Détraquée

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/11163924.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: F/M, Gen
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Characters: Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Theodore
Nott, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, Padma Patil, Draco Malfoy, Luna
Lovegood, Minerva McGonagall, Terry Boot, Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley,
Neville Longbottom, Hermione Granger's Mother, Hermione Granger's Father,
George Weasley, Mandy Brocklehurst, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Hermione Granger-centric, Character Study, Character Growth, POV - Deep
Dive, Female Gaze, Slice of Life, Splice of Life, Half-Blood Prince - Distilled,
Deathly Hallows - Diluted, Hermione Granger & Theodore Nott Friendship,
Loneliness, Insecurity, Drama, Fluff and Angst, Post-War, Healing, Hogwarts
Eighth Year, Post-Hogwarts, Eventual Romance, Enemies to Lovers, Slow
Burn, t'aint a burn, tis a simmer, Pining Hermione Granger, Unresolved
Romantic Tension, Eventual Smut, Ministry of Magic Employee Hermione
Granger, Ministry of Magic Employee Draco Malfoy, Pianist Draco Malfoy,
House-Elf Rights (Harry Potter), Rebel Rebel - The Muggleborn reboot, Late
90's Nostalgia, Veering away from canon and straining towards literary fiction,
Pummelling fantasy with realism, This is an Indie-fic, Garden State Of Mind,
How to Paint a Mental Landscape, The Love Song of Hermione J. Granger
Language: English
Series: Part 1 of Here We Go Round The Prickly Pear
Collections: quirked brow collection, Peak!Dramione, put me out of misery, ♡UωU♡ for
Dramione, Dramione that even my friends who don’t like HP can enjoy, Draco
& Hermione (Top-Tier), Desert Island Dramione Fics, Wips worth your despair
Stats: Published: 2017-06-10 Updated: 2024-03-24 Words: 694,893 Chapters:
105/107
 Détraquée
by Hystaracal

Summary

"All her growth was the conveying of a corpse of hope."

(From 'The Rainbow', D.H. Lawrence)

It was definitely the worst of times. Follow Hermione as she navigates through the quagmire:
saving the world, getting top grades, falling in love, lust, and a whole lot of trouble, and comes out
of it hopefully at least partially sane

Notes
Check out the Détraquée playlist here. (Compiled by rpriyanka)

Podfic version of this story, recorded by Karma_cookie.

中文-普通话 國語 translation by sihong9527 : 失常

 One
Chapter Notes

A little disclaimer/FYI:

This is not a Dramione story, though it is Dramione endgame. This is not a Half-Blood Prince
rewrite, though events from that book are relayed as splintered, irreverent remembrances. This
is not a story about the war, though the war takes place. There's a small canon divergence that
has a gradual snowball effect; but that's not what this story is about either. It may be epic in
length, but it is not an epic tale.

This story is Hermione.

Starring:
Book six and seven, as, a flipbook of impressions and rough edges
&
Eighth year and post-Hogwarts, as, the coming of age and aplomb

The plot is a supporting character in this maundering character study that is structured around
a slowly blossoming mind. The narrative is part interior monologue and part stream of
consciousness. It's a journey from older, fragmented recollections to fresher, more immediate
ones. The outside world has been shrunk to the shape of two wide brown eyes, and nothing is
free from perception.

The romance is eventual, but it is not an afterthought. It is the deeply embedded, warm and
buzzing heart of this story. Draco plays his part when the time comes.

Simply put, this is a thoroughgoing, slow-footed, indulgent and unconstrained piece of

fanfiction dedicated to Gentle Hermione lovers everywhere. Take your time with it, or not at
all. I hope, if you are still keen on reading, that you enjoy this monster of a tale.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

 PART I

She could see Pansy Parkinson standing a few feet away from the corner of her eye. Sneering, of
course. Defiantly, Hermione pulled back her shoulders, chin up, and stared at the empty track in
front of her.

Platform nine and three quarters was slowly filling up with students and parents, the low hum of
conversation gradually escalating to a cacophony.
Hermione had reached early - very early in fact – sending her parents off as soon as she could. She
didn’t want them to feel the heated glares and snide comments that they were sure to encounter had
they waited with her. The climate in the wizarding world was deteriorating at an alarming pace.
The geniality and wonder she had felt when she first embarked on her magical journey had faded
into something sinister and unwelcoming.

She took a fortifying breath, as her eyes fluttered shut. Keep it together.

Pansy was still lingering at the edge of her vision, joined now by an immaculately coiffed Daphne
Greengrass. They were both collectively sneering. Good grief, but Hermione was tired. She twisted
the end of her frayed Genesis t-shirt, one that had belonged to dad, and she had “borrowed” and
magically shrunk after he made her listen to ‘Foxtrot’... Just you wait Hermione, you’re going to
lose your mind...
Something heavy and unpleasant crawl up her throat. Dad. Dad with his fluffy grey hair and
tattered jeans; outdoorsy and scruffy, maker of the world’s worst puns, the only dentist in the
country who’d make his patients listen to ‘Rock the Casbah’ while he rummaged around in their
mouths.
And mum- who she was meant to be a spitting image of… slight, slender, and extraordinarily
generous. Mum who couldn’t cook for shit; the only person whose scope of literary references was
wider than her own... Her parents, thrilled to bits with their clever little witchy daughter...

She couldn’t breathe.

She barely registered the Hogwarts Express rolling in amid a cloud of purple smoke, a shrill
whistle, a sudden draught…

She was tired, and she couldn’t breathe and…

An arm slung itself around her shoulders, and she was squeezed into a tall, hard frame. Hermione
started, her head snapped up. Bright blue eyes looked fondly down at her from under strands of
ruddy hair.

“Hello.”

“Hullo, Hermione,” Ron smiled impishly, seeming unwilling to let go of her, “You’ve gone and
shrunk again, haven’t you?”

Some of her tension slipped away as she leant into his embrace. She rolled her eyes at him, not
even trying to hold back the sappy smile that unfurled across her face.

Then he turned her around and steered her towards his family, an oasis of warmth and ginger hair in
a crowd of irrelevant bodies, away from her thoughts and away from stupid Pansy Parkinson.

She went about hugging them one by one- from Ron to Fred (“Well hey there…”) to George (“…
lovely...”) to Ginny (“…fucking Fleur, Hermione, I swear to Merlin I’m going to scream…”) to
Molly (“You’re too thin, dear...”) to Arthur (“Don’t see your lovely folks around. Pity. Real
pity…”), until finally she all but melted into one Harry Potter.
God. She felt so selfish for letting herself drown in her woes back there. Harry had it far worse than
she ever would. She pulled away to look up at him, his hair nearly as hopeless as hers, and saw that
his splendid green eyes were clear and at ease for once.

“Hermione. Hi.”

“Harry. Hello.”

He grinned at her and she felt her heart swell at the happiness of that expression. Because to Harry,
Hogwarts was home, the Weasleys were family, and in that moment she knew he felt that he was
exactly where he wanted to be.

“All good?”

“Just grand.”

But he did that ostentatious, shifty thing with his eyebrows – an established signal for I’ll tell you
later – so she gave him an exaggerated wink in return. Okay. Got it. His grin expanded into a
chuckle and Hermione couldn’t stop herself from hugging him again.

On the train ride Hermione heard about Horace Slughorn from Harry, OWL scores from Ron and
Harry, the absolute horror/total dreamboat that was Fleur Delacour from Ginny/Ron, and then sat
and listened while Harry presented a veritable thesis postulating – nay screamingly declaring – that
Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater. Ron and Ginny looked away uncomfortably while that went on.
Harry was breathing heavily by the end of it, and the silence that followed was profound.

“Er… I’ve got to go meet Dean…” Ginny blurted and scrambled out of the compartment.

Hermione was tired.

“Harry,” she ventured, “Malfoy is sixteen years old, and I hardly think that-”

Ron groaned, even as Harry burst out with, “As if age matters when it means having a man inside
Hogwarts-”

“He’s hardly a man, Harry.“

“Semantics? Really, Hermione?“

“ What could he possibly accomplish with Dumbledore right here and-“

“-plotting something… it’s so obvious. Ron and Ginny saw him threaten Borgin-“
“-and furthermore… oh come on, he was clearly bluffing! Malfoy has always been full of bravado
and.. and… shit! Tell him, Ron!”

Harry and Hermione both looked at Ron expectantly. Poor Ron looked agonised, his ears red and
his brow puckered.

“Um… well…”

That was when a starry-eyed girl pushed into their compartment to tell Harry that he was being
summoned by Professor Slughorn. Ron crumpled with relief.

Hermione looked at him for a moment, her eyebrows arched, and then said, simply: “Why?”

Ron let out a humorless titter, stretched out his arms and shrugged dramatically.

“Sometimes Harry gives me a break from being the ever-irrational one.”

Hermione laughed, and lightly shoved at his shoulder. He smiled down at her like he had at the
station, the same soft fondness in his eyes as they travelled across her face. She felt her cheeks
warm under his scrutiny, her heartbeat sped up, and her laughter petered out as she met his gaze.
She wished he would say something… or do something… big and terribly meaningful, because her
stomach was rolling with anticipation. She took in a shaky gulp of air, and that seemed to snap Ron
out of well, whatever. He blinked rapidly, laughed nervously, and mumbled something about being
hungry and bloody hell where’s the food trolley at.

“Sucks to your ass-mar,” she retorted irritably.

“What?”

She was so very tired.

The Great Hall was as glorious as ever: the sky a dusky blue, full of riotous clouds and nary a star,
the students sat under a canopy of candles, and the air was laden with the smell of rich, warm food.
Harry was still fuming about Professor Snape’s appointment as the new Defence Against the Dark
Arts teacher. Ron was looking intensely focused as he fed himself at an extraordinary speed, and
Hermione thought about Futurist paintings depicting motion, about bizarre Japanese cartoons,
about William Makepeace Thackeray.
She pushed her half-eaten plate away, and looked about her listlessly. Ginny was sitting next to
Dean who had one arm looped around her, as he valiantly attempted to cut his steak with one hand.
Seamus was attempting to flirt with Parvati. Parvati was attempting to dissolve into thin air to
escape Seamus. Lavender was giggling at her friend’s predicament.

“Bored, eh?” came a whisper from her left.

She huffed a laugh and turned to look at Neville.

“Just… tired.”

He smiled ruefully at her. His once round face had matured and narrowed, but it retained that
quintessentially Neville look of hesitance and innocence.

“Did you read the latest piece in The New Journal of Herbology about the possibility of using
Asphodel to slow down the growth cancerous tumors?”

She gratefully, delightedly, jumped into that conversation.

Long live Longbottom.

Hermione trudged towards the huge doors of the Great Hall, anxious to reach her bed and sleep.
Her eyes felt hot, her head felt heavy. She was positively done.
So, of course, she had to come face to face with Draco Malfoy right before the threshold. His
mouth twisted with distaste the moment he saw her. Theodore Nott stood a little behind him,
looking generally uninterested in any and every thing.

Hermione was entirely in favour of avoiding confrontation, so she thought it prudent to stop
walking and let the egomaniac pass first.

But then-

“Out of the way, mudblood.”

Oh lord.

Her exhaustion and exasperation mingled languidly. She looked at him for a moment, and then
bowed her head. Her arms performed a series of graceful ports de bras, one arching by her side, the
other gesturing to the door. Her leg drew an elegant circle on the floor before dipping behind her,
and then she sank slowly, utterly into a devastatingly theatrical curtsey.

Silence. The throng of students around them had all fallen mum. Head still bent, she looked up at
Malfoy through her eyelashes. He looked dumbstruck. Flabbergasted. His eyes were wide, lips
 frozen in a half-sneer. Hermione very nearly lost her balance in the face of his comical
astonishment. It didn’t help one bit that behind him, Nott’s eyes were suddenly alive with glee, as
he bit down on his lip.
Behind her somebody snorted loudly. Then there was a giggle. Soon, the laughter was thunderous
and all around. Hermione continued to watch Malfoy even as a small, crooked smile broke across
her face.

He stormed out of the hall, but not before muttering, “Stupid uppity bitch.”

Nott beamed at her.

For the second time that day, she felt an arm snake around her shoulders and Harry pulled her away.

“That was brilliant!” Ginny danced around to her other side, and then there was Ron laughing, and
Dean and Seamus and Luna and Neville and Justin…
They encircled her, faces shining with mirth, and Hermione’s weariness momentarily made way for
contentment.

Chapter End Notes

1. “Sucks to your ass-mar!”: Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

ARTWORK:
The Curtsey, by unknownarchetype:
Hermione and Draco + Theo.
 Two

Hermione sat in her favourite corner of the Hogwarts library attempting to make sense of the day. It
was late in the evening, the sun was just short of dipping below the horizon, and a tawny, pinkish
light was filtering through the large window under which she was curled up in a lumpy armchair,
robes discarded, legs tucked under her bum, surrounded by open books that she just couldn’t focus
on.
“Professor” Slughorn was a buffoon. A pompous, ingratiating, frivolous fop who completely lacked
the air of a convincing intellectuality.
He’d fawned over anyone he considered as having some social standing, much to the bitter dismay
of Ron… and Draco Malfoy. Ron and Malfoy on the same side in any situation meant that the
universe was truly bonkers. But then again… she’d never known two other people with such
blatant chips on their shoulders…

She shook that thought off.

A disgruntled Ron always annoyed the hell out of her, Amortentia revelations be damned. She was
irritated enough without thinking about his bull-headed petulance. Tonight she was going to be
annoyed with Harry.

He’d always been a lazy scholar, and it had been all right when his marks reflected that. But now he
had that annotated textbook, and with Slughorn… with Slughorn… creaming his pants every time
he was around…

She wasn’t jealous, and she didn’t begrudge him winning the Felix Felicis at all. If anyone needed
luck, it was Harry. But...

Hermione sighed softly, and pulled her hair out of the sloppy bun at the back of her head. The thick
and heavy mass tumbled down, and she massaged her scalp, before turning back to her books and
parchment.

She worked peacefully for ten minutes.

“Well, don’t you make a pretty picture.”

Theodore Nott was leaning against the shelf in front of her, with a half-grin on his narrow face. It
took Hermione an entire minute to reconcile the statement with the source of it. An entire minute
after which she eloquently said, “Huh?”

Nott flashed a full shit-eating grin at her.

“Good evening, Hermione.”

He said it like a sharp but pleasant assertion. His voice was deep and Hermione winced as she
thought of Hannibal Lector casually sitting in a cage.

“What do you want?”

“I just wanted to congratulate you. Last night was spectacular. It’s so rare to see Draco at a loss for
words, you know.”

...

“And now you’re speechless. What a great year this is turning out to be.”

“Oh yes. Everything is just grand."

Nott laughed. “Well, you’re a sharp little thing, aren’t you?”

“What do you want, Nott?” she repeated.

“I think we’re past using last names, Hermione.”

“Are you mad?” she asked quite seriously.

“What are you working on?”

“…Er, ancient runes essay…” she mumbled uncertainly.

“Excellent! Just what I needed to get started on,” he quipped as he began pulling books out of his
bag and placing them on the table next to her.

“What are you doing?”

“Ancient runes essay, Hermione! Didn’t I just say?”

With that he sat on the armchair across from her, and began scribbling on a piece of parchment.
Hermione watched him for a few seconds. God, why couldn’t things make sense for a little while?
He looked up and grinned, before returning to his work.

Ah well. She thought, and turned back to her essay. Goo goo g'joob.

Homework assignments were more important than unraveling Gordian Notts.

By the end of the week, Harry had been coronated by Slughorn. Hermione’s bitterness was
insuppressible. At least this time, Ron seemed to share her sentiments.
She was just beginning to work her way into a gloriously unhinged rant, when Harry said he was
going for his first private lesson with Professor Dumbledore.

And just like that, her anger evaporated.

It was exasperating really, how she found it impossible to stay angry with Harry.
She watched him leave the common room, her heart heavy, and then leaned her head against the
back of the sofa, shutting her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter, you know.”

She frowned, her eyes still closed.

Ron continued: “I mean… Harry beating you. It’s just marks and all. Doesn’t mean shit. You
know… that is to say… it’s meaningless, yeah…?” he fumbled. “What I mean is… you’re still the
most brilliant person in the world. Nothing can change that.”

Hermione turned her head and looked at him. He was staring down at his hands, his face red. She
felt warmed to her soul. Her pulse stuttered. She couldn’t seem to say a word. Instead she tenderly
took his large hand in hers and squeezed it. When he looked at her, her smile was full and wide.
She could feel her eyes welling up. It was almost too much.

And this was why she was so lost when it came to Ron Weasley. For all the grief he gave her, he
also made her feel elated in ways she never thought possible.
He was smiling back at her now. Her stomach twisted. She dropped her head on his shoulder, his
hand still clasped in hers, and they sat looking into the common room fire. It had nothing on the
smouldering embers inside her.

Herbology with Hufflepuffs.

Helpful Hufflepuffs.
Herby Herbology with helpful Hufflepuffs.
Humble Hermione has herby Herbology with helpful Hufflepuffs.

She didn’t realise she had been muttering out loud until Neville and Harry began sniggering on
both sides of her.
She blushed and stared determinedly at the clump of verdure in front of her.

“Huffy Hermione’s head hangs in humiliation,” said Harry.

“Humiliated Hermione hisses hysterically at humorous Harry,” said Neville.

“Harrowed Hermione hazardously hexes two humungous heedless halfwits,” she countered.

“Oooooh!” they chanted in unison.

Hermione swallowed her giggle and elbowed their ribs simultaneously.

Professor McGonagall swept into the greenhouse. She looked strained in a way Hermione hadn’t
seen in a long time. She walked over to Professor Sprout and said something into her ear that
caused the latter to gasp in horror and drop her watering can.

Looking exceedingly unimpressed at the exhibition, Professor McGonagall turned around and
called out, “Miss Abbott. Could you please pack up your things and come with me?”

Hannah looked confused, but complied. Her eyes darted to Professor Sprout, whose face was
flushed and distraught, and her own expression morphed to fear.

“What... what’s going on?”

“Just come along, Miss Abbott,” Professor McGonagall said in an uncharacteristically gentle tone.

When the two had exited, Professor Sprout let out a sob.

“Professor...?” Ernie Macmillan asked, hesitantly.

“Oh Merlin. That poor girl,” Professor Sprout wailed. Everybody looked about uncomfortably as
she took a fortifying breath. “Her mother... she’s been murdered.”

Later that night, Hermione broke away from the common room, and went for a solitary walk. She
had felt Harry’s eyes on her all day, and she couldn’t handle that anymore.
She walked up to the astronomy tower in a daze. All her worst nightmares, the bleak consequences
of her life, choices, and situation were churning like a whirlpool in her head. Grasping the railing,
looking out into the night, she took in a lungful of cold air.

Hannah’s muggle mother had been murdered by Death Eaters, presumably for having the gall to
sully the lineage of one of the sacred twenty-eight.
Had they danced around her broken body? Had they cackled with glee as they spilt her dirty,
common blood? Hermione shuddered once, and never stopped.
If Hannah’s mother was a target, her own mother was a prize. Filthy muggle mother of filthy
mudblood Hermione Granger, best friend of the Chosen One. They’d make a damn carnival out of
it.

Fuck. Oh fuck.

She didn’t know what to do. Terror and helplessness had paralysed her mind.

A gust of wind... Another shudder...

Hermione hunched her shoulders and cried. Her head dipped until it was resting against her white
knuckles gripping at the railing. She cried without restraint, the force of her dread was crushing her.
When her sobs subsided, she couldn’t tell how long they had overwhelmed her for. Seconds?
Hours? The night looked the same; the moon was still nestled poetically between two branches of
the whomping willow.

Then she heard a soft rustle behind her. Startled, she spun around, and there was nothing there.
Still, she felt a bit uneasy as she scanned the length and breadth of the tower.

Nothing.

She backed out of the tower, eyes narrowed and darting from side to side.

Her eyes were swollen the next morning.

“Wow, Hermione, you look awful!”

It was too early for Lavender Brown to be voicing her opinions.

“Hmm,” she said, twisting her hair into a knot at her nape.

“You should do something about that. You’re around Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley all day; isn’t
that enough incentive to want to look your best, like, all the time?”

Lavender, polished as always, smiled condescendingly at her.

“Well, I’ll see you around!” she sang as she swept out of their dorm.

Hermione waited for her footsteps to recede before casting a soft glamour over her eyes.
There. That ought to appease Ronald Weasley.

She was scowling as she went down for breakfast.

The quidditch trials were that morning, and Ron was overtly jittery.

She had endured that, and Harry’s determination to keep his ghastly potion’s book, and a
debilitating perusal of the Daily Profit over breakfast; so she felt duly murderous when Lavender
gave Ron a coquettish smile as they made their way out onto the quidditch pitch. The come-hither
smile altered into a sly grin aimed directly at Hermione once Ron had looked away.

Hermione stomped off towards the stands without a word.

She watched impassively as the trials commenced. Growing up pretending to take Tottenham
Hotspur seriously had prepared her for this. And quidditch was a lot easier to get sucked into.

A large, blond bloke plodder over and sat three seats away from her, looking about as put off as she
felt. Sensing her eyes on him, he glanced over... looked away... and snapped his head right back.
With a smarmy sort of smirk and without a preamble, he said, “Cormac McLaggen, keeper.”

“Hello. I’m Hermione Gra-“

“Granger. Yeah, I know. Everybody knows who you are, doll.”

They both turned to the pitch at the sound of Harry’s frustrated yelling as he announced his final
(“yes that’s fucking final!”) decision regarding the chasers.

“Ha. That Potter is such a pushover. I’d have hexed those little cunts. Ha ha ha. Oh and look... all
his chasers are birds! Not bad lookin’ ones too. That Ginny Weasley’s a total slag, I hear. So your
boy Potter’s that sort, eh? Why didn’t you try out, doll? You’re well prettier than that lot,”
McLaggen grinned cockily at her.

She glared back furiously.

“Feisty! Tell you what, Granger... let me finish this trial shite – it’s going to be a fucking breeze for
me – and then I’ll take you out this weekend, yeah? Show you a good time. Eh, doll?”

“No, thank you,” she gritted out.

“Playing hard to get? Ha ha. Cute. Alright. Have it your way. I’ll play along. Oh! Ha! Look at that
skinny little wanker thinking he can whack a bludger – oh – Ah. Got lucky, the fucking garden
gnome. Ha ha...”

He wouldn’t stop. The only person this persistently obnoxious was Draco Malfoy. And Zacharias
Smith.

By the time he finally left for his try-out, Hermione’s temples were throbbing. Jesus fuck.

She watched the loathsome chauvinist save four goals in a row with acute displeasure, and
something in her snapped. Before she fully registered what she had done, McLaggen was
grimacing at his supposed mistake.

When Ron grinned at her after his triumph, his eyes were bluer than the Mediterranean Sea.
When Ron scowled at her after Slughorn invited her to his “little soiree”, she couldn’t care less
about the colour of his stupid little eyes.
When they shifted to watch Lavender playing with locks of her silken hair, Hermione just didn’t
have it in her to feel dispirited.

Harry was passionately engaged in constructing his ‘Draco Malfoy is a Death Eater’ hypothesis.

She was actually looking forwarding to attending the party just to get away from them.

Wine was one of mankind’s greatest inventions. She was on her third glass, feeling lighter than she
had in a long time. McLaggen and Slughorn were wrapped up in a frivolous conversation about
holiday destinations. Hermione had tuned out long ago.

Across from her, Blaise Zabini was sullenly murdering his potatoes. Neville, having the misfortune
of sitting next to him, was visible tense. Hermione caught his eye, and gave him a lazy smile.

“Neville is going to wet himself,” she whispered to Ginny, who was seated next to her, and on her
fourth glass of wine.

Ginny chuckled breathlessly. “And then Zabini will have to look more disgusted than he already
does, and that I really would love to see...”

“I don’t know. He looks like he’s already reached super-saturation point. I don’t think it’s possible
to look more disgusted...”

Zabini looked up from his spud-massacre then. Right at them.

“Oh Merlin!” Ginny squealed, “That’s it! That's peak disgust!”

Hermione bit down on her lip and dug her toes into the soles of her shoes to keep from laughing out
loud.
 Three
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Apparently, objecting to the practice of testing out unknown handwritten spells on your friends
made you an inexorable stick-in-the-mud.

Harry and Ron left for Hogsmeade, uncaring that she refused to go along.

Hermione strolled along an empty passageway, stopping before a tall window. The weather outside
was abominable. She imagined the boys stuck in the middle of a sleety street, iced over from head
to toe, their skin a bright bright blue.
Then their limbs began to fall off.

What would it take for Harry to just listen to her? For Ron to stop taking her for granted?

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my senses, as though of...

“Hermione Granger.”

Why did disembodied voices and noises insist on jarring her out of pensive moods?

It was Padma Patil this time, who scarcely ever spoke to her. Hermione’s immediate curiosity took
a bit of the edge off her irritation.

“Yes?”

She looked grave as she asked, “Can you tell me how I have suddenly gone from having the third
highest score in potions, to the fourth? And more importantly, how the hell is Harry Potter sitting
in the top slot?”

“Ah.” Hermione’s uncertainty lasted for barely half a moment before she said, “Harry’s been
working really hard lately.”

Loyalty to Potter above everything; no matter how badly she wanted to throw both him and his
book into a vat of rancid flobberworm mucus.

“Oh please,” said Padma, “Working really hard? Enough to turn into a genius overnight? And why
is his hard work only showing results in one class?”

Hermione shrugged helplessly.

“Listen, Hermione. This is all to do with Slughorn’s favouritism. I understand that Harry’s your
friend, but this isn't fair – ” She stood up straight, and locked her hands behind her back – “I have a
proposition for you.”

She looked like she was standing in a boardroom before a dozen ruthless business tycoons, rather
than in a dingy corridor with her frumpy classmate.

“Go on...” Hermione ventured.

“We pool our resources for the term end project. We’ll prepare two impeccably researched papers
with flawlessly brewed potions, submit one each, get back our pride and position, and call it a day.”

Hermione smiled, and extended her hand out wordlessly. Padma grasped it with her own.

“Library? After dinner?”

“Affirmative.”

“...Then she rose straight up into the air like a fucking archangel, and started screaming like she
was in agony. Ron, Leanne, and I pulled her down, but she still wouldn’t stop screaming... I ran;
found Hagrid...got to McGonagall... They’ve taken her to Mungo’s... ” Harry’s entire body was
thrumming with agitation. He was speaking way too fast.

“It was bloody terrifying,” Ron clarified, helpfully.

Hermione felt sick.

“An opal necklace, you say?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Harry rushed out, “The one on display at Borgin and Burkes. Now we have to figure out
how Malfoy managed to get it past Filch’s sensors.”

Ron’s gaze shifted to the ceiling in exasperation. But he held his tongue in an uncharacteristic show
of restraint. Hermione didn’t feel quite as self-possessed at that point.

“Good grief. Harry.”

“Oh get over yourself, Hermione!” He lashed out at her, glaring with unsettling acrimony, “You
don’t always know everything, alright? I’m right. I know I’m right. It has to be him. We heard him
asking that slimeball in the shop to put it on hold!”

“You don’t know that he was talking about the necklace!”

“Where is all this faith in bloody buggering Draco Malfoy coming from?”
“It isn’t faith in him! It’s faith in his inability to pull something like this off...”

“Yeah, because it was such a smooth operation. Not a colossal fuck up at all-”

Ron tried to play pacifist- “Er, Harry, mate...”

“No. Ron, no. Shut up. Why don’t you see it? You know exactly what a sick and twisted fucker
Malfoy is. And you saw him show his dark mark to Borgin!”

“Well, we didn’t actually see that...”

“Fine. You know what... Fine. I’ll be vindicated soon enough!” He looked at Hermione then. His
face was still a mask of severe hostility. He pointed at her, “Don’t think I’ll be above telling you I
told you so when shit hits the fan.”

With that, he stormed off to his dormitory, before Hermione could bite back by telling him how she
hadn’t said “I told you so” to him regarding the debacle in the Ministry last year.

Which she wouldn’t have actually said. Of course not.

Ron and Hermione couldn’t look at each other in the ringing silence Harry left in his wake.

“I’m going to the library,” she said shakily.

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“Hermione...”

She left. She needed more than anything to get away from Ron’s uncertain cerulean gaze. He would
have sat with her, had she stayed. But they would both have known that he would rather have gone
up to placate Harry.
Ron found it much easier to say unpleasant things about her.

Right now, she needed to be surrounded by books and quietude. Padma would be there. Brisk and
pragmatic Padma would help her lose herself in cerebral pursuits.

She let her mind drift to the nebulous idea that she had been toying with before she found out about
Katie’s ordeal. She thought about anaesthesia and ketamine, how they might be combined with
certain elements of the revive potion to render a person temporarily immune to pain.
Maybe it could decrease the severity of the cruciatus curse...?

Hermione inhaled deeply once she had walked into her safe haven.

She spotted the back of Padma’s head sequestered in a quiet corner. She’d braided her long, glossy
black hair; the thick dark rope contrasted startlingly against the bright white of her shirt.

“Hi, Padma. Let’s get started.”

Hermione decided to venture down alone for breakfast the next morning. She was about halfway
across the common room when she felt someone fist the back of her cloak to stop her.
She spun around, and there stood Harry Potter with his face twisted in discomfort. He was looking
at a distant corner over the top of her head, unable to meet her eyes.
His mouth opened.
Then closed.
He rolled his eyes at himself, before finally looking down at her.

By this point Hermione was smiling helplessly.

He gazed at her plaintively; a little stricken.

Hermione sighed heavily... and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.

Curse you, you poor love-starved, awful, wonderful boy.

That evening Hermione surveyed the common room dolefully, distractedly.

Harry had just left for another lesson with Professor Dumbledore. He’d been entertainingly
disgruntled for the past hour, as he’d watched Ginny and Dean curled up by the fireplace, giggling
at Arnold the pygmy puff.

They were still coiled together, looking warm and happy.

She glanced at Ron, who was sitting on the floor, leaning against an arm of the sofa, so he wouldn’t
have to look at Ginny and Dean. He’d decided that the sight of Lavender Brown painting her nails
was a far more pleasant one.

Hermione shot up and stalked towards the portrait hole.

“Where-“

“Professor Slughorn’s...”
A scathing snort. “Of course.”

Padma wouldn’t be getting together with her that evening. She had told her distractedly after their
Arithmancy lesson that she had to attend a meeting of her ‘Nocturnal Numerology’ club.
The Ravenclaws had clubs for everything, apparently. Hermione wondered idly, as she strolled
down the passage leading to the dungeons, what her life would have been like, had she been sorted
into that house. Undoubtedly, she’d have been a part of as many study groups as possible. She
thought jealously about the learning, the conversations, the scintillating exchange of ideas that she
had missed out on.

The year before, Terry Boot had told her on numerous occasions that she belonged in their (his)
house. He’d said it while running his hands through his shaggy brown hair.
Hm.
What if she were to take her own advice? What if she went out with Terry Boot? What if she drank
butterbeer sitting across from him, held his hand, let him run that same hand through her unruly
locks... let him cup her face, and kiss her mouth?
Would Ron be entertainingly disgruntled? Could she count on him to be spurred into action, and to
at long last get his act together?

She stopped walking abruptly.

She knew that would never happen. If the episode with Victor taught her anything, it was that
jealousy made Ron an ugly person. He would mistreat her atrociously until she’d ditch her suitor,
and then he’d expect everything to go back to status quo seamlessly. The frustration she felt at the
pit of her stomach surged through her and tore out of her throat:

“Bah!”

“Easy there, Hermione.”

“...Nott?!”

Him again?

“Theo, Hermione. I told you to call me Theo.”

She just looked at him.

“Go on. Call me Theo.”

They stared at each other, as they leant against opposite walls of the narrow corridor. He lowered
his head and fixed a sharp look upon her.

“Say it,” he crooned in a faux-threatening tone.

Hermione couldn’t help but smirk.

“Theo.”

He faked a shudder. “Ooooh. My name on your lips sets me on fire.”

He was exceedingly slender and narrow. She imagined that he was as slim as her, though he stood
more than a head taller. Light brown hair, blue eyes that were a little darker than Ron’s; she had to
admit that he was striking.

“Now what?” she asked him with affected amiability.

Nott —Theo — shrugged indolently. “I was headed to the library. I would love it if you’d join me
for a dazzlingly intellectual tête-à-tête.”

His smile was guileless and full. What even was Theo Nott? A Wildean dandy come to life?

“Okay.”

Oh dear, she was smiling back.

“Ah, there you are! I was just...”

Yes! Why not! Throw Draco Malfoy into the mix too! Good one, providence!

Malfoy stopped short when he spotted her. He looked dumbfounded.

Hermione realised that she rather liked being the cause of his unsettlement. Theo was thinking
along the same lines –

“You’ve done it again, Hermione! You’ve gone and stunned the unflappable Malfoy. See, this is
why I like you so much.”

“What the fuck? Theo, if you’re having some kind of perverted liaison with a mudblood, you
should know that - ”

“Shut your mouth, Draco. That is not how one speaks in civilised company,” said Theo, then
grinned at Hermione after taking in his expression. “Oh this is fun. I can see why you keep doing
it.”

And Hermione- god help her- Hermione giggled.

Malfoy’s head snapped sharply towards her. All traces of astonishment wiped clean from his face,
he regarded her with abject antipathy. In the torchlight, his nearly translucent eyes seemed to be
burning with fire and brimstone.

“I’ll see you in the common room, Theo.”

His tone conveyed much more than his words. He spoke them at Hermione; slow, loaded, and
guttural. It was a threat, an insult, and a challenge.

Theo whistled softly once Malfoy had stormed off.

“Intense, isn’t he?” he said, admiringly.

“Quite.” Hermione’s admiration was more obviously sardonic.

 “Well. Looks like our rendezvous amongst ancient tomes is off.”

“Another night then. I’ll be better prepared. I’ll even wear nice underwear.”

OH GOD.
Oh fucking god. What on earth possessed her to say that?

Theo looked positively radiant. “Oh, I do look forward to it.”

And with a wink and a smile, he left.

Barely an hour ago, she had been envisioning a life where she’d be a part of high-calibre research
clubs. Now, she realised that she had inadvertently become a part of something called the Slug club.
She didn’t know which inspired soul had come up with the moniker, but Slughorn was charmed.

“Cormack, my boy,” he was slurring slightly, “You must remind me to introduce you and your
wonderful uncle to the Turkish ambassador someday! He has some fascinating new business
ventures involving flying carpets, and a modification that makes them considerably less illegal...”

McLaggen was smirking stupidly.

Ginny was flapping around Gwenog Jones like a flamingo in heat.

Well. She had a goblet full of wine. It was time to measure out her life with it.

Chapter End Notes

1. "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness...": Ode to a Nightingale, by John Keats
2. "measure out her life with it": Reference to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S.
Eliot
 Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Ron had blushed and fussed around her all day. There could have been nothing more disastrous
than the way she had indirectly asked him to Slughorn’s Christmas party while he was in the
middle of an unholy snit; but then he had moved past his agitation and begun treating her with a
kind of flattering consideration that left Hermione grinning like a loon.

Harry had been alternating between rolling his eyes, stifling a smirk, and looking like he wished he
was somewhere far far away from the both of them.

She was grinning still when she left to meet Padma in the library.

Hermione was so very happy.

So what if Ron could be an arse sometimes? She didn’t care about the past few days.
Didn’t care if Monday’s blue. Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too.
Thursday I don’t care about you... it’s Friday, I’m in love.

Padma was not at all charmed to find herself in the company of a hummingbrd. A raised eyebrow
clearly implied, ‘I’m not going to ask, but do shut up.’

They worked well together. It was invigorating to conduct research with someone who could keep
up with her thought process. Like a well-oiled machine, they passed books, notes, and ideas across
the table.

Hours later, Padma gasped.

“Hermione! It’s nearly one!”

“What? Oh my... How did Madam Pince not throw us out?”

“No idea,” a bemused Padma said as she packed up her belongings.

Once they’d crept out into the corridor, Hermione whispered, “Will you be all right? With Filch, I
mean...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Padma murmured back with a smug smile, “You Gryffindors aren’t the
only ones skilled at rule breaking.”

They parted after exchanging a friendly nod.

Hermione was on the fifth floor when she spotted light shining out through the gaps surrounding
the door of the music room, and the silhouette of a girl sitting on the floor outside it.
Curious, she made her way to the figure.

“Luna?” she whispered, squatting down next to her.

In fuzzy bright purple robes over light blue pyjamas that were dotted with what looked like a
disastrous amalgamation of a crocodile and a wombat, she said, “Shh,” in her mellow voice,
“Listen.”

She handed Hermione the end of an extendable ear, which ran on to slip under the crack of the
door. Hermione put it to her ear, and was suddenly blown away by the tinkling of piano keys.

It was Bach’s prelude.

Her breath caught in her throat as the poignant melody washed over her. Whoever it was playing
the piece was doing it justice.
Eyes shut, Hermione let the music wrap around her like a glowing aura. The moment was brief but
transcendental, and she felt heavy with emotion.

“Who is that?” she asked breathlessly.

“Someone who would not be happy to see you.”

Both girls started at the voice that came from behind them.

Theodore Nott:
Noun; The personification of an unexpected muscle spasm.

She groaned. “Why are you everywhere?”

“Moi?!” he said, affronted, “Well excuse me! I was just coming to check on my temperamental best
friend – he’s prone to poetic bouts of night-time brooding... you know, scowling at the stars from
the astronomy tower, sighing deeply while staring at the moonlight dance on the rippling waves of
the lake, or like now, moping over the baby grand in there – “ he gestured to the music room with
his chin, before continuing, “That sort of thing. And who do I find crouched outside? You,
Hermione. You. Why are you everywhere?” He smiled sweetly at her, rambling on, “I think you’ve
put a tracking charm on me. I don’t blame you. But trust me, sweetheart, you don’t have to resort to
such desperate tactics. I’ll happily meet you anytime, anywhere. And incidentally-”

“Dried wormwood in vinegar,” Luna cut him off.

Theo looked at her like he had only just noticed her presence.

“I’m sorry?”

“Dried wormwood in vinegar. Let it sit overnight, and then strain the infusion and pour it into your
ears.”

“Now why would I do that?” Theo’s eyes flickered to Hermione in confusion.

“You obviously have the most dreadful infestation of Blathergouts. They’re like brain parasites that
cause people to prattle on endlessly and often ridiculously. I’m sure it’s been quite traumatic for
you.”

Hermione slapped her palm over her mouth to contain her laughter. Theo looked aghast.

“I’m sorry... what?”

“Oh yes. They sometimes interfere with a person’s basic comprehension, too. You poor thing.”

With that, Luna wandered off, quickly swallowed by the shadows in the dimly lit hallway. The
expression on Theo’s face wasn’t making it easy for Hermione to choke back her laughter.

“They’re not real? Blatherwhazzits?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Luna certainly described your symptoms most accurately.”

“Ha. Ha.”

He sneered at her, but it promptly morphed into a smile, one which Hermione returned almost
shyly.

Then his words from earlier registered.

“Hold on,” she frowned, “Best friend... is that Malfoy in there?”

Hermione was astonished as Theo beamed and nodded.

“Surprised?” he ventured.

“I... well... yes...” she stammered, “He plays wonderfully.”

Theo shrugged, “He had to have some redeeming qualities.”

“Right. Of course.” Hermione was blinking rather rapidly.

“Hey. Hermione.”

She jumped slightly when she realised how close he was. He was looking down at her kindly.

“Yes?”

“I think you should leave before he comes out.”

“Yes. Yeah. Good idea. Indeed.”

She was tremendously flustered, and suddenly all she could think about was the stupid underwear
comment she had blurted out the last time they had run into each other.
She cringed internally.

“Goodnight, Hermione.”

“Yeah. Goodnight.”
She woke up cringing, the next morning.

At breakfast, she made it a point to sit with her back to the Slytherin table. The Gryffindor
quidditch team, now including Dean, was huddled around Harry. She anticipated a spot of tension
arising in the face of this new dynamic.

The squad soon went off for practice, and left on her own, she ambulated down the viaduct
courtyard, thinking about taking advantage of the sunny day and getting a few peaceful hours of
reading done by the lake. Thoughts flashed and disappeared speedily in her head like a disjointed
flipbook. She was vaguely aware of the group of Hufflepuffs in front of her- Ernie, Susan, Megan,
and Roger, among others.

Ernie was in his natural pontificating pose:“...and British muggles were paragons of civilisation!
Most muggles were a bit savage, see; and the brave men of Dear Old Blighty took it upon
themselves to reform and enlighten the heathens. They conquered most of the world, and formed
the British Empire, which is said to be the greatest the muggle world had ever seen.”

At Hermione’s derisive snort, they all spun around to face her.

“Wherever did you hear that?” she asked.

“Muggle studies lesson. Rather fascinating, muggle history; quite as riveting as our own.”

“Ernie,” she said forcefully, “Everything you said is rubbish. A heap of jingoism and propaganda.
The British empire was atrocious, devastating its colonies economically and socially...”

“That is not at all what it says in our books,” muttered Susan, frowning.

“And moreover, other kingdoms and empires were not savage. They were abounding with culture
and learning, and just because they didn’t align with the British post-Christianity dogma, they were
awfully subjugated,” Hermione finished shrilly.

Ernie looked very unsure: “But the Brits were... honourable men...”

So are they all, all honourable men.

She pulled out her beloved copy of Hogwarts,A History, once she had settled comfortably on a
grassy patch by the lake. From between its pages, she pulled out a creased and slightly worn piece
of parchment.

‘A COMPREHENSIVE TO-DO LIST IN SERVICE OF HERMIONE GRANGER’S AGENDA

TO BETTER THE WITCHING AND WIZARDING WORLD.’

She smiled down fondly at the words she had carefully printed as an ambitious and over-zealous
eleven year old.

1. Introduce the magical community to muggle music.

2. Find a way to successfully integrate muggle technology with magic (first cause- electricity).
3. Encourage the incorporation of muggle medicinal practices in magical healing.
4. Demolish the appalling and deep-rooted social evil of pureblood ideology by enforcing strict
legislation that outlaws ANY and ALL forms of discrimination.
5. Launch anti-prejudice camps to undo centuries of prejudice and indoctrination.
6. Convince the magical community that regency era societal norms are grossly outdated.
7. Prepare a robust memorandum that clearly outlines the rights of misunderstood magical
creatures.
8. Establish a sanctioned union for House Elves, and make the magical community aware of the
concept of labour rights.
9. Introduce anti-slander laws Free press above all, no matter how vile the publication.
10. Ensure that centres of education remain entirely independent and untouched by bureaucratic
influence.

Yes, some might say she was preposterously, laughably over-ambitious.

Picking up a black gel pen she added,

11. THOROUGHLY revise, redraft, and revamp the Muggle Studies curriculum across all magical
institutions of learning.

There.

Hermione put away her list and her book, shed her robes, loosened her tie, and lay down on the soft
grass.

The sky was a lovely shade of light azure littered with fluffy white clouds. The warm air was being
balanced perfectly by frequent rushes of cool breeze. Hermione looked up at the broad leafy canopy
that covered the top half of her vision. It was a network of emerald and gold flashes as gusts of
wind rustled by.
She closed her eyes, absorbing the sound. There was something enticing about it – something
mystical and calming, something deliberate and soothing – a rain stick in the hands of a Shaman in
a trance.

Hermione tossed her arms above her head, and then arched her back off the ground, pressing her
feet into the soil until she felt the all-too satisfying burn of her spine being utterly stretched.

She collapsed after a few seconds, letting out a contented sigh. Blinking dreamily, she watched the
clouds drift across the arc of blue above, looking like giant floating cities with elaborate domes and
spires; heavy and solid... but really just clusters of vapour, glorified air, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
Ever since she was of schooling age, Hermione had had to contend with the scorn of her peers. She
was used to it by this point; a healthy mix of arrogance, indifference, and sangfroid kept her from
crumbling under the weight of their disregard.

But all that composure went to shit when Ron was involved. So when he completely out of the blue
started lashing out at her relentlessly, she stalked off to bed without a backward glance.

In the dormitory, Parvati was brushing her beautiful sleek tresses, while Lavender was draped
decorously on the window seat flipping through some mindless magazine.

Hermione flopped down on her bed and pressed the heels of her palms onto her eyes that felt
precariously hot.

“This sounds fun,” Lavender spoke up, “According to Greta Phyllis, love expert, it’s helpful to
make a checklist of qualities that you’re looking for in a man, so that it becomes easier to pick out
who you should be with.”

“Obviously,” Parvati replied, “I made my list years ago. What do you think, Hermione?”

Hermione pulled up her torso and rested on her elbows to look across at the idle twits.

“I don’t know. That makes sense only if you assume that there are masses of men striving to be
with you.”

“Oh Hermione,” said Lavender, waspishly, “I’m sure some boys like you.”

Parvati giggled fervently.

“Come on,” she said after she had recovered, “tell us what you’re looking for!”

“Who says I’m looking for anything? I’ve too much on my plate as it is.”

“Pish Posh,” Lavender scoffed, “Try not to sound like an old maid for once. I, for one, want a man
with a sense of humour. It’s soooo important to laugh, you know? He has to be handsome of course
– (“of course” broke in Hermione disdainfully, and Parvati ardently) – and tall. I do like them tall.
Perhaps... with... red hair...”

Lavender looked challengingly at Hermione, whose blood boiled. She curled her hands into fists
and bit down on her tongue.
Parvati gushed, “That’s such a good list, Lav! Make him tall, dark, and handsome for me. And I’d
like for him to have proper respect for the refined art of Divination...”

Hermione wondered how this creature was related to someone as smart and practical as Padma.
Though their features were near-identical, they were shrouded by an air so completely different
from each other, that Hermione would’ve been able to tell them apart in seconds.

“Your turn, Hermione; go on, humour us.”

Hermione sighed, and fell back down on her bed.

When she spoke, her voice was small. She suddenly felt defeated enough to search within herself
and expose something true and vulnerable to these awful, air-headed girls who shamelessly laughed
at her all the time.

“I suppose the most important thing is intellectual compatibility. I’d want him to be as motivated
and proficient as I am, so that my thoughts are complimented and challenged. I’d want him to be
ruthless in the pursuit of knowledge, but compassionate in the face of adversity. I’d want him to be
driven and relentless, but then to chuck it all for a moment of tranquillity... only to... to... arise and
unbuild it again. I’d want him to spare me no favours, but to stun me with kindness. I’d want him
to bite back every time I’d attack, but then to say something ridiculous and flush out all the vitriol.
Yes... it is important to laugh. He’d laugh. We’d laugh. He’d have wickedly funny insights into
things that he’d whisper in my ear like it’s a secret between the two of us.”

“By Godric!” Lavender tittered, “You really let it all out.”

Parvati was giggling again, “I hate to break it to you Hermione, but you’re probably going to be
alone forever.”

“Honestly! That’s not a list. I don’t even know what that was. You’re going to have to build your
own man!”

They laughingly moved on to another article.

Hermione let the drapes around her bed fall, and curled up against a pillow. She hadn’t expected
anything enlightening from those two, but she felt more at ease than she had when she stormed into
the dorm.

Whatever else her ludicrous bit of word-vomit meant, it was clear that the person she had described
was not Ron.

And yet... Yet.

It had to be Ron.
Chapter End Notes

1. Friday I’m in Love, by The Cure

2. Bach’s prelude
3. "So are they all, all honourable men": Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
4. "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing": Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
5. "arise and unbuild it again": The Cloud, by P. B. Shelley
 Five
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

They were in damp and chilly cave, with only a torch to illuminate the yawning darkness around
them. Their steps were cautious and wary; a monotonous and unsettling hum disturbed the airwaves
around them.
Indie had a tight grip on her elbow, muttering something about her being the cause of his inevitably
early demise. Hermione rolled her eyes but grudgingly allowed it.

Or perhaps not all that grudgingly.

Ten minutes (and six and a half whispered arguments) later, they arrived in a roomy vault of some
sort. It was completely closed in, save for a thin shaft of light that speared through a gap in the
ceiling, and fell directly on a pedestal in the centre. They approached it... slowly.
A red sandstone tablet – roughly the size of a tea tray – sat with compelling authority on the plinth.
It was engraved from corner to corner with strange and archaic looking symbols that glimmered
slightly like they were once coated in gold.

Indie squinted at them, tipping back this fedora carelessly.

“What’s this then? Ancient Celtic ideography?"

“Leave it to me, Doctor Jones,” Hermione said in a subtly coquettish manner.

Indie smirked at her, his fingers trailing down the length of her arm...

“...Ancient runes again...?”

Hermione was unceremoniously sucked out of the vault, and she zoomed through dimensions in a
dizzying manner, until she was spat out into a straight-backed wooden chair in the Hogwarts
library.

Her dashing, roguish, adventurer/archaeologist companion was replaced by a too-skinny Slytherin

in boring, baggy black robes.

She blinked at Theo resentfully. He raised his eyebrows.

“What?” he asked defensively.

“Nothing,” she shook her head, “You broke my train of thought.”

Pansy Parkinson came strolling along and stopped next to Theo. She scowled deeply, scrunching
her upturned nose in an unflattering manner.

“Let’s go to the other end of the Library, Theo,” she spat, “It smells like mudblood here.”

“Shut up, Pansy,” Theo snapped, while Hermione glowered.

“Are you defending her?!” She glared at Theo, eyes widened in alarm. Then she adapted her usual
snooty countenance, and said, “I understand that the pathetic mudblood needs all the help she can
get, considering how both her gormless friends, and her mangy muggle parents are going to be
dead very soon...”

Hermione scrapped her chair back thunderously, and was on her feet in a flash. Pansy whipped her
wand out.

“Do your worst, you dirty bitch...”

“Pansy, put your wand down,” Theo barked, and he pulled at her sleeve furiously.

She lashed out at him, “Are you seriously –“

“I’m defending you, actually,” he said, heatedly, “Do you really think getting into a duel with
Hermione Granger is going to end well for you?”

That’s when Malfoy emerged from between the bookshelves, looking uncharacteristically
dishevelled and drawn. He surveyed the scene unemotionally for a few seconds, before settling his
hand on Pansy’s back.

“Leave it, Pans,” he said frostily.

Pansy was still resolutely mid-flap. “What is going on... I don’t...”

“Pans. Pansy. Come on.”

Malfoy seemed equally determined to remain impassive. Or perhaps he was too tired to muster any
rage. There were deep shadows under his eyes, and his usual pallor had taken on a sickly grey
tinge. He drew Pansy away with his palm firmly placed between her shoulder blades. Just before he
turned to leave, he looked at Theo with some restrained tension evident in his posture.

His tone, however, was as deadpanned as ever- “Leave it to you to choose the most dramatic way to
make a statement.”

And then they were gone. Both Theo and Hermione took a moment to reacquaint themselves with
regular breathing.
She sat back down heavily, and he followed, settling down on the chair next to her.

She felt her fury leak out from her pores, systematically being replaced by her old friend, fatigue.
Theo was atypically quiet; Hermione had expected him to recover his usual blaséness almost
instantly, and was waiting for him to pelt her with quips.
Three minutes later, he still hadn’t spoken. He was frowning down at her copy of Magical
Hieroglyphs and Logograms, but it was clear he wasn’t really seeing it at all.

“Theo...” her voice was a trifle shaky and hesitant, “Is that what...” she broke off to take a breath,
“Am I a statement?” she asked more steadily.

He seemed to be going over her question minutely, because he didn’t answer immediately. His eyes
were still glued to her textbook.

“I wanted to get out. Fuck... I needed to get out,” he said, rapidly and brusquely through his
clenched jaw, “It’s been... it’s been... it’s been utter shit since the Dark Lord returned, okay? My
dad – all our dads – rallied around him like the predictable sodding sycophants that they are... And
us, their heirs and spawns, were of course expected to follow. But then... then father gets thrown
into Azkaban, and I feel... it’s like... I mean, it’s like I have a chance. He’s not going to be in there
for long. I needed to do something to get out, to make you all believe that I’m not – I am not and
will never be – one of them. And you... Hermione... you’re kind; the irreproachable good girl. If I
won your favour, I thought I could... I mean... it would be a lifeline...”

His monologue ended abruptly. Hermione stared at the thin line of dust caked on the edge of the
table. She tried to find something to say, but failed. She wasn’t even sure whether she should be
angry or comforting.

It appeared that Theo had still more to declare. When he spoke next, he sounded more sure and
eloquent than before –

“But you turned out to be so much more than the bland and banal goody-two-shoes you were
supposed to be. You’re witty and smart and interesting, that I find myself wanting your friendship
as much as your vote of confidence. Spending time with you has become less about laying the
groundwork for my... er, emancipation, and more about just spending time with you.
“You’re my friend, Hermione. And I’m your friend,” he reached out and grabbed her hand that was
resting on the table, “I am, alright? I’m your friend.”

Hermione could feel his gaze intent upon her, but now it was she who couldn’t meet his eyes. She
was a little frightened by his intensity.
Instead, she flipped the hand within his grasp over so that she could clasp her fingers around his.

“I stunned your father in the Department of Mysteries last year.”

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

“Did you really?”

“Yes.”

“My hero.”
Later that night, she lay in her bed with her feet propped up perpendicularly against the headboard.
Good for blood circulation, mum had told her.

Sleep was evading her, too wary of the dreams that would follow such a heavy day. A heavy day, in
the wake of other heavy days, making way for what will surely be heavier days... all reminders of
what was imminent and inescapable: War.
The notion of war had always been a distant abstraction; nothing that would ever be a part of her
immediate reality: Ancient wars reconstructed in history books... modern war sagas on the telly...
live footage from Sierra Leone... the horror and savagery was too sickening to even attempt to
place herself within.

Sometimes she couldn’t believe her life. She remembered the day Professor McGonagall had
suddenly turned into a cat in the middle of her living room, and her parents had been too astounded
to say more than a couple of winded ‘yeses’ for the duration of the prim old witch’s visit.

“Blimey. There’s a snow covered forest in my wardrobe, isn’t there?” her dad had said later.

She sometimes liked to imagine what their lives must have been like as seventeen-year-olds. Mum
would've been buried in books most of the time, wearing lurid floral shirts, and writing anti-war
poetry in a hand sown notebook with pictures of Wilfred Owen and Lorca on the cover.
Dad was a cool cat guitarist in a rock band trying to break into the British Invasion scene. He never
made it of course- his band’s biggest gigs were late night slots in grimy pubs across London, where
the crowd kept demanding they cover The Stones.
Mum and dad were both studying dentistry in Bristol, but only met in their second year, at a rally.
They were your typical conflict era revolutionary youth, deeply entrenched in the ‘sex, drugs, and
rock ‘n roll’ of it all.

And here she was.

She wore billowing floor length robes, and a pointy hat. She wrote on parchment with a quill, under
the light of a candle. She studied about Merlin, goblins, Chimaeras, and alchemy. She lived in a
medieval castle that had a monster infested lake and a shadowy forest full of enchanted creatures.

She was going to fight against a malevolent, sadistic, freshly-resurrected wizard-fiend.

Mother of Godric.

She picked up her wand, and immediately felt currents of magic surge through her body. She
transfigured her hairclip into an hourglass, just because, and then had it float up into the air and
spin like a dervish. Two mini sandstorms erupted in its glass bulbs – frantic, fevered, and fervent.
Hermione no longer broke bread with her usual group, now that Harry and Ginny were obsessed
with their upcoming match against Slytherin, and Ron was still adamant on impersonating a
snarling Nundu.

She shambled across the entrance hall, half listening to Seamus' description of the nocturnal snore-
symphony he had to endure every night – while Neville, the baritone, blushed profusely – when
Theo zoomed into existence out of nowhere, like a time-travelling DeLorean.
He gripped Hermione’s shoulders, standing before her with wildness and desperation in his eyes.
He looked fraught and unhinged - “You have to help me, Hermione.”

“What’s happened? Are you – No, Seamus, it’s alright; put your wand away – Right, Theo...
What’s the matter?”

“Lovegood,” he wheezed.

Hermione’s face reflected enough bewilderment for him to deign to explain further.

“She’s driving me mad. First it was the Blathergouts, and then the Nargles and the Plimpies and
Troozits and Fumpkins and this and that and squiggly fuckknowswhazzits that are supposed to be
eating my organs, or laying eggs under my skin, or creating a discombobulating fog around my
head. Last night after you left the library, she was somehow just there, and she dragged me out to
the lake and had me sit there till fucking midnight, fishing around for Dabberblimps. What the fuck
are Dabberblimps?! I don’t know. I don’t know what they look like, but she told me to roll my
trousers and muck about in the lake at night in fucking December... And I did it! I’m obviously a
complete basketcase because she said that cold water will help repel the somthingswithan’H’ that
live between my toes, and I believed her.”

“Er – I know she’s a bit...”

“Impossible. Not a bit! She’s entirely fucked up and impossible.”

Theo was so genuinely stricken that Hermione broke. She was laughing fully in a matter of
milliseconds.

“You can’t be laughing,” he was appalled. And then – “Oh Circe’s tit, here she comes!”

And just like that he was gone, charging down the hallway. Sure enough, Luna drifted by moments
later, and after saying a pleasant hello to them, continued to chase after the traumatised Slytherin.

“So...” Neville said, “Nott... you’re....?”

She smiled, “We're friends.”

Hermione had most of the day free of lessons, so after another wonderfully productive afternoon
spent in the library with Padma, she sauntered out into the grounds to balance out the hours of
sedentary preoccupation.

The Gryffindor quidditch team was in the middle of an extremely charged practice session. There
seemed to be some big scene going on up in the air, with Demelza crying, Harry and Ginny
screaming at Ron, while Peakes glared.

Eh.

She walked around the quidditch stands, rather than across, remembering that time last week when
McLaggen had caught hold of her there. She really loved the stinging hex sometimes.

Before she knew it, she found herself at Hagrid’s cabin. The man himself was outside with
Buckbeak, tossing him an assortment of rodents.

“Dinnertime is it?” she said in lieu of a greeting.

“Hullo, Hermione!” Hagrid’s smile shone through curtains of bristly hair. Dropping the sack of
dead animals (to her great relief) he walked over to her and squeezed her shoulder in what she was
sure he believed was a gentle manner.

“I’m jus’ going ter have a chat with Grawp,” he told her, “Want ter come along?”

And so she spent her evening with a giant and a half-giant, giggling over broken sentences and
bumbling gestures of affection.

“Grawpy still fancies yeh,” Hagrid chortled as they walked back.

“He’s very sweet. Obviously every bit a smooth operator as his brother. How’s Madam Maxime
doing, by the way?”

Hagrid’s cheeks turned scarlet, and he said “Fine,” gruffly.

Hermione smiled at his bashfulness, slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow.

The woods were lovely, dark, and deep; and all she promised to do later was sleep.
Chapter End Notes

1. "The woods were lovely, dark, and deep": Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by
Robert Frost
 Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The ceiling of the great hall reflected an incredibly dramatic storm, turbulent enough in its motions
and colours to induce shivers, despite the fact that the room was really quite toasty. Sitting opposite
Neville, Hermione was ladling steaming hot stew onto her plate; warm food was the need of the
hour.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up to see Ginny wearing a dour expression. Behind her,
Dean looked equally aggravated. They both collapsed onto the bench, tearing ferociously into their
dinner.

“Ron is a hellacious arsehole.”

Ginny’s declaration was bolstered by Dean’s grunt of approval.

“Bad round of Quidditch?” Neville asked.

“Ugh,” Ginny replied, “That’s putting it mildly. I wanted to transfigure him into mound of dragon
dung, but I suspect Harry would have objected.” She looked at Hermione; “Is he still being a shit to
you?”

“Yes. And I cannot for the life of me figure out why...”

“Right. That may be my fault...”

Hermione just shrugged. She wasn’t even surprised by her complete lack of concern about the
whole issue. She had evolved. Ron was a silly pubescent boy. Sod him. Sod them all. Sod
everyone. Sod the world. She’d had this sodding mantra on repeat in her head all day.

She turned to Ginny, looking to change the topic of conversation, but Ginny’s focus was fixed on
something behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, Hermione saw... Harry.
Naturally.
With the way Dean was scowling down at his food, Hermione surmised that he was well aware of
what had stolen her attention.

“I’m... I... need to talk to Harry... about tactics. Tomorrow’s the game, you know..”

Ginny’s voice had a dreamy quality that was almost Lunaesque, and Dean’s nose scrunched in
displeasure as she leapt off the bench. Across the table, Neville and Seamus wore near-identical
looks of trepidation.

Hermione cleared her throat. “So, Dean. I hear West Ham had a bit of luck with a new defender...?”
This was perhaps the first time Hermione was glad her dad rambled on about the Premier League in
his letters.
“Yeah. Ferdinand,” Dean grumbled back. And then fell silent. For good.

Well that was a failure.

Seamus gave Hermione a rueful half-smile. Something akin to a ‘nice try, old girl’.

It was only after nearly the entire table had cleared that Dean spoke up again.

“She’s going to dump me soon, isn’t she?”

“Um...”

“Yeah. Any day now. I’m expecting it.”

“I’m sorry, Dean.”

He chuckled at that. “I always knew I was a filler. She’s just been good at making me forget.”

He turned to consider her speculatively for a moment, and then said- “But this is all small potatoes,
innit? Hook ups and break ups and all that. Just us pretending to be normal before shit hits the fan.
It’s going to get bad for us muggleborns. Not that I need to tell you that...”

Hermione sighed. She would have preferred him going on about his broken heart.

“Yes. Bad.” What more was there to say?

“You know, I really didn’t think I’d have to face this rubbish around here. My dad’s a big bloke.
Imposing. And it doesn’t matter that he’s a civil rights lawyer; white, sanitised, suburban mums still
look at him like he’s out to sell their children drugs. And then I learned that not only do I have the
wrong skin colour, I have dirty blood too. Humanity sucks.”

“Power, insecurity, and subjugation: a historically inescapable pattern.” Hermione flinched almost
as soon as she’d said that- it sounded pretentious and officious even to her own ears.

Dean, however, looked mildly amused, “What about your parents, then?”

“White, sanitised, suburban dentists,” she quipped, and Dean laughed. “...but also godless, commie
reprobates, if that helps.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Later, Ginny asked her how she had got her boyfriend to talk more than she herself had managed to
in weeks.
It took Hermione a lot of effort to stop her eyes from rolling.

“We were talking about being muggleborn, and what it means, and such. He probably feels you
wouldn’t understand...”

“Of course, I’d understand!”

She didn’t though. None of them did.

Mornings before a quidditch match were generally tedious, but ones before a Gryffindor-Slytherin
match? Unbearable. The ridiculous chest-thumping was enough to kill anyone’s appetite.
Predictably, the great hall was a riot of redgold and greensilver; the chatter and cheeriness was
nauseating.

She paused when she spotted Ron. He looked vaguely sick and entirely uncomfortable. The sight of
him sitting at the table not stuffing his face with sausages and eggs was so disconcerting, that
Hermione felt a little twang in her heart. Perhaps it was time she offered him an olive branch- he
looked far too miserable for her to ignore.

“How are you both feeling?” she asked cautiously.

It was, of course, Harry who deigned to answer her with a careless and succinct, “Fine.”

Harry… who seemed far too absorbed in the pedestrian task of pouring a glass of pumpkin juice.
Hermione peered at him, and to her horror, saw a flash of gold disappear up the sleeve of his robe.

“There you go, Ron. Drink up.”

She managed to stop Ron just as he was about to take his first sip. Both the boys looked
bewildered. Ron’s expression held a hint of anger, Harry’s was overcompensating.

“What?” Ron barked at her.

Taking a calming breath, Hermione turned to Harry, “You just put something in that drink.”

“Excuse me?” Harry’s face was a mask of theatrical disbelief.

She seethed with barely suppressed fury. “You heard me. I saw you. You just tipped something into
Ron’s drink. You’ve got the bottle in your hand right now!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Harry, lightly. But he made a show of shoving a tiny
bottle abruptly into his pocket.

She was bowled over. She blinked at him in disbelief, and then tried again to reason with the other
one: “Ron, I warn you, don’t drink it!”

“Stop bossing me around, Hermione.” He drained the glass defiantly and returned his gaze to the
sky above, wordlessly dismissing her.
As was the custom, Hermione's tear ducts were instantaneously triggered. Moisture built up in her
eyes, and the rage gushed through her veins.

She bent to hiss into Harry’s ear, “You should be expelled for that. I’d never have believed it of
you, Harry!”

The look he gave her was one part reproachful, and two parts condescending.

“Hark who’s talking,” he whispered back. “Confunded anyone lately?”

Hermione tore away from him and out of the hall. She marched aimless out into the grounds, across
the pitch, where the crowd and excitement was building up, and... she couldn’t stomach it. She
found herself at the edge of the lake, and she paced, back and forth, furiously attempting to work
out the pent up frustration.
These were her friends. Her best friends. One she considered her brother in all but blood, one she
was fucking besotted with... and here she was brushed aside, shoved over, disregarded.

She couldn’t think coherently. Hurt overpowered anger.

What was she to them? Did they truly only value her when she could be useful? Would they even
miss her if she wasn’t needed for homework or research?

Hermione let herself cry. And once she started, she couldn’t stop. She could and would blame it on
the fact that she was due to bleed in less than twenty-four hours.

As the sobs abated, she sank onto the grass, burying her face between her knees.
It was only a few seconds later that she heard the rustle of footsteps behind her. She hoped against
all odds that it would be Harry and Ron. She felt the motion of a body dropping down next to her,
and an arm looping around her shoulders. Peeking through strands of her hair, she encountered
Theo's sombre profile. He was looking out at the lake, but feeling her eyes on him, he met her gaze
with his own.

“Hello,” he said softly.

“Hello,” she croaked back.

He sighed, taking in her wrecked visage. “What happened? It was those friends of yours, wasn’t
it?”

He was rolling his eyes before she’d even started to deny his assumption.

“Don’t bother, Hermione. I saw you storm out after talking to them.”

“You followed me?”

“Of course. And I’ll ask again. What Happened?”

“Just me coming in the way of quidditch, I suppose.”

She felt his irate expulsion of air as it blew wisps of her hair asunder.

“They don’t deserve your friendship, you know?”

Hermione could feel a fresh wave of tears welling up, and was unable to say anything in response.

“You’d think Potter would have the awareness and sensibility to understand how important you are.
But he’s too wrapped up in himself, isn’t he? I’m not even going to bother assessing Weasley. He’s
a right prick. Enough said. Everything else is expected. Why do you let them treat you like this?”

She blinked furiously, begging the tears to retreat.

“An absolute treasure like you – brilliant, sharp, dazzlingly skilled – crying over a couple of
mediocre tossers who have no refinement whatsoever...”

Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns! he said.

“...I’d hex the shit out of them, if I didn’t know all the other senseless, brawny Gryffinfucks would
pummel me to death in retaliation...”

She was sobbing into his chest.

“... And we both know I’m far too gorgeous to die young. I need to be allowed to age gracefully. It
needs to happen. You can picture it right? I will cultivate a batch of very sexy wrinkles, sport
glorious salt-and-pepper hair, and women – young and old – will throw their knickers at me.”

Hermione was a blubbering mess. Was she crying or laughing? But Theo didn’t give her the chance
to sort it out.

“We’d be married, you and I. You’d have aged wonderfully too, it’s inevitable. And we’d have
done something about your hair. Dear Merlin, Hermione, what is with your hair? You know, in the
time we’ve been sitting here, it’s slithered its way into my ears and made a nest for the Blathergouts
in my brain.”

“Luna’s convinced you they’re real?”

“She has some very compelling arguments in that regard.”

“Been spending a lot of time with her, have you?” Hermione asked, amused, in spite of the
lingering sniffles.

“Your fault entirely. You caused our paths to cross, and now I can’t get rid of her. She’s actually
mad, you know? Bonkers. Deluded, and... mad. Mad.”

Hermione chuckled softly, rubbing her eyes, and extracting herself from Theo’s embrace.

“You like her, don’t you?”

Theo balked. “I absolutely do not.”

She blinked at him in astonishment, as realisation dawned. “Oh my god. You like her!”

A series of different expressions flashed on his face, before he settled on a deep frown.
“Absolutely. Not.”

And Hermione began to laugh in earnest.

“Shut up, Granger!”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and fell back onto the grass, laughing until the old tears in her eyes had
all been replaced.

The game was over by the time Theo and Hermione made it back to the quidditch pitch. They stood
at the edge watching the last few stragglers shuffle towards the castle- the ones in scarlet scarves
were singing jubilantly.

“Congratulations, I suppose,” said Theo, dispassionately.

“Hurrah,” she replied in a similar manner.

“My common room is going to be insufferable tonight. Drunken losers having a collective bitchfit.
Bleh.”

“Um.”

“Yes, darling?”

“Why didn’t Malfoy play?”

Theo answered too quickly. “Unwell.”

“Right. Like that’s ever stopped him.”

“Heh. Right. So. What now?”

“Not the smoothest of segues, that.”

“What are you going to do, Hermione?”

“I’m going to talk to Harry and Ron.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. I’ll catch them in the changing room before they get swept up in festivities…” she couldn’t
keep the nervousness out of her voice.
Theo gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, (“Find me when you’re done”) and trudged off
towards the castle.

Hermione ran into Ginny, Dean, and Demelza just outside her destination. Her feeble words of
congratulations were muffled when Ginny flew in to hug her.

“Coming to the party, Herms?” she trilled.

“Yes, in a bit,” she replied, scowling at the obnoxious foreshortening of her name.

It was just Harry and Ron in the changing room, thankfully. Slowly and cautiously, she approached
the two, and after a deep fortifying breath, she addressed Harry.

“You shouldn’t have done it. You heard Slughorn, it’s illegal.”

It was Ron who boisterously responded - “What are you going to do, turn us in?”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Harry, playing innocent – badly.

Hermione could feel her composure breaking. Her throat was closing up again, her vision was
clouding, and her pitch was all over the place.

“You spiked Ron’s juice with Felix Felicis at breakfast!”

“No!” sang Harry. He was grinning. Actually grinning.

“Yes. You. Did.” she gritted out, “And that’s why everything went right, there were Slytherin
players missing and Ron saved everything!”

“No!” he said, again, and pulled out a tiny sealed bottle from his pocket. “I wanted Ron to think I’d
done it, so I faked it when I knew you were looking.” Then he aimed a proud, saccharine smile at
Ron, saying, “You saved everything because you felt lucky. You did it all yourself.”

“Wait, really?” Ron gaped at Harry. “I was so sure…” he muttered, shaking his head in
astonishment. And then he spun around to glower at Hermione, mimicking her shrill tone, “You
added Felix Felicis to Ron’s juice this morning, that’s why he saved everything! Fuck you,
Hermione. I can save goals without help!”

“I never said you couldn’t — Ron, you thought you’d been given it too!”

Ron shoved past her and left the room without a backwards glance.

Harry’s grin had vanished, and he looked pained and uncomfortable.

“Want to head to the party then?”

Hermione shot him the most disdainful look she could manage while trying to hold back yet
another bloody batch of tears. “No. You go.”

And she walked back out into the dusky evening.

Her plan to make a neat escape into the nearest toilet was sabotaged by Theo who was waiting for
her in the entrance hall. One look at her face had his mouth thinning into a grim line, and he
dragged her into a shadowy corner.

“Well?” he asked in a clipped tone.

“It didn’t go well,” Hermione stated, weakly.

“No shit. I just saw Weasley go by looking mightily pissed off.” He actually sounded so angry... at
her. It stung.

“Yes. It was... And he... Ron said... Ron...”

Theo studied her face, his neck bent at a very uncomfortable angle. What he saw make his scowl
more pronounced.

“I cannot believe,” his voice was getting gruffer by the second, “that you laughed at my liking
Luna, when you fancy Ron fucking Weasley.”

“So you admit you li-"

“Shut up. Are you serious?! Weasley? Ron Weasley?! Are you really that pathetic?”

She knew that this moment warranted anger and indignation, but she had none of those left in her.
So she just shrugged and peered at ground.

“How to you justify that to yourself? Dear fucking Merlin, Hermione! He’s so so so far beneath
you, I just don’t....” he broke his sentence off with a strangled sound of disgust. “Go attend your
party.” He ordered.

“What? No.”

“Yes. Go. Have a drink. Talk to your friends. Don’t look at Weasley.”

“Won’t make a difference.”

“Just stop taking his shit, Hermione. You’re a force of nature until you let him break you. Why do
you let him break you? He’s such an inadequate little wanker. Stop it.” He grabbed and shook her
gently. “Alright?”

“By the way, if you utter a word about your ludicrous and baseless allegations to Luna, I will kill
you.”

The usual casual airiness was back in his voice.

Oh gosh. Oh gosh oh gosh Oh

Hermione hadn’t felt such a bizarre mix of simultaneous elation and dejection before in her life.
Ron and Lavender were item. And she had set a storm of angry birds at him.
She had made a flock of tiny canaries peck and claw at him. He’d come in with his newly acquired
bimbo, all sheepish and pillock-like, and Hermione had directed a Tweety army to attack him.
I Tawt I Taw a Ruddy Twat.

She was laughing hysterically as she walked towards the library. But by the time she got to Padma
she was morose again. The girl in question was watching her closely as she pulled books out of her
bag.

“What?” Hermione snapped.

“So... Ron and Lavender, huh?”

“How on earth do you know about that?”

“My sister is the biggest gossip Hogwarts has ever seen. I got a bleeding Howler about Lav and her
Ron about three minutes after it happened.”

“Ah.” Her manner ought to have conveyed how completely she'd love a change of topic.

No such luck.

“What do you see in him, anyway? You can do so much--”

“Yes okay.” She definitely didn’t want to hear that spiel again.

“No, honestly. He’s an idiot. I went to the Yule ball with him! He didn’t even have the decency to
act polite. He sat there all sullen and spent the whole evening staring at...” and then Padma’s eyes
widened and Hermione glared. “...Oh.”

“Quite.”

“So that’s how it is.”

“Can we please get down to work now?” Hermione all but growled.

“Yes ma’am!” Padma threw her hands up in mock surrender.

And for the next three hours, that’s all they did.
Chapter End Notes

1. "Forward, the Light Brigade!" The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 Seven
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The sixteenth time Theo cast a wary glance at her over his ancient runes textbook, Hermione
cracked.

“Yes, Ron is currently seeing Lavender Brown. I feel fine. Please stop staring at me like you’re
expecting me to explode.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you sure you’re fine, though?”

“Theo,” she rumbled.

“You can’t expect me not to ask!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, all right. I wasn’t fine. But now I am.”

“Okay.”

“I sicced some murderous canaries at him.”

His grin was like the cat that ate the canary. “Excellent. Hey, Hermione?”

"What?”

“I can’t make sense of a single rune on this page.”

“Show it here,” she said, overplaying her exasperation.

And that’s how Harry found them some time later: In hysterics over Theo’s bizarre translation of
fifth century druidic tenets, which he, by some impressive means, had turned into an
autobiographical account of a plimpy’s search for existential fulfillment.

Harry cleared his throat – loudly – and said, “Time for lunch, Hermione.”

After two beats of silence, Theo was packing his books up.

“This was fun,” he said with his customary waggishness, “I’ll see you later.” And in a move that
Hermione was sure was entirely for Harry’s benefit, he dropped a light kiss on the top of her head.

Harry waited until Theo had disappeared from sight, before falling into the chair he had vacated.

“Well. That was unexpected.”

“Um.”

“This is brilliant! I should have known you’d come up with something like this. Could have told
me though! Is he a Death Eater too? How much have you got out of him?”

Hermione stared at him angrily. “That is not what’s going on here, Harry. I’m not using Theo to
cement crazy conjectures, nor to extract information.”

“Oh come now. Is he a Death Eater?”

“No more than I am!”

“But his father-”

“He is not his father!”

“His father,” Harry pressed on, “is fucking savage! He’s right in the inner circle! Hermione, have
you lost your mind?!”
“Theo is not his father. That man is in Azkaban, and Theo is very glad about that. Now, if we start
judging people for who their parents are, we’re no better than the other side. So please trust me on
this, because you know full well that I am not a naïve idiot!”

“... But...!!”

“He reached out to me because he wanted to make clear which side he's on, and he has become a
very dear friend. I will not entertain you casting such awful aspersions on his character.”

Harry’s mouth fell open a little. “How long has has been a very dear friend?!”

“Since... the beginning of term.”

“How on earth have I not noticed?” he demanded.

“Well, Harry, you haven’t exactly been around much, have you?”

When did they ever notice things about her really? They were always to surprised by the
developments in her life.
But Harry looked so endearingly sheepish, she reached out to gently touch his arm.

“It’s okay. I understand. Just lay off Theo, please? He’s a good person.”

He scoffed. “I don’t like this.”

“And you don’t have to. Do you trust me, Harry?”

“Look, this isn’t about that...”

“It is,” Hermione urged, “I trust him, and you have to trust that I know what I’m doing. So tell me,
Harry – do you trust me?”

“Yeah,” he said, ruffling his hair awkwardly.

“Then leave Theo alone.”

They left the library and walked slowly towards the great hall.

“Ron’s going to blow a gasket, you know?”

“Ron’s already blown a gasket,” said Hermione dryly.

“Well he’ll blow another gasket.”

“Bully for him.”

“Listen... do you think you could maybe...” he began hesitantly.

“No, Harry.” Hermione’s inflection was emphatic enough to get him to abandon his weak plea.

“Okay. Just tell me one thing,” he ventured.

“What’s that?”

“Are you friends with Malfoy?”

“Good god, no. If there ever was someone who absolutely is their father...”

“I just need to be sure, Herms.”

"I will not be friends with you either, if you ever call me that again.”

Harry grinned. “Okay. Sorry. Herms.”

She shoved him into a particularly tacky Rococo tapestry.

“Fucking ouch, Herms!”

Hermione was pulling her hair into a ponytail, and was determined to have it look neat – an
exercise that invariably caused her arms to ache from being held aloft for a so long. She gave up
when the pain got too sharp, dropping her arms and slouching her shoulders in defeat. Multiple
strands simultaneously sprang loose like jacks-in-the-boxes. She knew that if her locks had faces,
they would be laughing jesters.

A swarm of locusts – pardon me – a group of girls pranced into the bathroom, chattering madly.
They didn’t notice her standing in front of the corner sink, so engrossed were they in their
discussion.

One girl with perfectly straight blond hair (who Hermione was almost sure was called Martha) had
an intensely off-putting whiny undertone to her voice.

“I mean, if he just knew me, I’m sure we’d be together!”

“Oh please,” said a rail thin girl with beautifully braided hair, “he wouldn’t look at you twice if you
approached him in toffee-covered knickers.”

The rest of the girls broke into giggles, while probably-Martha scowled. The next one to speak was
definitely called Romilda, and she had waves and waves of glossy black hair.

“Harry talks to me, you know. I can tell he’s intrigued!” she tittered inanely, “All he needs is a little
push...”

“You’re sure these Weasley potions work?” asked a girl with smooth coppery curls: possibly-Viola.

“They do,” replied definitely-Romilda.

“And how exactly will you make sure he gets a dose?” snarked a girl with long straight coffee
coloured hair... Aisha-maybe?

“Oh, Aisha, (-ding ding ding-) I’ve spiked a number of little delicacies. Harry can pick whichever
he likes.”

“You’re so lucky you’re in the same house as him,” grumbled probably-Martha. “I don’t know how
I’m supposed to get him to eat anything.”

The entire lot of girls burst out laughing at the unintentional innuendo.

“Sweets, you couldn’t get any bloke to eat anyt--”

“Ooh, you’re such a bitch, Emily...”

Hermione had heard enough.

“Excuse me,” she adapted her most prissy, commanding manner, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to
confiscate those Weasley potions you’re in possession of. Strictly contraband, you see.”

Eight pairs of vacant eyes blinked at her in shock.

“We’re not in possession of any potions,” chirped possibly-Viola.

“Really?” Hermione drawled, doubtfully.

“It’s true!” recently-confirmed-as-Aisha said, raising her arms, “You can check!” she gestured
down her body with her chin.

More giggles ensued.

“Actually,” purred definitely-Romilda, “I'd rather you get Harry to frisk me.”

And then they were all delirious with giggles.

Hermione sneered and left the bathroom. Once outside in the giggle-free passageway, she let her
hair down; the erratic heap of swirls and frizz tumbled down her back, and she swore she could
hear it snarling and hissing a little. But that was okay. Those girls may have lovely soft hair, but at
least she had a half decent brain under hers.
Dusk was a strange time. It was such a pronouncedly in-between time, so ambiguous and murky;
the rich array of blues and purples it threw out induced a deeply poignant melancholy.

Even though she was walking with Harry, having an absurd conversation about Filch and Madam
Pince’s alleged love affair, Hermione felt terribly alone.
She was participating, but her mind was far away. The castle lamps had been lit- luminous orbs of
yellow, juxtaposed beautifully with the swaths of navy and prussian and plum that bloomed within
the windows they bracketed. It was a palette worth of Van Gogh.

“I’m telling you, they’re having a hot torrid affair right under our noses. Why do you think Filch
trained his mangy cat to patrol the corridors at night? It’s so that he could sneak into Pince’s
personal corridor...”

“Harry! Yuck!” Hermione gasped.

He sniggered.

At least he was making an effort these days. He’d spent whole afternoons with her in the library.
Hermione chose to believe it wasn’t to watch out for Theo, or perhaps simply because Ron’s mouth
was attached to Lavender’s, however much her pragmatic side told her that it was so.
It grated and stung that he had immediately assumed she was being reproachful when she sought to
warn him about the squad of femme fatales panting after his... affections.

Hermione Granger: Forever the nag.

She only ever felt like a tedious and sanctimonious bore when she was around Harry and Ron.
Theo never made her feel that way. Nor did Neville or Ginny. Even Luna, with whom she would
often quarrel. And Padma...
Perhaps she should go down a couple of notches. Even Dean and Seamus seemed to think she was
all right. Hermione thought it was all down to the protective sentiments Harry brought out in her.
She worried for him so very intensely that it was only inevitable it would come out in her
behaviour around him.
And she could never please Ron anyway.

When they arrived inside the Gryffindor common room, she found it far too full of bodies and
activity. Hermione, in (vacant or in) pensive mood yearned for the bliss of solitude. To think about
daffodils, or whatever.

Romilda Vane accosted Harry immediately, shoving all manner of eatables in his face.

“Told you,” Hermione said, haughtily. “Sooner you ask someone, sooner they’ll all leave you alone
and you can -”

Down by the fireplace, Ron and Lavender were cuddled up in an armchair. She was sitting on his
lap, playing with his hair, while he nuzzled her neck. Hermione’s stomach clenched horrendously.

“Well, goodnight, Harry.” She needed to get out of there.

 The dormitory was, thankfully, deserted, and she went and stood in front of the large arched
window.
It was true what she had said to Harry earlier - Ron could kiss whoever he liked. He didn’t owe her
anything. The unsaid pull that existed between them wasn’t a promise of any sort.

She’d had a fling herself a few months back. Pete Hughes, the son of her new neighbours, a student
of History at Oxford, had come home for the summer. He smoked like a chimney while quoting
Chomsky, and Hermione had been smitten.
On their last evening together, he’d laid her out on his olive green duvet, peppered kisses down her
body, and then torn her apart with his mouth. It was the lone sexual experience in her register –
Victor's kisses and polite groping didn’t really count – and it had been wonderful. He hadn’t asked
for any reciprocation. Instead, he had simply curled up beside her and fallen asleep. She'd woken
up to a packed suitcase, and a kiss that smelt of smoke and aftershave. And then he had gone.

Sitting on the window seat, Hermione pulled in her rampant thoughts.

The point was this: No matter how badly it shredded her heart, Ron was free to do whatever he
wanted. He was not free, however, to treat her like dirt; like she was disposable and dispensable. He
was not free to make her feel like the shittiest toerag there ever was... especially since he had the
power to make her feel brighter than the brightest star in the sky.

“Oh, Sirius...” she whispered, as she spotted his namesake twinkling through the window pane.
And just like that, the eternal cliché of gazing at an open sky for perspective reasserted itself.

The life and death of Sirius Black – now that was a true tragedy.

She pressed her palms against the glass. It had become dark enough outside for her to be able to see
a hint of her reflection. Her face faintly superimposed onto the firmament... Hermione in the sky
with diamonds.

What was that line from Thomas Hardy’s poem?

White stars ghost forth, that care not for men’s wives,
Or any other lives.

Chapter End Notes

1. "in (vacant or in) pensive mood yearned for the bliss of solitude": reference to Daffodils, by
William Wordsworth
2. "White stars ghost forth..." The Harbour Bridge, by Thomas Hardy
 Eight

The process of spell casting goes something like this:

1. First, there is the incantation – a potent murmur which leads to

2. The invocation of a specific strain of magical energy, which
3. Surges through the body of the conjuror (i.e., the sentient vessel within which magic resides) and
then,
4. Pushes out into the world – either through a magical conduit, like a wand – or straight out of the
conjuror’s pores (the latter requiring considerable skill).

Hermione felt alive with the glory of magic.

She could feel it running in currents under her skin, she could imagine its brilliant swirling
iridescence. Kind of like how poncy new age gurus would tell you to ‘visualise your chakras’.
Om Shanti Om.

There was a mirror on the desk at which she sat, and her eyebrows were teal; quite a good look on
her. They went well with her skin tone, and gave the illusion that she had subtle green flecks in her
eyes.
She’d achieved that feat in one go – the purpose of the day’s lesson on human transfiguration – so
while the rest of her classmates were cursing at their reflections she arched one teal eyebrow at
herself, tilting her head, and squinting her eyes sceptically.
Then she furrowed her teal eyebrows, settling them into a deep frown, and pursed her lips.
She was in the middle of comically wagging her teal eyebrows (à la Groucho Marx), when
Professor McGonagall appeared over her shoulder.
Hermione’s teal eyebrows puckered in mortification.

“Very good,” she said crisply. There was the faintest of faint upward tilt to the corners of her
mouth.

Hermione slumped back on her chair, looking around the room. Dean, who had half a red eyebrow,
was perched at the corner of his seat, while Seamus pointed his wand at himself. Hermione was
instantly nervous as well. Nothing ruined a peaceful day like someone blowing their face off.

A moment later, Seamus was sporting bright purple eyebrows, and a very large grin.

Dean gaped at him in disbelief. “How the hell did you do that?!”

Harry had one yellow eyebrow. Parvati’s were partially streaked with fuchsia. Lavender’s were still
dark blond. Ron’s were...

Ron had given himself a tufty, curled, very ginger handlebar moustache.
It looked so ridiculously incongruous on his face that Hermione burst out laughing. The rest of the
class joined her soon after, and Ron turned crimson with embarrassment and fury. He glared
fiercely in her direction - Hermione should have known comeuppance was imminent.
They moved onto the theoretical part of the lesson, with Professor McGonagall quizzing them on
the limitations of human transfiguration. The smooth delivery of Hermione's responses was
hindered by the great thespian Weasley’s needlessly embellished re-enactment of her enthusiasm.
Lavender and Parvati were in splits.

Ignore them, ignore them, ignore them.

Was it hypocritical of her to be upset?

The moment the bell rang, Hermione sped out of the classroom in search of holy sanctuary.

Fuck, she’d been crying so much all year.

She found an empty bathroom and rushed in, collapsing against the nearest wall. Sniffling
pathetically, she cursed herself for being so bloody sensitive. She really, really wanted to get over
Ron, already. Living with a broken heart was terrible. She wanted to hurt him. Really hurt him, the
way he kept hurting her. She needed to do something sufficiently drastic to...

There were footsteps, and then there was Luna standing in front of her, softly blurred because of
her tear-filmed eyes.

“What happened?” she asked.

Luna, so accustomed to cruelty, motivated to Hermione answer truthfully. “Stuff with Ron.”

“Ah. Yes. He can say upsetting things sometimes.”

“Indeed.” Hermione sniffed and blinked and shrugged.

“Theo worries about you, you know?”

“Hah. I know. I’m sure he worries about you too.”

Luna nodded solemnly, “He gets quite angry when people make fun of me.”

Hermione smiled through the last of her tears, “I’m glad you’ve become friends.”

“Me too,” Luna beamed, “He’s even helping me with my care of magical creatures assignment. We
go fishing for Dabberblimps every night!”

“That’s wonderful, Luna.”

“By the way, Hermione, your eyebrows look beautiful.”

Oh. Her teal eyebrows. Hermione was shifting to pull out her wand, when Luna’s gasp halted her.

“What?” she asked, startled.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what, Luna?”

“Your eyebrows are brown again,” she said softly. “You can do wandless, non-verbal magic?”

“I... I don’t know. I don’t think so?”

“You just did,” said Luna, looking perfectly placid again. “You know, it’s said that people proficient
in wandless magic generally suffer from frequent mental breakdowns. You ought to careful.”

“Ye—yes.”

Wandless magic. Her blood rushed at the thought. She was itching to go somewhere private where
she could explore this possibility further.

“Shall we get out of this miserable place then?” she asked Luna.

“Yes, please. It’s good that you’re not planning to cry in the bathroom anymore. Moaning Myrtle
might think you’re stealing her USP, and you know how awfully sensitive she can be.” Luna patted
her back gently as they walked out. “Oh, hello, Harry! Did you know one of your eyebrows is
bright yellow?”

And indeed it was Harry with a yellow eyebrow waiting outside the bathroom. Hermione realised
he must have rushed out right after her, without even bothering to fix his appearance, and she was
filled with gratitude.

“Hi, Luna,” he said, uneasily, “Hermione, you left your stuff. . . .”

“Oh yes,” said Hermione, taking her books and things from him, “Thank you, Harry. Well, I’d
better get going. . . .”

She thought she’d spare him the burden of having to comfort her – for both their sakes. She was
also desperate to give wandless magic another try.

Rushing up endless staircases, Hermione tumbled through the portrait hole, into the Gryffindor
tower, and raced into her dorm in record time.
She paused at the foot of her bed, her eyes falling on a thick hardbound book that she has placed
there in the morning.

Inspiration struck suddenly… she had to leave immediately.

Growling in frustration at her own warped priorities, she left the way she had come in just moments
ago.

*
Hermione scanned the students pouring out of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom on the
first floor. When she spotted the individual she was seeking, she beckoned to him frantically.

Looking mildly perplexed, Theo strolled over to her.

“Hullo. You look like you’ve been sprinting laps around the quidditch pitch all morning.”

“Something like that,” she replied, a bit breathlessly. “You’d asked me about muggle wars and
conflict and all that-” she waved her hand in the universal sign for ‘etcetera’, “- so anyway, I found
this book, and, um, I think you’ll find it interesting.”

She was still panting a little. Bloody hell, she needed to exercise more often.

Theo took the heavy tome from her hands, running his fingers over the glossy cover. “History of the
World by J. M. Roberts,” he read, “Wow. Thanks. You’ve been running around like a maniac just so
you could give this to me?”

“Well... not exactly...” there was something off in his manner – his posture was too stiff, and his
face was twisted into a muted frown. “You look upset?”

He took in a gulp of air, glaring into the distance. “Potter is taking Luna to Slughorn’s party
tonight.”

“Oh?” she said in surprise.

“Why is Potter,” he spat his name out with Malfoy’s brand of vitriol, “taking Luna to Slughorn’s
party?”

“They’re fairly close...”

“Right. Potter has almost the entire female population of Hogwarts at his disposal, and he chose to
ask Luna.”

“She doesn’t fawn over him like the rest.”

“Why didn’t he ask you?”

“He thinks I’m going with Ron.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Good.” he stated. Clipped. And then – “Why do you think she agreed to go with him?”

“She likes him, Theo...”

“Right.” he ground out, again.

“...not nearly as much as she likes you.”

He peered at her. “What are you saying?”

“I ran into Luna earlier today. She told me how much she appreciates you standing up for her, and
helping her with her work, among other things,” Hermione replied loftily.

“I see.” The ever-collected Theo Nott had two bright spots of red on his narrow face.

“I can tell you with complete surety that both Harry and Luna are interested in people other than
each other.”

“Yeah. All right,” He cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed; “Who’re you going with, if not
Weasley?”

Hermione grinned. “You.”

“Oh?”

“Do you have any objections?”

“None! But the rest of Hogwarts might...”

“Oh, please. Virtually half the school has seen us together. Your friends have. My friends have.
Harry knows, and he’s dealing with it. The only person who doesn’t is...”

“Weasley.” Theo’s smile was slow to come, but deadly in its impact. “This is very Slytherin of you,
darling.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend like it won’t serve your agenda as well. So. Will you go
to Slughorn’s party with me tonight?”

Theo laid his palm on his heart: “I’d be honoured to, Hermione.”

She nodded in a businesslike manner – “Eight O’clock” – and turned to leave. He called out to her
just as she began to walk away.

“Thanks again for the book, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” she called over her shoulder.

“And, uh... this conversation... I mean the stuff at the beginning... you know... it never happened,
right?”

Hermione was glad her back was turned – he wouldn’t have been pleased by her look of glee.

“Neeever happened.”
She walked deliberately slowly while leaving the great hall after her meal.

Deliberately. Slowly. Steeling herself as she neared the grotesque, writhing, two-headed monster
that materialised whenever Ron and Lavender came into contact.

“Oh, hi, Hermione!” Parvati’s cheery greeting was the very soul of contrition.

Hermione smiled, and shot back an equally jaunty “Hi, Parvati! Are you going to Slughorn’s party
tonight?”

“No invite,” said Parvati sullenly. “I’d love to go, though; it sounds like it’s going to be really
good… You’re going, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Hermione girded her metaphorical loins. “I’m meeting Theodore at eight, and we’re going
up to the party together.”

“Theodore? Theodore Nott, you mean?” Parvati’s eyes expanded risibly.

“Mhmm. The very same.”

“Are you going out with him, then?” Parvati, demanded urgently.

Hermione did her best to channel the Romildas, the probably-Marthas, and the possibly-Violas of
the world. She simply giggled in response. Harry, who was sitting next to Parvati, shot her a look of
disbelief.

“Wow. I’d heard you both studied together, but I didn’t know it was a… a… thing!”

“He’s really quite intelligent.” Hermione considered twirling her hair, but didn’t want to risk
creating an unnecessary tangle. “You can imagine how much pleasure I take in that. Well, see
you… Got to go and get ready for the party…”

“Just a minute, Hermione!” Parvati said, looking only more scandalised while she pulled a bit of
parchment out of her pocket. “My sister asked me to give this to you.”

Hermione thanked her and left.

She hadn’t looked Ron’s way even once, knowing full well that she was being catty and silly and
such an idiot... yet she couldn’t wrestle down a satisfied smirk.

The parchment in her hand said: ‘Library- tonight. After your stupid party, obviously.’

“You’re scarily vindictive sometimes,” Hermione was told.

“Oh, and you aren’t?”

Ginny grinned at her – well, at her reflection, standing behind her as she was, braiding and coiling
strands of atypically smooth brown hair.

“You should have seen Ron’s face. Like a troll struck by a dozen stunners, he was. I don't know
how we’re related.”

Hermione regarded Ginny – Ginny’s reflection – thoughtfully.

“My mum says that girls mature a good five years before boys. At the very least.”

Ginny nodded. “Mine says that same. And she’d know, you know?”

“OUCH.” Hermione yelped.

“Oh shut it. I didn’t pull that hard. Fuck me, you have so much hair! So anyway, my mum... she’d
know. It’s why she kept popping out kid after kid until she had me. Pretty daft plan, honestly –
stuck with six duds just for one pearl.”

“I’d say you’re worth all that and more, Ginny,” said Hermione, giving her a warm smile.

Ginny kissed the tresses currently in her grasp. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Besides the Prat Extraordinaire, you’ve only had to deal with that lot in small doses.”

“True. But besides the Prat Extraordinaire, they’re a very decent lot, I’d say.”

“Oh, really?” said Ginny, deprecatingly, “let’s go over this decent lot, shall we? The eldest is
engaged to an overbearing cow, the one after is so desperate to hide his homosexuality that he ran
off to train bloody dragons, and the third turned out to be a foul government toady who abandoned
his family. Then came a pair of delinquents with massive issues with authority. And after that...”

“The Prat Extraordinaire,” Hermione joined in at the end of the tirade. She was quivering with
laughter, and Ginny clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“Do you mind? I’m trying to work a miracle over here.”

“Well, excuse me,” Hermione attempted in vain to stem her chuckles, “I didn’t ask you to do this.
You practically begged me to let you do my hair.”

“Of course, I did. This is a very important operation...”

“Operation Hang the Bastard Out Yonder. OHBOY.”

“You have such a way with abbreviations!”

There was a short stint of silence.

Ginny had finally reached the other side of her head when she asked- “Are you sure you aren’t
coming to the Burrow tomorrow?”

“I am, Ginny.”
“Come on,” she said, “You don’t have to interact with Ron at all. Harry wants you there, I really,
really want you there, Fred and George want you there, and mum and dad would love to see you.
Plus, Lupin and Tonks will probably come by...”

“Of course I’d love to see them all, too. But I honestly do have a lot of work to complete. I’m not
even going to my own home so that I can stay here, and –”

“And spend time with Nott?” Ginny asked, drowning out the end of her sentence.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “And there we go. I was wondering when you’d bring that up.”

Ginny shook her head in bemusement while muttering- “It’s just so bizarre!”

“Perhaps,” she said, “but it is, okay? And before you ask, it certainly isn’t a ploy or sham.”

In the mirror, Hermione observed her friend struggle to form her next query. After a beat or two,
she seemed to settle on something and asked, “Are you actually going out with him?”

“No, Ginny.”

“Rea-”

“Really. It’s completely platonic.”

“Pity. He’s not bad to look at. A little scrawny, maybe, but then, so are you.”

Hermione dismissed her with a soft grunt. “Not happening.”

Ginny picked up the final bit of her hair, and began plaiting it.

Meeting reflection-Hermione’s eyes, she said, “Harry doesn’t like it.”

Hermione frowned. “He seems to have... grudgingly... accepted it, actually...”

“Nah,” she said, looking a bit apologetic, “He’s just not getting after you because he knows that's
not the way to go about it. He also feels guilty; like, he if had been around more, you wouldn’t have
gone and befriended a sodding Slytherin.”

“So what if he’s a Slytherin?”

“So what? They’re a bunch of no good snakes!”

“That is blanket stereotyping, and it’s beyond absurd! If that entire house is unequivocally evil,
why does it even exist? Let’s do away with Slytherin house, and there’ll be no bad witches or
wizards in Great Britain ever again! Peter Pettigrew was in Gryffindor, remember?”

“That’s not what I mean, Hermione,” Ginny said gently, “Bad eggs can pop up anywhere. But you
can’t deny where most of them come from. Even the youngest kids here act like such pissing little
–”

Hermione cut her off. “Can you blame them? They come in here as eleven year olds, get sent to a
particular table by a mouldy talking hat, and suddenly they’re ostracised by practically all their
peers, and even some of the teachers! How would you react to that?”
They fell into another stretch of silence, allowing them both to get lost in their own heads. Only
two years ago, they'd been in the exact same position; Hermione wounded by Ron, having her hair
sorted out for a boy who wasn't Ron.

“I’m done,” Ginny whispered, causing Hermione to resurface. She stared in awe at the intricate coil
of braids and twists at the back of her head.

“You really are a miracle worker.”

“No shit. I could have done my own hair ten times over in this much time.”

“You don’t have to do anything to your hair,” she sniped, eying Ginny’s silky tresses, which she
had justifiably left loose.

Spinning around on the little footstool on which she was sat, Hermione looked up and smiled
gratefully at her friend.

Ginny returned the gesture with a subdued smile of her own. “I’ll talk to Harry over the hols.
You’re right; what you said...”

The atmosphere was unacceptably sombre and intense; especially considering the fact that they
were due to attend a party in half an hour. Hermione lifted her chin regally and said, “Of course I’m
right.”

Her inflection was all wrong, but Ginny indulged her with a grin.

“Doesn’t it get tiring? Always being right?”

Hermione arched her brows and pretended to examine her cuticles. “Not in the slightest. ...hey!”

Ginny had pinched her shoulder – gently – and Hermione rubbed the spot like she hadn't, while
giving her the fingers. Gasping in fake indignation, Ginny pulled her up by the arm and spun her
around to face the mirror again.

“Not too shabby, eh?” she said smugly.

Before Hermione could say or do anything else, she found herself being dragged out of the
dormitory.

“Where are we going? It’s only seven-thirty...”

“We have to pass the time in the common room. OHBOY, remember?”

In those subsequent thirty minutes, Hermione felt just about as self-conscious as she had during the
Yule ball. She tried desperately to involve herself in the conversation that Ginny, Harry, Dean, and
Seamus were engaged in... but they were talking about quidditch, and she was consumed by the
knowledge that a certain red-haired boy was sitting diagonally across the room from her, and he
hadn’t stop staring at her for a moment.
 Nine
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Slughorn’s office was dressed up to look like a sumptuous Turkish tent. The walls and ceiling were
draped with green, scarlet, and gold silk. A large gilded mosaic lamp threw a diffused red light that
bathed the room in a treacherous, decadent glow, which was underscored by frequent puffs of
smoke, lilting chants sung to the tune of various string instruments, and the unending murmur of
conversation, punctuated with sudden loud bursts of laughter.

The atmosphere was heady in a suffocating, self-indulgent, trying-too-hard way.

“People are staring,” Hermione grumbled.

“What did you expect? Although, I think we can safely say that at least half those stares are over
the way you look,” Theo smiled at her, “Very nice, Hermione.”

She laughed awkwardly. “Thanks.”

“Why is that obnoxiously large fellow glaring at me like he wants to pull my guts out of my
throat?”

“Huh? Oh. That’s Cormac McLaggen. He, um, had asked me to go with him...”

“And you didn’t think to warn me about potentially murderous, scorned suitors baying for my
blood? I’ve told you before, I’m far too beautiful to –”

“To die young. Yes.”

Theo laughed. He moved to take a sip of his mead, but midway... It was like he’d been petrified. An
alarmed Hermione followed his line of vision, and it led to a very unlikely group of individuals: a
somewhat bewildered looking Harry, a very red-faced and beaming Slughorn, a gentleman who
could be best described as ‘Barney Rubble wearing bifocals’, an animated cadaver –
unquestionably a vampire, and last but definitely not the least as far as Theo was concerned, Luna.

Hermione smirked at her gobsmacked companion. “She looks very pretty, doesn’t she?”

He let out a breathless sound of agreement.

“Come on then.” She grabbed his arm and began pulling him towards the object of his fixation. A
look of untempered relief spread across Harry’s face when he spotted her coming their way, and he
took hold of Luna and broke away from the group.

They met near the centre of the room, and the purposefulness that had driven Harry and Hermione
up to that point suddenly deserted them. There was a stretch of uncomfortable silence while she
looked at him, and he glowered at Theo, and Theo made moony eyes at Luna, and Luna gazed
beatifically at the fairies encased in the lamp overhead.

“Hi Harry, Luna!” Hermione chirped. She fucking chirped, and that was enough to draw the
attention of the other three.

“Hey, Hermione... Hello, Nott.” Harry’s face, voice, manner, everything conveyed distaste.

Luna spoke up before Theo could spit out a proportionately acidic greeting in response,
gesticulating towards the twinkling lights above.

“Fairies really don’t like being trapped in this manner.”

“Of course they don’t!” Hermione jumped on board with alacrity, pleased to have a legitimate
cause to vent out her irritation, “It’s just one of the many ways magical creatures are abused. Don’t
even get me started on the house-elves being forced to navigate this crowd with those humongous
platters –”

“No,” Luna interrupted, “I mean fairies don’t like red-tinted glass. They don’t like what it does to
their complexion.”

Hermione drained her goblet in one neat gulp.

“Why don’t you tell me more about that, Luna,” said Theo, an unsettling purr pervading his tone.
He slipped his arm around her waist, and made to lead her away and into the crowd.

Hermione yanked him right back into place. “No. Your motive here is to establish your... er,
political stance, yes? To make clear where your sympathies lie? So go on,” she said with a wild
flourish of her arm, “Convince away.”

And again, there was an awkward moment where she looked expectantly at Theo, and he looked
coldly at her, and Harry alternated between frowning at the two of them, and Luna gazed
beatifically at the fairies encased in the lamp overhead.

“What grand gesture would you like me to make?” Theo asked, “Shall I stand on a table and recite
an ode to Dumbledore? Should I have worn a giant Gryffindor hat? Or perhaps worn robes with
‘Death Eaters are dastardly dicks’ stitched on across the back? Would you like me to drag Potter
into the middle of the throng and snog him in front of everyone?”

“You could start by not behaving like an utter wanker.” Hermione berated him over Harry’s splutter
of horror, “You know what to say. You always know what to say.”

“You’re giving me too much credit there, darling...”

“I am not – ”

“No, actually, I am Nott.”

Hermione glared, quite ready to empty his drink on his head – she might be able to do it wandlessly
now – but Harry interrupted her.

“How’s this for an overture of friendship,” he said to Theo, “Never argue with Hermione when
she’s in advocate mode.”
“As bad as one would expect, ay?” Theo asked with a ridiculous amount of severity.

Harry responded with equal gravity. “Worse.”

“I have a beautiful Lion-head Gryffindor hat, Theo. I’ll let you borrow it for the next party.”

It was fair to say the ice was somewhat broken after that. The conversation was stilted, and both the
boys were still entirely aloof, but with the help of fine, freely flowing libation, and Luna’s sweet
candour, they managed to establish a fragile dynamic of sorts.

“Harry Potter!” came a lively cry from somewhere behind them. Sybill Trelawney materialised
dramatically, in a manner befitting a fraudulent seer.

“Oh, hello,” said Harry, unhappily.

She greeted Luna with equal enthusiasm, nodded at Theo, but ignored Hermione completely, which
suited her just fine. She zoned out as Trelawney twittered at Harry about something or the other,
sipping her enth goblet of mead and listlessly trying to cast a weightlessness charm on a house-elf’s
platter with nothing but her mind.

She swayed from the strain of it… from the influence of her drink… and Theo placed a steadying
hand on her back. “We’re doing alright, aren’t we?” he asked.

She smiled at him, and looking around she realised that their gathering seemed to have expanded.
Slughorn was there too, and… Snape?

Indeed Severus Snape was flashing his usual acrimonious sneer at Harry, while saying- “Funny, I
never had the impression that I managed to teach Potter anything at all.”

“Well, then, it’s natural ability!” Slughorn countered gaily. “You should have seen what he gave
me, first lesson, Draught of Living Death — never had a student produce finer on a first attempt, I
don’t think even you, Severus —”

“Really?” Snape looked sour and suspicious, and what if Hermione had been cruel and spiteful
enough to choose that moment to throw Harry under the bus?

No, she wanted to whisk Theo, Harry, and Luna away to the opposite end of the room. Or maybe
go hide alone in some corner. Or maybe leave this inane party altogether. She zoned out again. The
rosy rose light in the room was the colour of madness. The madness was a fog around her head, and
Luna’s mellifluous voice broke through the mad fog, but only after her words were leeched of all
meaning. Then there was laughter. The pressure on her back was tremulous, the laughter was
unfettered, crazy, and echoing strangely, like the mad fog had solidified, and was causing sound
waves to refract in all sorts of mad angles.

She had never been this tipsy before.

Theo grabbed her arm with a jarring tightness just as she felt her eyes flutter shut.

She resurfaced, and yet again, the alternations to her surroundings took her by surprise. ‘Surprise’,
was really a ‘what the fuck?!’ which resulted in the very distressing phenomenon of sudden onset
soberness. S.O.S.

Joviality looked very disturbing on Filch. There he was, with a manic grin on his face, saying: “I
discovered this boy lurking in an upstairs corridor. He claims to have been invited to your party and
to have been delayed in setting out. Did you issue him with an invitation?”

Draco Malfoy, mutinous and fuming, snarled: “All right, I wasn’t invited! I was trying to gatecrash,
happy?”

“No, I’m not!” said Filch, grinning, grinning like a harlequin. “You’re in trouble, you are! Didn’t
the headmaster say that nighttime prowling’s out, unless you’ve got permission, didn’t he, eh?”

Slughorn, keeping with the spirit of generosity associated with yuletide, dismissed Filch and
extended a spontaneous albeit disinterested invite to Malfoy, welcoming him into the fold.

His pinched expression of displeasure morphed into a gracious smile. With his smooth brow,
straight back, and gleaming teeth, he looked like a different person.

“This is very kind of you, Professor,” he said to Slughorn.

As the old man pompously waved away his thanks, Hermione looked over at Theo. He was staring
fixedly at Malfoy, worry pulling his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth down into a frown.

“You okay?” she murmured.

He only shook his head, eyes still locked on Malfoy.

“I’d like a word with you, Draco.” This was Snape, whose presence Hermione had nearly forgotten.
He, too, looked extremely displeased.

“Oh, now, Severus,” Slughorn slurred, “it’s Christmas, don’t be too hard —”

“I’m his Head of House, and I shall decide how hard, or otherwise, to be. Follow me, Draco.”

Hermione dragged Theo to the side once they had left. He slumped against the wall and sighed
dejectedly.

“He wasn’t trying to gatecrash, was he?” she asked. Theo merely shrugged. “He wasn’t. And you
aren’t going to tell me what he was really doing.” She teetered slightly, unexpectedly. Stupid
platform sandals.

Theo steadied her with a hand to her shoulder, and the last vestiges of his frown melted away.

“You’re drunk.”
“No.” she laughed feebly.

“You’re nearly there, then.” Theo smirked, “Come on. I’ll see you to your common room.”

“No… I have to go… to the library.”

“Don’t be absurd, you mad bint. You can study tomorrow.”

“Have to meet Padma. Shouldn’t take too long…”

With a long suffering sigh, Theo pulled away from the wall and began walking her towards the exit.
“I’ll drop you to the library then.”

Perhaps she was relying a little too much on him for support.

They walked in companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

“Who’s Kubla Khan?” Theo asked, suddenly.

“…Mongol emperor. Why do you ask?” she blinked at him in puzzlement.

“You were just muttering something about him and a dome.”

“I was? No? Was I?”

Theo shook his head at her in indulgent exasperation.

“You are such a bizarre little creature. And here we are at the library, so I bid you farewell.” He
laughed as Hermione curtsied. “You are really good at that.”

“My grandmother insisted I attend ballet lessons as a kid.”

Giving her a gentle one-armed hug, he said “Goodnight”, and strolled back down the corridor.
Hermione watched him until he disappeared from sight.

With careful but wobbly steps, she navigated through the sea of tall bookshelves until she arrived at
the table Padma favoured for their study sessions. Except Padma wasn’t at the table… she was
sitting on the floor, under a large arched window.
Her long hair was loose for once – a shiny oil spill meandering in waves down her back – and so
was her posture; there was a general wilted look about her. She was still in her uniform, which was
disastrously rumpled.

“Hey, Hermione. Nice dress.”

“Thanks?”

Hermione regarded her uncertainly. She even sounded wrong; all hoarse and drowsy.

She stumbled to the spot besides her, and sat down heavily on the thick carpet.
Then she noticed the leather hipflask in Padma’s hand.
“Er… what’s that?”

“Firewhisky.” Padma shrugged carelessly, and then proceeded to take a huge gulp from it.

“Ah.”

“So the term-end results are out. Did you see? Did you see what a powerful pain potion warrants?
Second and third place apparently. And guess who topped? That’s right. Your superstar chosen one
Potter boy.” She made a sound of abject disgust.

When she offered her flask to Hermione, it was accepted with much gratitude.

They sat side by side, rapidly passing the flask from one to the other. Firewhisky burned like
nothing Hermione had ever known. It was very aptly named. It had none of the smoothness of dad’s
favourite Glenfiddich that she had snuck a few sips of at parties her parents threw. But she found
she liked the burn – the burn that filled her while simultaneously emptied her so that there was
room for more burn to fill and empty.

The mad fog was back, and now it was gold like dust mites set alight by candle flames.

Padma’s head landed on her shoulder.

Hermione recited Kubla Khan (…again?) while Padma played with the silky hem of her dress.

“Nice dress.”

A voice that was muffled against a shoulder.

The flask was empty. They looked at it forlornly.

“Fuck Potions.”

She felt Padma nod against her neck.

Two rows of bookshelves were visible from where they were seated. They converged as they
receded, bending unnaturally to meet at a point blacker than the lock of Padma’s black hair resting
on her wrist. Lines of books were moving into that blackest of black holes at varying paces… it
was dizzying, discombobulating… an M.C. Escher mindfuck…

Padma lifted her head slightly.

“Nice dress…” Hermione felt the intoxicated hum in the warm breath against her jaw. She turned to
look at –

Warm, soft lips brushed against hers with the gentlest of pressure. If a kiss could be whispered, that
was how it was done. The whisper grew into an assertion as the pressure increased… as Padma
sucked at her lower lip, Hermione felt another firewhisky-like burn consume her. She pulled back
in bleary confusion, and Padma looked back at her with blazing twin black hole eyes –

“Please.”
 – and Hermione surrendered. Mad fog closed in, rushing in through her ears and saturating her
brain cells.
They gave up on being tentative. It was a kiss of defeat and resignation. It was a frantic
acknowledgement of futility and disappointment. Hermione forgot herself in it, and when she felt
Padma’s tongue flick against her mouth, she brought out her own.

Padma broke away with a lurch. She gasped, squeezing her eyes shut…

Hermione shakily stood up, catching herself on the nearest chair as she staggered. She walked
precariously between the bookshelves; one hand grabbing at whatever it could find to keep herself
steady…

She walked towards the universe’s end… the ultimate vanishing point… the blackest of black
holes.........

Hermione frowned.

She was standing in front of the portrait of the fat lady. How on earth had that happened? She gave
the blatantly disapproving pink puffer fish the password, and veritably crawled up the stairs to her
dorm. Everyone else was asleep. She slipped into her bed without bothering to undress.

Her head was swimming; the mad fog was grey early winter morning London smog in mum's
garden. And she couldn’t shake away the memory of lips and warm breath…
Unbidden, her hand crept into her underwear, and she touched the sensitive dampness with a
shudder. She remembered the way Pete had touched her, gentle strokes at first…
Wonderful, glorious currents travelled up her legs and down her spine. She pictured his dirty blond
hair and strong tattooed arms, a gruff voice saying baby and her hand went deeper and faster and
deeper… And she was confused because blond kept getting streaked with red, and oh baby she
spun her fingers in circles, and the last thing she remembered were eyes so blue blue blue
blue
blue o god
blue

Chapter End Notes

1. Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 Ten
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Waking up after being petrified by the basilisk was a very strange experience. She vaguely
remembered hurrying out of the library all those years ago… and then there was: Nothing.

A long expanse of blank… and then existence. It had been non-being, and then being. It had been
like someone had switched her life off, and then her eyes opened, and things came on again. It had
been startlingly abrupt.

This is what Hermione felt when she woke up on Christmas Eve morning: Suddenly extant. She
stared up at the canopy above her bed like a newborn taking her first breath – acquainting herself
with her surroundings. Her head was throbbing raucously, and she could hear her eardrums pulsing
with the rhythm. Her throat was the driest thing in the world. She sat up slowly, groaning in agony.
Thankfully, the dorm was empty, and she hurriedly slipped into the bathroom.

She stood under the hot shower for a long time, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. She
vehemently scrubbed her orange blossom scented body wash into her skin, desperate to get rid of
the pungent distillery smell that had embedded itself into her pores, and then went over her dim
memories from the night before while massaging her scalp with shampoo.

As she put away her toothbrush after a very thorough cleaning of her teeth, she contemplated her
reflection, feeling deeply uncomfortable. Sure, the girl in the mirror looked like she ought to – her
skin flushed and dewy, contrasting starkly against her shower-darkened hair that spread around her
shoulders and back like seaweed – but Hermione couldn’t find herself relating to this image in the
least. She took a couple of steps back, dropping the towel wrapped around her body, and glanced
down at her torso… small breasts, narrow waist and shoulders…

She reached out, stretching her arm to touch her index finger to the mirror. The girl in the mirror
followed her movements, and their digits met on the glass, creating a tangible connection. The
Creation of Hermione.

Alas, this was no Genesis, and there would be no glorious, iconic ceilings painted to immortalise it.
It wasn’t a creation, or even a recreation, for that matter. It was a bloody teenage crisis; a cliché…
which she wrapped up in fortitude and stowed away. She was not the kind of woman who’d come
and go, talking about Michelangelo.

There will be time for such extravagance later.

“Hermione! There you are!” An anxious Ginny rushed towards her, followed closely by Harry.

When Hermione had finally bothered to look at the clock after her shower, she realised that the
Hogwarts Express was due to leave in twenty minutes. She got dressed in a frantic hurry, and
charged down to the platform to say goodbye to her friends.

“Where the hell did run off to last night?” Harry asked.

“I went to the library,” Hermione muttered, hoping they would think that her face was flushed due
to the cold.

Harry and Ginny rolled their eyes in synchrony and laughed. Like, ha ha, that’s just so Hermione;
so typical ha ha ha.

Ha ha indeed. Typical, rule-abiding Hermione overdid it at a party, went to the library to get utterly
shitfaced on smuggled goods, and then indulged in a bit of harmless sexual experimentation.

Was it harmless? How could she know how Padma had processed the incident? Maybe she'd lost
yet another friend. Hermione shook those thoughts away. There will be time for meditation later.

Harry was speaking to her.

“I really needed to talk to you! It’s important. Last night I –”

He was jostled forward awkwardly, when that repugnant, flailing multi-limbed beast Rovender
crashed into him.

“Oi!” he cried indignantly, and the sound speared through the beast, and Ron and Lavender
emerged.

“Sorry!” Lavender giggled, sounding as sorry as Snape did while dishing out detentions.

Hermione was powerless against the determination of her eyes, as they insisted on fixing
themselves on Ron. He was looking at her with the ugliest look of contempt she had seen.

“Yeah, sorry mate. Just saying goodbye to my girl,” he said to Harry, “I’ll see you on the train.”

He stalked off, pulling his girl along, and they morphed into Rovender again as they walked.

“You were saying, Harry…?” Hermione asked calmly.

“Er, right. So, last night I followed Snape and Mal –”

This time he was interrupted by the shriek of the train’s whistle.

Grumbling impatiently, Harry pulled her into a hug. “Sod it. I’ll tell you when I get back. Have a
happy Christmas, Hermione.”

“You too,” she said, and then went to hug Ginny.

“I’m really going to miss you, Hermione.”

The train trundled off, all fat and wobbly like a millipede. Smoke rose in great big tufts, bright
against the pastel blue and mauve of the winter morning sky. Haze fractured the sharpness of the
surroundings, and everything seemed to be made of irregular flecks and dabs of colour. It was an
impressionist painting come to life – like someone had animated Monet’s rendition of the Gare St-
Lazare station. Hermione pulled her coat tightly around herself and turned to walk back to the
castle.

There would be time for romanticism later.

How she loved brisk, solitary walks. She breathed out into the clean wintry air, sullying it with tiny
puffs of fog. She stomped emphatically down on the carpet of snow below, sullying its pristine
perfection. These acts of petty destruction were helping her exorcise her inner demons – it was
cathartic. Hermione dared to eat a peach.

Nothing had changed.

Sure, she had woken up feeling like her skin wasn’t her own. She had broken rules for ignoble
reasons, she had kissed a girl, and she had relinquished control of her faculties. But nothing had
changed, because while the kiss had been nice and being intoxicated was liberating, she was still
the girl who was hopelessly pining. The clever girl who really should know better: that was her
reality.

Was it time for introspection yet?

Hogwarts castle loomed in front of her, housing hundreds of warm fires, hundreds of comfortable
armchairs, thousands upon thousands of books...

Later, she thought. There will be time later.

“There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
 There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

Chapter End Notes

1. "The Creation of Hermione": reference to Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam'

2. Multiple references and quotes from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
3. Monet’s rendition of the Gare St-Lazare station
 Eleven
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Hermione beamed up at the towering stack of books on her bed:
her parents had truly outdone themselves. Every year they’d pick a theme of sorts, and between her
birthday and Christmas, they’d ply her with a carefully curated collection of books. There was
however, a less-than-pleased sentiment conveyed in the letter that accompanied them.

"I’ve made you an absolutely killer mixtape, but of course you’ll only get to hear it when you
bother to come home next." Clearly, dear old dad was a bit brassed off.

Concentrate.

She stared hard at the book at the top of the pile, and thought Accio! with all her might. It shifted
perceptibly.
The second time it hopped up into the air and hovered for a few seconds, before falling back down.
The third time it came flying into her outstretched hand.

Hermione grinned with manic delight. One by one, she summoned all the books, stacking them on
the floor next to her forsaken wand.

She summoned the glass sitting on her bedside table. Aguamenti!

Nothing happened.

The second time, she thought the glass felt marginally cooler.
The third time, she managed to conjure a few condensation-like beads along the inside of the glass.
The fourth attempt left her with a glass half-full of icy water.

She spent an hour creating absolute chaos in the dormitory that was all hers for the next ten days.
Summoning, conjuring, severing and repairing, transfiguring, shrinking, enlarging... She failed a
lot, but succeeded more. She felt like Matilda Wormwood after she’d learned to control her powers.
Exactly like Matilda – she was an extraordinarily talented, woefully misunderstood bookworm...
suddenly exalted.

Exhaustion gripped her afterwards. She stood amid the wreckage, basking in absolute self-
satisfaction. Her magic and her mind had done this. She had tossed a room; surely with enough
practice, she could bring down mountains, part the sea, summon tornadoes, chisel rock and steel
and build cities like the world had never seen. Elated and euphoric, she stretched out on her bed
gracefully like the blooming queen of Sheba, and with languorous waves of her arm, took her time
putting things in order again. A botched reparo had left a dent in Lavender’s mattress, which
Hermione made a point to forget to rectify.
Turkey and Potatoes and Parsnips, oh my! Christmas dinner at Hogwarts was spectacular, and
Hermione hoped the house-elves slaving away in the kitchens liked the hats, socks, and scarves she
had sent them. As always, very few students had opted to stay back for the holidays, so they were
all comfortably seated in the middle of the great hall. After a surreptitious glance up and down the
table, Hermione crooked a finger at a salt cellar, and it sprouted legs and scuttled over to her.

“Could you perhaps direct some salt my way, Ms Granger?” an amused voice requested.

Startled, Hermione looked into the brightly twinkling eyes of Professor Dumbledore. Clearing her
throat, she mumbled, “Yes sir, of course,” and with a slight flick of her finger, set the cellar a-
walking.

Every single pair of eyes in the room watched the tiny bit of silverware scamper down the table.

“Impressive,” said Professor McGonagall, gracing Hermione with a rare smile.

“Simply marvellous!” Slughorn exclaimed through a mouthful of food, beaming.

Many other commending assertions, hushed and loud, piped up along the table, and Hermione felt
her whole face burn.

“Show off,” Theo muttered in her ear. She glared at him half-heartedly as he grinned at the
splodges of red on her cheeks.

“Shut up,” she hissed back.

A few seats down, Hagrid was telling Slughorn about how consistently brilliant she had been over
the years. Thanks for that Dumbledore. She saw that he was still watching her, smiling. Hermione
wondered how much energy he must expend in keeping that sparkle going in his eyes. It had to be a
charm – human eyes didn’t do that.

They sat on the steps by the archway that opened onto the central courtyard, stomachs full and
minds briefly unburdened.
Hermione was leafing through a book on Arithmancy, and Theo, seated one step below, rested back
on his elbows and lazily contemplated the setting sun that looked like a grimy, dumpy little
pumpkin though the evening haze. Save for the odd stray student milling about, they were
completely alone, and a deep stillness pervaded the usually raucous castle.

“Why on earth did you choose to stay here for Christmas?” Theo asked her sullenly.

Hermione emerged from her book and frowned, “Why did you?”

He shrugged mordantly. “It was bound to be me alone in a cold and lonely castle either which
way.”

“You live in a castle?” she asked in wonder.

“Mansion. Whatever.”

Hermione studied his profile for a moment – perhaps he didn’t share her tranquil mood as she had
assumed. Indeed, his furrowed brow and cloudy eyes were obvious indicators of inner turmoil.

“I can’t be around my parents,” she said hesitantly, “I... I just don’t know how to downplay the hell
we’re hurtling towards. I never have been able to lie to them.”

Theo’s frown deepened. “Would they stop you from coming back if they knew?”

She couldn’t hold back a derisive snort. “Hardly. They’d want to join the Order and fight.”

His eyes widened with incredulity as he turned towards her. “Seriously?!”

“Oh yes. No power on earth can stop them from fighting for a worthy cause. They have to stand
against all injustices, oppose all wrongs...”

“Dear Merlin,” Theo’s expression cleared, and he grinned. “So that’s where you get it from!”

Hermione sniffed snootily. “I get it from both sides. That’s why I’m twice as insufferable.”

His laugh rang out, echoing around in the empty courtyard, and she smiled at the sound and the
way he looked.

“I’m going to show you something,” he said slowly, “but you have to promise you won’t laugh, or
get all sappy on me.”

“Okay?”

“No. Promise.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “All right. I promise.”

He fished around in his bag for an eternity, muttering to himself. Hermione made out a couple of
‘where the fuck’s, a few ‘somewhere here’s, three ‘Ah-haaaa...nope’s and one notable ‘dickering
doxy bollocks, where is it?’

She tapped her foot, emitting impatient growl-sighs. The forth ‘Ah ha!’ was, thankfully, not a false
alarm. With it, Theo pulled a small badge out of the depths of his bag.
It was a S.P.E.W. badge, slightly scratched up and a bit dented.

“I nicked it off you ages ago. Well, not nicked,” he backtracked, “I definitely left you a sickle in
place of it.”

“Why?” Hermione asked, stunned.

Theo paused as though to mull over his next words. “After my mother died, Boffin – he was her elf
– he took care of me. On particularly... bad... days, when I’d be up in my room crying, he’d bring
me hot chocolate and biscuits, and tell me stories. I hated how my dad treated him. When I heard
about your venture, I knew I had to support it; even though it would’ve had to be- regrettably- in
secret. Wasn’t brave enough to take a stand at that point. Also, I wasn’t too chuffed at the thought
of wearing the word ‘spew’ on my chest. You really didn’t think that one through, did you?”

Hermione knew her eyes were huge. Cartoony and doe-eyed.

“Oh, Theo, I can’t beli – ”

“No.” He shot her down, pointing an accusatory finger. “You promised you wouldn’t get sappy.
Stop it now.”

She let out a chuckle and said, “Those badges were worth two sickles.”

“Guess I owe you, then.” Theo laughed... and then stopped abruptly, as though struck by the
unintended significance of his statement.

Hermione shook her head, hoping to cut short that train of thought.

“Wow. I managed to recruit four members. Brilliant.”

“Who were the other three?”

“Harry, Ron, and Neville.”

Theo scoffed. “Pathetic. Twat number one and two probably only joined to shut you up. And
Longbottom would happily dive into the lake in the middle of a snowstorm for you if you smiled at
him.”

“You mean like you do for Luna?”

“Fuck off.” He scowled.

Hermione struggled with a broad grin.

They chatted into the evening, well after the sky was a domineering navy blue, and all the lamps
inside the castle had flared to life. He was extremely inquisitive about her parents, about their
activism, and what were considered ‘contentious issues’ in the muggle world.
It soon got too cold to be sitting on stone steps out in the open. They moseyed back indoors,
aimlessly wandering through empty corridors.
“Do you talk to them like this? Potter and Weasley, I mean.”

Hermione’s silence evidently conveyed enough, and Theo made a noise of disgust. “I just cannot
understand this supposedly great friendship. You don’t talk about things that matter, you don’t
confide in them... they don’t think twice before abandoning you –”

“Harry has never abandoned me.” Hermione asserted. “Look, I know how it seems to you, and yes,
maybe Harry and I don’t have tender heart-to-hearts, but there’s this... implicit and deeply strong
trust between us. Like I know, I know, Harry Potter would risk his life on my behalf, no matter
what. Nothing can destroy that.”

“Look at his track record – risking his life is a habit for him.”

“And you think that hasn’t taken its toll?” she retorted, shrilly. “The things he’s had to endure, the
horrors he’s faced, the people he’s lost... and the worst is yet to come. His burden is bigger than any
of ours, and he’s never had a choice. He was orphaned, marked, and forced into accepting this
fucking nightmare as his destiny. And I will gladly, willingly, unconditionally give him my help
and support, because in spite of being in the thick of it all, Harry takes time out to cheer me up
when the boy I fancy goes and gets himself a girlfriend.”

A heavy silence succeeded Hermione’s rant. They’d stopped walking, standing stalk still and on
edge in the middle of the passageway. This caused a very crusty looking portrait to tartly chastise
them: “Move along ye dawdling dingbats!”

Both Theo and Hermione jumped.

“Naff off!” Theo spat, and freed the moment of tension.

“Anyway,” said he evenly, as they recommenced their directionless trek, “That boy you fancy is a
knob.”

Hermione laughed bitterly. “One of his many character flaws.”

“And yet you fancy him.”

“I make poor choices.”

“Well, Hermione,” said Theo, graciously, “I will endeavour to be an exception to that rule.”

A group of ghosts floated by, with vacant eyes and empty smiles. “Merry Christmas,” they softly
whispered, and “Merry Christmas,” Hermione and Theo said back.

Bah! Humbug!

Theo pulled out a box of Fizzing Whizbees from somewhere within his robes. They walked, talked,
periodically floated off the ground as they ate the sweets, and it was only after an unpleasant run in
with Mrs Norris that Hermione realised that it was well past midnight.

Christmas was officially over.

“What I don’t understand...” He halted briefly to take a long sip of butterbeer. “...is how you can
dismiss the entire concept of Divination, but believe wholeheartedly in Arithmantic predictions.”

The Three Broomsticks was only moderately full that afternoon. Madam Rosmerta sat idly behind
the bar, looking strangely glassy-eyed, as if she had indulged in too much of her own stock.
It was a cold and sunless day, one that – as both Hermione and Theo agreed – could only be
assuaged by warm butterbeer and a steaming plate of chips and gravy.

“Pshaw,” said Hermione, popping a chip into her mouth, “They’re completely different. Divination
is all smoke and mirrors. Arithmancy uses numerical calculations and tabulations to deduce the
probability of certain outcomes, with solid empirical evidence to back each claim.”

“But what about –”

“Honestly, even the Astrology-based centaur method of divination has its merits. Studying
planetary movements to predict broad future scenarios is perfectly plausible... it has its base in
legitimate Astronomy, after all. Now compare all that to Trelawney’s ridiculous tea leaves and
crystal balls and oooooh you’re in grave danger!” Hermione’s attempt at putting on a spooky voice
had Theo looking completely bemused.

“Luna was right about you,” he said, “You really are obsessed with hard facts. They’re like crutches
for you, and you can’t move forward without seeing proper tangible proof for everything.”

“And what’s wrong with that?!” Hermione spluttered indignantly. “It’s how you establish facts and
the truth.”

“What’s wrong is that it makes you myopic. Limited. Tell me something,” Theo leaned forward,
resting his arms on the table, “How did little precocious muggleborn Hermione end up believing in
magic?”

“McGonagall turned into a cat in my living room. Hence proved.”

He rolled his eyes. “Easy as that? But surely that didn’t suddenly supply you with all the answers to
the magical world. Like, how you came to possess magic, or what it comprises of –”

“I’m not neurotic,” she said resentfully, “I know that... that... fire is, without knowing its exact
chemical make. And I know magic is, without knowing the exact atomic deviation that caused it to
be. I’ve been looking into it for years now... but it’s a disturbingly unstudied area. And for that,”
Hermione slapped her palms down on the table for emphasis, “I blame the complacent, blasé
attitude that you, Luna, and most of the magical community are content to stew in. It can’t just be
all whimsy and sparkles! Magic is energy; Muggleborns and squibs prove that the genetic make of
muggles and magical folk is near equal. So what is the origin of magic? Where does it come from?
I sure as hell am not going to find those answers in the bottom of my tea cup.”

Hermione drained the last of her butterbeer, and Theo fell back in his chair.

“Blimey, Hermione. Sometimes... the way you talk...” He pulled a face and looked away.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He replied swiftly, “I’m going to ask for the bill now, and this one’s on me. Don’t you
dare argue. You got me three books and that incredible hamper of muggle sweets for Christmas,
and I gave you one fucking quill. Merlin. All our outings from now until the end of time are on me.
Or until next Christmas, at least, when I can get you a unicorn. Or perhaps your birthday. When is
your birthday? I was born on February twenty-ninth, 1980. That’s just the kind of luck I have - a
sodding leap-year baby. So I just consider the second half of the twenty-eighth of......”

Nobody rambled at the speed of light like Theo. Hermione could only blink, nod, and laugh as he
went on and on. There was no stopping him. Mister Fahrenheit.

“No, no,” she said in frustration, “There are six balls in one over, and fifty overs in one innings. But
that’s only in one-day matches. Test matches don’t really have a fixed number of overs.”

“And that’s four innings to each side?”

“No. One to each side in ODI’s, two to each side in Test matches. Of course, there are certain
exceptions, and –”

“How do you score goals?”

“Theo, I told you, there are no goals. The aim is to collect runs –”

“You mean the goal is to collect runs,” he said cheekily.

“Ha ha. Sure. So anyway, six balls in an over, fifty overs... or not, as the case may be... and see, this
is the pitch, where the action takes place, this is the crease...”

Professor McGonagall would be most annoyed if she knew her blackboard had a crude diagram of
a cricket stadium on it.

“I can’t believe you said quidditch is unnecessarily complicated.”

“Oh god, are you alright?” Hermione gasped through uproarious laughter when Theo fell smack
dab onto his arse after a long, frenzied skid down the Hogwarts grounds.

She pulled at his arm ineffectively, as he sat there groaning.

It took her over five minutes to get him up and moving again, all the while enduring an enraged
tirade against snow.

“You certainly invoke this god fellows name a lot, for someone who claims to be an... er... eighty-
ist?”

“Atheist.”

“Ah. That’s just as well. Eightyist sounds like what you’d call someone with a fetish for geriatrics.”

“Oh god.”

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And Theo and Hermione were writing— Writing—writing –

Theo and Hermione were writing, while sitting on large cushions on the floor.

There was a full but contained fire crackling between them that Hermione had conjured. Theo had
rolled his eyes when she’d pulled out a book and parchment from her bag, before settling down to
write a letter to Luna himself.

She drew herself out of the world of Protective Enchantments and Spells for Conservation after a
long period of quiet, suddenly finding herself in desperate need for chat. Shockingly, the book had
begun to bore her.

“Theo.”
“Yeah?” For once, he was the one looking jarred and abstracted, and she was the one smirking.

“That’s a mighty long billet-doux you’re penning there.”

He glowered. “Funny.”

“Tell me,” she said, “How’re you finding that history book I gave you?”

For some reason, he flushed and instantly looked away from her.

“Good. It’s good. Really fascinating,” he said shiftily.

“Oh...kay? Where have you reached?”

“Um, far. Not too far? Sixteenth century. Yeah.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “So the Industrial Revolution then?”

“Yeah. Exactly,” he said promptly.

“God, you’re so full of it,” she snapped.

“Excuse me?”

“You haven’t read a word, have you?” she demanded.

It looked like he was going to protest for a moment... but then his shoulders slumped in defeat.
“No.”

Hermione shook her head at him, torn between annoyance and amusement. “Can I have it back in
that case? There’s something I want to look up.”

“No! No. I’ll read it. I will. Really.”

She laughed. “I’ll give it back to you soon. Just... our last conversation got me thinking about
paganism, and –”

“I can’t give it back to you, all right?”

Two – Four – Six – Eight seconds went by with her just staring at him.

“Why on earth not?”

“I um...” he grimaced and ducked his head, as though expecting to be smacked, “I

gaveittosomebodyelse.”

“You what?!?”

“Er, yeah. I just... You see... someone, they um, saw me with it and expressed great interest, so I
lent it to them, and –”

“Where the hell do you get of lending my books to other people?!” she yelled.

“Hey, hey... Hermione, calm down...”

“Do not tell me to calm down, you... you... todger! How dare you...”

“Look, he was genuinely intrigued, and I promise you’ll get it back in pristine condition –”

“– bloody trusted you with my book, and you went and –”

“...overreacting –”

“Overreacting?!” she bellowed, outraged, “Hullo? Have you met me? Are you truly surprised I’m
extremely protective about my books?”

She hoped for his sake that he'd carefully consider what he’d say next, because she was so so so
close to hysteria.

“I’m sorry!” he blurted out loudly, looking quite sincerely repentant.

Hermione gave him the most poisonous look in her arsenal. “Who did you give it to?”

Impossibly, he looked even more contrite, and also... scared? He looked downright wretched.

“Now see here... before I tell you, just please try and stay calm...”

Oh fuck. Oh no. She felt nauseous... and she knew. Of course she knew. It was obvious.

“...I um... I gav—I lent it... to... ohfuckdontkillme... Draco.”

Hermione felt dangerously livid, and when she spoke, it was with the kind of precarious, deceptive
quiet that most people would instinctively run far away from.

“You gave my book to Draco Malfoy.”

“...yes. Listen –”

“You gave my book... my muggle book, written by a muggle man about muggle things, to that
awful, bigoted muggle-hating bastard.”

The fire between them rose to an alarming height, roaring flames nearly scorching the ceiling.

“Whoa! Hermione, calm down!”

Deep breaths. Count to ten. That little shit, she thought.

“You little shit,” she said.

“Listen, I am sorry, but you have to –”

“Do not tell me to calm down. He’s probably torn it to shreds by now! Set it on fire! How could you
do this? Oh god, I’m so furious with you right now!”
“No!” Theo interjected forcefully, “He wouldn’t do that, alright? I promise you, your book will
come back to you looking exactly like it was when you last saw it.”

“Ugh. Why would you... Ugh.” Hermione balled her fists and squeezed her eyes close. Deep.
Breaths.

“Hermione,” Theo adapted a very cautious and gentle tone, “I swear, he isn’t like you think he is.
And he’s been reflecting on some things that your book will help him through and –”

“Don’t try and make me feel sympathetic towards that arsehole,” she cut in acerbically, “It isn’t
going to happen. I don’t care about what’s going on in his perverse little mind. I don’t want him
anywhere near my book; you get it back... Right. Now.”

“Why?” he asked seriously, with a frown.

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why can’t you— okay not sympathise—understand his situation?”

“What bloody situation? And understand?? Seriously?! All I understand is that I’ve been subjected
to his ghastly bigoted invective for as long as I’ve been a part of the magical world. And now he’s
got his claws on my book, and.... oh god. Does he know it’s mine?”

“He doesn’t. No! But will you please, please let me talk?”

“No.”

“Hermione...”

“Oh just talk, will you.” she barked, crossing her arms tightly across her chest and glaring stonily at
the tip of her shoe.

“Draco is every bit as tied down to his fate as Potter –”

“Ha!”

“Every bit as tied down. He was born into it. His family, his life, everything has led him to where
he is and –”

“You were born into it too!”

Theo gritted his teeth at her interruption. “Sure, except my father was a fucking monster,” his
temper and tempo were both rising: “He’s been beating the shit out of me for as long as I
remember. He beat the life out of my mother. Yes - No, don’t... I’m not saying this to soften you.
But understand that that is where I’m coming from. Of course I’d want to run away from it all. But
Draco...? His parents adore him. They spoilt him rotten from the moment he was born; he’s known
nothing but love and indulgence. So why wouldn’t he go along with what his father – the man who
he respected and admired above all – told him? He’s been a dick and bully, but it’s not fun and
games anymore, and he knows it. He... he knows it, and it’s fucking killing him. He’s my best mate,
Hermione. I know him through and through, and I can see what all this is doing to him. It’s like
he’s on a fucking precipice; on the brink of either a revelation... or a complete breakdown. So yes. I
gave him your precious book. I’ll do anything to help him, and I won’t apologise for it again.”
Hermione collected her things, packed them into her bag, and stood up. The fire extinguished itself,
drenching the room in shadows.

“I want you to get my book back to me the very second he gets back to Hogwarts.”

“Okay.”

She walked away, fully prepared to leave Theo alone in the murk with his thoughts. However, just
before she stepped out of the room, Hermione paused, and without turning to face him she said,
“Don’t build him up as a victim in front of me again. I understand that he’s important to you, but
I’m in no way obligated to be concerned about his circumstance.”

“Okay.”

His voice was raspy, and broke on the second syllable of the word. Hermione was thrown back to
the day by the lake when she had cried, and he had held her.

The fire flared back to life. She turned around, and went to sit opposite him again.
They passed the time silently holding pieces of parchment to the flames and watching them
blacken, curl, and crumble.

“Sing it for me.”

“Absolutely not!”

“That’s not fair. You can’t tell me you know the perfect muggle song for me, and then refuse to let
me hear it...”

“I’ll recite the lyrics.”

“Fuck off. That’s pathetic. Sing for me, darling. Come on.”

“You’re pathetic.”
On new year’s eve, he lured her over to the astronomy tower with a bottle of wine and half a dozen
cauldron cakes. It was cold and blustery, but alcohol combined with a couple of nifty warming
charms had them feeling perfectly comfortable.

And they were nicely, gently fuddled.

“This wine is good,” Hermione smiled.

“That’s it? Good?” Theo said, drolly, “Aren’t you going to comment on its smokiness, or
earthiness, or pick out obscure undertones...”

She giggled, tilting her head back to look at the stars. Struck by sudden vertigo, she sat straight
down by the railing against which Theo was casually leaning. He took a swig of wine, and looked
out into the night like a king surveying his flourishing empire.

“What did you think was the craziest thing about Hogwarts when you first came here?” he asked.

“The fact that we had a Herbology teacher whose name was Sprout.”

Theo choked. Wine dribbled down his chin, and he doubled over laughing.

After recovering, he dropped down next to her, and put his head in her lap. His hair was
ridiculously long, with the fringe falling into his eyes. He looked like a young George Harrison.

Hermione swept the strands off his forehead and said, “Why don’t you cut your hair? Doesn’t it
annoy you?”

Theo laughed loudly, again. “Oh, Hermione. Do you honestly want to start a conversation about
annoying hair?”

She flicked his forehead.

“Ah! That was so unnecessary!”

“Stay out of my hair.”

“Clever. Ha ha. Then you stay out of mine. ...Oi. Not literally. Keep stroking. Feels nice. I think I
might take a nap.”

“If you fall asleep on me, Theo, I will turn your hair blue. Permanently.”

“We both know I’ll pull it off.”

An owl glided by. Hermione checked her watch... Eleven Fifty-Six p.m.
Another year gone by. She supposed this was meant to be a big moment, but she felt neither anxiety
nor excitement. She felt serene. In the past few days, she had finally known what it meant to have a
confidant.
 She didn’t know when the war was going to fall upon them. She didn’t know when she’d have to
fight, when she may die, if she’d ever get to sit for her NEWTs, if things with Ron would ever get
sorted...

But she knew that she would be keeping Theo Nott forever.

“Happy New Year, Theo.”

“Haaappy fucking New Year.”

Chapter End Notes

1. Matilda, by Roald Dahl

2. "Mister Fahrenheit": from Don't Stop Me Now, by Queen
3. "The wind was a torrent of darkness...": The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes
 Twelve
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted from HBP.

Hagrid was a wreck. He was blubbering over his tea as he told Hermione about Aragog’s rapidly
diminishing health.

Bit by bit, Hogwarts was filling up with students returning after the holidays, and Hermione had
thought spending time with him would be a pleasant and diverting way to pass the morning, till
Harry and Ginny showed up.
It was a decision that she had cursed ten times over in the past hour. There was only so much you
could say to comfort a man who was in pieces over an ailing once-ruthless and murderous giant
spider whom you’d never had the thrilling pleasure of meeting.
So, it was with great keenness – after the fifty-sixth “there there” – that Hermione deposited Fang’s
drooling head onto his owner’s lap and left the cabin with a vague line or two about needing to
meet the bunch arriving from the Burrow.

She traversed the grounds unhurriedly, carefully casting a charm to harden the snow so that she
wouldn’t find herself waist deep in the stuff.

Just as she made it indoors, dusting her cloak, a squeaky cry of “Ms Granger!” had her spinning
around to face Professor Flitwick, looking fairly out of breath.

“Ms Granger,” he rasped, “I’d been asked by the headmaster to hand this over to Mr Potter, but I’ve
just been informed that some students have set off a whole array of those Weasley twins’ products
somewhere on the fourth floor, and I’m afraid it needs to be dealt with immediately...”

“Of course, Professor,” Hermione replied, taking a scroll of parchment from his hand, “I’ll see that
this gets to Harry the moment he gets here.”

“Excellent, excellent,” he called over his shoulder, already charging up the stairs.

Hermione shook her head as she followed in his wake, albeit at a slightly saner pace. Of course a
lot of students would have got Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes goods as a substantial part of their
Christmas loot. Ignoring the burning curiosity that was begging her to go have a gander at the
commotion, she dutifully trudged over to the Gryffindor tower.

Harry, Ron, and Ginny appeared to be caught in an argument with the fat lady. Remembering the
newly changed password, Hermione rushed forward.

“Harry! Ginny!” she called out, “Did you have a good Christmas?”

Surprisingly, it was Ron who piped up to answer- “Yeah, pretty eventful, Rufus Scrim —”

Hermione was having none of it. She didn’t even look at him.

“I’ve got something for you, Harry,” she said loudly, “Oh, hang on — password. Abstinence.”

“What’s up with her?” enquired Harry with a raised brow once they were inside.

“Overindulged over Christmas, apparently,” Hermione replied. A grin spilled across her face as she
remembered how the fat lady’s complexion had been as pink as her dress that evening, “She and
her friend Violet drank their way through all the wine in that picture of drunk monks down by the
Charms corridor. Anyway...”

She held out the scroll she had been assigned to deliver.

Harry took hold of it eagerly. “Great,” he said, unrolling it at once, “Another lesson with
Dumbledore tomorrow night! I’ve got loads to tell him — and you. Let’s sit down —”

Like a sudden explosive spurt of thick ketchup from a clogged nozzle, Lavender appeared on the
scene and leapt into Ron's arm with a piercing cry of “Won-Won!” There was a short outbreak of
laughter from a few bystanders, and Hermione participated with a sharp edge of resentment.
Turning to Harry, she gestured to the other end of the room.

“There’s a table over there… Coming, Ginny?”

“No, thanks,” Ginny replied limply, “I said I’d meet Dean.”

Hermione and Harry watched her go over to the boy’s dormitory. Then they looked at Ron… well,
the few fragments of him that were visible from behind Lavender.

Harry peered down at Hermione. “Walk?” he asked pleadingly.

“Walk,” she consented willingly.

They leapt out of the portrait hole, and Harry grumbled, “Forced out of our own common room.
Bollocks.”

“Shameful,” Hermione commiserated with a laugh.

He flashed a half-smile at her. “So how was your Christmas?”

“Oh, fine,” she shrugged. “I hung around the castle. How was it at Won-Won’s?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute… Look, Hermione, can’t you — ?”

“No, I can’t,” she said emphatically. “So don’t even ask.”

“I thought maybe, you know, over Christmas —”

“It was the Fat Lady who drank a vat of five-hundred-year-old wine, Harry, not me,” she snapped.

The wine she had consumed had only been a few decades old.

She fixed her most stern look on him, setting her jaw. Harry sighed in surrender.

They passed a huddle of Hufflepuffs on the fourth floor landing, buzzing with excitement over
what seemed to have been a spectacular show. From amid the throng, Hermione heard frantic high-
pitched cries entreating the students to “Clear off, clear off at once!” It was obviously Flitwick, but
all that was visible of him was the tip of his hat.

They bounded down the stairs to the third floor in better spirits, and Hermione asked, “So what was
this important news you wanted to tell me?”

But she had cause to gasp, loudly, before Harry could respond. There, beside a rusty suit of
armour, stood Theo and Malfoy… and Theo was pale as a sheet and clutching his nose, which was
bleeding profusely.

“Theo!” she exclaimed, frightened by his state, but then Malfoy was suddenly in her face, blocking
him from view.

He snarled viciously, “Get the fuck out of here, you cunt!”

“Drago!” Theo berated thickly, while Hermione struggled to hold Harry back as he made to launch
himself at Malfoy, claws out and teeth bared.

“What?” Malfoy spun around and scowled at Theo, “Hasn’t she done enough?”

“Drago, stop… fug’s sayg… Stop…” Theo was tilting his head further and further back as he
struggled to speak intelligibly.

“This little bitch is the reason you –”

“No! Just go, Drago. I’ll get this fixed… join you layder… Drago…”

Using his free arm Theo lightly shoved Malfoy towards the staircase leading downstairs. The boy's
face was twisted with fury, and only Theo’s pathetic desperation seemed to be keeping him from
drawing his wand. He descended woodenly, turning back every few steps to glower menacingly at
Hermione.

Hermione had more important things to worry about.

“Good god, Theo! What happened?” she fretted, “Let me have a look, please?”

He removed his hand, and Hermione whimpered. Even Harry hissed sympathetically. His nose was
red, purple, and three times its usual size. Blood dribbled down past his chin and had soaked up his
collar.

“Episkey!” Her voice quivered, but the spell worked, effectively stopping the bleeding. Theo
winced as his nasal bones clicked into place. “Okay. I think that should do it. It will be sore for a
while, though. Just... be careful...”
“Yeah,” Theo replied throatily, “Thanks. A lot. Well... I’ll be off...”

“Wait!” Hermione grabbed his arm. “Who did this to you?”

“It was nothing, Hermione. Just an accident...” he tried to shake off her hold, but Hermione was not
going to allow that.

“Why did Malfoy say it’s my fault?” she demanded.

“He’s barmy.”

“That’s true,” Harry chipped in.

“Theo. Theodore. Tell me what happened... Right. Now.”

Her glare could be used as a weapon, and she was not ashamed to wield it when necessary.

Theo held her stare for two seconds before succumbing. The amateur.

“It was Blaise and Vince, alright?” he growled, “They were saying shit about ...about, well, you. I
let them know that it’s not acceptable to do so in my presence. They retaliated a bit violently. The
end.” He looked half angry, half embarrassed, and Hermione and Harry gaped at him.

“I... um, Th –”

“I will also not accept any gratitude from you. Not for this. I did what was expected... what I
believe you should expect from me by now. So don’t thank me... and for Salazar’s sake, do not
wallow in guilt. You patched me up, so we’re even. Not that you and I need to be keeping score. If
we were to keep score, I’d say I have a whole lot left to do to catch up. Oh, you don’t want to open
that can of worms, darling. I’ll bury you in gratitude, I’ll drown you in ‘thank you’s and thoughtful
gestures, and then you won’t know what to do with me, or yourself, and then if I’m left with a
bleeding nose it will be your doing... I’ve heard from a very reliable source that you can inflict a lot
of damage... surprisingly... so if you don’t mind, I’d like to go now. There’s a dragon in the
dungeons that need to be tamed.” He paused then, looking thoughtful, “That was not a euphemism
for anything salacious. You saw it go by, roaring and spitting fire. So Hermione... Potter... May I be
excused?”

Hermione nodded weakly, and he hopped down the staircase, disappearing from view.

“That was decent of him,” said Harry after a few moments.

“Yes,” she replied bitingly, “Just about ‘decent’.”

“No. That’s not what I... I meant...”

She sighed. “I know what you meant, Harry.”

They found a nice large window ledge to perch on, overlooking the forest with its snow covered
trees looking like they’d been dusted with icing.

“Has Nott ever told you anything about Malfoy, about what he’s up to?”
“No.”

“It’s just that... well, this is what I’ve been meaning to tell you for ages –”

And then Harry told her about a heated argument between Malfoy and Snape on the night of
Slughorn’s Christmas party. It aligned quite well with the little that Theo had let slip about Malfoy.
A task... him being in over his head... under pressure. She decided against voicing these thoughts to
Harry; he didn’t need any more fuel. As far as Snape was concerned, however...

“Don’t you think—”

“— he was pretending to offer help so that he could trick Malfoy into telling him what he’s doing?”
Harry interjected in a strangely practiced manner.

“Well, yes.”

“Ron’s dad and Lupin think so,” he said reluctantly. Then he rallied - “But this definitely proves
Malfoy’s planning something, you can’t deny that.”

“No, I can’t…”

“And he’s acting on Voldemort’s orders, just like I said!”

“Hmm... did either of them actually mention Voldemort’s name?” she asked softly.

Surely, he couldn’t actually be a Death Eater. Would Theo protect him if he was? The answer came
to her not a fraction of a second later – he would. Of course he would.

Harry appeared to be recounting the altercation in his head: “I’m not sure… Snape definitely said
‘your master,’ and who else would that be?”

“I don’t know,” said Hermione, biting her lip. “Maybe his father?”

She really, really hoped it was his father. How was she supposed to handle things if Harry happened
to be right? What tricky, equivocating game was Theo playing? No… no… she couldn’t doubt him.
Not now.

“How’s Lupin?” she asked, buying herself some time.

“Not great,” Harry replied, “He’s undercover among a pack of werewolves – Voldemort
sympathisers. He’s been struggling, trying to win their trust…”

“How awful,” Hermione breathed, feeling a devastating shiver surge through her body.

“Yeah. I asked him about the Half-Blood Prince too,” Harry rolled his eyes at Hermione’s scowl,
“He hadn’t a clue… OH!” he exclaimed, suddenly gaining volume, “I had a row with Rufus
Scrimgeour as well!”

“What? The Minister?!”

“Who else? He showed up on Christmas with a Percy Weasley shaped scapegoat to get me alone
and demand that I give the general public the impression that the ministry and I are great chums
now.”
“Seriously? After the way they treated you all of last year… after Umbridge… he wants you to…
oh, he has some nerve doesn’t he?”

Harry grinned. “Don’t worry. I let him know exactly how I felt about his pitch. And the twins and
Ginny let Percy know exactly what they thought of his reappearance.”

“I’m sure,” Hermione said, and laughed.

It was early in the evening, and she’d hidden herself behind a statue of Athena outside the library,
periodically peeking over the goddess’s arm.
Finally, after an uncomfortably long duration, she saw her intended victim come marching out of
the library. She shot out from her hiding spot, and planted herself firmly in Padma’s path.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly.

Padma’s eyes widened, and darted from side to side. She looked like a frightened, cornered animal.

“Oh... hi... Hermione...” Her typical self-assurance was obviously still on holiday.

“Did you have a good Christmas, Padma?”

“Oh, yes. It was nice. Thanks. Er... you?”

“Mine was lovely as well. I stayed back at Hogwarts, and... wait...” Hermione pulled a bundle of
parchment out from her bag, “I did a lot of reading on Arithmancy. These are the notes I compiled,
but I’m sure I’ve missed something. Perhaps you could look over them?”

Padma looked at her slightly nervously, but made no move to take her notes.

Sighing in a long-suffering manner, Hermione said, “Look, we work well together. Regardless of
the outcome last time, I think we can both benefit from continuing to exchange ideas. Now, are you
going to look over my notes or not?”

Slowly, Padma divested her of the bundle, and nodded. She took out a notebook from her own bag.

“Would you read through my research on Dragon Pox? I’ve hit a dead-end, unfortunately. While
there are lots of books on the impact of the disease on the heart, I honestly can’t find a single book
that has the diagram of a regular heart to compare it with.”

“I have an aunt who’s a Cardiologist. She has a lot of good books for beginners that I’m sure she’d
let me borrow if I asked.”

“Oh, would you?” And just like that, she was alight and beaming.
“Sure,” Hermione smirked, “I’ll see you in a couple of days then?”

Padma laughed, and in a charming homage to the past she said, “Affirmative.”

It was ridiculously easy to reason with Ravenclaws, Hermione thought as she prepared to sink into
her favourite armchair in the library. It was just a matter of appealing to their intellectual fervour. It
was a shame that only life threatening situations worked with her housemates. A troll, a dragon, an
execution... she wondered what terrifying and dangerous thing would have to occur before Ron
came back into her life.

By seven o’clock, Hogwarts was at full capacity again. There was a person, or two, or six... every
which way Hermione looked. To think that just a day ago, it had felt like Theo and her were the
only people in existence...

Now, as they walked back from the owlery, (after Hermione had sent off a long letter to her parents
along with a shorter one to be despatched to dear Aunt Malorie,) she missed the carefreeness of
those days.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked when they arrived at their point of parting.

“Yes,” Theo tried for lightness, nodding with comical solemnity, “don’t you worry your bushy little
head.”

Hermione bit her lip uncertainly.

“Look,” he tried again, “It isn’t going to be all hugs and kisses down there in the dungeons, but
that’s hardly much of a change from the usual. And maybe I’ll just have to never speak to Blaise,
Vince, Greg, Pansy... Daphne... Ah, sod it all, I don’t care. They aren’t going to try anything
serious, I’m sure. Big, bad Draco has my back. And, speaking of...”

It was with an outstandingly sheepish look on his face that he gave her back her copy of History of
the World.

Hermione wordlessly handed him Camus’ The Rebel.

Seamus’ cry besieged her the moment she entered the Gryffindor common room.

“Um. Yes?”

He beckoned to her a bit madly from his spot on the carpet, where he was sprawled along with
Dean, Ginny, and Colin Creevey. Between them sat a large gramophone.

“Got this old thing for Christmas,” Seamus explained, “It’s an important heirloom, or some such
rot. We’re trying to get it to play some of Dean’s muggle records... but it just won’t work.”

Taking his cue, Colin dropped the needle, and immediately, the whole room was filled with the
most horrible scratching sound. There were shouts of protest from every corner, and Colin quickly
silenced the machine again.

“You see?” Seamus asked, pained, “The records that came with this are full of some old bat
shrieking... reminds me of fucking Banshees...” he shuddered.

“I think it works like a normal gramophone – a muggle one, I mean. Same mechanism... I think.
Just run by... magic?” said Colin, “but something goes wrong, like it’s not in sync or something.”

“Let me see the record,” Hermione requested, and when Dean handed it to her, she raised a brow.
“New Order, Dean?”

Dean bristled, “They’re really bloody good!”

She examined the grooves on the record, and then looked at the needle on the gramophone; like
most wizarding equipment, it was flamboyantly large. She shrunk it with a ‘Reducio’, and fingers
crossed, set it to play once more.

It didn’t move.

“She’s peeled!” Seamus cried, and Dean and Colin squirmed.

Hermione rolled her eyes. A simple ‘Rennervate’ later... there was music everywhere.

Dean whooped joyously, and jumped up onto his feet while pulling Hermione and Ginny along.

Before and during the Yule ball, Hermione had been a tangle of nerves; all that formal,
synchronised dancing terrified her. But this...? This she could do.
Tossing her hair back, she hopped and capered around with a giggling Ginny and Dean. Seamus
dived into the fray, and Colin pulled out his camera, and soon enough, the entire room was cheering
while watching them go mad.

Hermione’s eye got caught on Neville, sitting nearby wearing an easy smile. Something in her
expression must have revealed her intentions, because his smile suddenly disappeared, and he was
shaking his head in terror.
She skipped over to him and hauled him up, dragging him into the dance...carpet. All the while, he
looked painfully uncomfortable, and Hermione just grinned and poked his arm. With a resigned
grumble, he attempted to... well, “dance”. It was a mess of arm waving and head bobbing, that had
her helpless with laughter. So helpless in fact, that she missed the narrowing of Neville’s eyes...
and...

The next thing she knew, she had been lifted up by the waist and was being spun around and
around. The music... the tempo... the cheery noises all around... Hermione clutched Neville’s
shoulders and threw her head back, taking it all in.

He put her down, now grinning widely, before taking her arm and spinning her yet again.
 Thirteen
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Snow gleamed in the bright mid-morning sunlight, and she squinted against its harsh whiteness.
Pulling her hat low on her head, and wrapping her thick muffler tightly around her neck, she
sauntered out onto the courtyard with an air of contentment.

She had barely covered a few meters when she heard her name being called out from behind her.

“Hermione,” Harry panted once he had jogged over to her side, “Hi. I just...” and he held up his
hand, begging for a moment to catch his breath.

Hermione grinned at him in all his red faced, skewed glasses glory.

“My. You’re quite the athlete.”

“Oh, shut up,” he wheezed, “You try... running... through ankle... deep... snow.”

Ten minutes later, they were taking slow circles around the yard while Harry gave an account of his
latest lesson with Dumbledore. Hermione had to grapple with a twinge of untimely envy; oh, but
how could she not want to be a part of such a fascinating investigation into the mind of a
psychopath? Dumbledore’s approach was nothing short of an adventure. What must it be like to see
firsthand, and through various memories and perspectives, the burgeoning evil blooming forth in a
young Tom Riddle?

“…and then he showed me a memory of Slughorn’s where he was sitting in his office surrounded
by admiring students… as always,” Harry rolled his eyes, “Riddle asked him about something
called Horcruxes –”

“Hor… what?”

“Horcruxes. So anyway, suddenly there was this dense white fog that obscured everything, and
Slughorn’s voice yelled through it, telling Riddle he knows bugger all about these horcruxes, and
he should just fuck off. Er, in different words of course.”

“That’s… odd.”

“Yeah. Dumbledore said it means that the memory has been tampered with. Said that Slughorn’s
obviously ashamed of what he said, so he hid it. And now I’m supposed to get the real memory
from him. It’s my ‘homework’ apparently,” he finished wryly.

Hermione frowned. “He must be determined to hide what really happened if Dumbledore couldn’t
get it out of him,” she said slowly. “Horcruxes… Horcruxes… I’ve never even heard of them…”
“You haven’t?” Harry’s disappointment was palpable, and it made her feel ten times worse – she
didn’t have an answer ready and waiting. She had let him down.

“They must be really advanced Dark Magic; why else would Voldemort have wanted to know
about them?” she tried desperately to make her speculation seem substantial, “I think it’s going to
be difficult to get the information, Harry, you’ll have to be very careful about how you approach
Slughorn, think out a strategy…”

“Ron reckons I should just hang back after Potions this afternoon…”

Lately Harry had picked up the habit of dropping Ron’s name in every bloody conversation they
had. Hermione felt her temper flare up like it had been doused in rocket fuel.

“Oh, well,” she retorted angrily, “if Won-Won thinks that, you’d better do it! After all, when has
Won-Won’s judgment ever been faulty?”

“Hermione, can’t you — ?”

“No!”

She marched away from him before he could make any more preposterous requests. Had he ever
asked this of Ron? She seriously doubted it – too unnecessary and uncomfortable, she thought. She
didn’t like throwing tantrums, stalking off all petulant-like, but… but…

But she missed mum.

The sudden pain of it hit her like a sledgehammer. The last time she had seen her had been nearly
six month ago, and Hermione longed to see her smile, feel her embrace, and relive those lovely
days in summer when they’d go explore secondhand bookshops while sipping refreshingly chilled
lemonade.

Hermione charged out of the potion’s classroom with a head full of brain-melting fury. There were
beads of sweat dripping down the back of her neck, her hands were sooty, she was missing a lock
of her hair, and Slughorn hadn’t even looked into her cauldron. She was perhaps the only person in
the room who understood Golpalott’s Third Law, and definitely the only one who had implemented
it correctly, yet Harry and his stupid bezoar had won the day. If only Snape had still been teaching
them… he would have given Harry three weeks of detention for pulling something so audacious.
Slughorn had been so thoroughly tickled.

This was it. She’d had enough. She was going to steal that blasted textbook and throw it into the
lake. She was going to tell Slughorn exactly where Harry’s inspired potion making skills were
coming from. She was going to tell Theo, who would tell Malfoy, who would tell Snape, who
would confiscate the book and give Harry lots and lots of dirty cauldrons to scrub, sans magic.

But really, she was just going to mutter angrily to herself while she stomped up the stairs to her
next class.

There were exactly two hundred and fifty books on Dark Magic in the restricted section of the
Hogwarts library. Hermione had zipped through seventy-three so far, and she hadn’t found a single
mention of Horcruxes. In addition to having to deal with the acute aggravation of failure, she now
had to live with the knowledge that there existed a potion that could turn a person’s veins into
tapeworms, and one that could cause a breakout of large and painful pus-filled boils on a person’s
entire body… eyeballs included. She knew of spells that could recreate the symptoms of leprosy
and anthrax simultaneously, spells that caused organs to rupture, spells that made schizophrenia
seem tame…

She chucked aside useless book number seventy-four.

Book number seventy-five let out the most frightful wail the moment she touched it. Hermione
silenced it with a sneer.

After she’d slammed useless book number ninety one shut, she rested her head on the table in front
her. She felt feverish, exhausted, and defeated; A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear... A
stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief... In word, or sigh, or
tear -

“Hi, Hermione.”

Just the sight of Theo smiling down at her improved her mood.

“Hi,” croaked her underused voice box.

He took the seat across from her, and raised a brow at all the towers of books with dodgy titles that
lay between them.

“Interesting choice of literature,” he remarked.

Hermione shrugged dismissively. “How’ve you been?” she asked.

“Undoubtedly better than you. You looked like an angry little Erinys after potions yesterday
afternoon.”
Hermione simply shrugged again.

“Righto,” said Theo, give her an odd look, “Well, speaking of interesting literature, that book you
gave me... it's quite something, eh?”

Hermione smiled tightly, “I hope it's giving you much to think about...”

He smirked and eyed her calculatingly for a couple of seconds. Then-

“You know full well I’m not the one reading it. I knew the moment I saw the title that I wasn’t
whom it was meant for. You’ll be happy to know that it's doing quite the number on your intended
target.”

Hermione huffed angrily and looked away from Theo’s self-satisfied expression. Yes, she knew
where the book was going to land up... but couldn’t he afford her the dignity of pretending like she
didn’t know? What was his problem? When she looked back at him, he was grinning hugely, and
Hermione quite nearly threw useless book number forty-nine (it had a scorpion tail for a bookmark)
at him.

“Have you finished translating the runes on page seventeen of –”

“No, not yet.” He was still grinning as he placed his books, parchment, and inkpot on the table.
“Shall we get started?”

It was like every boy she knew had secretly come together and made a pact to annoy the life out of
her.

Thus, a couple of days later, when Ginny asked if she’d like to join her on a nettle collecting
expedition, Hermione agreed with great enthusiasm.

“I’m really worried about mum,” Ginny said morosely, kicking a small clump of frost, “She’d only
just come to terms with Fred and George quitting school, and then this whole fiasco with Percy
happened. And she’s so bloody scared for Harry…”

Hermione sighed sympathetically as they delved into the edge of the forbidden forest.

“And then there’s Tonks,” she continued, “I don’t know what’s happened to her.”

“I don’t think it’s because of Sirius anymore,” said Hermione quietly, “Maybe she’s worried about
her parents too…”
“Maybe. But… I don’t know. It can’t just be that. It’s like she’s been drained of life and colour
and… well, it’s a little alarming.”

Ginny sat on her haunches in front of a bush, and took out a small pair of clippers from her cloak
pocket.

“How are things with Dean?” Hermione asked.

“Shit,” Ginny answered glumly, “I need to end it… it isn’t fair. I just don’t know how. I think he
knows it’s coming too, so he’s started being overly attentive. It’s driving me mad, but I can hardly
dump him for being sweet.”

“You’re really sure you want to end it, though?”

“I am. I…” she sighed, looking up at Hermione, “I can’t stop thinking about Harry. I know what
you said about loosening up and all that,” she waved the clippers about expressively, “but I can’t do
it anymore. If Harry doesn’t want me, he doesn’t want me –” (Hermione rolled her eyes. Ginny
couldn’t possibly be that blind) “– I just can’t seem to stop… bleh.” she finished with a gloomy
scowl.

“Yes,” Hermione laughed sombrely, “I know how that-”

“Oh no. Harry at least treats me like I’m a person worthy of respect. You have no excuse.”

Hermione grumbled. “I know that too.”

She looked up through a mesh of barren twigs and branches at the jigsaw sky above. Blackbirds
streaked across in a flurry; just enough in number to bake in a dainty pie to set before a king.

Ginny stood up, her pouch full of thorny leaves, and she looped her arm around one of Hermione’s.

“Let’s go back in. It’s too damn cold,” she said.

They began walking back to the castle, arm in arm.

“Ron accosted me during the hols, you know. He ordered me to tell him what the deal was between
you and Nott. I don’t know why he didn’t just ask Harry… I bet he thought he could bully proper
answers out of me. Ha! The idiot.”

Hermione swallowed the uncomfortable lump in her throat. “What did you tell him?”

“Oh, I told him it’s none of his business. Then, predictably, he began ranting about evil gits, Death
Eaters, and betrayal. Worry not, fair maiden; I defended your honour… was proper indignant on
your behalf. He was gaping like a buffoon by the time I was through with him.”

Like a slow ripple, Hermione felt a smile unfurl across her face. “You are an invincible Valkyrie
goddess, Ginevra Weasley.”

Ginny was torn between a grin and a glare. “Thanks ever so much, Herms.”

Harry was waiting for them at the entrance hall, agitated and malcontent.
“Hi, Ginny... Hermione.”

Things between Hermione and Harry had remained a bit strained. Her anger over the bezoar
episode still felt raw, and he had no patience for it.

Ginny’s eyes darted curiously between the two of them. “What’s up, Harry?”

“I was just wondering if either of you had got an invitation to one of those Slug club parties
recently.”

“Not me,” said Ginny, and her inquisitive expression intensified.

“No,” said Hermione, curtly.

“Oh. Alright.”

Six beats of silence later, Ginny let out a low whistle. “Ooookay then. I’ve got potions to tend to...”

She smiled at both of them before departing.

Harry watched her go with a flustered blush on his face. Then he turned to Hermione. “Er, we’ve
got transfiguration, yeah? Shall we...?” he trailed off uncertainly.

“Okay.”

“So, um... I really hope Slughorn will have one of his little suppers soon. It might give me another
chance to... to attack. Have you had any luck finding out what Horcruxes are?”

Harry knew her too well. Of course she couldn’t keep up the silent treatment when he chose that
line of conversation. She was promptly reminded of her frustration with the library

“I haven’t found one single explanation of what Horcruxes do! Not a single one! I’ve been right
through the restricted section and even in the most horrible books, where they tell you how to brew
the most gruesome potions - nothing! All I could find was this –” she pulled useless book number
hundred and sixty one out of her bag, “–in the introduction to Magick Moste Evile – listen – ‘Of the
Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction.’ I mean, why
mention it then?” she slammed the tattered old tome shut and stowed it away.

Harry got lost in thought, frowning down at the stone floor.

She had conquered wandless, non-verbal conjuring.

When she was younger, she’d sometimes (only when she was really, really idle) watch those
outlandish Japanese cartoons on the telly. She remembered one in particular, which had a brawny,
glowing man with radiant golden hair who could summon balls of intense energy between his
palms and send them shooting off wherever he pleased.

Hermione had a big swirling ball of light cupped in her hands, and she gazed at it with wide-eyed
wonder. A second later, she pulled her arms back over her left shoulder and threw the ball into the
lake, where it hissed as it was extinguished, and sunk.

Padma had managed to double Hermione’s Arithmancy notes. She hugged her in delight when she
saw the books on cardiovascular medicine that Hermione was holding... and then stepped back
immediately.

“Oh, thanks, thank you, cool,” and then she scarpered away.

Hermione watched her bolt with amusement. Honestly, Padma was one of the last people she’d
expect to have difficulty in letting go of awkwardness.

“Maybe something a little more cheerful the next time?” Theo said jauntily, as he tapped Hermione
on the head with The Rebel, before placing in her hand. “Tara.”

She looked daggers at his retreating back, at his merry little strut. She could almost imagine him in
a top hat and coattails, swinging a cane and whistling.

Late at night when she had buried herself in bed, she flipped through the book at random, reading
passages she had forgotten, and some that she remembered vividly. She encountered no dog-ears,
no smears or smudges... her book had been well cared for. There was nothing about it that said it
had been in the possession of an utterly vile -
 There was a piece of folded parchment on page seventy, placed directly under the line, ‘The
dilemma at this stage is not to be free or to die, but to kill or to enslave’. Hermione gently pulled it
open, and gasped as a small spiral of ash lifted off the sheet and hovered a few centimeters above it.
Beneath this floating spiral, written in moderately neat cursive was the first stanza of Shakespeare’s
the Phoenix and the Turtle:

“Beauty, truth, and rarity.

Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos’d in cinders lie.”

Hermione folded the parchment shut and placed it carefully back into the book, too bewildered to
know what to think.

The month of January had gone by so fast. Snowfall had all but ceased, yet the sixth year students
were caught in the deluge of another form of precipitation – a relentless torrent of homework
assignments.

There was a large table by a window in the common room, and Hermione, Harry, Neville, Parvati,
and Seamus sat around it, working on various essays.
Dean was sitting a short distance away, drawing them as they worked. Ginny sat by his feet on the
carpet, constructing increasingly complicated obstacle courses for her pygmy puff. Seamus’
gramophone was softly playing the best of Louis Armstrong.

Unremarkable. Comforting. Why couldn't life be just that?

Chapter End Notes

1. "A grief without a pang..." from Dejection: An Ode, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2. "bake in a dainty pie to set before a king": Sing a Song of Sixpence by Mother Goose
 Fourteen
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Seriously though, what if her life had been a corny screwball neo-noir parody sort of thing? It had a
fairly clichéd premise – a group of quirky world saving teenagers with an arch-nemesis. There was
mystery, intrigue, and a good amount of gore. There would, of course, be no dearth of clever and
funny bon mots throughout the entire adventure. Eventually, they’d come face to face with ghoulish
old Voldemort, and Harry would slide up to him like, “Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce que c'est?” and bind
him in layers and layers of rope. Then, when Tonks and Mad-Eye would come to take him away
and lock him up in Azkaban, Voldemort would scowl and end the saga with one of the most
moving sentences in pop-culture.... “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you
meddling kids!”

She rubbed her eyes and shook her head. Focus, Hermione. She had an hour to finish three essays,
or she wouldn’t have any time left to recommence her quest to unravel the mystery of Horcruxes,
and continue with her research on protective enchantments that she was sure would come in handy
very soon, and also...

Focus, damn it.

But February made me shiver... with every paper I'd deliver...

Hermione’s overtired brain was crooning as she handed her three-and-a-half feet long essay to
Snape. He looked down his nose at her, and she felt a rush of... good grief... was that fondness
towards the only person in her life that had the decency to be consistent? She always knew what
she would get with him – derision and condescension served cold and tart. It was soothing soul
balm, really. Sevy’s Scornfully Soothing Soul BalmTM. Altruistic old Sevy dished it out for free; all
you had to do was exist. Such admirable steadfastness...... Oh shit.

She had been blinking up at him blankly for entirely too long, while her inner monologue suffered
from an attack of Theodoritis.

His lip curled... and there it was! That entirely predictable look of Sevy-disdainTM, perfect for
curdling milk, making little children cry, scaring delicate old biddies... he would make such an
excellent evil genius terrorist action film villain...

“What do you want?” he spat.

Hermione jumped back in alarm and chagrin. “N-nothing, nothing! Good evening, sir.”

She turned and scrammed.

“What the hell was that?” Harry asked her with wide eyes.

“Harry. I haven’t slept, Harry.”

He looked at her like she was a leper. “In how long?”

“I don’t know!” she wailed.

“Okay, okay,” he said firmly, putting a comforting hand on her back and leading her up the stairs,
“How about we rectify that now, yeah? Come on.”

No sooner did they walk into the common room than Hermione crumbled into the armchair closest
to the fireplace. It was raining and raining buckets outside. Curling up into a tight little ball, she felt
someone drape a blanket over her. She waved a grateful hand at whomever it was... her eyes had
fallen shut of their own accord.

“What’s happened to her?” said a voice. She couldn’t quite put a face to it at that point.

“This will be the day that I die,” she garbled.

And promptly fell asleep.

Grey, olive, and rust : lake, forest, and sky.

Four o’clock, and world outside had turned into a work of abstract expressionism. Someone call
Rothko and tell him to have at it.
Hermione paused by a window on her way to tea and stared out at the fuzzy horizon line.

“What are you looking at?” Theo hopped up on the ledge and peered through the glass enquiringly.

“A metaphor, I’m almost sure,” she replied inanely.

He gave her a look, and Hermione rushed to stop him from commenting.

“How is it that I never see you and Luna together?”

Theo smirked knowingly before answering her. “It’s intentional. I don’t want my highly
opinionated housemates to know that we’re... er, friends.”

“Why ever not?”

He sighed, and a sudden grimness took over his features. “They might try to hurt her, wouldn’t
they?”

“Ah,” she breathed. Then she crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “What about me then?” she
asked hotly.

“Oh please,” Theo rolled his eyes, “As if any of those twits could hurt you. Specially now, since
you can crush all their bones with one casual hand gesture...”

Hermione was mollified. “Not all their bones.”

He grinned, and tugged at one of her curls. “I’m starving.”

The journey from the greenhouses to the castle was bloody murder. Hard raindrops like beestings
pelted down from every direction, wearing away even the strongest of repelling charms.

One of Lavender’s boots landed in a puddle of sludge, and the earth accepted this sacrifice with the
entitlement of an all-powerful god, leaving her standing in the rain with one soaked, mud-spattered
stockinged foot.

“Won-Won!” she squealed in horror.

The journey from the greenhouses to the castle was an absolute delight. Hermione hung back with
Harry and Seamus, and they sniggered as they watched Ron struggle to wade through the slush
while carrying Lavender on his back.

On a perfectly dreary Saturday morning, the sixth year students gathered in the Great Hall for their
first Apparition lesson. The four heads of houses stood in a line on a raised podium, and they were
joined by the ministry appointed instructor.

“What do you reckon,” Harry whispered in her ear, “all that appearing and disappearing has
somehow diminished his substance or something –”

Hermione fought a valiant battle with a chuckle. He was right – the man before them looked
terribly frail and faded.

“– I mean, he’s practically half-ghost.”

“Shhh!”

She clamped the insides of her lips between her teeth.

“Good morning,” said the spectral entity, “My name is Wilkie Twycross and I shall be your
Ministry Apparition instructor for the next twelve weeks. I hope to be able to prepare you for your
Apparition Tests in this time —”

He was interrupted with a whip-like shout from Professor McGonagall: “Malfoy, be quiet and pay
attention!”

A sea of heads turned this way and that, until they were all looking at a pink-faced and glowering
Malfoy. Under this scrutiny, he shuffled away from Theo and Crabbe, both of whom were looking
aggravated as well. Hermione tried to catch Theo’s eye, but he fixed his gaze most determinedly on
Twycross, who had gone on speaking as if there hadn’t been any disruption.

“— by which time, many of you may be ready to take your tests. As you may know, it is usually
impossible to Apparate or Disapparate within Hogwarts. The headmaster has lifted this
enchantment, purely within the Great Hall, for one hour, so as to enable you to practice. May I
emphasize that you will not be able to Apparate outside the walls of this Hall, and that you would
be unwise to try. I would like each of you to place yourselves now so that you have a clear five feet
of space in front of you.”

This gave everyone permission to wreak havoc. Pushing, pulling, move over, and listen here…
simple chaos, which Harry decided to take advantage of.

“Where are you going?” Hermione hissed, but he ignored her and moved away swiftly, darting
between people until he had disappeared somewhere in the back of the crowd.

Undoubtedly, he had gone and situated himself closer to Malfoy. She shook off a surge of irritation,
and focused on the simple wooden hoop that had appeared on the floor in front of her.

“The important things to remember when Apparating are the three D’s!” said Twycross.
“Destination, Determination, Deliberation!”

(Behind Hermione, Parvati muttered, “Thanks, but I’m perfectly happy with my double D’s,” and
Lavender giggled hysterically.)

It was one of the dullest hours of her life. She could see her Destination, she had Determination in
spades, and bloody hell, she was moving with Deliberation... except she wasn’t moving at all. It
was like driving lessons all over again. Dad had experienced many mini heart attacks when she’d
suddenly accelerated instead of breaking, or when she had stalled in the middle of traffic.

After the fourth try, when Susan Bones had splinched herself, Hermione just knew she’d be the next
one to do so.

That didn’t happen. Nothing happened at all, in fact. There wasn’t a single success story in the
Great Hall that morning.
Twycross’ tone betrayed a complete lack of surprise, “Until next Saturday, everybody, and do not
forget: Destination. Determination. Deliberation,” and after vanishing all the stupid hoops in the
room, he left.

Hermione followed soon after, as excited chatter bloomed up around her. She stalked out with
determination, knowing her destination was likely to be a bit flaky…

However, Theo was leaning against the railing of the grand staircase with his arms folded in a very
deliberate stance.

“You thought I was going to be running away, didn’t you? You thought you’d have to chase me,
and then haul me over to some secret corner, and demand that I tell you what the hullabaloo in the
Great Hall was all about… and I’d protest, but you’d work yourself up in that gloriously Hermione
manner, (have I told you how much I adore that about you?) and you’d righteously order me to–”

“Man alive, would you shut up!” Hermione exclaimed. He snapped his mouth closed, looking
affronted. “Your attempt to distract me, while admirable, was futile as always. Since I am not a fan
of futility, I’m not going to bother asking you what the hullabaloo was all about.”

“Oh.”

Now Theo looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Hermione steeled herself, begging her blood not to rush to her face, and said, “Um, I have more
books…”

Instantly he was grinning, she was flushing, and oh, hang it all.

Theo had asked for cheerful, hadn’t he? Hermione shoved a stack of half a dozen P.G. Wodehouse
paperbacks into his arms, and jogged up the stairs.
Except… she had snuck in Crime and Punishment between Carry on, Jeeves and The Mating
Season. It was just too important.

There were precisely twelve point six minutes to get from Arithmancy to Potions. Since it was just
a matter of going from the first floor to the dungeons, she tempered her pace to a brisk walk.

As she passed the courtyard, she saw Harry perched on the balustrade with his nose buried in a
book. He was wholly, completely absorbed, and for a second Hermione felt so proud, believing this
to be her influence, before she remembered that he was most likely pouring over his Prince’s notes.
She tip-toed over to his side, and craned her neck to look over his shoulder. He wasn’t reading at all
– he had the Marauder’s Map resting atop his open book.
Curious. Hermione slowly moved her head closer to Harry’s so that she could speak directly into
his ear.

“WhachadoingHarry,” she murmured.

“Motherfucker,” Harry roared.

He slid off the railing, and hopped, skipped, and trotted for a good two meters before he spun
around and gaped at her.

“Hermione!? Oh shit. You nearly killed me!”

No, Hermione was sure that she was the one who was going to die. Her stomach ached from
laughing so hard. It took her a while to recover, after which she sniffed, wiped her eyes, and said,
“Sorry about that.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Harry, dryly.

“What are you doing, though? We have potions in... er, now.”

“Right. Let’s go. I was... I was looking for Malfoy. I’m sure I’ll catch him doing something
dubious...”

“Was he doing dubious things right now?”

“Well, no. He was in your Arithmancy class. But it’s only a matter of time. You know what’s really
weird? Sometimes he just disappears. Literally falls off the map. Where could he possibly be
going?”

Oh no. Oh no. She could just picture Harry three weeks from now. Unshaven and wild, he’d be
hugging his knees and rocking slowly while staring at the map and dully chanting, “where’s
Malfoy, where’s Malfoy, where’s Malfoy...”

Hermione was late for potions that afternoon, but since she was with Harry, it hardly mattered.

“Where does Malfoy disappear to?” Hermione asked Theo demandingly later that evening in the
library.

“Sorry?”

“You heard me. He’s nowhere in the castle or the grounds. So... where does he go?”

“How do you know that?”

“That’s not the point.”

 Theo shrugged innocently. Hermione glared.

“Hey, what’s the difference between the ‘u’ symbol with three dots, and the one with four?”

“Theo!”

“Hermione! I really don’t know where Draco-”

“Right.” Hermione cut in with a growl.

An infuriating grin spread across his face. “I’ll tell you what... why don’t you ask him yourself?
Next time, you can give him your books in person, and have a lovely long chat about his comings
and goings.”

“You know,” she said angrily, “I would think you’d give me less of a hard time about this whole...
thing. I’m not remotely invested in it. I’m doing this for you.”

That was enough to wipe his smile away. “I know.”

She huffed and turned her mind back to her work. She needed to finish these translations as soon as
possible, so that she could move on to her Transfiguration assignment, and then get back to more
important research matters.

“Thank you, Hermione.”

His sincerity touched her, and she sighed. “What was it you had said...? ‘I will not accept any
gratitude from you’....?”

His answering smile was so full, that she simply had to smile back. She would take every little
opportunity there was to smile.

Chapter End Notes

1. Psycho Killer by Talking Heads

2. "But February made me shiver...", "This will be the day that I die": American Pie by Don
McLean
 Fifteen

The professors were all going to think that Harry was suffering from severe incontinence with the
way he was constantly asking to use the john. Hermione knew he was really just slipping away to
check the Marauder’s map for Malfoy’s whereabouts.

It was as she had feared – Harry was obsessed to the point of madness. He was always, always
searching, his eyes darting wildly hither and thither, and he was always, always disappointed. If he
found Malfoy doing regular, innocuous things, he’d shove the map away and run his hands through
his hair in frustration. If he found that Malfoy had pulled one of his mysterious disappearing acts,
he’d shove the map away, yank his glasses off, and rub his eyes in an utterly harrowed kind of way.

That was the position Hermione found him in as she returned to the common room after an evening
of studying about medicinal herbs with Padma. She sat down next to him on the sofa, and waited
patiently for his face to emerge from his hands.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly.

“Hi,” he sighed, slipping his glasses back on and giving her a look of pure despondency.

“Malfoy’s gone missing again, has he?”

“Yes!” cried Harry, suddenly full of heated agitation, “It’s so bloody maddening. I’ve scanned
every inch of the castle; he’s nowhere. I can’t have missed him! I can’t... I mean, I don’t think I
could have...” he trailed off and stared into the fire. Then he turned back to look at her. “Hey! Why
don’t you have a gander? See if I’ve missed any–”

“No.”

“Hermione, come on!”

“Absolutely not,” she pressed, “I will have nothing to do with your fanatical mission, Captain
Ahab. You’re wasting away your time and sanity. Give up, already.”

“How can you say that?” Harry demanded, “You know that Malfoy is up to something shifty and
dangerous; how can you happily sit on your hands while he goes about doing... it?”

“You’ve told Dumbledore, Harry. Why not let him deal with this?” Hermione adapted a gentle,
pacifying tone.

Harry was not pacified. “Fat lot of good that did. Dumbledore didn’t give a shit.”

She didn’t say anything. Hadn’t he understood how Dumbledore functioned by now? He was all
about maintaining a facade of absolute calm, when in fact his mind was whizzing, covering every
corner. Hermione often wondered how much the old man really knew... how much he had planned,
foreseen, or manipulated...

Since the post-triwizard horror show and the shambles at the ministry, she had had plenty of harsh
thoughts about her headmaster. While she knew he cared about Harry, she hated how he was only
providing him with information in bits and pieces, at a pace that he seemed to think would best
serve the course of events. He had an agenda – that much was obvious. Certainly, his motive was to
see the end of Voldemort... but this determination made Hermione very nervous. She didn’t know
how much he was willing to sacrifice, and... he clearly wasn’t infallible. Sometimes, she wanted to
barge into his office and insist that he tell her everything.
Harry was lost in his thoughts as well. His forehead was creased with aggravation and
preoccupation. Hermione felt terrible.

“Show me the map, Harry,” she said softly.

He jerked in surprise, and after considering her for a short moment, handed over the yellowed bit of
parchment.

Hermione bent over the sheet, and let her eyes sweep across it, registering every black dot present.
Not one was marked ‘Draco Malfoy’. She sighed, straightening her spine.

“He isn’t there.”

“I knew it,” Harry growled, scowling down at her lap.

“Crabbe is over there, between the sixth and seventh floor... and Goyle’s...... there! Fourth floor
corridor...”

“They’re hardly ever together, the three of them. Which would be weird but, well... not everybody
remains friends forever, right?” And abruptly, Harry was morose. “Look at you and Ron– ” She felt
her face heat up. “–Are you sure Nott doesn’t know anything?”

“Yes, Harry. He’s got nothing to do with any of... whatever’s going on.”

“Mischief managed,” he intoned bleakly. He was so transparently glum, which was a very
unsettling anomaly. Harry almost never let his emotions show.

They fell into their own minds again.

“Who’s Captain Ahab?” he asked, out of the blue.

Hermione felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. She told Harry the story of a bitter, manically
obsessed man, out on a debilitating and vengeful quest to slay a great white ferret.

It was wonderful to hear him laugh.

It was truly mindboggling that the wizarding world couldn’t come up with a single decent mode of
transportation. Broomsticks were a safety hazard, the floo network was messy and potentially
unreliable, portkeys induced motion sickness and vertigo simultaneously, and finally, apparition... a
slippery, monstrous menace that could go straight to hell.

This was the sentiment that united the entire lot of sixth years’ after their third lesson. Not a single
student had managed to apparate successfully, though twelve people had splinched themselves, the
latest being Justin Finch-Fletchley. Hermione watched him limp into the Great Hall during dinner,
looking exceptionally sulky.

“Nobody,” grumbled Seamus, “Nobody told me it would be this difficult. That Twycross... I could
give him a clatter.”

“Yeah,” Dean seconded, “Fuck his three D’s!”

Ginny smirked. “What? All at once?”

Harry choked on his pumpkin juice, spilling more than half of it down his robes.

On the twenty-eighth of February, at twelve p.m. sharp, she began looking for him. However, much
to Hermione’s dismay and irritation, Theo Nott was nowhere to be found. At twelve-thirty, she gave
up, and dejectedly went to attend her Transfiguration lesson.

She finally saw him two and a half hours later, when he burst into the potions classroom, looking
flushed and dishevelled, like he had come running all the way from Albania. Taking his usual seat
next to Malfoy, he looked confused at Hermione’s look of displeasure when their eyes met.

After class finally ended, Hermione indicated with a gentle tilt of her head that he should follow
her, and stalked out of the room. He caught up with her as she reached the stairs, and silently
ascended alongside. They were on the second floor when Hermione finally spoke.

“Where have you been all day?”

“With Luna. She said she had something for me, and it ended up being in the sodding forest. Of
course it couldn’t be somewhere sane and normal, and just... well... there was tree climbing
involved... ah, but, anyway... did you need me for something?”
As they walked into an empty classroom, Hermione gave him a look that screamed ‘obviously’. She
rummaged around in her bag, and pulled out a neatly wrapped package.

“Happy birthday,” she stated.

Theo grinned as he took custody of his present, and began tearing into the paper with gusto.

“You don’t have to open it right now...”

“Yes, I do! I simply have – wow! This is beautiful, Hermione! Thank you! Did you make it
yourself?” he chirruped as he held up the jade and indigo scarf.

“Yes,” Hermione said timidly, “It’s imbued with six different protective charms. Not fail-safe, by
any means, but it should hold against basic hexes. It’s also temperature sensitive; it’ll keep you cool
in the summer, and warm in the winter...”

“You are brilliant,” Theo declared. He wrapped the scarf around his neck, and beamed at her. “How
do I look?”

“Very smart,” Hermione laughed. “There’s also this,” and she pulled another box out of her bag, “I
had my mum send it over – it’s from my favourite bakery...”

Inside the box was a small chocolate cake. Setting it down on a desk, she conjured a candle and lit
it, then took a small step back waiting for Theo to do the honours. He was still wearing a
humungous grin and, eyes dancing, he bent his head to blow out the tiny flame.

“Happy birthday,” Hermione said once more.

With large slices on conjured plates, they stood by a window and ate while watching storm clouds
gather outside.

“Mother of Merlin, this is glorious,” Theo groaned.

“Isn’t it? I’ll have to take you to this place someday. They have the most incredible assortment of
baked goods. You might die, but it’ll be a good way to go.”

“Definitely.”

“So,” Hermione’s grin felt a bit wicked as she said, “Theo and Luna were sitting in a tree...?”

He flushed instantly, but his high spirits seemed to be preventing him from projecting a convincing
look of disapproval.

“Yes. But we were not engaged in any scandalous activity as you’re so inelegantly implying.”

“That so?”

“That is so.”

She laughed, and Theo marched off to help himself to more cake. He came back with a slice
considerably larger than the first.

“This is truly,” he said between mouthfuls, “One of the best birthdays I have ever had. The entire
morning in the company of the girl that I, uh, with Luna... Cake and presents with my best friend...
and there is, without a doubt, a bottle of firewhisky and sweetmeats from the Malfoy kitchens
waiting for me in my dorm. There’s also a good chance Narcissa would have taken the trouble to
ensure that...”

He went on talking for a while, but Hermione had stopped listening, her brain stuck on a word. She
didn’t know how much later he picked up on her inattentiveness, but she resurfaced when he
tugged at her sleeve, asking, “Where’d you go off to?”

“Erm, I... I was just...” she felt ridiculous and childish, but soldiered on, “You said, um, ‘best
friend’?”

“...Yes...?” Theo’s expression communicated a tacit ‘and your point is....?’

“I though... Malfoy...”

“Well, yeah,” he rolled his eyes, “Draco is my brother, and I care about him more than life itself.
But lately, he’s been more than a little preoccupied and absent. Not that I blame him, mind you. Not
in the least. Nonetheless, he’s not been around. Now you,” he smiled down at her indulgently, “you
are my tiny, mad-haired salvation. And I love you to pieces.”

Warmth bloomed somewhere deep in her chest, and suffused her entire being. She stared up at him
with wide eyes, utterly bowled over. Nobody, besides her parents, had ever so blatantly declared
their affection for her.

“Speechless, are we? It’s okay. I understand. You’re overwhelmed. I have that effect on people. You
needn’t worry though; I know you love me, too.”

Still gripped by her awe, Hermione couldn’t find the words to vocalise her concurrence. So instead,
she simply nodded. Vigorously.

Hermione sat up in bed that night leafing through a book on concealment charms with total
determination. She was focused. Her mind was completely occupied. Fully. Focused. No, wait...
she’d already said focused. She was absorbed. Engrossed. Immersed. She was not thinking about
inconsequential trivialities, like the fact that there was to be another birthday the next day, and that
there was another boy who’d be coming of age... a boy who had not – and wouldn’t ever – tell her
he loved her, in any capacity...

Fuck, shit, dash it all.

What had Ron planned for the day? He must have been terribly upset that the weekend’s trip to
Hogsmeade had been cancelled... perhaps, if the weather allowed it, he’d have a small picnic by the
lake, with Harry, Ginny, Dean, Neville, Seamus... Parvati...... Lavender.

Hermione put away the book, extinguished the orb of light she was reading by, and lay down in the
dark, focusing on breathing.

Why oh why couldn’t she feel this way about Theo? But then... he was besotted with Luna, and that
would be another terrible situation. Why couldn’t she feel this way about... god, one of the many
single, decent boys in her year? About... about Padma. Or better yet... why couldn’t she just not
feel this way at all? About anyone. Ever.

Such maudlin yearning was tarnishing her brilliance. She had turned away from a book she’d
normally have finished before falling asleep, so that she could... what?... Moon over the cruelly
tantalising way in which red hair gleamed in the sunlight when a tall figure with lovely broad
shoulders would throw back his head and laugh?

Fuck. Shit. Dash. It. All.

She closed her eyes, and begged for sleep.

“Yes, I thought as much.”

Hermione spun around and blinked at Ginny’s look of exasperation.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said I thought as much. I was damn near certain you’d choose to hide in some sad corner instead
of going to the Great Hall to eat breakfast.”

“I am not hiding in a sad corner,” Hermione groused from the sad corner shadowy crook where
she’d been standing for the past fifteen minutes, “I’m not hungry.”

She was ravenous.

“He hasn’t come down yet, you know.”

“Who hasn’t?” Hermione asked mulishly.

Ginny narrowed her eyes. “My idiotic brother, that’s who. I reckon he’s still in bed, cuddling and
petting his presents. So? Will you please come eat breakfast with me? I promise I’ll leave with you
if he shows up.”
Hermione huffed, but let Ginny lead the way downstairs. She needn’t have worried – Ron didn’t
make an appearance... nor did Harry. She tried staunchly not to wonder what that was about.
Ginny offered to accompany her to the library after breakfast, on the condition that Hermione
proofread her Muggle Studies essay.

But they never made it to the library. Professor McGonagall, pale and grim, waylaid them in the
entrance hall.

“Ms Granger, Ms Weasley; come with me please.”

With no further explanation, she began a brisk march up the stairs.

“Um, Professor,” Ginny ventured, after exchanging an apprehensive glance with Hermione, “Is
something wrong?”

“I’m afraid so,” she replied sombrely, “Your brother was poisoned earlier this morning.”

Hermione felt the bottom fall out of her world.

 Sixteen
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

That day Hermione learnt how it felt to unravel completely.

“...Who... drink... when... Slughorn...” said Ginny’s voice, and “...Foaming... panic... bezoar...
Dumbledore....” said Harry’s.

She registered nothing, feeling demented and devastated.

The three of them had been standing outside the closed doors of the hospital wing for... oh, forever,
while Madam Pomfrey worked on Ron. Dumbledore had whizzed in a while back, followed by
Snape. Then Dumbledore had left. Each time, the doors opened and closed too quickly for her to be
able to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside.

“...can’t see Slughorn wanting to poison...”

How were they still summoning up the sanity to speculate, while Ron was lying there in god knows
what state, maybe even...

She was standing rigidly, uncomfortably straight. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her
palms. She concentrated hard on maintaining this insane tension in her body, because if she let that
go... she’d let go of a lot of other things.
If Ron didn’t make it, he’d never grin in that wide, puckish, perfect way again... a grin that she
hadn’t seen in months... and may never...

She clenched her jaw.

Time was passing in flashes, inching forward in abrupt jerks.

“...then someone had to know that he planned to gift that bottle to...”

Blink.

The puddles of sunlight on the floor had shifted.

Blink.

McGonagall entered the hospital wing; Snape left.

Blink.
Theo laid a hand on her arm... “something to eat, please?”

Blink.

It was raining.

Blink.

“I’m sure Dumbledore will investigate every possible aspect...”

Blink.

Was that Neville?

Blink.

Lavender came to put on the most ludicrous show of distress. A mortified looking Parvati dragged
her away after McGonagall burst out looking furious.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Night fell, and they were still waiting. Harry and Ginny had finally stopped conjecturing, and stood
silently on opposite ends of the double doors, like a couple of sentries.

“Mum!”

Hermione twitched.

Mrs Weasley was hurtling towards them, followed closely by her husband, and Dumbledore. She
didn’t acknowledge any of them, tearing straight through the doors without a word. Mr Weasley
offered them a dismal nod.

Another age went by...

...After which Dumbledore and the Weasley’s reemerged, the missus sobbing pitifully into her
husband’s neck as he held her.

“Dad??” Ginny asked in alarm, but neither of them spoke. They just continued to walk away, down
the corridor. “Dad!”

Hermione’s throat closed up, her vision blurred, her ears felt like they were on fire.

“What happened? What happened?” Harry yelled.

“Calm yourself, Potter!” Professor McGonagall’s command had Hermione, Ginny, and Harry
spinning on the spot as if they wished to apparate. “He’s fine. Ron Weasley is going to make a full
recovery,” she articulated each word slowly and thoroughly; and with each syllable, Hermione felt
herself come out of her fugue state.
The doors opened once more, and Madam Pomfrey’s face popped out, and she finally allowed them
in.

“Yes, Mr Weasley should be completely fine. Of course, he will have to stay here for a week or so,
and be regular with his doses of essence of rue,” the matron said as she led them to Ron’s bed.
Hermione’s stomach muscles clenched tighter and tighter with every step she took.

There he was. His skin was the colour of bleached corals, and dotted with beads of sweat. His
scruffy hair was damp and swept away from his forehead. From chin-down, he was covered with a
thick quilt. She came to a halt at the foot of his bed, her eyes glued to his faintly quivering lips, to
his barely trembling eyelashes…
Ginny fell into the chair closest to his bed, picked up a cloth that lay by his pillow, and began to
lightly dab at his clammy temple.

“You bloody prat,” she whispered.

As she brushed the cloth across his brow, Ron hummed. It was that clear, unassailable proof of his
aliveness that got Hermione to uncurl her fists. She gasped.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Ginny said to her, kindly.

She did, blindly shuffling over to the closest chair, her gaze not shifting off Ron for even a fraction
of a second.

That day, Hermione felt relief in an entirely new... sharp and shattering... way.

She watched him breathe in terror and wonder.

Fred and George joined Ron’s bedside gathering a few minutes later – apparently, they had been
waiting to surprise Ron at Hogsmeade – and like Harry and Ginny, they were extremely eager to
talk about the mystery surrounding the ‘accident’. Vultures, she thought gracelessly. She didn’t
participate, only loosely following the discussion. It was mostly an endless regurgitation of the
same old facts and speculations; it was all entirely pointless.

“So the poison was in the drink?” Fred asked for the second or third time.

Harry jumped to answer with same alacrity every time: “Yes, Slughorn poured it out —”

“Would he have been able to slip something into Ron’s glass without you seeing?”

“Probably. But why would Slughorn want to poison Ron?”

Ron’s lip twitched, and Hermione wished with all her might that her would open his eyes and
frown grumpily at them with a “do you mind, I’m trying to recover from a near-death experience
here!”

They went over the same stale questions: who was the poison really for, where did it come from,
was Slughorn a Death Eater (honestly), was Slughorn in danger…
“But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas,” Ginny
unnecessarily reminded Harry, “So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore.”

“Then the poisoner didn’t know Slughorn very well,” Hermione snapped before she could stop
herself. Well, she didn’t snap so much as rasp… twelve hours of complete muteness was bound to
have some effect. “Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he’d
keep something that tasty for himself.”

“Er-my-nee.”

Her heart stopped beating.

They waited for Ron to say more… but all they got was some incomprehensible mumbling, before
he simply started snoring.

He’d said her name. Her name. Of all things… it had been her name.

With a loud bang, the doors were thrown open, and Hagrid came stomping toward them, pulling
Hermione away from her attack of sentimentality.

“Bin in the forest all day!” he said; a fact that was corroborated by his damp hair, bearskin coat, the
crossbow in his hand, and his mud-caked boots. “Aragog’s worse, I bin readin’ to him — didn’ get
up ter dinner till jus’ now an’ then Professor Sprout told me abou’ Ron! How is he?”

“Not bad. They say he’ll be okay,” Harry replied.

“I don’ believe this. Jus’ don’ believe it… Look at him lyin’ there… Who’d want ter hurt him, eh?”

“That’s just what we were discussing,” said Harry. “We don’t know.”

“Someone couldn’ have a grudge against the Gryffindor Quidditch team, could they?” Hagrid said
with actual genuine concern. “Firs’ Katie, now Ron…”

“I can’t see anyone trying to bump off a Quidditch team!”

Thank you, George.

“Wood might’ve done the Slytherins if he could’ve got away with it,” Fred joked.

For god’s sake.

“Well, I don’t think it’s Quidditch,” Hermione interposed, “but I think there’s a connection between
the attacks.”

“How d’you work that out?” Fred asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren’t, although that was pure luck.
And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was
supposed to be killed.” She faltered at that point, frowning as she thought out aloud, “Of course,
that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don’t seem to care
how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim.”

Alas, they didn’t get a chance to pursue that, as Mr and Mrs Weasley entered the ward.

The first thing Mrs Weasley did was engulf Harry in the hug, while sobbing, “Dumbledore’s told us
how you saved him with the bezoar! Oh, Harry, what can we say? You saved Ginny… you saved
Arthur… now you’ve saved Ron…”

Harry had turned the colour of ripe cherries. He clumsily tried to dismiss her, but Mr Weasley had
his own bit to add – “Half our family does seem to owe you their lives, now I stop and think about
it. Well, all I can say is that it was a lucky day for the Weasleys when Ron decided to sit in your
compartment on the Hogwarts Express, Harry.”

The cloying, mawkish display was not doing Hermione’s unaccommodating mood any favours. As
much as she wanted to spend the night sitting by Ron’s bed, holding his hand, she chose to leave
with Harry and Hagrid when Madam Pomfrey came by to remind them that Ron was allowed only
six visitors at a time.

Hermione awoke from a deep, dreamless slumber and felt around for her watch in panic. It turned
out to be one of those strange situations where she felt like she’d been asleep for ages, but really…
it was just quarter to five in the morning.

It was completely pitch black outside. She shuffled out of bed and wrapped her warmest cloak
around herself as silently as possible, so as to not disturb any of her dormmates.

She crept up staircases, down hallways, and soon she was climbing the stairs of the murky tower
where Sirius had been locked up, before they had rescued him. It looked exactly the same,
untouched by time – and time-turners. In the illusory dark, she could pretend he was sitting
crumpled in a corner. She walked over to the window they’d flown up to, remembering the look of
supreme astonishment on his face when he saw them…
All that was visible outside were a few flickering lights. If she unfocused her eyes, they bloomed
into enormous spheres, and she could have been looking at the solar system.

Ron was alive, and life could go on.

Hermione thought that perhaps it was time to gather abandoned half-thoughts, and piece together a
theory about what had happened the day before. She didn’t think she could do worse than the
collective mind-power of Potter, Weasley, Weasley, and Weasley.
Someone had poisoned Slughorn’s bottle of mead, hoping it would reach Dumbledore. Most likely,
Katie was supposed to deliver the cursed necklace to him as well. She was fairly certain that
someone was hell bent on assassinating the headmaster. The motive wasn’t clear, but the most
obvious and serious one would have something to do with Voldemort, and that exponentially
intensified the gravity of both these incidents.
When Hagrid (to Harry’s great glee) let slip the titbit about Snape and Dumbledore’s argument,
Hermione was struck by the sudden conviction that Dumbledore knew exactly who was behind
these attacks, and yet was perfectly as peace with letting them continue their mission, albeit under
Snape’s watchful eye.

A ‘mission’… Snape’s involvement…

These factors brought her to a most discomforting conclusion: What if Harry was actually right?
What if… What if it was Malfoy after all?
Whether or not he had been officially branded a Death Eater was irrelevant; if he was out to kill
Dumbledore, he was exactly as dangerous as Harry feared. But… was he? She had too many
contrary ideas about him. He was egotistical, arrogant, and horrible. He could quote fucking
Shakespeare, and Theo swore he wasn’t unsalvageable. This was a boy she’d slapped once. The
boy she could surely take down in a duel with her eyes closed.

However, circumstantial evidence was still evidence, and she couldn’t think of a justifiable
alternative.

What a ghastly world they lived in. A simple, mediocre bully could possibly turn out to be a
diabolical killer – a ruthless minion of the most malevolent wizard alive. At the age of sixteen.

A weak hint of light was creeping up from behind distant shadowy trees. Hermione turned away
from the window and began the long walk back to the Gryffindor tower. She told herself quite
firmly that she would be getting answers from Theo. He dare not prevaricate this time; Ron had
nearly died.

Her mind raced, but her legs dawdled; it was nearly daybreak by the time she reached the sixth
floor.

As she rounded a corner, she stopped short with a jerk, narrowly missing colliding with someone.
She blinked disconcertedly at the black cloaked chest standing like a wall in front of her. When she
looked up, her blood ran cold.

His pale skin was stained with the dusty blue cast of early dawn. It brought out the deep purple
rings around his eyes, and he looked like a bloodless Inferius. He was every bit as startled as she
was, looking down at her in surprise, rather than the usual revulsion.
Hermione was, honest to god, scared. With all the notions she had been entertaining, all she could
think at that moment was... he’s a killer. She stood rooted to the ground, watching as surprise made
way for loathing, as soon enough, Malfoy was proper sneering.

Sneering, and (possibly, probably) capable of murder.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t tear her wide, panicked stare away from his strange mist-and-steel
eyes. He didn’t move either. They were trapped in a vortex of fear and odium, and... move move
move... she remained inert.
Would he pull out his wand? Would be spit abuse and vitriol? Would he physically assault her?
He blinked twice, straightened his shoulders, walked around her... and away.

Hermione didn’t turn, even after the sound of his footfalls had faded. She took a few fortifying
breaths, then half ran all the way back to her bed. She really, really hoped Harry wasn’t awake and
having an early morning crack at his map.

‘Say, Hermione, I saw you and Malfoy having a showdown at dawn... did you find out what he’s up
to?’

‘Oh, no, Harry! I was paralysed by irrational terror, so he just glared at me and left.’

‘Ha Ha! How quaint.’

Goodness, she really had been paralysed, and completely sodding useless.

“...As if any of those twits could hurt you . Specially now, since you can crush all their bones with
one casual hand gesture...”

She laughed to herself bitterly.

Ginny came sprinting towards Hermione and Harry as they were exiting the Defence Against the
Dark Arts classroom later that morning.

“He’s awake,” she panted, “Ron’s awake!”

Within an instant the three of them were dashing toward the hospital wing. Harry charged straight
in, but Hermione stopped dead at the door, suddenly assailed by insecurity.

“Hermione?”

“Yes... Ginny, I... you go on. Perhaps it’s best if I –”

“You can’t be serious!” Ginny cried, “You still don’t want to talk to him?!”

“I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me. I just –”

“Oh Morgan. Don’t be a stupid cow. Come on,” Ginny grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her
inside.

Ron looked like... himself. His cheeks had regained their colour, his hair was shiny and shaggy, and
he was laughing at something Harry had said... until he spotted her.

His eyes got round and dimly apologetic, and his breathing picked up a touch. She wasn’t doing
much better – the thrumming of her heart was sure to shatter her ribcage.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Ron.”

Harry rolled his eyes. So did Ginny, but with a grin.

“So. Um. Was, uh... was it really necessary to celebrate your birthday in such a terribly dramatic
manner?”

And he gave her that wide, puckish, perfect grin. She could hear her blood rushing about inside her.

“You know me,” he quipped, “I never do anything by half.”

“Except homework,” she reminded him, barely managing to fight against the pull of a manic smile
to do so.

“Except homework,” he agreed, laughingly.

Ginny jumped in then, listing out all the many, many, many things that Ron did by half. Harry and
Hermione interjected occasionally. Ron gave them a sour look, but said very little besides the
occasional, “almost died,” and “give me a bloody break”.

The banter and ridiculousness went on for a while, after which Ron was instructed to nap, and they
had to leave. In that while, Hermione collected six full grins, two fond chuckles, and one secret,
overwhelming, exhilarating, significant glance.

“Finally. There you are!”

Hermione looked up from her essay and Theo smiled, setting his bag down on the table in their
favourite quite corner of the library. He was wearing the scarf she’d gifted him.

“I’ve been trying to catch hold of you all day. So, Weasley’s well out of the woods, then?”

“Yes,” she replied, tersely.

“That’s good. And I suppose things between him and you are all peachy again?”

She glared, silently daring him to go on.

“And that’s a yes. Brilliant. What a lucky break for him, in that case.”

“Lucky?” she spat in disbelief.

Theo shrugged, arranging his books and things in front of him.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

He peered at her, looking annoyed. “Why the hell are you being so short with me?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Why would I be? We’re best friends, after all. So what if you’re constantly lying
to me? We’re buddies, you and I.”

“Excuse me?” Theo retorted indignantly, “First of all, don’t ever use the word ‘buddies’ again. And
secondly, I have never lied to you. Not once.”

“Oh, really?” Hermione shot back, incensed, “Okay, Theo... who put Ron in the hospital? Who
poisoned that mead?”

“How should I know?!”

Hermione slapped both her palms down on the table. “Stop. Lying. Tell me it was Malfoy.”

“It wasn’t,” Theo denied immediately, but Hermione saw his face blanch.

“Stop ly –”

“I’m not fucking lying. Why the buggering hell would Draco want to kill Weasley? He doesn’t love
him, sure, but he’s isn’t going to –”

“It wasn’t Ron he was after. He made a mistake. Like he had earlier with Katie Bell.”

Theo paled even further. “No. That wasn’t him. He... he wouldn’t... No. No.”

“Either this is your worst attempt at perjury so far, or you’re up to your ears in denial,” Hermione
snarked.

He frowned at her in utter confusion and devastation. It was an expression she couldn’t quite label
– was it horrified resignation, was it shocked disbelief? – all she knew was that it was raw and
upsetting, and she instantly eased her hardened stance.

“Theo,” she murmured, reaching out to lay her hand over his, “I do believe that you aren’t lying to
me, alright? But you have to admit to harbouring certain... suspicions. You must have noticed... that
is to say, with the way Malfoy’s been acting, the awful things that have been happening... what I
mean is...” she felt distressingly inarticulate, “Look, you’re the closest to him. Surely you can
muster something substantial, and we can put a stop to this madness.”
“How?” Theo croaked, his eyes fixed on hers with disconcerting directness.

“Um... well, we could talk to some of the professors...”

He snorted. “Like who? Dumbledore? And he’ll do what...? Expel Draco? On the bases of a bit of
farfetched guesswork?”

“It isn’t all that farfetched,” Hermione grumbled. What would Dumbledore do, though? All
evidence pointed to the fact that he already knew... “Can’t you get Malfoy to admit...?”

Theo pulled a face and looked away.

“This is serious, Theo!”

“Oh, really?!” he replied, affecting a guise of facetious disbelief, “Serious, is it? Oh, dear me! I
thought we were all just larking about! But it’s serious! Ah! Thanks for letting me know,
Hermione.”

Hermione threw up her hands.

“Clearly you are larking about! Do you honestly think keeping Malfoy’s nefarious secrets is more
important than –”

“Than what? Your insatiable curiosity?!”

“It’s not about my sodding curiosity! Ron could have died!”

“And Draco had nothing to do with it!”

“You don’t know that!” Hermione hollered.

Theo dragged his chair back loudly, making her cringe.

He packed up his bag in a towering rage, while saying, “I’m sure pinning this shit on Draco is very
convenient for your lot, but leave me the fuck out of it. I am not going to sit here and help you
bolster such despicable allegations. Good night.”

And he left her with the coldest look he’d ever aimed her way. She growled under her breath; her
anger, distress, and frustration boiled over, and she stood up to pace feverishly, in an effort to calm
her nerves. How could he point-blank reject everything she had set forth? There had to be a limit to
personal loyalty when lives were at stake... when there were far bigger things at play...

...It was too much. Everything was too much.

She circuited the medium sized library table until she was dizzy.
The day just had to end with a confrontation with Lavender.

“Well, you’ve been out late,” she noted resentfully when Hermione walked into their dormitory.

Hermione was in no shape to deal with such puerile cattishness. She ignored the huffy blonde, and
stomped straight into the bathroom, letting the door close with a slam. She stood under a stream of
hot water for a long time. Steam swirled around her, laden with the scent of oranges and cinnamon.

Oranges.... Dead oranges.

Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.

What a day.

Outside the bathroom, Lavender had been waiting for her with a face like thunder.

“Where have you been all evening?” she demanded.

Hermione shrugged offhandedly, sparing her a perfunctory half-glance before crawling into bed.
Lavender got even more riled up at such cavalier treatment.

“Where you with my Won-Won?” she yelled, marching right up to Hermione’s bed.

“I did go see him, yes,” Hermione answered vaguely, as she looked over the stack of books on her
bedside table, hoping to pick something diverting to end the day with.

“Will you pay attention?!”

Hermione gave her the exact look of mock surprise that Theo had displayed earlier. She knew from
experience that it was bloody lethal.

As predicted, Lavender seethed. “So you want to be his friend again? He’s become the star of the
school, and you’ve suddenly decided you want to make up with him?”

“Star of the school?!” Hermione laughed incredulously, “He was poisoned, you idiot. And yes, it
put our differences in perspective –”

“Oh, Please. Spare me. You need to stay away from him!” Lavender fumed when Hermione
laughed at that, “I’m serious! You stay away from him!”

“Go away, Lavender. You have no business telling me what to do. If you have problems, go talk to
Ron.”
 “Oh I will,” she avowed menacingly, “The second he wakes up.”

Hermione raised a brow, but decided not to bait the crazed termagant any further. “When he wakes
up. Right.”

With pointed finality, Hermione wandlessly, wordlessly closed the curtains around her bed, shutting
out Lavender... and the rest of the world.

Chapter End Notes

1. "Woodcutter. Cut down my shadow...": The Song of the Barren Orange Tree, by Federico
García Lorca
 Seventeen
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“McLaggen is a stonking great arsehole,” Harry grumbled, “I’m going to fix him onto the highest
goalpost with a permanent sticking charm, and leave him there forever.”

“Someone would notice, sooner or later,” Hermione said, regretfully, “he has a way of making
himself known. I say we give him the Umbridge treatment...”

Harry shuddered, “I’d rather not go anywhere near those Centaurs again. Chuck us a chocolate
frog, will you Ron?”

“Sure. Well, I reckon he’ll take care of himself, gnormless troll that he is. All we’ll have to do is sit
back and watch the show. You remember how he fucked up his trial, yeah?”

Hermione blushed, immediately looking away from Ron, who was leaning back against the
headboard of his sickbed with a dreamy smile on his face.

“No, I’m pretty sure that was a onetime occurrence,” said Harry, pointedly.

Hermione refused to look at him as well.

“Hmmm,” she mused, transfixed by the play of sunlight on the ward curtains, “Want me to design
some facial graffiti? I’m sure Dean will gladly chip in. We can create something really
spectacular...”

“Blimey,” Ron muttered, “Why do I keep forgetting how dangerous you are?”

“If you’d like, I can conjure a bird or two to remind you.”

They were approaching dangerous territory. Ron visibly gulped, searching for something
appropriate to come back with. Hermione stared at him in anticipation...

Harry cleared his throat loudly. “I think it’s time to go, Hermione. Don’t want to be late for
McGonagall.”

“Right, yes,” she hastily stood up to leave, suddenly embarrassed, “Bye, Ron. We’ll come by again
soon...”

“Yeah,” he answered tetchily, “See you.”

Harry grasped her upper arms once they’d exited the hospital wing.

“Listen. Hermione,” his eyes bore into hers, “Please, please, please –”
“Let you get what you want this time?”

“What?” he asked, blankly.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Sorry. Go on...”

He gave her a jesus, you’re mental look, and said, “Can you please not fight with Ron again?”

“Can I not fight with him?! Well, excuse me, but –”

“Yes, yes, I know, he’s um... but, just... please, Hermione. I’m asking you because you’re obviously
the mature one here...”

“Oh. Nice. Flattery. If this is how you appeal to Slughorn, it’s no wonder he hasn’t given up that
memory yet.”

“That was low!”

“Oh, bugger off.”

They got stuck on a moving staircase, pulling them away from their destination. Hermione sighed
in resignation, crossing her arms. Victim to the whims of a flighty flight of steps... wasn’t she
suffering enough?
Harry decided to take advantage of that gift of time, and pulled out the Marauder’s map. He shoved
it away only moments after.

“In the D.A.D.A. classroom,” he huffed impatiently.

“Haven’t had a breakthrough yet?” she asked him in what she hoped was a casual manner.

“No!” he wailed, “I’m stalking him, and still... nothing. I go out of my way to be where he is, and
so far, all I’ve seen him do is walk between classes with various girls, or Nott... one time, I caught
him having a row with Zabini, but they both shut up when I got close enough to hear. Oh, and once
I caught him with his tongue down Parkinson’s throat.”

“Lovely.”

Harry made a sound of deep disgust, “And he’s disappearing more and more often. He’s almost
never in bed, even when I check in the middle of the night, or way early in the morning...”

Hermione twitched involuntarily, once again reminded of how lucky she was that Harry hadn’t
been glued to his map ‘way early in the morning’ two days ago.

“Hermione,” he continued, “I don’t think Nott is being honest with you.”

“He hasn’t got anything do with this,” she answered immediately.

“Maybe,” he allowed, “But he has to know something. Maybe I should talk to him...”

“No!” she said in alarm, aghast at the mere thought.

“Why not? If he really is on our side, he should be glad to help!”

“Things aren’t so cut and dried, and you know that. I mean, of course Theo is on our side as you
put it... but he isn’t going to spy on his friend, who –”

“Who’s a manky Death Eater! And surely if they’re so close, Malfoy must have told him some
stuff!”

“...He hasn’t. I... I trust Theo, okay? If he knew anything, he would –”

“Would he, though?”

“YES,” she stated emphatically, “Remember, Harry... the… the world isn’t split into good people
and Death Eaters!”

It was absolutely awful of her to throw Sirius’ words in his face like that, but she was frantic.

Harry was quiet after that.

In a desperate bid to lighten to the mood, Hermione said, “You know, of all the ways in which the
Dursleys mistreat you, depriving you of music is probably the worst.”

Harry gaped at her. “Yep. That’s definitely the worst.”

"I didn’t… that wasn’t what I…”

He smiled slowly, forcefully, at her horrified expression, “Good thing I’m getting a heavy dose of
the stuff thanks to Seamus’ gramophone, right?”

Hermione, mortified, muttered, “Remind me to put on The Smiths sometime. They’re a great guilty
pleasure for moments of weepy self-indulgence.”

“Yes please," Harry intoned monotonously, "I could really do with some of that in my life.”

As usual, on Wednesday evening, Hermione sauntered to the library to spend an hour absorbed in
good, wholesome research with Padma. Keeping with the other girl’s Healerly ambitions, they’d
been studying magical medicine in great depth. They met just outside the library doors, and walked
over to their usual table, passing Madam Pince, who was actually feeling generous enough to offer
them a ghost of a smile.
Hermione passed over Moste Potente Potions to Padma, and picked up Important Modern Magical
Discoveries, quickly flipping over to the section on medicinal inventions.

Close to an hour later, she stretched, grimacing as something around her shoulder blades cracked
audibly. She really hated when that happened.
“Mind if I take off a bit early? I promised Neville I’d help him with his water-making charm.”

“Sure. But, um...” Practical Padma had turned into Piteous Padma again that day after a long time,
and Hermione was annoyed. “I was just wondering... er, my sister was telling me about how upset
Lavender is about the fact that you and Ron are on speaking terms again...”

“Your sister needs to find better things to do with her time than gossiping mindlessly,” Hermione
said with a scowl.

“Ha ha, oh yes, I agree. But... it’s true then?”

Hermione arched her eyebrows, and bluntly began packing up to leave.

“So you still... you’re still interested in him?”

“I do believe that’s none of your business, Padma.”

“It is though!” Padma rushed out. Hermione looked at her in surprise, and saw that her face was
flushed. “You need to know... you have to know... You shouldn’t have to settle for him! You...
you... you have options, alright!”

“What,” Hermione breathed, startled, “are you talking about?”

“I don’t do things out of the blue, Hermione,” Padma’s speech picked up momentum, and she kept
her overbright eyes fixed on Hermione, “I think about everything. I always make sure. I know what
I want before doing anything. It’s never impulsiveness, or alcohol, or… or…” she huffed in an
agitated manner, “You have options.”

Hermione felt an icy tremor make its way up her spine. She stared down at her hands that were
clasped together on her lap: her stupid tiny and narrow hands, with their ink-stained fingers and
uneven nails. She knew what she had to say next, and she dreaded it. She wished she would
spontaneously disappear. She wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole. She wished
someone – anyone – would rush over and demand she leave with them.

Swallowing thickly, she said, “Maybe. But they aren’t options I would consider.”

“I see.”

Hermione tentatively looked up from her hands, biting her lip, bracing herself…

Padma had looked away. She had turned her face to the side, and Hermione could see that she was
blinking desperately to keep the sheen in her eyes from leaking out.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she declared hoarsely. “I’ve been trying really hard. I’ve been
compartmentalising to the best of my ability, because I know what we're doing is important, and it’s
helped me a lot... but... I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” Hermione said softly.

When Padma sniffed and nodded, she knew it was time for her to leave. There was something
about that gesture that evoked farewells and finality.
When Hermione reached the Gryffindor common room, she told Neville she was feeling too unwell
to study.

“Since when has that ever stopped you?” he called out wonderingly to her back as she climbed up
the stairs to her dormitory.

She felt completely out of sorts the next day. By early afternoon, guilt and disquiet had acquired a
sombre note, and when she stepped out of Greenhouse two, she took an abrupt turn towards the
lake, rather than going back into the castle. Nobody noticed her slip away; most people were
excitedly discussing how large and dangerous the Venomous Tentacula plants had become. (Neville
had been an unlikely hero that day, shielding an unsuspecting Hannah Abbott from being struck by
a spore-ball by deflecting it with his watering can.)

The weather was atrocious. Immense grey clouds portended a brutal downpour, and the wind was
beastly and cold, scraping at the skin of her nose and cheeks. Hermione tightened her muffler
around her neck and walked to the edge of the lake. It rippled and churned, aggravated by currents
of air.
She was mesmerised by the cacophony of colours. Focusing on one isolated patch of water, she
severed it from its surroundings and context until it was just a piece of marbled volatility and
tremendous beauty: Thick grey streaks warped by shots of steel blue, celtic blue; thin frills of
frothy white; a sudden bloom of deep gunmetal; blue and grey overlapping...

Then an unexpected weight on her shoulders dragged her back into the real world.

“Hello, buddy.”

Hermione looked up to her right. Theo’s nose was red, and his hair was tucked into his hat, baring
his seldom-seen forehead. He was wearing the scarf again.

“Hi,” she replied blandly, and was irrationally incensed when he presented her with a grin.

“I’ve come to rescue you, fair princess! The elements are cruel and determined to drench and freeze
you to death... but do not fret!”

He spun them around with a jaunty turn, and keeping his arm around her, began briskly leading her
back towards the castle.

“What are you doing here?” she asked cantankerously.

“I told you, I came to rescue –”

“What are you doing here?”

He sighed, squeezing her into his side, and said, “I haven’t seen or heard from you in three days,
Hermione. If you think you can give me the sulky silent treatment like you do to Weasley, you have
another thing coming. I don’t care if you’re throwing the most awful, Merlin-be-damned wobbler.
You cannot ignore me. It’s against the fundamental rules of our world. You can have a look in
Primordial Laws of Magic. It’s right there – chapter one. You and I are simply not allowed to cold-
shoulder each other.”

“You and I specifically?”

“Oh, yes.”

She didn’t know why she thought a disagreement with Theo would go the way it usually did with
Ron. Everything about her friendship with him was unprecedented. The issue wasn’t being buried
and ignored after a long, tormented period of silent fuming; Theo had acknowledged it, and wanted
to move past it. They hadn’t been forced to reconcile over some death-defying situation. He had
sought her out, and was being warm, silly, and himself, and she hadn’t had to do a thing.

Hermione planted her feet firmly onto the ground, bringing them to a halt. They turned to face each
other in a strangely synchronised manner. He gave her an anxious, questioning look, and she
responded by taking in a huge gulp of air, and...

“Thank you.”

“Huh?”

“... Thank you, Theo. I didn’t know how...; I mean... You. You’re just... just...”

He was visibly fighting a smile as he watched her.

“Yes,” he said, cutting short her moronic babbling, “I am. I know.”

He sounded very smug, and Hermione allowed it. She also allowed him to pull her back under his
arm, and pilot her across the grounds.

They were only a few meters short of the entrance hall, when the corner of her eye saw a flash of...
something... on Theo’s wrist, as it rested limply on her shoulder.

“What’s this?” she enquired, moving to pull his sleeve back to have a proper look. At once, he tore
his arm away from her and hid it behind his back.

“Nothing!” he exclaimed, far too loudly, far too quickly.

It was such an alarmingly extreme reaction.

Hermione reared back, “What the hell?”

“It’s nothing Hermione. Just a rash. Rather frightening looking one, I’m afraid. I don’t want to
traumatise you.”
“It most certainly did not look like a rash!”

“It is... a rash...” Theo spluttered feebly.

Hermione narrowed her eyes, and surged forward, tugging at his arm.

“Let me see.”

“No!” he fought against her, and unfortunately, battle of strengths were not her forte.

“Theo!”

After a minute-long struggle, he relented. Greedily, Hermione pulled back his sleeve...

He was wearing a bracelet. It was a chunky, obviously handmade one, consisting of some sort of
iridescent pieces of bark strung together.

“It’s Wiggentree bark, dusted with powdered moonstone,” Theo informed her snappily with a
supreme blush on his face, “It’s supposed to be restorative and lucky, and it... wards off Blibbering
Humdingers.”

He was so, so red. Hermione grinned ear to ear as she examined the bracelet.

“It’s quite pretty,” she offered consolingly.

Theo glared. “I like it.”

“So do I!” she gushed, “I’ll be looking into the healing properties of this combination. Luna
actually might be on to something.”

“You should tell her,” Hermione said after they’d resumed walking.

His high colour hadn’t completely receded, and at that statement, it came right back into
prominence.

“Don’t be stupid,” he gritted out.

“I’m not! You should tell her. Come on, Theo... You know she feels the same way.”

“Or she doesn’t. And she’ll laugh, or turn away, or... fuck. She might blame it all on some seedy
little parasitic beasties that have colonised my brain, and then I’ll just die, Hermione. I’ll fucking
just die.”

“Oh come now. She won’t do any of those things,” Hermione rebuked him playfully.

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“For god’s sake, Theo. Everybody knows I know everything.”

He laughed and it was like he had done so in spite of himself. “Ah, yes. The biggest, most
successful case of mass delusion that world has ever seen!”
She pushed him, hard, and laughed as he exaggerated his resulting stumble.

He tucked her under his (bracelet-free) arm, and pulled her up the wide marble staircase, offering a
wide, shit-eating grin to a cluster of fourth year Slytherins that had stopped to stare at them.

It was no wonder, with all the ups and downs and emotional turmoil she was experiencing, that she
should forget that Harry and Ginny had quidditch practice that evening.

Hermione was genuinely shocked to find nobody else at Ron’s bedside when she went to visit him.
He looked up at her, equally startled, and they gawked at each other in silence.

“Oh,” she gasped, after a stretch.

“Hey,” he mumbled uncomfortably.

Keeping her eyes lowered, she gingerly settled on the side of his bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he said blankly. Then he shook his head, and after taking a moment to gather his wits, went
on, “Bored. I wish Pomfrey would let me out of here already. I’m going mad staring at the ceiling
all day.”

“Oh stop,” she said with a laugh, “You have enough people coming by to keep you company.”

“Eh,” he grunted dismissively, “Neville looked in yesterday. Ginny and Dean were here in the
afternoon, but like Harry, they don’t really have time...” he suddenly grinned euphorically,
“McLaggen’s giving them hell.”

“I’ve heard. Many times. Many, many, many times.”

“Yeah well, if that dowdy, dried up old matron would just let me out....”

“Ron!” she chastised, but he saw through her façade of disapproval and laughed.

“Anyway. Point is, I’m bored to death, Hermione. I don’t s’pose you could come by more than
once a day? I survived being poisoned; it’ll be really sad if boredom kills me.”

Predictably, she felt hot and bothered after his endearing request.

“If I do that, I’ll bring homework. Assignments. Tons and tons of thick, dusty books...” she warned.

He laughed again, and she wondered if he was in this good a mood when other people visited him.

“And that might kill me too. Bugger it all, looks like I’m doomed to die one way or another.”
Hermione stuck her tongue out at him.

He certainly looked completely healthy. Right then, he was her favourite version of Ron Weasley:
that lovely, dishevelled ginger hair, that easy smile, and best of all, those twin pools of cerulean
splendour beaming down at her, glowing like they were backlit. He was warmth, comfort, and an
unexpected jolt to the heart. She wanted (and how she wanted) to curl up by his side, breathe in the
smell of his skin, have him turn around and cup her face, kiss her forehead, kiss her cheeks, kiss
her...

Ahem.

They both looked away from each other awkwardly.

“So, um... Lavender must come to see you often enough?”

Ron grimaced; “I donno. I mean, sure, she must... but I think I was asleep and missed her.”

She looked at him sceptically, “Every time?”

“Er, yeah.”

“Right. Well, I guess I’ll go now...” she burbled, standing up slowly.

“Hermione, wait!”

His hand shot out and grabbed hold of her wrist, pulling her down unceremoniously.

“Ow, Ron!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he rushed out, “You, erm... alright?”

“Yes,” she said, more curiously than curtly, “What’s the matter?”

“Listen,” he started, “I wanted to say...” he puckered his brow earnestly, “...these past few months
have been total bullocks. I’ve umm missed you.”

Not quite an apology, but he was making those solemn, penitent eyes at her, and seriously... was she
still solid?

“I’ve missed you too, Ron.”

He smiled, pleased and relieved. Did he know he was still holding on to her wrist? With the way his
thumb was slowly tracing her veins, he probably did. And he definitely knew exactly what he was
doing to her pulse.

“One more thing...” he murmured, “This thing with you and Nott...”

“What about it?” she asked guardedly.

“Are you... I mean, are he and you... together?”

“He’s my friend. A very good friend, but that’s all.”

“How the hell did this happen, Hermione?” His ears had begun to turn red.

“It doesn’t matter how it happened. He’s my friend, and he’s a wonderful person; that’s all you
need to know.”

“Look, Harry and Ginny told me he’s uh... okay, and that I shouldn’t get up in your face about it.
Ginny threatened me something awful over the hols,” he laughed humourlessly, “I just want to
understand...”

She sighed. “He needed to distance himself from his family and its associations, so he sought me
out, because he knew I’d listen. And I did listen, and... I’ve got to know him really well, Ron. He’s
important to me. Just like you’re important to me.”

Ron didn’t seem to appreciate the parallel at all. He scowled, and took a moment to collect himself.

“He’s still friends with Malfoy.”

“Yes.”

“And Malfoy’s fine with him being your friend?”

“Yes.”

“You’re fine with Nott being friends with a tosser who thinks you’re scum?”

“Yes. Just like he's fine with me being friends with people who think he’s scum.”

“Are you friends with Malf –”

“Absolutely not.”

“Alright.”

“All.. right...?”

“Yeah. I mean, he was never as bad as Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle and the rest of that lot. And Harry’s
vouched for him.”

The Potter Certificate of Approval was all Ron ever needed.

She pushed down her resentment and said, “Thank you.”

He smiled again and squeezed her wrist affectionately.

“Maybe he’ll give out the Slytherin team’s secrets. Make it easier for us to hammer them in the
next match.”

She sat with him for another hour, until Madam Pomfrey came around to send her away her. She
floated out the door.
The Gryffindor quidditch team wore a fascinating variety of aggrieved looks on their faces when
they joined the rest of their house at dinner. All except Cormac McLaggen, that is.
He loomed over Harry as he trailed behind him, talking his ear off.

“...thing is, Potter, you’re not using your beaters to their full potential. Now if I was captain, I’d
have ‘em both circle the outer –”

“You’re not the bloody captain,” Harry snapped, plonking down opposite Hermione, “Now let me
eat in peace.”

McLaggen didn’t bite back – he was too busy leering at Hermione.

“Watcha, Granger,” he said slickly, sliding onto the bench next to Harry, who looked livid, “Long
time no see.”

“Yes, well, looks like my luck’s run out.”

She glowered fiercely at him, a look which usually left her peers quaking in their boots. However,
it appeared that McLaggen was too stupid to comprehend its dangers.

“Aw, you don’t mean that, doll.”

Hermione looked down at her plate – it was still partially piled up with food. But nothing – not
even the prospect of pudding – was worth spending another second in the company of that
unrepentant letch. She rose smoothly and walked towards the doors leading out of the Great Hall.
McLaggen garbled a few words around a mouth full of food, she flipped him a dismissive gesture.

Nobody witnessed the pièce de résistance, though. She’d wandlessly, non-verbally tied his
shoelaces together.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it
was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all
going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of
comparison only.

Hermione had honestly lost count of the number of times she’d reread the brilliant first chapter of A
Tale of Two Cities. But this time, it pulled at some deeply visceral part of her, and her reaction went
beyond a profound appreciation of the artful spin of words – it was her time, age, epoch, and
season at play here. Those words were meant to set the tone for the rest of his novel - to lay an
ominous shadow across his reader’s consciousness… well, she felt that dread towards her here and
now. Dickens had unwittingly stomped all over her grave.

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain
of it would be red upon many there.

Hermione shuddered, burrowing deeper under her quilt.

“Hermione. Hermione!”

Someone outside her bed-iverse was calling for her, and she chose to take the noble path of
feigning sleep.

“Hermione!”

Her curtains were brutally, callously pulled apart, and a breathless Parvati stared down at her
recumbent form. An involuntary spasm shook her at the sight... they were identical twins after all.
That guilt she’d been carrying around all day intensified. She promptly sat up.

“What is it?”

Parvati looked acutely unnerved.

“You’re pretty good friends with my sister, aren’t you?” she asked urgently.

“Er.”

“Did she talk to you about Anthony Goldstein?” Parvati was too agitated to bother waiting for
replies to any of her questions, “Did she mention anything about fancying him? Do you think it’s
been going on for longer than she’s letting on? Did she –”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hermione cut in, “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Padma is apparently going out with Anthony Goldstein! Did you know? I mean, she did tell me
that he was, like, constantly pestering her, but I was so sure she wasn’t interested... and now
Romilda just told me that Aisha just told her that she heard Mandy telling Terry that they’re
together. And she asked him out! I can’t believe this!” she stomped her foot on the ground like a
toddler throwing a snit.
 Hermione was staggered. Well... that was one way to cope, she supposed. Much like the advice
she’d given Ginny over a year ago.

“Well... good for her, I guess.”

“Good for her?!” Parvati choked, “No, this is not good. My own sister, and she didn’t think to tell
me that she’s planning to get herself a boyfriend. Oh Merlin! She has a boyfriend. My prudish,
swotty sister has a boyfriend, and... and... I’m just going to be alone forever!”

She was on the brink of an utterly fatuous meltdown, and Hermione was too bleeding tired to deal
with anything of that sort.

“Good grief, Parvati. Get a grip. And look at yourself, you can easily get yourself a boyfriend if
you’re gagg-ahem-so keen on it. I know for a fact that Seamus is –”

“Don’t make me cry, Hermione. Seamus? Are you serious?! He might end up making me explode if
I get him too excited, like... you know...”

Parvati and Seamus wrapped up in an embrace, snogging heavily. He has her against a wall, and
she has her hands in his hair, and it’s getting more and more heated... suddenly... ka-boom!... and
there’s empty space where Parvati’s head once was. Seamus is covered in bits of brain and skull
and blood. He blinks, looking stunned. “Cor...” he says.

The image was enough to break her overwrought composure – Hermione threw back her head and
laughed till she felt tears leaking out of her eyes. Sometime in the middle of her fit, Parvati had
closed her curtains violently (and with a muted shriek), and marched away while ranting irritably
and incomprehensibly.
Eventually, her laughter mellowed into soft chuckles... and then died down entirely. What followed
was quiet, and not just in her surroundings. She welcomed the lull with tremendous gratitude. As
she slowly succumbed to sleep, she thought back to the summer she’d spent in the south of France
with her parents, when she was thirteen. She saw mum and dad sitting on a blanket under the sun,
against a backdrop of the rugged mountains of Provence that Cezanne had immortalised. They were
laughing at nothing in particular while feasting on cheese and wine, and the last thought Hermione
had was... it was the best of times.

Chapter End Notes

1. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths

2."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...": Tale of Two Cities, by Charles
Dickens
 Eighteen
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Hermione walked out of the hospital wing after another successful one-on-one stint with Ron. She
had given him a belated birthday present – a dragon skin wallet that she had imbued with anti-theft
wards and a charm that would have it leap back into his pocket should he ever accidentally drop it.

“Cool!” he had exclaimed with a pleased grin, and then they’d passed the time agreeably, engaging
in small talk and pleasantries, with Ron giving her his own humorous account of Christmas at the
Borrow, followed by a short (and entirely useless) discussion on what horcruxes could be.

And yet... Hermione wasn’t feeling the giddy euphoria she expected to. There was a bothersome
niggling sense of dissatisfaction swirling in her gut, and she frowned at herself in perturbation.
Much to her frustration, her next lesson was over an hour away – there was nothing to distract her
thoughts from travelling down a path she really preferred they stay away from.
Her mind was a bustling, hyperactive, never-stagnant bundle of neuronal confetti, and Ron’s
simplicity was exactly the respite she ought to crave. He was comfortable.

...Stultifying.

Hermione sighed uneasily. He didn’t actually give her any respite, did he? Rather, he frequently
gave her the additional baggage of emotional and psychological distress, and she really had no time
for that. Why did she still... still... it made no sense...

‘Love isn't s’posed to make sense, ya meff!’ She heard her obnoxious cousin Charlotte’s voice clear
as day in her head.

Why was she letting herself get worked up when they had only just re-established their
camaraderie? It was fine. Ron still had a girlfriend, anyway. ...And there it was: that painful twist in
her stomach.

It was official: She was a complete basket case. She needed an intervention, extensive therapy, and
a short spell in a padded cell.

Outside, the turbulent conditions had calmed somewhat, with the sun sporadically and arbitrarily
emerging from behind thick clouds. It was like the weather gods had grudgingly decided to take
pity on their mortal playthings – ‘Peace, wee worms, there is hope still! Perhaps you truly shall see
spring again someday.’

Hermione found herself approaching the quidditch stands, dimly remembering Ginny telling her
that the Gryffindor team had practice scheduled sometime that afternoon. Perhaps she could watch
them; maybe practice a few harmless non-verbal spells on McLaggen...
...With the panicked haste of a small animal sensing a predator, she cast a disillusionment charm on
herself and then ducked behind a post for good measure. In the near distance, two brooms touched
onto the ground, and two figures gracefully leapt off them.

Hermione peered from behind the post, and watched Theo pull the bluegreen scarf out of his pocket
and wrap it around and his neck, while he grinned at Malfoy. They walked across the pitch in her
general direction, both with windswept hair, shining eyes, and flushed faces.
Theo said something to Malfoy that caused the latter to toss his head back and laugh, his hair
glinting as the sun made one of its random appearances. Then Malfoy said something back, which
had Theo laughing as well. They were both chuckling and walking, as if they were just two regular
young wizards in high spirits after an invigorating spin on their brooms.

Clinging tightly onto the post as they walked by her, Hermione could hear Theo talking:

“...believe he actually thought it was a sound investment! For fuck’s sake, what kind of a sodding
pillock would think that was a good idea? Sure, pepper imps are plenty popular, but there isn’t a
chance of them burning through the roof of your mouth, no matter how many you eat. And why on
earth would –”

“Do you even realise you’re talking, Theo?” Malfoy asked with a smirk, “I swear you’d just go...”

And then they had gone past her.

Hermione stared at the back of their heads – caramel and spun gold – with profound discomfiture.
This was the person Theo was so desperate to protect, then.

The scene she had just witnessed gave her pause. It worked to further strengthen her compassion
for Theo. He was stuck in such a horrible, impossible position.

They were all stuck in such horrible, impossible positions.

She pictured grossly twisted, paralysed bodies. Frozen screaming faces. Pain and horror. A horse in
agony... the head of a bull... Picasso’s Guernica.

Hermione was pulled away from her morbid musings with the arrival of the Gryffindor quidditch
team. They appeared to be completely engrossed in strategising, not noticing her at all.

“Hi, Harry,” she called.

Harry jumped about a foot in the air, and then spun around in a wild circle.

“Whozere?!”

The rest of the team had similarly spooked expressions as they turned this way and that.

Oh right. She was still disillusioned.

She undid the charm with a sheepishly mumbled word of apology. Harry gawped for a couple of
strained seconds, before marching right up to her and angrily demanding, “Why are you constantly
trying to give me a heart attack? Don’t you think there are enough people trying to kill me
already?”

“I said I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I forgot I had disillusioned myself.”

Ginny popped out from behind Harry and asked, “Why the hell were you standing out here all by
yourself and invisible at one-thirty in the afternoon?”

“... I was... thinking...” Hermione replied idiotically.

Harry and Ginny stared at her like that one sentence had robbed them of all their faith in her sanity
forever.

“Anyway,” she said awkwardly, “I should get going. I have to –”

“Well, well. Look who it is! Come to watch me play, doll?” McLaggen strutted over to her side,
flashing a disgusting half-grin.

“No,” she asserted coldly, and left.

Hermione was done with interacting with humans for the day. Quite thoroughly done. What she
needed now was a deliciously complicated book, and six to eight hours of complete solitude. She
checked her watch – thirty-five minutes till her Ancient Runes lesson. Best make the most of it.

As the newest couple in the castle, Padma and Anthony were causing quite a stir. Infinitely more
dignified than Ron and Lavender had ever been, they cut through crowded corridors holding hands
and seeming perpetually immersed in some riveting discussion or the other.
They were both quite tall, and with her long dark hair and his burly built, they made a striking pair.
As it happened one evening, Hermione was climbing down the same flight of stairs that they were
climbing up, and since preoccupation was a common affliction for all three of them, they only
ended up locked in a silent and startled staring match around the middle of the staircase. Rather, it
was Anthony who was silent, Hermione startled, and Padma was staring.

Five, six, seven, seconds passed.

Hermione offered them both a sudden, snappy nod each, then recommenced her decent. She didn’t
look back, they didn’t say a word, and later, at dinner, she ate a large slice of chocolate tart.
Since only twelve sixth year students had opted to take Arithmancy that year, all four houses sat for
lessons together.

It was eleven-thirty at night, and those twelve gathered in the astronomy tower where Professor
Vector waited for them with four glorious brass telescopes. She quickly divided them into groups of
three, and launched what was undoubtedly one of Hermione’s favourite lessons of all time.
Combining the laws of trigonometry with Hellenistic astrology was fascinating – she sat with a
piece of parchment doing rapid calculations, while Sue Li from Ravenclaw peered through a
telescope, and Roger Malone from Hufflepuff neatly tabulated the results. They had the entire
Monomoiria charted within an hour.

Professor Vector checked their work and said, “Very well,” (which coming from her was praise
beyond comprehension,) “By the next lesson, I expect ten predictions derived from these
calculations. And read pages 45-78 from volume five of Valens' Anthology.”

Once, in a transfiguration lesson years and years ago, Professor McGonagall had told their class to
read the first ten pages of Early Transfiguational Arts. Eleven year old Hermione had turned to her
neighbours and said, “Of course, I’ll be reading the entire book....”

Seventeen year old Hermione nodded and said, “Yes, professor,” while thinking, of course, I’ll be
reading the entire book.

How age mellows a girl down.

Professor Vector moved onto the next group. When Sue turned to Roger and asked him if he was
excited about his house’s match against Gryffindor the next day, Hermione immediately tuned them
out. She gently massaged her cramped fingers and walked over to the opposite side of the tower,
where she leaned against the rampart and observed the rest of her classmates. Anthony and Padma
had teamed up with Terry Boot. Next to them, Michael Corner, Wayne Hopkins, and Sally Smith
were arguing heatedly over their calculations. The final group consisted of Tracey Davis, Lisa
Turpin, and Draco Malfoy, and they seemed to have completed the assignment as well.
Lisa and Tracey, with their shoulders hunched against the wind, were pleasantly chitchatting.
Malfoy’s posture couldn’t be more different – straight and impeccable in that would you just look at
how well-bred I am way, he stood apart at a distance; aloof. He wasn’t even wearing a cloak, as
though the bitter chill wasn’t affecting him in the slightest. With his stark white shirt and his pale
hair, he shone like a beacon against the dark sky, as he gazed out into the endless night. Clearly, no
one had ever warned him about the dangers of getting into a staring match with the abyss.
“Hi.”

Terry Boot had abandoned his partners and come to stand next to her.

“Mind if I join you? I’m a bit sick of being the third wheel over there,” he gestured towards Padma
and Anthony with a tilt of his head.

Hermione forced out a laugh, “I hardly think they’d do anything to make you uncomfortable.”

“No, but they’re definitely giving out some serious please-leave-us-alone vibes. Makes a bloke feel
really unwanted.”

Her laughter was more genuine this time.

“So,” he continued, “Good lesson, eh?”

“Yes,” she replied enthusiastically, “Arithmancy keeps getting more and more fascinating.”

He grinned, running a hand through his hair, “It does. And you should know I’ve upped the ante.
You might not have as easy a time topping this term. I reckon you’ll need to add a good three
minutes to your daily study schedule to beat me.”
“Oh, please,” she chided, simultaneously flattered and flustered.

She’d only ever spoken to Terry a small handful of times... he always found a way to compliment
her every time. She really wished she knew what to do with his compliments.

“It’s true. You know it is. It’s bloody aggravating. There are no less than six ‘I hate Hermione
Granger’ clubs in Ravenclaw. They’ve even attached your picture on the dart board in our common
room.”

“Oh really? How perfectly lovely. You have a dartboard in your common room?”

“Sure. Everybody needs a good way to unwind. And we enjoy flinging small, pointy objects at your
face. What do you Gryffindors do?”

Hermione bit her lip to stop herself from doing something atrocious, like giggling.

“We have a gramophone, and tend to spontaneously break into dance.”

He laughed, and the spots of light from nearby candles danced charmingly in his hazel eyes. “You
dance? I mean, do you dance? Well. Mark this moment as the only time I’ve ever wished I was in
Gryffindor.”

She really hoped the sound she made was more of a chuckle than a giggle.

Things were so strange this year.

As she made her way back to the Gryffindor tower, Hermione pondered over the many ways in
which her world had suddenly opened up. But she wasn’t going to spiral into an existential crisis
over it. She only had a small window of time to just be, before grave and serious eventualities
became her life.

For now, she would embrace this barmy new reality. The next time Terry came to talk to her, she
might even flirt back.

“...oh my, Smith has lost the Quaffle again. That’s the eighth time so far. He isn’t a very good
player, is he? I think he’s suffering from a terrible fit of Loser’s Lurgy... he does look quite
sickly...”

Hermione cheered along with the rest of her house while Zacharias Smith bared his teeth at Luna.
Hermione had never enjoyed a quidditch match more.
“...Cadwallader is flying towards the Gryffindor goal posts again... but look at that cloud behind
him! Looks rather like a tap-dancing niffler...”

“She’s brilliant,” Neville yelled over the roaring crowd. Hermione beamed at him in agreement.
She really wanted to see Theo at that moment.

“...Smith’s new hairstyle makes him look rather like a plimpy...”

Delightful commentary aside, there was little else good about the game. McLaggen was proving to
be – predictably – an unmitigated disaster. He was everywhere except where he should have been.
Hermione could tell, despite the vast distance between them, that Harry was absolutely fuming.
Ginny, Demelza, and Dean were trying their best, but it was forty minutes into the game and the
score was a dismal –

“Seventy-forty to Hufflepuff!” Professor McGonagall shouted into Luna’s megaphone.

“Is it, already?” Luna wondered with mild surprise, “Oh, look! The Gryffindor Keeper’s got hold of
one of the Beater’s bats.”

McLaggen had, in fact, taken custody of Peakes’ bat, and was brandishing it about like a deranged
showman. Harry was zooming towards him, yelling bloody murder… just as McLaggen swung the
bat…
Hermione’s shriek of horror was drowned out by the various loud reactions emitted by the other
spectators. The bludger had whizzed like a rocket and hit Harry straight on the head. The moment
of impact was sickening; and then Harry fell off his broom. Hermione was on her feet in an instant,
fumbling for her wand.
Luckily, Coote and Peakes caught him before he hit the ground. He hung limply in their arms as
they floated him down and laid him on the ground. A stretcher was summoned, and Harry was
promptly levitated to the hospital wing.

Bile sat suspended in Hermione’s throat. Seeing Harry pale and unconscious felt far too much like a
premonition. For neither can live while the other survives. She sat back down slowly, trembling,
and the racket and clamour around her dimmed to an endless whistle.

“Hermione? Hermione, come on... game’s over.”

She let Neville lead her through the swarm. Apparently, the Hufflepuff seeker had caught the
snitch, and the whole lot of them was celebrating like it had been a fair win.
They met Ginny just outside the changing rooms, and she looked enormously furious.

“Let’s go see Harry,” she barked, dragging Hermione along by the wrist. Neville got left behind
somewhere.

“Er, Ginny... slow down?” Hermione broached tentatively.

“Sorry,” she grumbled.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m not okay! We lost the match. Harry let himself get hit like a prat. McLaggen
knocked a bludger at him like a prat. And Dean thought the whole thing was funny, the bloody,
bloody prat.”

Hermione held her tongue the rest of the way.

Harry was still unconscious when they reached him, and Ron greeted them with a cheery nod, all
the while gorging on sweets.

“How’did haffen?” he enquired with a full mouth. Hermione felt her lip curl, but she dutifully
retold the events of the past hour.

“So McLaggen really fucked it up...” Ron was tickled.

“Just hurry up and get out of here so that we can get rid of him,” Ginny groused, “Coote and
Peakes tore him to shreds, but it didn’t affect him at all. Prat. Ugh. I just knew today was going to
be an utter crock of shit. First McLaggen, then all this bloody wind, Harry barely making the game
on time, and then –”

“Wait,” Ron barged in, “He barely made it? How come? He left here early enough.”

“He was rambling on about Malfoy and a couple of girls... I’m not sure, I wasn’t really listening...”

Since Harry was showing no indication of waking up any time soon, and Ginny began complaining
about crippling hunger, the two girls left for the Gryffindor common room, where post-match
snacks would indubitably have been laid out.

They walked in silence, lost in their own thoughts till Ginny suddenly spoke up: “Do you think he
fancies Malfoy?”

“Huh?”

“Harry, I mean. Do you think he fancies Malfoy?”

“What? You’re joking, aren’t you...? What?”

“He’s so obsessed with him! I’ve never seen him like that about anyone else.”

“Ginny! He’s absolutely convinced that Malfoy is up to no good. Not all obsessions are a
manifestation of secret romantic feelings!”

“I know that,” said Ginny, with a pinched expression on her face, “It could simply be burning,
burgeoning lust. And Malfoy seems pretty obsessed with Harry too...”

“Oh god. That is beyond twisted. They genuinely loathe each other. You honestly think it’s just a
front and that they’re secretly having a roaring affair right in front of our noses?!”

Ginny shrugged sullenly, “Or it’s just denial.”

“You’re batty. Honestly, the whole acrimony-masking-blazing-desire is a clumsy and ignorant
cliché. On another note, have you seen the way Harry looks at you?”

She got another shrug in response. Hermione shook her head in disbelief, wondering about the
harmful psycho-somatic effects of an overdose of absurdity.

While Hermione firmly stood by her disdain for Trelawney’s fondness for envisaging doom, she
couldn’t help her own staunch acceptance of Sod’s Law.
Of course, Theo would be waiting for her on the third floor. They had planned to meet after the
match, after all. Harry’s ordeal had made her forget about her Ancient Runes homework.

“Hermione! Oi. Buddy!” Theo stopped short when he noticed the redhead beside her.

“Buddy?” Ginny snorted. Hermione flushed.

“Weren’t we supposed to go to the library about now?” Theo asked Hermione with a frown.

“Yes, sorry... slipped my mind...”

“It’s okay, Hermione,” Ginny chirped, suddenly in high spirits, “You go on. I’ll just grab some food
and join you both in a bit.”

Hermione and Theo gaped at her.

“What?” she asked innocently, “I think it’s time him and I got to know each other. We’re both your
buddies, after all.”

Yes, too much absurdity was fatal. Hermione was sure of it. She was now a washed out ghost
watching Ginny’s hair dance as she bounded away from them. She would presently go join Myrtle
in her bathroom and pass the rest of her days wailing and moaning.

“Well. This ought to be interesting,” Theo quipped.

He spent the journey to the library raving about Luna’s dazzling commentating skills. Hermione
nodded absently, not paying much attention. Her stomach was full of lead-coated knots, and it
wasn’t because she was worried that Theo and Ginny wouldn’t get along; he was eminently likable,
and she was buckets of fun. In fact, Hermione was sure that they’d get along fantastically... and that
thought was what made her feel vaguely sick. The bottom line was this: she was not ready to share
Theo. His relationships with Luna and Malfoy didn’t bother her; those were completely separate
dynamics at play. But Ginny could – and would – become his friend. She was exciting, much more
so than Hermione, and what if... if Theo ended up preferring her company...

Her insecurity was beastly and insuppressible. She had only just found her perfect friend.

She was not not not ready to share him.

Chapter End Notes

1. Picasso’s Guernica
 Nineteen

Disappointment and self-pity and fury was a frightfully distressing combination for one young
witch to deal with.

It began with yet another abortive apparition lesson. Hermione was simply not accustomed to
failing; yet there she was, crashing over and over and over again. Even the patronus charm had
conceded to her resolve after six tries.

And so, she stomped out of the Great Hall in a right temper, carrying with her the fourth ‘D’ (of
which condescending old Twycross had spoken nothing about) – Disappointment. Crushing,
maddening disappointment.

She sat stewing by the lake, running her fingers through the luxuriant grass on the shore. Since it
was a Saturday and the weather was almost pleasant, there were a fair number of students out and
about. A short distance away, a group of seventh years – two boys, three girls – had bravely waded
into the unquestionably cold water, and were splashing about like imbecilic toddlers. Hermione was
quite sure that the primary motive behind that exercise was getting the girls’ shirts wet.
A few minutes later, she spotted Theo and Ginny strolling along the edge of the lake and towards
her. Together.

Her throat developed a dense, hard, pumpkin-sized lump. Ginny was grinning in that saucy, teasing
way of hers, and Theo was looking down at her, amused.

“Merlin, Herms,” Ginny exclaimed, settling down next to her, “We’ve been looking for you for
ages!”

Ages, Hermione thought uncomfortably. Something close to panic was spinning within her.

“Hold on. Herms?!” Theo said with a look of wicked delight, “Herms? You let her call you
Herms?”

“She does what she wants,” Hermione mumbled.

They both ignored her.

“Fuck off,” Ginny said good naturedly, “You call her buddy!”

“Excuse me, I was just taking the piss. Hermione is the one who said it first.”

“That’s a likely story.”

And that was how self-pity came into the mix.

The night after they’d “studied” together in the library, Hermione couldn’t sleep. Ginny had come
in fully determined to be Friendly, and so she had been. Theo suffered from obsessive compulsive
charisma. Hermione watched with dismay as he brought out the same flirtatious, playful side of
him that he had used to charm her so many months ago.

Now, Theo and Ginny were tossing wisecracks from one to the other, and it was utterly wretched.
She just wasn’t able to bring herself to break in and assert her existence.

Why had they sought her out in the first place? Clearly, she wasn’t needed here at all.

And then came fury, bringing with it an impulsive undercurrent of fuck it, which coerced Hermione
into performing an act of self-sabotage. She stood up and walked away.

“What – hey, where are you going?”

She glanced over her shoulder at Theo as he sat up from his semi-recumbent lounging.

“I just remembered I have some Arithmancy homework left to do. I’ll see you later,” she said, her
voice high-pitched and feverish.

She’d only taken a few more steps before she felt his hand on her arm, and he turned her around to
face him again.

“Are you okay, Hermione?” he peered at her with concern.

“Yes,” she replied, and when she saw he looked unconvinced, she added, “Apparition is getting on
my nerves, I suppose.”

He didn’t withdraw his hand, nor his frown.

Ginny, splayed out on the grass, laughed. “You have no idea how heartening it is for us ordinary
people when you fail at something.”

Hermione smiled tightly. In that moment, she fully felt the collective weight of disappointment,
self-pity, and fury. Turn them out, knaves all three.

She pulled away smoothly from Theo’s grip, tilted her head in farewell, and walked away as fast as
she could without actually breaking into a run. She didn’t once look back, terrified of what the sight
of the two of them might do to her composure; those two jolly ordinary people lazing by the lake,
probably laughing over how neurotic poor, smarty-pants Hermione was about her homework.

She came to an abrupt stop as she remembered having this exact thought, nearly word for word,
over five years ago. Except then, it was regarding Harry and Ron after they’d just finished with
their first lesson on the levitation charm...

She’d regressed so far that she had reclaimed the broken psyche of an eleven year old.
So, she had abandonment issues. Diddums. When she was five, her aunt and uncle had forgotten all
about her in middle of the farmer’s market in Orton, and she had wandered lost and in tears for over
an hour before they finally remembered her. Plump and sweet Ruby Groves had abandoned her on
the playground when they were eight, after the other kids made fun of her for playing with ‘Bossy
Beaver Granger’. Harry had abandoned her over a broom; Ron abandoned her like it was his
favourite pastime... Padma, her first and only partner in intellectual pursuits abandoned her... Pete
was twined around her naked body one night and suddenly leaving the next morning...

Theo had made her feel cherished, understood, and completely not alone for a long stretch... she
supposed it was about time he moved on with his life.

Golly gosh, but she was being pathetic. Stop it. There really was Arithmancy work to get done. She
sniffed. Stop it. She’d neglected practicing wandless transfiguration for a week. Her eyes were
stinging. Stop it. Of course, she needed to read at least six more books on potioneering – the margin
between Harry’s grades her hers was getting to be cataclysmic. She needed to look up some more
protective enchantments. Her lower lip trembled.
Stop it stop it stop it.

She spent the whole day in the restricted section of the library, after which she felt she could
confidently claim to be fully capable of writing a top-quality dissertation on the protego charm. A
Saturday well spent, all in all, if you were gracious enough to strike the ten minutes she spent
sniffling from the record.

On standing up, she found her legs to be stiff beyond reason – she very nearly toppled right back
into the armchair she had spent... well, shit... eight hours nestled in. It was nine o’clock at night.
She’d missed dinner, tea, and supper. The moment she stepped out of the library doors, she
rummaged around in her bag in a desperate frenzy until she found a slightly crushed granola bar.

She couldn't muster the energy required to visit Harry and Ron in the hospital wing... or to do
anything besides hiking up to the Gryffindor tower.

Sometime later, she was leaning over the sink before a bathroom mirror, lethargically plucking
stray hairs from around her eyebrows.

She looked so terribly tired. Hours of unremitted reading had caused the vessels under her eyes to
swell up, and the eyes themselves looked flat, strained, and dull. Her skin was alarmingly pasty.
She slapped both her cheeks repeatedly, and soon they were stained pink in the most unnatural way.
She had her hair pulled up into a high bun that was nearly the same size as her head. It made her
thin neck look ridiculously twig-like. She followed the gently curving column down to where it met
her shoulder – harshly cut by the prominent line of her clavicle – and then back up. Her gaze
landed on the mole a few inches under her left ear. It was more like a glorified freckle, really; but it
stood out explicitly against her current pallor, like a coffee grain on ivory.

Hermione sighed and splashed cold water on her face until it was numb.

When she was finally curled up in bed, she wrote a letter to her parents. It was six pages long, and
suffused with a tone of light frivolity and cheerfulness.

By the time she finished all her pending work on Sunday, the clock struck had noon, and Hermione
felt like she’d lived through the day six times over. It was proving to be one of the longest
weekends of her life.

She loitered around the upper corridors, thinking about the dark and sinister premonitions she’d
extracted from her Arithmantic calculations. Most of the sixth floor was deserted – until she found
Dean standing before a portrait with a frown on his face. Hermione walked over and stood beside
him.
The picture was of one Philippe d'Orleans, a late descendant of some French aristocratic
(pureblood) line, and he was fast asleep, completely oblivious to his audience.

“Fucking hideous, innit?” Dean commented disdainfully.

“Impudence!” Monsieur d’Orleans howled, suddenly wide awake, “I wood ‘ave you locked in an
iron maiden fool of Bubotuber pus for zis!”

“Not you, you toff,” Dean barked, and then turned to Hermione, ignoring the indignant sputtering
that followed, “Look at the brushwork. It’s terrible.”

It was. The shabbily applied paint was made all too obvious by the poor choice of colour and
clumsy composition. Dean ducked his head and peered at the artist’s signature.

“Some Collins bloke. 1920. The height of the modernist movement and this is what magical people
were doing. Can you imagine what incredible pictures they could be making? Their paintings
fucking move, and all they’re using it for is to immortalise stuffed up geezers like old Philippe
here.”

“Connard! Va te faire enculet!”

“Well, art in the wizarding world is sub-par across the board,” Hermione paused to cast an efficient
silencing spell on the raving Marquis, and then continued, “I mean, look at the photography, the
novels, the poetry, the music....”

“Oh, the music,” Dean groaned, “You right. It’s all rubbish.”

They left d’Orleans miming furiously and continued to examine the paintings lining the wall.

“Tsk. Awful. I’d call it derivative, but the so-called artist probably didn’t even know he’d
inadvertently butchered Velasquez’s style.”

Dean laughed, “We need to bring about a revolution, comrade Granger. It’s on us.”

“It ought to be really bloody easy in such a boring and conservative cultural climate.”

Eventually, they ran out of wall, and standing at the end of the corridor, Dean asked, “Have you
seen Ginny, by the way?”

“Er, no. I haven’t since yesterday morning.”

“You and I have that in common then,” he said, bitterly, “She’s refusing to talk to me because I
laughed when precious Harry fell off his broom.”

“That wasn’t funny,” Hermione snapped.

“I know it wasn’t. Everything was going wrong that day, damn it. Everything. Then Harry gets
bludgered, and Luna’s carrying on in her way... I just... It was hysterical laughter, alright? I wasn’t
enjoying myself. And Ginny just jumped down my throat.”

“Okay, I understand. But you know she’s a bit hot-headed –”

“A ‘bit’?!”

“– and she’s sensitive about quiddi–”

“About Harry.”

Hermione didn’t know what else to say; her own feelings of resentment were blocking her from
formulating a proper defence for Ginny’s case.

“She’s going to have to do it,” he continued angrily, “Break up with me, I mean. She can’t just
ignore me and expect me to do it for her. Bitch can’t have it that easy.”

Hermione stared at her feet, biting down hard on her lip.

“Sorry,” he offered after a few seconds.

“It’s... You’re... upset...”

Dean just laughed humourlessly.

She looked at her watch, and good grief, it was only twelve-thirty.
Things looked better on Monday. Hermione sat next to Harry, nibbling on scrambled eggs and toast
while he absentmindedly sipped his pumpkin juice, probably preoccupied with thoughts about
Ginny and Dean’s row, and his upcoming lesson with Dumbledore.

Ron was sitting with Lavender, both stonily ignoring each other. Hermione wasn’t feeling petty
enough to gloat... even to herself.

Barely had she set foot out of the Great Hall when she stood face to face (well, face to chest) with
Theo. He raised an eyebrow at her startled expression and asked, “Off to class then?”

There was a subtle accusatory tinge to his enquiry, to his stance, to the very air surrounding him.

“Yes. Transfiguration.”

“Okay. I’ll walk you to it.”

“No!” she blurted, “You needn’t bother. I just...” she looked to her left, and to her right, and then
called out “Harry!” and scampered away without another word of explanation.

She felt terrible and nauseous, wishing she hadn’t eaten anything just moments before. Still, there
was a sense of calm that came with the knowledge that she was pulling away before he finally
decided to.

“...when we came out of the memory, Dumbledore told me that Hepzibah Smith was found dead
two days later, and her House-Elf confessed to accidentally poisoning her cocoa. Slytherin’s locket
and Hufflepuff’s cup were gone. And the one everybody knew as Tom Riddle seemed to fall off the
face of the earth.”

“Blimey,” Ron breathed.

“He framed the House-Elf?” Hermione demanded, shrilly.

Harry nodded knowingly.

“All worth it in his opinion. The only thing he cared about was getting his hands on those treasures.
The next memory was Dumbledore’s, ten years later. Riddle came into his office and asked for a
position on the Hogwarts staff.”

“He what?” Ron looked stunned.

Pish posh. Hermione was still fuming over the fate of Hepzibah’s poor House-Elf.

“As the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Dumbledore turned him down, of course, and he
was none too happy about it. By that time he’d established himself as the notorious Lord
Voldemort, and had started calling his followers Death Eaters.”

“Godric’s gonads. Why was he so keen on teaching here?” Ron asked.

“Dunno. Dumbledore says it’ll all make sense once I’ve got that memory from Slughorn. Fuck. I
really wish I knew how.”

“You’re going to have to be cunning and underhand about it, Harry. You know how starry-eyed he
gets around you,” Hermione said, “You’ll need to butter him up just right...”

“I tried that, Hermione,” Harry whinged despondently, “He shoved me out of his office.”

Three pairs of eyes – blue, green, and brown – stared pensively at the Gryffindor hearth. Reflected
firelight took on a different hue in each of their irises.

Hermione threw herself into assignments, work, and research with doubly redoubled gusto, which
was more than a little extreme, even by her standards. When she wasn’t in class, she lived in the
restricted section of the library.

Lavender scowled every time she saw her. Ron was perpetually agitated; Harry preoccupied.
Parvati kept trying to talk to her about Padma, Dean kept trying to talk to her about Ginny. The
only way to save herself from the talons of a menacing meltdown was to hide under a pile of tomes.

By mid-week, she looked like a forgotten member of the Addams family. She let her hair spill
down her shoulders and back, silently willing the waves and spirals to be as outrageous as possible.
Might as well go all out.
She walked to the greenhouses with Neville, unreservedly convinced that he was the only sane one
among her group of peers. He was reading out a passage about the most effective methods of
harvesting goosegrass from the latest addition of The New Journal of Herbology while Hermione
listened. She remembered when his voice had squeaked and quivered continuously, when he had
been the same height as her, when he meekly shuffled up to her and asked if she had seen his toad...

Feeling a surge of fondness towards him, Hermione smiled and asked, “Would you mind if I read
your Herbology essays from now on? I’m sure they’ll be immensely insightful.”

He flushed with pleasure and agreed at once.

Theo sat within the range of her peripheral vision, and spent the entire potion’s lesson assiduously
glowering at her. Hermione shook her hair down to hide him from view, but it didn’t help at all.

She could feel his icy gaze.

Cutting up chomping cabbages was hard enough without being completely distracted. Gingerly, she
stole a glance in his direction... his mouth tightened, but the hard intransigence of his glare
remained the same.

“AAAAH!”

Ernie’s unexpected shout commandeered everybody’s attention. He was clutching at his bleeding
hand and gnashing his teeth.... At her?

It took a perplexed Hermione a few moments to realise that her overzealous cabbage had taken
advantage of her inattentiveness, clamped down on her knife and flung it at the unsuspecting
Hufflepuff.

“Shit! I’m so sorry Ernie!” she wrung her hands tensely.

“Oho! What’s this commotion?” Slughorn waddled over, and seemed to find the entire situation
rather humorous. He sent Ernie off to Madam Pomfrey, and laid a reassuring hand on Hermione’s
shoulder, “Harmless accident, Ms Granger. Happens to the best of us.”

She held down the demonic homicidal vegetable and hacked it into shreds.

It was only after she had put all the required ingredients into her cauldron and set it to simmer, that
she risked another quick look at Theo. He shook his head hostilely.

The seat next to him where Malfoy usually sat was empty.
A tawny, speckled owl dropped a mint green envelope on Hermione’s lap, stole a scone off her
plate, and flew away... all in a matter of seconds.

A broad grin broke across her face, and she flew from the crowded Great Hall, too, ignoring
Harry’s “Who’s it from?” and Ron’s “Wheh oo tearin offoo?”

She raced through the castle until she found the perfect secluded nook with a lovely large window
to settle by. And there, with a happy sigh, she opened up the long missive her parents had written to
her.
They always wrote those letters together – two voices, one note – and when she read them she felt
like she’d been transported back into their living room, on the settee, watching them as they talked
to her and to each other.

... your father has decided to sew the most preposterously garish patches onto his jeans like some
sort of delinquent teenager... ...old Mrs Henley’s tabby somehow got trapped in our shed, and now
she’s convinced we torture and kill cats in our spare time... ...your mother is baking again; SEND
HELP... ...Hermione, my brilliant girl, your thoughts about Kafka were so discerning... ...Would you
believe it, apparently Richey’s been spotted in Goa...
...We miss you...
...We love you...
...Hope you’re as excited as we are about this summer and our holiday in Australia.

Hermione clutched the letter to her heart and basked in its sweetness. She carefully put it between
the pages of a book in her bag; in the evening it would join the thick bundle she kept in the bottom
of her trunk.

She didn’t think she’d be going to Australia any time soon; not with the way everything seemed to
be rapidly coming to a head.

She stood up slowly and looked out the window, detesting the way her joy upon reading her
parents’ words was going up in smoke, leaving behind the ashy residue of despair.

There were two figures leisurely circuiting the grounds a few meters away from the Whomping
Willow. Even though they were at a considerable distance, Hermione could tell that one had long
red hair, and the other was wearing a blue and green scarf around his neck.
The hair and the scarf were both flapping in the wind like banners.
Harry, Ron, and Seamus were talking and Hermione paid them no heed. She was a girl possessed:
steadfast and resolute. She entered the Great Hall with just one thing on her mind – she would not,
could not, let a silly wooden ring and a vaporous ministry lackey defeat her.

She closed her eyes when Twycross began his countdown. She pictured the hoop, the whole hoop
and nothing but the hoop (I swear before almighty Merlin)...

“...3!”

She spun. Every molecule of air around her hardened like concrete and slammed into her with the
force of a mallet, squeezing, constricting all her bones and organs tightly. She opened her eyes with
a gasp, and she found herself standing squarely inside her hoop.

“Well done, Ms...”

“Granger,” Professor McGonagall supplied with a glint of pride in her eyes.

“Yes,” Twycoss droned, “Ms Granger. Why don’t we see if you can manage that twice in a row...?”

She absolutely could, and did.

 Twenty
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted from HBP.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Ron exclamations were drenched in panic, his eyes were fixed on a sign on the Gryffindor notice
board. He looked green enough for Hermione to feel legitimately scared that the Sunday roast he
had consumed not too long ago was going to make an ugly reappearance.

It was an announcement regarding the date of their Apparition test.

“Bugger, bugger, buggering shite. I’m going to fail. There’s no way I’m not going to. Fred and
George will never let me live it down!”

The common room was filled with sixth year students in a similar state, while simultaneously
scrambling to complete their Defence Against the Dark Arts essay on Dementors.

Hermione had got hers over and done with three days ago.

She looked across at Harry who was sitting on the other side of the table and frowning down at an
open book. He had decided that the solution to his Slughorn-predicament lay with the self-styled
“half-blood Prince”.

She wrinkled her nose and said, “You won’t find anything in there.”

Harry huffed, and looked up to scowl at her.

“Don’t start, Hermione. If it hadn’t been for the Prince, Ron wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

“He would if you’d just listened to Snape in our first year,” she snapped.

She waited expectantly for him to say something more, but he simply turned back to his book,
silently dismissing her. So she spoke again, more irate than before,

“I’m telling you, the stupid Prince isn’t going to be able to help you with this, Harry! There’s only
one way to force someone to do what you want, and that’s the Imperius Curse, which is illegal–”

“Yeah, I know that, thanks,” Harry cut in glibly, not bothering to look at her again, “That’s why I’m
looking for something different. Dumbledore says Veritaserum won’t do it, but there might be
something else, a potion or a spell…”

“You’re going about it the wrong way,” she stressed, “Only you can get the memory, Dumbledore
says. That must mean you can persuade Slughorn where other people can’t. It’s not a question of
slipping him a potion, anyone could do that–”

She was interrupted again, this time by Ron: “How d’you spell ‘belligerent’?” He was feverishly
shaking his quill, looking riled up, “It can’t be B–U–M –”

“No, it isn’t,” Hermione assured him, plucking his parchment away from his hands and examining
his ungainly scrawl, “And ‘augury’ doesn’t begin O–R–G either,” She stared at him with
bewilderment. “What kind of quill are you using?”

“It’s one of Fred and George’s Spell-Check ones … but I think the charm must be wearing off…”
he answered sulkily.

“Yes, it must. Because we were asked how we’d deal with dementors, not ‘Dugbogs,’ and I don’t
remember you changing your name to ‘Roonil Wazlib’ either.”

Ron gaped at his essay – stricken.

“Ah no!” he moaned, “Don’t say I’ll have to write the whole thing out again!”

Hermione sighed at the pathetically aggrieved look on his face, and pulled her wand out.

“It’s okay,” she said consolingly, “we can fix it.”

She began tapping at all the faulty words, correcting them one by one. Ron watched her for a
moment, and then leaned back in his chair, covering his eyes tiredly.

“I love you, Hermione.”

She nearly threw his banal, badly written essay right back at him. Anger, sharp and scorching,
speared its way up her spine and flooded her face with heat. How dare he… how dare he say that to
her, now, so flippantly, as a way to thank her for helping him with his bloody homework, when she
had spent over a year aching to hear it from him.

With great difficulty she took a breath to calm herself down, and said as disinterestedly as could
manage, “Don’t let Lavender hear you saying that.”

He continued to rub his eyes, radiating fatigue. “I won’t. …Or maybe I will… then she’ll ditch
me…”

“Why don’t you ditch her if you want to finish it?” Harry asked quickly, saving Ron from
Hermione's reaction.

“You haven’t ever chucked anyone, have you? You and Cho just–”

“Sort of fell apart, yeah.”

“Wish that would happen with me and Lavender. But the more I hint I want to finish it, the tighter
she holds on. It’s like going out with the giant squid.”

It was clearer than ever, at that moment, that Ron and Ginny were siblings. Apparently, they
employed the same tactics when it came to ending relationships.

“Fecking no good, sallow, greasy wankstain!”

They watched Seamus stomp off to bed furiously, all the while muttering colourful adjectives to
describe Snape.

Harry and Ron had fallen silent after Seamus’ departure, thankfully. Hermione felt angry with
everyone and everything.

“There,” she said eventually, and gave Ron his essay back.

They were the only people left in the common room by then.

“Thanks a million,” he said, “Can I borrow your quill for the conclusion?”

Of course he could. She handed him the feather wordlessly, and sat back and observed his
silhouette. He was too tall for the low table he was working on, so he hunched awkwardly over his
parchment. His hair hung over his forehead, glowing in the light of the fire. Her resentment towards
him dissipated with the suddenness of a flame being doused with a bucket of sand. He distractedly
bit the corner of his lip and furrowed his brow as he worked, looking for all the world like a
dedicated scholar...

...A small explosion like a gunshot rang out, and she shrieked. Ron jerked wildly, sousing his essay
with ink.

“Kreacher!” Harry cried.

He bowed deeply, and rasped, “Master said he wanted regular reports on what the Malfoy boy is
doing, so Kreacher has come to give–”

Crack.

This time it was Dobby. He glared at Kreacher with his enormous eyes.

“Dobby has been helping too, Harry Potter! And Kreacher ought to tell Dobby when he is coming
to see Harry Potter so they can make their reports together!”

Unacceptably baffled, Hermione demanded an explanation.

Harry dithered, shooting her an uncertain glance, “Well… they’ve been following Malfoy for me...”

“Night and day,” Kreacher added waspishly.

“Dobby has not slept for a week, Harry Potter!” Dobby chirped deliriously.

“You haven’t slept, Dobby?” Hermione raged, “But surely, Harry, you didn’t tell him not to–”

“No! No, of course I didn’t! Dobby, you can sleep, all right?” (– well, how benevolent of you,
Harry!–) “But has either of you found out anything?”

She participated sparingly in the discussion that followed. Finally, Malfoy’s mysterious
disappearances had been accounted for. She almost found herself smacking a book on her head like
Harry, because it was so obvious.

The second after he dismissed the two House-Elves, Harry turned to Hermione and Ron, and
beamed.

“How good’s this? We know where Malfoy’s going! We’ve got him cornered now!”

Ron shrugged glumly, dabbing ineffectually at the puddle of ink on his essay.
With a long-suffering sigh, Hermione pulled it away from him and began draining off the ink off
with her wand.

“But what’s all this about him going up there with a ‘variety of students’?” she asked Harry, “How
many people are in on it? You wouldn’t think he’d trust lots of them to know what he’s doing…”

“Yeah, that is weird. I heard him telling Crabbe it wasn’t Crabbe’s business what he was doing…
so what’s he telling all these… all these…” Harry pondered silently for a minute... then suddenly –
“God, I’ve been stupid,” he said quietly. “It’s bloody obvious, isn’t it? There was a great vat of it
down in the dungeon… He could’ve nicked some any time during that lesson…”

“Nicked what?” Ron wondered.

Agitation had driven Harry to his feet; he paced madly as he rambled.

“Polyjuice Potion! He stole some of the Polyjuice Potion Slughorn showed us in our first Potions
lesson… There aren’t a whole variety of students standing guard for Malfoy… it’s just Crabbe and
fucking Goyle as usual… Yeah, it all fits! They’re stupid enough to do what they’re told even if he
won’t tell them what he’s up to… but he doesn’t want them to be seen lurking around outside the
Room of Requirement, so he’s got them taking Polyjuice to make them look like other people…
Those two girls I saw him with when he missed Quidditch – Crabbe and Goyle!”

Ron threw back his head and cackled. “He’s got Crabbe and Goyle transforming into girls?
Blimey… No wonder they don’t look too happy these days… I’m surprised they don’t tell him to
go fuck himself…”

“Well, they wouldn’t, would they, if he’s shown them his Dark Mark?” Harry said like he was
stating the obvious.

That was the point at which Hermione decided it was time for her to leave.

“Hmmm,” she said, “the Dark Mark we don’t know exists...”

Harry gave her a superior sort of look.

“We’ll see,” he said boldly.

“Yes, we will,” Hermione said. She stood up, picked up her bag, and gave him one final, solemn
look, “But, Harry, before you get all excited, I still don’t think you’ll be able to get into the Room
of Requirement without knowing what’s there first. And I don’t think you should forget that what
you’re supposed to be concentrating on is getting that memory from Slughorn. Good night.”

She darted up to her dormitory, ignoring Harry’s look of annoyance. He had been ignoring hers for
much longer.

She tossed and turned in bed for a long time that night. The disquietude she’d been feeling was a
raging storm now – her very own Great Red Spot.

If Malfoy was truly the one behind the failed attempts at Dumbledore’s life, whatever he was
working on in the Room of Requirement was sure to be extremely dangerous. She doubted he was
going there to indulge in poetic bouts of night-time brooding, as Theo had once claimed. And
speaking of whom... she had no option but to talk to Theo again. Now that she had this new bit of
information in her arsenal. He wouldn’t be able to dismiss her all that easily.

...That is if he would be willing to talk to her at all...

Hermione grumbled to herself, and then flipped over to lie on her belly, pressing her face into her
pillow.

“Beauty, truth, and rarity.

Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos’d in cinders lie.”

Why couldn't Malfoy continue deriding her at every given opportunity? If only he had
bombastically threatened to hex her when they’d nearly collided... She knew exactly who that
person was.
Who was this cold, haunted, evasive, and scheming shadow? Was he the trap, the trigger, or the
hunter?

“...Here enclos’d in cinders lie.”

She wondered what he thought of Raskolnikov.

Hermione felt too wound up to stomach anything more than a cup of tea for breakfast. She shot a
stealthy glance at the Slytherin table – Malfoy was notably missing; as were Crabbe and Goyle. It
was fairly safe to deduce that they was currently up on the seventh floor, just as it was safe to
presume that Harry was going to waste his entire morning pointlessly pacing before a wall. He
already was devising elaborate strategies to break into the room that Malfoy required, and she
remained deliberately uninvolved, much to his displeasure.

An owl bearing the Daily Prophet shook her out of her ruminations. However, before she could
open it out, Harry laid his hand atop it and said, “Look, I haven’t forgotten about Slughorn, but I
haven’t got a clue how to get that memory off him, and until I get a brain wave why shouldn’t I
find out what Malfoy’s doing?”

“I’ve already told you, you need to persuade Slughorn,” she said, “It’s not a question of tricking
him or bewitching him, or Dumbledore could have done it in a second. Instead of messing around
outside the Room of Requirement” – she yanked the newspaper out from under his hand – “you
should go and find Slughorn and start appealing to his better nature. How can't make any progress
until we know what Horcruxes are!”

She left for Ancient Runes soon after, mentally adding layers of resilience to her skin with every
step she took.
All of last week she’d chosen to sit beside Terry Boot, so when she settled on her usual seat that
day, Theo looked at her in surprise, and then antipathy. Hermione kept her eyes fixed on Professor
Babbling. For the first time, she felt that the woman was living up to her name.

The lesson ended, too soon. Theo stood up to leave and Hermione reached out and grabbed the
back of this cloak.

“May I have a word, please?”

He eyed the fabric held tightly in her fist until she slowly let go of it.

“Please,” she said once more, plaintively.

His aspect was one of detachment, the kind he bestowed upon the masses who didn’t know him,
and whom he didn’t care to know.

“Okay," he agreed coolly.

Hermione nodded, and led him out of the classroom to a secluded alcove behind an arras depicting
the goblin rebellion of 1752.

“Look,” she began... and then took a deep breath, bowed her head, and carried on, “We – that is,
Harry, Ron, and I – know that Malfoy’s been spending most of his time in the room of requirement.
We haven’t figured out what he’s doing yet, but –”
“You want to talk about Draco!?”

He sounded furious and incredulous, and when Hermione lifted her eyes to look at him, she found
that his expression reflected the same.

“Er, yes,” she said timidly, “Harry is absolutely determined to find out what –”

“You want,” he snarled, “to talk about Draco.”

Hermione stared. “Er...”

“Fuck you,” he spat, ruthlessly.

And then he stormed away, leaving Hermione alone and unable to breathe.

She ghosted through the next two days in autopilot mode, going from one lesson to the other,
skipping meals, and dodging conversations.

She spent the nights curled up on the window seat, trying to read... plaiting and unplaiting her
hair...

There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend,

And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming
And humming Sands, where windy surges wend:
And he called loudly to the stars to bend
From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they
Among themselves laugh on and sing alway...

“You’ve really upset him, you know?”

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut. “I know.”

Approaching Luna had been her last desperate attempt to fix things, now that getting Theo alone on
her own was no longer an option.

“I’ve just been so stupid, Luna. Stupid, and... and... thoughtless. I know I’ve done a lot of
questionable and vengeful things, but I’ve never felt like such a bad person before.”

She morosely peered up at the cloudless sky.

“You’re not a bad person, Hermione,” Luna reproved gently, “You’re a little socially inept. So am I,
I think, from what I’ve gathered...”

Hermione smiled sadly at the odd girl with her dirigible plum earrings and strings of cornflowers in
her hair.

“...Theo is as well,” Luna continued, “We have to band together – there will be a time when the
Ministry brings out its mind-controlling tweed caps – you might remember seeing them in the
Department of Mysteries last year – and we’ll be the first ones they come after,” Luna leaned
forward and tapped her temple, “The so-called eccentric ones.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll tell him to hear you out. He listens to me.”

Feeling a touch less burdened than she had in days, Hermione grinned.

“That he does.”

Vicious hunger clawed at her insides. She hadn’t eaten properly in ages, and on Thursday evening
she felt the absence of every single meal she had passed over.
She raced past lamps as they flared to life, eager to reach the Great Hall for dinner.

Suddenly, something latched onto her arm and pulled her into an empty classroom. Hermione
yelped in panic, whirled around with her wand raised, ready to.....

“Theo?!” she gasped, “What the hell –”

“You wanted to talk,” he barked with a sneer, “Go ahead. Talk.”

“Oh.”

Hermione tried to buy herself some time by making a great show of stowing her wand away and
catching her breath.
Theo was having none of it.

“Talk,” he growled.

“Yes. Yes, okay,” Hermione wrung her hands and fixed her gaze on Theo’s knee, “I’m just... I’m
really sor–”

“What did I do?”

“Huh?”

He turned his back to her and walked a few paces away.

“What. Did. I. Do. Why did you suddenly decide to toss me out of your life?”

“I didn’t... that wasn’t...”

“Oh, save it,” he snapped wrathfully, “Something fucking happened. I tried all week to
understand... to get you to explain... and you just kept running away from me like I was infected
with a particularly gruesome strain of Spattergroit. And now you want to talk? Lovely,” he
doggedly kept his back to her, “Tell me what I did to suffer your disapproval.”

“Nothing,” Hermione wailed desperately, “You didn’t do anything! I just... just...”

“Just what? I badgered Ginny endlessly, but she said you’ve been avoiding her as well. Fucking
Potter said –”

“You spoke to Harry?!”

“–Potter said that you’re perfectly fine, and are currently busy helping Weasley catch up with his
coursework,” – He still hadn’t turned around – “Is that it then? You got your old chum back, so
now you no longer need me around?”

“No! Theo, no! That’s not remotely –”

“You want to talk about Draco? He bloody warned me. But I told him he was wrong, that your
friendship is true. Told him that you... you...” Hermione looked woefully at the back of his head as
he shook it, “...Fuck. I was even making an effort to get along with your friends. For you. And then
what? I’m left to spend my afternoons moaning at sodding Ginny Weasley. Is she supposed to be
my consolation prize? What exactly do –”

“I thought you were getting along swimmingly,” she let drop, tears stinging her eyes.

Theo froze. His entire frame stiffened. And slowly... he turned around... and stared at her.

He got it. He absolutely got it, and Hermione, terrified, wanted to run away. She wanted to escape
the stifling room and his penetrating gaze.

But he didn’t allow her that option. He marched towards her, stony-faced, and gripped her
shoulders.
“Have I not –” and then he shook her, hard, “– made it abundantly clear that I am not like those
disgracefully flaky tossers you hang around?!” he shook her again, “Have I not proved that I won’t
bloody abandon you? Have I not adequately expressed –” another hard shake “– my regard for
you? Is it not apparent enough that I –”

“I’m sorry,” Hermione blubbered, crying in earnest, “I’m so... sorry... didn’t mean... sorry... just so
pathetic... terrible person... I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

She wasn’t making any sense. She didn’t know how many words she was actually saying, and how
many were getting lost among her sobs and gasps.

“Such a stupid girl” she heard, though it was barely above a whisper, and then she found herself
being pulled towards him... against him... and he hugged her.

She bawled into his robes, maintaining an erratic litany of “sorry, sorry, sorry...” and he patted her
back gently, saying “Shh... shush... enough...”

“Enough,” he iterated firmly, pulling away and grasping her shoulders once again, “Calm down.”

“Theo. I’m sorry...”

“By Salazar, I heard you the first sixty times, alright? It’s okay...”

“No it isn’t!” she sniffed, roughly mopping her cheeks with her fingers, “I’m just so sor–”

“Did I ever tell you exactly how my mother died, Hermione?”

Well, that shut her up.

“Wha- what?”

“I was four. Just a couple of months short of five, actually... so one evening, I was in my room
when I heard loud crashes and screams coming from downstairs....”

Theo shuddered. He removed his hands from her shoulders, walked over to the nearest chair, and
sat down forcibly. He looked far away into the distance; his eyes were unfocused.

“It took me a while to find them – the old ancestral home’s rather whopping...” that was the point at
which his voice began to quiver, “Father was standing in the dead centre of the parlour, yelling and
waving his wand around. Furniture was flying about, crashing against the walls... colliding against
each other... My mother was cowering in a corner... pleading... I think... I might have called out to
her... There was another really loud boom... and that’s all. The next thing I know, I’m in Malfoy
manor... on Narcissa’s lap... in hysterics... My mother was dead.”

He closed his eyes and sighed; Hermione slapped a hand over her mouth in horror.

“They questioned me for hours and in many different ways... I just couldn’t remember anything.
But... I must’ve... I had to have seen something, because I’ve been able to see Thestrals ever since.”

“Oh god,” Hermione whispered.

He opened his eyes and nodded.

“Now, here’s the point: after that day, I spent most of my time with the Malfoys. They practically
adopted me – I ate at least one meal a day with them. I was a part of family outings, picnics, trips to
Diagon... Narcissa read to me, Lucius bought me my first broom... they never missed a birthday... I
went with them to France every summer...” he said with a tender smile, “And Draco – Draco –
didn’t for a second resent my presence, or the fact that I had claimed some of his parents’ attention.
If I call him my brother, it’s because that’s exactly what he is. And yes, I know he's involved in
something very grave indeed... He isn’t going to tell me, Hermione. I’ve... I’ve begged, but he just
gives me that fucking smirk of his and says ‘plausible deniability’. We had a huge row over this
about two weeks back. He said he really can’t tell me – for my safety, and his safety, and Narcissa’s
safety. I did, however, make him swear he’d come to me if things got out of hand...
“And I’ve written to Narcissa eight times, five times to Lucius, interrogated Snape (got me a
detention, that), and endured a soul-deadening conversation with Goyle... to no avail. All I can do is
keep a close eye on Draco, and make sure he’s safe. I can talk to him and keep him sane. I can give
him the books you so kindly contribute; I can make sure he eats and sleeps from time to time. And
before you ask... No. I’m not going to Dumbledore, or Slughorn, or sodding McGonagall. I will not
turn against him... not for anything; not ever. Surely you can understand that?”

She did.

For even if he had admitted to being in cahoots with Malfoy... she wouldn’t have turned him in.
Just like it was when Harry was concerned; she would cast away her supposed morals for Theo,
too.

“My world... my family... consists of three people,” he said, and finally turned in the chair to look
at her fully, “Well... four now, I’d say.”

He smiled, shrugged casually.

“Oh come here,” he huffed, and when she only took a tentative step forward, he reached out,
grabbed her hips, and tugged her closer. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his head
against her lower ribs. She softly carded her fingers through his hair. He sighed.

By and by, he slackened his hold.

“Let’s go eat,” he said while standing up and vanishing the tear-stains on his robes, “The noises
your stomach is making are positively feral.”
Early spring lent a beautiful charm to the village of Hogsmeade. Trees sprinkled with bright green
leaves gleamed under the resplendent sun, and all the shops had little pots of flowers adorning their
windows.

Hermione and Ron strolled towards the square for extra apparition lessons. Ron was jittery with
nerves, making him chatty, which was having a rather unfortunate impact on Hermione’s once-calm
nerves.

“I’m so bloody glad to be out here! Lavender’s not going to be of age till late June... Means there’s
no danger of her ambushing me for the next three hours. Whew!”

Hermione didn’t role her eyes – a remarkable show of restraint.

“Seriously, what more can I do? I break every plan we make, skip out on her over and over again...
how thick can she be? Why can’t some people take a bloody hint?”

“Mmhmm.”

Hermione had been glad they were leaving Harry behind... even though it meant he’d be stuck in a
self-inflicted exile on the seventh floor. At least she wouldn’t have to pretend to brush off the
Malfoy issue by building up the Slughorn issue, (it was so obvious that the latter deserve all of
Harry’s attention). Now she really wished he had come with them.

“I don’t even let her snog me all that much now –” oh good god “–but it’s like she’s decided it’s all
some big challenge for her to overcome. Makes a bloke wonder, you know... what if all girls are
like this? Clingy. Needy. It’s enough to make a permanent bachelor out of me...”

“Oh look, that’s Theo. Hey! Theo!” she called out, waving.

“Huh?!” Ron choked, “What are you – No –”

“Hi, Hermione. ...Weasley.” Theo smiled tightly, shooting her a fleeting, questioning look.

“Hi,” Hermione said brightly, “Excited about the lesson? Think you’ll finally manage to pull it
off?”

“Sure. After aaaaall this time we’ve spent together,” Theo slung his arm around her shoulders,
“Some of your brilliance must have rubbed off on me.”

Ron scowled severely with his hands deep in his pockets, and remained adamantly quiet the rest of
the way.

*
The lesson went rather well. Hermione travelled from point A to B, no problem, all six times. Theo
did it three times. Ron overshot – landing up outside Scrivenshaft’s Quill shop, rather than Madam
Puddifoot’s. There was only one instance of splinching: Justin Flinch-Fletchley again, regrettably.

Later, everybody filled into the Three Broomsticks for a celebratory round of drinks. Hermione sat
at a corner table with Theo, Ron, and Seamus.

“Bloody weird to be having a pint with you,” Seamus muttered to Theo.

“Likewise, er...”

“Seamus Finnigan, ya twat. I’m in four of your classes.”

“Right, right. Of course. Finnigan. Sláinte!”

With that, Theo took a long sip of his butterbeer. Seamus watched him with narrowed eyes for a
second, before shrugging, raising his glass, and chugging it down.

Their strange little party was interrupted not much later.

“Ms Granger,” Twycross said genially, “You were absolutely spectacular today. I’ve been
conducting these lessons for years; never before have I seen any student grasp the D’s so promptly,
so firmly –” Theo, Seamus, and Ron were sniggering behind their mugs, “– such fine technique!
Your movement in particular is a stroke of genius...”

“Thank you Mr Twycross.” Hermione shut him down before he could inflict any real damage.
Seamus was already a worrying shade of purple, and after the man had gone, he bent over laughing.

“Grasp... movement... stroke,” he wheezed.

“Very mature, Seamus,” Hermione rebuked, taking a dainty sip of her drink.

With a laden tray, Madam Rosmerta approached them, tacitly enquiring if they required refills. She
looked dreadfully exhausted, just as she had around Christmas. Her usual coquettish effusiveness
was completely lacking, and when they all refused refills, she nodded indifferently.

“Soooo, Rosmerta,” Ron spoke in a voice two octaves lower than usual, “Have you heard the joke
about the blind healer?”

“No,” she replied vacantly.

“Well, see... there’s this healer, and he’s blind, yeah? One day he was going to perform a tricky boil
removal spell on a patient, and –”

“How the hell was he allowed to do that?”

“Bugger off, Seamus. It’s a joke. So anyway, Rosmerta, the healer goes up to his patient –”

“This premise is a joke.”

 “Shut up, Hermione. His patience’s a hag –”

“What?! There isn’t a hag in all the world who’d want any of her boils removed...”

“Nobody asked you, Nott! His patient, a hag, wanted her boil removed. Now, she had a mimbulus
mimbletonia plant on her lap –”

“Why the hell –”

“She just did, alright? Shut. Up. She had a mimbulus mimbletonia plant on her lap. The blind
healer reached out, feeling his way towards his patient –”

“That’s just ridiculous.”

“The wrong boil! He burst the wrong boil, and there was stink sap everywhere!” Ron roared,
panting furiously.

The entire pub fell silent.

“That wasn’t funny,” Madam Rosmerta stated, and drifted away.

Ron grimaced in mortification. He could barely look at his three compatriots, but did manage to
muster the pluck to demand: “Not. One. Word.”

In all fairness, they abided by that request. Not one of them spoke a single word. They did,
however, laugh until their faces were red.

On the walk back to the castle, Theo and Seamus broke into an improvised, largely nonsensical and
explicitly lewd ditty about hags, healers, and boil covered D’s. Ron sulked, kicking up an
unnecessary amount of dirt with every step he took.

Chapter End Notes

1. "There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend...": The Sad Shepherd, by William
Butler Yeats
 Twenty-One
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted from HBP.

The deserted passageway was a mesh of beguiling shadows; intrigue and conspiracy hung thick in
the air like a rancid fog. The night was a quite one; the kind where all sorts of no good sinister
creatures, great and small, came out to play.

Hermione Granger, P.I., pulled her dark cloak tightly around her (impeccably disillusioned) frame,
and she peeped around the corner leading into the seventh-floor corridor. Her mark – tall, slender,
and so very blond – had just stepped out of what had been a solid wall, and was surveying his
surroundings with great caution. He had such a strong aura of ambiguity about him – his fair
colouring somehow able to scorch and chill at the same time.
Beautiful, sure, but there ain’t never been no pretty face that had managed to lead Hermione
Granger, P.I., astray...

Draco Malfoy could not be a femme fatale. Er, homme fatale. Absolutely not.

The sound of soft footsteps brought back her focus: Malfoy was walking down the corridor, away
from her. She hastily made to follow, silencing her own footfalls.

Attempting to break into the room he had been using would be a completely pointless endeavour.
To her grave disappointment, neither Crabbe nor Goyle were at hand, so she wouldn’t be
eavesdropping on any potentially edifying conversation as she had hoped.
But she continued to trail him, half sprinting to keep him in sight; he really walked quite fast.
There was a hypnotic quality to the way light bounced off his hair. He kept his spine absolutely
straight, his arms swung just the right amount, and his chin remained self-importantly raised. From
the back, none of his recently developed signs of weakness were evident.

He stopped suddenly, and Hermione got so involved in keeping herself from tripping over her own
feet, that she didn’t notice the presence of another person in their midst.

“Pansy,” Malfoy stated, folding his arms across his chest and looking down his nose at the girl.

“Oh, Draco! Where have you been? Sprout said you were supposed to report to her for detention
two hours ago, but nobody had any idea where you were... and oh, you’re in so much trouble...”
“Fuck,” Malfoy spat, “I completely forgot... that dumpy old bale of hay will probably double my
punishment now.”

“Where have you been?” Pansy asked miserably, “Where do you keep going...?”

Malfoy scowled. “None of your business. Now move; I’ve got talk to Snape and see if he’ll get
Sprout to drop this ridiculous detention business...”

“No, Draco, Wait!”

Pansy grabbed onto his arm desperately, and he glared at her in disbelief.

“Have you lost your mind, Pansy? Let. Go.”

“No first you listen, I –”

“Let go now.” He had a crazed, fearsome look in his eyes, and Hermione was quite impressed that
Pansy stood her ground.

“No!” she yelled, “No. First you tell me what you’re doing. I’ve barely seen you in months! You
don’t eat, you’re rarely in class... you don’t even look at me! And you haven’t... we haven’t... in
ages...”

Hermione always thought that if she ever saw Pansy Parkinson cry, she’d be rather... well, not
gleeful... but perhaps filled with some well-deserved schadenfreude. But there was nothing
enjoyable about watching her snivel while clinging onto Malfoy’s arm as he sneered at her
contemptuously.

“Oh poor little Pansy,” he mocked, “Gagging, are we? Why don’t you go ask Higgs? You know
he’s always up for it.”

“Stop it!” she wailed, “Please! I miss you, Draco. And I’m worried about you! Are you... is it... it’s
him, isn’t it? He’s told you to do something, hasn’t he?”

“As I’ve said before, it’s none of your fucking business,” Malfoy said menacingly, bearing down on
her, “And I don’t need you to worry about me. What I need is for you to let go of my arm, and
leave... me... alone.”

With that, he tore his arm out of her clutches and strode away. Left by herself, Pansy pressed her
fist to her mouth to muffle her sobs, and after a minute or two, followed in Malfoy’s still steaming
wake.

Wretchedly ill at ease after that evening’s bit of sleuthing, Hermione Granger, P.I., shuffled back to
her headquarters, a lone figure with a long shadow, brooding intensely.
En route to the Transfiguration classroom for her next lesson, Hermione spotted a familiar cascade
of red hair and realised there was one more person she’d been treating less than fairly of late. She
increased her pace to a trot to catch up with her.

“Hi Ginny,” she said guiltily.

“Well, hello! Long time no see, Herms of my heart,” Ginny said pointedly.

Hermione replied with a clever “Um.”

“Have you and Theo have made up yet?” Ginny demanded.

“We have.”

“Thank Merlin! I swear, if he had come up to me one more time to moan about you, I’d have hexed
him... badly. He was driving me up the wall.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Hermione mumbled.

“What the hell was it all about then? ...No, wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear another word
about it. Between him and Dean I’ve absolutely had it with boys and their bloody whinging. Please
tell me you’re free later? Let’s do something fun. Please.”

“Of course,” Hermione agreed readily, “Come over to my dorm in the evening. You’ve got your
OWL’s coming up; I can help you brush up on Muggle Studies...”

“Hermioneeeee,” Ginny wailed in agony.

Hermione ignored her. “...I’m sure Seamus will let us borrow the gramophone. My dad’s sent me a
‘Best of the Seventies’ record – I will teach you some killer Travolta disco moves.”

Ginny’s eyes twinkled, “I have no idea what any of that means, but I’m sure it’s something I need
to learn.”

The sky was clear and powder blue, the sun was warm and golden, and according to the Daily
Prophet, six people had been killed in the last twenty-four hours: A group of three muggleborns
slaughtered and laid out under a looming dark mark, one member of the Wizengamot known for
taking a strong stance against convicted Death Eaters, one young shopboy running errands in
Diagon Alley, and one... fuck. One five year old boy who’d been brutally and fatally ravaged by
Fenrir Greyback.
Hermione folded the paper and shoved it into her bag, as if the act of putting it away would
somehow erase all the tales of horror it was loaded with. But when she closed her eyes to collect
herself, the back of her eyelids presented her with scenes of gore and blood-soaked damnation.

In a note entirely unlike the usual, her parents had written to her about the wave of terror that had
gripped the nation – the kind that hadn’t been seen since the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ had been put away
over a decade ago. There was a savage new serial killer on the loose, the Police claimed. “Don’t
trust strangers... keep your doors and windows locked at all times...”

The Death Eaters had declared open season on muggles, and apparently the Prophet didn’t think
that it deserved any coverage. Hermione ditched breakfast and went to the library, where she sat
down to write a letter –

Dear Tonks,

It’s been a while since I last heard from you. I hope you’re doing well, and things are all under
control. Harry mentioned seeing you in Hogwarts last week; I wish I had known you were visiting –
it would have been nice to catch up.

However, the reason I’m writing to you now isn’t to exchange pleasantries. There has been an
alarming upsurge in reports of unsolved homicides in muggle newspapers. Muggles are being
mysteriously murdered all across the country, with no discernable pattern, and no viable evidence
left at the crime scenes. I think you know full well who’s behind all this.
I need to know that the Auror department is taking this as seriously as it is the murders of witches
and wizards. The Prophet hasn’t said a word about it... but I suppose that is to be expected.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Hermione

Her hand was trembling by the time she got to the end. She would give Tonks two days – if she
didn’t get a satisfactory reply by then... well. She needed to formulate a game plan of her own,
regardless.

In the summer before fifth year, Mad-Eye, Shacklebolt, and Tonks had placed a variety of
protective enchantments on her parent’s home; but after all her research, Hermione knew that that
wasn’t good enough by half. Her parents were essentially sitting ducks at this very moment.

The fidelius charm was out of the question... there was no way she could warn her mum and dad
against giving out their address without them retaliating with a billion questions. And of course she
could not tell them the truth without her dad rushing off to collect his ornamental kukri from the
mantle, and her mum breaking into a rousing chant of “el pueblo unido, jamás será vencido”.

...Even if she found a spell powerful enough to keep her parents fully and wholly safe, her absence
would draw them out. If she just disappeared, they’d be devastated beyond anything, and they’d
organise huge search parties... almost certainly rope in that patient of theirs who worked for the
MI6...

In the midst of this acutely upsetting, paralysing, demoralising, terrorising dilemma, a face
appeared in her mind’s eye. What the sodding hell was Gilderoy Lockhart popping up in her head
for?

And then.
Oh, and then.

The quest for the perfect solution was absorbing enough to keep her from truly grasping the
enormity of the consequences of that particular plan of action. The library contained over twenty-
five books on advanced memory charms, after all.

...my assignments are restricted to guarding Hogsmeade, or the occasional high level ministry
official. I’m not in touch with anybody from the muggle surveillance unit, but I’m sure adequate
measures are being taken. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help...

Hermione crumpled up Tonks' derisory response and chucked it into the common room fire.

“What was that?” Ron asked. Both he and Harry were watching her inquisitively.

“Nothing,” Hermione muttered.

Ron frowned, but Harry just shrugged and went back to watching the Malfoy-dot on his Marauder’s
map, waiting for it to move towards the seventh floor corridor.

“Four muggles were murdered today,” Hermione whispered after a few beats of silence.

Harry and Ron looked appropriately disturbed, but neither of them thought to ask her about her
parents.
The shuffling of feet, grating of chairs, and a rapid intensification of chatter ensued the moment
Flitwick dismissed the class. As students poured out of the room, Hermione turned to Harry and
Ron and said, “You two go ahead; I want to get the first draft of my assignment looked over...”

They left, (Ron rolled his eyes dramatically) and soon, Hermione was alone in the room with the
tiny charms professor.

“Is there something you need, Ms Granger?” he asked curiously.

“Yes, professor. I came across a very interesting book on memory charms in the library the other
day, and it mentioned this one spell... omitto... but it didn’t quite say what it did...”

“Ah yes!” Flitwick beamed, “It’s a rather nifty variant of the obliviate charm. It’s reversible, for
one... as long as you know the exact memories that have been omitted. It’s also easier to target and
replace memories with this spell. But absolute clarity is necessary – you have to cover every single
detail of the memory being erased, as well as that of the memory you wish to plant. Extremely
complicated stuff...” Flitwick paused to eye her for a moment, and then continued, “If you will
accompany me to my office, I can give you a book that will explain it all clearly...”

“Oh, I’d really appreciate that, Professor!” Hermione gushed enthusiastically.

“Come along, then.”

It was settled.

An outward facing arc – Fragmen omitto – and a sharp upward flick. That was the spell that would
expunge her existence from the memories of the reasons for her existence.

It was settled, and she was so agonisingly unsettled.

One-thirty AM.

Hermione sat curled up on a window ledge a short distance from the door to the astronomy tower.
Staring out into the night, she was sickened by her thoughts, and her plans, and herself. What kind
of monster would tinker with such wonderful minds? What kind of reprehensible ingrate would
obliterate her own parents’ memories? What right did she have to shred and patch up something as
fragile and personal as that?

“Hermione?”

She jumped, nearly tumbling onto the unforgiving floor.

“Theo? You gave me such a fright! What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

Hermione raised a brow at his sad attempt at deflection. “Thinking,” she averred.

He stared at her searchingly; it was the type of disconcerting scrutiny that saw through any façade
she might try to put forth.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, concern lacing his voice.

“Nothing.”

“No. Something is wrong.”

Hermione turned back to the blackness beyond the window and sighed. And then she told him
everything. Saying it all out loud – putting the entire scheme in words and vocalising them – turned
her stomach in the most grievous manner. She couldn’t breathe properly.

“It’s the right thing to do, Hermione.”

How she had longed to hear that, exactly that, straightforward, direct, clear-cut...

“Is it?” she whimpered.

“Absolutely. I’d do exactly the same, if I had the option.”

Hermione pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, hoping to send back the tears that were
threatening to make an appearance.

“Come with me,” Theo murmured, pulling her hands down gently.

“Where to?” she rasped.

“Just come,” he stated simply, “But first...”

He pulled out his wand, aimed it at her (the fact that she didn’t even flinch was a testament to how
much she trusted him), and whispered a spell.
Feeling a trickle of magic shimmy down her body, Hermione asked, “You disillusioned me?”

“Yes. Now follow me.”

Silently, he led her down to the fifth floor, all the way to the music room.
“Stay in the shadows, and don’t make a sound,” Theo whispered. Then he walked inside, leaving
the door open just long enough for Hermione to slip in. She crouched in a darkened nook beside a
large shelf, as Theo settled on a chaise longue way off at another end.

In the middle of the room was a beautiful mahogany piano, behind which sat Draco Malfoy, giving
Theo a look that was amused and exasperated in equal parts.

“You’ve followed me here as well? Merlin, Theo. Your persistence knows no bounds.”

“I just wanted to hear you play, you arsehole,” Theo replied superciliously, “It’s been a while.”

“You’ve been hanging around Gryffindor twats for too long. It’s decimated your ability to lie
convincingly.”

“Just shut up and play, will you?”

With that, Theo closed his eyes and reclined against the arm of the chaise longue.

Malfoy smirked. And then he started to play.

It was one of Chopin’s nocturnes, though Hermione couldn’t say which one, exactly. From the very
first note a sort of glorious resplendence usurped the atmosphere – the candlelit sepia tone of the
room turned into enchanted golden dust. It was too forceful to be tranquillity... too powerful to be
soothing... too overwhelming to be comforting. But it was a thing of beauty. It was absolute beauty,
and it suddenly, jarringly permeated through Hermione’s constricting hopelessness.

Beauty.

Beauty, truth, and rarity.

Malfoy’s eyes were intent on the keys. His hands danced over them elegantly, like his fingers were
performing a perfectly synchronised dance. Hermione couldn’t look away from them as they
skittered mesmerisingly.

Grace in all simplicity.

Who could object to melancholy when it tasted so sweet? Every crisp note performed the gentlest
twirl as it made way for the next... together they formed an effulgent wave of pathos... a molten
swell of all-pervading melodious poignancy.

The impression of the final fragment of music lingered long after Malfoy had ceased playing. In
those moments brimming with overpowering... somethingness, Hermione just breathed. She wasn’t
who she was. Malfoy wasn’t Malfoy as he gazed expressively at the empty air in front of him. Theo
wasn’t Theo, lying back with his eyes close. They were all just objects once their masks and
projections had been leached away by corrosive tendrils of true, rare beauty.

Here enclos’d in cinders lie.

When the fugue had lifted, Theo and Malfoy dawdled towards the door with heavy steps.

“How’s Pansy doing?” Malfoy asked hoarsely.

“What are you asking me for?” Theo gave him an odd look, “I’m dead to her, remember?”

“Right. I just thought you might’ve seen her around.”

“Um, sure,” Theo replied, still wearing a perplexed expression, “She was in the common room this
evening, blabbering on about some new robes she’d ordered from Milan.”

With a short, hollow laugh, Malfoy doused all the tapers in the room.

Hermione was left alone in the dark where she sat unmoving... still just breathing.

Three days later she was sobbing into her pillow after opening a package from home that included a
collection of short stories by Kafka, a box full of tea cakes from her favourite bakery, ‘The Stone
Roses’ on vinyl, and a two page comic hand drawn by dad, titled, ‘When Evelyn McCowan-
Granger Cooks: A bleak tale of Trepidation and Despair’.

There was also a copy of The Telegraph; ‘MYSETRIOUS STRING OF DEATHS CONTINUES...
ANDERSON FAMILY FOUND DEAD IN THEIR DINING ROOM – CAUSE OF DEMISE
UNCLEAR... SHOCKING: DECOMPOSED CORPSE FOUND FLOATING IN THE FOUNTAIN
AT TRAFALGAR SQUARE...’

On Wednesday afternoon, she stood in a line between Gregory Goyle and Daphne Greengrass,
bouncing on the balls of her feet, studiously ignoring the hulking boy and the sneering girl that
flanked her. She was minutes away from her Apparition test, and she’d never been good at dealing
with pre-examination nerves.
On top of everything, Ron had developed a new infuriating habit – he’d taken to diving behind her
the moment he thought he spotted anything remotely resembling a girl. Each time, Hermione had to
assure him that it wasn’t Lavender, and then he’d straighten up awkwardly. Was there anything
more ludicrous than a tall, strapping lad cowering behind a scraggy girl, nearly a foot shorter?

Oh yes there was: An overwrought half-giant expecting students to break curfew to honour the
passing of a colossal, man-eating spider.

Students were being called, one by one, to the middle of the Great Hall, where Twycross and two
other ministry officials stood waiting expectantly. One was a rather severe looking old woman with
a clipboard in hand, and the other was a shabbily dressed man with thinning ginger hair, who felt
compelled to break into a round of applause whenever a student passed.
He was presently engaged in one such bout after Hannah Abbot successfully went from point A to
B.
Terry Boot passed. Mandy Brocklehurst passed. In fact, there were quite a few success stories...
only Susan Bones and Justin Finch-Fletchley had failed so far...
Seamus whopped with delight on passing.
Twycoss tut-tutted dismally when Goyle bungled up his test. Hermione couldn’t suppress a smirk
of satisfaction when he lumbered away, looking sour.

“Granger,” the stern woman called out.

Destination... Determination... Deliberation...

She braced herself – squeezed through oblivion... and crack!

“Excellent as always,” Twycross praised warmly.

Hermione moved aside and lingered by the edge of the hall. To her delight, Daphne Greengrass
stumbled over her fine silk robes while attempting to spin.

“Oh, come on! I tripped! Let me have another go!”

Her objections were duly ignored.

Finally, it was Ron’s turn. Hermione bit her lip in anticipation, more nervous for him than she had
been for herself. Ron took a deep breath... closed his eyes... and spun.
Seconds later, he was standing within the circle of the wooden hoop, blinking in disbelief at
himself. Mr Enthusiasm brought his hands together, primed to clap-clap-clap, but he was
interrupted by Madam Hostility.

“Hold on. What’s this here?” she demanded while pointing at nothing. The two men peered closely
at the tip of her finger.

“I believe,” Twycross drawled drolly, “that that is half of Mr Weasley’s eyebrow.”

“Fail!” the woman barked, “Okay, next; Zabini!”

Outrage and indignation fulminated on Ron’s cherry-red face as he stormed out of the Great Hall.
Hermione raced after him, catching him just as he was beginning to climb up the grand staircase.

“Ron!”

“Half an eyebrow. Half a fucking eyebrow. Seriously? Half an eyebrow?!”

“I’m so sorry...”

“Argh. I can’t believe they failed me over half an eyebrow!” he groused feverishly.

Hermione attempted to temper his fury with consoling platitudes, and it worked to a certain extent
– Ron’s weakness for mollycoddling was dead useful sometimes.

They were intercepted by Dean and Ginny outside the Gryffindor portrait hole, and Hermione left
Ron to grumble at them.

“Harry!” she cried the moment she entered the common room, “Harry, I passed!”

Harry smiled widely. “Well done! And Ron?”

“He –” Hermione faltered, “He just failed. It was really unlucky; a tiny thing. The examiner spotted
that he’d left half an eyebrow behind.” Harry grimaced sympathetically. “How did it go with
Slughorn?” she asked, hoping he’d made some headway during the scantily populated potion’s
lesson that afternoon.

“No joy,” he replied dully.

Ron slid in though the portrait hole and morosely plodded over.

“Bad luck, mate,” Harry offered bracingly, “but you’ll pass next time – we can take it together.”

“Yeah, I s’pose. But half an eyebrow!” Ron exclaimed for the nth time, “Like that matters!”

“I know,” Hermione consoled, “it does seem really harsh…”

Later that evening, Hermione, Harry, and Ron watchfully slinked up to the boy’s dormitory, after
making sure that Neville, Dean, and Seamus were all otherwise occupied. It had been a while since
Hermione had been there – nothing different about it, though. ‘Teenage boy clutter’ was a fairly
constant phenomenon.

Harry plunged into his trunk, burrowing his arm all the way up to the elbow, and extracted a
minuscule bottle from within its depths.

“Well, here goes.”

He knocked back a careful gulp of liquid luck, and Hermione waited till he had only just lowered
the bottle to ask, “What does it feel like?”

He stared back at her for a few seconds, as if perturbed by how anticlimactic the moment had
been… but slowly, a look of absolute, vivacious wonderment bloomed on his face. He positively
beamed, hopped onto his feet spryly and spoke with uncharacteristic merriment.

“Excellent. Really excellent. Right... I’m going down to Hagrid’s.”

"What?” Ron and she spoke at the same time, in matching astounded tones.

“No, Harry,” Hermione prompted, “You’ve got to go and see Slughorn, remember?”

Harry was the living, breathing, (raving) embodiment of self-assurance.

“No. I’m going to Hagrid’s; I’ve got a good feeling about going to Hagrid’s.”

“You’ve got a good feeling about burying a giant spider?” asked Ron, thoroughly appalled.

The Almighty Chosen One pulled his supreme invisibility cloak out of his bag.

“Yeah,” he expounded, “I feel like it’s the place to be tonight, you know what I mean?”

“No.”

Hermione nervously examined the golden liquid glittering inside the tiny bottle Harry had drunk
from.

“This is Felix Felicis, I suppose?” she said fretfully, “You haven’t got another little bottle full of – I
don’t know –”

“Essence of Insanity?” Ron offered.

Harry – well, Harry’s disembodied head – laughed. “Trust me,” he said as he walked towards the
stairs while fixing his cloak and disappearing completely, “I know what I’m doing… or at least
Felix does.”

Hermione and Ron shared a brief distressed look, before hastening to follow him. The door was
open – so presumably Harry had made it out; but before they could take another step, their path was
cut off by Lavender Brown.

“WHAT WERE YOU DOING UP THERE WITH HER?”

“OH! Uh… Lavender… fuck, okay, look… this isn’t… it wasn’t… we weren’t…”

Ladies and gents, if you ever require top quality inarticulate spluttering during unfortunately
awkward situations, Ron Weasley is your man!

“You weren't what? Go on. Tell me!”

“We weren’t…. weren’t… anything, alright?! It was nothing! Nothing!”

Hermione tried to intercede, “Lavender, Ron and I were just talking…”

“You shut the fuck up, you slag. You’ve been trying to steal my boyfriend from day one! You
shameless hussy – you – you – Are you happy now?”

Well then. There were basically two ways to deal with this situation:

1. By responding in kind, i.e., screaming back righteously, raging at being called such vile
names, having it out, unleashing a proper slanging match, et cetera.
2. By bowing out... Because fuck that; it wasn’t her scene.

Hermione raised her palms in surrender, and escaped out the door, careful to avoid brushing against
Lavender. The door slammed shut behind her.

She breathed deeply.

Then she realised that there was another loud argument occurring in front of the portrait hole.

“I didn’t fucking push you, Ginny! I haven’t so much as touched you in weeks.... not that you’d
notice, of course...”

“Oh Merlin’s rod. Don’t start that again. Honestly, Dean... will you ever stop complaining?!”

“Sure, when you stop biting my head off for no bloody reason!”

Good lord, Harry had left a trail of absolute destruction in his wake. Perhaps that was how Felix
Felicis worked – it maximised its drinker’s luck while drastically diminishing the luck of those
around them, to maintain the general balance of fortune.

Hermione didn’t need to think twice before scampering out of the common room. The thought of
passing the evening in the library made her soul sing.

As she was walking past the Transfiguration section, angry loud-whispers seeped out from between
the bookshelves.

“Do you even know what you’re saying?! That makes no sense – you’re such an idiot.”
That was definitely Padma.

A male voice retorted heatedly: “So I made one mistake! You don’t have to be such a harping bitch
about it!”

“How dare you?! I don’t know what I ever saw in you...”

Shaking her head, Hermione quickened her pace. She was truly desperate to reach her oasis of
serenity.

Half past midnight, and Hermione sat alone in the Gryffindor common room. Harry still hadn’t
returned from the Felicis-trip. She gnawed at her lip in worry... the potion had to have worn out
hours ago. Where could he be?

She curled up on at sofa, determined to stay up till he got back. Not that going to her dorm was an
option – the collective scorn of Lavender and Parvati had formed an impenetrable force field at the
door...

The next thing she knew, Harry was shaking her awake.

“Harry... Where were you? What time is it?”

“Dunno. Late. I was in Dumbledore’s office. I got the memory. Fuck, I have so much to tell you...
but... tomorrow, alright? I’m knackered.”
 Twenty-Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Human consciousness is immeasurably complex; the id, ego, and superego – for lack of better
labels – come together to construct a complete sense of identity that make human beings one of the
greatest examples gestalt. A cluster of organs, bones, and muscles, connected via various systems,
encased in tissue are turned into a person.

Hermione didn’t believe in the soul: not in the sense theological dictums had built it up to be.
She didn’t believe in some divinely touched essence capable of outliving its mortal vessel. She
certainly didn’t believe it was something that could be torn into tiny bits like a loaf of bread, and
scattered around a forest.

Then Harry told her about Horcruxes.

She couldn’t wrap her head around the concept.

When in doubt, go back to the Greeks.

Aristotle didn’t believe the soul and body could be separated: that was no help at all. The
Epicureans, however, considered the soul to be made up of atoms – just like everything else. That
could work.
Say it is a fragment of your consciousness that you’re putting away... how did the absence of this
fragment affect the whole? And this fragment... did it form a whole in itself? If not, the Horcrux
would hold only a part of your essence – only a fraction of who you are...

“Hermione, why are you scowling at Dennis? Poor kid looks like he’s going to shit himself.”

She started, smoothening her expression and looking away immediately.

“Sorry,” she muttered to Ron, and flashed a rueful half-smile at Dennis, “I suppose got lost in
thought.”

Ron grinned at her and shook his head, simultaneously bemused and delighted. It was the kind of
wide and charming grin that ought to have set her heart racing and her cheeks flushing and her
stomach twisting in on itself. Hermione waited and waited... but after nothing more than a feeble
twinge, she simply smiled back at him.

She looked over at Harry, and he was, once again, engrossed in his potions textbook, probably
looking for some secret spell that would help him break into the Room of Requirement. With
Katie’s return, he was even more determined to catch Malfoy red-handed.
Hermione wanted to shake him. You’d think that after finding out that there were four pieces of
Voldemort’s soul/essence/consciousness/ego left to be sought and destroyed, he’d be more focused
on bigger things.

“Hullo, you lot,” Ginny chimed, skipping up to them and dropping down on the sofa between Harry
and Ron.

The former dropped his book, ink, quill, and composure on the floor as he stuttered over a greeting
in response. The latter beamed at his sister.

“Hullo yourself.”

The Weasley siblings were radiant in the wake of their respective split-ups, even while their ex-
partners skulked around the place looking miserable.

“Katie’s back!” Ron cheered, “Did you see?”

“Yes!” Ginny trilled back, “No more McLaggen, no more Dean... The original line up is back,
baby! We’re going to kick Ravenclaw’s arse in the next match!”

Ginny’s hearty proclamation was augment by a cheery hear, hear from the boys, and the three of
them settled into an impassioned discussion about strategy and formation and what have you.

Hermione was bored to the soul.

Her hand was shaking like mad as she wrote: Your potions essay is between pages 16 and 17 of
your textbook.

Taking a huge gulp of air, she summoned forth all her courage and concentration. Then she pointed
her wand at herself.
She closed her eyes, sharpening her thoughts to one single point...

“Fragmen omitto.”

One. Two. Three.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, feeling horribly disappointed. The spell hadn’t worked. But it had to
work. It had to had to had to had to...

Get a grip.
A few shuddering breaths later, Hermione turned back to her potions essay, ready to give it one
final look-over -

The parchment before her was not her potion’s essay.

It was empty, save for one sentence...

Oh.

The spell had worked.

A few more harmless experiments later, Hermione trudged out of the library, tired but fairly
satisfied. While her parents would require an infinitely more complex version of the spell, the
facility with which she had accomplished these minor trials put her at ease.

Her peace of mind was shot to hell the moment she entered her dormitory.

“I hope you’re happy,” was how Lavender chose to greet her, in a voice that was heavy with
acrimony.

Hermione had nothing to say back – no words of solace, of contrition, nor of reciprocated
bitterness. She mutely walked over to her wardrobe, blindly took out the first pair of pyjamas she
could reach, and hurried towards the bathroom door.

Obviously – obviously – Lavender wasn’t finished.

“You stole him from me. It’s what you’d planned from the beginning, wasn’t it... you’re such a
whore –”

“That’s enough, Lavender,” Hermione cut in sharply.

From the corner where she’d been timidly watching the show, Parvati entreated, “Come on, Lav.
Let’s go down to the common room and finish our divination homework.”

“You go!” Lavender yelled stroppily, “Little Miss Priss and I need to have it out.”

With flashing eyes, she marched right into Hermione’s personal space and hissed, “You just always
get what you want, don’t you? What were you two really doing up in his dorm last night? You
threw yourself at him, I’ll bet. Oh, I’ve been watching you dance around him for years like a total
trollop. You couldn’t stand to see him with me, could you? Couldn’t stand to see him happy. Just
you wait. He’ll come crying back to me soon, when he remembers how much your fucking nagging
gets to him, and how horrid your hair is. You should have heard him go on about you; don’t fool
yourself into thinking he actually likes you –”

To Hermione’s absolute horror, she felt her temper-sensitive tear ducts threaten to begin leaking.

Quivering with anger and humiliation, she positively growled, “Listen here you gobby cow... Ron
broke up with you because you were jealous, intolerably clingy, and all-in-all painful to be around.
It has nothing, nothing, to do with me. Now get out of my face before I hex your hair into
something so hideous that you’ll spend the rest of your life envying mine.”
Lavender backed away with an outraged gasp, clearing the path to the bathroom. As Hermione
marched down it, Lavender issued her parting shot: “He really can’t stand you, you know. Thinks
you’re a bit of a joke. If you didn’t help him with his homework, he’d have told you to fuck off
ages ago...”

Hermione slammed the bathroom door shut, and leant heavily against it, rubbing her temples in
exhaustion. Lavender’s hysterical rant permeated through the thick wood of the door and bounced
off the tiles.

“...A boring, prissy swot with no figure to speak of...”

“How would you define the soul?”

It seemed as good a moment as any to strike up a philosophical discussion.

Spring was in full bloom – balmy weather, cloudless skies, fresh verdure, the works. Hermione and
Theo lay side by side on the soft grass by the lake, staring up the vast expanse of clear blue above
them.

“I wouldn’t dare to try.”

Hermione make a small reproachful noise. “Humour me. I’d like a pureblood’s perspective.”

He was quiet for a while, apparently attempting to piece together a lucid explanation.

“Well, I suppose it’s your... core essence. Where your magic resides.”

“So... some form of energy then?” Hermione asked, intrigued.

“Partly. But it’s also... well, it’s you. And not just your personality and morality and all that. I mean,
it is all that, but more. It’s um... your heart...”

“But all that’s a construction of your own mind,” Hermione argued, “It’s still tied to you in a very
real and physical way...”

“Not really,” Theo answered thoughtfully, “You can channel and part with your magic; the same is
true for the soul. It’s a separate system, in a way. It’s what the Dementors suck out of you with a
delightful little buss. I suppose your mind is a part of it, too.”

“So you’re saying,” Hermione began, half sitting up and resting on her elbow so she could face him
fully, and pulled away the bluegreen scarf that he had draped over his eyes, “that the mind is just a
constituent of the soul, rather than the soul being a culmination of the mind’s perceptions?”
“That’s putting it better than I ever could,” Theo said and shrugged, squinting against the sun’s
glare.

Hermione fell back down on her back, watching the glorious cobalt dome of the sky pensively.
“This doesn’t gel well with science.”

Theo let out a short laugh. “Aren’t you used to that by now?”

“Humph.”

“Why are you burdening me with such deep theoretical conversation on a glorious, pleasant, lazy
day like today? Lie back and bask in the indolence, Hermione.”

Hermione looked at him scornfully and said, “I don’t do that. Not ever.”

“Humour me,” he retorted fluently, “Just loaf about with your buddy –”

“Are you ever going to let that go?”

“No. Loaf about with your best buddy Theo, and soak up the sun. Don’t move or think for a whole
blissful hour. It’s good for –”

“For the soul?” she asked with an arched brow.

Theo grinned. “Exactly.”

It was rather lovely, being stretched out languorously. Hermione let the torpor cloud her senses, and
she felt wonderfully floaty.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

The hour ended eventually, as all hours do. Hermione grudgingly hauled herself up, dreading the
long, long walk up to the Arithmancy classroom.

Before leaving, she placed a slightly ragged book squarely on Theo’s chest, not waiting to see if
he’d acknowledge it. The Razor’s Edge. An epigraph was boldly printed on the inside cover – "The
sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to ‘enlightenment’ is hard"
– and she’d stuck a post-it under it, on which she had carefully written out a quote (...tit for tat, the
bard for the bard...):

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
On putting the final full stop, she had thought... your move, Malfoy.
It was a rather audacious thing to do, she knew. He wouldn’t recognise her handwriting, but he
would definitely ask Theo where he was getting all these books from... if he hadn’t already.
Hermione realised with a start that she hadn’t ever considered how Theo was justifying suddenly
having access to such a vast bounty of muggle books.

But she didn’t turn back to ask. The boy lounging by the lake was relaxed, tranquil, and soothed.
Mentioning Malfoy would bring an end to all of that.

The seven dwarfs sat around a table in the Hogwarts library, mining for diamonds among stacks of
books for various homework assignments.

Doc Granger thought she would have much preferred being alone in a damp and gloomy
underground quarry.

Grumpy Weasley was muttering crabbily from behind Creature’s of the Dark, shooting frequent
chary looks at Sneezy Nott – an absolute contrast to his amiable sister, Happy Weasley, who was
the over-chipper force that had instigated the coming together of that motley crew. She was taking a
break from not working on her essay by drawing out quidditch formations. She tugged at the sleeve
of Bashful Potter’s robe and invited him to examine her doodles, at which Bashful flushed,
chuckled, and said “That’s a really good plan!”

Sneezy... well, sneezed, for the zillionth time, and mopped at his red and swollen nose miserably.

“Fuck’s sake, Nott,” groused Sleepy Finnigan, his tousled head emerging blearily from the cradle
of his arms, “Would you stop that?”

“I can’t help it, you dick,” Sneezy snapped thickly, “Soddin hay fever, innit? And ’m immune to
anti-allergy potions. Fuck pollen. Seriously. Fuck pol –”

He sneezed again. Sleepy and Grumpy grunted irritably in harmony.

Dopey Lovegood (who’d spent most of the afternoon silent and smiling serenely) took a pouch of
tiny pellets out of her bag and offered it to Sneezy, who unhesitatingly took a handful and tossed
them into his mouth. Almost instantaneously, the red splodges on his face disappeared.

“Holy shit,” he said in wonder, “I feel fantastic! What were those?”

“Honey, shrivelfig leaves, and pepper-up tablets. My mum’s recipe,” Dopey replied, “I’m glad
you’re feeling better.” She patted Sneezy’s arm softly.

“I love you,” Sneezy told her fervently... and immediately his face turned red again.

“Aww,” Happy squealed, “Are you two together?”

“No!” Sneezy yelped... bashfully.

“Well, we’re all together right now,” Dopey countered, fairly. “And Theo and I are together at other
times, too... But in a very different way. It’s just the two of us then. Theo doesn’t like other people
to see us when we are together.”

Dopey hadn’t meant to say something so thick with innuendo, but it was enough to make Sleepy
bury his head in his arms again... to laugh. Happily.
Happy – that is, the real Happy – was grinning wickedly, while Bashful and Grumpy had identical
looks of distaste on their faces. Sneezy had surpassed bashfulness, and was teetering towards
mortification...

Doc was annoyed. Nobody was staying in character.

“Simmer down you all,” she whispered hotly, “Else the hunter and the wicked stepmother will find
us!”

Six pairs of eyes stared at her in profound bewilderment.

“I meant Filtch and Pince.”

A few seconds of silence later, Bashf – Harry grinned at her. “Don’t worry, Snow white,” he said
jocundly, “We won’t let them get you.”

The remaining five looked between the two of them apprehensively.

...Actually, all except Luna, who twirled her quill between her fingers and said, “Being together is
so wonderful. I love being together.”

Hermione flitted about the empty common room with a scrap of parchment in hand, a bit heady and
delirious – both from her accomplishment and the late hour.
It was three in the morning, and she had successfully made herself forget the location of thirty of
her things, as well as convinced herself that she had somehow seen Bowie perform at Brixton
Academy that night. It had been a heavenly minute-and-a-half.
She began humming as she unearthed her scrunchie from under a heap of cushions on the floor, and
then flew over to the curtains behind which she had hidden her schoolbag.

It's a God awful small affair

To the girl with the mousey hair,
But her mummy is yelling, "No!"
And her daddy has told her to go,
But her friend is nowhere to be seen.
Now she walks through her sunken dream....

Quidditch-mania had claimed the souls of all her housemates. Hermione mourned the loss over a
light breakfast of tea and a blueberry muffin, and she attempted to drown out the excited buzzing
by focusing her attention on an article in The Guardian about the newly elected muggle Prime
Minister. Her parents had been warily optimistic about this Tony Blair...

“Can I have the sports page, Hermione?” Dean asked from across the table, “I hope United were
fucking hammered yesterday...”

A little while later, Harry and Coote came in, propping up a very sickly Ron between them. Ginny
and Demelza trailed in after them.

“Ron!” Hermione exclaimed, “What happened?”

“Nerves,” Ginny answered when Ron merely shook his head, “He just spent an hour in the toilet,
throwing up.”

Nonetheless, Ron’s anxiety-induced nausea abated enough for him to shovel down bacon and eggs.
And toast. And beans. And Pumpkin juice.
Hermione wrinkled her nose and turned back to her paper.

When she resurfaced, everybody around her was still talking about the upcoming match. She stood
up promptly, but just as she was turning to leave, she caught sight of the look on Dean’s face. He
was staring at Ginny and Harry as they sat with their heads close together, talking enthusiastically.
Something in his expression reminded her of herself.

“Hey Dean,” she called, “I was planning to go look at those massive war paintings outside the
history of magic classroom; want to come with?”

Dean blinked at her in surprise... then understanding... and then gratitude.

“Yeah. Sure.” He popped the last bit of his toast into his mouth and smiled.
It was getting preposterous.

Peakes got into a bloody brawl with two members of the Ravenclaw team: A verbal sparring match
spiralled out of control, and ended with two bloody noses and a fractured ankle. Professor
McGonagall, beside herself with fury, had given all three of them detention for the next two nights.

As she dragged the battered thugs away, the crowd that remained wasted no time in rekindling a
juvenile battle of shits.

An updated internal assessment marks sheet had been posted on the notice board, and she was at
the top of all her classes. Except potions.

The acidic bubbling she felt when she saw that dissipated slightly when she become aware of the
name under hers in the Ancient Runes column.

She gave Theo the happy tidings when they met at the library later that evening.

“All thanks to you!” he said warmly.

“Not at all,” Hermione contradicted, “It’s all thanks to the work you put in. If I could pull up a
person’s score so easily, Harry and Ron would be among the top students in our year.”

Theo made a face, “You know darling, I live for the day you’ll finally stop equating me with those
arseho –” Hermione levelled a look at him, “– those fine gentlemen.”

She rolled her eyes, and pointed down at his textbook, wordlessly telling him to get to work.

“Isn’t Potter topping potions?”

She gritted her teeth. “Don’t remind me.”

When it was time for them to part, Theo gave her three of her books back. Hermione nervously ran
her finger along the hardbound edges of A Discourse on Inequality, before finally harnessing the
pluck to ask, “Where have you told him you’re getting these from?”

“Ah,” Theo’s smirk was far too loud, “I was wondering why you hadn’t asked me about that.”

“Well?”

He idly pulled at one of her curls until it was perfectly straight.

“Truth is, he hasn’t asked.”

Hermione frowned in disbelief. She watched him watch her hair spring back into place when he let
it go.

“Really?”

“Really,” he affirmed.

He reached for that lock of hair again, and Hermione reared back to avoid his hand.

“He’s just unquestioningly accepting all these muggle books from you?” she demanded.

“I suppose he’s made his assumptions,” Theo replied, now twining pieces of her hair around his
finger, “It’s not like I’m well acquainted with a lot of muggles or muggleborns.”

“You mean to say,” Hermione said slowly, “That he knows these books are mine?”

He closed his fist around the ends of her hair and used the tips to dust his robes.

“I’m almost certain he does.”

“And... he’s still taking them. And reading them.” Hermione was floored.

She slapped his wrist until he relinquished his hold on her curls.

“Evidently,” Theo confirmed, eyeing the top of her head speculatively.

Hermione stood up before he could act on whatever he had planned next.

He walked her back to her common room, through the nadir of her existence, always two steps
behind so that he could keep flicking at her hair to make it bounce around wildly.

Hermione had missed dinner again, but she had saved herself from Professor Vector’s raised-
brows-pursed-lips-utterly-unimpressed look of censure that she would have had to face had she not
raced up to her office and asked to make a correction in her essay.

That hadn’t taken more than a few minutes.

But then Hermione hadn’t been able to stop herself from asking after the uncharacteristically
harrowed look the professor was sporting, unknowingly opening up a can... nay, an intermodal
container... of worms. She now knew far too much about Vector’s wastrel, ne’er-do-well husband,
and the impossibility of arriving at a fair divorce settlement.

She entered the common room chuckling incredulously to herself, and suddenly Ron leapt before
her with his forehead puckered with worry.

“Seen Harry?” he demanded.

“No?” she asked in trepidation, “What is it, Ron? What’s happened?”

“Dunno,” he replied, nervously tugging at a loose thread on his cuff, “He charged in here ‘bout half
an hour back, drenched to the bone and covered in blood... asked me for my potions book and took
right off again.”

“Covered in blood?!” Hermione spluttered, horrified. She then noticed Ginny sitting on a nearby
armchair, white faced and tight lipped.

It would be fifteen more minutes before Harry returned. In that quarter-hour, Ginny didn’t budge or
speak. Ron sat atop the table next to her, bouncing his legs fretfully. Hermione paced before the
fireplace, tension making her motion almost robotic.

What oh what had Harry got himself into this time?

His face was ashen when he tripped in through the portrait hole.

“Harry!” All three of them cried at the same time, with Ron and Ginny shooting up to their feet.

Harry walked woodenly over to the chair Ginny had just vacated and eased himself into it.

Hermione knelt before him, softly but urgently asking, “Are you hurt, Harry?”

He shook his head. “Not my blood.”

Goose pimples broke down her arms and spine.

“Whose... whose is it?” she croaked, while casting a silent, wandless Tergeo on his soaked shirt.

“It was an accident.”

“You’re scaring us, mate,” Ron said from behind her.

Harry inhaled deeply. He tapped his finger against his knee once... twice... and then –
 “I... I think I... I... almost.... killed Malfoy.”

Chapter End Notes

1. "Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore...": The Lotos-eaters by Alfred,
Lord Tennyson
2. "There is a tide in the affairs of men...": Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
3. "It's a God awful small affair...": Life on Mars? by David Bowie
 Twenty-Three
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted from HBP.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The truest manifestation of shock is complete immobility: being stunned into a state where your
neurons... disconnect... so thoroughly that you’re rendered mute and motionless. Total mental and
physical paralysis.

It was such a state that fell like a pall upon Hermione, Ron, and Ginny after Harry’s alarming
admission. There were other people in the common room – it was only eight-thirty in the evening –
but they all faded into irrelevance.

Ron was the first to recover.

“You... almost... killed Malfoy? What?”

“It was an accident,” Harry repeated numbly, “I didn’t know... That spell... I didn’t expect it to...”

“You’re not making any sense,” Ron put forward plainly, “Why don’t you start at the beginning,
yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, nodding in appreciation of Ron’s astute suggestion, “Alright. I was on the
seventh floor, checking for Malfoy on the Marauder’s map, when I saw that he was in a loo... with
Moaning Myrtle, of all people. Erm, ghosts... ghost-people –” Harry shook his head at himself, “–
Anyway. He... Malfoy... was crying over a sink –”

“Malfoy was crying?”

It was the barely-suppressed note of glee in Ron’s voice that revived Hermione’s vocal chords.

“Then what happened?” she prompted urgently.

Bit by bit, Harry ran through the horrific tale. An impromptu duel... an unknown curse... an
explosion of blood...

“Is he going to be okay?” Hermione asked shakily, after Harry was done.
“Snape burst in almost immediately,” he replied, “Like he’d been close by. He patched Malfoy up
and took him to the hospital wing. He was still unconscious, though...”

“Blimey,” Ron breathed.

“What’s going to happen to you?” Ginny asked, perching herself on the arm of Harry’s chair.

“Detention,” Harry said glumly, “Every Saturday ‘til the end of term. It’s a good thing I was able to
hide the Prince’s book; fuck knows what would’ve happened if Snape got a hold of it...”

“Where’d you put it?”

“Room of requirement.”

“Hold on,” Ron piped up in an unexpectedly loud cry, “Every Saturday...? What about the quidditch
final?”

Harry’s face contorted, as he let out a devastated sigh. “I won’t be playing.”

“No!” Ron and Ginny gasped in unison.

“It’s the most important game of the season!” Ron spluttered.

That, Hermione decided, was the last straw. These people were falling into pieces over quidditch,
summarily dismissing the near-manslaughter that had taken place no more than an hour ago. She
felt sick... absolutely sick... and steeled herself to steer the conversation back onto a more
significant path.

“I told you there was something wrong with that Prince person... And I was right, wasn’t I?”

The look Harry gave her was poisonous.

“No, I don’t think you were.”

“Harry,” she said incredulously, “how can you still stick up for that book when that spell –”

“Will you stop harping on about the book!” he retorted irritably, “The Prince only copied it out! It’s
not like he was advising anyone to use it! For all we know, he was making a note of something that
had been used against him!”

Hermione felt her eyes go round with astonishment.

“I don’t believe this. You’re actually defending –”

“I’m not defending what I did!” Harry cut in hastily. “I wish I hadn’t done it, and not just because
I’ve got about a dozen detentions. You know I wouldn’t’ve used a spell like that, not even on
Malfoy, but you can’t blame the Prince, he hadn’t written ‘try this out, it’s really good’ – he was
just making notes for himself, wasn’t he, not for anyone else…”

“Are you telling me,” she asked while gaping at him, “that you’re going to go back –?”
“And get the book? Yeah, I am,” Harry said with a hardened look, “Listen, without the Prince I’d
never have won the Felix Felicis. I’d never have known how to save Ron from poisoning, I’d never
have –”

“– got a reputation for Potions brilliance you don’t deserve,” Hermione spat. She felt aflamed. She
felt enraged. She felt...

“Give it a rest, Hermione!”

...She felt utterly perturbed and infuriated as she snapped her gaze unto Ginny at her sudden
exclamation.

“By the sound of it, Malfoy was trying to use an Unforgivable Curse,” Ginny continued, “you
should be glad Harry had something good up his sleeve!”

Hermione blenched. “Well, of course I’m glad Harry wasn’t cursed! But you can’t call that
Sectumsempra spell good, Ginny, look where it’s landed him!” When she saw that none of her
companions thawed at that declaration, she attempted to speak in a language they were more likely
to respond to, “... And I’d have thought, seeing what this has done to your chances in the match –”

“Oh, don’t start acting as though you understand quidditch. You’ll only embarrass yourself.”

Ginny’s jaw was set pugnaciously, and at that moment Hermione felt nothing but genuine hostility
towards her. What if she were to start listing out all the things Ginny didn’t understand? All the
many, countless things that not one of those upright cunts understood... not Harry, who was staring
up at Ginny in wondrous gratitude, and not Ron, who was glancing between the three of them with
a look of gormless discomfort on his face...

It was always her versus them. There she goes again! Hermione having a right flap about the wrong
thing, as usual.

A deep, long breath later, Hermione addressed Harry.

“May I see the Marauder’s map, please?” Her tone was brusque, but polite. Well accomplished, she
had to say.

“Why?” Harry asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

“I need to find Theo.”

“Oh, sure,” Ginny said nastily, “Run off to him, why don’t you?”

Hermione ignored her. When Harry grudgingly handed her the map, she wasted no time in
activating it and began frantically searching for the appropriately labelled dot.
There – in an empty classroom near the hospital wing, dot-Theo was pacing up and down and up
and down...

Hermione returned the map, rose fluidly onto her feet, and stalked towards the portrait hole. She
felt Harry, Ron, and Ginny’s eyes on her back all the way. They felt like three searing stab wounds.

By the time she got to him, Theo had stopped pacing.

For a few moments, Hermione stood at the door and watched him. He was sitting on a desk,
stooped, with his face buried in his hands. The room was awash in blue-black and dark-violet hues,
save for a few moonbeams that streamed in through high windows, one of which was lining his
silhouette in fine silver strokes, turning him into a heartbreakingly poetic picture of tragedy.

He sat like Pathos on a monument... drowning in grief.

With a painful lump in her throat, Hermione shuffled over to him and whispered, “Theo.”

He didn’t budge, nor make any sound of acknowledgement. Tentatively, Hermione placed a hand
on his hunched shoulder, and said his name once more.

“What the fuck, Hermione?”

His voice came out muffled from behind his palms, but the husky, broken tenor revealed to her that
he was – or very recently had been – crying. It knocked the wind right out of her. And she had no
idea what to say. All that she could think to do was move closer and wrap her arms around him.
Proximity allowed her to feel the way he was shaking jerkily, the way his breathing was erratic and
laboured.

“What... the... fu...ck,” he gasped.

She held him tightly until the she felt the last of his juddering. In the stillness that followed, she
cautiously asked, “How is he?”

“In a coma,” Theo replied throatily, “The wounds have healed, but he lost so much blood. They
don’t know how long... how long... how...fuck.”

With that, Theo shook himself free of her arms, and strode across the room. He seemed, suddenly,
to become possessed by some vehement agitation; the moonlight-aura around him rippled with the
intensity of it.

“What the fuck,” he roared with this renewed vigour, “was Potter thinking?”

Hermione swallowed. “He didn’t know.”

“He didn’t know what?” Theo rounded on her.

It was the first proper look she’d got of his face, and the ashen pallor of it, his puffy the bloodshot
eyes, were like another punch to her gut.
“He didn’t know what that spell would do,” she replied quietly. He curled his lip vituperatively, and
Hermione hastened to reaffirm her claim, “I swear, Theo. He had no idea... he panicked and shot
the first thing he could think of. He didn’t know that it would... um...”

“That it would nearly kill Draco? Oh, really? The spell just popped up in his head out of nowhere,
eh?”

“He’d read it. Somewhere.”

The look that Theo gave her then turned the dreadful sickened feeling in her stomach into acid.

“He’d read it,” Theo repeated bitterly, “Somewhere.”

“Yes,” Hermione pressed pathetically, “And Malfoy was about to use the Cruciatus curse on him –”

“Oh, so you’re saying he deserved to be flayed to death?!”

“It was an impossibly tense situation, and –”

“That Cruciatus curse wouldn’t have fucking worked anyway,” he muttered, scraping his nails
through his hair.

“What... what do you mean?”

Another abrupt change of demeanour struck Theo. It looked as though desolation had dropped from
a great height straight onto his shoulders, and he sagged under the weight of it. He staggered
towards the closest chair and fell into it.

“Draco wouldn’t have pulled off much of a crucio,” he sighed wretchedly, “You really have to
mean it... to want to inflict the worst sort of pain imaginable... to revel in it...” Hermione made a
small sound, and he looked up at her resentfully, “Yes, I know you think that just because Draco’s
called you names and played mean tricks on you, he’s capable of torturing people. But I happen to
think I know him better. At worst, your precious Chosen One would’ve felt a short spasm... a
twinge... Not even that, given the state Draco was in...”

“Harry said he was crying... before...”

Theo closed his red-rimmed eyes, overpowered by ineffable grief.

“Yeah,” he choked, “He’d got a letter earlier today. It took me hours to get it out of him...
apparently the Dark Lord had a bit of a temper flare-up and decided to take it out on Narcissa.”

A lone, pearly tear trailed down his narrow cheekbone. It caught the moonlight spectacularly. For
the first time, Hermione felt that she was lucky, having the option to alter her parent’s memories to
keep them safe.

“Is she here? Narcissa Malfoy...?”

“No. Snape thought it would be best if we didn’t tell. He’s probably right. ...Merlin, Hermione. I... I
can’t... I cannot deal with this anymore. D-Draco... The way he looks right now... bloodless... still...
so still... it’s one of my worst nightmares made real. I just... I...”
His head fell back into his hands, as he sobbed in earnest.

Every bit and component that Hermione was made of turned stone cold in despair. Helplessly, she
reached out to touch him...

“Theo?”

The lilting, dulcet call came from the door, and both Hermione and Theo started. Clad in her
purple, fuzzy robes, Luna glided into the room. She kept her eyes on Theo and came to an uncertain
stop a few feet away, directly in the path of a particularly sharp moonbeam.
Standing bathed in that luminous shaft of light, Luna seemed to have realised her true purpose; she
was made to be drenched in such milky brilliance. Everything about her – the dirty blonde hair,
pale skin and eyes, her peculiar persona, and her very name – was specifically designed to come
into its own when illuminated in such a manner. She was ethereal.

A strangled gasp from Theo had Hermione tearing her eyes away from the vision before them. He
looked devastatingly awestruck. Luna’s radiance seemed to have magnified some of his attributes
as well – Hermione had never seen him so raw, so unmasked.

In a flash, he was on his feet, and he charged towards Luna. His face was determined and set, his
stride was almost menacingly purposeful... It was quite alarming...
...Until he cupped Luna’s face in his hands and kissed her.
She barely hesitated; her arms encircled his waist almost straight away, and she returned his kiss.
They were somehow contrary and harmonious all at once. Theo was the personification of urgency
– he was exigent, fuelled by desperation and anguish. On the other hand, Luna was patience. She
was gently coaxing calm and fortitude; tender, but potent enough to be more than a match for Theo.
They were like two supplementary sinusoidal waves, weaving together and undulating fluently.

It was nothing like the clumsy, frenzied snogging on frequent display in shadowy nooks and quite
corners of Hogwarts. This was fierce. It was real. It was adult.

It took a faint moan from Luna to make Hermione realise that she was intruding on an extremely
private moment. As quietly as should manage, she crept out of the room, reeling, but comforted by
the knowledge that for the time being at least, Theo was going to be just fine.

At breakfast the next morning, Harry, Ron, and Ginny were pointedly friendly towards her.
Congenial. Like they were being so gracious by taking the highroad and letting bygones be
bygones.
She grit her teeth returned their kindness with interest.
Harry could take off on a perilous horcrux-related escapade with Dumbledore anytime soon; Ginny
needed help studying for her O.W.L.s – Hermione couldn’t afford to sulk.

Over the next two days, passions and emotions ran higher than ever, quidditch mania peaked, and
Hermione got stuck with a permanent migraine.

Thanks to Pansy Parkinson and Moaning Myrtle, the entire school had learnt about Harry and
Malfoy’s bathroom face-off. (Both girl and ghost had run rampant, wailing and howling at an
identical pitch, serving as a very efficient – and shrill – public announcement system).
The Slytherin students were, as expected, aggressively cutting towards Harry. The Gryffindors
were extremely put out at well... simply because their captain and star player had got himself
banned from the final. That was it. Strict house rivalry rules dictated that they weren’t allowed to
feel any sort of horror towards Harry unintentional act of violence against the scum of Slytherin.

Hermione spent nearly all her time in the library archives, scouring through records from the past
ten decades. Her mission was simple: Find the Prince.

The Prince - The way Harry said it, as though it was both a grand title and an affectionate nickname
- This Prince was probably a repressed sociopath – one that even Machiavelli would’ve distanced
himself from.

She had put aside a pile, eliminating everyone from the year 1920, and pulled pile 1930 closer. First
up: Kenneth Abbot... quite a fit one, he was...

After an hour went whizzing by, Theo joined her and caught her in a chokehold that could maybe,
possibly be considered a hug, if you were just short of completely mental.

“My brilliant, beautiful, buddy Hermione! How long I have wondered among these old tomes in
search of you!”

Hermione squirmed until he let her go, and stared him with concern.

“You seem... cheerful?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s a glorious summer day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing; I just
took the most dee-lightful stroll through the forest.”

Theo beamed. Clearly, he hadn’t gone alone for this stroll... and clearly he and his companion
hadn’t done a whole lot of actual strolling.

“Sound’s charming,” Hermione replied with a dee-lighted smile.

“Draco woke up.”

“Oh?” she breathed, “When?”

“Today morning,” he said as he shoved aside a few stacks of paper so that he could seat himself on
the table Hermione was working at (she narrowed her eyes at his careless treatment of the ancient
crumbling parchment), “He’s acerbic and cranky... prime Draco, really.”

“So that explains why you’re so...” Hermione flailed her hand about as she re-straightened her
carefully stacked piles.

“So what?”

“So damn sanguine.”

Theo laughed. “I told you, darling. It’s a dee-lightful day, and –”

“Did you bring Malfoy up to speed then? Apprise him of all the latest developments? Let him know
about your lovely new girlfriend?”

“Erm, yeah. I did.”

“Did that send him right back into a coma?”

Theo scowled. “He... laughed.”

“...And then?”

“And then he asked me about Potter’s punishment for shredding him. Which is criminally lax, by
the way. Detention. Honestly.”

“That’s it?”

“Right?! Anyone else would’ve been expelled –”

“No. I mean... he just laughed? He didn’t... um... pitch a fit?”

For five entire seconds, Theo regarded her with a small half-smile.

“You remember how during that glorious time when we were getting to know each other, I kept
surprising you?” he asked.

“You still keep surprising me,” Hermione answered honestly.

He reached out to squeeze her arm affectionately, and said, “Well... expect the same from Draco.”

She protested (“I’m not getting to know him!”), and he just grinned (“Aren’t you though?”)
“NICE ONE, DEAN!” Seamus roared, as the lanky substitute chaser scored another goal for
Gryffindor.

They were nearly two hours into the final – Ravenclaw was in the lead by... some number, and the
consequent clamour was deafening. Sandwiched between Neville and Seamus (and some shapely
fifth year girl whom Seamus had somehow cajoled onto his lap), Hermione was terribly distracted.

“Bradley scores!” the nameless Hufflepuff commentator yelled, “Hundred and ten to Ravenclaw,
putting them at a twenty point lead!”

Cue: more hyperactive screaming.

She could have been practicing memory charms. She could have been finalising her Transfiguarion
essay. She could have been practicing wandless shield charms. She could have been painting her
fucking toenails.

“ANOTHER TEN TO RAVENCLAW!”

Harry would be devastated if Gryffindor lost. ‘Inconsolably dejected’ is how she would’ve
described his expression as he had left for detention with Snape earlier that day.

“That was a close shave for Bell! The Ravenclaw beaters are particularly ruthless today...”

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best-

“...CHANG AND WEASLEY ARE NECK AND NECK BEHIND THE SNITCH...”

Everyone around her had got to their feet. Hermione leapt up promptly, just in time to see Ginny
shoot forward with an astounding burst of acceleration and close her fingers around the tiny golden
ball.

The world exploded. The stands were a dam that burst, and people gushed onto the pitch in a thick
deluge, all the while screaming... screaming...

If Neville hadn’t grabbed her and kept her steady, Hermione would’ve been tragically crushed to
death in that deranged stampede.
Eventually, the party moved into the common room, and the shouting and hollering come along too.
It all reached its zenith when the team made their grand entrance, holding up a big silver cup.

All of Hermione’s jaded indifference disintegrated the moment she saw the pure jubilance on Ron’s
face. She bounded towards him, and he pulled her into an impossibly tight embrace, lifting her off
her feet.

“We won!” he cried “We fucking won!”

Pumpkin fizz and meat pies were passed around. In one corner, a group of seventh years broke into
an old victory song. And that was when the portrait hole sprung open and Harry was pulled into the
throng. His mouth hung open in disbelief as he attempted to make sense of the commotion. Ron
hurtled towards him, trophy in hand and yelling, “We won! We won! Four hundred and fifty to a
hundred and forty!”

Hermione looked behind her to exchange a grin with Neville, when the entire room fell into a
sudden, nonplussing silence. As ear-splitting as the preceding uproar had been... this was somehow
louder.

Somewhere a glass shattered.

Hermione turned her head, and the scene before her left her gasping.

Harry and Ginny’s kiss was nothing like the one she had witnessed between Theo and Luna. This
here was oh fucking finally. A synthesis of sheer ecstasy and amazement.

When they broke apart to the sound of giggles and wolf-whistles, Harry’s eyes roamed once across
the crowd, before he took Ginny’s hand and they skipped out of the portrait hole, leaving behind a
rather large group of people who didn’t know what to do with themselves.

“Did you know about this?” Ron demanded, once some semblance of normalcy had been regained.

Hermione, sidetracked by the sight of Dean’s back disappearing behind the door leading to the
boy’s dormitories, didn’t answer.

“Oi,” Ron tried again, “Did you know?”

“Huh? Oh. Yes. Of course. You must’ve to be blind not to have seen that this is where they were
headed.”

“You’re joking! When... How... he’s my best mate... she’s my sister... nobody told me!”

She rolled her eyes; it was best not to say anything when Ron was being so dramatic.

“What do I do?”

“What do you mean what do you do? You don’t do anything!”

“Do I allow this?”

 “Allow?! It’s none of your business!”

“She’s my sister!”

“She’s a person – an individual – who makes her own decisions.”

“Why do mad things keep happening?” he grumbled with a scowl.

Hermione bumped his shoulder with her own. “I think, Ronald, that that would make an excellent
epigraph for our collective memoir.”

A surprised chuckle later, Ron clinked his glass against hers and said, “To madness, then. The one
thing we can count on.”

Chapter End Notes

1. "He sat like Pathos on a monument... drowning in grief.": Reference to Act II, Scene IV;
Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare
2. Lochinvar, by Sir Walter Scott
 Twenty-Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

As someone who was self-aware enough to be reasonably well acquainted with her own
insecurities, Hermione believed that she was rather adept at picking them out in others, too.

As a case in point, you could look at her accurate assessment of one Ronald Weasley: inconsistent
friend and waning love interest.

The subject was temperamental in the extreme – easily aggravated, highly sensitive, thin-skinned,
and known to hold grudges for inordinately long periods of time. As it happened (and armchair
psychologists world over rejoiced) the floodgates could well and truly be opened by uttering the
words ‘so tell me about your mother’. Ron, unfortunately, faded into near-irrelevance when put
beside his dynamic group of siblings.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

Therefore, when Ron managed to win the enduring friendship of Harry Potter, it became his
proudest accomplishment. It didn’t matter that the rest of the Weasley clan was quick to adopt him,
and vice-versa... Harry was Ron’s friend. And Ron was Harry’s friend. Ron mattered to Harry, the
person he’d miss the most, as the Triwizard Tournament had revealed.

When Ginny invaded that equation, the balance was thrown off completely.

They were sitting out on the grounds, Hermione, Ron, Harry, and Ginny, during a brief and rare
shared free period. They’d all ditched their robes, swaddled instead in the perfect warmth of May.
Harry was leaning against a tree with Ginny’s head on his lap, idly twirling a lock of her hair. He
was also guffawing – with gusto – at Ginny’s quite frankly mean imitation of Ron talking with a
mouth full of food.

This was how they chose to bond: by taking the mickey out of Ron. The fact that it was probably
because Ron was their most easily accessible commonality was neither here nor there – Hermione
could foresee it becoming a thing. Inside jokes, a shared nudge-nudge-wink-giggle... Ron was not
made to withstand such frequent blows to the ego; certainly not from Harry.

His frown was deepening by the second.

“Why don’t we go for a walk, Ron?” she asked, her voice unnaturally high, “Give these two some
time alone.”

Harry and Ginny both shot her grateful looks, and Ron nodded in sour agreement. He arose, and
surprised Hermione by offering her a hand to help her up. She couldn’t fight the flush that spread
across her cheeks as she accepted his overture.
They walked, for a long while, in uncomfortable silence that eventually got too tense for Hermione
to deal with.

“Are you alright?”

“Dandy,” he grunted. And then – "Those two are a bit sickening, aren’t they?”

Not in the least, actually. Sickening was what she’d use to describe what Ron and Lavender had
been. Dear Prudence advised her against voicing that opinion.

“Ruddy potions homework is doing my head in,” Ron continued.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take much to tamper down the impulse to help him out with it.

“Let’s go visit Hagrid,” she said instead, “It’s been a while since we've seen him. And it’s been long
enough since Aragog’s passing... hopefully he’ll only bring it up half a dozen times.”

A reluctant, sort-of-smile twitched its way across Ron’s face.

“Yeah, okay...” And he looked down at her in a curiously timid way, before hoarsely adding, “You,
um, look really nice today.”

Hermione self-consciously fiddled with a pleat of her skirt.

“Thank you,” she said softly, not elated, not indifferent, but on the shaky cusp between the two.

According to the most recent, highly distressed letter from her parents, three young women,
students of the University of Gloucestershire, had been found in a... “state”... very close to her
dad’s favourite camping spot in the forest of Dean. Authorities suspected that they were victims of
brutal torture, and the trauma had robbed them of all their mental faculties. They were like empty
shells; dead on the inside.

The Daily Prophet spoke of dementor attacks occurring all across Britain.
Hermione was wrestling with her hair while reading Neville’s latest Herbology essay as it levitated
in front of her. She’d stopped being surprised by his level of discernment by that point. There was a
legitimate Herbology savant living inside that shambling young man.

She sighed in relief once she’d finally managed to pin up every last strand. But then a very
disdainful voice spoke from behind her –

“No need to look so pleased. It still looks like shit.”

With that, Lavender marched out of their dormitory wearing a stupid, smug grin. Hermione rolled
her eyes, bending to pick up her bag from the foot of her bed. It had been over a month, and still,
the stream of disparaging remarks didn’t seem remotely close to stemming.
When she looked up, she saw Parvati lingering awkwardly by her bedpost.

“Listen, Hermione, I’m sorry about the way she’s been –”

“You don’t have to apologise for her,” Hermione cut in as courteously as she could manage.

“I know. But still...” Parvati hedged, running a finger along the carved wood of the post, “She’s
being really nasty, but she can’t help it, you know. She really loved Ron.”

It was an honest to god struggle to not roll her eyes again.

“I understand.”

“Um... also... actually... I was wondering if you could do something for me...”

And there it was. The whole reason for that apology.

“What is it?” Hermione asked wearily.

“It’s Padma. Ever since she split up with Anthony, she’s been... well, really depressed? I’ve never
seen her like that before. I think there’s something she’s not telling me. Nobody else seems to know
anything... believe me, I’ve asked around. But you’re wicked smart; I’m sure you could find out...”

“No,” said Hermione, shortly.

Padma-related guilt had been relegated to a fairly low position on Hermione’s List Of Things To
Angst About in the past couple of months, ever since she’d got involved with: A– Project
Desecrate Mum and Dad’s Memories But Don’t Let It Tear You Down, B– Project What The Fuck Is
Draco Malfoy Up To, (also known as, Harry’s Sanity And Theo’s Happiness Are Hereby Declared
Protected Species), C– Project Holy Shit, We’re Going To Have To Go Spelunking for Soulbits, and
most recently, D– Project Exhume The Unholy Prince.

“Why the hell not?” Parvati spluttered.

“Because it’s none of my business.”

“She’s... she’s my sister, Hermione. I’m worried.”

“If you’re so worried ask her yourself.”

Hermione didn’t want at all to be a part of that conversation for even a second longer.

“I’ve tried!” Parvati keened, “she won’t say anything. It’s killing me!”

“So that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?” Hermione snapped, “You’re an incessant busybody who
needs to know everything about everyone.”

Instantly, Parvati’s mouth twisted with offense. “Ugh, you really are a stuck up bitch, Hermione.
I’m so sorry for bothering you.”

She spun around and stalked away, her long black hair swinging like an indignant pendulum.

Breathing hard, Hermione sat heavily down on her bed, wondering why she just couldn’t stop
rubbing people the wrong way.

“...so really, western art owes so much to Manet. He’s the one who punched the first hole in the
wall that led to modern movement...”

Hermione was rambling. Next to her, Dean nodded absently, sullenly, and she knew he wasn’t
really paying attention to a word she was saying.
She’d watched him furtively over breakfast; he had been visibly fuming as Harry and Ginny
engaged in incrementally flirtatious banter. In the climax, Ginny kissed a bit of jam off the corner
of Harry’s mouth, and Dean threw down his toast and stormed out of the Great Hall. Feeling an
irrepressible tug of compassion, Hermione had followed, and then proceeded to try and lure him
into conversation over the next half hour.

Needless to say, it didn’t go well.

“...the next great pathbreaker, would have to be Cezanne, I suppose–”

Hermione gasped as she was unceremoniously spun around, and her subsequent shriek was muted
on account of her lips being smothered by another pair of lips.
Dean’s fingers dug into her upper arms as he hauled her closer, continuing his assault on her mouth
all the while. It took Hermione another moment to regain her bearings... and then she shoved him.
Hard.

“What the fuck,” she spat, wiping a furious hand across her mouth.

Dean stumbled back, panting, and he just gaped at her wordlessly.

“I said,” Hermione shouted, “What. The. Fuck?”

His expression morphed from staggered to horrified in slow motion – every detail of the
transformation was documentable.

“Shit,” he exhaled.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Hermione demanded wrathfully.

“I... I’m so sorry, Hermione! Oh fuck. Holy fuck. I’m so so so sorry!”

“You’re sorry?! Tell me why I shouldn’t hex you till you’re nothing but a smear on the floor!”

“Oh god, I don’t know what I was thinking!”

“I’ll tell you what you were thinking,” she supplied spitefully, “Revenge.”

Dean’s eyes went round with dismay. “You’re right. Shit. You right. I was just... I am a fucking
mess. I’m so sorry, I –”

Hermione held up a hand to halt his useless faltering. “Just stop. I’m going to walk away now, and
don’t you dare come after me. In fact, don’t say another word to me until I’ve decided I want to
hear from you again.”

She went straight to the only place that she believed would keep her from bursting out with rage-
induced, uncontrolled magic; Where there were more than an adequate number of books around to
keep her in check.

In the fleeting interlude between potions and ancient runes, Theo handed her a towering pile of
books.

“That’s all of them,” he said, “And... it stops now, okay?”

“How come?” she asked, deftly shrinking the lot and dropping them into her bag.

“He says he can’t afford any more distractions.”

Theo had a chillingly haunted look in his eyes when he said that. Hermione swallowed, and
nodded.
On any other evening when twilight was just fading into night and the moon and stars had claimed
their posts, Hermione would’ve been found either in the library or in her common room, deeply
absorbed in some scholarly pursuit.

On this particular evening, however, she was perched on that well-secluded window ledge by the
Astronomy tower, doing nothing – absolutely nothing – besides staring outside and sighing weakly.
There was only one person she would’ve wanted with her then, and he was most likely ensconced
in some sheltered corner of his own, enjoying a few blissful stolen moments with his girlfriend.

Not that she grudged him that.

But it was a fine summer evening; the sky was sapphire blue, the moon was a slim, delicate,
gorgeously curving crescent like a powder-white eyelash, and Hermione felt utterly, trenchantly
alone.

Alone, desolate, and terrified. It was that time of the year again: they were just a day away from
slipping into the final month of the school year, and that was generally when shit hit the fan.
Terrible, awful things happened, and Harry came close to dying. Every bloody year, with no
exceptions, ever since they’d enrolled in that mad school. Suddenly, the moon looked scythe-like;
the grim glint at the edge of the reaper’s lethal blade.
She wanted a welcoming set of arms to fold into. She wanted to be held against a warm body, to
rest her head against a beating heart, to feel a gentle palm stroke her hair...

God, she felt so alone.

So desolate. So terrified.

The menacing calm before a storm was meant to last only for a short while, but Hermione felt like
she had spent several lifetimes suspended that ominous stillness.

Her thoughts led her to pull The Razor’s Edge out of her bag. Her cheeky post-it was still there...
Oh! But her writing had been erased, and in its place, written in vaguely familiar cursive was:

Away, you three-inch fool!

In spite of herself... in spite of everything... Hermione leant her head against the cool window pane
and laughed out loud.
Chapter End Notes

1. "They fuck you up, your mum and dad...": This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin
2. "Away, you three-inch fool!": Act IV, Scene 1, The Taming of the Shrew, by William
Shakespeare
 Twenty-Five
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted from HBP.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“Ginny and I are meeting for a study session in the library tomorrow. Would you like to join us?”

“Not in the slightest.”

They’d just finished up another (great in Hermione’s opinion, baffling according to Theo) Ancient
Runes lesson, and were spending the fifteen minute break after soaking up some sun in the
courtyard.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I can be around Potter without succumbing to the urge to give him a taste of his own
vicious spell.”

Hermione fished around in her bag.

“Harry isn’t going to be there.”

“That’s immaterial. Ginny’s his girlfriend now – she’s sold her soul to the devil.”

The devil.

Hermione huffed, and popped open a box of butterscotch fudge that her parents had sent her. At
once, Theo apprehended the whole lot, and then offered her one.

“You haven’t forgotten that Harry and I are still friends, have you?”

“Pshaw. As far as I’m concerned, you’re my friend above everything else. I know you’ll never say
it out loud, but you love me more.”

She focused on maintaining the blankest look she could manage... but it didn’t matter.

“I’m going to be busy tomorrow anyway,” Theo continued, as the last residues of his smirk faded
away, “It’s Draco’s birthday.”

Hermione frowned. “I thought he was opposed to any distractions?”

“Don’t care,” he replied flippantly, “It’s his birthday, and I’m going to ensure that he gets totally
shitfaced.”

Their conversation was briefly interrupted by the sound of desperate yelling... followed by the
source: Three Ravenclaw boys tore across the yard as Peeves, who had somehow procured one of
Fred and George’s Fanged Frisbees, chased after them, cackling maniacally.

After an extended period of munching and sniggering, Theo mused, “Ginny and Potter... I can’t
wrap my head around it.”

Hermione turned her eyes heavenwards and said, “It’s been... two weeks, Theo.”

He waved off her response, swallowed his fourth piece of fudge, and continued, “It’s just so
bizarre. So...” he grimaced, “Incestuous.”

“What!?” She choked on her piece of fudge.

“It’s like she’s the closest thing Potter could get to the Weasel-King without being called a poof.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped, and she stared at Theo for a few gobsmacked seconds.

“That’s completely ridiculous,” she sputtered, “And don’t call Ron that.”

“I know you secretly agree with me,” he replied pertly, while biting down on piece number five.

“You’re an idiot.”

He shot her a grave, meaningful look. She narrowed her eyes.

“You’re going out with Luna,” she reminded him, “Blond hair, grey eyes... was she the closest
thing you could get to Malfoy without being called a poof?”

It was Theo’s turn to choke then, much to her great satisfaction, and she let that reflect in her smile.

“That’s... that’s just... Luna’s hair is at least four times darker than Draco’s!” Theo rebutted in
outrage.

“Oh, have an in-depth knowledge of hair colour shades, do you?”

“Shove off, Hermione.”

She grinned, “Bet you really regret bringing the word incestuous into play now.”

Something that looked frighteningly like determination stole over his face. He studied her with hard
eyes, like Perry Mason about to deliver a clincher.
“You know, if I really wanted to date a female Draco, I’d be with you, not Luna.”

For a moment, Hermione thought he had actually petrified her, non-verbally. She felt frozen.

“Excuse me?” she demanded indignantly.

Now that he had regained the upper hand, Theo reverted to his leisurely disposition. He picked up
yet another bit of fudge and tilted his head serenely.

“Hmm. The same forcefulness... that holier-than-thou conceit...”

Her ears felt like they were on fire. “Shut it, you prat –”

“...that unparalleled wit... the annoying plethora of insecurities... the insane need to prove yourself
–”

“How dare you?!”

“That’s exactly what Draco would’ve said.”

Hermione leapt off the banister they were sitting on and stood with her hands on her hips before the
insufferable bullshit-spewing, mendacious treat-stealer, glaring in righteous fury.

“You wanker! Give me back my fudge.”

“Nope. Has anyone ever told you how resplendent you look when you’re having a strop?”

“Theodore, I swear–”

“I’d know though, wouldn’t I? As a completely objective party who happens to be on more than
familiar terms with the both of you–”

“This is the absolute worst thing you have ever said to me. You take it back. Take it back right now,
or else I’ll ghhhhfg!”

...Theo stuffed a large piece of fudge right into her raving mouth.

“Doesn’t that taste wonderful, Hermione? Nearly as sweet as revenge, is it not?”

Ginny groaned loudly when Hermione set three more books on their already over-crowded table.

“No, please! No more! We’ve been at it for hours and hours!”

“Do I need to remind you that you have your O.W.L.s in two weeks? Look, I know History of
Magic can be a little dry –”

“A little? I think Binns’ plan is to bore us all to madness and death so we can all be barmy
blathering ghosts like him. Come on Herms... let’s call it a day.”

“Call me that once more and I’ll keep you here all night,” Hermione warned, but at Ginny look of
superlative panic she relented and said, “Fine. Half an hour more. I will release you once we’ve
gone over the final years of the Giant Wars.”

They walked into the common room forty minutes later, with Ginny looking significantly perkier.
Ron beckoned them over from a table by the window, while Harry grinned widely, his eyes for
Ginny alone. She plonked herself next to him and curled into his side, resting her head on his
shoulder.

“Had a productive evening?” Harry smiled into her hair.

“Hermione is a slave driver,” Ginny replied around a yawn.

Hermione stuck her nose up in the air, “You’ll thank me later. They all come around... eventually. It
says a lot about human nature that people haven’t made Just Listen to Hermione Without Moaning
an adage to live by.”

Harry and Ron laughed. Ginny stuck her tongue out, and then unattached herself from Harry just
enough to grab a copy of the Daily Prophet that was lying on the floor.

“I’m now going to busy myself with important things like the news, rather than wasting my time
mugging up irrelevant facts about wars that happened centuries ago.”

If Ginny hadn’t been Ginny, and Harry and Ron hadn’t been Harry and Ron, Hermione would’ve
loved to take that opportunity to initiate a debate on the merits of historical awareness, and the
pivotal role it played in understanding and contextualising the present.

But, alas... they were who they were.

“Oi,” Ron yelled suddenly, “Don’t you berks have better things to do than stare?”

The group of half a dozen odd students that had been standing nearby, staring at Harry and Ginny
while giggling and whispering, scattered in different directions; a live demonstration of the process
of nuclear fission.

“Damn nosy tossers,” Ron grumbled, “I can’t believe they’re still in a twit about you two.”

Harry scratched his nose, looking faintly embarrassed. “Yeah, I’m actually considering keeping the
invisibility cloak on for the rest of the year.”

“You’d think people had better things to gossip about,” Ginny said nonchalantly, “Three dementor
attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a hippogriff tattooed
across your chest.”
“What did you tell her?” Harry asked, the edges of his mouth twitching.

“I told her it’s a Hungarian Horntail; much more macho.”

“Thanks. ...And what did you tell her Ron’s got?”

A setup if there ever was one. Both were wearing their impish, conspiratorial grins.

“A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.”

Hermione tittered nervously, and Ron’s face was like thunder. He pointed a threatening finger at
Harry and Ginny, and growled, “Watch it. Just because I’ve given my permission doesn’t mean I
can’t withdraw it–”

“Your permission,” Ginny said with a heightened sneer, “Since when did you give me permission to
do anything? Anyway, you said yourself you’d rather it was Harry than Michael or Dean.”

“Yeah, I would,” Ron admitted stingily. “And just as long as you don’t start snogging each other in
public–”

Ginny balled up the newspaper in her hand and lobbed it at her brother’s head.

“You filthy hypocrite! What about you and Lavender, thrashing around like a pair of eels all over
the place?”

Harry let out a shocked laugh.

Ron’s scowl didn’t recede for hours.

Slughorn set them the uncomplicated and tedious task of preparing a muffling draught, and buried
himself in a book and an armchair in the corner of the room. That had become his modus operandi
ever since Harry had sidled his shameful memory out of him.

Hermione left her asphodel to simmer in diluted syrup of hellebore, and set her chin in her hand,
bracing herself for half an hour of idle waiting.

Ten minutes later, Theo shuffled into the room.

“Where have you been for the past two days?” Hermione whispered harshly as he listlessly slid into
the stool next to hers.
“Dying,” he rasped, rubbing his eyes. He seemed to think that that was an adequate answer to her
question.

Hermione arched a brow at him.

“Bleh, alright, I was hungover. Terribly hungover. Near-fatally hungover. A hair’s breath away
from perishing from severe alcohol poisoning.”

“I see,” Hermione replied loftily, “You celebrated Malfoy’s coming of age with great abandon,
hmm?”

“Bleh.”

“And I suppose he still hasn’t recovered? That’s why he’s missing right now, and why you’re
sitting here with me?”

“What are we supposed to be brewing?” he asked with evasive faux-curiosity, “Oh... Oh shit... that
smells repugnant. I’m begging off today’s assignment. Not happening.”

Theo took the bluegreen scarf (that could now be called a permanent fixture around his neck) and
wrapped it around his mouth and nose.

“How much did you drink exactly?” Hermione asked trepidatiously.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Oh god, Theo.”

“Isn’t that a bit redundant? ‘God’ and ‘Theo’...? I didn’t think you were all that fond of tautology,”
he garbled through the scarf.

She stared blankly at him.

He stared right back, with equally vacant (and bloodshot) eyes.

“Are you saying that you are the supreme, divine creator of the universe and all its creatures, great
and small?” she asked.

“Well... yeah. You did say it’s called Theology.”

Hermione was speechless. She maintained her impassive stare, but something was bubbling in her
stomach. It ascended up her chest... her throat...
She threw back her head and laughed.
She squeezed her eyes shut, and basically howled with laughter... and people were probably
gawking... and she didn’t know why she’d found that so hilarious... but dear... god... she couldn’t
stop.

She did eventually, though; stop, that is.

Wiping her eyes and gasping, she said, “You’re ridiculous.”

She didn’t dare look around her, knowing that she’d encounter the scandalised stares of a classroom
full of people. Her cheeks burned.

A soft chortle from Theo had her glancing up; the scarf had slipped and left his mouth uncovered.
He was beaming at her, eyes dancing with amusement.

Pristine blank parchment laid out in front of her...

Inkpot to the right of it...
Perfectly sharpened quill in hand...
Text by Agrippa...
Book of Hebraic numerological translations...
Ascribed Arithmancy textbook...
Gaelic Methodology....... missing.

With a world-weary sigh, Hermione scraped back her chair and disappeared amongst the shelves.

When she returned to her seat, there was a piece of paper sitting on top of her parchment. On it was
a very well rendered drawing of a tall, lanky male figure with close-cropped, tightly curled hair,
sitting in the pose of Durer’s Melencolia I. When she looked up, she saw Dean peeping out timidly
from behind a bookshelf.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

Hermione blinked, bit her lip, and then nodded once – sharply. He loosened, his shoulders relaxed
and he breathed deeply...

With a small grateful look, he turned around and walked away.

Hermione had struck gold.

After weeks of frustrating fruitlessness, she’d finally found a plausible resolution to Project ETUP
(Exhume The Unholy Prince). Clutching an old newspaper clipping in her hand, Hermione stepped
in through the Gryffindor portrait hole and made her way towards the corner where Harry and Ron
were straining themselves trying to complete their Herbology homework.

Settling on the chair between them, she spoke in her best I-mean-business voice, “I want to talk to
you, Harry.”

Harry made a small moue at her tone. “What about?”

“The so-called Half-Blood Prince.”

“Oh, not again,” he cried out in annoyance, “Will you please drop it?”

She squared her shoulders. “I’m not dropping it until you’ve heard me out. Now, I’ve been trying to
find out a bit about who might make a hobby of inventing dark spells–”

“He didn’t make a hobby of it–” Harry cut her off hotly.

“He, he–” she countered, her own temperature rising, “Who says it’s a he?”

“We’ve been through this! Prince, Hermione, Prince!”

“Right!” said ground out. With a bit of a flourish, she slammed the newspaper clipping down on the
table before them. “Look at that,” she gestured wildly towards it with her hand, “Look at the
picture!”

Lifting it up to eye-level, Harry gazed coolly at the picture of Eileen Prince, Captain of the
Hogwarts Gobstones Team. Ron leaned over to have a look as well, and immediately his nose
scrunched up in distaste; Hermione presumed he was reacting to Eileen’s appearance, which,
admittedly, defied all criteria of conventional beauty.

“So?” Harry’s eyebrows were rising higher and higher as he read the article accompanying the
photograph.

“Her name was Eileen Prince,” she replied slowly, “Prince, Harry.”

He looked up and at her for a long moment, processing what she’d just said. And then... then he
burst out laughing.

“No way.”

“What?”

“You think she was the Half-Blood...? Oh, come on.” Harry, still chortling, placed the paper back
down on the table dismissively.

“Well, why not? Harry, there aren’t any real princes in the Wizarding world! It’s either a nickname,
a made-up title somebody’s given themselves, or it could be their actual name, couldn’t it?” Harry
snorted, and she gnashed her teeth, “No, listen! If, say, her father was a wizard whose surname was
Prince, and her mother was a Muggle, then that would make her a ‘half-blood Prince’!”
“Yeah, very ingenious, Hermione...”

Surely, surely, there was steam coming out of her ears.

“But it would! Maybe she was proud of being half a Prince!”

“Listen, I can tell it’s not a girl. I can just tell.”

Oh. Oh. So she was up against some transcendental bond of brotherhood here. Harry’s lad-radar
had sounded off – he could just tell.

“The truth is that you don’t think a girl would have been clever enough.”

“How can I have hung round with you for five years and not think girls are clever?” he said
witheringly, “It’s the way he writes, I just know the Prince was a bloke, I can tell. This girl hasn’t
got anything to do with it. Where did you get this anyway?”

“The library,” she replied, ignoring the way he rolled his eyes, “There’s a whole collection of old
Prophets up there. Well, I’m going to find out more about Eileen Prince if I can.”

“Enjoy yourself,” Harry grouched.

“I will,” she snapped, “And the first place I’ll look is records of old Potions awards!”

She left quickly, not allowing him the opportunity to snark at her any further.

On reaching the library, she put together a teetering pile of old records and newspapers –– and then
stopped dead (almost spilling paper everywhere) when she got to her usual table.

“Sweet Dagda!” Seamus exclaimed the moment he saw her, “Hermione... you’re here! Fantastic,”
he promptly stood up and began packing his things, “You can take over – I’m officially off duty
now. Fucking finally. I’m leaving. I’m off.”

Hermione turned to the two remainders.

“Theo, Luna, hi. What’s going on?”

“Well, Finnigan kindly agreed to sit here so that it wouldn’t be just the two of us. No need to set the
rumour mills going, you know,” Theo replied with an easy smile.

“Ah.” Hermione took the seat Seamus has just vacated before tentatively asking, “You asked
Seamus to be your cover? Of all people...?”

Theo shrugged, “He’s a laugh. I like him.”

“Seamus. You like Seamus.”

“Yeah. You know, I don’t know why you force yourself to hang around with Potter and Weasley
when you have him around.”

Before she could retort, Luna chimed in, “Harry’s perfectly lovely.”

Theo, aghast, glared at her in betrayal so she clarified, “Yes, he does unpleasant things sometimes,
but I don’t think that’s him, really. I think there’s something foreign and insidious in his head that’s
messing him up... I see it in his expression sometimes,” she lowered her head gravely, “Probably an
army of malicious wrackspurts.”

“Love,” Theo said disdainfully, “You know I think you’re the most intuitive and perceptive witch in
the world, but if you start defending Potter, I’m going to get terribly mardy.”

Luna smiled seraphically; “That’s alright. I know how to cheer you up.”

A grin, a leer, and a purred, “That you do...” from Theo had Hermione snapping her fingers twice
in warning.

“Reign in it, you two. I may have agreed to be your scapegoat, but I did not agree to a peepshow.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Theo.

“I suppose we won’t be inviting you to celebrate Beltane with us next year,” said Luna.

A statement of finality if ever there was one.

They each fell into their own work (though Hermione suspected that Theo and Luna were holding
hands under the table) and sat in uninterrupted silence for a long while.

Hermione’s mouth was thinned in annoyance. Eileen Prince hadn’t been awarded a single prize of
academic excellence. It appeared that her only claim to fame was being a competent gobstones
player.
She poured over Prophet after Prophet, and found nothing remotely useful. Desperate, she even
skimmed through papers from years later. Nothing in the minor accomplishments pages. No
mention in the Page Three high society drivel. In the wedding announcements pages...

The engagement is announced between Eileen, daughter of Reginald and Eimear Prince of
Ballycastle, and Tobias, son of Abner and Rachel Snape of Cokeworth, England.

She scrambled through the remaining Prophets, hunting, hunting...

On 9th January, 1960, to Eileen (nee Prince) and Tobias Snape, a son, Severus Snape.

“Oh fuck,” Hermione groaned out loud.

Somewhere in the background, a voice that sounded like Theo’s asked, “What is it?”

Hermione ignored the voice.

Severus Snape was the Half-Blood Prince. It made sense – it made complete sense. He had known
how to counter the Sectumsempra curse... immediately asked to see Harry’s potion’s book... And,
well, there was no denying that he was exceedingly clever... a dab hand at potions...

She stood up, sending the prophets back in place with a careless wave of her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she rushed, “I have to go.”

“Hey... Hey,” Theo caught hold of her wrist, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Hermione stated firmly, “I just need to speak to Harry. Don’t worry, I promise it’s
nothing serious.”

“You look spooked,” Luna added, “Something has rattled you. But she doesn’t want to tell us,
Theo. You should let her go.”

He did not relent.

“Hermione–” he frowned up at her, then at Luna, and then back at her, “Ugh, fine. But you will tell
me what this is about yeah? Later?”

He released her wrist and she, without delay, tore out of the library. Her footfalls thumped loudly
against the stone floor; if there was any piece of information that could convince Harry to give up
the book... this was it.

When she finally stumbled into the common room, Ron was sitting alone and Harry was nowhere
in sight. She raced over to him and panted, “Where’s Harry?”

He looked at her with anxious eyes. “Dumbledore sent for him. He’s been gone a while now...”

All thoughts of Snapes and Princes evaporated right out of Hermione’s mind. She gasped.

“You... you don’t think he’s found...”

“Donno,” he muttered, rubbing his hands together uneasily.

Yet again, Hermione and Ron were left to stew in worry and disquiet, wondering what had become
of their friend.

Countless minutes later, Harry could be seen running across the room.

Hermione shot up to her feet; “What does he want? Harry, are you okay?” she demanded fretfully.

“I’m fine,” Harry called over his shoulder, as he dashed up the stairs and disappeared into his
dormitory.

She sat back down robotically and exchanged a startled look with Ron...
...and then Harry was back, carrying a variety of indistinguishable things in his hands.

“I’ve got to be quick,” he wheezed, dropping down onto his haunches in front of them,
“Dumbledore thinks I’m getting my Invisibility Cloak. Listen... he’s found a horcrux –” Hermione
and Ron both gasped, but Harry paid no heed to their amazement, “I’m going with him to get it–”

“Where–” Ron began.

“It’s hidden in a cave on some distant coast... the cave in which Riddle once terrorised two children
from his orphanage –”

“But what about –”

“I don’t have time to get into the fucking details! I ran into Trelawney on the way... she was trying
to get into the Room of Requirement, but was thrown out by somebody already in there. Somebody
who was whooping triumphantly. So you see what this means? Dumbledore won’t be here tonight,
so Malfoy’s going to have another clear shot at whatever he’s up to.”

Hermione opened her mouth, but Harry foresaw her interjection.

“No, listen to me!” he growled furiously, “I know it was Malfoy celebrating. Here–”

He thrust something into Hermione’s hands... an old, yellowed bit of parchment: the Marauder’s
Map.

“You’ve got to watch him and you’ve got to watch Snape too,” Harry continued frantically, “Use
anyone else who you can rustle up from the D.A.; Hermione, those contact Galleons will still work,
right? Dumbledore says he’s put extra protection in the school, but if Snape’s involved, he’ll know
what Dumbledore’s protection is, and how to avoid it – but he won’t be expecting you lot to be on
the watch, will he?”

“Harry–” she tried again, her voice shook with tension.

“I haven’t got time to argue,” said Harry tersely. “Take this as well–”

He dropped a pair of socks onto Ron’s lap. Ron stared down at them.

“Thanks. Er – why do I need socks?”

“You need what’s wrapped in them... it’s the Felix Felicis. Share it between yourselves and Ginny
too. Say good-bye to her for me. I’d better go, Dumbledore’s waiting–”

Ron extracted the tiny bottle, and Hermione jumped to the edge of her seat, “No!” she half-yelled,
“We don’t want it. You take it. Who knows what you’re going to be facing?”

“I’ll be fine; I’ll be with Dumbledore,” said Harry with a shake of his head, “I want to know you lot
are okay… Don’t look at me like that, Hermione, I’ll see you later…”

And suddenly, he was a blur, dodging the students milling about the common room, before finally
vanishing from sight.

“Bloody fucking hell,” Ron breathed.

Chapter End Notes

1. Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer

 Twenty-Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

One small sigh for calm, one giant heave for equanimity.

“Okay,” Hermione said to herself bracingly.

Then she began rummaging around in her bag.

“What are you looking for?” Ron asked.

“My DA Galleon. I’m quite sure it’s in here somewhere...”

Ron grunted and shook his head, “What good will that do? I hardly think anyone will still be
carrying theirs around with them. I’m going up to the dorm to wake Neville, Dean, and Seamus.
That’s the best we can manage right now.”

She hummed perfunctorily as he got up and left, still caught up in her search. Finally, after much
fumbling and scrambling, her fingers closed around the elusive coin. She tapped it gently, altering
the engraving on the facet to read, ‘7th floor corridor ASAP’.

A sigh had barely escaped her lips when the portrait hole swung open and Ginny traipsed in tiredly.

“Blazing buggering fire crabs,” she groaned, falling onto the sofa next to Hermione, “I’m
exhausted. My brain has melted. It’s like a puddle of thickened slime in my skull. I can’t wait for
these O.W.L.s to be... What’s happened to you?”

Hermione met her concerned frown with consternation.

“Um... Ginny,” she began, worrying her lower lip with her teeth, “Harry’s... gone. With
Dumbledore.”

Ginny’s spine straightened as she was - almost involuntarily - lurched out of her slouch. “What do
you mean gone?!”

“He... they... Well, they’ve gone to do something. I don’t really know what...”

“You don’t really know. Right,” Ginny said with scathing disbelief, “Is it dangerous? Oh, wait.
Don’t bother. Of course it’s bloody dangerous.” With all the colour drained from her face, she
suddenly stood up. “You just let him go off like that?”

“He’s with Dumbledore, Ginny–”

“And he couldn’t even bother to tell me? Just a ‘hullo little girlfriend, I’m off to be a valiant hero
again, tara’ would’ve been nice. Oh Merlin. Why does he keep pulling these stunts?”
“He didn’t have time to find you; Dumbledore was waiting–”

“He told you, though. Had time enough for that.”

“I just happened to be here when he was leaving, and he–”

“Of course you were. You always happen to be there for him, don’t you?”

“Ginny...” Hermione whispered imploringly.

And just like that, the agitated, ashen-faced girl before her deflated.

“I know,” she said in a pained voice, “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just... scared, Hermione.”

Hermione rose, stood in front of her, and put a comforting hand on her arm. “So am I.”

That was when Ron came back down from his dormitory, followed by Neville, Dean, and Seamus,
each wearing bewildered looks of varying intensities.
Tousle-haired and bleary-eyed Seamus was the first to speak:

“Alright, Mr Weasley, sir. We’re downstairs now. Will you please tell us why you dragged us out of
bed?”

“Stop being so bloody shirty, Seamus,” Ron snapped (Hermione, in her twitchy state, struggled to
contain a giggle and suppress the urge to challenge Ron to say Shirty Seamus five times, rapidly),
“This is important. Dumbledore’s not in the castle tonight, and there’s a very good chance that
something bad is going to happen–”

“What d’you mean something bad,” Dean asked anxiously.

Hermione cleared her throat, “We have reason to believe that Draco Malfoy has... something
planned. He’s been working on it in the room of requirement all year. Snape’s involved too, in
some capacity. And since Dumbledore’s away, we think that they’re going to... act... tonight. We
need to keep an eye on them.”

There was a brief interlude in which the three newcomers digested her words.

“Malfoy and Snape have... something... planned,” Dean clarified.

Hermione and Ron both nodded.

“What exactly is something?”

“Donno,” said Ron with a shrug.

“But you’re sure it’s something.”

“Yeah.”

Neville, whose face was a mask of apprehension asked, “Where’s Harry?”

“He’s gone with Dumbledore,” said Hermione.

“And where have they gone?” Seamus demanded.

With another flippant shrug, Ron replied “Donno,” once again.

“Basically, you know sweet fuck all,” Seamus grumbled, “I’m going back to bed.”

“Don’t be a tool, Seamus,” Dean entreated at the same time as Ron said, “Settle your arse down!”

"Well, I’m sorry,” Seamus barked, “But this whole thing is mad as a box of frogs. We’re in
Hogwarts for fuck’s sake – Dumbledore or no Dumbledore, it’s as safe as safe can be.”

“I’d have said the same thing about the Ministry before last year,” Neville countered, before
looking over at Hermione, “How’re we doing this then?”

She gave him a grateful nod, unfurled the Marauder’s map, and muttered the activation phrase.
Scrutinising carefully, she searched the map from corner to corner.

“Malfoy isn’t showing up on this,” she announced, “So he’s obviously still in the Room of
Requirement. Snape... is in his office. We’ll split up and stand guard at both those locations...”

Dean and Seamus peered over her each of her shoulders.

“Cool map,” Dean said in awe, “Where’d you get it?”

"It belonged to Harry’s dad...” she replied absently.

“Anyone else from the DA show up?” Ron asked.

“Um... Luna.”

Ron whickered, “Brilliant. Just the person you want around in a time of crisis.”

“Shut up, Ron,” Ginny snapped, “So how are we splitting up, Hermione? ...Er, Hermione?”

Hermione, however, was already halfway across the room. Without turning, and with her eyes still
glued to the map, she said, “Theo is outside the portrait hole for some reason. I’ll be back in
second.”

He was on her the moment she stepped out.

“Thank Merlin,” he exclaimed, “I’ve been standing out here for twenty minutes trying to get this
puffed up pink Fwooper to let me in.”

(An offended wail tore out of the fat lady’s mouth. “Well I never...”)

Theo took hold of Hermione’s elbow and dragged her a few feet away.

“What are you doing here?” Hermione asked nervously.

His hair was all over the place, looking like he had run his hands through it a billion times.
“Hermione, listen,” he began fervently, looking down at her with turbulent eyes, “Something’s
going to happen tonight.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why would you say that?”

“Because Draco told me expressly that under no circumstances am I to leave the common room
tonight, and point-blank refused to give a reason for it. Then he left, and I have no idea where he’s
gone. He looked... he looked awful. Like he was going to be sick. I didn’t get–”

He stopped talking abruptly, staring at something behind Hermione. She spun around and saw her
housemates spilling out of the common room.

“’the fuck are you doing here, Nott?” Ron demanded.

“I don’t have to justify my whereabouts to you, Weasley.”

“Look here you plonker–”

“Oh, save the pissing contest for another time you two,” Hermione rebuked, “Theo’s just confirmed
our suspicions about Malfoy. Now let’s quickly get to the seventh floor before Luna gets tired of
waiting...”

“Wait, what? Luna?” Theo yelled, “Why is she loitering around? Fuck.”

He charged away like a boy possessed. The rest of them watched his receding back, gobsmacked,
for a few seconds... and then they followed, tearing down the corridor, their cloaks billowing out
behind them like Lethifolds.

It took ten long minutes for them to settle on how exactly they were going to divide themselves into
two groups.

“Luna, Hermione, and I will wait here for Draco,” Theo declared authoritatively.

“You’ll be distracted if we’re with you, Theo,” Luna rejoined.

Hermione spoke before he could open his mouth to argue, “She’s right. You wait here; you’re the
only one who might be able to talk Malfoy out of his designs. Ginny, Neville, Dean... You can
disillusion yourselves and stand at a distance. That leaves Ron, Seamus, Luna, and I to wait outside
Snape’s office.”

“No, that’s –”

“Don’t be difficult, Theo. Luna and I will be fine.”

He snapped his mouth shut and loured at her.

“Er – Hermione...” Ron ventured, “D’you think I can stay here with Ginny? Mum will kill me if I
let something happen to her–”

“Fuck off, Ron,” Ginny scoffed, “I’m better with a wand than you are, any day of–”

“That’s not the point, you daft cow–”

“Don’t call me a da–”

“Alright,” Hermione snapped, “Theo, Ron, Ginny, and Dean will wait outside the Room of
Requirement; Luna, Seamus, Neville, and I will–”

“Hey, at least let me have Finnigan!” Theo begged.

“Aw, Nott! Knew you had a glad eye for me, you rawny dah’lin...”

“Hardy har, knobhead–”

And so it was decided; Ron, Ginny, Seamus, and Theo went to stand outside the room of
requirement, and Hermione, Luna, Neville, and Dean headed down to the dungeons to station
themselves outside Snape’s office.

That had been forty minutes ago.

Three jittery Gryffindors, and one unnervingly composed Ravenclaw sat in a row against the wall
by Snape’s door. Hermione had cast a quick Muffliato around them, taking buckets of pleasure in
using Prince Severus’ own spell against him.

“I think I’m going to have to agree with Seamus now,” Dean said, “This is stupid.”

He’d tilted his head back to rest against the wall and had his eyes closed. Hermione fiddled with a
loose thread on her cloak, unable to come up with something to contradict that proclamation.

“Hermione,” Neville broached tentatively, “You’re absolutely sure about all this, yeah?”

“Yes. That is to say... Harry’s been keeping a close eye on Snape and Malfoy all year, and–”

“No. I mean... are you really sure? Harry was certain that Sirius Black was being held prisoner at
the ministry, too... And well, you know how that turned out.”

Hermione bit her lip. “Neville, you know that that whole fiasco at the ministry was a trap. This...
this is different...”

She tugged and tugged at the loose thread, but it refused to break. She really wished she hadn’t
given the Marauder’s map to the other group.
“Is it really different?” Dean asked, opening one eye to look at her, “What, besides Harry’s
conviction, has brought us here? Do you always just do what he says?”

Hermione bristled, half wanting to tell him that he was welcome to fuck off.

Instead she said, “Absolutely. Ours not to make reply, Ours not to reason why, Ours but to do and
die.”

“Oh brother,” Dean huffed, and settled back into his reposeful pose.

Hermione glared daggers at his profile.

“Look,” she tried again after a spell, speaking more to Neville than anyone else, “I am absolutely
certain that Malfoy has something sinister up his sleeve-”

“Theo says that he isn’t really a bad person,” Luna interjected.

Dean and Neville expelled identical noises of disbelief. Hermione wound the thread around the tip
of her finger till it was bloodless and chalk-white.

“Theo’s a bit biassed,” she said.

“Maybe,” Luna allowed, “But you trust his judgement, don’t you?”

Hermione didn’t answer - she simply stared down at her anaemic fingertip.

“...don’t you?”

“Yes,” she confessed, grudgingly.

That admission marked the end of their surveillance-time chitchat. They just sat there quietly (in a
row against the wall by Snape’s door); Hermione played with her thread, Neville blinked at a crack
on the opposite wall, Dean kept his eyes closed, and Luna tapped her wand repeatedly against her
shoe, changing its colour with each strike: blue, green, purple, maroon...
...Hermione found herself partially mesmerised by the flickering hues, thinking about bright neon
signs at Piccadilly...

“What’s that?” Neville exclaimed urgently, “Someone... someone’s coming!”

They were all on their feet in a flash, squinting their eyes to see through the shadow-heavy
corridor; a tiny figure was vaguely discernible in the distance. They stood in tense anticipation,
each holding tightly onto their respective wands, poised to attack if necessary...
As the figure came closer, Hermione realised that it was Flitwick. He ran wildly past them, not
even sparing a glance in their direction, and burst into Snape’s office, leaving the door open behind
him.

Neville let out a shaky sigh, “What the he–”

“Shhh!” Hermione hissed sharply. She pressed herself against the door jamb, straining to hear what
was going on inside.
“...Death Eaters... the castle!” she picked up fragments in Flitwick’s high voice; he sounded
desperate and panic-stricken, “Severus... with me... Astronomy.... outnumbered...”

Then there was a heavy thump, and four seconds later, Snape was standing before them. His eyes
travelled from Hermione to Luna to Dean to Neville, his curled lip becoming more and more
prominent along the way. Hermione, expecting interrogations and detentions, set her jaw defiantly.

“Professor Flitwick has collapsed in my office – he appears to have over-exerted himself. Go in and
look after him... and if you meddlesome children want what’s best for you, you’ll stay inside for the
rest of the night.”

And with a thorough sneer in lieu of a ‘by your leave’, he marched down the corridor. The
meddlesome children watched him till he melted into the shadows, and then looked at each other
with wide eyes... on your mark, get set, go!... They hurtled into the office.

“Oh!” Luna gasped miserably, “Poor Professor Flitwick!”

He was unconscious and spreadeagled on the floor. Hermione knelt beside him, and pressed her
wand to his forehead.

“Rennervate,” she whispered. Flitwick stirred feebly, and his previously shallow breathing evened
out, but he did not wake up. She removed her cloak, bundled it up, and placed it under his head like
a pillow. Luna and Neville draped theirs over him like blankets.

“Is he going to be alright?” Neville asked Hermione uneasily.

“I think so. He should wake up once his nerves recover...”

“At least he’s warm now,” said Luna. She took one of her strange Gurdyroots out of her satchel,
and placed it next to his head. “There. That’s perfect. Now the Gulping Plimpies will stay away
too.”

“Pardon me,” Dean cut in loudly, “But if you’re all done playing Florence Nightingale, maybe we
could talk about the fucking Death Eaters that are supposed to be in the castle?”

“Right!” Hermione squeaked, “Damn it, I really wish I had that map with me...” She stepped away
from Flitwick’s... floorside, “We should go back up to the seventh floor and reconvene with the
others. Come on.”

“Death Easters,” Dean yelped in distress as he swooped in front of her to block her path, “Death.
Eaters. In the castle. What if we run into a couple of fucking Death Eaters?”

Hermione raised her eyebrows, “You have your wand don’t you?”

He looked towards the other members of their quartet pleadingly. Neville shrugged.

“Isn’t this why you joined Dumbledore’s Army to begin with?” asked Luna.

Defeated, Dean nodded stiffly.

Screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail.

They crept silently through passageways and up staircases, clinging to the walls and the darkness
that pooled under them.

They needn’t have bothered.

The castle appeared to be completely deserted; No patrolling sentries, no murderous psychopaths,

no irascible caretakers, nor their mangy cantankerous cats. Even the paintings lining the halls were
eerily vacant.

“I don’t understand,” Hermione murmured, “There were supposed to be Death Eaters... extra
security–”

She stopped speaking and all four of them froze, listening in terror to the escalating sound of
sprinting feet coming from somewhere ahead of them. Immediately, they got into their defensive
stance: alert, prepared, with wands held aloft.

“...Luna...!...Hermione...!...Dean...!”

Almost as if they’d materialised out of thin air, Theo and Ginny were suddenly just there. Ron and
Seamus came after, crashing into the other two and nearly knocking them onto the ground.

“Oh!” Ron huffed, “Are you all okay?”

“We’re fine” Hermione assured him hastily, “But what on earth is going on?”

“Death Eaters have infiltrated the castle,” Ginny averred grimly.

“But...” Hermione stuttered, “How... how...?”

“It was Draco’s doing,” Theo said in a gravelly, haunted voice, “I don’t know how, but–” he
seemed to choke on his words, and Luna took his hand in hers.

“Shit. Fuck!” Dean swore.

“That’s what I said too,” Seamus muttered frivolously.

“What happened with Malfoy, though?” Hermione asked keenly, “Did he –”

With a muted screech of impatience, Ginny exclaimed, “We don’t have time to faff about and
explain! We need to go help out!”
“Oh. Oh yes,” Hermione mumbled penitently, “Yes...”

“Um... look here...”

“...Check the map, Ron – find out where everybody is...”

“Yeah. There’s also this,” he pulled the tiny bottle of Felix Felicis out of his pocket, “One little sip
each, alright?”

“...Um, guys...”

“What is that?” Seamus asked, eyeing the bottle suspiciously.

“Liquid luck,” Hermione and Theo said simultaneously. They looked at each other, and in the deep
groove between his furrowed brows, Hermione perceived the full brunt of his despondency.

“...Oi, look here, guys...”

“Theo, listen,” she whispered to him as the Felix Felicis was being circulated, “You don’t have to
do this. You don’t have to fight.”

“Are you mad?” he asked, looking aghast, “Of course, I bloody well will fight.”

Taking the tiny bottle from her hand, he took a bold swig. Luna watched him with immense pride; a
sentiment that Hermione shared whole-heartedly...

“...WILL YOU FUCKING COME OVER HERE?”

They all spun around in alarm to stare at Neville. He stood a little distance away, staring outside a
window while wearing the most blood-curdling look of horror.

“What is it?” Luna asked cautiously.

“Look,” he said hoarsely, pointing outside.

Hermione's internal sparks of Felicis-induced euphoria and confidence fizzled into nothingness as
they moved towards Neville in an anxious huddle, gathered around the window, and looked out into
the night.

There it was, looming repulsively over the astronomy tower – toxic green and glittering – the Dark
Mark.

They instantly knew what that meant. Someone had been killed.
 Ginny clapped her hands to her mouth.
Luna and Dean gasped.
Ron let out a strangled groan.
“Oh fuck,” Seamus whispered.
Theo’s mouth thinned into one straight line.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but...

Hermione whimpered.

Chapter End Notes

1. "Ours not to make reply..." The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
2."Screw your courage to the sticking-place...": Act I, Scene 7, Macbeth, by William
Shakespeare
3. "This is the way the world ends...": The Hollow Men, by T. S. Eliot
 Twenty-Seven

Streaks of light, bursts of colour, sparks flashing and whizzing hither and thither: A battle scene
like a laser lighting display.

Hermione wielded her wand like a conductor’s baton, throwing hexes towards the gaunt, vulture-
like Death Eater she was locked in a duel with. She wasn’t fully aware of the spells she was using,
and yet they continued to stream out of her wand fiercely and judiciously – it was pure adrenaline-
driven automatism. Some primal survival instinct was guiding her, momentarily suspending fear
and hesitation.

“Stupify!” she roared, and the resulting spell was so forceful, her rival flew back at least ten feet.

She spun around, half-crouched and resolute... Neville was being brutally beaten down by a female
Death Eater, injured as he was after attempting to charge through the mysterious, invisible barrier
closing off access to the Astronomy Tower. She surged forward to help him and –

“HERMIONE! LOOK OUT!”

She dived just in time to avoid a jet of green light – the killing curse – and crashed onto the floor
just adjacent to Bill Weasley’s mangled body. A startled sob tore out of her throat, raw and guttural.
She kicked her legs out as she sprung back onto her feet, accidentally but unremorsefully kicking a
dead Death Eater in his dead dead dead face.

“Okay, Hermione?” Tonks hollered, even as she valiantly continued to restrain an enormous blond-
haired Death Eater who was on a rampage, shooting Avadas willy-nilly.

“Fine!” she called back, and aimed a body-binding curse towards the brute.... which was deflected
by one of his peers.

“Now that wasn’t very nice of you, was it, little runt? A punishment is in order... Crucio!”

Hermione jumped to the side to dodge the curse, and immediately retaliated by shooting a torrent of
arrows out of her wand.
The Death Eater deflected them with a sickening grin.

“Tsk. Child’s play. You’re asking for trouble, little runt. Cruc –”

Thick flames from a scorching spell grazed by him, and he yelped and staggered back.

Suddenly, Theo was by Hermione’s side. Smoke trailed out of his wand as he glared mutinously at
the Death Eater.

“What’s this?! Nott?!” the Death Eater thundered, appalled, “You... you treacherous... slimy... fuck.
If only your father could see you now.” Quick as a viper, he non-verbally disarmed Theo, “Avada
–”
“Petrificus Totalus!” Hermione shouted, and finally the wretched sod was defeated. He fell back,
stiff as a board and wide-eyed.

“Are you alright?” she asked Theo urgently.

“Yeah,” he breathed, massaging his wrist... and then he abruptly pulled her down with him into a
squat as yet another stray Adava sailed over their heads.
They scattered in opposite directions, Theo scrambling to retrieve his wand, and Hermione
resuming her mission to help Neville.

He was sprawled on the floor, propped up by no more than an elbow, intrepidly but tiredly trying to
stun the woman who was bearing down on him...
Hermione circled around them so she could get a clear shot... “Everte Statum!”... and the Death
Eater made a pitchy squawk as she was thrown high into the air. Neville nodded gratefully, and
collapsed onto his back panting.

Hermione skittered to her left, catching sight of a green streak of light just in time to narrowly
avoid being hit.

“EVERYBODY, SHIELDS UP!”

It was Lupin’s voice that tore through the chaos and calamity, all across the dark and narrow
combat zone. Hermione leapt to Neville’s side, and put up a powerful shield charm over both of
them...

And that’s when half the ceiling caved in – a shattering downpour of rock and rubble – and
everything disappeared behind a thick cloud of dust.

It was jarring – unnervingly so – the absolute quiet that fell upon that weakly lit corridor as it filled
with brume and puffs of fine grey powder.

Hermione slowly lowered her wand, and the shimmering blue dome encompassing her and Neville
fizzled out. A low trembling breath left her lungs, and she heard it like it had fallen directly onto
her ears through a loudspeaker. Every subsequent breath was similarly amplified.
She peered around through the haze in a state of total stupefaction, and watched it gradually clear.
Little by little, silhouettes of other people stirring and unfurling became sketchily visible.
After coming to her feet, she offered a hand to Neville, helping him up. He kept his hand wrapped
around hers, reflexively, and they waited in suspense for the dust to settle.

The dust always settled.

“Lacarnum Inflamarae!” – It was a feral, throaty intonation, following which, a giant blazing orb
of fire tore down the length of the corridor like a comet, forcing everyone to leap towards the walls.

As if she hadn’t ever been interrupted, vicious Lady Bellona staked her claim once more. The battle
recommenced.

Having lost Neville during the fireball-ruckus, Hermione found herself facing two Death Eaters all
on her own.

“Well, well,” said one (a ragged, rangy looking fellow), “It’s Potter’s mudblood sidekick innit,
Amycus?”

“It is,” the other (stout, lumpy) one wheezed with a smirk, “Little mud-rat thinks she has the right
to play around with magic. How about we cut her to size... Diffindo!”

Hermione deftly flicked her wand, causing his curse to go flying right back to him.

“OH! Oh,” he panted after ducking to dodge the rebound, “You damn well think you’re clever,
don’t you, you filthy little...”

“Confringo!” Hermione shouted, slicing her wand to include both Death Eaters in the resulting
explosion.

They got their shields up in time.

“That's it,” the rangy Death Eater growled, “Crucio!”

She scarcely managed to avoid being hit.

“Impedimenta!” she cried, brandishing her wand like a blade.

Except, she wasn’t the only one to cast the spell. From either side of her, Seamus and Ginny had
thrown the exact same jinx at the exact same time. Seamus and hers hit the first Death Eater
squarely in the solar plexus, and he was thrown back into a heap on the floor. The second, Amycus,
chased after Ginny with a furious roar.

Before Hermione could so much as think about following, she was distracted by the sight of Snape
and Malfoy, as they came charging out of the door leading to the Astronomy tower.
With his wand in one hand and the scruff of Malfoy’s neck in the other, Snape adroitly navigated
through the raging skirmish. He swept past Lupin, who was holding up a shield in front of Tonks...
past Professor McGonagall who was energetically exchanging hexes with a Death Eater... past
Dean, who cast a powerful Reducto on a pile of rubble, drawing out the Death Eater who’d hidden
behind it... past her... and just as he reached the far end of the corridor, he paused.

“It’s over,” he called, “Time to go.”

The moment he and Malfoy disappeared around the bend, the Death Eaters began detaching
themselves from their various duels, and followed.

Hermione blinked. Once.

Amycus was still adamantly trying to annihilate Ginny... The big, blond Death Eater was still in the
business of arbitrarily and insanely shooting spells...

He set off a series of golden yellow jets of light, and they went and crashed against walls, shattered
windows... demolished a suit of armour just a few meters away from where Ron was locked in
combat with a brick-like Death Eater...
Hermione leapt back into the fray, and aimed hex after hex at the blond menace, hitting him once in
the knee, once on the shoulder. How this chap was still standing was beyond her. But her concerted
attack seemed to strengthen Tonks’ resolve. She redoubled her efforts, and between the two of
them, (“Three... Two... Now, Hermione!”) they finally took the savage down.
He fell on all fours, howling in pain and –

“Harry, where did you come from?”

At Ginny’s shocked cry, Hermione spun around – bizarrely, gracefully, a fouetté, a pirouette – just
in time to see him sprint by her.

“Harry,” she whispered into the gust of wind he left behind in his wake.

From somewhere behind her, she heard McGonagall shout victoriously, “Take that!” and more
Death Eaters broke away from the fracas. The big blond one, too, seemed to have recovered enough
to make an escape.

Halfway across the corridor, Harry tripped over Neville’s prone form, and lay winded on the
ground. Seizing the opportunity, Hermione broke into a run... but alas, Harry was back on his feet
no more than seconds later, and he resumed his chase.

Harry ran on, and Hermione followed. Not knowing where to... not knowing what for...

Harry ran, and Hermione followed.

Harry was a sportsman. He was built to seek, he had long legs, and he was accustomed to the
hardships of quidditch training. It was no wonder that he had a good distance over Hermione as
they raced down the Hogwarts castle. She was always at least a hundred steps behind.

On the third floor, she stopped, succumbing to the most excruciating side stitch. She stood before a
large embroidered wall-hanging, gasping and clutching at her stomach.

And then she was brusquely, unceremoniously pulled into a dingy alcove behind the tapestry.

A strong, lean arm wrapped around her midsection, pinning her against a hard form. Her shrieks
were muted by a palm pressed firmly against her mouth.
Hermione fought madly. She kicked her leg back, but her captor wrapped one of his own around
her ankles, locking them in place. She jerked wildly; she jolted and she juddered... she screamed
and screamed in vain into the palm that was silencing her...

“Stop it. Granger. Stop.”

Fear iced up her spine, and it froze her movements. That voice. She knew that voice.

A few fleeting moments after fear and recognition came determination. She intensified her
thrashing, her desperate convulsing...

“Stop,” Malfoy snarled, “Stop fucking fighting.”

She could feel his breath against the shell of her ear. Even as she struggled, she became all too
aware of him... of his presence, the physicality of it. His arm wrapped around her like a vice... his
body, tense and unyielding, pressed against her back...

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he rumbled into her ear, “Stop. Fighting.”

Oh, not a chance in hell, Malfoy.

“...Please.”

She was immobilised once more, but this time in disbelief. It wasn’t so much the word (one which
he had never deigned to use in her presence before) rather the way he’d said it. It was desperate,
rasping. Pleading.

In that dim alcove they stood, still entangled, learning to breathe at a regular pace again.

“Look,” he muttered, “I’m unarmed, Granger. I just need to talk to you.” And then he paused, as
though waiting for her to fully internalise that declaration. “I’m... going to let go now.”

He paused, once again, giving himself time to imagine her nodding her head, or saying, ‘sure thing
Malfoy’, or what you will. Then slowly, he loosened his hold... just a fraction... just enough for her
to wriggle free, twist around, and hurl an effective, non-verbal Incarcerous spell at him.

Bound tightly from his shoulders to his ankles, Malfoy stared at her, open-mouthed and seething.

“What the fuck... untie me,” he fulminated, “Untie me at once.”

Hermione, not quite able to form words owing to the awfully startling turn her night had taken,
gave him a look, in the hope that the general sentiment behind the phrase, ‘Ha, not happening,
idiot,’ was sufficiently conveyed.

“You despicable little bitch... UNTIE ME,” he raged, “I fucking told you I wasn’t going to hurt
you! Let. Me. Go.”

He looked more than a little worse for wear. In fact, he looked entirely drained, behind all that
vehement rage of course. What exactly had happened up in the astronomy tower?

“What is wrong with you? Are you just going to stand there watching me like a total sodding
moron–”

“I believe you said you wanted to talk,” Hermione managed to rasp out at last. Her throat felt
flayed from the inside after all her futile screaming.

“Untie me, Granger.”

“Talk, Malfoy.”

“First you untie – Oh Merlin’s fucking shit-smeared pants. Is this a game to you, you stupid mu –
girl? Think this is some jolly little diversion? Don’t you realise that–”

“That what?” she snapped, incensed, “That you somehow brought Death Eaters into Hogwarts?
Yeah, they were kind of hard to miss seeing how they’ve been trying their damnedest to kill me for
the past hour or so–”

“– for fuck’s sake–”

“– have been engaged in a full-on battle up there–”

“– not interested in explaining myself to you of all people, bloody sanctimonious–”

“– and then, after unleashing absolute hell, you drag me into this hole and say you want to talk?
What on earth do you–”

“SHUT UP,” he thundered, so loudly, so fiercely that Hermione took a step back, “Just shut up! I
don’t care about your inane self-righteous bluster. You–”

“How dare you,” she shrieked.

“Shut the fuck up–”

“– even realise what you’ve done?! You horrible, shitty excuse for a human being, you–”

“Just promise me you'll keep Theo safe, alright?”

Her jaw snapped shut. She stared at Malfoy as he fumed and panted and glared back. It was strange
that in a space so dark, where the only source of illumination were thin shafts of candlelight that
had penetrated through the stitching of the tapestry, his eyes managed to glow, as though they
carried their own in-built light. Like two pieces of backlit rock crystal, they shone turbulently.

“What...?” she breathed.

“Keep Theo safe. After all this... after tonight... they’re going to be out for his blood. They’re going
to want revenge. His beast of a father is going to want revenge. Promise me you’ll hide him away
somewhere.”

“I... what are you–”

“Gah, my sainted aunt, are you incapable of giving a simple answer to a simple question? The way
you go on during lessons, one would think you’d be able to manage that at least.”

“Malfoy– ”

“I don’t have time to indulge your bullshit, you idiot! Just tell me you’ll make sure–”

“Of course I’ll make sure he’s safe!” Hermione rushed out incredulously.

And yet again – again – they came to a standstill, staring each other down.

“All right,” Malfoy conceded eventually, “Now untie me, Granger. I’ve already wasted more time
than I could’ve afforded.”

Hermione wished she could bring herself to scoff. She wished she could’ve laughed scathingly,
abrasively, and told him to go to hell. She wanted to be able to bring herself to parade him through
the school, all trussed up and bound as he was, and deposit him right onto Dumbledore’s lap.
And yet... all she could see in her mind’s eye was Theo. Theo hunched over in anguish, bathed in
moonlight... crying because he thought Harry had killed Malfoy.

Helpless against the pull of that memory, she waved her wand and let him loose. The cords fell
away and after giving himself a light shake, he wasted no time in storming out of the nook...
jostling her shoulder as he went.

Hermione allowed herself a minute to regain composure, with her head bent and her hand grasping
a nearby wall for support.
Then she sighed deeply, nodded briskly to herself, and stepped back out into the hallway. It was
completely deserted. She could hear the low hum of commotion emanating from somewhere below,
but she ignored it, choosing instead to mount up the stairs and return to the scene of the battle. It
got quieter and quieter as she climbed, and soon the only thing saving her from going mad from
deathly silence were the sounds of her footsteps and her breathing.

The seventh floor was the absolute pinnacle of extravagant devastation.

The floor was strewn with chunks of rock, glass, and debris. Not a single painting or sculpture had
survived. The fallen ceiling, like a gaping wound, revealed the first signs of dawn – pinky-purple
and blossoming like a newborn rose. It was outrageous and appallingly inappropriate for the
firmament to present such promise and prettiness when the scene below was so tragic.

In the dead centre of the corridor, Madam Pomfrey was helping Neville onto a stretcher. The rest of
them – the battered soldiers of Dumbledore’s Army – stood to the side, watching. Theo had his
arms around Luna as she leant heavily against him. Her leg was bleeding profusely. Dean was
perched on a boulder and had his hand pressed against a gash on the side of his head. Ron, Ginny,
and Seamus appeared to be largely unhurt.
Hermione took a step towards them, and accidentally kicked a small chunk of concrete. It skittered
raucously across the ground, bouncing off larger pieces of detritus. The noise alerted her comrades
to her presence, and they all looked at her in dumbfounded relief.

“Where the hell have you been?” Theo demanded, exhaustion preventing him from suffusing his
tone with the kind of fervour he’d been aiming for.

“I went after Harry,” she answered in a low voice, “but he outran me.”

She came to a halt by Neville’s stretcher, frowning down at her blood and dirt smeared friend.

“You okay?” she asked tentatively.

Madam Pomfrey replied before he could – “Nothing I can’t fix in a jiffy. Now you all please follow
us down to the hospital wing. Professor McGonagall’s orders.”

She levitated Neville’s stretcher and steered it down the corridor.

With a low groan, Dean lifted himself onto his feet.

“Shall we?” he ventured, gesturing towards Pomfrey’s back with his free hand.

“I’ll go find Harry,” Ginny murmured.

“Wait,” Hermione requested, “What happened to... I mean... Bill...”

“He’s alive,” Ginny answered, but not without a tremor in her voice, “He’s alive...” she paused,
looking at Hermione through a thin film of tears, “Greyback messed him up really badly. But...
he’ll live.”

She walked away before Hermione could offer any words of relief or consolation. And that was
good, since she really couldn’t think of any.

“Come on,” Theo muttered. Keeping his hold on Luna, he led the way to the hospital wing.

Hermione lagged at the back of the group, examining the backs of the heads in front of her. It
seemed as good a way as any to keep from thinking... she was too too too fucking tired to think.
Tiredness was as real and material inside her as her blood, her bones, her muscles and sinews...

Luna’s dark blond tresses where matted with filth; and yet, they caught the candlelight at strange
moments, gleaming as though burnished. Theo’s light brown mop looked uncharacteristically stiff –
most likely caked in sweat and dust. Seamus’ short sandy brown hair was tufty and clumpy. Dean’s
cropped jet black curls were soaked in blood.
Hermione turned to her right to look at Ron’s fiery red locks; they were slicked back. Dirt and
sweat worked as well as any hair gel or potion in the market. Ron looked back at her, and she hated
the cloudy patina that sorrow and fatigue had lathered onto his usually brilliant blue eyes.

When she staggered slightly, he put a supporting arm around her waist.
 Twenty-Eight
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted from HBP.

Bill’s face was gruesomely marred, as though it had been deliberately deformed and distorted. His
face was a Francis Bacon portrait.

Madam Pomfrey, along with a senior healer from St. Mungo’s who’d flooed in not too ago, had
tried every healing spell in their sizable combined arsenal. Nothing had worked.

(“I’m sorry,” Healer Masterson had mumbled regretfully before leaving, “There really isn’t any
known cure for werewolf bites.”)

All that there was left to do then was to stop the bleeding and close the wounds. Pomfrey was
slathering a pungent green salve onto Bill’s face in that regard, and the rest of them (with the
exception of Neville, who was fast asleep on the next cot, heavily doped up on various restorative
potions,) gathered around his bed to watch sorrowfully.

“Poor lad,” Tonks whispered.

Ron made a low, gruff sound; he hadn’t looked away from his brother for even a moment. There
was a distressed, beseeching semblance about his stare, like he might be imploring Bill to just
please, please get miraculously healed.

Hermione tore her eyes away from Ron’s vulnerable countenance, passed over Bill’s mangled one,
and let her gaze travel down his duvet covered body. She looked at his toes, at the grille at the foot
of his bed, at the fingers that curled around the top bar, at the palm and arm attached to those
fingers... the shoulder... the neck – Luna’s neck – bent with exhaustion. She looked at Luna’s face,
and her eyes that were blinking long and slow in a struggle to stay awake. She looked at the chest
Luna’s head was laid upon, at the throat above, swaddled in the scarf she had painstakingly weaved
so long ago...

She looked at Theo, and he was looking right back at her.

Their eyes stayed locked for an unquantifiable extent of time. He wore no expression, and gave no
sign nor indication to betray what he may have been thinking or feeling. His eyes, blank but
steadfast, met Hermione’s stare... and did no more. She felt her breathing accelerate. Her mouth fell
open, just a trifle, to provide a better outlet for her quickened breaths.
Just promise me you’ll keep Theo safe, alright? The intense and impassioned plea echoed in her
mind, over and over again, gradually losing its urgency the longer she stared into Theo’s
unreadable eyes. The pitch got deeper, richer, lilting, monophonic, haunting... And soon enough, it
was a Gregorian chant: Just promise me you’ll keep Theo safe, alright? Just promise me you’ll keep
Theo safe, alright? Just promise me you’ll keep Theo safe, alright? Alleluia Amen. It was a perfect
companion to the austere, church-like atmosphere of the hospital wing.

Without interrupting his scrutiny, Theo tilted his head until it was resting atop of Luna’s. His
nostrils flared unobtrusively. There were so many, many different ways the past year could have
gone, and so many of those possibilities ended in a scenario where she didn’t have the support, and
friendship of this unwavering, wonderful boy; even the thought of those hypotheticals, though their
probability now was zero, made Hermione’s stomach turn.
She would keep him safe. She would make sure not a single overlong hair on his head would be
touched.

As her resolve strengthened it must have become apparent on her face, because Theo’s brow
furrowed questioningly. She blinked at him slowly: A gentle gesture of reassurance.

The doors of the hospital wing were pushed open, and the low and lengthy creak that came with it
broke their connection. She looked up and felt all the air leave her lungs. Harry.

She sprung off the stool she’d been sitting on and ran over to throw her arms around his neck. He
smelt of smoke and sea salt and cold sweat; and though his arms came around to hug her back, they
felt stiff and mechanical. They... he... felt wrong. She pulled away, falling back onto her heels to get
a look at his face. It was covered in soot and dirt, upon which were clearly visible two narrow trails
leading from his eyes to his jaw. Dried up tear tracks. She swallowed thickly.

Lupin came to her side to peer at him as well. “Are you all right, Harry?”

“I’m fine,” he answered hoarsely, looking over her shoulder, “How’s Bill?”

Hermione turned and walked back to her seat. Nobody seemed to be able to answer Harry’s
question.

Ginny, who had come in with Harry, took hold of his hand and pulled him closer to Bill’s cot, from
where he frowned sombrely at Pomfrey and asked, “Can’t you fix them with a charm or
something?”

“No charm will work on these,” the matron responded, “I’ve tried everything I know.”

“But he wasn’t bitten at the full moon,” Ron counteracted, throwing an unsure glance at Lupin,
“Greyback hadn’t transformed, so surely Bill won’t be a – a real –?”

“No, I don’t think that Bill will be a true werewolf,” said Lupin, “but that does not mean that there
won’t be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely ever to heal fully, and –
and Bill might have some wolfish characteristics from now on.”

Ron dragged a hand down his face despondently.

“Dumbledore might know something that’d work, though,” he said, “Where is he? Bill fought those
maniacs on Dumbledore’s orders, Dumbledore owes him, he can’t leave him in this state –”
“Ron,” Ginny interposed sharply, “Dumbledore’s dead.”

The sound of roaring wind erupted in Hermione’s ears. She felt her entire body break into goose
pimples; it was a horrible, horrible feeling, like a prolonged internal shudder.

“No!” someone (Lupin?) cried. She saw Harry nod faintly at Ron, confirming Ginny’s statement.

“How –” Seamus and Tonks began at the same time.

They both stopped and exchanged a look, and Seamus lowered his head, signalling Tonks to
continue.

“How did he die?” she asked softly, “How did it happen?”

Harry wet his lips, pulled his shoulders back, and gravely proclaimed, “Snape killed him. I was
there, I saw it –” (...Hermione had to bite her lip to hold in a gasp; her focus was riveted on
Harry...) “– We arrived back on the Astronomy Tower because that’s where the Mark was...
Dumbledore was ill, he was weak, but I think he realized it was a trap when we heard footsteps
running up the stairs. He immobilized me, I couldn’t do anything, I was under the Invisibility Cloak
– and then Malfoy came through the door and disarmed him –” (...This time, she had to clap her
hands to her mouth to keep mute, and beside her, Ron groaned...) “– more Death Eaters arrived –
and then Snape – and Snape did it. The Avada Kedavra.”

Harry clenched his jaw after that, unable to speak any further. His fists were balled up tightly.
Madam Pomfrey let out a distressed wail, and was immediately shushed by Ginny. “Listen!” she
pressed, and pointed towards the window at the end of the ward.

Against the pearly pink hue of the early morning, a phoenix was streaking across the sky, its
scintillating plume rippling and dazzling even from a great distance. It was singing a melodic
requiem of such terrible beauty that they all sat quietly with their ears pinned back, letting the
powerful, heart-rending song wash over them... pour into them... letting it convey the awful grief of
a moment that no human articulation could adequately express.
Hermione’s eyes swept across Ron... Harry... Ginny... Lupin... Tonks... Seamus... Dean... Luna...
and landed once again on Theo. His head was bowed, weighed down by horror, disbelief, fear,
sorrow, and who knows what else.

When Hermione was in her third year, and she’d had a falling-out with her friends over the
appearance of a dodgy Firebolt, she would often go up to the astronomy tower in the evenings to
watch the day end... and to wallow.
Zipping back and forth through time was more exhausting than she’d ever anticipated. She was
lonely, miserable, and terribly jealous of Harry’s special Patronus lessons with Lupin. She had
tried the spell herself multiple times, but had had to contend with the shock of failure every time.
So she invented a consolation prize – a modification to the bluebell flames charm that allowed her
to conjure a silvery blue mist from her wand; not remotely as iridescent as a Patronus, but by then
Hermione was getting used to things falling short of her expectations. She sat on the podium which
held a giant ever-moving model of the solar system, and gazed at the tangerine sky while conjuring
a myriad of radiant shapes: a wonky owl, a serpentine dragon, Bavarian gentians, a perfect
Fibonacci spiral...

“That’s very clever spellwork, Ms Granger.”

Hermione jumped and dropped her wand with a clatter. Looking over her shoulder, she saw
Dumbledore watching her. With a small smile, he walked over and sat down next to her.

“What are you doing here, Professor?” she asked him as though he were an absconding miscreant,
rather than the bleeding headmaster of the school.

She flushed immediately, and attempted to stutter out an apology which Dumbledore waved away
with a chuckle.

“I came here to contemplate... much like you, I imagine. Great minds really do think alike –”
Hermione flushed even harder at his casual equating of their minds, “– Quite a view from up here,
isn’t it?”

The universe was drenched in contrasting hues of copper and ultramarine.

“It’s beautiful,” Hermione agreed softly.

"How have you been coping with the Time-Turner?” he asked inquisitively.

“Just fine, Professor. Thank you.”

“I’m sure you are. I wouldn’t usually have allowed something so potentially dangerous in the hands
of any student, let alone a third-year. But it was easy to make an exception for you. A student of
such unparalleled aptitude deserves to be aided in every possible way in her quest for learning.”

Hermione didn’t think she’d ever regain her usual colouring again. She nearly pressed her hands to
her cheeks to help cool them down.

“I... um...” she said oh so intelligently.

Dumbledore smiled down at her indulgently, that permanent twinkle in his eyes surpassing the faint
flickering stars that had begun to dot the sky.

“ I don’t claim to be a seer, but I am an old man. Age brings with it experience, refined perspective,
and the ability to foresee the outcome of certain things. You will do wonderful things, Ms Granger.
You already have – and I am sure it will only get better. Harry is lucky to count you among his
closest friends.”

Her lip wobbled at Harry’s name, and of course, as with everything, Dumbledore caught it.
He continued, “He has a lifetime’s worth of hardships ahead of him... and you... you, Hermione,
are going to prove to be of inestimable value to him. As a friend, yes... but also as an
extraordinarily gifted witch. You will do wonderful things; of that I am sure.”

She breathed in, slowly, deeply, staring up at him in the hope of conveying her gratitude through
her eyes. Her throat was too choked up with emotion to allow any sound to pass through.

As the darkness of night spread across the vista, he smiled at her kindly and said, “I believe supper
will have been laid out by now. Do make sure you eat well – time travel can be most draining.”

"Yes, professor,” she whispered, and stood to leave.

“One more thing,” he called.

Hermione paused at the door and turned around. “Sir?”

“If you would be so kind as to divulge the intonation for that delightful spell of yours? It will be a
welcome addition to my daily contemplation regime.”

Hermione glowed, and with a wide grin, she told him.

The phoenix’s threnody rang on till the sun finally broke over the horizon – a subdued smudge of
gold.

After Harry had left with Professor McGonagall, Hermione hadn’t lingered for much longer in the
hospital wing. Mr and Mrs Weasley were sitting distraught by a son’s bedside for the second time
that year, and everybody who wasn’t a Weasley (or a Delacour) left to give the family some
privacy. They walked together solemnly up to an open courtyard, and there they stopped for a few
strained moments, each looking from one face to the other, as though grappling to find the right
words to disperse with.

Then suddenly Seamus exclaimed, “What is that?!”

He was gaping at the sky above, looking astounded.

Every head present tilted upwards reflexively, and Luna provided the answer in a shaky murmur,
“It’s a Thestral, Seamus.”

It was simple after that. Theo turned away first, half-carrying Luna up to the Ravenclaw tower (he
squeezed Hermione’s arm as he passed by her,) and then Seamus and Dean made to walk away...
but stopped, looking askance at Hermione who hadn’t moved.

“You two go on,” she told them in a low voice, “I’ll just be a moment...”

Once they’d left, Hermione looked up at Lupin to find that he was regarding her curiously. “What
is it, Hermione?” he asked.

“Professor Lupin –”

“Call me Remus, please...”

She breathed a half-hearted laugh, “Okay. Remus. It’s... It’s about Theo. We need to find some
place safe – some place perfectly safe – for him to be until... until...”

Until when? Hermione had no idea how to finish her sentence. Thankfully, Tonks came to her
rescue.

“That boy,” she asserted, “Saved me from a very vicious severing spell.”

“I’m sure we can set something up for him. Somewhere unplottable and protected by the Fidelius
Charm.” Lupin smiled gently at the appreciation on Hermione’s face. “I was best friends with a boy
who turned away from his family’s dark predispositions, Hermione. I understand the danger Theo’s
in.”

“He’ll want to be with Luna,” Hermione added, “I don’t think he’ll agree to anything otherwise.”

He frowned thoughtfully. “I... I can speak to Xenophilius... Luna’s father, that is... I don’t think
he’ll object to having his home turned into a safehouse...”

“Thank you, Remus,” Hermione said meaningfully.

Tonks stepped forward and hugged her.

With a nod, Hermione turned and began her trek up to the Gryffindor tower. Just as she reached the
foot of the staircase, she looked back over her shoulder. Lupin and Tonks were still rooted in the
middle of the courtyard, hand in hand.

The common room was chock-full. Students of all ages were sitting, standing, pacing around in
their pyjamas, and the monotonous buzzing of sotto voce conversation had filled the air. It came to
a stop the moment Hermione was spotted standing by the portrait hole. A few of them came
rushing towards her, questions poised on the tips of their tongues, but Hermione held up her hand
warningly. She marched determinedly towards the stairs leading her dormitory, eyes stonily fixed
on her destination. The sea of students parted for her.

Once in the dorm, she gathered some clean clothes and went straight into the bathroom. Turning the
shower to its hottest temperature, she stood under an inundation of scalding water and just respired.
The liquid swirling around the drain was red and brown... her blood and dirt... dirt and her blood...
Mudblood. She brutally scrubbed her skin with a sponge saturated with body wash, until the smell
of oranges was so prevalent, it was cloying. She breathed in the aroma desperately, seeking
comfort... but all in vain.

Dumbledore was dead. Sagacious, brilliant, powerful, seemingly indestructible Dumbledore was
dead. So Hermione cried. She dropped the sponge, wrapped her arms around her waist and doubled
over.

Dumbledore was dead. Murdered by Snape – whom she was supposed to be keeping a watch on,
but instead had just let slip past her.

Dumbledore was dead. An assassination orchestrated by Draco Malfoy – whom she had had at her
mercy just a few hours ago, but she had set free.

She had just let him fucking go, with barely any hesitation. Hadn’t she surmised, after the poisoned-
mead incident, that this was exactly what Malfoy was planning? Hadn’t she known full well that he
was on the dark side? How could she have let him go? How could she have let him go? The only
reason Malfoy wasn’t paying for his crimes right now was because she had let him go.

She cried until her lunges ached. Then she reached out to turn the water off, and with that motion,
commanded her tear ducts to shut off too.

In the world outside, the sun had risen fully, birds were chirping, and Parvati was packing up all her
belongings while Lavenders sat on her bed and watched with red-rimmed eyes. Hermione looked
between the two girls in confusion.

Parvati glanced at her edgily, and cleared her throat.

“My parents are here to take Padma and me home,” she mumbled as she continued to fling her
clothes into her trunk. Lavender sniffed loudly.

“I see,” Hermione said, “Well... goodbye.”

Parvati stopped and faced her fully, fidgeting anxiously with a blouse in her hand.

“Are you okay, Hermione?”

“I’m fine,” she affirmed, “Take care, Parvati. ...Lavender.”

Weariness was a strange intoxicant. Unfocused and dazed, she shuffled to the boys’ dormitory,
coming to a standstill at the door. Seamus lay sprawled on his bed, evidently asleep. Dean, with a
bandage around his head, was sitting on his, resting against the headboard.

“Ron’s in the bathroom,” he said.

“Ah,” she replied, slowly strolling over to lean against his bedpost, “How’s your head?”

“Sore,” he shrugged, “Pomfrey’s given me a sleeping draught to get through the pain but... I don’t
feel like sleeping.”

Hermione sighed, and sagged just a little more.

“Are you still kicking yourself for letting,” he said with accompanying air-quotes, “Snape go?”

“We could’ve... We should have stopped him, Dean –”

“Don’t be mad. You heard Lupin, yeah? He would’ve killed us all if we had tried to stop him.”

“There were four of us! We could’ve –”

“It’s Snape, Hermione. Dark wizard extraordinaire.”

She bit her lip, tormented and guilt-ridden... and that was when the bathroom door opened, and Ron
emerged amid clouds of sweet smelling vapour.

“Hi,” he said, and seated himself on Dean’s bedside table.

“Bill woken up yet?” Hermione asked gingerly.

“Not yet. Mum and Fleur are in wedding planning mode though – making a right racket. Loud
enough to wake the dea–” he changed track with an abrupt look of horror, “Is Harry still with
McGonagall?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you could check on the Marauder’s map?”

Ron went over to his bed upon which lay a pile of dirty clothes, and pulled the map out from
somewhere within.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” he avowed. “Hmm... Harry... Harry... Nope, not in
Dum – er, the headmaster’s office... not in the hospital wing... Oh. Oh fuck.”

“What?!” Hermione and Dean demanded simultaneously.

Ron lowered the map grimly.

“Astronomy tower,” he said with an air of absolute bleakness.

“Come on,” Hermione urged, and they left Dean looking gobsmacked on his bed.
 *

The moment they burst in, Hermione and Ron encountered Harry’s back at the far end of the tower,
where he stood with his elbows on the railing. His black-robed form stuck out sharply against the
powder blue sky.

They approached him cautiously, but Harry’s heightened instincts must have alerted him to their
presence, for he turned around. Hermione stopped; Ron stopped... and they both looked at Harry.
For the next few moments, they did simply that – they considered him across the expanse of a
dozen or so feet that lay between them.

“He was right here,” Harry said suddenly, “Standing right where I am when it happened. And
Hermione... you’re standing exactly where Malfoy was.”

With a startled whimper, she took a few hurried steps back.

Harry went on, “Then Snape...” he walked towards them, stopping about midway and spinning
around to face the railing, “Snape stood here. And from here... while Dumbledore begged and
pleaded with him... he... he...” Harry raised his wand.

Hermione went over to his side and saw that his hand was trembling dreadfully. She took hold of it
in both of hers, pulled it down, and divested him of his wand. She then led him to the central
podium and gestured for him to sit. Parking herself beside him, she kept his hand in hers. Ron
joined them, dropping down on Harry’s other side.

“I’m not having a meltdown, you know,” he informed them, “I just came here to get the Invisibility
Cloak.”

Hermione didn’t bring up the fact that he could’ve summoned it from anywhere in the castle. The
three of them silently contemplated the bright and balmy summer morning...

...summer mourning... some are mourning...

She tightened her fingers around his hand and said heavily, “Harry... I’m so, so sorry... about the
whole Malfoy... thing.”

He’d assume that she was apologising for apparently not believing his ‘Malfoy is a Death Eater’
theory. She wouldn’t ever be able to tell him about what happened in that shady alcove – but she
just had to voice her regret.

Harry squeezed her hand back, “I...” he swallowed, “I feel sorry for him.”

“What?!” Ron exploded.

“He lowered his wand.”

“What d’you mean?”

“After he disarmed Dumbledore, they talked... for a long time. I think they both were stalling.
Anyway... apparently, Malfoy had tried to come clean to Dumbledore twice.”

Hermione gasped, and Ron spluttered.

“Yeah,” Harry muttered, “Once after the Christmas hols and once after... after the, um, bathroom
incident. But Dumbledore turned him away – wouldn’t even look at him – said it was to keep him
safe, in case Voldemort used legilimency against him. You know... the way he was with me during
fifth year. I thought he’d admitted that that tactic didn’t bloody work...” He finished with a sigh.

“Then what happened?” Hermione implored.

“Then Dumbledore offered him an out; said he’d give him and his family a place to hide. Malfoy
lowered his wand... and that’s when the rest of the Death Eaters broke in, and... and it was too late.”

“Oh god,” Hermione whispered.

“This whole thing’s still his bloody fault,” Ron countered mulishly, “He still –”

“I know what it’s like,” Harry cut in, “Not having a choice.”

A gust of pleasantly cool breeze swept across, and the sound of leaves rustling carried up to the
tower.

“So?” said Ron eventually, breaking the fresh bout of silence, “Did you find one? Did you get it? A
– a Horcrux?”

Hermione started. The Horcrux! She had honestly and seriously forgotten all about it. Harry shook
his head.

“You didn’t get it?” said Ron, deflated, “It wasn’t there?”

“No. Someone had already taken it and left a fake in its place.”

“Already taken?”

Harry dug into his pocket, pulled out a lacklustre gold locket, and held it out to Hermione. She
finally let go of his hand, and examined its plain, inornate surface.

“Open it,” Harry said dully.

Inside she found a crumpled scrap of parchment, and after smoothening it out, she read aloud: “‘To
the Dark Lord, I know I will be dead long before you read this, but I want you to know that it was I
who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can.
I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more.’ Signed,
R.A.B..”

“R.A.B.,” Ron repeated, “but who was that?”

“Dunno,” Harry replied.

“Hermione...?” Ron asked, shooting her a perplexed look.

“I... I can’t think of anybody with those initials...”

“It was all for fucking nothing,” Harry rasped heatedly, “Dumbledore weakened himself for
nothing.”

“What happened out there, Harry?” Hermione questioned tentatively.

“Later,” he said firmly, “Just... not now. Please.”

 Twenty-Nine
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

It was late in the afternoon. The dreamy, smouldering heat brought to mind sticky, bittersweet
marmalade on warm toast. The soughing wind, freshly escaped from Morpheus’ box of dreams,
carried an oscitant drowsiness that it liberally deposited on all that it touched. The constant
susurration of leaves (“...shh...shhh...shh...”) was the sound that Hypnos’ wings made when they
folded around an unsuspecting Zeus and lulled him into a deep sleep.

The Astronomy Tower was made of ebony and poppy seeds. Harry reclined slowly till he lay flat
on his back, and told the wretched tale of a bootless quest, a yawning cavern, an insidious black
lake swarming with Inferi, and having to force a debilitating liquid down Dumbledore’s throat
while fighting to ignore his anguished protests.

Hermione hugged her knees to her chest as she listened with her heart in her throat. That was no
way for a man as great as Dumbledore to go. She still believed that there could be dignity in death,
and Dumbledore had been entirely deprived. Destabilised by a vile potion, forced to relive his
worst memories, and then murdered by a man he not only trusted, but had tirelessly defended time
after time...

It was hideously unjust.

When Harry came to the end of his account, he let out a shuddering sigh and closed his eyes. Ron
levelled a tense look at Hermione, silently urging her to say something. She pinched her lips
between her teeth; oh but what could she say?

“Shh shh shh shh,” the wind and the treetops whispered.

The angle of the sun was such that a few rays fell directly onto the shiny bronze telescopes that
lined one side of the tower. The light that bounced back, brilliant and blinding, scattered
haphazardly across the floor.

“’m sorry, mate,” Ron said weakly.

From between her knees Hermione mumbled, “You were there with him... to the end. He must’ve
been comforted by that.”

“Yeah,” Ron seconded awkwardly.

Harry said nothing, didn’t move, didn’t even open his eyes.

“Um, Harry?” Ron asked uncertainly. He scrunched his face and looked once more at Hermione.

“Harry?”
She leaned over to peer at his face, and...

And it appeared that Harry had fallen asleep.

“Shhh shh shh shhh shhh....”

They let him have his forty winks, and by the time they finally left the Astronomy tower, evening
was close to settling in.

Hermione, Ron, and Harry walked silently back to the Gryffindor portrait hole, and on arriving
there, found a large and buzzing crowd gathered out in the corridor.

“What on earth...” Hermione muttered, pushing her way through the horde.

“Why the fuck are you all standing out here?” Ron blared, but nobody bothered to enlighten him.
He then turned to the fat lady, “Quid Ag–”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go in there.”

They turned to watch Dean saunter over with his hands in his pockets.

“Alright, Harry?”

“Yeah,” Harry replied, “But what’s going on?”

Dean shrugged casually. “Seamus and his mum are having a row. It’s been going on for a while...
and it’s loud and bloody ugly.”

“What’s it about then?” Ron demanded.

“She wants to take him home. He’s not having it. So they’re going to yawp at each other till one of
them caves.”

“Bloody hell. My money’s on his mum,” said Ron, “She’s really er...”

“Forceful,” Harry supplied expressionlessly.

Soon enough, the portrait hole swung open, and an extremely frazzled witch in deep plum robes
charged forcefully out, tore through the crowd and down the corridor. Hermione shared a startled,
nonplussed look with the three boys, and they all clamoured into the common room.

Seamus was sitting coolly on an armchair with a box of Honeydukes’ mini chocolate nougat cakes.
“What some?” he offered. Ron practically dived into the box.

“Um... what happened with your mum, Seamus?” Hermione broached.

He yanked the box away from Ron and gallantly held it in front of her.

“She’s getting a room in Hogsmeade,” he said smoothly.

“You mean,” Dean said slowly, “She’s agreed to let you stay?”

“Let me?!” Seamus spluttered, “Ha boy, of course I’m staying.”

He said it like he was genuinely offended that they’d even considered any other outcome to be a
possibility.

Ginny appeared out of her dormitory a few minutes after with eyes full of sleep.

“What was all the yelling about?” she groaned, falling onto the sofa next to Harry.

“Finnigan family reunion,” Ron said around a yawn.

“And you know what the Irish are like,” Dean added.

“Rambunctious,” Hermione finished with a nod.

“Piss off,” Seamus grunted.

Conversation died out as they passed the box around, suddenly aware of how long it had been since
they’d last eaten. The cake was divvied and gobbled up with singular alacrity, and everything else
melted away. They had cake... and that, Hermione (and perhaps the ghost of Marie Antoinette)
thought was plenty good enough.

The next morning, Hermione, Harry, Ron, and Ginny visited the hospital wing to see Bill and
Neville. The atmosphere there was the exact opposite of what it had been the day before.

“Look sharp, Longbottom!” Fred barked as he tossed a rather fluffy looking purple ball at him.

Neville caught it, and threw it over to George.

The twins, Bill, and Neville were playing catch in the hospital wing, and Hermione wondered what
Madam Pomfrey would do if she happened to just step out of her office. Her eyes darted to the
closed door...

“We’ve put an alarm on it,” said George, giving Hermione a knowing look. He threw the ball
towards Bill.

“Feeling okay, Bill?” Ron asked.

“Absolutely,” he answered, neatly flinging the ball at Fred.

The wounds on his face were now mostly dry and much less swollen, and his fantastic bone
structure was once again beginning to show through.

“What about you, Neville?” said Ginny.

“I’m perfectly fine,” he replied after completing his turn of catch-and-throw, “Dunno why Pomfrey
won’t let me leave.”

With a painfully artificial gasp, Fred began, “Strapping young lad like you? She probably just
wants to –”

What she wanted, they would never know. Hermione interrupted Fred with a horrified shriek:
“Excuse me – is that a Pygmy Puff?!”

“Mmhmm,” Fred hummed, undeterred by her vocal intrusion, “Say hello to Argus.”

Argus sailed through the air between Fred and Neville.

“You named your Pygmy Puff after Filch?” Harry asked with a disbelieving chuckle.

“We found we really miss the blighter,” said George. Argus was in his possession, and he tossed
him from one hand to the other rapidly, before throwing him at Bill... from under his leg.

“He’s a living creature, you maniacs!” Hermione spluttered, even as around her, Harry, Ron, and
Ginny were laughing.

“Give us some credit, Hermione,” Fred reproached, “We aren’t going to drop him. Two very well
trained quidditch players here... and one chappie with keen animal instincts –”

“Careful, brother-mine,” said Bill with a toothy grin, “The animal instinct knows nothing of
familial sentiment.”

Argus flew from Bill to Fred like a bullet.

“Honestly!” Hermione cried.

“Y’know,” Ron sniggered, “You’re forgetting that the fourth person in this little game of yours is
Neville.”

“Hey!” Neville protested indignantly. He forwent George, and threw Argus – hard – at Ron.

“Cool,” said Ron as he caught the Pygmy Puff with ease, “Here, Harry...”
Harry caught Argus with one hand.

“Enough now!” Hermione moaned, and Argus went from Harry to Ginny to Bill to Ron to Fred to
Harry to Neville to George to Ginny...

“Bloody controlling, self-important, idiotic old –”

“Theo!” Hermione gasped, appalled and revolted, “Don’t say that! Don’t you dare – you can’t –
you mustn’t –”

“Mustn’t speak ill of the dead?” Theo spat vituperatively, “Fuck that. Fuck him. He’s dead? Yeah,
well he jolly well could’ve avoided that, couldn’t he? If he had just gotten over himself and listened
to Draco. Instead, he turned him away. Twice, Potter said? Fuck. That old bastard. How could he?!”

Keeping with her broad ‘no secrets from Theo’ (NSFT) rule [Addendum A to the above policy:
Harry+Voldemore+Horcrux related issues are not to be disclosed] and led by the belief that he
deserved to know, Hermione had told him what Harry had said about Malfoy and Dumbledore’s
confrontation. Now, she really, really regretted it.
They were standing at their spot by the lake after having picked up a cucumber sandwich each from
the Great Hall. Theo hurled his half-eaten one into the water with a restrained but furious growl. He
was proper trembling with anger and despair. Hermione looked away. Across the grounds, she
could see a throng of Ministry officials strutting into the castle – all coming to attend Dumbledore’s
funeral set to be held the next day.

Fixing her eyes on the marching bureaucrats, Hermione said quietly, “He was trying to protect him,
Theo. You know... if Voldemort –” Theo barely flinched at the name – “decided to use legilimency
on him, he’d –”

“Bullshit. Draco is an expert Occlumens. And if Dumbledore had just given him one fucking
chance, he’d have known it too. Do you... Do you realise what it must’ve taken for him to do that?
To go to Dumbledore... to go against everything, against his family, the Dark Lord... against
himself... Oh, Salazar. And he turned him away. He turned him away.”

He gripped his hair, breathing heavily. Spinning in a wild circle, he strode to the edge of the
forbidden forest, but before Hermione could take one step to follow, he turned around and paced
right back.

“What do you think is happening to him right now, eh? Yup, poor old Dumbledore is dead, but
what do you think that psychopath is doing to Draco right fucking now?”
Hermione swallowed copiously against the big ball of... something... lodged in her throat.

“I believe... he’s being lauded for pulling off a successful mission?”

He snorted scathingly. “Successful?! Darling, his mission was to kill Dumbledore. He failed.
There’s no question about it – he’s being punished. Brutally. Evil psycho-lord is particularly fond of
torturing Malfoys, ever since Lucius got arrested...” and then he wholly, alarmingly shuddered.

[Addendum B to the NSFT policy: Say NOTHING about how on the night of the battle, Malfoy
found time during the madness to pull her aside and make her promise to ensure Theo’s safety; he’d
probably breakdown completely.]

“...We need to extract him out of there. Him and Narcissa. We need to...”

“Theo... That’s... impossible. We don’t even know where they are.”

“Dumbledore promised! He promised Draco he would hide him away! Sure he was bumped off, but
that shouldn’t negate –”

“Stop it.”

“No! Listen. Draco tried to the right thing, okay? And your great sodding judicious old leader
didn’t let him. You – you all – you owe him this!”

Hermione could only look at him, her face full of hapless pity.

“Bloody shit,” he hissed so low it was barely audible, and stormed back over to the edge of the
forest. He stood there with his back to her, hand pressed hard against a tree trunk for support.

She stayed rooted to her spot until his shoulders stopped shaking... until he turned around and said
he was ready to head back in.

Steps heavy, Hermione walked out of the library, sighing in defeat. She’d spent over an hour
combing through the archives, looking for a plausible identity behind the initials R.A.B. All she’d
come across were Rosalind Antigone Bungs, a ninety-eight year old pureblood of Hungarian
ancestry, known for her exquisite collection of brocade mantles, and Rupert "Axebanger"
Brookstanton, who... well... he’d fit right in with the Gauls in the world of Asterix. He was an
Auror who’d died on the job in the early 70’s.
The library to the Gryffindor tower: It was a trail she’d covered so many times that she could walk
it blind. She knew it in the earliest hours of the morning, and in the blackest of nights. She knew
which stones on the floor had cracks, she knew where every taper hung, she knew every painting
on every wall.
And they were thinking of closing the school. This could quite possibly be the last time she’d be
walking down this hall, admiring the way the lamplight refracted off the stained glass windows.
This could be the last time she climbed these steps, dragging her fingers along the cool, shiny
banister. This could be the last time.

Before she knew it, she was back in her dormitory. Lavender’s parents had whisked her away
earlier that day, so Hermione had the whole place to herself. Feeling piteously forlorn, she thought
to call Ginny over... but then again, there was a certain perverse fulfilment to be obtained by letting
loneliness work on you.
She pulled her trunk out from under her bed and began packing. Clothes, books, stationary – all fell
pell-mell, spurred into motion by a bit of silent - robotic - wandless magic. Her thoughts were far,
far away...

...with her unsuspecting parents, probably sitting down for their evening meal after a long day at
the clinic. With Theo, so full of anguish... she’d have to say goodbye to him too, tomorrow. Luna,
Neville, Seamus, and Dean... brave friends who’d so willingly jumped in to help save the school.
Ginny had lost her heart to a boy with the most uncertain of fates. Ron and his grin that once made
her world spin... that still held power over her. Harry – oh Harry –

Hermione pushed open a window and shoved her head outside, breathing in a huge gulp of cool
night air.

Hagrid, flat-out one of the kindest souls she’d ever known. Dear McGonagall, the closest she’d had
to a mentor. Flitwick. Vector and Babbling. Snape... the cruel curl of his lip... insufferable know-it-
all... that must have adorned his sallow face when he shot the curse that ruined everything.

Draco Malfoy. How desolate and doomed he must have felt that night, when he stood before her
bound in ropes... “Just promise me you’ll keep Theo safe, alright?”
That desperate plea had lodged itself in the furrows of her brain. Theo... Safe... Theo...
She thought about his hands, of all things. Hands that made beautiful, beautiful music when
dancing over piano keys. Hands that held her books with obvious care, and wrote mystifying notes.
Hands that fixed the vanishing cabinet and disarmed Albus Dumbledore.

Could he truly, at that moment, be cowering in some corner, suffering the terrible wrath of
Voldemort?

Voldemort. Tendrils of fury writhe inside her like thousands of delirious snakes. It all began with
him... and it had to end with him. Well, first they’d have to figure out how to end him...

Without the slightest bit of confidence, Hermione picked up her wand and attempted to cast her
strongest summoning charm yet.

“Accio Horcrux book!” she cried. And forty-eight seconds later, a thick tome bound in faded black
leather flew in through the dormitory window.
She shouldn’t have been shocked by how easy it had been; Dumbledore’s wards had died with him.

She placed it on her bed – Secrets of the Darkest Art – and stared. The sinister air she perceived
about it was all in her head, but still she couldn’t bring herself to open it. Oh, she’d read it alright –
every page, every word – but... not yet. She didn’t like the idea of attending Dumbledore’s funeral
with her head full of those secrets. It would taint the occasion.

Dumbledore.
His brilliant accomplishments, and his unfathomable decisions. She could only picture him at his
spry, benevolent, and twinkling best; never as one who would manipulate situations, or ignore a
boy desperate for help. She couldn’t imagine him crying and breaking down when forced to face
the mistakes of his past. She couldn’t see him begging for mercy, nor bent and broken with death
lying on him like an untimely frost.

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

On the soft, luxuriant grass by the lake stood a marble sepulchre: bright white and minimalistic –
Dumbledore’s final resting place. The funeral was over; all the attendants had left. Harry and Ron
had gone to take care of some last minute packing, and Hermione lingered by the tomb... waiting.
The mermaids that had swum up to the surface to sing their lament were still somewhat visible
below the surface of the lake, weaving through swirls and eddies.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

The band running along the edge of the tomb was embossed with tiny half-moons and stars, so like
the ones frequently seen on Dumbledore’s robes. Hermione’s gaze skittered across the panorama,
taking in the lake and the grounds and the forest and the glorious castle. She now knew for sure that
she would not be returning to Hogwarts whether it remained open or not, and yet it wasn’t nostalgia
she was feeling. It was some indescribable combination of resignation and approval; it had
engulfed her the moment Harry said he’d be out tracking Horcruxes.

Then she heard the rustling of footsteps coming from behind her, and all she knew was dread.

“Ayup little girl,” Theo said softly as he stood close beside her.

Hermione licked her suddenly bone-dry lips, and... oh, wonderful, she was tearing up already.

“Hermione?” He ducked his head and took in her face with concern.
“Yes, um, yes,” she stuttered, straightening her shoulders, “Look Theo. You’re a target now. The
Death Eaters are going to want to get their hands on you.”

“Oooh, titillating,” he said dryly.

Hermione ignored him. “So I spoke to Lupin, and the Order has set up a safehouse for you. He’ll
take you there today –”

“Waaaaaaaait a minute there, darling,” Theo frowned, “Why didn’t you speak to me first?!”

“I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to refuse, and – no shut up, listen – the safehouse is Luna’s
home.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. I’ll just swing by Malfoy Manor first, whisk Draco and Narcissa away and –”

“Are you mad?”

Theo looked down his nose at her.

“Perfectly sound, thanks. But this is non-negotiable.”

“What makes you think he’s even there? It was the first place the Ministry looked. Haven’t you
been reading the papers? They tore the place down hunting for him and Snape!” Hermione said
incredulously.

“I don’t care!” Theo yelled, “I need to see for myself. He must’ve left some clue... some... some...”

Hermione wrung her hands desperately.

“Theo,” she appealed, “He’s with Snape... with Voldemort... you’re not going to be able to find
him.”

“Gah!” he howled in distress, burying his face in his hands.

“Please, please, listen to me. Go stay with Luna till this is all... over. There’s no sense in you
running out into the wild and getting killed. Theo. Please.”

Slowly, he removed his hands, and the face they revealed was disturbingly... lifeless. Hollow.

“Fine,” he uttered impassively, “When will you join us?”

Oh god. She bit back a sob and took a deep breath.

“Well, I have to go home first and... and modify my parents’ memories. Then there’s Bill Weasley’s
wedding –”

Theo snorted in disbelief; “You’re joking.”

“Heh. I know it seems like bad timing but... they all need something to celebrate...”

“Right. Delightful,” he said in a clipped manner, “And then you’ll come to the safehouse?”

The way he was looking at her, challengingly and searchingly, made Hermione certain he knew full
well that she wasn’t planning on joining him. He was just waiting for her to confirm it out loud.

“I’ll be going with Harry. Dumbledore gave him a task to do, and I –”

“No. Sorry. Absolutely not.”

Exhaling heavily, she timidly reached out to touch his arm... but he jerked out of reach.

“Hermione, no. There’s no sense in you running out into the wild and getting killed,” he parroted
savagely.

“I’m not going in blind, Theo –” (she absolutely was,) “– We have to do this! It’s the only way to
stop Voldemort!”

“What?” he demanded through gritted teeth, “What do you have to do?”

“I... I can’t...” she stuttered.

“You can’t tell me?!” His eyes widened unbelievingly, “Seriously?”

“I can’t, Theo... Oh, I really can’t! You know I trust you–” and he turned away from her in disgust
“– I do. You know that. But this is Harry’s secret to tell, and I can’t –”

“For fuck's sake,” he growled, “Harry’s task, Harry secret; Harry, Harry, Harry. Why is he the main
bloody protagonist in your life story? It’s pathetic. You make everything about him. You go
scurrying after him no matter what –”

“This is not just about him! Come on, Theo – it’s about stopping Voldemort, and yes, unfortunately
that all comes down to Harry!”

“Exactly! It comes down to Harry. Not you!”

“I can’t abandon him! He needs me, and –”

“Well, of course he needs you! He probably won’t last a day without you watching his bumptious
chosen arse!”

“So then?! You know I have to go with him!”

Theo pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply.

He looked shrewdly at Hermione for a full minute, and then said, “I’m coming with you.”

“Ughhhgoorrrd,” Hermione breathed, “No!”

“Yes. I. Am.” he said forcefully.

“Harry’s scarcely agreed to let Ron and me go along! He’ll never agree to this!”

“Oh! Oh my! King Potter cannot handle a ‘too bad, bugger off, suck it up’ is it?!”

“It’s his mission, Theo! If you do this, he might... he might not let me go along either –”

“Good! Excellent! Problem solved!”

“He needs me, and –”

“I NEED YOU,” Theo shouted, stalking impossibly close to her, “I need you! My wellness... my
sanity... my fucking life depends on you now, okay? I need you. I don’t know where the hell Draco
is – and I... I won’t... I won’t be able to go on if something were to happen to you. Hermione. I
need you.”

There was a watery shimmer across his eyes, but it was nothing compared to the state Hermione
was in. Tears were falling rapidly down her heated cheeks.

“Nothing,” she stressed, “Is going to happen to me.”

“Merlin love a Dugbog... please. You can’t know that!” he differed fervently.

“But I do! Nothing is going to happen to me because I refuse to let it! No listen,” she implored
hotly when he scoffed, “I absolutely and wholly intend to get through this godawful shitstorm with
my mind and body intact. And you know full well that nothing can oppose the force of my
determination.”

Her words weren’t... effective. Theo was looking miserable and entirely unimpressed. In a fit of
desperation, Hermione said every damn thing that popped into her head.

“I have a list!” she exclaimed, “Things I simply have to do, see... and... and... House-elves! Societal
inequality! The Muggle Studies curriculum!”

“You’re a lunatic! Stop this nonsense, you’re –”

“Werewolves! Medical synthesis! The Weird Sisters have nothing on The Who! Theo, I’ll see you
when it’s all over, okay? I’ll take you to that favourite bakery of mine. I’ll take you to the cinema.
I’ll restore my parents’ memories, and we can all go together!”

Nearly every word she spoke was punctuated with a sob. She stared up at Theo and took in his
every feature: floppy, tousled hair, thin, angular face, deep, deep blue eyes like the ocean at night.
He pursed his lips (rightfully made to be pulled up in a mischievous grin,) and blinked the moisture
away from his eyes.

“I’d like to meet them,” he said croakily, “Your parents.”

“They’ll adore you.”

“’Course they will. Everybody does.”

Hermione sputtered out a watery laugh. Then she threw her arms around his neck. He hugged her
back immediately, lifting her right off the ground. She closed her eyes and buried her nose in his
scarf; she could feel his every exhale against the back of her neck.

“Love you,” she murmured, and he squeezed her tightly against himself.

When she opened her eyes, peering over Theo’s shoulder, she saw three figures making their way
across the grounds towards them. With a sigh, she slipped back down onto her feet, took a step
away, and lightly spun him around to face the approaching trio.

As they neared, Hermione recognised Lupin and Luna, but the third person was a stranger to her.
He was tall and barrel-chested, with white hair so frizzy and fluffy that it made her feel better about
her own. Upon that hair sat a comically tiny fez.

“Hemione, Theodore,” Lupin greeted briskly, “This is Xenophilius Lovegood.”

“Hello,” Hermione muttered, but the man was too busy examining Theo.

“So, you’re the boy, eh? The boy... that is, my Luna’s... er...”

“He’s my boyfriend, daddy,” Luna said steadily.

“Yes. That.”

Said boyfriend was chewing his tongue nervously, struggling to maintain eye contact.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” he rushed out.

“Humph. Born on a leap day, weren’t you? Such people are known to be inconstant.”

Lupin cleared his throat loudly, and much to Theo’s great relief, took hold of the situation.

“We’ve secured the place... it’s ready. We’ll be apparating straight from Hogsmeade. Are you
packed and ready to leave?”

Theo nodded. Luna then turned to Hermione and pressed a piece of parchment into her hand.

“That’s for you,” she said, “Remus told me how this whole thing was your idea... Thank you,
Hermione.”

Hermione hugged her, and in the lowest tone she could manage, she whispered into her ear: “Take
care of him.”

“I will,” she whispered back. They broke apart, and Luna looked Hermione dead in the eye, “And
you take care of yourself.”

There was nothing else left to do or say. But still, Hermione wanted one last chance to look at Theo
– just look at him – and so that’s what she did.
“Come on,” she vaguely registered Luna say as she led Lupin and her father away.

Theo’s mouth was quivering, but besides that, his expression was placid. His eyes... oh but his eyes
were tumultuous.

“Well,” Hermione rasped, “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes. When she felt a
gust of cool air hit her face, she knew he was no longer standing in front of her. Unable to watch
him retreat, she turned to face Dumbledore’s tomb again and stared at the glossy marble, at the
half-moons and stars, until her tears caused it them blur into a giant white blob. She swiped at her
eyes, and stared at the grass, the damp hem of her sombre dress robes, and finally looked at the
parchment Luna had given her.

‘The Lovegood House is located at Ottery St Catchpole in Devon, England.’

How long did she stand there? It was hard to determine. She was in a strange state of semi-
awareness, from which she was only (and abruptly) pulled out of when Ginny came and stood next
to her.

“The train’s set to leave in half an hour,” she said.

Hermione nodded. Arms around each other’s waists, the two girls turned back towards the castle.

“Harry broke up with me. ...And you’re not surprised at all.”

Hermione pulled a sympathetic face. “Are you?”

“No,” Ginny sighed.

“How are you?”

“I’m... not surprised,” she answered bleakly, “And you? Alright?”

Hermione looked up at the turrets and spires of the place that had been her second home for the last
six years.

It was the end of the world as she knew it, and “I feel fine,” she said.
Chapter End Notes

1. "One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally...": Death, be not proud, by John Donne
2. "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each...": The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
by T. S. Eliot
3. It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), by R.E.M.
 Thirty
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

PART II
Colourful little buildings lined the road, and Hermione watched them go by in a blur from the
backseat of dad’s old Bentley as it zipped across Kentish Town. Tendrils of Ian Curtis’ warbling
baritone escaped from the stereo:

I've seen the nights filled with bloodsport and pain,

And the bodies obtained, the bodies obtained...

“Alright, out with it,” said dad, shooting her a look through the rear view mirror. “What’s wrong?
You’ve barely said a word since you got off the train.”

She knew there was no use in telling outright lies – her parents would know them for what they
were immediately. Half-truths and prevarication were the way to go.

She replied, “Professor Dumbledore died. His funeral was just this morning.”

Mum gasped. “What happened?”

“He was a hundred and fifteen years old.”

“Ah, that’ll do it,” said dad, not unkindly, “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Hmm,” she said, hoping that that was the end of the conversation.

“Had he been ill?” mum asked.

“Er, a little. Then he... took a dreadful – fatal – tumble two nights ago.”

“Oh god,” mum sighed sadly, “Poor Harry must be devastated.”

“He is.”

Mum made a small sympathetic noise, and for a short spell they sat in silence, save for the
humming of the motor, and Joy Division.

This is the car at the edge of the road,

There's nothing disturbed, all the windows are closed.
I guess you were right, when we talked in the heat,
There's no room for the weak, no room for the weak.

“I know I tell you this every year and it never ends up happening, but you should call Harry over
for dinner sometime. Ron, too. Actually, you might as well ask all the Weasleys –”

“Robert, please, no!” mum interrupted with something akin to panic.

Dad chuckled, “You really, really don’t like Arthur and Molly, do you?”

“They treat us like we’re remarkably clever and amusing circus animals,” mum sniffed, “Arthur is
unbearable with his ridiculous enthusiasm.”

“Come now, Evie,” dad chided, “He means well. Our... um... ‘muggle’, Hermione?”
“Yes,” Hermione affirmed.

“Right. Our muggle bits and bobs are all new to him.”

“And magic isn’t to us?” mum demanded, “Actually, we ought be behaving like him, considering
we were, out of the blue, thrown into a bloody fantasy novel. Is a little bit of decorum too much to
ask for? And his wife. Heavens, all she wants to do is exchange recipes.”

Hermione and dad both laughed at that. Even if mum wasn’t utterly hopeless in the kitchen, her
unreserved contempt for conventional gender roles would’ve put her at odds with the homely Mrs
Weasley.

“Honestly, Hermione,” mum continued, “If you end up marrying Ron I will be most disappointed.”

Hermione’s face burned with mortification as she remembered all the times her parents had caught
her smiling on receiving terse, barely legible letters from Ron.

“I have absolutely no desire to do that,” she muttered, and on catching dad’s raised eyebrows in the
rear view mirror added, “Anymore.”

“Good girl,” mum cheered.

“Ron’s oldest brother Bill is getting married in two weeks,” Hermione said quickly before her dad
could speak, “We’ve all been invited.”

“In two weeks? We’ll be strolling around Aussie beaches,” said dad.

“What a pity,” mum deadpanned.

They stopped at a traffic light, and dad turned around to grin at Hermione.

“We have a fantastic itinerary ready for our trip,” he said cheerily, “just waiting for the Hermione
stamp of approval.”

Bile shot up her oesophagus, but she somehow managed to smile back.

“I can’t wait to see it,” she mumbled, staring at dad’s charming open smile, the crow’s-feet around
his chestnut brown eyes, and the salt-and-pepper curls springing out of his scalp.

Where will it end? Where will it end?

Where will it end? Where will it end?

Home looked like home – as it always had. The garden was overflowing with sweet peas, peonies,
and giant dahlias as big as her head. The faded brick house with its brown tiled roof and spotlessly
white casement windows was a quaint suburban dream.

As dad busied himself with unloading her trunk, Hermione drank in the image before her.

“Garden looks beautiful, mum,” she said admiringly.

“Oh, thank you, love.” Mum wrapped her arms around Hermione from behind and resting her chin
on her shoulder. “I missed you so much.”

“Me too,” Hermione replied unsteadily.

“Really wish you had come home for Christmas. Not seeing or speaking to you for eight whole
months is agony.”

“I know, mum,” Hermione sighed, “Sixth year has been... mad. I’m so glad to be home.”

“Move it along, ladies,” dad panted, dragging her trunk down the paved path leading to their front
door, “The second innings is about to start.”

“Speaking of,” Hermione began, amused, “Why did you choose to go to Australia the year the
Ashes are being hosted in England?”

“It’s what happens when I let your mother make decisions.”

“Don’t start, Robert.”

Dad threw a faux-exasperated look at mum, and winked when Hermione giggled. Then suddenly,
his face contorted.

“Oh, Jesus. Hun,” he whispered hotly, “Mrs Henley’s back!”

Mum gripped Hermione’s arm, “Do not look at her. Move faster, Robert! Go, go!”

“Let me,” Hermione said to dad, and wandlessly levitated her trunk a scant inch above the ground.

“Thanks,” he huffed, “Damn it, hurry. She’s hobbling over!”

Mum fumbled with the keys before finally unlocking the door, and the three panic-stricken
Grangers leapt into their house, shutting out the husky cries of, “Where’s me cat?! They took her
again, devil worshippin’ scum! Witches! Me cat! Where’s me cat! They killed and et me cat!”

Late at night, Hermione closed all the curtains in her room and switched off all lights save for one
table lamp. Sitting at her desk in her pyjamas, she rolled her neck, took a deep breath, and with a
motion suggesting grim ceremony, cracked open Secrets of the Darkest Art.

Four hours later, she turned the final page. Her skin was crawling with revulsion. Standing up with
a suddenness that made her head swim, she hurled the book into her open trunk and slammed it
shut, wanting it to be as far away from her as possible. She climbed into bed, feeling the remnants
of the many shudders she had suffered while reading the horrible book.

But at least she knew – in theory – how a Horcrux could be destroyed. It had to be wrecked into a
state beyond magical repair. Ah, but to find something capable of inflicting such damage was going
to be a problem. Hermione groaned into her pillow; it was just one thing after the other.

Hermione sat with her rapt mum on the living room settee, telling her about Arithmancy. They were
deaf to the sound of cricket spilling from the telly. Yet, in spite of the noise and absorbing
conversation, she was fully aware of the pointed tick of every passing second – had the clock on the
mantelpiece always been so loud?

Dad stalked into the room from the kitchen looking terribly tetchy.

“Bloody dishwasher’s conked off again,” he groused, “That’s the last time I call that galling, smug
old scouser to fix it.” Putting on a fantastically convincing accent, he continued, “C’mon Robbie,
giz a couple o quid for this here. Bleurgh.”

“He’s your brother-in-law, Robbie,” mum reminded him with a smile.

“Not for much longer... Oh! Headley’s bowling up a storm today!”

Dad settled down on the armchair in front of the telly, and it was clear that he was lost to them for
the next few hours.

Hermione turned to mum, “Aunt Vicky’s getting a divorce?”

“Yes. And your father’s never been prouder of his little sister,” mum smirked.

“For god’s sake, you could've caught that you blundering buffoon!”

After sharing an indulgent laugh, mother and daughter returned to their discussion. The tick-tick-
ticking clock never relented.
Hermione stepped into the house with her purse full of money sometime around noon, after a quick
trip to the local Building Society branch. The few thousand pound didn’t feel like much when
uncertainty stretched on endlessly in front of her.

Her parents were at work, and she had the place to herself for the next six hours; she was
determined to make the most of it. First order of business: organising luggage. Digging deep into
her wardrobe, she pulled out a tiny amethyst-coloured pouch, covered in intricate beadwork. It had
been a gift from Aunt Malorie on her fifteenth birthday. She sat cross-legged on the floor with a
book on advanced charms open before her, and closely read the instructions for casting an
undetectable extension charm.

“Capacious extremis,” she intoned, waving her wand in spiral over the bag. Then she stuck her
finger into the opening... followed by her hand... her wrist... her arm... her shoulder...

What if she were to just dive inside and live in there forever?

Shaking ludicrous ideas out of her head, she moved on to fill the bag with every magical book in
her trunk, followed by dittany, murtlap essence, pepper-up potion...

She sifted through her clothes, picking out the most practical and comfortable items to take with
her. As she went to close the wardrobe doors, her eye fell on lightly shimmering lilac fabric, and
wistfully, she took out the dress it was attached to. Tea-length, strapless, and made of silk and
organza – it was really very, very pretty. Well, she was going to attend a wedding, wasn’t she?

After dropping the dress inside, Hermione took the bag up to the attic. Afternoon sunlight poured in
through the skylight high up on the slanted roof, touching every corner of the cluttered, dusty
space. She walked to a towering stack of large cardboard boxes, wandlessly summoning the ones
labelled, ‘photographs’, and ‘Hermione’s documents’. She put every paper contained in the latter
into her bag, and vanished the empty box after.
Turning to the other one, Hermione swallowed and precariously pulled the covering flaps aside. It
was so like her mum to classify the photos by year and store them in neat piles. It certainly made
her life easier. She went through the piles one by one, starting at 1979, erasing herself from every
picture that included her. Nearly all of them did. She tried to be matter of fact about it. Clinical. Her
hands may have been shaking, her breathing may have been laboured, but she did not cry.

No, Hermione did not cry.

She slipped a few photographs into her bag from time to time: one when she was just born,
swaddled up in her mother’s arms, one when she was a toddler sitting between dad’s legs on top of
a slide, one from each birthday, each family vacation, each Christmas.
She laughed out loud at a picture from Halloween, 1985, when dad had insisted they dress up like
the band Cream. In sensational shirts and tight bell-bottoms, dad was looking absolutely thrilled,
Hermione was grinning with her giant childhood teeth, and mum seemed embarrassed to be alive.
By the time she finished, she was sitting in near-blackness. Her final move was to comb through
the 1974 pile to find a photo from her parents’ wedding. How happy they looked! They were
radiant, blissful, and so fucking gorgeous, holding hands under a large yew tree. She brought the
photo to her lips and lightly kissed it.

But she did not cry.

“Hermione!”

The call came from downstairs – her parents had returned. She found them in the kitchen, laughing
over something or the other. Dad saw her and grinned, waving a paper bag in her direction.

“Mongolian beef stew and rice for dinner,” he said, “How’s that sound?”

“Excellent,” Hermione beamed with forced enthusiasm.

Momentarily shelving her anxiety, Hermione let herself pretend that it was just a regular Sunday
morning with her parents. Dad stood by the stove, expertly rolling crepes. Mum sat at the table,
perusing the paper. She was wrapped up in a fluffy, cobalt robe, and her smooth honey blonde hair
was coiled at the back of her head, elegantly messy. For the ten-millionth time in her life, Hermione
mourned the fact that she had inherited her father’s explosive curls.

Mum yawned, blindly reaching out for her coffee without looking away from the paper. Hermione
admired the delicacy of her neck, the cut of her jaw, the straight but gentle line of her nose, her
thick and dark eyelashes... she truly was a beautiful woman. Despite being utterly dishevelled, she
radiated poise and grace. But even when overwhelmed by all that dainty loveliness, Hermione
didn’t forget how forceful mum was; frighteningly intelligent, fiercely opinionated, brazen,
talented, unconventional, and brave. If she could be even half the woman her mother was, she
would be content.

Dad set a plate in front of each of them.

“Dig in!” he proclaimed, “Anything good in the papers, Evie?”

“No,” mum replied curtly, “Eight more unexplainable deaths.”

Anxiety soared off the shelf and speared its way back into her heart.

But she did not cry.

And there it was – the final evening. They were meant to catch a late night flight the next day, and
their tickets (that, unknown to her parents, were two in number and not three,) were stuck on the
fridge door with a magnet.

Hermione stood in her room, purportedly packing a suitcase. In reality, she was putting away every
single one of her processions – shutting away all the little pieces of her life thus far – effectively
turning the place into a bland and innocuous guest room.

Her books took up five large cartons. Her music collection took one, her clothes took two. It was a
bleak undertaking, so she forced some fun into it. Skipping around and snapping her fingers, she
made her things fly and dance around. It was a silly game, really... A lark! A spree!

“A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down, the medicine go down...”

She sang, pranced, and twirled – but she did not cry. And when finally, all her things had been
packed up, she put the cartons together and transfigured them into a large comfy sofa. The walls
were bare, the shelves and dresser were empty, and her starry bedcover was now plain white linen.
No, Hermione did not cry.

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,

In a most delightful way.

When she got downstairs, Hermione went into the kitchen and prepared three cups of mint tea. In
two of those cups, she added a splash of sleeping draught.

Her parents were sitting side by side on the couch – Dad with his arm around mum – and chortling
while watching The Vicar of Dibley.

“Tea,” Hermione announced, steadily levitating the cups onto the coffee table.

“Just the thing,” dad approved, “Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Done packing?” mum asked.

“Yes.”

It took no more than two sips each; then they were slumped against each other, deep in slumber.
She switched off the telly and stood before them, her wand clenched tightly in her hand. Her body
was wracked with tremors; she wanted to bolt, and she wanted to shake them awake...
She did neither. And nor did she cry.

The clock on the mantelpiece was ticking loudly again. She closed her eyes and gathered all her
courage. She amputated the soft, scared, aching part of her being and remembered the sound of
Theo’s voice in her head: “It’s the right thing to do, Hermione.”

Okay.

It took her well over three hours to completely alter first dad’s, and then mum’s memories. She
gazed at their peaceful faces after, feeling drained and empty – but she did not cry. Keeping her
eyes on them, she walked backwards towards the telephone, and dialled a number with quivering
fingers.

“Hello?” said a husky voice after a few rings.

“Hello. It’s me,” she whispered, “Hermione. Could I come over?”

There was a short spell of silence, and then, “Now? Er... yeah. Of course. Don’t ring the doorbell,
though... the old ‘uns are asleep.”

“Sure. See you.”

She walked timidly back to her parents, touched her mother’s hand, her father’s hair, and pressed a
kiss on each of their cheeks. Still, she did not cry. With her beaded bag in hand, she absorbed the
sights around her one last time, and then walked out the front door drenched in hopeless finality.
And no, Hermione did not cry.

The moment she stepped into the plot next door she saw his silhouette. Framed by the doorjamb, it
was bold and stark against the dim light spilling out from behind. He waved as she approached –
the same breezy, casual gesture with which he had always greeted her.

“Hey there, lovely,” he whispered.

“Hi, Pete.”

“Come on in.”

His hair was longer than before, almost brushing his shoulders, but he looked just as she
remembered: handsome, scruffy, and cool. He led her up to his room, and when there, hastily
cleared an immense pile of clothes off his bed to make room for her to sit.

“Drink?” he enquired.
“Please,” Hermione rasped. Her tremors were worse, and she felt oh so empty empty empty empty.

“Scotch alright?”

“Anything.”

While he fixed her drink, Hermione studied the posters on his walls – The Manic Street Preachers,
Pearl Jam, The Clash. Over his desk hung a large woodcut portrait of Voltaire, accompanied by a
quote: Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.

“Here you go,” he said, handing her a glass of golden liquid.

“Thanks.”

It wasn’t firewhisky, she mused as she took a sip, but the burning bitterness was still somewhat
soothing.

“So,” he broached, “What brings you here at this unholy hour?”

“I’m sorry about that,” she muttered, and he waved her apology away, “I just wanted to see you.
We’re leaving tomorrow, my parents and I.”

“Holiday?”

“Um, no. We’re moving. To... California,” she lied in the hope that he would tell his gossipy mum,
who’d ensure that that falsity would spread all around the neighbourhood.

“Seriously?!” he asked with some shock.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“My parents got a really good job offer...”

“But...” he sputtered, “California, Hermione?! They’re all fucking sunny and happy over there. It’ll
be intolerable.”

“Perhaps,” she said with half a laugh.

“When will you come back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

After a few moments of silent drinking, Hermione asked, “How have you been?” and he told her all
about his term at Oxford.

They were three drinks down and in the middle of a conversation about the siege of Leningrad,
when Hermione surged forward and pressed her mouth against his.

She felt EMPTY, and like a dementer, she wanted to steal substance straight out of him.
He kissed her back eagerly, after a muted moan of surprise, and gripped her by the waist. She
opened her mouth to taste him – that vaguely familiar blend of heat and smokiness was somewhat
subdued by the prominent flavour of scotch – and fell back on his bed, pulling him down with her.
They kissed for a long time, deeply and desperately, barely breaking away to shed their respective
shirts, and her bra. His hands travelled all over her skin; and hers over his... Oh, but she was still
seeking... seeking... something that continued to be elusive.

Letting her hands travel down his body, she murmured, “I want you.”

He jerked back and stared at her. “You mean...?”

“Yes,” she replied firmly.

“Have you done it before?”

“No.”

“Look, Hermione,” he hedged, “I’m not sure –”

“But I am! I’m sure. I want you. Please.”

He considered her thoughtfully for a few second, and then... “Alright,”... and he kissed her again.

A breathless haze followed. His touches were much more motivated, his kisses more purposeful.
Hermione took all he gave greedily, wanting and wanting and wanting. When they were both naked
and panting, he momentarily moved away to put on a condom, before positioning himself on top of
her.

“This will hurt,” he warned.

“I know. Do it.”

Bloody hell, did it hurt. It was a sharp, radiating pain that had her squeezing her eyes shut and
digging her nails into his shoulder blades.

“You okay, baby?”

She just whimpered, biting her lip.

“Shit, Hermione, baby, I’m sorry! I’ll just –”

“I’m okay,” she gasped.

And bit by bit, she found that she truly was. She felt full. Painfully, uncomfortably full... and it was
glorious.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, but... I can’t hold still anymore...”

She smiled, arched her back, and whispered, “Then don’t.”

The sun was just bursting out of the horizon when she woke up. Blinking as she reoriented herself,
Hermione sat up and stretched. Pete was sprawled beside her, lying on his stomach with his face
entirely obscured by his hair. She brushed the strands aside gently, and placed a parting buss at the
corner of his mouth. She winced at the throbbing soreness between her legs as she stood up and
dressed.

She didn’t look at him again before creeping out of his house. She didn’t allow herself to look at
the building that was no longer her home as she walked down the street. She stared instead at her
feet, and shook her hair down to work like blinkers and obscure her peripheral vision.

At the end of the road, behind a dense grove of beech trees, Hermione spun on the spot and
disapparated.

There was a hillock not too far from the burrow that provided quite a spectacular view of the area.
Upon it sat Hermione watching the morning break. She was urgently convincing herself that the
wonky house in front of her was where she was to go, and not to another invisible house nearby,
where Theo currently resided. She wanted so badly to see him. So badly, that it winded her. But no
– Hermione did not cry.

The door to the Burrow opened, and Mrs Weasley waddled out, wrapped up in a ratty tartan gown.
She was, without a doubt, the most ostentatiously maternal woman Hermione had ever known; a
mother to seven – eight if you counted Harry, and she knew Mrs Weasley certainly did. However,
Hermione recoiled at the thought of joining those ranks, even though she was effectively an orphan
now. She had grown up under the care of the most perfect of mothers... there was no replacing that.
As she watched Mrs Weasley feed the chickens strutting about in the yard, she pictured mum and
dad... no, Monica and Wendell Wilkins, a childless couple, waking up. They’d shake their heads at
themselves for falling asleep on the sofa. They’d share laughs over breakfast. They’d spend the day
finalising their big move down under. And at night, they’d board an aeroplane.

Would it really be so bad if she went to see Theo?

Yes. Yes it would. She was in no state to have another argument about her plans to go with Harry.
So she stood up, dusted her trousers, and descended down the hillock. She did not cry.

“Hermione dear!” Mrs Weasley called on spotting her, “You’re here early!”

“Erm, yes. I hope it isn’t a problem...”

“Not at all. Come here, you.”

Hermione was pulled into a warm trademark Molly Weasley hug; it was brief, but she savoured it.

“You’ll be rooming with Ginny, of course,” Mrs Weasley said as they walked into the house,
“Would you like to go and freshen up? She’s still asleep, but not even a herd of feral hippogriffs
could wake her.”

Hermione smiled, “Yes, thank you.”

“Where are your things, dear?” Mrs Weasley asked with a puzzled glance at Hermione’s tiny bag.

“All in here,” Hermione answered awkwardly.

Though it earned her a suspicious look, Mrs Weasley didn’t pursue that line of questioning,

“Go along then. I’ll get started on breakfast. Now that this is the new headquarters, there are so
many more mouths to feed.”

She bustled away, and Hermione saw herself up the stairs and into Ginny’s room.

Dark times change a lot of things, and that included Ginny’s sleeping habits. It turned out that it
didn’t take a herd of hippogriffs... it took no more than the sound of a door closing to wake her.

“Wha – Hermione?” Ginny mumbled as she rubbed her eyes and wearily sat up, “What time is it?”

“Six-thirty. Sorry for waking you... go back to sleep.”

“Nah, ‘sfine.” Ginny shoved her hair back from her face and huffed.

She scooted a bit to the side and patted the space next to her, wordlessly telling Hermione to sit.

Hermione complied and asked, “How’re things?”

“Insane,” Ginny responded promptly, “Between Order meetings and wedding planning there isn’t a
moment of peace around here.”

“Hmm.”

“What about you? How’re your parents?”

Hermione knew immediately that that was the moment she was to break. Maybe it was the fact that
she had finally slowed down, maybe it was Ginny's straight question, or maybe it was the genuine
concern in her eyes.

“I... I... I had to do the most awful thing...” was all she managed to say before bursting into tears.

Hermione cried.

“Hermione!” Ginny exclaimed in alarm, “What is it?”

But she was too far gone to be able to speak. Ginny pulled her close and wrapped her arms tightly
around her. “What...? What?” she demanded frantically.
 When Hermione merely shook her head and sobbed into her nightshirt, Ginny sighed. She gently
rocked her – back and forth and back and forth – and stroked her hair.

Chapter End Notes

1. "This is the car at the edge of the road": Day Of The Lords, by Joy Division
2. "A spoonful of sugar" from Mary Poppins (1964)
 Thirty-One
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Hermione slept through most of the morning (thanks to a much needed gulp of dreamless sleep
potion,) and after a long and calming shower, she went down to the Burrow’s kitchen for lunch. Or,
at least, that was the plan until she ran into Ron at the landing outside Ginny’s room.

“Blimey!” he exclaimed, “Hermione! You’re here!”

“It would appear so,” she said, the end of her sentence getting muffled against his chest as he
yanked her into his arms.

“Jolly good to see you,” he chattered on as they descended, “Place is a madhouse, by the way. If
you thought there were too many people here before...”

Mrs Weasley had set up a table in the back garden to accommodate all her many guests, and when
Hermione stepped out she was inundated by the sound of multiple, simultaneous conversations and
the clattering of cutlery. As discreetly as possible, she slid into a chair between Tonks and Ginny.
Ron dithered conspicuously behind her for a long moment, before taking a seat next to Moody on
the other side of the table. She didn’t need to look at him to know he was displeased by that
arrangement.

“Hi Hermione,” Tonks greeted with a glittering smile, “Lookie here!”

She waggled the fingers of her left hand, and on her ring finger, a slim gold band gleamed in the
bright afternoon sunlight. Hermione looked from her to Lupin with surprise and delight.

“You got married?” she gasped, “Congratulations!”

“Two days ago!” Tonks beamed, “Just a quiet ceremony in my parents’ garden. Well, it was quiet
until dinner, when –”

“That’s enough, Dora,” Lupin chided.

Unlike his radiant wife, he looked more careworn and drawn than ever. But when he met
Hermione’s eye he offered her a tight semblance of a smile.

Curious as she was about what it was that had disrupted their quite dinner, her attention was stolen
away from the couple by a small explosion at the far end of the table. Mad-Eye Moody sat stock-
still with his hand frozen in front of his open mouth... and every inch of his skin and hair was
covered with chunks of ham, bread, and assorted vegetables. Utter silence struck the gathering as
they all waited with bated breath for the impending second explosion that would be Moody’s
temper.
“FRED,” he roared, pounding his fists on the table, “GEORGE!”

The twins were looking absolutely horrified.

“Now, Moody,” said Fred in a conciliating manner, “Keep calm, yeah?”

“CALM?!” he bellowed, “You stupid, ginger, good-for-nothing cretins; I’LL KILL YOU!”

He roughly wiped a globule of mustard off his glass eye and stood up thunderously, a motion that
caused a great lot of food-debris to rain down on the grass around him.

“Okay, listen,” George stuttered, “It was an accident, alright? That mini-bomb was meant to reach
Ron’s plate...”

“HA!” Ron barked, but everybody ignored him. They watched the twins ditch their seats and
slowly walk backwards and away from the table, hands raised in what was meant to be a placating
symbol of surrender.

“I am,” Moody growled, bearing down on them threateningly, “Going to kill you both. I’m going to
turn you,” he pulled his wand out of its holster, “inside out. I will transfigure you into
flobberworms and feed you to the chickens. I’ll shove hundreds of those damned mini-bombs up
your –”

Fred and George turned around and fled.

“COME BACK HERE!”

Moody limped behind them, brandishing his wand. They scurried around the garden before turning
around the corner of the house and disappearing from sight.

“Those boys!” Mrs Weasley wailed, massaging her temples. Her husband quickly rearranged his
look of amusement to reflect a more disapproving state of mind.

On either side of Hermione, Tonks and Ginny were laughing irrepressibly... infectiously.

“Serves them right,” Ron declared with glee.

“Must we ‘ave zem at our wedding?” Fleur asked Bill miserably, “If zey ruin it, I will –”

“Oh don’t you worry, love,” Bill chuckled, “They wouldn’t dare cross you.”

All laughter quickly ceased when Moody returned to the table. He was whistling and perfectly
clean as he sat back down on his seat.

“Pass us another sandwich would you, Molly?” he asked almost cheerfully.

Fred and George did not reappear.

*
The twins were found later that day, immobilised and silenced, bobbing up and down in the middle
of a scummy pond just outside the Weasley’s orchard. A sickening layer of slime and algae covered
their faces.

A large group of garden gnomes had congregated around the pond, and had made a game of out
lobbing clumps of wet mud at Fred and George’s heads.

Instructed to buff up every piece of silverware in the house, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny sat at the
kitchen table with a pile of rags and a bottle of Madam Glossy’s Silver Polish.

Ron was muttering petulantly under his breath, and only a few odd words were audible from time
to time.

“Bloody... sodding... miserable... house elf...” and the like.

The door opened and Mrs Weasley, Lupin, Bill, and Kingsley walked in.

“That’s enough for now,” Mrs Weasley announced, “You can finish the rest after dinner.”

“Oh thank you, thank you, mistress,” Ron gushed.

Mrs Weasley spared him a sneer before moving on to pull a casserole from the oven.

“And incidentally, we’ll be going to Diagon Alley tomorrow, to pick up your schoolbooks.
Kingsley here has very kindly agreed to chaperone us.”

“It’s nothing,” Kingsley said in his deep, measured voice, “The muggle Prime Minister is in Berlin
for two days, so I’m officially off duty.”

Hermione and Ron shared an apprehensive look.

“Um... mum,” Ron ventured, “Hermione and I aren’t going back to Hogwarts.”

She turned around in slow motion, looking like she hadn’t quite comprehended what Ron had said.
“I beg your pardon?!” she spluttered.

“Hermione and I aren’t –”

“You’re dropping out?” Bill asked looking bemused, “Seriously?”

“Yes,” said Hermione, “We’re –”

Mrs Weasley rounded on her before she could finish.

“You!? Hermione? You’re abandoning your education?”

“Unfortunately,” she ground out, “We’re going with Harry. Dumbledore had given him a task, and
we’re going to help him.”

Since the Weasley matriarch was too busy turning purple to speak, Lupin took over.

“Dumbledore gave him a task?” he asked eagerly.

“Yeah, but he also told him not to tell anybody but us,” said Ron.

“But, surely with recent events in mind, you can –”

“No,” Hermione interjected shortly, “Dumbledore made him promise.”

“If Dumbledore made him promise,” said Kingsley decisively, “Then that promise ought to be
honoured.”

Lupin’s mouth thinned with disapproval, but he fell silent. Mrs Weasley on the other hand, had
regained her voice.

“No,” she raged, “Absolutely not. I’m you mother Ronald Weasley – I deserve to know where
you’ll be going. And what about your parents, Hermione? They’re perfectly content with you
running off like that?”

Under the table, Ginny clasped her fingers around one of her hands, and Ron took hold of the other.

Grateful for their support, Hermione faced Mrs Weasley with bravery she wasn’t feeling and said,
“I am of age. I make my own decisions.”

Hermione Granger: Ragpicker. That was her new designation.

She’d taken to scrounging around the Burrow, pilfering items she thought might prove to be useful
for the forthcoming quest. And so, while everybody else was assembled in the sitting room
indulging in a post-supper nightcap, she was raiding Mrs Weasley’s potion cabinet. When she
walked into the living room a few minutes later, her little beaded bag contained a good stock of
healing balms and ointments.

Over the next two days, she also picked up:

1. A book of basic household charms,
2. A book on remedial spells,
3. A kettle, mugs, plates and cutlery, a billycan, and a large knife,
and 4. Mr Weasley’s detailed map of wizarding London.

One afternoon during lunch, she feigned tiredness and snuck into Fred and George’s room.
Understandably nervous, she judiciously waved her wand over everything, not wanting to set off
any booby traps. From their room she took:
1. Two Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes Broom Broom Kits,
2. A handful of extendable ears,
3. One large box of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder,
and, 4. Half a dozen Decoy Detonators.

She hurried out as soon as she’d nabbed all she needed and closed the door softly, letting out a
relieved sigh. Then a voice spoke from behind her and she jumped out of her skin.

“Got all you wanted, eh?”

She turned around slowly to face Fred who was leaning casually against the wall.

“I... I...” she stammered, shamefacedly, “I’m so sorry, I’ll put everything back –”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Fred reprimanded, “I just hope you’ve taken at least a couple of U-No-Poo
pellets to put into Ron’s tea from time to time. Just in case he misses us too much.”

Hermione laughed and shook her head.

“I am sorry, though,” she felt it necessary to reiterate, “I should’ve just asked you or George. But I
just... um...” she trailed off uncertainly.

“You’re far too used to sneaking around, you thrill-seeking little junkie,” said Fred fondly, “Now
come on, we’re going to the attic.”

“What for?” she asked, even as she let him apprehend her arm and drag her up the stairs.

“It’s a surprise.”

Once they’d reached the fourth floor landing, Fred pointed his wand at the ceiling and muttered,
“Descendo.” A panel slid away to reveal a small opening, from which a ladder dropped down to the
floor. Fred tilted his head towards it, gesturing for her to climb.
A horrible sense of nausea infiltrated her senses when she stood in the small, dusty space, and it
wasn’t just because it stank to high heavens. She was brutally thrown back to the day she’d spent
cosseted in her own attic, pouring over photographs from happier times.

“There you are,” said George appearing in front of her jarringly. Fred, too, had climbed up by then,
and looking around, she saw Ron and Mr Weasley present as well. They were all staring at
something on the floor, and Hermione looked down and...

...And she nearly vomited all over her shoes.

Curled up on the floor was the most revolting creature she’d ever seen. She knew it was a ghoul,
slimy and gnarly, but for some reason, it was clad in striped pajamas.

“What the hell?” she yelped. The ghoul moaned loudly.

“Hermione,” said Ron, “Say hello to my doppelganger.”

She pursed her lips and eyed the ghoul doubtfully.

“Your doppelganger,” she repeated blandly.

“My doppelganger,” Ron affirmed, “We’re going to give him spattergroit.”

“What –?”

“Fake spattergroit,” Mr Weasley assured her, “Okay then. First, we need to give him hair –” He
tapped his wand on the ghoul’s head, and from it sprouted a vast quantity of red hair, “– And now
for the boils and pustules. They need to be large and purple... and ample. Fred, George, take a leg
each; Hermione, the arms, if you please...”

And so they set about the truly horrendous task of covering the ghoul’s body with oozing blisters.
Ron watched from a distance with a sickened grimace twisting his features.

“Merlin’s saggy left testicle,” he spat once they’d finished, “He’s really repulsive.”

“Yeah,” George agreed, “But that’s good. People will believe it’s you.”

“Just one thing though...” said Fred, before lengthening the Ghoul’s nose so spectacularly that he
would’ve put Pinocchio to shame.

“Enough!” Mr Weasley ordered, and cuffed Ron on the head when he saw him bestowing the twins
with a two-fingered salute.

Then, squatting by the Ghoul’s hideous head, he spoke in a very deliberate manner.

“Er... Mister... Ghoul –” (Fred and George began to snigger quietly,) “– Ron here,” he pointed at the
same, “will be leaving soon.” The ghoul simply moaned, and Mr Weasley went on, “You are to
move into his room when he goes. Do you... do you understand?”

This time when the ghoul moaned, he accompanied it with a fit of fervent nodding. One would
think he was actually... excited by the prospect.

“Can we leave now?” Ron begged.

They left. Out on the landing, Mr Weasley pushed a small bundle into Hermione’s hands – “This is
Perkin’s tent. You know... the one we stayed in during the quidditch world cup...”

“Thank you, Mr Weasley. Thank you.”

It was a beautifully embroidered, long-sleeved blouse in navy blue, and Hermione slipped it over
her head, relishing the feel of it. It had belonged to mum, who’d handed it down to her a few years
back. After a deep sigh, she walked out of the bathroom.

She entered Ginny’s room in a state of distraction (she couldn’t stop her mind from constantly
running over protective enchantments and defensive spells,) and hence, didn’t really pay attention
to the owner of the room, who was standing in front of the full-length mirror.

A few seconds later, the image registered and she spun around in shock.

Ginny had a large pair of scissors in her hand, and her glorious, shiny, long red hair lay in heaps on
the floor by her feet. That which was remained on her head, barely went past her jaw.

“Ginny,” Hermione gasped inanely, “You... cut your hair!”

“So it’s noticeable then?” Ginny asked with a twisted smile.

Hermione’s laugh was more incredulous than amused, and she went closer and sat on the edge of
her bed.

“I’m sorry, I’m just... stunned.”

Ginny shrugged. “I needed to do something reckless, y’know? Does it look really bad?”

“Oh, come on,” Hermione scoffed, “You’d look good even if you shaved it all off and wore only
bin bags for the rest of your life.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

It was true though. Once Hermione got over the shock of it, she realised that the cut suited Ginny; it
gave her an edgy sort of look that matched her personality.

“Your mum’s going to lose it,” she warned.

“Oh yes she will,” Ginny said with obvious delight. She waved the scissors about and asked, “Shall
I do yours, too?”
“No,” Hermione declined flatly, “My hair explodes the moment you cut it. It’s like –” she gestured
wildly with her hands, “– POOF! A veritable lion’s mane. I’ll be declared the new Gryffindor
mascot.” She paused to let Ginny laugh, and then after fixing her eyes obdurately on her toenails
she continued, “And besides... I’ve already done my reckless something.”

“Oh?” Ginny sat on her knees in front of her, infiltrating her line of vision, “Do tell.”

Hermione felt her face heat up, and she squeezed her eyes shut before saying, “I had sex with my
neighbour the night before I came here.”

When she finally gathered the courage to steal a look, she was faced with a wide-eyed Ginny
whose mouth had fallen open.

“Galloping Gargoyles,” she whispered in awe, “Is this the same muggle bloke you went out with
last year?”

“We didn’t exactly go out... but yes.”

Ginny’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times as she struggled to find the right words to say.

Finally, she settled on, “How was it?”

“Oh god,” Hermione groaned.

“Not good?”

“It hurt,” Hermione admitted, “A lot. But at that point, I really wanted it to.”

They stewed in silence for a while. Hermione’s face eventually stopped burning, and Ginny shook
the astonishment off her own.

“Well, shit. My recklessness seems really insipid now.”

Hermione chuckled lightly. And again... they fell quiet once more.

“So,” Ginny broached by and by, “You definitely don’t fancy Ron anymore?”

“I do not,” Hermione mumbled.

Ginny exhaled heavily out of her nose and said, “That’s for the best, I suppose. You two aren’t well
suited at all.”

“No,” Hermione agreed, “We really aren’t.”

“And this muggle...?”

“No. I mean, he’s lovely... but...” Hermione pulled a face, “Even if there’s a chance, I can’t think
about it right now.”

Ginny stood up and signalled for Hermione to follow.

“Alright then. Come on –” she tossed her short locks dramatically, “– let’s go downstairs and give
my mother a heart attack.”

Late one Friday evening when dusk was at its most violent stage, sending blood-red shafts of light
piercing through the Burrow’s window panes, Mad-Eye Moody paced in front of the large fireplace
in the sitting room. He vibrated with flagrant impatience as the room slowly filled up, until every
surface available became a perch for somebody or the other. Hermione was comfortably sat on a
sofa with Ginny and Hestia Jones... until Ron come by and squeezed in next to her – unnecessarily
close.

Once everybody had settled, Moody cleared his throat and revealed the reason behind convening an
emergency meeting of the Order.

“I’ve called you all here because we need to come up with an alternative plan to get Potter here
from Little Whinging,” he rumbled.

(Hermione huffed to herself as she remembered how her suggestion to call the plan Operation
Spring the Stag during a previous meeting had been met with a full house of blank looks.)

“Hestia and Dedalus,” Moody continued, “Your part still holds. You are to reach the house and take
the Dursleys – in their car – at least ten miles away before disapparating to the safehouse in Upper
Flagley.
“Now here are the problems: First, Pius Thicknesse, newly appointed Head of the Department of
Magical Law Enforcement, has gone over. He’s made it an imprisonable offense to connect the
house to the Floo Network, place a Portkey there, or Apparate in or out; all done apparently to
protect Harry, and to prevent You-Know-Who from getting to him. Absolutely pointless, seeing as
his mother’s charm does that already. What he’s really done is block him in.
“Second problem: The boy’s underage, which means he’s still got the Trace on him. We can’t wait
for the Trace to break, because the moment he turns seventeen he’ll lose all the protection his
mother gave him.”

“Brooms again, then?” Tonks asked, “The trace can’t detect those.”

“Brooms an’ Thestrals,” Hagrid replied from his place by a window, “I’ll get a pair of ’em from
Hogwarts. An’ I’ll have ter use Sirius’ bike... nothin’ else can take me weight.”

“When will we do this? Harry’s seventeenth is four days from now,” said Mr Weasley.

“Tomorrow,” said Moody firmly, “Tomorrow evening, after sundown.”

Kingsley raised his hand; “I’ve leaked a fake trail to the Ministry; they think Harry’s staying put till
the thirtieth. However, this is You-Know-Who we’re dealing with… he’s bound to have a couple
Death Eaters patrolling the skies in the surrounding area, just in case…”
“And that’s the third problem: Azkaban has seen a mass breakout. There will be more than just a
couple of Death Eaters. So we’ll need a diversion,” Moody explained, “Multiple diversions.” With
a wave of his wand, he unravelled a large map, and hung it mid-air like a large screen in front of
them. “We’ll give multiple houses the best protection we can throw at them. They all look like they
could be the place we’re going to hide Harry. So far we have... My house, Kingsley’s place...” as he
named a location, the corresponding point on the map lit up, “...Ted and Andromeda’s.... Remus,
your place too? Okay good...”

“My Auntie Muriel’s place isn’t too far from here,” Mrs Weasley added.

“Excellent,” Moody barked, “Sturgis Podmore’s flat is lying empty since his arrest... we can use
that too. And... here... Minerva said we could use her niece’s house... Now, here’s the deal – we’ll
travel in pairs, each flying to a different location. It’ll force the Death Eaters to scatter.”

“But why would they even bother with the rest of us?” asked Bill, “They’ll just follow Harry.”

“That’s where this comes in.” From within the folds of his robe, Moody pulled out a large flask of
sludge-like liquid.

“Polyjuice!” Lupin exclaimed, “So there’ll be seven Harry Potters flying the skies tomorrow?”

“Precisely,” Moody confirmed, “Mundungus’ idea, if you’ll believe it.”

Every single person stopped to stare at the droopy pile of rags that was Mundungus Fletcher. He
met their disbelief with an inordinate amount of smugness.

Hermione couldn’t help it. She scoffed. Loudly.

“Is there a problem?” Moody asked testily.

“Harry will never go for that. Six people risking their lives for him?”

“I’m sure Harry will listen to reason...” Kingsley began.

And this time, Ron and Ginny joined Hermione in expressing disbelief.

“Reason? Harry?” Ron jeered, “Not in these situations.”

“Well we’ll make him do it then,” Moody growled, “Hold him down and tear his hair out if
necessary.”

“We volunteer,” said Fred and George simultaneously.

Moody dived back into the plan – “We have seven ‘protectors’, or companions – Kingsley, Tonks,
Remus, Arthur, Bill, Hagrid, and myself. Now we need the decoys.”

Half a dozen hands shot up in the air immediately.

“Good, good,” Moody muttered and began noting down names, “Ron, Hermione... Fred, George...
Erm... Miss Delacour? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said simply, taking Bill’s hand.

“Okay... And...”

“Me,” Ginny yelled fervently.

“Absolutely not Ginevra –”

“Underage,” Moody barked dismissively, (Ginny glowered but held her tongue,) “Mundungus old
chap... I’m sure you’ll want to participate in this ingenious plan of yours.”

“Nah, thank ye very much... I’ll pass, I will.”

“Shut it.”

Half an hour later, with their plan more or less cemented, the party sat down for supper in the
garden, amid the sound of gentle winds and unremitting cicadas.

...That and Ron’s unassailable grumbling – “Why me? Why Muriel’s? Why do I have to go to
bloody Muriel’s? Right nightmare, Muriel is...”

It was so bloody odd, inhabiting Harry’s body. The ground was further away, she felt unnaturally
broad and heavy, and the glasses sitting on her nose were very annoying. She was also very, very
adamantly trying to not think about the situation below her belt at all.

Kingsley helped Harry-mione climb onto a thestral out in the Dursley’s back garden before leaping
onto one himself. Though it was a dark thought to have, she was glad that this time she was able to
see the great winged steed she was set to ride. Gibbon, you louse, your death was worth something
after all.
On her right, Ron-disguised-as-Harry and Tonks were poised on their brooms. Beyond them,
Hagrid sat like a boulder on Sirius’ bike, with Harry crouched comically in the sidecar.

“Good luck, everyone,” Moody blared, “See you all in about an hour at the Burrow.” (...Harry-
mione stared at her larger, tawnier imposter hands gripping the Thestral’s silky mane...) “On the
count of three: One... Two... Three.”

The motorcycle roared, and everybody took off. They ascended rapidly, all in a cluster; the phthalo
blue sky and wispy clouds embraced them -

Like a bolt from hell, a score of Death Eaters on brooms materialised from all sides. Without giving
them a chance to recover, the black-cloaked figures set off a barrage of bright green streaks of light.

She heard screams... maybe she screamed as well... and the Order members paired up and
dispersed.

Harry-mione directed her thestral to follow Kingsley, veering to the left... then to the right... and
left... to dodge the myriad of curses coming her way.

Thousands of feet up in the air with five Death Eaters hot on her trail... she thought she might
actually go mad with terror. The wind whistled in her ears, adding to the cacophony of alarm bells
and sirens going off in her head: Danger, Danger, Mayday, Abort, Abort, Fucking ABORT.

There were two Death Eaters on either side of her – two thickset men by the looks of them. The
other three shot ahead to deal with Kingsley.

“Bombarda Maxima!” she shrieked, aiming straight for the Death Eater on her right.

She didn’t care that if hit, he’d fall to a certain death... she didn’t care at all. The bastard moved out
of the range of the explosion just in time – and his colleague took the opportunity to try and hex
her. She retaliated – he evaded – and by then the other Death Eater had recuperated.

Fuck fuck fuck. They were relentless... she wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. Not without
solid ground under her feet. She tried to stun them – a spell she was really, very good at – but they
were nimble flyers.

Suddenly, her thestral bucked so violently that she was nearly thrown off. She flung her arms
around the creature’s skeletal neck, as it whinnied in a horrible, agonised way.

“STOP, OH GOD STOP,” she screeched.

The Thestral did nothing of that sort. It reared and thrashed like a rodeo bull, so hard her bones
began to rattle. And then it hit her – the smell of smoke – she dared to twist her neck and look
behind....

The thestrals tail was on fire.

“Mum,” she sobbed irrationally. Digging her knees into the thestral’s flanks and looping one arm
tightly around its neck, she pointed her wand over her shoulder, and without looking long enough
to aim properly, she conjured a powerful jet of water, followed by a swift numbing charm.

“Shhhh...” she whispered into its mane, “Shhh.”

It calmed... and the Death Eaters were back on her. Two bright white beams of light burst on either
side... “Protogo!” she yelled, and then, “Ventus Duo!” Both her adversaries were blasted off course,
giving her the opportunity to race ahead... maybe lose them entirely...

Up ahead, Kingsley knocked a Death Eater off his broom, who, with a dreadful almighty scream,
spiralled headfirst towards the ground, and then –
The world around her froze... but she was still moving. Somewhat. It was like her thestral was
flying through some sort of viscous gel. Kingsley and the Death Eaters were paralysed mid-duel –
set dramatically against the dark sky as if they’d been painted by Caravaggio. There was a static
owl a few metres away with its wings arched. What the fuck had happened?
And suddenly he was in front of her, hovering with no apparent means of flight keeping him
airborne. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream.

Vol – Voldem –

His ghastly, cadaver-white, snake-like face was mere inches from her own. His blazing, blood-red
eyes were boring holes into her own. Shards of something alien and malevolent were piercing into
her consciousness. She was choking on her fear... but she could not look away. Red eyes. Red red
red eyes....

Voldem – he hissed in fury... and then he vanished as abruptly he had appeared.

The world was jolted into motion again.

“IT’S NOT HIM. IT’S NOT THE REAL POTTER!” one of the Death Eaters behind her shouted.
His four remaining comrades retreated immediately.

She pulled in a deep tremulous breath. It was over – for now – it was over.

“Hermione,” Kingsley called urgently, “Hermione, are you okay?”

“F – fine.” She raised a shaking hand reassuringly.

And so, the final stretch of their journey was without event. Hermione, who was gradually
regaining her true appearance, trusted her Therstal to stay on track and closed her eyes.

And she saw red eyes. Red red red eyes....

No more than ten minutes later, they landed in Kingsley’s small and tidy garden. On dismounting,
Hermione found that her legs could not hold her up, and she stumbled straight into a heather bush.

“Careful, there,” said Kingsley, coming over to help her up.

“How did this happen?” she whispered as they walked into his Spartan living room, (plain white
walls, minimalist furniture,) and to the bent coat hanger that was their portkey to the burrow.

“Somebody betrayed us,” Kingley spat, “And I intend to find out who that was. Here,” he held out
the coat hanger, “Any second now...”
Hermione was standing by the pond where Moody had vengefully deposited Fred and George a
mere week ago.

Now, he was dead.

It was almost implausible that someone so powerful, so durable, so constantly vigilant had died.
She felt the same horrified disbelief she’d felt when Sirius and Dumbledore had been killed. Did
anyone ever truly get used to death? Would it happen to her as the war progressed? Would she
become that jaded?

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The sound of people approaching had her looking over her shoulder, and she smiled thinly as
Harry, Ron, and Ginny joined her. Nobody spoke.

“Oi, you lot,” called out a voice, “Mum says we’ve got to de-gnome the garden.”

“Again?!” Ginny and Ron grumbled simultaneously.

The twins stood under the shade of the orchard, waving them over. As Hermione got closer,
George’s t-shirt caught her eye. Bright purple it was, and on it, printed in bold, white letters were
the words:
COGITO
EAR-GO
BUM.

Harry began to laugh. It was that full, unencumbered laugh of his... the one that Hermione never
understood. How could someone as fraught as Harry summon such pure joy?

“Told you, Freddie, didn’t I?” George elbowed his brother and grinned from ear to... gaping hole, “I
told you it’s funny.”

“Listen Ginny, please let me fix it,” Mrs Weasley implored, “A simple lengthening charm – just for
the wedding. You can hack it all off again after –”

“I’ve told you a hundred times, mum. I like it like this. You may not ‘fix’ it!” Ginny snapped.
They were in the kitchen, preparing vegetables for dinner. Hermione had shuffled into the pantry
allegedly to fetch some carrots, when actually she was seeking a good vantage point. She kept a
keen eye on the bickering Weasley women, glad that they were so focused on each other.

“But the wedding, poppet! You’re a bridesmaid! You cannot have your hair looking like that. Fleur
is quite distraught!”

“Well, Phlegm can go straight to –”

“Ginny!”

‘Accio Polyjuice potion; Arresto Momento,’ Hermione pronounced in her head, and from the top
shelf of a nearby cupboard, an entire crateful of vials started gently floating towards her. ‘Silencio,’
she added, for good measure. It had been Moody's stash, but she refused to feel bad about taking it.

“You’re such a beautiful girl; I don’t understand why you feel the need to sabotage –”

“Mum, you’re being absolutely ridiculous. Lay off, please –”

As the vials soared over Mrs Weasley and Ginny’s heads, Hermione held her breath. They cast the
slightest of shadows as they passed, but thankfully, the women were too distracted to notice. When
finally, they drifted into the pantry, Hermione held her little beaded bag open, and one by one, the
vials fell inside with nary a sound.

When she had told Ron about her parents, he had looked troubled and hugged her.

Then she told Harry about her parents. He looked troubled, and let Ron hug her.

Neither had looked straight into her eyes and said, “It’s the right thing to do, Hermione.”

Oh, Theo.
She couldn’t stop thinking about how close he was... and yet so utterly out of reach.

Within her reach, however, were piles of Ron’s socks and underpants that she was packing into a
rucksack.
 “To Miss Hermione Jean Granger, I leave my copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, in the hope that
she will find it entertaining and instructive.”

What a bizarre day it had been.

Hermione had so hoped that it would be a day as close to normal as possible – that Harry would
have a pleasant birthday full of cake, presents, and cheerful chitchatting. But things like that tend to
go out of the window when the Minister of Magic decides to pay a visit.

Dumbledore’s will had stumped her. Why did he do that? Why was it always cryptic clues, hidden
agendas, and coded secrets?
Here she had a book of children’s stories written in runes. Harry was stuck with riddle-embossed
snitch. And Ron could play with lights.
...Excellent. Lovely. Dead useful, Professor Dumbledore, sir.

Hermione set the book aside and lay back in bed with a groan. She was just tired – tired of it all.
And so she decided to read Catch-22, using her fist to muffle her laughter lest she wake Ginny up.

Chapter End Notes

1. "And death shall be no more...": from Death, be not proud, by John Donne
 Thirty-Two
Chapter Notes

The dialogue in the second to last segment has been borrowed from DH.

Wrapped up in her dressing gown, Hermione stepped out into Ginny’s room. Her face broke into a
wide, genuine grin.

“You look beautiful, Ginny!”

“Thanks,” Ginny mumbled with half a smile. Her bridesmaid’s dress was pale gold and flowy, with
an almost dangerously low neckline. She’d pulled her shorn locks away from her face using many
tiny glittery clips, making rubbish of Mrs Weasley’s claim that they would take away from her
appearance.

“Get here, you,” Ginny ordered, patting the pouf in front of the dresser, “lets tame that wild
bramble on your head.”

Hermione scowled but obediently sat, and Ginny popped open a bottle of Sleekeazy with great
fanfare.

There were quiet through the whole process; complicit in an unspoken understanding of each
other’s preoccupation. Hermione thought about how much her mother would’ve loved to see her
getting dressed up, since she so rarely bothered. It was strange that someone as unconcerned with
appearances as mum would be so delighted when her daughter made an effort. A small, wistful
smile tugged at the corners of her mouth... and disappeared almost instantly at the sight of Ginny’s
face, which held more than a little rigidity – it was a vision of explicit of anxiety.

When her hair finally flowed smoothly and sleekly down to her waist, Ginny put her hands on
Hermione’s shoulders and rested her chin on top of her head.

“You’ll take off, wont you,” she asked, “once the wedding’s over?”

“Yes,” Hermione whispered.

Ginny’s grip tightened, but she sighed resignedly.

“Keep them safe. Promise me you’ll keep them safe. And make sure they come back home.
Please.”

“I’ll do my best.”
“And you know... the only way you can ensure that is by bringing them back home personally. You
have to walk them through the door. You have to be there.”

“You make sure everyone’s there to welcome us, then. Every last one of you.”

“It’s a deal,” Ginny stated; then she straightened and half-turned away, “I’ve to go help the bride
get ready now. Not that she needs any help, mind you. Just wants someone to bark orders at.”

With a small chuckle, Hermione nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you downstairs.”

Once Ginny had left, Hermione went over to the pale purple dress laid out on her bed. She shed her
gown and stepped into the light material, wandlessly coercing it to zip itself up. It fit her well... she
ran her palms down the silky bodice, smoothening out creases that didn’t exist. Returning to the
mirror, she dabbed a bit of colour on her face: purple on her eyelids and coral pink on her lips. She
bent to slip on the scary high heels that she’d borrowed from Ginny and transfigured to match the
colour of her dress. And as the final touch, she conjured a small cluster of fresh lilacs and tucked
them behind her ear. Then she took a step back and stared at her refection.

The girl in the mirror was undeniable pretty... Hermione hated her.

“What are you doing?” she asked out loud, “There’s a sodding war going on. People are dying.
Your parents have forgotten you. Your friend is miserable and trapped in an invisible house. You
need to help the prospective saviour of the world realise his destiny. What the hell are you doing?!”

The girl in the mirror gave her no answers. She just mimed her words back at her... mocking her.
Huffing in disgust, Hermione spun around and walked out of the room.

She didn’t go downstairs, where the first lot of guest were undoubtedly beginning to show up.
Instead, she climbed upstairs, all the way to the fifth floor – Ron’s room. There, she collected Harry
and Ron’s rucksacks and shoved them into her tiny beaded bag. She took one last look around,
smiling at the Ron-ness of it all. There was nothing else to do now... she was as well equipped as
she could be.

Descending in four-inch heels was not easy. Hermione took each step at a time while keeping a
steady grip on the railing. On the third floor, she paused as voices filtered out of the slightly ajar
door to Bill’s room.

“...you bring a date?” said Bill’s voice.

“Come off it, mate,” Charlie’s voice chided, “I didn’t want to cause a scandal –”

“Oh fuck off, Charlie! We all know. Nobody cares!”

“Mum doesn’t know, Bill. She’d explode.”

“Nah. She has six straight children to give her all the grandkids she needs... and more. You should
just tell her –”
Hermione moved on. On the second floor, from Percy’s old room (or, the recently allocated Bridal
station,) she heard:

“...Ma chérie! Ma fille! Tu es si belle!...”

“...Ces boucles d'oreilles en perles, Fleur...?”

“...Stop fiddling with my hair, mum...”

“...Auntie Muriel should be here soon...”

On the staircase between the first and second floors, Hermione ran into a shrivelled up bird of prey
in very frilly magenta dress robes.

Mr Weasley, from a few steps below, said, “Ah, Hermione! This is Madam Muriel Prewett, Molly’s
great-aunt.”

“Oh dear,” said Muriel dryly, her red-rimmed eyes looked down her enormous hooked nose at
Hermione, “Is this the muggleborn?”

“Hermione Granger, madam,” she sniffed, “Nice to mee–”

“Don’t muggle’s feed their children anymore? She looks half-starved,” Muriel sniped.

She was like some highly caricaturised Dickensian dowager. In her hands was an ornate antique
box that no doubt contained her famous goblin-made tiara.

“Er,” Hermione muttered, stealing a look at Mr Weasley who was gazing heavenwards as though
begging for forbearance.

“Speak up girl,” Muriel barked, “And straighten up! Bad posture and skinny ankles – such a
shame.”

With those grim words, Muriel clomped away with her nose in the air, and Mr Weasley offered
Hermione an apologetic smile as he followed.

The white marquee in the orchard gleamed like alabaster that afternoon. A rich purple carpet
divided the space into two, and delicate golden chairs were set on either side. Supporting poles
were covered in gold and white flowers, enormous floral arrangements stood at every corner, and
suspended above the pulpit were large golden balloons, courtesy of Fred and George.
The guests were all mostly seated in place, and the low buzz of excited chatter swelled and ebbed
rhythmically.

Hermione stood outside with Ron, the twins, and their so-called ‘cousin Barny’, (who was Harry in
the guise of some unspecified red-haired boy from the nearby village). They were in splits, all of
them, as Fred and George told stories about their notorious Uncle Bilius... which was why
Hermione jumped about a foot in the air and dropped her bag on the ground when a voice extremely
close to her ear said, “You look vunderful.”

“Victor!” she gasped, after hastily picking up her bag, “I didn’t know you were – goodness – it’s
lovely to see – how are you again?”

Lord, she sounded like a silly fifteen year old. Victor did look good though, in that intense,
distinguished way of his. In dapper dress robes and a newly cultivated beard, he was somehow
taller; more imposing. But the smile he bestowed upon her was sweet. He took her hand and kissed
it, and opened his mouth to speak when –

“How come you’re here?”

Hermione gaped at Ron for his ill-timed and crusty interruption. He was awfully red, and scowling
sullenly at Victor.

Victor raised his eyebrows, “Fleur invited me.”

Before Ron could say anything more, Barny (or, The Wizard Formally Known as Harry,) quickly
offered to show Victor his seat, and rushed him inside the marquee.

“What the hell, Ron?” Hermione demanded.

“What?” he snapped, his ears in flames.

“You were so rude! Why –”

She stopped on account of Mr and Mrs Weasley’s arrival.

“It’s time! It’s time!” Mrs Weasley squealed, “Go sit down, children... the bride’s on her way!”

And so they dutifully hurried down the aisle, (“Children, she says,” George muttered,) collecting
Barny (or, The Wizard Formally Known as Harry,) on the way.

From her place in the second row, Hermione looked about her with a sense of disconnection – the
excitement, the anticipation, the eager humming – none of it made sense to her.
Bill and Charlie marched up to the pulpit, both looking extremely sharp in fitted black dress robes
that looked like ankle length morning coats. Fred wolf-whistled, much to the delight of Fleur’s
veela cousins.

Suddenly, from nowhere and everywhere, music bloomed and the guests fell silent.

Fleur floated up the aisle, her hand daintily placed on her beaming father’s elbow, with Ginny and
Gabrielle following behind in matching dresses and similar smiles.
She looked... to say she looked beautiful, would’ve been extremely trite. She was faultless, she was
exquisite, she was glowing. Her dress and jewellery were simple – the most ornamental thing on
her was the tiara – but for once, surprisingly, it wasn’t her appearance that made her so
breathtaking; it was the pure, incandescent joy on her face and in her stride; it radiated out of her
and touched everyone watching.
Hermione turned to look at Bill. He was gazing enraptured at his bride with shining eyes and a
mile-wide grin. The scars on his face – all marks of distress and trauma – seemed to have melted
away. There was nothing but untainted, absolute happiness in the space between the couple.

And just like that, Hermione understood. The reason for that whole elaborate circus; for the fancy
cutlery, for the expensive hors d'oeuvres and beverages, for all the planning and nitpicking... it was
obvious, really. It was for this exact moment: Bill and Fleur generating so much joy that all those
lucky enough to be around were caught in the swell of it.
Yes, there was a sodding war going on, and yes, people were dying. But still... look! Look at how
effortlessly true bliss and deep love have empowered an entire room!
It didn’t mean a lot; it meant everything.

The sun had set, but the wedding reception was at its peak. Twinkling lamps hung from the golden
canopy that the marquee had been transfigured into. The band was playing particularly energetic
jazz numbers. Bill and Fleur were in the middle of the dance floor, twirling and giggling as though
drunk on happiness (and copious amounts of champagne). Ginny was dancing with Lee Jordan,
Ron was dancing with Gabrielle. Victor had found some veela-type to keep him company after
Hermione had turned down a second dance with him. Hagrid, Charlie, and a Bob Hoskins lookalike
were sitting on the floor in one corner, singing. Tonks was trying to pull Lupin onto the dance floor,
but he shook his head adamantly. Then, Fred offered to dance with her instead, and laughing
brightly, Tonks agreed. Lupin continued to stare into his glass of firewhisky miserably.

Leaning against the bar with a glass of gin and gillywater in her hand, Hermione felt a sort of
kinship with him.

Her spirits had come crashing down as she imbibed more and more... well, spirits. Her feeling of
detachment had returned, but now she also felt hollow and melancholy. She took a long sip and
sighed; her eyes continued to skitter all around the throng dejectedly. She saw George disappear
under a table with one of Fleur’s cousins. She watched as Ron towed Gabrielle across the crowd to
get more cake. At a corner table, she saw Barny (or, The Wizard Formally Known as Harry,)
talking to - of all people - Old Auntie Muriel and Elphias Doge. She thought she ought to go rescue
him... maybe even wrangle a dance out of him... But no.

Nothing could induce her to go anywhere near Muriel again.

There was an outbreak of laughter from the dance floor, where Luna and her father were dancing
utterly ridiculously. Hermione scowled. She’d tried no less than eight times to drag that insane girl
aside to talk, but each and every time Luna had pulled away and initiated a conversation with the
nearest person. Hermione was one drink away from casting her first Imperio...

“Hi.”

With a bit of a jump, she turned to look the young man who’d sidled up next to her. He was dark
haired and stocky, wearing a pleasant smile and clutching goblet of mead.

“Hello,” Hermione replied curtly, hoping that the unspoken please go away was clearly put across
through her tone.

“You look beautiful,” he went on, undeterred, “Would you care to dance?”

“No thanks,” she gritted out through her teeth.

The young man’s smile widened. “Don’t worry. I’m not on the pull. I’m actually here with my
girlfriend.”

“Really,” Hermione drawled.

“Yes, really. She’s right there,” he said and pointed.

Hermione disinterestedly followed the line of his finger, and her eyes came to rest on a blonde girl
in bright yellow robes...

“She’s not your girlfriend.”

“Excuse me? Yes she is!”

“That’s Luna Lovegood,” Hermione said, getting seriously angry, “I know for a fact that she is not
your girlfriend.”

“Oh really?” He tilted his head down and eyed her meaningfully, “You’re sure, are you –”

“Good grief–”

“– Buddy.”

Hermione’s entire body seized. Her hands suddenly began to shake, so she carefully placed her
glass on the bar.

“Oh my god,” she gasped.

“In the flesh,” the man said cheerfully.

Then he grinned, and he looked entirely wrong, but... she knew that grin. She launched herself at
him, and he caught her tightly in his arms.

“Oh my fucking god,” she breathed into his ear, “You’re here. Theo.”

“Well, of course I’m here,” he laughed, “The moment Luna told me her father had got an invite, I
insisted they take me along.” He pulled away, but kept his arms around her as he ran his eyes all
over her face. “Merlin, it’s good to see you.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Hermione quipped as best she could, (her fanatical grin wasn’t letting
her speak clearly,) “Who are you supposed to be?”

“Some bloke,” Theo replied with a shrug, “Luna got his hair off the floor of a barber’s shop in the
muggle village down the hill. Terribly unhygienic, yeah... but desperate times and all that. Now.
I’m going to ask you one more time - would you care to dance?”

“I would love to. Absolutely.”

He hauled her onto the dance floor and whirled her round and around, and around once more. He
pulled her close and twirled her away. He picked her up by the waist and spun. Hermione was
laughing breathlessly when she caught Luna’s eye over Theo’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she
mouthed, and Luna grinned before returning to the alien dancing routine she had going with her
father.

Theo made her dizzy through three songs, then led her, stumbling and giggling, back to the bar.

“So,” he said after they’d got a drink each, “How are you?”

“I am...” Hermione hedged, “...As expected.”

“I see,” he pronounced with a raised brow, “And your parents...?”

She breathed heavily out of her nose. “Safe.”

“Good girl,” he said and squeezed her hand.

“What about you?” Hermione asked, “How have you been?”

“Er, as expected?” he ventured, “Wait no. Worse. Definitely worse. Hermione, I’m going crazy.”

“Cabin fever?”

“Not exactly,” he said with a scowl, “It’s fucking Xenophilius. He’s a madman. No listen, believe
me. Luna’s quirks are adorable, right? His are outrageous. He hates me. He absolutely loathes me.”

“Oh, come on,” Hermione reasoned, “He’s probably just playing the part of the overprotective
father.”

“Yeah, see, if that was the case, he’d simply have warded Luna’s room to keep me out. Which he
has done, by the way –”

“Oh, you poor thing!”

“– but he does not have to make me spend the afternoon peeling and slicing those bloody awful
dirigible plums, and then bake them into a pie and have me eat it for dinner every single day! And
that Gurdyroot infusion! I spat it out the first time, so he’s punishing me by making me have a glass
with every bloody meal. As if it isn’t bad enough that I have to scrounge around in the garden like a
fucking niffler, digging the blasted things out! I also have to fish for Plimpies, keep out the
Wrackspurts – which basically involves batting at empty air for hours, and.... Stop laughing, you
monster!”

Of course, Hermione did no such thing.

“Oh, the Labours of Theodore.”

“Far more than ten,” he grumbled, but then he brightened, “Luckily, the miserable sod has a
weakness.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He trusts Luna implicitly. So he hasn’t put any wards on my room.”

“Ah.”

“Exactly. So she visits me every night.”

“Lovely.”

“It really is. We don’t sleep much.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“We spend a lot of time not sleeping.”

“Yes, I get it.”

“Not sleeping every night is doing me a lot of good.”

“That’s nice.”

“And Luna really does love good. I mean, really, really –”

“Theo!”

He threw back his head and laughed. Hermione’s own lips quirked up reflexively at the sound. In
her mind’s eye she could picture him as he ought to have been – thinner, taller, with his light brown
hair falling into his fine blue eyes.

“Oh, sweet Salazar, darling,” he chortled, “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” she said softly, “So much.”

He sipped his drink after the last vestiges of his amusement subsided, and adopted a more solemn
tone.

“When will you set off on your great, secretive adventure?”

Hermione cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Tomorrow.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, “Potter’s here isn’t he? That tubby red-haired fellow.”

“Huh? How’d you know?” she demanded in shock.

“Luna told me.”

“How did she know?!”

“It’s Luna,” he shrugged offhandedly, “She knows things. But anyway. Are you... well... are you
prepared?”

“Yes. I am – I think – I suppose I’ve thought of everything.”

“I can believe that,” he said with a sigh, “Carelessness and cutting corners aren’t your style.”

“No,” she agreed, wanting to say more comforting things but drawing nothing but blanks.

Fortunately, that’s when Luna joined them, flushed and glinting with sweat. (The sunflowers in her
hair were beginning to wilt, making Hermione wonder about the state of her lilacs...)

Luna ordered herself a glass of sherry and leaned into Theo’s side as he put an arm around her.

“Had fun, love?” he asked affectionately.

“Yes,” she beamed, “Daddy is a wonderful dancer, isn’t he?”

“Superlative,” Theo remarked dryly.

Hermione grinned.

“By the way, Hermione,” said Luna, “I’m sorry for ignoring you all evening. Theo wanted to
surprise you.”

“Please don’t apologise. It was a fantastic surprise. In fact,” Hermione bit her lip, “I should
apologise for even thinking about using the Imperius curse on you.”

“Hermione Granger!” Theo admonished playfully.

“Oh, never mind,” Luna laughed calmly, “It wouldn’t have worked anyway. A gnome bit me this
afternoon.”

“Er... okay?” Hermione said, puzzled.

“Gnome saliva is extremely beneficial! It makes you immune to the unforgivable curses and
bestows the gift of many tongues.”

“Many tongues, eh?” Theo murmured licentiously.

Don’t react, Hermione firmly told herself.

There was a shriek. Hermione jerked around in alarm.

Something enormous and blazing fell through the canopy and landed smack-dab in the middle of
the dance floor. All the revellers fell silent and gaped in unified astonishment at the silver light,
which turned out to be a patronus in the shape of a lithe and graceful lynx. Its mouth opened and
Kingsley’s voice issued forth:

“The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.”

All hell broke loose.

The panic-stricken crowd turned wild, with people running around in shock, or screaming, or
promptly disapparating. The protective enchantments around the burrow had been decimated.

“Shit,” Hermione cried. She rounded on Theo and Luna – “You need to get out. You need to leave
–”

Theo shouted... something, but she ignored him.

“Shield charms. NOW. Protego!” she ordered, “Shit shit shit. Go! Theo, Luna, GO!”

Guests were running around hither-thither like headless chickens. Tonks emerged from an
especially dense huddle, barking orders at Bill, Charlie, and Hagrid.

“Theo!” Hermione half-sobbed, “They can’t find you here. Hurry!”

“But –”

“Luna. Get him out of here. Find your father and go. GO.” She shoved them both, “I’ll be fine – I
need to get to Harry and we’ll be out too – Damn it – MOVE.”

And that’s when they appeared: Death Eaters – at least thirty of them. With perfect synchrony they
raised their wands and let loose a violent flow of spells. There was madness, madness everywhere.
Furniture flew all over the place, amid an outburst of explosions and lights and screams.

Luna grabbed hold of Theo’s hand and ran towards her father at the other end of the floor.

She was one and they were three.

Three rancorous Death Eaters were attacking her with all they had and she could do nothing
besides struggle to maintain her shield charm.

“Not so tough now, are you, mudblood?” yelled one Death Eater – the woman from the night of
Dumbledore’s murder. Hermione was pushed back brutally from the force of her curse.

“Protego Totalum,” she wheezed.

A little behind her and to the left was a large table that had been knocked over on its side,
effectively forming a partition. If she could just duck behind it, she might be able to fend off the
brutes...

Suddenly, from behind the table, three jets of light shot out and hit all three Death Eaters squarely
in the chest, knocking them out cold. Overwhelmed with relief, Hermione took a moment to collect
her breath before diving behind the table-screen.

But her words of gratitude died in her throat. What came out instead was, “You!”

Instantly, her wand was levelled at the young man before her.

“You...” she spluttered, “What – you – Wha –”

“Is this how you thank someone for saving your life?” asked Draco Malfoy with his mouth twisted
sardonically, “By stuttering and pointing your wand at them?”

“Saving my – Go to hell!” she snarled.

“Oh, put away your wand, Granger,” Malfoy commanded. He kept his own wand harmlessly at his
side, pointing towards the ground. “You aren’t really going to do anything –”

Hermione laughed humourlessly. “Is that what you think? I’m not going to make the same mistake
twice, you arsehole.”

Malfoy scoffed. “It wasn’t a fucking mistake, and you know it. The reason you let me go that
night... the reason I saved your miserable hide just now... still holds.”

“Save it, Malfoy. I think the reason would prefer knowing where you are – even if you’re chained
and shackled.”

Malfoy smirked. It was such an aggravatingly familiar expression that Hermione nearly hexed him
there and then.

“What makes you think he doesn’t already know?”

That stumped her. She gaped at him and his smirk grew. “Wha – he – he –”

“Stuttering again, Granger? Shit, you’re a dreadful conversationalist.”

“I simply don’t –”

A blur rushed into their tiny shelter and pinned Malfoy to the back of the table by this throat.

Lupin.

Hermione’s gasp of shock was lost under the livid growl that tore out of the older man.

“You double-crossing little maggot. I knew we shouldn’t have trusted you!”

“Get off me–”

What was going on? Hermione stared at the two men in astonishment.
Lupin’s grasp tightened. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? Lull us into a false –”

“Plan?” Malfoy choked out, “Plan?! D’you think ‘m allowed to make plans?! GERROFFME!”

He kicked his leg out, catching Lupin in the shin and causing him to jump back with a howl of
pain.

Gingerly rubbing his reddened neck, Malfoy seethed, “There was no time to warn you, alright?
Yaxley showed up with the news that they’d taken the Ministry, and minutes later we were
apparating here. There was no time, you hear me?”

“Liar!” Lupin roared.

“I’m not fucking lying! Here –” Malfoy spat, shoving a piece of parchment into Lupin’s hand, “– a
list of all raids and attacks intended for the next two months.”

Glaring furiously, Lupin tucked the list inside his robes.

“Quit frothing at the mouth, would you?” Malfoy snapped, “You know what they do to rabid dogs.”

Hermione made a noise of deep indignation on Lupin’s behalf, which finally alerted him to her
presence. “Hermione?” he started incredulously, “What are you doing here? Where’s Harry?”

Oh dear god... Harry! What was wrong with her?

Muttering a stream of oaths, she tore out from behind the table and into the chaos. Her eyes darted
all over the place, searching...

She saw Ron attempting to stave off that same large blond Death Eater who’d gone berserk on the
night of Dumbledore’s death. He was wearing Ron down, so without wasting a second, Hermione
rushed forward crying, “Impedimenta!”

“Fuck,” Ron panted, “Bloody maniac. Thanks, Hermio –”

“Where’s Harry?” Hermione urged, cutting him short.

“Donno... I haven’t... There!”

He was at a far corner, duelling two Death Eaters. Much to Hermione’s horror, his disguise was
fading – as she watched, he seemed to get thinner... his hair was darkening...

“Come on,” she yelled, grabbing Ron’s wrist and pulling him along. In a strangely serendipitous
moment, that was exactly when Harry shook his opponents off and looked up...

At once, he ran towards them, cutting frantically through the crowd. They met in the middle of the
dance floor, and Hermione grabbed onto his hand tightly. Her mind filled with the image of a wide
street lined with electronic shops and glitzy nightclubs... a mishmash of architectural styles... a big
blue sign that read Tottenham Court Road Station...

She spun on the spot and vanished.

Getting attacked by Death Eaters in Central Bloody London: And here she had believed they’d be
relatively safe in a heavily populated muggle area.

Hermione blew a strand of hair away from her face and glared at the dark-haired Death Eater
sprawled on the floor. Dolohov – her old friend from the battle at the Ministry; the one who was
responsible for the fading scar above her bellybutton.

The café where they’d taken sanctuary was in shambles.

“Lock the door,” Harry said to her, “and Ron, turn out the lights.”

She rushed to do as he said, glad that he was taking charge. She had no idea where to go next.

Ron used the Deluminator to extinguish the lights, and then whispered, “What the fuck are we
going to do with them? Kill them? They’d kill us. They had a good go just now.”

Dimly illuminated by the yellow light that streamed in from outside, Hermione could just make out
his face – and it made her shudder. Harry, bless him, shook his head.

“We just need to wipe their memories,” he said, “It’s better like that, it’ll throw them off the scent.
If we killed them it’d be obvious we were here.”

“You’re the boss,” said Ron flippantly, “But I’ve never done a Memory Charm.”

Hermione muttered hoarsely, “I know the theory.”

Taking in a gulp of air, she focused on the events of the last fifteen minutes and – “Obliviate.”
When Dolohov’s eyes glazed over, she knew she had succeeded.

Harry patted her on the back. “Brilliant! Take care of the other one and the waitress while Ron and
I clear up.”

She nodded and turned to the large blond Death Eater as Ron sputtered in dismay: “Clear up?
Why?”

“Don’t you think they might wonder what’s happened if they wake up and find themselves in a
place that looks like it’s just been bombed?”

“Oh right, yeah.”

“Obliviate,” Hermione whispered, tuning them out.

When they’d taken care of everything, she leant her hip against a table, and looked askance at
Harry.

“How did they find us? How did they know where we were? You—you don’t think you’ve still got
your Trace on you, do you, Harry?”

Ron promptly refuted that theory, “He can’t have. The Trace breaks at seventeen; that’s Wizarding
law. You can’t put it on an adult.”

“As far as you know,” Hermione countered, “What if the Death Eaters have found a way to put it
on a seventeen-year-old?”

“But Harry hasn’t been near a Death Eater in the last twenty-four hours,” Ron argued, “Who’s
supposed to have put a Trace back on him?”

They both looked at Harry, and Hermione nearly groaned out loud. He had that typically tortured,
self-loathing look on his face.

“If I can’t use magic,” he said slowly, “and you can’t use magic near me, without us giving away
our position–”

She’d heard enough. “We’re not splitting up!”

“We need a safe place to hide,” Ron reasoned, “Give us time to think things through.”

“Grimmauld Place,” said Harry, simply.

And so it was.

The ancient, insalubrious house looked exactly as Hermione remembered. She placed her bag on a
dusty sofa, and waved her wand to set the rusty gas lamps aflame. She pulled the filthy curtains
aside and peered cautiously at the street outside: It seemed deserted. She backed away and pointed
her wand at the large fireplace, and conjured a fire sans the heat. The warm orangey tint that
subsequently spread across the room somewhat lessened its dreadful drabness.

Harry was standing in front of the massive Black family tapestry, staring hard at where Sirius’
name should have been. Hermione swallowed, and looked apprehensively at Ron, who merely
shrugged bleakly. Then his eyes widened, as he pointed at something behind her.

She spun around and a tiny shriek tore out of her. As before, a bright slivery light zoomed into their
presence, gradually taking on the form of a weasel.
“That’s dad’s!” Ron exclaimed, and in a moment of insanity, Hermione wondered what Draco
Malfoy would’ve said on finding out that Arthur Weasley’s patronus was actually, truly a weasel.

She gave herself a solid shake just as Mr Weasley’s voice projected out of the glowing animal:

“Family is safe. Do not reply... we are being watched.”

The Patronus dissipated, and Ron emitted a choked whimper.

“They’re alright,” he gasped, “They’re all safe!”

She smiled widely at him, and he laughed, (“They're alright!”) and hugged her.

But, alas, fucking shit, as always, their jubilance was short-lived: Harry let out an agonised cry and
fell down heavily on the sofa. A cloud of dust exploded all around him.

“Harry!” Hermione shouted, “Harry! What is it?”

He moaned, and clutched at his forehead.

“Bugger!” Ron yelped, “It’s another vision, innit? What is it? What did you see?”

Hermione stared between the two of them, flummoxed and beside herself with worry.

“What? A vision?! Your scar, again? What’s going on? I thought that connection had closed!”

Fingers pressed against his scar, Harry groaned. “It did, for a while. I – I think it’s started opening
again whenever he loses control, that’s how it used to –”

“But then you’ve got to close your mind!” Hermione was horrified. “Harry, you have shut that
connection down... use Occlumency! Otherwise Voldemort can plant false images in your mind,
remember –”

“Yeah, I do remember, thanks,” Harry spat, “I try. These fucking – these visions – they just come to
me at the most random moments. I can’t – fuck. Damn it. It hurts like hell.”

Hermione didn’t have the heart to berate him anymore. She fished a handkerchief out of her bag
and cast a cooling charm on it. She perched on the arm of the sofa next to Harry, and pressed the
cloth against his scar.

“Thanks,” he sighed.

“So, um,” Ron broached, “What did you see then?”

Harry closed his eyes. “It was just a flood of rage at first. Burning hot rage. Then... a long room
dimly lit room...” (Harry’s hand convulsed, and Hermione reinforced the cooling charm on her
handkerchief,) “...that giant blond Death Eater – he’s called Rowle, by the way – was on the floor,
thrashing and screaming, and I was... I mean, Voldemort was... threatening to feed him to his snake
for letting us escape again. There was another person in the room... Draco... and... and Voldemort
forced him to torture Rowle...”

“Oh god,” Hermione groaned.

How awful. How sickening. And ghastly. And... And... And...

Stuttering again, Granger? Shit, you’re a dreadful conversationalist.

“Oh come on, he forced him?” Ron jeered dismissively, “It’s all exactly what that little shit
willingly signed up for –”

“He didn’t willingly sign up for anything,” Hermione burst out before she could stop herself.

Ron stared at her.

“She’s right,” Harry seconded. His eyes were open now; the brilliant green streaked with reflected
firelight, “You didn’t see him, Ron. Voldemort told him that if he didn’t do it, he and his parents
would face the consequences.”

There was a terrible weight inside Hermione’s chest. She jumped to her feet and collected her bag
saying, “I need to get out of this bloody dress. I’ll – I’ll be right back.”

She scarpered into the nearest bathroom and shut the door firmly behind her. Sitting on the edge of
the large claw-footed bathtub, she rummaged around in her bag till her fingers closed around her
old DA Galleon. Then, praying to deities she didn’t believe in that Luna still had hers at hand,
Hermione altered the coin’s engraving:

‘Fine?’

A minute later, the galleon burned hot.

‘All are fine’.

She pressed her palm against her heart and breathed.

 Thirty-Three
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been borrowed (and maybe somewhat decontextualised and
fiddled with,) from DH.

There was a plate of stale biscuits before her, with a cup of cold tea to the side – both remained
untouched. Hermione was doing what she always did when beleaguered. She was making a list.

Their first day in hiding at 12 Grimmauld Place had been, to say the least, insane. So here’s what
happened, she summarised systematically and succinctly in her head:
1. Harry was being tormented by the idea that Dumbledore had sat mute and indifferent while his
domineering mother had abused his squib sister, (based on a claim by the oh so scrupulous Rita
Skeeter).
2. R.A.B. stood for Regulus Arcturus Black.

“...literally no food in the bloody house!”

Harry and Ron stomped into the drawing room, shattering her train of thought. Ron looked
supremely disgruntled, but perked up a trifle on spotting the plate of biscuits that Hermione wasn’t
eating.

“-choo up to?” he asked with a mouth full of crumbs.

“Nothing,” she replied wearily.

Harry was noticeably twitchy as he strode over to the large window to peer outside.

“Shouldn’t Kreacher be back by now? House-Elves are supposed to be great at finding people.”

“It’s Mundungus, mate,” said Ron smoothly, “He’s a good hider, yeah?”

Hermione clasped her hands together and sighed –

3. The locket, that is, the bloody Horcrux, had been in their hands two years ago, and they’d tossed
it aside carelessly. Now that crook Mundungus Fletcher had it. (Thinking of Kreacher’s horrible
ordeal made her eyes sting with tears. It was truly sick the way...)
“Hey, Hermione? Hullo... more where that came from?”

She glared balefully at Ron who was pointing at her cup. But then, Harry came and sat beside her,
looking discouraged and jittery and everything else that characterised a person in desperate need
for a spot of tea.

She muttered, “Of course,” and fished a kettle, two cups, and a box of teabags out of her bag.

One... Two... Three... Four days went by, and Kreacher did not return. Worry over that, mixed with
the strain of their general situation and the gloomy atmosphere in the house, had turned the three
‘best friends’ into bad-tempered, intolerant, and reluctant housemates who could scarcely stand to
be around one another.

One the fifth night of Kreacher’s nonappearance, Harry was, true to form, glued to the drawing
room window with his hands in tight fists by his sides, and Ron was stretched out on the moth-
eaten sofa, twiddling his thumbs. Scribbling furiously into a notebook, Hermione sat on the floor
translating The Tales of Beedle the Bard – mostly to keep her mind off Theo and how much she
wished he was around. The text was littered with irregular runes, some that she couldn’t find
anywhere in Spellman’s Syllabary, and she was forced to improvise.

The Wizard and The Hopping Pog Pot

There was once (deviation from the standard rune for ‘c’) a kindly old wizard who used his magic
generously and wisely for the benefit of his nearighbours. Rather than reveal the true (single
symbol used; similar to the Old Futhark rune for ‘truth’) source of his power, he pretended that his
potions, ?????, and antidotes

“What’s wrong, Harry?”

She dropped her pen at Ron’s exclamation, gazing up at the Chosen One’s choicest look of
disquietude.

“Death Eaters,” said Harry darkly, “Outside.”

“Reckon they know we’re in here?” asked Ron while sitting up.

Hermione nervously tapped her nail against the floor and mused, “I don’t think so... else they’d
have sent Snape in after us, wouldn’t they? And Moody’s curse is preventing him from telling them
how to get in... They’re probably watching to see whether we turn up. They know that Harry owns
the house, after all.”

“How do they—?” began Harry.

“Wizarding wills are examined by the Ministry, remember? They’ll know Sirius left you the place.”

With a low grunt, Harry stalked back to the window to keep vigil. Ron fell back on the sofa, and
Hermione picked up her pen.

sprang ror rer ready–made from the little cauldron he called his lucky cooking pog pot. From myls
(i.e., miles) around people came to him with their troubles, and the wizard was pleased to give his
pot a

The lights went out.

Then they came back on.
Ron was fiddling with the blasted Deluminator again.

stir and put things right.

This wee belove well-beloved wizard lived to a godly (goodly?) age, then

The lights went out.

Then they came back on.

died, leaving all his ?haytles (chattels?) to his only son. This son was of a very different
disposetition to his gentle father. Those who could no

The lights went out.

Blind with rage, (and yes, the lack of illumination, too,) Hermione chucked her pen in the direction
she thought Ron was. It landed with a thud somewhere embarrassingly close to her.

“Will you stop it!” she yelled.

“Sorry, sorry!” Ron’s voice called through the gloom, “I don’t know I’m doing it!”

The lights came back on, and Hermione glowered at Ron’s sheepish expression.

“You don’t know you’re doing it?!” she demanded in disbelief, “I know you’re remarkably thick,
Ron, but how could you not notice the lights going on and off and –”
“Oh, simmer down! I said I’m sorry, didn’t I?” Ron responded hotly.

“Well,” Hermione spat, “can’t you find something useful to occupy yourself?”

“What, like reading kids’ stories?”

“Dumbledore left me this book –”

“– and he left me the Deluminator! Maybe I’m supposed to use it!”

“I’m sure he didn’t intend for you to use it to annoy the shit out of your friends!”

“Well, maybe he did! You know, since I don’t have your natural talent for annoying people –”

There was a loud crash from downstairs, and Hermione and Ron froze. They stared at each other in
alarm for two-and-a-half seconds...

They tore down the stairs, wands drawn, coming to an abrupt halt in the hall, where Mrs Black’s
portrait was raving, and Harry stood with his wand trained on a man whose identity was masked by
a cloud of dust.

“MUDBLOODS AND FILTH DISHONORING MY HOUSE!”

Hermione skittered over to Harry’s side; her heart was in her throat. The mysterious man coughed,
waved his hands about to clear the air, and said, “Hold your fire, it’s me, Remus!”

The relief she felt was so enormous that she nearly laughed. Oh thank goodness. She pointed her
wand at Walburga Black’s portrait and closed the curtains that kept her silent.

They sat at one end of the long wooden table in the kitchen, sipping on warm butterbeer that Lupin
had pulled out from under his cloak, and stared down at the copy of the Daily Prophet that he’d
placed before them. The entire front page was taken up by a photograph of Harry, under the most
inflammatory of headlines: WANTED FOR QUESTIONING ABOUT THE DEATH OF ALBUS
DUMBLEDORE.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” said Lupin gently.

Harry said nothing. He simply pushed the paper away and took a small sip of his beverage.

Hermione seethed on his behalf; “So Death Eaters have taken over the Daily Prophet too? But
surely people realize what’s going on?”
Lupin shook his head tiredly. “The coup has been smooth and virtually silent. The official version
of Scrimgeour’s murder is that he resigned; he has been replaced by Pius Thicknesse, who is under
the Imperius Curse. Naturally many people have deduced what has happened: There has been such
a dramatic change in Ministry policy in the last few days, and many are whispering that Voldemort
must be behind it. But that’s the point: They whisper. They daren’t confide in each other, not
knowing whom to trust; they are scared to speak out, in case their suspicions are true and their
families are targeted.”

"And this dramatic change in Ministry policy involves warning the Wizarding world against me
instead of Voldemort?” Harry asked bitterly.

“That’s certainly part of it,” Lupin replied, “and it is a masterstroke. Now that Dumbledore is dead,
you – the Boy Who Lived – were sure to be the symbol and rallying point for any resistance to
Voldemort. But by suggesting that you had a hand in the old hero’s death, Voldemort has not only
set a price upon your head, but sown doubt and fear amongst many who would have defended you.
Meanwhile, the Ministry has started moving against muggleborns. Look at page two,” he said,
gesturing towards the Prophet.

With anticipatory disgust, Hermione turned the page. “Muggleborn Register,” she read aloud, and
the more she read, the higher her voice got. It reached a fevered pitch at phrases like ‘the so-called
muggleborn is likely to have obtained magical power by theft or force’, and ‘the Ministry is
determined to root out such usurpers of magical power’.

“People won’t let this happen,” Ron said questioningly.

“It is happening, Ron,’ said Lupin, “Muggleborns are being rounded up as we speak.”

And so, Hermione deduced, she would have had to be on the run even if she hadn’t chosen to stick
with Harry.

“It’s... it’s...” Harry stuttered, face red and eyes blazing.

“I know.” Lupin stated gloomily.

Hermione used the spell of silence that followed to steel herself to broach a rather precarious
subject. She hadn’t said a word about it to Harry or Ron, since tempers had been flying high of late,
but with Lupin here... well, she just had to know.

“Profes – pardon me, Remus. What is going on with Draco Malfoy?”

To her right, Ron choked on his butterbeer, and broke into a loud bout of coughing. To her left,
Harry froze, and stared at her in discombobulation. Hermione, however, kept her eyes locked on
Lupin, who, with a look of great resignation, said, “I was wondering when you’d bring that up.”

“Draco Malfoy?!” Ron splutter, “What the hell?”

Hermione sighed, and at long last, told the tale about her run-in with Malfoy at Bill and Fleur’s
wedding, and his subsequent spat with Lupin that she witnessed.

“What the hell?” Ron said again, once she had finished.
Lupin chugged the final dregs of his butterbeer, set the bottle down on the table rather loudly, and
ran the back of his hand across his mouth.

“He came to us on the night of our wedding. Genius move on his part, to show up at Andromeda’s
– no matter what the family history, she would never turn her nephew away. I was all for handing
him over to Mad-Eye, but she insisted he be allowed to explain himself. And for the first time in
my life, I witnessed Tonks agreeing with her mother.
“First thing, he wanted to know where Theodore Nott was. Of course, I told him nothing until he
first made his intentions clear... So he told us that Dumbledore had offered him sanctuary, but... had
unfortunately died before he could accept –”

“And whose sodding fault was that?” Ron spat.

“He said,” Lupin continued, “That he wanted to take up that offer... that he would switch sides and
help out. I didn’t believe a word he was saying, so he offered to drink Veritaserum, if necessary.”

“He wasn’t lying,” Harry muttered, “I was there, remember? Dumbledore did offer, and he was
going to accept...”

“Well, yes,” Lupin concurred, “The Veritaserum confirmed as much. When we asked him what his
terms were, he demanded again to know the whereabouts of Nott. But then, he declined to go into
hiding with him – said he couldn’t leave his parents behind. Bear in mind, I’m giving you a highly
sanitised version of what transpired; that boy is a sneering reprobate, and I quite nearly rung his
neck.”

“You should’ve,” Ron grumbled, and Hermione, who was completely riveted by Lupin’s account,
shushed him impatiently.

“So then what happened?” Harry prodded.

“Well, he said he’d play the spy – pass information about Death Eater plots and plans –” (Lupin
paused to acknowledge Hermione’s surprised snicker of approval at his phrasing,) “– and in return,
we would have to swear not to harm either of his parents, and, when...and if... the time for
sentencing comes –”

“NO,” Ron exploded, “You’re joking. He wants to be let off?”

“Him and his mother, yes. I told him that there was no way Lucius Malfoy could dodge
punishment, so he demanded leniency in his case –”

“That’s just... oh wow... batshit insane!” Ron shouted, “Leniency for Lucius Malfoy?! No
punishment for his arsehole son? He’s a murderer!”

“He isn’t a murderer –” Hermione reasoned timidly.

“Bloody close to one though!”

“Ron,” Lupin called calmly, “His information has proved to be true and has helped us deflect some
half a dozen Death Eater attacks – one of them, Hermione, being on your parents’ neighbourhood.”

Hermione shuddered... dreadfully... but Ron was not deterred.

“All that’s well and good,” he growled, “But he still fucking tried to kill people –”
“Ron –”

“He tried to kill me!” Ron turned his eyes, burning with fury and betrayal towards Hermione, “I
almost died, thanks to him. Don’t you care about that? Shouldn’t he be punished for that?”

Hermione let out a low whimper, not knowing at all how to answer him.

Still, she tried: “Ron, it was an accident –”

“An accident? That’s all? I could’ve died, and you’re brushing it off as an accident?!”

“Harry nearly killed Malfoy, too! This whole... thing... is a mess...”

Next to her, she felt Harry shift uncomfortably. Ron’s face twisted with contempt.

“I don’t believe this.” He turned away from Hermione in disgust, and rounded on Lupin, “How...
how... could you agree to this? How could you?”

“I told you, his information proved –”

“No. I mean before all that. How could you agree?!”

Suddenly, Lupin looked tired. His greying hair seemed to wilt, and a shadow passed over him. He
looked crushingly sad.

“He’s Sirius’ cousin. His... his whole demeanour... his eyes...” he broke off with a devastated sigh.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ron roared. He jumped out of his seat and stormed out of the kitchen.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

Eventually, Lupin tentatively asked, “Are you okay with this, Harry?”

Harry shrugged apathetically. “It’s what Dumbledore wanted. And turns out, Dumbledore wasn’t a
very good person at seventeen, either... so yeah, I’m all for redemption.”

“Harry,” Hermione whispered, “You know the Prophet is being controlled by Death Eaters; you
can’t believe what –”

“Right,” he cut in shortly, and got to his feet, “I’m going to check on Ron.”

And that left Hermione with Lupin who continued to look completely depressed.

“Remus,” she whispered, and he started.

Clearing his throat, he broached, “I presume you still can’t confide in me what your mission is?”

“I can’t. Sorry.”

“I thought you’d say that,” said Lupin despondently. “But I could still be of some use to you. You
know what I am and what I can do. I could come with you to provide protection. There would be
no need to tell me exactly what you were up to.”
Hermione felt her face pull into a frown as she considered him confoundedly. “But what about
Tonks?”

“What about her?” Lupin raised his brows.

“Well,” she said hesitatingly, “you’re married; how does she feel about you going away with us?”

“Tonks will be perfectly safe,” he said coldly, a tone that sent a shiver down her spine, “She’ll be at
her parents’ house.”

“Remus... is everything all right? You know...between you and–”

“Everything is fine, thank you,” he snapped acerbically.

Her face burned, and she stared diligently at her knee, even as she itched to squirm.

“Tonks is going to have a baby.”

– Her head snapped up to gape at Lupin.

“Oh, how wonderful!” she cried.

He smiled tightly, as though it pained him to do so, and then – “So... do you think Harry will accept
my offer?” On seeing Hermione’s look of astonishment, he closed his eyes. “I-I made a grave
mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much
ever since. She... the child... they deserve better than me.”

It struck her like a flash of lightening: Why he had accepted Malfoy’s deal... Why he was so
morbidly unhappy... How he could bring himself to leave Tonks...
She’d never had him to begin with. Lupin belonged to a dead man, and... And Hermione’s heart
broke for all the players stuck in such an awful tragedy.

But before she could say anything, Harry’s rough voice erupted from the doorway: “I see. So
you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?”

The scene that followed involved a lot of livid yelling and spiteful words (coward... bastard...).
Hermione was barely aware of what was being said, and desperate to restore peace, she threw
herself between the raving men. It came to an end when Lupin charged out of the house in a
towering rage, eyes full of hurt.

“Harry!” Hermione keened, “How could you?”

“It was easy,” he spat, shaking with anger, “Don’t look at me like that!”

Ron, it appeared, had been drawn back downstairs by the hubbub, and he barked, “You shouldn’t
have said that stuff to Lupin.”
“Oh shut up. He had it coming to him,” Harry snapped, “Parents shouldn’t leave their kids unless –
unless they’ve got to.”

Pity curdled in Hermione’s gut.

“Harry—” she whispered, reaching out to touch him, but he shrugged her hand off and stomped
away to stare into the fire grate.

Ron turned his back on both of them and began rifling through the pantry. Hermione sat down
again, keeping her eyes on the ground.

The three ‘best friends’ stewed in silence and resentment.

The silence rang on for two more days… And it was agony.

One night, not being able to keep it together, Hermione locked herself up in the loo and cried. She
clutched her DA Galleon in her hand, wanting so badly to send a message, just so she had someone
to communicate with. Maybe Luna would give her Galleon to Theo, and even one word from him
would be a boon.

But then, there was a loud crack from outside, and on running pell-mell to the kitchen, she found
that Kreacher had returned, with a frenzied Mundungus in tow.
And with that, suddenly, they had everything in the world to talk about.

Something had fissured, irrevocably, between Ron and her. While pieces of her feelings for him had
been falling away all year, Ron had suffered a single moment of disenchantment. Ever since the
night of Lupin’s disastrous visit, there were moments when she’d catch him watching at her in a
way that made her skin crawl. He was amiable enough otherwise, as the three of them got involved
in preparing for operation Trounce the Toad, but ever so often, he’d lash out at her with jibes more
poisonous than ever before, and as a result of which, Hermione was the one who’d volunteer to
watch the Ministry entrance most often.
She apparated back to the doorstep of Grimmauld place just as the sun had begun to set, careful to
stay hidden under the invisibility cloak. There were four menacing Death Eaters on the street.

Her co-conspirators were seated at the now disconcertingly spotless kitchen table, pouring over
their plan and the bits of Intel they had collected thus far, while munching on some scrumptious
walnut cake.

“Everything okay?” Harry asked as she slipped tiredly into a chair.

“Yes, I – oh, thank you, Kreacher!” she gushed, eying the slice of cake he’d placed in front of her.

Kreacher grunted, which was a marked improvement on his usual oh no, the mudblood is speaking
to Kreacher, doom, gloom, kaboom reaction.

“Anyway,” Hermione soldiered on, “I know where Umbridge’s office is. I overheard that big,
bearded man telling his friend, ‘I’ll be up on level one, Dolores wants to see me,’... So round here,
most probably.” She marked a tentative ‘x’ on their roughly drawn map.

“That’s great!” Harry cheered, “Now we just need to figure out a way in...”

Over the past two weeks, they’d learned that nobody, (save for the most senior officials,) was
allowed to connect their homes to the Floo Network. Apparating in and out of the Ministry had
been banned. The only way in was by using newly issued tokens. They had, maybe, possibly,
identified three people who took the same route to the Ministry every day...

Unlike Kreacher’s excellent cake, their scheme was disturbingly half-baked.

Three days later, after Hermione had spent six hours crouched in front of the Ministry, she decided
to throw caution to the wind, and just walk.
She pulled the cloak tightly around her and ambulated down Whitehall, breathing in the cool
evening air, and pensively watching the traffic rush by.
There were a surprising number of people out that evening, and as she neared St. James’s Park, the
crowd thickened. She looked about her in surprise; many people appeared to be crying, and nearly
everybody was holding flowers.

Utterly perplexed, Hermione dived deeper into the swarm, hoping to find her way to the
epicentre..........
 *

It was two hours after dark when she finally made it back to Grimmauld place.

“Where the hell were you?” Ron demanded, but Hermione held up her hand pleadingly.

“Kreacher,” she whispered, “Would there be any... um... firewhisky in the house?”

Not looking directly at her, the House-Elf nodded, and vanished. He rematerialised a second later
with a bottle of Ogden’s Old, and three glasses.

It was only after she’d had taken a couple of brisk sips that Hermione turned to her two anxious
friends and said, “Princess Diana died.”

“Who?” said Ron unsurprisingly.

Harry’s forehead creased with worry, “Was it Death Ea–”

“No,” Hermione said, “Car crash in Paris.”

“Oh,” Harry mumbled.

Hermione stared at the bright amber liquid in her glass while Harry (ineptly) told Ron about the
monarchy. Somehow, holed up in that dingy house, she’d become myopic. She’d forgotten that
while the British magical community was paralysed, the rest of the world was carrying on.
Princesses were dying, people were mourning. In some other part of the world, people must’ve had
a cause for celebration. Children were being born. The sun was rising in Japan.

She wondered what dentists in Australia were up to.

Another three days later, Harry returned with a copy of the Daily Prophet, from which they learned
that Snape had been appointed the new Headmaster of Hogwarts, and that attendance was
mandatory.

Hermione shot up the stairs immediately, (secretly applauding her presence of mind,) to shove
Phineas Nigellus’ portrait into her trusted beaded bag. When she returned, the boys were quiet and
sombre, and she knew that they were thinking about the same person as she was – Ginny.

“I think we should do it tomorrow,” Harry declared softly, but firmly.

She would never get used to inhabiting someone else’s body. Mafalda Hopkirk was not much larger
than her, but she definitely had a touch of rheumatoid arthritis. The pointy kitten heels weren’t
helping. They click-clacked with every step she took, trailing behind Dolores Umbridge down to
the Ministry court chambers. Hermafalda felt an urge to laugh hysterically.

However, that untimely urge left her the moment they stepped into the passage outside the
courtrooms. It was brimming with dementors. She was hit with cold dispair... until Umbridge
snapped her fingers, and the whole swarm of black-cloaked soul-suckers disappeared into the other
end of the hall.

“This way, Mafalda,” Umbridge trilled. She patted the hideous velvet bow sitting on her head, and
led them into a room to the left of the passageway.

It was a small room with a high rounded ceiling, like a giant bell jar. A fresh assault of despair
alerted Hermafalda to the presence of more dementors here, on a raised podium but the wall. She
followed Umbridge to a bench behind a banister, where a self-important looking man was already
seated.

“Morning Yaxley,” Umbridge sang, “I’ve got Mafalda along for record keeping.”

She then proceeded to summon a patronus (a silver Persian cat) and instructed it to pace before the
banister. Instantly, the air around them warmed.

The “trials” Hermafalda witnessed were worse than she’d imagined. This was the build-up to a
holocaust. She could barely keep herself from screaming in outrage, from hexing the two depraved
monsters next to her. She needed to escape... And she needed to help out as many muggleborns as
possible...

“No, no! I’m a half-blood; I’m a half-blood, I tell you! My father was a wizard, he was, look him
up! Arkie Alderton… he’s a well-known broomstick designer! Look him up, I tell you—get your
hands off me, get your hands off—”

Hermafalda bit the insides of her cheeks as Jimmy Alderton was dragged away by the dementors. It
was good that she was so adept at taking notes, because she was hardly focusing on what she was
writing.

“Next!” Umbridge called out, “Mary Cattermole.”

Fuck. Hermafalda blinked in horror at the slim, petrified woman who’d just sat down on the lone
chair in the middle of the room.

“You are Mary Elizabeth Cattermole?” Umbridge asked authoritatively.

Mrs Cattermole nodded meekly.

“Married to Reginald Cattermole of the Magical Maintenance Department?”

Mrs Cattermole burst into tears. “I don’t know where he is, he was supposed to meet me here!”

Hermafalda’s hand was shaking. If they had just waited a little longer, they might’ve found
someone else for Ron to impersonate...

“Mother to Maisie, Ellie, and Alfred Cattermole?” Umbridge continued ruthlessly.

“They’re frightened,” wailed Mrs Cattermole, “They think I might not come home–”

“Spare us,” Yaxley sneered, “The brats of Mudbloods do not stir our sympathies.”

Okay, she absolutely had to help this woman... but what could she do? It was two against one, not
to mention the army of dementors outside, and the entire ministry above...
Her eyes darted to the door... perhaps she could use a Decoy Detonator... cast a quick patronus...

“I’m behind you,” came a whisper from behind her.

Her hands flew up in the air. Her bottle of ink tipped over. She gasped in alarm. But after all that
came immense relief – she knew that voice belonged to Harry-as-Runcorn.
Thank heavens.

And luckily, Umbridge and Yaxley were too busy interrogating to notice her little accident. Now,
all she had to do was wait...

They were sprinting across the Atrium like madmen; Yaxley and his vengeful entourage hot on
their tail.

“Come on!” Harry-as-Runcorn bellowed. His abnormally hand was in hers, slick with sweat, and
they dived into the closest fireplace.

They were tossed, a moment later, out of a toilet, and outside the cubicle, they were reunited with
Ron-as-Cattermole, trying to get away from his supposed wife.

“Reg, I don’t understand—”

“Let go, I’m not your husband, you’ve got to go home!”

“LET’S GO,” Harry-as-Runcorn yelled, over the noise of multiple cubicle doors crashing open.
Hermalfalda felt his fingers tighten around her, and he disapparated, landing them squarely in front
of 12, Grimmauld Place.

No sooner did they land, than yet another clamour arose. Death Eaters – one, two, three, shit, too
many of them – “Incarcer–”

She gripped Harry’s hand, focused on the first place that popped into her head, and spun.
 Thirty-Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

...

"What… What's happened to him?"

"Splinched. Quickly, in my bag, there's a small bottle labelled 'Essence of Dittany'–"

"Bag – right –"

"He's fainted...! Unstopper it for me, Harry, my hands are shaking..."

"Why are we here? I thought we were going back to Grimmauld Place?"

"I don't think we're going to be able to go back there."

"What d'you –?"

"As we disapparated, Yaxley and a couple of other Death Eaters caught hold of me and I couldn't
get rid of them… they were still holding on when we arrived at Grimmauld Place, and then – well,
they were going to attack, so I brought us here instead."

"But then, where are they? Hang on... You don't mean they're at Grimmauld Place? They can't get
in there?"

"I think they can. They got inside the Fidelius Charm's protection. Since Dumbledore died, we're
the Secret-Keepers… Harry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"

"Don't be stupid, it wasn't your fault! If anything, it was mine..."

The air before Hermione's wand hazed and shimmered with magic.

"Salvio Hexia... Protego Totalum ...Repello Muggletum... Muffliato..." she murmured, as she
walked in a rough circle around the small clearing.

Harry was busy setting up their tent, and Ron remained sprawled on the forest floor, winded and in
pain, the wound on his arm being the only part of his skin that had some colour.
She could hardly believe that this was the same place that, three years ago, had housed a quidditch
stadium large enough to accommodate a hundred thousand people. It was also the place where she'd
seen what the Death Eaters were capable of for the first time. It seemed that those woods were
destined to induce a rush of adrenaline, be it from excitement, or terror, or the uncontainable
anxiety of being on the run.

With a final "Cave Imunicium," she turned to the boys.

"That's as much as I can do," she told them, nervously tapping her wand against her knee, "At the
very least, we should know if they're coming. I can't guarantee it will keep out Vol–"

"Don't say the name!" Ron cut in severely, sitting up a touch and looking fierce. "I'm... sorry," he
added, somewhat diffidently, "but it feels like a – a jinx or something. Can't we call him You-
Know-Who – please?"

Harry's eyes darted towards Hermione, before settling on Ron in bewilderment.

"Dumbledore said fear of a name –"

"In case you hadn't noticed, mate," Ron retorted impatiently, "calling You-Know-Who by his name
didn't do Dumbledore much good in the end. Just – just show You-Know-Who some respect, will
you?"

"Respect?" Harry sputtered, "What the –"

But then he decided to heed the cautionary look Hermione aimed at him.

She blessed him a hundred times as they lugged Ron into the musty tent; she absolutely could not
endure any more days of bitter brooding. They gently helped him down onto the lower berth of a
bunk bed, where he immediately fell against the pillows with a groan of pain.

Desperately wanting to make things better, and adhering to the tactic her Grandmother swore by,
Hermione muttered, "I'll make some tea," and rushed into the tiny attached kitchen. From there, she
could hear Harry and Ron fretting over the possible fate of the Cattermoles, and she let herself hope
that henceforth, the tears in their rapport would begin to mend.
Why had she forgotten what the omniscient 'they' said about speaking too soon?

It was among her most favourite places: Hareshaw Linn.

When she was eight, her parents and she had trekked over to see the gorgeous waterfalls, awed by
the gushing, frothy cascades, by the fern green and the jade green and the flickers of deep olive
green and emerald green...

It was where she was now, sat on a rock, marvelling at the contrast between the streams of silvery
water and the raw-umber rocks they rushed down.

"Oh!" Luna cried standing by the edge of a brook, "It's an Augurey!" She pointed to a distant tree,
"If it sings, one of us is doomed to die."

"That's an old myth," Hermione said patiently, but Luna just gave her an 'oh-you-naive-child' look.

"I think I could stay here forever," Theo sighed, suddenly draped across a carpet of moss near
Hermione's rock.

"Why don't we?" Luna smiled, walking over to curl into Theo's side.

"Indeed, why don't we?" Theo said, throwing an arm around her.

Hermione blinked at them, a bit disorientated.

"But..." she mumbled, "The war..."

"If you're talking about your unrelenting war against your hair, Herms, that will never end," Ginny
said with a mischievous grin, walking out from behind a tree.

"No... Um. No... I mean... the war... Voldemort..."

"Stuttering again, Granger? Shit, you're a dreadful conversationalist."

She jumped, and whipped her head to the other side. Malfoy, it appeared, was sharing her rock-
seat. He smirked at her burgeoning confusion; his pale gold hair was being scattered this way and
that by the wind.
"What?" she shook her head to settle her thoughts, "No... this isn't... Harry and Ron... the tent..."

"Do shut up," Malfoy suggested, "Don't try talking – it's clearly beyond your capabilities. Here,
have an apple. Go on."

He held a bright, blood-red one out to her, a single eyebrow arched in challenge, and she looked
from his face to the apple... and back to his face...

"AHHHHH!"

Hermione's eyes flew open in alarm, and the book on her lap fell to the floor with a thud. She
glanced, wide-eyed, at Ron who was attempting to sit up in his bed.

"Harry!" he exclaimed, "Outside!"

She charged out, nearly tripping on the way, and found her tormented friend slumped on the forest
floor, alternatively twitching, muttering, and crying out.

"Harry!" She knelt by his side, shaking him desperately. He clearly was back in Voldemort's head,
and she needed to bring him back. Shit, she – "Harry!" she yelled.

He woke up with a gasp. At first, he stared up at her with fright and mystification on his face, but
little by little recognition dawned, and he sat up in a hurry.

"Dream," he stuttered promptly, "Must've dozed off, sorry."

Hermione's worry turned into anger at the barefaced lie.

"I know it was your scar! I can tell by the look on your face! You were looking into Vol–"

From within the tent came an infuriated shout: "Don't say his name!"

"Fuck – Fine," Hermione growled, "You-Know-Who's mind, then!"

Harry's own eyes flashed with irritation.

"I didn't mean for it to happen!" he protested vehemently, "It was a bloody dream! Can you control
what you dream about, Hermione?"

Hermione's felt herself flush deeply, but she persisted, "If you just learned to apply Occlumency –"

"He's found Gregorovitch, Hermione," Harry rushed out, cutting her short, "and I think he's killed
him... but before he killed him he read Gregorovitch's mind and I saw—"

Since one good turn deserved another, she cut him short too. "I think I'd better take over the watch
if you're so tired you're falling asleep."

"I can finish the watch!" he objected indignantly.

"No," Hermione snapped dismissively, "You're obviously exhausted. Go and lie down."

So he went, with a parting vituperative glare. Hermione was sure that he and Ron would have a ball
dissecting his "dream," (a "dream" she was nearly sure was another of Voldemort's - successful -
attempts to derail and distract Harry).

And she – alone in the dark with nothing but shadowy trees before her – felt herself sink into a
deep hole of isolation, where all there was to do was gaze dully at the blue-black, and the grey-
black, and the flickers of deep charry black and sooty black...

The very next morning, they packed up and apparated to the outskirts of the town of Nantwich. Ron
claimed he didn't particularly care where they camped, as long as it was near enough to civilisation,
so that they might get something to eat.

Hermione repeated the same cycle of protective enchantments, their tent was set up once more, and
then Harry wrapped himself up in his Invisibility Cloak and went off in search for provisions.

To bide the time till he returned, Hermione plunged back into The Wizard and The Hopping Pot.
She was getting better at deciphering the runes, and it wasn't long before she reached the end:

But from that day forward, the wizard helped the villagers like his father before him, lest the pot
cast off its slipper, and begin to hop once more.

Well, wasn't that precious. Was Dumbledore trying to teach her tolerance towards Muggles? If she
had but one failing, it was certainly her prejudice, right? Scoffing, Hermione turned the page... and
was confronted by an interleaf that was crammed with writing. The words were – thankfully – in
English, and written in brilliant purple ink.

...Notes! Dumbledore's notes!

Brimming with excitement, she read; it was a fascinating history of the tale, and how it altered as
Wizardkind's opinions of muggles changed.

She was just about to get started on 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune', when Harry stumbled, panting
and wheezing, into the tent.

"Dementors," he breathed, and collapsed into the nearest armchair.

Ron looked profoundly aggrieved. "But you can make a brilliant Patronus!"
"I couldn't ...make one," Harry gasped, "Wouldn't... come..."

"So we still haven't got any food," Ron grumbled.

"Shut up," Hermione told him, "Harry, what happened? Why do you think you couldn't make your
Patronus? You managed perfectly yesterday..."

"I don't know," he replied, looking chagrined.

Then there was an almighty clatter of wood on floor as Ron kicked a small side table. She gaped at
him in absolute disbelief – what sort of imbecilic child had he turned into?

"What?" he roared, "I'm starving! All I've had since I bled half to death is a couple of toadstools!"

Harry immediately sprang to counter-attack; "You go and fight your way through the dementors,
then!"

"I would, but my arm's in a bloody sling, in case you hadn't noticed!"

"That's convenient."

(Oh god, Hermione groaned. A testosterone-fuelled showdown. Harry hadn't been this touchy since
fifth-year when...)

"And what the fuck is that supposed to –?"

"Of course!" she exclaimed, jumping onto her feet. "Harry," she said, rushing over to his side, "give
me the locket! Come on!" Harry stared at her blankly, and she snapped her fingers in front of his
face. "The Horcrux, Harry, you're still wearing it!" And when he finally relinquished the locket she
asked, "Better?"

"Yeah, loads better!" Harry said in wonder.

Cautiously, she put forth her next question – "You don't think you've been possessed, do you?"

"What? No! I remember everything we've done while I've been wearing it. I wouldn't know what
I'd done if I'd been possessed, yeah? Ginny told me there were times when she couldn't remember
anything."

Hermione looked closely at the chunky adornment, and just the notion of what it was... and that it
was in her hand... made her shiver.

"Well," she mulled, "maybe we ought not to wear it. We can just keep it in the tent."

"We are not leaving that Horcrux lying around," Harry said decisively, "If we lose it, if it gets
stolen–"

"Oh, all right, all right."

Without giving too much thought to what she was doing, Hermione set the locked around her neck
and tucked in under her shirt.

"We'll take turns wearing it, okay? So nobody keeps it on for too long."
"Great," Ron resurfaced, just as prickly as before. "And now we've sorted that out, can we please
get some sodding food?"

"Fine," Hermione relented, "but we'll go somewhere else to find it. There's no point staying where
we know dementors are swooping around."

They were camped in the Hexamshire moors, and it was Hermione's turn to keep guard outside the
tent. She looked at her watch – eleven fifty-eight p.m.

The flatlands seemed to stretch for billions of miles, and the moon was full. It was the sort of place
where Macbeth's witches may congregate when storm clouds gathered, or where a Highwayman
may come riding... riding, riding...
There was a rustling sound from within a nearby shrub, and a snake darted out. It slithered across
the plains without looking her way. A gust of cool wind swept by, gently caressing her face. She
looked at her watch – midnight.

She was officially an adult in both the worlds she inhabited.

She wondered what this day might have been like had the war not befallen them. She'd be at
Hogwarts, in the Gryffindor common room with Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Dean, and Seamus.
Maybe she'd have mended fences with Parvati and Lavender, too. They've have got food from
Hogsmeade and had a small party.
The next morning, the parcel from home would've arrived, along with a long letter, ("...would you
please STOP growing up, my darling? ...don't listen to your father, Hermione; have a wonderful
day...").
Theo had promised her a unicorn, hadn't he?
Fred and George would've sent her something mad and (as much as it would pain her to admit,)
ingenious.
Mrs Weasley would've knitted her something.
Professor McGonagall would've stealthily handed her a parcel, (without a doubt some interesting
book on her subject,) after class...

Another nippy breeze wafted across the empty moorland. Hermione jerked oddly when she felt
something burn against her thigh. She stuck her hand into her pocket and pulled out the old DA
Galleon, and printed on its façade was: Happy birthday buddy.

She was crying before she'd even fully understood what she'd read. Clutching the coin to her heart,
she took in a dozen shuddering breaths, overwhelmed by that strange feeling of happy sadness that
had all the potency of a heart attack.

She replied: 'U O me a unicorn.'

A minute later: 'How bout a Wrackspurt?'

'Nothing Invisible, prat.'

In the morning, Harry asked her if Vol – ("DIDN'T I ASK YOU TO STOP SAYING THAT?" "FINE,
YOU-KNOW-WHO THEN!") could have hidden a Horcrux in Albania, where he'd spent his years
of exile.

"Yeah, let's go to Albania," Ron snarked, "Shouldn't take more than an afternoon to search an entire
country."

Hermione ignored him.

"There can't be anything there," she said to Harry, "He'd already made five of his Horcruxes before
he went into exile, and Dumbledore was certain the snake is the sixth. We know the snake's not in
Albania, it's usually with Vol—"

"Oi!"

"For god's sake! The snake is usually with You-Know-Who – happy?"

"Not particularly." Ron scowled into the distance. "So where next?"

They were camped in Epping Forest, under a large oak tree. It was early in the evening, Harry was
keeping watch, and Hermione once again curled up with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She couldn't
focus. Ron was sitting across from her bunk, silently glowering at her.

"What is it, Ron?" she asked tersely.

"Do you reckon Harry has any idea what he's doing?"

Hermione put away the book with a sigh.

"Look," she whispered, glancing nervously at the entrance of the tent, "None of us have any –"

"Oh, stop that!" Ron snapped loudly, and she quickly cast a wandless muffliato around them, "Stop
fucking coddling him. He's completely clueless, and he's dragging us around on leashes like we're
pathetic little puppies."

"He's... he's doing his best, Ron."

"Well that's not good enough."

Hermione clenched her fists. She wanted to punch him. She wanted to douse him in cold – freezing
cold – water.

"What do you want me to say?"

Ron sneered, "For starters, maybe you could bloody well admit that you thought he knew what he
was doing! That Dumbledore had actually told him... something... that would justify dragging us –"

"He isn't dragging us anywhere! We volunteered! We –"

"Yes, because we thought he had a plan. How long are we supposed to bugger around like this?"

Hermione stood up and walked away.

"HEY? WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

"To get food," she replied coldly.

Under the invisibility cloak, Hermione apparated to a small alley in Essex. She crept down a
sparsely populated street till she found a corner shop that she entered smoothly alongside an elderly
couple.

Once inside, she went straight to the loo so that she could remove the cloak without scaring the life
out of unsuspecting bystanders. She was well aware that it wasn't prudent to walk around so freely,
even within some random muggle shop... but just the illusion of temporary freedom was something
worth cherishing.

She drifted down the aisles, looking dispassionately at all the goods for the sale. The neat and clean
shelves, the bright fluorescent lights, and the perfect, controlled temperature all seemed so alien.
She filled her basket with things that she thought the boys would like, which resulted in her
spending the longest time in front of the shelf stocked with sweets. She picked up some instant
noodle soup, a small loaf of bread...
She had to remember that her funds were very limited and that their quest was nowhere close to
being over.

Eventually, she went and stood in the line leading up to the cashier. The sky was just beginning to
darken, and she knew she had to get back. Idly, she glanced to her left... and froze. She was
confronted with, in the glass door of a refrigerator full of beverages, her reflection. Her hair looked
awful, even though she'd tried so hard to plait it neatly. Her frayed and faded jumper hung off her
shoulders, and her jeans were stained with dirt. Hermione Granger in the prime of her youth, ladies
and gentlemen!
She looked away pointedly. There was girl before her in the line, who looked about the same age as
Hermione. Her hair was bleached blond and tied up in a high ponytail. She wore a tight denim
dress and platform heels, her toes were painted electric blue, and she pulled out a shiny pink
snakeskin wallet to pay for her... her bottle of vodka and cigarettes.

The cashier was a man of about forty, with soft, hazel eyes. "Alright lass?" he asked kindly, and
Hermione nodded with a wan smile.

I mind me of my youth and sigh,

Alas for youth, for youth gone by!

They were camped on Lyscombe Hill, and at five in the morning, Hermione took over guard duty
from Ron. "Bloody pointless," he muttered under his breath as they passed each other.

The sun rising over lush green hills: It was probably the epitome of pastoral beauty and blah-
bloody-blah, perhaps Constable would've got something out of it, but as far as Hermione was
concerned, it was a routine, mundane phenomenon, and Mother Nature was nothing more than a
frightful show-off.
She flipped open The Tales of Beedle the Bard, but then swiftly slammed it shut. Fuck off,
Dumbledore. If this... this... inane children's book was what he presumed her intellect was worth, he
well and truly could fuck right off.

Cleverest Witch of Her Age. God, she wanted to scream, to rend her voice box until it bled, until her
screams would be echoing across all the hills in Dorset for eternity. She wanted to scream at Ron;
she wanted to scream at Harry. She was better than this, better than them... she should just run away
to Istanbul and study about Byzantine's clandestine cabal of witches. She should go to China and
learn about the warlocks of the Xia dynasty. In Varanasi, she could live with Yogis and discover the
secrets of Vedic magic. She was mired in mediocrity, because of some vagrant boy who wanted to
play hero, and –

WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?

She exhaled hard, horrified at her herself. With a sniffle, she pulled the locket away from her skin,
in the vain hope that that would stem its evil influence.

'I hate Ron.'

'Finally! Thank Theo!'

'CANNOT BECOME A THING.'

'Too late. May Theo bless u.'

They were camped on the bank of River Clwyd, and they were out of food again. The cicadas were
chirruping, the river was quietly bubbling... inside the tent, the air was thick with animosity.

Ron was picking dourly at the food on his plate as he said, "My mother can make good food appear
out of thin air."

From the corner of her eye, Hermione saw Harry aim a ferocious frown at him, but somehow, he
summoned the forbearance to stay quiet. She, however, had no patience left.

"Your mother can't produce food out of thin air," she snapped, "No one can. Food is one of the first
of five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfigur–"

"Oh, speak English, can't you?" Ron erupted with a full mouth.

Hermione grit her teeth. "It's impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can summon it if
you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some
–"

"Well, don't bother increasing this shit. It's disgusting."

And that was it. She set her fork down and glared daggers at the perpetually malcontent pain in her
arse.

"Harry caught the fish and I did my best with it! I notice I'm always the one who ends up sorting
out the food, because I'm a girl, I suppose!"

"No, it's because you're supposed to be the best at magic!" Ron retorted baldly.

She leapt to her feet, uncaring as some of her fish landed on the floor. "You can do the cooking
tomorrow, Ron! You can forage around for ingredients and try and charm them into something
worth eating, and I'll sit here and pull faces and moan and you can see how you –"

"Shut up! Shut up now!" It was Harry who had expostulated roughly, and she felt a sharp sting of
betrayal. She turned to him in indignation.

"How can you side with him, he hardly ever does the cook–"

"Hermione, be quiet! I can hear someone!"

She ran to her bag and took out three extendable ears, and tossed the boys one each. Then, with her
knuckles pressed against her lips and her eyes fixed on Harry, she listened.

Her terror ebbed when she found out that their 'visitors' were goblins; it turned into intrigue when
she realised that Ted Tonks was with them, and then, when she heard Dean's voice, it took all the
self-control she had not to run out and meet him.
Then it got thrilling – there was a bit about Neville, Ginny, and Seamus trying to steal Gryffindor's
sword from Snape's office... the fact that The Quibbler had become a mouthpiece for rebellion...

When they drifted away, Harry gaped at her.

"Ginny – the sword –" he stammered.

"I know!" she squealed.

She ran, once again, to her bag; there was a portrait of a former headmaster of Hogwarts within,
with whom they might possibly have an illuminating chat.

Jubilant over the discovery that the sword of Gryffindor could destroy Horcruxes, Hermione and
Harry were pitching ideas about its probable location.
"Think!" she rasped excitedly, "Think! Where would Dumbledore have left it?"

"Not at Hogwarts," Harry said, pacing in his exhilaration.

"Somewhere in Hogsmeade?"

"The Shrieking Shack? Nobody ever goes in there."

"But Snape knows how to get in... wouldn't that be a bit risky?"

"Dumbledore trusted Snape."

"Not enough to tell him that he had swapped the swords."

"Yeah, you're right!" Harry grinned brightly, "So, would he have hidden the sword well away from
Hogsmeade then? What d'you reckon, Ron? ...Ron?"

Ron? Where was he?

Hermione spun in a circle, scanning the tent, and came to an abrupt stop when Ron's low voice
emitted from his shadowy bunk. "Oh, remembered me, have you?"

"What?" Harry asked, moving closer to him.

Ron waved him away, "You two carry on. Don't let me spoil your fun."

Harry looked at Hermione pleadingly, but she was just as much at a loss as he was. It had begun to
drizzle outside, and the drops falling on the roof of the tent marked the 7... 8... 9 seconds they
stewed in confusion. Hermione was sure that Ron would be pleased that they finally had something
to go on.

"What's the problem?" asked Harry, by and by.

"Problem?" Ron spat, "There's no problem. Not according to you, anyway."

"Well, you've obviously got a problem. Spit it out, will you?"

Slowly, Ron sat up. His face – half in shadow, half doused in candlelight – looked more sinister
than she had ever seen it.

And by god, he did spit. He spewed venom like she'd never imagined him capable of... and there
she'd thought she'd seen the worst of his nastiness.

*
 A forceful shield charm stretched between: her and Harry on one side and Ron on the other. For
12... 13... 14 raindrops, Harry and Ron looked at each other, their expressions full of intense
loathing.

"Leave the Horcrux," Harry commanded sharply.

Ron yanked the chain off his neck, and threw in onto a chair.

Then he turned to Hermione, raising his eyebrows. "What are you doing?"

"What – what do you mean?" she whispered.

"Are you staying or what?" he barked.

"I'm staying, Ron. We said we'd go with Harry, remember. We said we'd help–"

"Shut the fuck up. I'm so sick of your righteous bullshit. You choose him. Fine."

"No – please – just listen –"

"I get it, alright?!" he yelled, "If you could choose Malfoy over me... of course this is a no brainer."

With that, Ron burst out of the tent. Unable to help herself, Hermione ran after him. She saw him
charging to the edge of their protective barrier, and she gave chase, blinking as raindrops fell onto
her eyelashes.

"Ron!" she called... but he disapparated.

Her voice travelled over empty cold night air, down the churning black river, into ether...

She walked back inside with heavy, sodden steps, her muddy shoes squelching sickeningly. She
kicked them off and lowered herself into an armchair, and pulled her knees up to hug them to her
chest.

"He's gone," she told Harry quiveringly.

Harry looked too stunned to speak. With jerky motions, he draped a blanket over her hunched form,
and then slipped into his bed on the other side of the tent.

Chapter End Notes

1. "I mind me of my youth and sigh...": Alas for Youth, by Ferdowsi
 Thirty-Five
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

She used the last two teabags the next morning.

Hermione and Harry didn't say a word as they sat across from each other, delicately sipping from
their cups. He still had some of that gobsmacked air about him, and his eyes, from time to time,
would glance at Ron's empty bunk, before quickly looking away.

She took the Horcrux from him, and put it around her own neck; his demons needed no more
feeding.

They didn't speak as they packed their bags, nor as they dismantled the tent, nor as they erased all
their footprints from the ground. They both dawdled deliberately, and they both kept eyeing the
small copse across the river – foolishly thinking that a gangly, red-haired figure might emerge from
within its depths – again and again, until finally, they simply stood side by side on the cleared
riverbank, staring at the trees.
They both sighed, and they both reached out to grasp hands simultaneously. Hermione apparated
them to a hillside in Surrey, whereupon they immediately began setting up their camp and putting
up their enchantments. Not a word was spoken.

Had you asked her the day before, "When, Hermione, did you fall out of love?" she'd have hemmed
and hawed and fed you some rambling, cryptic bullshit about feelings not being absolute, and how
you can never really pinpoint an exact moment, and it's all a process, really, you know...?

But, as she stared out at the carpet of heather that rolled up and down hills, Hermione could most
decisively state – "I do not love Ron Weasley."

All her misgivings had been cemented, her doubts turned to certainties, and that twinge of longing
– the one that told her that being with one of her closests friends might just be the best happiest
ever after she could hope for – died.

He'd left. He'd actually gone. He'd abandoned her. He'd... chucked up everything and just cleared
off.
Surely a person's true character was revealed when things got difficult? It was in the way a strident
underachiever like Harry would always rise to the challenge when faced with danger... the way
meek old Neville and frivolous old Seamus were leading the rebellion in Hogwarts... the way Theo,
without demur, had stuck with them to defend the school against Death Easters... the way Malfoy
was risking his life to pass information to the Order...
...The way Lupin tried to run away when Tonks got pregnant; the way Fleur stood by Bill after his
run-in with Greyback...
...The way Regulus Black decided to destroy Voldemort's Horcrux...
And Ron had left Harry and Hermione to their fate.

She knew the Horcrux had played a part in this. But come on, Ron... is thy honourable mettle so
easily wrought from that it is disposed? She had the locket around her neck right at that moment,
and she could feel it's insidious coils of influence in the back of her mind... yet, her loyalty to
Harry, and to the cause for which they were fighting would always, always triumph over them.

"I don't love you," she whispered, so soft that it became one with the wind. For the first time since
that whole horrible ordeal, a tear rolled down her cheek.

Hermione and Harry still weren't speaking very much. Over the next week, they moved from one
hill to the other in the same locality, dithering really, wondering what to do next.

One evening, as they ate eggs that Harry had filched from a nearby farmhouse, ("Don't worry, I left
some money by the coop,") they wondered, once more, where Dumbledore could've left the sword:

"...with Professor McGonagall?"

"...a vault in Gringotts?"

"...maybe gave it to Moody?"

"...could it be with batty old Mrs Figg?"

Needless to say, they weren't getting anywhere.

The evenings were doused entirely in silence. She felt that Harry was afraid that if they spoke too
much, she'd bring up Ron, or tell him that she'd had enough and was leaving too. There was no way
to tell him how silly he was being without, well, bringing up Ron.
By the end of the week, she was so desperate that she brought out Phineas Nigellus' portrait to join
them from dinner.

"Your insolence is simply staggering," he drawled disdainfully, batting uselessly at the blindfold
she'd conjured over his eyes.

"What you call insolence, Professor, I call discretion," Hermione replied, matching his tone.

"It's that muggleborn upbringing, I'm afraid," he sniffed, "Beastly."

"Stop that. How're things at Hogwarts?" Harry demanded angrily.

"I refuse to say a word until I am treated with more respect!"

Hermione added that experiment to her long list of failed endeavours.

Their reticence bled into weeks, and Hermione felt cold and debilitating loneliness wrap around her
like a vice. Sitting vigilant outside the tent in the damp Lincolnshire Marsh, she wrote an imaginary
letter to her parents. It was eleven pages long.

When Harry came out to take over from her, he gave her a curious look.

"Do you think it's possible that Dumbledore gave the sword to Fawks?"

"The... his phoenix?" Hermione asked wonderingly.

"Yeah," said Harry, "Like in second year. Fawks delivered the sword to me in the Chamber of
Secrets."

"Er, that seems highly improbable, Harry. Where would a phoenix store a sword for so long?"

Still, from that day on, Harry spent long portions of the day staring upwards. Hermione would sit
by quietly, peering down at The Tales of Beedle the Bard. There was such a vast lot of distance
between the earth and the sky.
High up in the Yorkshire Dales, she lay on the dwindling grass and held a strand of her hair against
the setting sun. The weather was getting colder and colder; she wouldn't be surprised if it began
snowing in a week or so. She let her hair drop and took out her current most prized procession: her
DA Galleon.

'Babbitty Rabbitty & her Cacking STUMP?!'

'Ah! 1 of my favourites!'

'Magicfolk are mad.'

'Shut up. Delightful story.'

'She was an animagus?'

'Yes.'

'What animal would u be?'

'Puma.' –– 'No. Husky.' –– 'No. Fox.' –– 'Falcon.' –

'THEO!'

– 'Jaguar.' –– 'Gazelle.' –– 'Giant English Mastiff.' –

On Great Gable, sleet and rain tumbled down upon them seemingly out of nowhere. Hermione
rushed into the tent as fast as her legs could go. She entered, and the warmth within was the
greatest relief she had ever known. Shaking chunks of ice out of her hair, she walked over to her
bunk and lay down on her stomach, burying her frozen nose in her pillow.

Once she'd thawed, she peeked at Harry, who was sprawled in his own bunk, immersed in the
Marauder's map.

"What's happening at Hogwarts today?" she asked.

With a slight frown, he replied, "The lot of them – Ginny, Neville, Seamus... The Patils, Lavender...
Boot, Corner, Ernie – went one by one to the seventh floor... and then disappeared."

"Into the Room of Requirement? I mean, of course! So Dumbledore's Army is still going strong!"
Hermione bit her lip, scared for her friends, but so, so proud...

"And I think Peeves is helping by keeping the Carrows busy."

"...Wow."

"That's not the strange part. Malfoy and Tracey Davis went in too."

"Well, that's... not all that strange, Harry."

"Yeah," Harry grunted, "I suppose not. Nothing seems all that strange now anyway."

He went on to mumble something about Dumbledore under his breath, which Hermione didn't quite
catch, and then they lapsed into their usual silence.

Tired of the harsh mountainous terrain and climate, Harry and Hermione set up camp in Rossendale
Valley. But while the conditions were marginally better, the strain between them was at its worst.
Hermione suffered for a day and a half, but then something in her snapped.

Enough.
Ron didn't deserve to have so much power over them.

"Harry," she said, sometime around five in the afternoon, "I'm going to pop over to the nearest
town... pick up something to eat."

"Alright," he said dully.

She didn't let herself get distracted while shopping this time. The place she was in was smaller and
more homely than the last one, and she quickly picked up some teabags, sugar, milk powder,
spaghetti, a jar of Bolognese sauce, and tinned fruit.
Her final purchase was the main reason she'd bothered to make that excursion. She held the bottle
close to her chest as she hurried out of the shop and into a corner alley, from where she apparated
back to their campsite.

Long after darkness had fallen and a steady hailstorm had commenced outside, Hermione set her
purchase down on the coffee table in front of Harry. He looked up from the Marauder's map, and
eyed the bottle distrustfully.

"What's that?"
"Egregiously cheap whisky," Hermione replied, placing two glasses on the table as well.

"Er... Are we going to drink it?"

"Yes."

"Is that wise?" Harry asked in that tired, sanity-questioning tone of his.

Hermione sighed in defeat.

"Probably not," she whispered, staring down at her hands.

Well, that was that. She was done trying; tired of failing. They'd just spend the rest of forever
stewing in silence and discomfort, and –

"Pour us a glass then."

Her head snapped up in shock. Harry shot a small smile at her, baffled and amused, looking like he
still wasn't convinced she was sane.

But nonetheless, he held out a hand expectantly, "And don't be stingy, yeah?"

"Isn't it a terrible, terrible pity ," Hermione lamented dramatically, "That you can never tell your
story to the muggle world?"

She was sitting across an armchair, with her legs hanging off one arm and her head tipped over the
other. She looked at upside-down Harry with large, earnest eyes. He was slumped so low in his
chair that his chin was resting on his chest.

"It'd be a pity to get arrested," he mumbled, "Stat – Stat – Sta-choot of secrecy and all that..."

"No, but just think! They'd go wild! Blooming Hollywood would lap you up! Harry! You'd become
a cultural icon... a... a... fucking billion dollar franchise! You'd be bigger than – OH!"

In her excitement, Hermione had sat up; the sudden rush of blood made her wonderfully giddy,

"...was I saying?"

"Bigger," Harry supplied obligingly, spreading his arms wide.

"Right. You'd be bigger than James Bond!"

He snorted, "I'm not the Hollywood type, 'ermione."

Hermione didn't think that was a cause for concern. "Oh they'll find some dashing young lad to play
you. No problem."

"And what about you?" Harry grinned, "There'll have to be a pretty girl sidekick sort who –"

"Bite your tongue, Harry Potter. I would never let my character be reduced to mere eye-candy!"

His grin was the closest thing she'd seen to a Glasgow smile.

"Fuck, you'd make the director's life hell. You'd never leave, boss everyone around, and... and take
over everything, and –"

"And I," Hermione declared, pointing a finger at him, "Would be the reason the film'll be a roaring
success –"

"Oh, sure, sure –"

"Harry, you'll be famous."

"Yeah. Famous. I wonder what that's like," he said dryly.

Hermione broke into a fit of giggles.

He slid of his chair like he hadn't a single bone in his body, landing on the carpet with a grunt of
surprise. Hermione's giggles intensified.

Who – seriously who – said that alcohol doesn't solve any problems?

"Last call," Harry announced, shaking the bottle. The golden liquid sloshed about hypnotically.
Hermione gave Harry her empty glass and got shakily onto her feet.

"Where're you going?" he asked.

"Loo."

She staggered across the tent, grabbing whatever was in her way for support. There was a scratched
up and foggy mirror in the tiny, under-lit bathroom, and after she'd finished her business, she stared
into it. Her face was extremely flushed, her eyelids were heavy, but the corners of her mouth were
turned up.

When she returned to the main room, Harry was comfortably stretched out on the carpet, leaning
against the chair he had previously occupied. Hermione fell back into her own, and picked up her
freshly refilled glass gratefully, robbing it of a generous sip.

"I miss Ginny," Harry said in a low voice.

"I miss her too," Hermione murmured. "I miss Theo."

He peered at her inquisitively through his glasses.

"Are you in love with him?"

She laughed softly, "No. But I do love him."

"So weird."

"...'tis. But 'tisn't. He's wonderful, Harry, really. You should..." then she sat up, suddenly energised,
"You should be his friend too!"

"Wha–"

"Wait. I'll tell him."

Ignoring Harry's inane questions, Hermione reached into her pocked to pull out her wand and DA
Galleon.

'Harry wants to be your friend'

"He's got one too?" Harry asked.

"Luna's," Hermione nodded.

'What the fuck?!'

Hermione frowned. 'Harry wants to b friends okay'

'Is this a joke?'

'NO.'

'What.' –– 'WHAT.' –– 'Seriously?'

"Harry," Hermione cried dismally, "He doesn't believe me!"

"Gimmi that," Harry demanded.

She handed him the Galleon, and he held it in front of his face and blinked, before yelling, "Yes,
seriously."

"It doesn't work like that, you idiot!" Hermione stumbled over and dropped onto the floor next to
him. "Like this, see..." She tapped it with her wand.

'YES SERIOUSLY. FRIENDS.'

'?'–– 'Are you drunk?'

"YES," Hermione and Harry both shouted at the coin. Then they looked at each other, before
simultaneously tapping it with their wands.

'YES yes'

'Bloody fuck.' –– 'Here I am worried sick' –– '& U R out there getting pissed' –– 'This is bullshit.'

Hermione, distressed, gasped; "Sorry, Theo!"

'Luna = sanest person I know' –– 'Going to bed. Goodnight.'

"Oh no," Hermione wailed.

Harry patted her hand consolingly.

"He's not being very friendly," he said crossly.

"It's okay," she sniffed, "We're going to have to be persistent. Like he was with me... and look at us
now."

She sighed and laid her head on Harry's shoulder. He put an arm around her and gently began
stroking her hair.

"Harry," she whispered, after... some? ...a lot of?... time, "We'll get through this, you know? You'll
kill that sadistic bastard, and we'll all be able to live again."

Harry let out a slow breath. "It doesn't fucking feel that way. I mean, we're not even close... And I
feel like such a twat... donno what to do..."

"Shhh," she chided, "You'll figure it out. I believe in you. And I'll help... I promise. I won't leave
you like... like... I won't leave you."

"I know," Harry sighed.

Her head slid down to his chest, and she could feel his every inhale and exhale; she could hear the
muffled beating of his heart. He was so incontestably alive...

*
She woke up with a parched throat and a throbbing head. Her eyes were in no mood to open. Still,
she sat up and stretched... holy hell, her back hurt.

They'd fallen asleep right there on the floor.

Hermione looked at Harry, who was still out cold, and lightly snoring. His neck and arm were bent
at distressingly uncomfortable looking angles, so she straightened them out, then summoned his
blanket from his bed and spread it over him. All the while, he remained fast asleep.
After washing up, she dragged herself into the kitchen and prepared two cups of sweet, strong tea.
She left one hovering in front of Harry, fortified with a lasting warming charm; she knew he'd
greatly appreciate it when he'd resurface.

Bundled up in her thickest coat, Hermione stepped out of the tent, and took a deep gulp of fresh and
cold early morning air.

There was a lot of fog about, and the world was divided into multicoloured streaks like a
sedimentary rock – deep blue on top... then lighter... purple... mauve... one thin bright stripe of
tangerine... a pale line of snow covered hills... the near-black silhouette of the distant town... the
dark but gold-lined layer of barren trees... the blue-brown-grey foreground...

Clusters of lightly glowing fairies fluttered above the thistle bushes scattered around.

She stood in the midst of that whirlwind of colour and watched the new day blossom.

'Hi.'

'Hi?' –– 'You're saying hi?' –– 'What the fuck was all that?'

'I'm sorry.' –– 'Had a rough couple of days' –– 'Needed a break.'

'I see.'

For a full five minutes, she shilly-shallied over what to say next, feeling like a chastised little girl...
but then:

'Are you okay, Hermione?'

'Yes. Miss you. But yes.'

'Miss you too. Every day.' –– 'Potter REALLY wants to b friends?'

She laughed out loud.

'Of course. Who wouldn't?'

'True. You're right.' –– 'Will make him grovel though'

'Wouldn't expect anything less.'

Hermione couldn't stop laughing as Harry tried to almost-swallow his riddle-incrusted snitch for the
second time. His bulging eyes and throat gave him the appearance of a much startled frog...

"ACK!" He coughed, sputtered, and spat the tiny golden ball into his palm.

Shuddering at the cosmic amount of saliva that coated it, Hermione contained her chuckles and
said, "Well, that didn't work."

"Holy cunting hell," he croaked, "No... didn't work... gah... water!"

Hermione obliged, and he gulped down an entire bottle.

"You really think Dumbledore hid the sword's location in the snitch?" Harry asked once his face
was less red, and his breathing was under control.

"I have no idea, Harry."

"Hmph," he scowled, "I can't believe I let you convince me to try swallowing it."

Helpless, Hermione starting laughing again. "I can't believe it either."

"Huh?"

"Harry," she sniggered, "I was joking."

"What? What?" He stood up looking most insulted, "You cow!"

"Oh, oh," she gasped, doubling over.

It was snowing heavily. They were cosseted in the tent that was covered in snow that stretched
across the island that sat in the middle of Loch Maree that was situated in the Northwest Scottish
Highlands (that lay in the house that Jack built).

The Tales of Beedle the Bard resting on her knees, Hermione emerged from a period of deep
contemplation with a subtle shake of her head.

"Harry," she said, jolting him out of his own ponderings, "Could you help me with something?" He
nodded and so she held the book out towards him and pointed to the top of the open page. "Look at
the symbol."

Harry assessed the strange triangular-looking eye with its vertically bisected pupil.

"I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione," he said eventually.

"I know that, but it isn't a rune and it's not in the Syllabary, either," she told him in a rush, "At first I
thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don't think it is! It's been inked in; Dumbledore – or –
somebody's drawn it there... it isn't really part of the book. Think! Have you ever seen it before?"

"No," he stated. But then he leaned a little closer... "No, wait a moment... Isn't it the same symbol
Luna's dad was wearing around his neck?"

"That's what I thought too!" she exclaimed eagerly.

"Then it's Grindelwald's mark!"

"...What?"

"Krum told me," Harry replied, "Apparently, Grindelwald had carved it into a wall at Durmstrang
when he was a pupil there. It became his mark."

Hermione stared at the odd symbol in astonishment.

"I've never heard that Grindelwald had a mark. There's no mention of it in anything I've read about
him. It's all... very odd. And why has it been drawn in a book of children's stories?"

Harry scratched the back of his head. "Yeah," he agreed, "it is weird."

She traced the shapes with her fingernail, thinking furiously. It had to have been Dumbledore who
put that symbol there... but why? It had to mean something; why else –

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?"

She looked back up at Harry, and he was nervously tapping his fist against his knee.

"I've been thinking. I– I want to go to Godric's Hollow."

And there they were at last.

"Yes," she sighed, "Yes. I really think we'll have to."

"Did you hear me right?" He blinked at her.

"Of course I did," she said, rolling her eyes, "You want to go to Godric's Hollow. I agree; I think we
should. I mean, I can't think of anywhere else it could be either. It'll be dangerous, but the more I
think about it, the more likely it seems it's there."

"Er – what's there?"

She stared at him. Where was his mind?

"The sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you'd want to go there... and I mean, Godric's
Hollow is Godric Gryffindor's birthplace –"

"Really? Gryffindor came from Godric's Hollow?"

"Harry," she ground out, quickly losing her patience, "Did you ever even open A History of
Magic?"

He smiled at her very sheepishly.

"Erm... I might've opened you know, when I bought it... just the once..."

"Well," she said tartly (but also smiling a bit,) "As the village is named after him I'd have thought
you might have made the connection. But you see? Godric's Hollow, Godric Gryffindor,
Gryffindor's sword; don't you think Dumbledore would have expected –?"

"Sure," Harry shrugged, and a pall fell over his face as it always did when the topic of
Dumbledore's possible designs came up. "Remember what Muriel said?"

"Huh?"

"You know... er... Ginny's great-aunt. At the wedding. The one who said you had skinny ankles."

"Oh."

Harry didn't let the name he didn't say linger: "She said Bathilda Bagshot still lives in Godric's
Hollow."

"Hm. Well, I suppose – OH!"

Harry jumped to his feet, wand drawn...

"What did you do that for?" he snapped, after calming down, "I thought you'd seen a bloody Death
Eater unzipping the tent, at least –"

"What if Bathilda's got the sword?" she gushed, too excited to be embarrassed, "What if
Dumbledore entrusted it to her?"

Harry sat slowly back down and frowned.

"Yeah... he might have done. So, are we going to go to Godric's Hollow?"

Now, Hermione stood up. They had a PLAN – how glorious!

"We'll have to think it through carefully, Harry. We'll need to practice disapparating together under
the Invisibility Cloak for a start..." She began pacing up and down across the tent, aware that Harry
was only half listening, but who cares, they had a PLAN! "...and perhaps disillusionment charms
would be sensible too, unless you think we should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice Potion? In
that case we'll need to collect hair from somebody. I actually think we'd better do that, Harry, the
thicker our disguises the better..."

DAY 1 :

"Why the hell are we doing this?" Harry raged after their sixth attempt to disapparate together
under the cloak had resulted in him falling flat on his face, "Let's just go."

"I told you Harry... You-Know-Who'll expect you to show up there! We need to be fully prepared!"

DAY 2 :

Harry came back from the nearby village with a small plum cake and two strands of hair.

DAY 3 :

'Your scarf saved my life today'

'What happened?'

'Xeno tried to test his new shaving charm' –– 'On me. Bounced off the scarf' –– 'sliced the tassel off
his hat' –– 'You're the best.'

'Oh my god!'

DAY 4 :

They managed to successfully apparate under the cloak. Hermione insisted that they do it again
fifteen more times.
DAY 5 :

"Come on, Hermione... we're ready!"

"Yes... yes. I think we've done all we can."

"Brilliant! So we can go?"

"Just let it get dark..."

The graveyard was filled with shadows and eerie serenity. In the distance, tiny houses decked with
twinkling lights seemed to belong to a different world.

Hermione, hunched in her guise of an aging, mousy little woman, wondered among the gravestones
feeling both scared and solemn. Dumbledore's mother's and sister's graves were the only
noteworthy ones she'd found so far. Up ahead, Harry (a broad, balding man) was moving a lot
faster, with much more purpose. She could only try to understand what he was feeling...
That is, until another tombstone stopped her in her tracks.

"Harry, come back a moment," she called softly.

"What?" he huffed impatiently, trudging through the snow towards her.

She crouched to look more closely at the weather-beaten grave; "Look at this! It's the mark in the
book!"

He squatted beside her, and peered at where she was pointing. "Yeah... it could be..."

"It says Ig—Ignotus, I think –"

"I'm going to keep looking for my parents, all right?"

Old-Man-Harry said with some irritation, and he stood up and rushed away.
She followed, with a sigh.

She'd never spent much time in a graveyard. Her grandparents had died, one by one, when she was
very young, and she remembered their funerals only vaguely. In her memories, graveyards were
peeked at from behind the pleats of her mother's black dress, or over her father's shoulder as he
carried her. And here she was walking over hundreds of skeletons, passing by hundreds of tiny
memorials… a bit of stone to commemorate a entire life, a whole person, a –

"Harry, they're here... right here."

She waited before the modest little tomb of pristine white marble, (JAMES POTTER; LILLY
POTTER; The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,) and when he had joined her, she took
his hand in hers.
They stood there for a long, long moment, hand in hand. He was struggling to breathe, she could
tell; he squeezed her fingers in distress.
She spun her hand in a circle and conjured a small wreath of Hellebores, which he gently placed
before the headstone.

He stepped back, put his arm around her and walked them away from the grave... from all the
graves... back out into the village square.

She didn't like this. She didn't like this at all.

If Old-Woman-Hermione was old, then the woman they were following was prehistoric. Old-Man-
Harry had a grasp on her elbow, and was ardently dragging her along behind the hobbling relic. He
was quite convinced that she was Bathilda Bagshot... and (Not-That -)Old-Woman-Hermione...
well, she didn't like it. Not one bit.

They entered her house, and Old-Woman-Hermione's hand flew up to her tiny, beak-like nose. The
place smelled terrible; simultaneously like rotting food and open drains.

Bathilda's colour was off. While it was true that people turned grey with age, they certainly didn't
obtain that delightful green tinge on their skin unless it was necrotic.
The mottled Bag...shot shambled into an adjoining room, leaving Old-People-Harry-and-Hermione
in the hall staring nervously at each other.

"Harry, I'm not sure about this," she whispered.

He shook his head. "Look at the size of her; I think we could overpower her if we had to... Listen, I
should have told you, I knew she wasn't all there. Muriel called her 'gaga' –" A sudden loud and
creepy hissing sound shot out of the room Bathilda had just entered, "– It's okay," he said calmly,
and dragged her into the room.

She didn't like this... At. All.

The room was dark and extremely filthy. The unbearable stench was much worse in there. Bathilda
was bent by a dusty fireplace, mishandling a stack of logs. Old-Woman-Hermione precariously
approached her and murmured, "Er – shall I...?"

Ghostly, filmy eyes surveyed her impassively; she swallowed. But then Bathilda stepped aside, and
let Old-Woman-Hermione light the fire.
Just as she finished, she heard Old-Man-Harry say, "Ms Bagshot?" and turned to see him shoving a
framed photograph in front of the woman's face.

"Who is this person?" he asked eagerly, "Do you know who this is? This man? Do you know him?
What's he called? Who is this man?"

"Harry, what are you doing?" she asked incredulously.

"This picture, Hermione... it's the thief, the thief who stole from Gregorovitch! Please! Bathilda!
Who is this?"

Bathilda just gazed at him mutely. She hadn't spoken a single word thus far... Old-Woman-
Hermione didn't like that at all.

"Why did you ask us to come with you, Ms Bagshot? Was there something you wanted to tell us?"

She spoke deliberately loudly... only to be ignored. Bathilda hobbled closer to Old-Man-Harry, and
began gesturing inelegantly.

"You want us to leave?" he asked. "Oh, right...Hermione, I think she wants me to go upstairs with
her."

Old-Woman-Hermione groaned to herself.

"All right," she sighed, "Let's go."

"She wants me to go with her, alone."

"Why?"

"Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only me?"

She didn't like this. She didn't like this at all.

"Do you really think she knows who you are?"

"...Yes... I think she does."

"Well, okay then. But be quick, Harry." Please.

They left her alone in the dim, dirty, smelly little room. She wrapped her arms around herself,
shaking and bouncing on the balls of her feet. She really wished they'd be quick about it all...
She carefully took a turn about the room, stopping in front of Bathilda's bookshelf. Floor to ceiling,
it was filled with tomes from... wow!... from the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the Achaemenid Empire...
On the small table by the shelf, was another very intriguing book, The Life and Lies of Albus
Dumbledore. Setting her scruples aside, she shoved it into her bag.

THUD.
It was muffled, but there was definitely a thud, and it came from upstairs. Her entire frame tingled
with apprehension. She walked back into the hall and cautiously began climbing up the stairs.

"Harry?" she called.

No response.

CRASH!

She nearly fell backwards down the stairs.

"Fuck!" she breathed and charged ahead... really, this so wasn't the time to be stuck with Old-
Woman-Joints...

The scene that greeted her upstairs knocked the wind out of her.

"STUPEFY!" she shrieked, aiming straight for the giant snake's head, but it lashed out of the way.
Luckily, the motion caused it to forfeit its hold on Old-Man-Harry, and he fell heavily onto the
floor. "Stupefy!" she tried once again, and the snake darted towards her menacingly. "Expulso!" she
shouted, but had to dive behind a chest of drawers before she could aim properly...

There was the sound of glass shattering...

Cowering behind her hiding place, she let herself inhale once...

"Everte Statum!"

The snake flew back, uncoiling, thrashing wildly...

"He's coming! Hermione, he's coming!" Old-Man-Harry's voice carried over the serpents mad
hissing... and suddenly he was there, beside her. Scant hair and wrinkled face caked with sweat, he
pulled her bodily toward a window...

The snake was still having paroxysms. Its tail was flaying wildly, smashing, crashing... furniture
and ornaments were flying all over the place...

With her in his arms, Old-Man-Harry jumped atop a broken dresser. The snake flew at them,
spitting venom and –

"Confringo!" Old-Woman-Hermione screamed.

Bright light exploded out of her wand and scattered all over the room, bouncing off everything...

And they leapt out of the window.

He fell the moment they materialised on Hay Bluff, and he took her down with him.

Old-Woman-Hermione lay panting, wheezing, coughing on the snow covered ground, with Old-
Man-Harry half on top of her; by the time she emerged out of her state of shock, she was back to
being Hermione, the original.

"Harry," she whispered, shaking his arm, "Come on, Harry, move... we've got to put the protective
spells up."

"Almost... Almost..." he hissed, but didn't move.

"What – Harry?"

With much effort, she rolled him off herself and onto his back... he lay limp and unconscious, quite
blue in the face.

"Oh god, Oh no ... Harry! Harry!" She shook him harder and harder, but all he did was moan and
twitch. She touched his forehead, and found it to be burning hot. An anguished, panicked "SHIT!"
tore out of her throat, and like a tornado she spun around Harry's inert body, casting enchantments,
pitching the tent...

"Locomotor!" She levitated him inside the tent, laying him gently on his bunk.

"No no no no no no no," he chanted, and suddenly his back arched and he roared. His wand – in
two pieces – fell with a clatter-clatter onto the floor. "Oh god oh fuck..."

Hermione's internal organs all clumped together to form a giant orb of terror inside her. Damn it.
What was she to do?

"AHHHH, NO STOP!" Harry screamed, writhing like one in need of an exorcism. He clutched his
chest, clawing at – Oh – the Horcrux! She wrenched his hands away, difficult as it was, and
pulled... pulled... pulled... It seemed to have fused into his skin.

Tears flooded her eyes and she whimpered, "diffendo," severing the fucking locket off his chest. He
yelled in agony.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, Harry," she sobbed, pouring dittany on his wound. Then abruptly, he began
to laugh. It was a cold, sinister, evil laugh that made her skin prickle. Oh what was she to do? What
– What –

The power of Christ compels you, the power of Christ compels you, the power of Christ compels
you, her tears were falling onto his shirt as, just as abruptly, he began to cry.

"No... please... Mum," he wailed. He curled into a fetal position and trembled, weeping... weeping
along with him, Hermione conjured a cloth and dabbed at his face.

"Please wake up, Harry, please wake up!"

 "No," he moaned.

"Harry, Harry – please! You're okay..."

"No..."

"Harry, it's all right; you're all right."

"No... I dropped it... I dropped it..."

"Harry... wake up, wake up!"

He opened his eyes with a gasp, and looked straight into hers. The sight of that bright, wonderful
green filled her with so much relief that it hurt. She gasped, too.

"Harry," she murmured tremulously, "Do you feel all –all right?"

"Yes?"

His voice was rough and unsure. Staring up into nothing, he raised a shaky hand to wipe the sweat
off his brow.

"We got away," he breathed.

"Yes."

Chapter End Notes

1. "chucked up everything and just cleared off": Poetry Of Departures, by Philip Larkin
2. "thy honourable mettle so easily wrought...": Act I, Scene 2; Julius Caesar, by William
Shakespeare
3. "The power of Christ compels you": From The Exorcist (1973)
 Thirty-Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“You’re still really angry at me, aren’t you?” Hermione asked with no little resentment.

Harry, who’d been staring stonily at the broken fragments of his wand for hours, said, “No. No,
Hermione. I know it was an accident. You were trying to get us out of there, and you were
incredible. I’d be dead if you hadn’t been there to help me.”

His words did nothing to ease her mind, for his expression, cold and aloof, belied all that he had
said. He was still angry with her. The little joy they had amassed before their excursion to Godric’s
Hollow lay in ashes.

Her dreams were haunted by visions of giant darting snakes, and rows of graves bearing the names
of all her near and dear ones.

Sheets of snow were falling down from the dreary sky, the air was bitterly cold, the ground was
barren... altogether an enchanting little assortment of allegories for misery. While Harry wallowed,
Hermione perused The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore. It was prime Skeetershite: Dramatic and
deeply in love with its own sensationalism. It certainly painted an awful picture of Dumbledore’s
family life. She kept a metaphorical bucket of salt beside her as she read.
When she reached a bit about Dumbledore’s friendship with Grindelwald, she rushed to share it
with Harry. He was horrified, deeply disturbed, and felt, most prominently, angered and betrayed. It
was a fall of the idol, God is dead moment for him, and she understood his rage, but... But.

To her, it seemed eminently forgivable; a childish folly, a dangerous but passing dalliance that
Dumbledore clearly grew out of. For which hot-blooded youth was immune to the
impressionability, the zeal, and the hubris of being young and brilliant? The difficulty of his
circumstance must certainly have played a part. As much as Hermione liked to believe that her
mind wasn’t all that malleable, it might just have been her pride that had set up that conviction.
Who knew how she might change as she got older? Who could say what pieces of her might fall
off, what notions she might abandon, what ideals she may stow away? It was her situation – as a
muggleborn and hence a target – that had brought her to the right side of the war. Would she have
been the same if she had been born to a conservative, pureblood family like certain people she
knew? And those certain people were now fighting for the light.

She hated that division; light and dark. It was too simplistic... too idealised. If anything, war was
one big monochromatic slab of impenetrable black. She didn’t have any righteousness left in her.

What a bleak world it would be if people weren’t allowed to change... if they were bound eternally
to their fledgling principles.
It was the ones that didn’t change that deserved censure. Those that stuck staunchly by their
regressive or twisted ideals even when they could – and should – have known better.

She didn’t say any of that to Harry. It wasn’t the time for a debate about ethics.

“Harry, I’m sorry, but I think the real reason you’re so angry is that Dumbledore never told you any
of this himself.”

He threw his hands over his head and shouted, “Maybe I am! Look what he asked from me,
Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And again! And fucking again! And don’t expect me to explain
everything, just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me even though I don’t
trust you! Never the whole truth! Never!”

The stretch of pristine, virgin snow between them expanded as they stared at each other.
Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed.

“He loved you,” Hermione murmured, “I know he loved you.”

“I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me
in.”

He turned away then, and she didn’t follow. For older Dumbledore’s secrecy and shiftiness, she had
no justifications.

Hermione’s blood was gushing and her breathing was shallow. She shone the bright light emanating
from her wand all across the hillside, as her heart, vibrating with palpitations, climbed up her
throat. It appeared that she was alone... but she had thought... she was almost sure she had seen a
shadow pass through the thorny bramble...

Harry emerged from the tent after what seemed like a decade had passed, looking like his nap
hadn’t done him any good. By then, daylight had seeped into the gloom, lighting up the snow, and
proving once and for all that there was, in fact, nobody there.

“How about we pack up early and move on?”

She agreed readily.

Five-year-old Hermione Granger stood between mum and dad as they all stared up at a thick, lush
canopy of green leaves.

“Well, there goes our afternoon of cloud-watching,” dad said, sounding sad, “Bollocks!”

“Language, Robert!” mum scolded.

“Ah, sorry ma'am. Anyhoo. Lemonade, anyone?”

“Oh, yes, please!” Hermione chimed.

While mum and dad went to rummage around in the cooler by their tent, Hermione glared angrily
up at the branches that were blocking the view of the sky. How dare the silly things ruin dad’s
plans? She raised her hands and wished that they’d shift around just a little...

And lo and behold they did! They did!

“DAD! MUM! CLOUDS!” Hermione cried with delight.

They came running out, bewildered, as Hermione clapped her hands and laughed.

“Wha – What on earth?” Dad stared up at the branches with big, wide eyes.

“How did that happen? How is that possible?” mum asked, grabbing dad’s arm, “Robert, How –”

“Wind?” suggested dad, weakly.

“Wind?!” mum repeated, “Those boughs are massive! How are they bending like that? It isn’t
physica –”

“Look!” Hermione, who had lain down on the forest floor, exclaimed, “That cloud looks just like
Grandpa Bruce with his pipe!”

Eighteen-year-old Hermione Granger cast a warming charm on the icy ground of the Forest of
Dean and lay down with a sigh. The leafless, naked branches overhead formed a thick mesh
through which tiny mosaiced chucks of sky were visible. She raised her wand and pushed them
aside, braiding them together intricately so that they formed a circlet, and the firmament was fully
revealed. There was not a single cloud to be seen. But then again, she had more than enough of the
symbolic sort in her life.

And a new day will dawn for those who stand long,
And the forests will echo with laughter.

Harry’s sulking was driving her barmy. They’d been sharing her wand for the past three days, and
every time he’d ask for hers he’d have this woe-is-me-and-a-plague-upon-thee look on his face that
was so bloody irksome that Hermione itched to tell him to shove off.

She tried something a little more productive.

“Summon this,” she ordered, and placed her copy of The History of Magic a short distance away
from him.

“Why?” he asked, frowning.

“Just do it, will you!”

It was obvious that he wanted to say, ‘You’re mental, fuck off,’ but he gathered the fortitude to
mutter, “Give me your wand then.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“But – what – how the hell do you expect me to summon that stupid book?”

“It is not a stupid book, Harry. Summon it wandlessly.”

“That’s impossible,” he exclaimed in irritation, “What are you playing at?”

“Not impossi–”

“Oh fine! Bloody hell. Only really powerful and accomplished wizards and witches can –”

His mouth snapped shut when the book zoomed into Hermione’s open hand. She arched a brow at
him.

“When did you learn to do that?!” he spluttered.

“Last year,” she replied.

“How?”

“I don’t know Harry. I practiced.” Feeling quite impatient, Hermione put the book down again,
“Now it’s your turn. Go on. Summon the book.”

“I can’t!”

“You haven’t even tried!”

“Damn it, Hermione,” Harry growled, “I’m not as good at magic as you are! I can’t –”

“Oh, shut up!” she cried, rolling her eyes heavily, “Your humility is very endearing, Harry, but
honestly... just... shut up. You’re a very capable wizard. Look at what you’ve done! You’ve faced
the Darkest wizard alive on so many occasions, and lived to tell the tale.”

“That was beacause of my wand,” Harry spat, “The protection of the twin cores –”

“The wand is only as good as the wizard! But anyway, your wand is gone, okay? It's broken. It's
useless. Stop languishing in self-pity and summon the stupid book!”

She hadn’t realised how loudly she’d been yelling, till she caught the stunned look on Harry’s face.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to call the book stupid.”

“Harry!”

“Oh alright,” he grumbled sullenly, “How am I supposed to do this? What do I do with my hands?
Do I point?”

“Whatever feels comfortable,” she said tiredly.

“Er,” he raised his right hand limply and fixed a distrustful eye on the book, “Accio!”

Nothing happened.

“This is stupid.”

“Keep. Trying.”

She didn’t relent for over an hour and a half. Harry’s temper rose with every unsuccessful attempt.

“Sod it,” he raged, “Seriously. Enough. This isn’t going to work.”

“It will!” she insisted fervently, “Harry, it will. It’s like learning to swim. Once you figure out the
trick, you’ll be able to do more than just summon things. Now come... once more...”

“Bloody bullshit,” he muttered, but complied.

Another fruitless hour went by.

“That’s it. I’m done. Done. Good day to you.”

“Harry,” she snapped, “Get back here! You are not done –”

“Oh yes I am!”

“Listen to me, this isn’t a joke – you need to learn to do this!”

“I can't! Obviously, I can't –”

“– Just try –”

“– been at it for hours and –”

“– so unwilling to make an effort –”

“– just isn't working – what, unwilling?! Are you –”

“– It will work! You can do this –”

“– Shit, you're such a... FUCKING ACCIO!”

And the History of Magic rose from its place and shot towards Harry, who caught it with a gasp of
ultimate shock. For a long moment, they both stared at it, breathing hard.

Finally, Hermione whispered, “Oh my god. You did it. You did it.”

“I – I did it. I did it,” Harry parroted dumbly, “Er, will I have to be in a strop every time for this to
work?”

“No,” Hermione laughed breathlessly, “You want to try again?”

“Yeah.”

They tried a dozen more times, and Harry suffered failure only thrice. Each time he got it right,
Hermione moved the book a little further, until finally, he was able to tear it away from her while
she hugged it tightly to her chest.

“Brilliant!” she cheered, and he grinned.

“So what next?” he asked.

“Bigger objects, heavier objects, until you’ve got it perfected,” Hermione gushed excitedly, “Thing
is, wandless magic is markedly less potent than that which is channelled through a wand, so I think,
for emergencies, you should practice stunning and disarming. The latter should be easy. You have a
rather strong, um, affinity for expelliarmus...”
‘... And Death spoke to them. He was angry that he had been cheated out of three new victims, for
travellers usually drowned in the river. But Death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate the
three brothers upon their...’

Death looked an awful lot like Dumbledore, but with an inky black beard and obsidian eyes. Stern
and hooded, he stood like the statue of Giordano Bruno on a bridge over troubled waters. Before
him were Harry, Lupin, and Malfoy, all seeped in the hazy glow of twilight.

“I need to defeat Voldemort!” Harry cried, “You promised you’d help! Give me the power to kill
Voldemort!”

“He’s dead!” Lupin howled, “You promised he’d be safe! Sirius... Oh, bring him back! Bring him
back!”

“I need to get out!” Malfoy roared, “You promised me a way out! Tell me where to hide... Tell me
how!”

But Dumbledore simply smiled – his calm, serene smile, which looked nothing less than ominous in
his current getup.

From her distant vantage point, (...was she standing on a ledge? A cloud? She didn’t dare look
down...) Hermione watched as the three men got more and more agitated.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

She looked over her shoulder at Theo, who gave her a deeply morose half-smile.

“What?” she asked.

“Them,” he replied, gesturing with his chin, “Putting their faith in him. Death bestows only one
gift, and one gift alone. Isn’t it ridiculous, Hermione?”

Hermione....?
....Hermione...?
...Hermione...?

“Hermione!”

She awoke with a choking gasp; The Tales of Beedle the Bard slipped out of her hands and fell
to the floor.

“Hermione!” Harry’s face came into focus. He was flushed, bright eyed, and his hair was...
dripping wet?

“What’s wrong?” she croaked, “Are you alright?”

“It’s okay, everything’s fine. More than fine. I’m great. There’s someone here.”

“What do you mean? Who –?”

And then she saw him, standing hunched and soaked in the middle of the tent, holding Gryffindor’s
sword in his hand.

She ought to have asked questions… oh she had at least hundred questions… but she could only
stare at the tense looking young man. She walked towards him, staring, gaping, and with each step
her wonder ebbed, and cool anger (a strangely contrary emotion,) took over. She stopped right in
front of him, and he smiled nervously. His hands twitched, as though itching to reach for her.

“You complete arse Ronald Weasley,” she hissed lowly… dangerously.

“Um, hey,” he mumbled stupidly.

She sneered.

“Look, Hermione, I’m sorry!” he exclaimed, but Hermione had already walked away.

Without looking back she said, “I’ll keep watch now, Harry,” and went out into the biting cold.

How was it that Harry, who’d been in a huff for days after she’d accidentally broken his wand
while saving his life, had welcomed Ron back with such conviviality and enthusiasm?

Because Ron had saved Harry’s life. Right. And he’d even given him a replacement wand.

They were back to being the best of friends, like nothing awry had ever occurred. Like Ron hadn’t
said the most horrible things, like he hadn’t abandoned them at all. Hermione watched them wander
about, smiling and chatting, foraging for berries like a couple of merry fucking wood dwellers from
the small sunlit spot where she sat with an open book that she wasn’t reading.
She felt, once again, like an add-on. There were Harry and Ron, reunited… and Hermione too, I
suppose. With her nose in a book, of course, ha ha ha.
There was an unforgiving pain in her chest; how she missed her best friend. She missed him. She
really, really missed him.

‘Hello,’ she spelled on her Galleon.

For the first time since their unconventional correspondence began, Theo didn’t reply.
“Hermione! Come on. Just listen to me. Please!”

“What do you want, Ron?”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m so... I’m really, really fucking sorry!”

“Sorry? You crawl back here after weeks and weeks and say sorry? I went running after you! I
called you! I begged you to come back!”

“I know! I... Hermione, I’m sorry, I’m really–”

“Stop saying that! You think it’s all going to be all right if you just say sorry?”

“Well, what else do you want me to say? I came back, yeah? I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes. You’re here. Fantastic. Harry’s well pleased. Leave me alone.”

“What about – are you... are you, er, pleased?”

“What do you think?”

“What can I do Hermione? What do you want–”

“I want Harry to be happy. You’re here. So be it.”

“Hermio –”

“Fuck off, Ronald.”

‘Hi. Sorry. Something came up.’

‘Theo, please tell me you’re safe?’

‘I am! Perfectly safe.’ –– ‘Did I worry you?’

‘YES.’

‘Shit. Sorry.’

‘It’s alright. Just...’ –– ‘Keep the coin with you at all times please.’

‘Aye aye, Captain.’

While Harry tried to levitate spoons with his new blackthorn wand, and Ron fiddled with a
wireless, Hermione lay in her bunk immersed once more in The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.
On the page she was examining was a photograph of the letter that Dumbledore had written to
Grindelwald. Her eyes travelled across the thin, slanting handwriting, (...for the greater good...) and
when she got to his signature at the end, she froze. The ‘A’ of Albus had been replaced by that
same strange triangular eye-like symbol.

She jumped out of her bunk and rushed to Harry, saying, “We need to talk.”

He cast a leery look at the book in her hand.

“What?” he asked.

“I want to go and see Xenophilius Lovegood.”

He started, “Sorry?”

“Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna’s father,” she said calmly, “I want to go and talk to him.”

“Why?”

“It’s that mark, the mark in Beedle the Bard. Look at this!” She held the book before him. “The
signature... Look at the signature, Harry.”

It took him a while to compute it all.

In the meanwhile, Ron tried to ask, “Er – what are you –?” but she shut him up with a ferocious
look.

“It keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?” she said to Harry, “And since we can’t talk to Dumbledore or
Grindelwald, we can ask Mr Lovegood what it means. I’m quite sure this is important.”
Harry considered her mutely for a few seconds.

Then, looking grave, he muttered, “You just want to go see Nott, don’t you?”

“What?” she spluttered, stung, “Do you really think I’d do that? Make up a ridiculous excuse, drag
you out of hiding...”

“Hermione,” he reasoned, “We don’t need another Godric’s Hollow. We talked ourselves into going
there, and –”

“But it keeps appearing!” she rushed out edgily, “Dumbledore left me The Tales of Beedle the Bard,
how do you know we’re not supposed to find out about the sign?”

“Here we go again!” Harry exclaimed in a long-suffering way, “We keep trying to convince
ourselves Dumbledore left us secret signs and clues –”

“The Deluminator,” Ron interrupted, “turned out to be pretty useful. I think Hermione’s right, I
think we ought to go and see Lovegood. It won’t be like Godric’s Hollow –” (As if he knew
anything about that) “– Lovegood’s on your side, Harry. The Quibbler’s been for you all along; it
keeps telling everyone they’ve got to help you!”

“I’m sure this is important!” threw in Hermione, “I’m sure we ought to know about this!”

Ron clapped his hands together and said briskly, “I think we should vote on it. Those in favour of
going to see Lovegood –” He raised his hand. In spite of herself, Hermione felt the smallest quiver
of amusement... she put up her hand, too. “Outvoted, Harry, sorry.” Ron grinned.

“Fine,” Harry grunted, but even he had the ghost of a smile on his face, “Where do the Lovegoods
live, anyway?”

“Luna told me... she’s the Secret-Keeper,” Hermione said, and took out Mr Weasley’s map from her
bag. “Their house is under the Fidelus charm, but I’m sure there’ll be some Death Eaters skulking
around. We should apparate here,” she pointed at a dense looking grove on the map, “Harry, you
stay under the cloak. If we do come across any Death Eaters, stun or confound them immediately.
Okay?”

“Okay,” said Ron bracingly, and Harry unenthusiastically.

‘LISTEN.’

‘Yes?’

‘Tell Potter to end the bloody war already’

‘Getting bored, are you?’

‘Terribly. It’s all so tiring.’

‘I’m sorry u r having such a tough time’

‘Well then do something about it’ –– ‘I miss you buddy.’

‘Do you now?’

‘Fucking YES.’

“Of course that’s Luna’s house,” Ron chuckled, “Who else would live in a place like that? It’s like
a giant rook!”

Hermione puckered her brow as she stared at the black tower-like structure behind which loomed a
giant moon at three in the afternoon.

“It looks nothing like a bird.”

“I was talking about a chess rook. A castle to you.”

They approached the small mossy gate, upon which were nailed three signs, ‘THE QUIBBLER,
EDITOR: X. LOVEGOOD,’ ‘PICK YOUR OWN MISTLETOE,’ and ‘KEEP OFF THE
DIRIGIBLE PLUMS.’

The Lovegoods had a charming garden, dusted with snow, poetically overgrown, and full of wild
plants that she wished she could spend more time exploring. Neville would’ve loved it here, she
thought wistfully. She could imagine what it might look like in spring… a lush, violent explosion
of green, with Luna wandering about in floaty linen robes…
Two large crab-apple trees, leafless but laden with bright red fruit arched on either side of the front
door. As Hermione knocked, a tight ball of anticipation formed in her stomach. Her reason for
visiting was utterly sincere, but god, Theo was here. He was here, just on the other side of the door.

They heard footsteps, and slowly the door creaked open.

“Oh!” gasped Luna. And again, “Oh!”

Hermione sprang forward and hugged her.

“Hi, Luna,” she whispered.

“Well… hullo,” Luna greeted, sounding like she’d quite recovered from the shock of seeing them,
“Harry, Ron. What a lovely surprise. Do come in.”

The room they entered was a semicircular sitting room, with one bright blue sofa covered with a
print of tropical birds, and a pair of purple armchairs, and another one in magenta. The coffee table
was yellow and dotted with red flowers. The walls depicted a jungle scene, à la Rousseau.

“Nice place,” said Harry with a grin.

“Thank you,” Luna replied happily, “I painted the walls, you know. Please sit. It’s so lovely to see
you all again...”

While she was speaking, Hermione nodded vacantly as her eyes scanned the room. Where was he?
There was a moving iron staircase – much like a spiral-shaped escalator – in one side of the room...
perhaps he was upstairs?

“...Hermione.” She refocused her attention back on Luna, who was smiling. “He’s over there,” she
pointed towards a door that was painted like the walls, and so was almost unnoticeable, “In the
kitchen.”

She shuffled towards the door as though in a trance, like she was walking through something much
denser than air. Gingerly, she pushed opened the door and stood stock still at the threshold.

He was sitting with his back to her, at a (bright orange) table, working on something she couldn’t
see. His hair was longer than she remembered, falling over ‘her’ scarf around his neck and brushing
the top of his collar. Stepping into the room and letting the door close silently, she simply watched
him for a few seconds. Then she gently cleared her throat.

“Nearly done, Luna-love,” he said, “This batch is impossibly fiddly.”

Hermione’s heart contracted at the sound of his voice.

“Not Luna, sorry,” she said softly.

His chair scraped back deafeningly, and he jumped to his feet and spun around. His mouth was
hanging open as though he were silently screaming.

“Hi, Theo,” she said with a grin.

“Oh, bugger,” he choked, “What the fuck did Xenophilius put in my tea this time?”

“Excuse me?”

“It was that grassy shite he puts in his pipe, wasn’t it? Fuck’s sake!”

The rubbed at his eyes furiously, and then blinked at her.

“What are you raving about?” Hermione demanded.

“You’re a hallucination. Damn that devious old madman to hell.”

“Theo,” said Hermione steadily, “I am not a hallucination.”

“Heh. Right.”

She rolled her eyes. With deliberate and resolute steps, she walked right up to him and wrapped her
arms around his waist.

She rested her head on his chest and murmured, “See?”

Slowly, his hands rose and landed on her back.

“You’re real,” he breathed, “You’re here.”

Suddenly, he pulled away, and gripped her shoulders.

“You’re here!” he shouted, “What – Why – How the hell are you here?!”

“Um,” she said, but then he hugged her again, much harder and tighter than before.

“Holy Hippogriff dung! I don’t believe it!”

Her giggle was muffled, and eventually she had to say, “Theo... you’re crushing me.”

“Oh sorry.” He let go and they both sat, and Hermione finally saw what he had been bent over on
the table.

“What are those?”

“Frumpleberries,” said Theo with a grimace.

“They look revolting.”

“They look like they taste. Where’s your baggage?”

“Huh?”

“Potter and Weasley.”

“Oh. Ha ha. They’re in the other room, with Luna.”

“How are you,” they blurted simultaneously, and then laughed.

“You first,” he insisted.

“I’m... oh, do I have to? Fine. It’s been awful, and difficult, but I’m alive. I’m... okay.”

“You look... very skinny,” Theo frowned.

“Look who’s talking.”

“I’ll have you know,” he said with his nose in the air, “I am very muscular and fit. Ask Luna.”

“No thank you.”

“Humph.”
“Your turn now,” she laughed, delighted by the lovely sullen expression he was wearing, “How are
you?”

“Great. My girlfriend’s dad wants me dead, but as you can see, it hasn’t worked out for him yet.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“I am not!” he cried indignantly, “He’s an insufferable.... er,” he glanced furtively around the room,
and lowered his voice significantly, “He’s an insufferable wanker. And I can’t even say anything,
because Luna bloody well adores him. It gets marginally better when Draco visits, because,
obviously, he never holds back. Old Xeno hates him more than he does me.”

“Dra – what? Malfoy visits?”

“Yeah, when he has information for Remus. There’s a passageway between the Room of
Requirement and Hog’s Head; Draco sneaks away at night. The choice was between coming here
or the Burrow... well, not really much of a choice, if you think about it.”

As hard as she tried, Hermione just couldn’t picture a mondain like Draco Malfoy sat in that
eccentric, riotous house at all. And once again, she was stunned by the reality of the world outside
their little campsites. So much was happening... so many players... all struggling, striving,
rebelling...

Theo’s hand gripped hers and pulled her back to the present.

“You have no idea how good it is to see you,” he said with a soft smile.

“Believe me,” she murmured, “I know exactly how that feels.”

Harry and Ron were getting a highly detailed explanation from Luna about all the elements in her
mural when Hermione and Theo walked into the sitting room, and they looked exceedingly grateful
to have it interrupted.

“All caught up?” Luna asked, “Good. Daddy is on his way down; he’s just bundling up the final lot
of tomorrow’s edition.”

As she went to sit on a purple armchair, Hermione gushed, “We heard what your dad’s doing with
The Quibbler. It’s amazing. So brave...”

Luna smiled, “Yes. And it helps that we’re so well hidden, otherwise daddy says we’d have been
killed a long time ago.”
“Alright, Weasley... Potter...?” Theo muttered.

“Yeah,” they both grunted.

There was a minute of awkward silence, after which Hermione saw (with a sinking heart) a broad,
evil grin break across Theo’s face.

“Potter,” he crooned.

“What?” said Harry suspiciously.

“Potter.”

“What?!”

“So.”

“So?! Have you lost your mind?”

“So you want to be friends, eh?”

Oh god. Harry’s groan drowned out Hermione’s.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, Nott –”

“Call me Theo, Harry.”

“Nott. Can we just pretend all... that... never happened.”

“Oh no! After all, you were so adamant –”

“Theo, please,” Hermione begged.

“No, no, no. How can I forget all those capitalised ‘yesses’ and ‘seriouslies’? So friends, yeah,
Harry?”

Harry buried his face in his hands.

“What a lovely idea!” Luna chimed, even as Ron burst out with, “What the hell is he talking about,
Harry?”

“I’m talking about Harry’s plan to replace you with me, of course!”

“What... What?!”

But somehow, the universe had a rare – such a rare – fit of compassion. Their ‘discussion’ was
deterred by a shocked cry of “Harry? Ron? Hermione?!” from the foot of the spiral staircase.

They all jumped, and gaped in absolute discombobulation at a wide-eyed, and very heavily
pregnant Nymphadora Tonks.

“What are you doing here?!” Harry, Hermione, and Tonks shouted all at once.
“Blimey, you’re huge!” said Ron with awe.

“Yeah, Weasley,” Theo sniped, “That tends to happen when a woman is with child.”

“Merlin, do you ever shut up?”

“Typical that you show up,” Tonks ranted as she waddled over, “On the day that Remus is away on
a mission. Oh gah,” she moaned as she eased herself into an armchair, “Anyway... how are you?
Where have you been? Why are you here? Is everything okay?”

“We’re fine, Tonks,” Harry said reassuringly, “And we’ve been... pretty much all over England.
We’re here to talk to Mr Lovegood. It’s... well... you’ll see soon enough. But how are you here?”

She mournfully rubbed her belly and sighed.

“The Death Eaters came for dad. I wasn’t at home... I think that was deliberate...” She paused to
lick her lips, “They tore the house down. Tortured mum and left her in... in... well, a state. Then
they took dad away.”

“He’s okay!” Hermione said hurriedly, “He got away. He was hiding out in Wales with Dean
Thomas and Dirk Cresswell.”

“What? You saw him?”

Ron shook his head, “Not exactly. We couldn’t reveal ourselves. But we heard them talk. He
sounded... alright.”

Tonks let out a sound that was made purely of relief.

“Thank... thank... fuck... Thank you.” There were tears in her eyes.

“How’s your mother?” Hermione enquired.

“Not good,” Tonks rasped, sobbing gently, “She doesn’t leave her room, doesn’t eat... I’d tell her
about dad, but she’s finally sleeping now after weeks...”

Hermione reached across and squeezed her hand.

“You know... Ron’s right. You’re huge. When are you due?”

Tonks huffed a watery laugh and wiped her eyes. “Six weeks. Can’t bloody wait. The little terror’s
a kicker. Apparently I was too –”

It was then that the elusive Xenophilius Lovegood finally made his entrance.

“Mr Potter,” he proclaimed with a bow (Theo rolled his eyes), “Mr Weasley, Miss Granger. Good
afternoon. Sorry for making you wait.” He strode over to a cabinet by the wall, and began tinkering
with bottles. “Infusion of Gurdyroots for everyone?” (–Theo’s fingers clenched tightly around
Hermione’s wrist –) “Ah, except you, of course, Tonks. It’s time for your bat milk brew.”

“Ah! Xenophilius, do I have to?”

“Yes, my dear. You will thank me when your child is born a seer. Now, Mr Potter... how may I help
you?”

Everybody had gathered in the garden to say goodbye.

The sun was a burning ember floating between two distant hills, turning the snow into gold.
Outside the boundary of the Lovegood’s property, the Death Eater sentries that they’d stunned three
hours ago were still snoozing in a heap on the ground.

Hermione and Theo stood slightly apart from the rest of the group.

“Did you really come here to talk about a children’s story,” Theo mumbled.

Hermione huffed. “Please don’t. I feel stupid enough as it is.”

“If you say this jaunt was a waste, I will shove you into a bush,” he warned.

“Of course not,” she said with mock solemnity, “I finally got a chance to sample some Gurdyroot
infusion!”

Theo stuck his tongue out at her. “Awful, innit?”

“Truly,” she agreed, “I feel sincerely sorry for you now.”

“Why, thank you.”

They hugged, and there was nothing sweet about the sorrow of parting. She then hugged Tonks and
Luna as well, nodded at Xenophilius, and took her place between Harry and Ron.

“Stay safe you three,” said Tonks.

“And you,” Harry nodded, “All of you.”

“Will do, friend,” Theo quipped with a sarcastic salute.

Laughing, Hermione took hold of Harry and Ron’s hands. The last thing she saw before
disapparating were Theo and Luna, arm in arm, smiling at her.
Chapter End Notes

1. "And a new day will dawn for those who stand long..." Stairway to Heaven, by Led
Zeppelin
2. Statue of Giordano Bruno, Ettore Ferrari
 Thirty-Seven
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been borrowed from DH.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

All prophecies were, in effect, self-fulfilling. They didn't so much tell the future as much as
influence it. They triggered events, planted ideas in people's minds, and hence, inevitably proved
themselves to be true.
Take a pinch of arithmancy, a handful of vague symbolism, liberally douse them in concentrated
theatrics... and there you have it: A recipe for a simple prophecy. Harry was the Chosen One
because Voldemort had decided to believe Trelawney's prediction. And once he'd decided that,
everything else fell in accordance.
There was a reason Time-Turners could only take you into the past – there was no possible way of
establishing a concrete future. Hermione remembered reading an article in The Theoretical Review
that had claimed that (with certain modifications,) a device could be conceived that constructed a
future based on probability and the users own predilections. Yet, it categorically stated that it would
be catastrophic to allow the creation of a timeline based on just one person's vision. No, really?

Now, if such practicality made her limited, narrow, and close-minded, then so be it. Xenophilius
Lovegood was welcome to go off on a glorious quest, riding on the back of a Crumple-Horned
Snorkack, to pull the all-powerful elder wand out of a (resurrection, undoubtedly) stone, and
gleefully lord over his court of blibblering whatsits.

"All right… Say the cloak existed. But what about the stone, Mr Lovegood? The thing you call the
Resurrection Stone?"

"What of it?"

"Well, how can that be real?"

"Prove that it is not."

"But that's – I'm sorry, but that's completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doesn't exist?
Do you expect me to get hold of – of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you could
claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't
exist!"

"Yes, you could. I am glad to see that you are opening your mind a little."
Inane, woolly, insufferable man... she completely understood why Theo regarded him with such
scorn.

The biggest problem at the moment, however, was that Harry had bought into the legend of the
Deathly Hallows completely. In fact, when he spoke of them, his face and tone had an unnervingly
greedy quality about them; she knew it to be the inception of a whole new fixation for him.
He believed he owned the cloak, was convinced that the stone lay in his snitch, and so he hungered
for the wand; the wand he believed You-Know-Who was currently seeking as well. Harry desired
to be the master of death. Hadn't Voldemort's devastating pursuit of immortality taught him
anything?

Bizarrely enough, it was Ron who brought a bit of equability to the table. With staggeringly
uncharacteristic diplomacy, he agreed that Harry's theory sounded very plausible, but insisted that
Hermione was right about needing to focus on the Horcruxes. This policy of appeasement did not
appease Harry.

"But don't you understand?" he said urgently, passionately, "If we have the Hallows, nothing else
will matter! We'll be invincible!"

"We still need to destroy the Horcruxes, Harry!" Hermione seethed, "You can't conveniently ignore
them!"

"Um, I think she's right," Ron mumbled.

"God, look at the bigger picture! This obsession with Hor–"

"Obsession?" Hermione spat fiercely, "We're not the ones with an obsession! We're the ones trying
to do what Dumbledore wanted us to do!"

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," Harry recited superciliously.

"Oh, I thought it was You-Know-Who we were supposed to be fighting?"

He threw his hands up in the air and walked away.

Days bled into days at a furious pace, like time was a feather caught in a gale. But so many things
remained constant, that even as weeks went by, it hadn't felt like they'd moved forward by even an
hour.
Harry could not – would not – stop thinking about the Hallows. In fact, his preoccupation had taken
an even more dangerous turn: He'd begun to deliberately try and infiltrate Voldemort's mind to
figure out his whereabouts, and consequently discover the location of the Elder wand. Hermione
had fought with him about that on three separate occasions... Not one of those occasions led to
anything positive.
As a stark contrast, the new, improved version of Ron made of sunshine and optimism, spent most
of his time pouring over his father's map, picking out places where he thought the remaining
Horcruxes might be. On six separate occasions, the three of them ventured out to explore his
supposition... Not one of those occasions led to anything fruitful.

And Hermione? She read. She read words that had meanings, which fell upon each other like
dominoes across pages... meanings that she, perhaps, picked up on. A little.

They were, once more, stuck in a state of complete cluelessness. I hope it's nice and toasty in hell,
Professor Dumbledore.

"Ron... Ron!" Hermione hissed, "Get... down." She pulled him back into a crouch and glared. "Are
you insane? Do you want them to catch us?"

"Bloody hell, calm down! I was just having a look..."

"And giving them a look in return?"

"They didn't fucking see me!" Ron retorted in a furious whisper, "I just –"

"Both of you shut up!" Harry growled lowly.

They were hunkered down behind an old, dilapidated cabinet inside the Riddle House. After an
hour of futile Horcrux-hunting, they were just set to leave when a gang of Snatchers barged in and
forced them to duck for cover.
There were five of them – grungy droogs in tattered black robes – and they were obviously more
than a little intoxicated. Swaying and teetering, they banged about the room talking in loud voices.
One of them was singing a song about a man who'd lost his lover to a Kelpie.

"Oh me bonnie floaterway wiff the ol 'orse..."

"Fuckin' runt took a chunk off me leg! Blimey! It 'urts!" said one with a grimy rag tied around his
calf.

"...me pretty lamb ter the bottom o the sea..."

"Oh button it. We'll 'ave yer ter a 'ealer tomorrow," replied another tall one with Jim Morrison hair,
"Need ter sleep now. There's beds upstairs, yeah then, eh, guv?"

"...He took 'er away, the demon 'orse..."

The leader among the Snatcher slurred, "Aye, there's beds. Let's go. Cop off yer arse, right Sammy.
We need ter be back in business early t'morrow! Struth!"

"...'er entrails be flotsam, ridin' em waves fer'all eternityyyy..."

Hermione, Harry, and Ron waited while the Snatchers ascended, (there were many thuds and ooofs
involved,) and then shot out of the house the second all was quiet.

She had the History of Magic open on her lap, and she was looking for any and every mention of
the Elder wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, etc. Her own wand was clamped between her
teeth as she attempted to gather her hair into a bun.
She jumped up in the air – wand, book fell to the ground – when, most unexpectedly and
horrifyingly, she felt... something... tickle the back of her neck. She spun around and saw Ron,
holding a thin strand of her hair between two of his fingers.

"Er, sorry," he muttered shyly, "You left this out..."

He walked closer, (far too close,) and wound that strand around her bun, while she stared dumbly at
the buttons on his shirt.

"There," he whispered thickly, "Perfect."

Hermione backed away rapidly, barely rushing out a "thanks," before jogging out of the tent. She
felt irritated and uncomfortable and...
Outside, Harry was muttering and twitching while sat on a tree stump with his eyes closed...

...and tired.

Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world's weight she had never chosen
to bear.

In Wimbourne they had another run in with some Snatchers.

The only reason they were there was because Ron felt that Voldemort might've wanted to live there,
I mean, you never know. A foolish proposition, but it was all they had.

Harry, fortunately, was under his invisibility cloak while Hermione and Ron stood back to back
with seven wands trained on them. It happened in a flash: One moment the Snatchers were leering
down at her, and in the next, they were flat on their backs, unconscious.

Harry gripped her shoulders hard when they'd apparated away to a distant, rainy marsh.

"The blackthorn didn't work Hermione! I tried and... Shit... but I got them all! I stunned them all
wandlessly! I got them all!"

With a slightly hysterical laugh, Hermione hugged him tightly.

The rain was unrelenting. The sound of water-pellets falling on the roof of their tent was the sound
of hundreds of machine guns on a rampage. Said roof kept springing leaks, so the three restless
inhabitants kept having to run around casting reparos.

Hermione was meticulously polishing Gryffindor's sword until the blade shone like a mirror.
Something burned in her pocket, and instantly her fingers sought the DA Galleon within.
'HALLOW, my dear buddy,' it read.

Rolling her eyes, Hermione replied, 'Sod off.'

'Don't be unpleasant.' –– 'Why don't you visit again?' –– 'Ask Xeno where the legendary Hopping
Pot's at'

'SOD. OFF.'

'No. –– 'All well?'

Her wand hovered over the coin for a moment... um... 'Well enough?' –– 'What's happening at your
end?'

'Draco's here.' –– 'Tonks is chasing him round the kitchen.'

'Why?'

'Wants him to feel his unborn cousin's kicking prowess'

Of course Hermione pictured it. Harry and Ron stared at her like she was insane when she began
tittering to herself.

With nothing better to do, they were moving on a daily basis. Sometimes just a few miles away, and
sometimes to the other side of the country. The process of packing up and setting up their camp was
ingrained in Hermione's muscle memory.

...I've got some real estate here in my bag...

In Chiddingfold Forest, Lee Jordan's voice rolled out of Ron's wireless:

"It is with great regret that we inform our listeners of the murders of Ted Tonks and Dirk Cresswell.
A goblin by the name of Gornuk was also killed. It is believed that muggleborn Dean Thomas and a
second goblin, both believed to have been travelling with Tonks, Cresswell, and Gornuk, may have
escaped. If Dean is listening, or if anyone has any knowledge of his whereabouts, his parents and
sisters are desperate for news. Meanwhile, in Gaddley, a muggle family of five has been found dead
in their home..."

Why had they told Tonks that her father was well? Why had they made her happy and got her
hopes up? What business did they have saying it when they'd only briefly heard the man's voice
months ago? Hermione felt like she might be sick.

And Dean... oh god. He had to be alive. She couldn't even think of the alternative.

There was Kingsley: "Muggles remain ignorant of the source of their suffering as they continue to
sustain heavy casualties..."

A bittersweet stab of relief; mum and dad were far, far away from all this.

Finally, Fred: "...Point is, people, don't get lulled into a false sense of security, thinking he's out of
the country. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but the fact remains he can move faster than Severus
Snape confronted with shampoo when he wants to, so don't count on him being a long way away if
you're planning to take any risks. I never thought I'd hear myself say it, but safety first!"

And then they were laughing.

"Good, eh?" Ron chortled.

"Brilliant!" Harry exclaimed.

Hermione sighed, "It's so brave of them. If they were found..."

"Well," said Ron, "they keep on the move, don't they? Like us."

Harry rubbed his hands together eagerly.

"But did you hear what Fred said? He's abroad! He's still looking for the Wand, I knew it!"

"Harry –"

"Come on, Hermione, why are you so determined not to admit it? Vol–"

"HARRY, NO!"

"–demort's after the Elder Wand!"

Ron was on his feet, screaming, "THE NAME'S TABOO! I told you, Harry! I told you we can't say
it anymore – we've got to put the protection back around us –quickly – it's how they find –"

But before Harry or Hermione could as much as move, there came a thunderous Crack! from
outside the tent.

"Come out of there with your hands up! We know you're in there! You've got half a dozen wands
pointing at you and we don't care who we curse!"

"Fuck!" Ron growled through gritted teeth.

There was a rustling outside... someone was tearing through the tent flap... Hermione's heart had
stopped beating. With barely a thought, she turned her wand onto Harry; "Aculeatum!" He doubled
over, and his face was rapidly swelling up right before her eyes...

They were in the tent now, Snatchers, three in number and, shit, oh fuck, one of them was Fenrir
Greyback. His eyes lit up when he saw her, and his sick tongue flicked out and dragged over his
upper lip.

"Well well," he rasped, and grabbed her by the arm. She resisted – clawed at his hands, put all her
weight behind pulling away – but to no avail.

Their wands were apprehended, and they were all dragged outside, where two more Snatchers
stood waiting.

"That's it then, eh, mate? Three kids? Pathetic 'aul this evenin'," said one.

("Gerrof me, gerrof me, GERROF ME," screamed Ron.)

"Oh, I don't know. That girl's a ravver not so bad 'un..."

"Back off, Scabior," Greyback barked. He pulled Hermione closer and traced his nose down her
cheek, "This one's mine. Delicious girl... what a treat... I do enjoy the softness of the skin..."

She whimpered; her stomach turned. It was truly terrible how primal fear was one of the few things
that her system just didn't seem to get desensitised to.

"Get – Off – Her!" Ron bellowed, and immediately received a blow to the face.

"No!" Hermione moaned.

"Search the tent," Scabior ordered.

Their false identities seemed to have convinced the band of Scary Men, and Hermione, Harry, and
Ron were bound and thrown onto the forest floor with their backs to two other captives.
"Anyone still got a wand?" Harry whispered.

"No." Hermione and Ron replied.

"This is all my fault," Harry lamented, "I said the name. I'm sorry –"

"Harry?" the person behind her gasped, and she desperately tried to twist and get a look, because
his voice... his voice...

"Dean?" Harry spluttered.

"It is you! Well, shit! If they find out who they've got –! They're only looking for truants to sell for
gold but –"

Dean stopped speaking as Greyback and two other Snatchers came closer.

"Well, Ugly," he spat at Harry, "If you're telling the truth, you've got nothing to fear from a trip to
the Ministry. I expect your father, Mister Dudley, will reward us just for picking you up."

"Hey!" someone shouted from just outside their tent, "Look at this!"

A Snatcher built like a bulldozer barrelled over, cradling Gryffindor's sword.

Well... they were truly done for now. Truly truly truly done. Hermione couldn't breathe –

"Ve–e–ery nice," Greyback purred, examining the sword, "Oh, very nice indeed. Looks goblin-
made, that. Where did you get something like this?"

"It's my father's," Harry said too quickly, "We borrowed it to cut firewood–"

"'ang on a chuffin' minute, Greyback! Look at this, in the Prophet!" Scabior cried, tearing out of the
tent, "'ermione Granger, the Mudblood who is known to be travelling with 'arry Potter."'

Hermione Granger's muddy eyes closed in horror. Done for. Done. Fucking. For.

Greyback squatted in front of her, peering at her face. "You know what, little girly," he crooned,
"This picture looks a hell of a lot like you."

"It isn't!" she yelped, "It isn't me!"

"...known to be travelling with Harry Potter."

Greyback looked at the three of them in awful silence for a long moment, (Oh, they were done for.)

"Well, this changes things, doesn't it?" He shifted so that he was crouched in front of Harry, and
asked in a dangerously mellow voice, "What's that on your forehead, Vernon?"
He lifted a finger and touched –

"Don't touch it!" Harry roared.

"I thought you wore glasses, Potter?"

"I found glasses! There was glasses in the tent, Greyback, wait—" Bulldozer-Snatcher disappeared
back inside, and then returned, brandishing Harry's glasses.

The glasses where then rammed onto Harry's face.

Greyback hummed in delight; "It is! We've caught Potter!"

They were so, so done for.

It was terribly dark and Hermione could hear music. Not some vaguely cadenced buzzing in her
ears, no; there was a full-fledged orchestra in her head. Every note, every treble and sharp was so
clear...

The doomed progression down the driveway was set to the tune of Berlioz's March to The Scaffold.

It was most likely a quiet night. Most likely, the sound of footsteps and the mewls of startled
peacocks was the only noise for miles. But the music in Hermione's head was at its crescendo.
Loud and wild! Symbols and trumpets! She wanted to pretend her wand was a baton, and she was a
wild-haired conductor. Fuck being a good man in a storm – she was a woman on the edge of an
ataque de nervios.

Greyback's filthy talons had broken through the skin on her arm.

Malfoy Manor erupted suddenly from between decorative foliage. It was indubitably a beautiful
building – Jacobean architecture, diamond-paned windows, tiny peaked turrets – but in Hermione's
head, the symphony morphed into the Addam's Family theme. Fittingly, the large front doors
opened with a dramatic creak. Hermione almost hoped that Narcissa Malfoy would snap her
fingers.

Instead she demanded, "What is this?"

"We're here to see He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!" Greyback announced.

"Who are you?" Mrs Malfoy sneered coldly.

"You know me," the feral werewolf rumbled, "Fenrir Greyback! We've caught Harry Potter!"

Harry was shoved into the light spilling out from inside the Manor.

"I know 'es swollen, ma'am, but it's 'im!" said Scabior. "If you look a bit closer, you'll see 'is scar.
And this 'ere, see the girl? The Mudblood who's been travelling around with 'im, ma'am. There's no
doubt it's 'im, and we've got 'is wand as well! 'Ere, ma'am –"

Tinkling chimes and little claps.

Narcissa Malfoy lowered her head to examine Harry.

"Bring them in," she said.

They were shoved into a long hallway where twin rows of Malfoy ancestors bared their teeth at
them.

Everyday it's a-getting closer,

Going faster than a rollercoaster

The drawing room was resplendent. A crystal chandelier bathed the vast, vault-like space in golden
light. The walls were dark purple and full of gilded mirrors.
Hermione was tossed from Greyback to Scabior. Her head was forced downwards, (a gorgeous
Afghani carpet covered the floor,) and Scabior gripped her tightly around the ribs, his fingers
pressed against the underside of her breasts.

"What is this?" Lucius Malfoy's icy, imperious voice called out.

"They say they've got Potter," his wife replied, "Draco, come here."

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper

Baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper
We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper
Baby I'm your man

La, la, la –

Hermione's head was jerked back with a forceful tug of her hair, and there before her, pale faced
and panic-stricken, was Draco Malfoy.
She'd never been this close to him before.

"Yes – yes," Mrs Malfoy was saying, "She was in Madam Malkin's with Potter! I saw her picture in
the Prophet! Look, Draco, isn't it the Granger girl?"

Draco looked at the Granger girl, and the Granger girl looked at Draco. Come on she pleaded,
Please, please, please.
Could he hear her? His eyes widened, just a touch... oh but they were grey... And unbidden, the
sound of Chopin (as played by Malfoy,) filled her head.
Please.
Chopin, crashing into... don't fear the reaper, cut through with static... oh god. She wanted to slap
her hands against her ears.
Malfoy's grey eyes... searching...
She let out a whisper of a sob, and he turned his face away. The golden light in the room fell on his
profile, throwing the distressed twist of his mouth into prominence.

"I... maybe... yeah."

"But then, that's the Weasley boy!" the elder Malfoy shouted, pulling Ron by the scruff of his neck,
"It's them, Potter's friends – Draco, look at him, isn't it Arthur Weasley's son… what's his name–?"

"Yeah. It could be."

Then Draco Malfoy turned his back to them.

Suddenly, the drawing room door flew open, and a new face pushed itself in front of Hermione's.
Bellatrix Lestrange's heavy-lidded eyes considered her penetratingly, until a glimmer appeared in
their inky depths.

"But surely," she murmured, "this is the Mudblood girl? This is Granger?"

"Yes, yes, it's Granger! And beside her, we think, Potter!" Lucius Malfoy exclaimed, "Potter and his
friends, caught at last!"

"Potter?! Are you sure? Well then, the Dark Lord must be informed at once!"

A kerfuffle broke out regarding who exactly would get the honour of summoning The Dark Lord.
Hermione panted, waiting, because it won't be long, yeah, yeah, yeah, but while they bickered and
nattered, they were all still alive…

And that's when Bellatrix spotted Gryffindor's sword in the bulldozer-Snatcher's grubby hands.

Pain.

Had she ever really known pain? Pain; pain that drives you insane, pain like the rain –

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?

"CRUCIO!"

Pain. Daggers are mundane, broken limbs - don't complain.

Oh what are those? Not painful – not at all.

"WHERE DID YOU GET THIS SWORD? WHERE?"

"We found it—we found it—PLEASE!"

"CRUCIO!"

Pain. It was inside her, it was a part of her, it was her.

Thine are the lidless eyes of night that stare upon our tears; mum and dad, glassy-eyed and
blanched, washed upon some nameless shore... Theo, Harry, Ron, Ginny, Luna, Neville...

"YOU'RE LYING, FILTHY MUDBLOOD, AND I KNOW IT! YOU HAVE BEEN INSIDE MY
VAULT AT GRINGOTTS! TELL THE TRUTH, TELL THE TRUTH! CRUCIO!"

…hanging limply like strange fruit on a barren tree.

Pain. Oh god, the pain. Make it stop. Let me go. PLEASE let me go –
Bismillah, NO… we will not let you go!
Let me go.

"WHAT ELSE DID YOU TAKE? WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT? TEL ME THE TRUTH OR, I
SWEAR, I SHALL RUN YOU THROUGH WITH THIS KNIFE! CRUCIO! CRUCIO!"

Pain like rain, pain like fire, pain like every unfulfilled desire; pain like Dix's Verwundeter; pain
like rain, pain like acid, pain that's absolute and tacit; pain like pain like pai–

"HOW DID YOU GET INTO MY VAULT? DID THAT DIRTY LITTLE GOBLIN IN THE
CELLAR HELP YOU?"

"We only met him tonight! We've never been inside your vault... It isn't the real sword! It's a copy,
just a copy!"

"CRUCIO!"

Electric pain, eclectic pain. Arising pain, surprising pain, utterly paralyzing pain...

And

Then
It

Stopped

"Draco, fetch the goblin! He can tell us whether the sword is real or not!"

And

Everything

Was

Black

From the blackness emerged a thread.

Fine and delicate like spider silk, it drifted towards her... but what was she? One with the shadows,
one with the blackness... she was nothing.
Her disembodied, nebulous sense of self watched the thin strand undulate.

But wait – she had a form. She had a head, and on it was hair, because she was dead certain that
something was stroking it. A large hand – a familiar, warm, soothing hand...

Dad? Dad?

"Dah –!"

She blinked up at the face looming above hers; it wasn't her father's, but one that was nearly as
comforting.

Theo's eyes were tired and foggy, his nose was red, his hair was a wreck, but his lips pulled into a
soft, tremulous smile.

"Hello, darling," he rasped.

"Wha – Wha –" Hermione breathed.

"Shhh," he whispered, "You're safe. It's alright."

Safe? What? She frowned... but then she remembered. Malfoy Manor – Bellatrix – Fuck. Theo,
however, anticipated her move, and pressed her back into bed the moment she tried to jump out of
it.

"Hermione! Calm down!"

"No! No – I – Harry! Ron! ...Dean!"

"They're fine," Theo asserted, "They're all fine. Please, Hermione. Listen to me. You got away. You
all got away!"

"We... got... away," she gasped, "How?"

"I'll tell you in a bit. First... I need to get Fleur. I'm under orders, see?"

"Wait... Fleur?"

"Yeah, this is her and Bill's place. Now stay right here, okay?"

She looked about her in the interim. It was a pretty little room she was in, the walls were unfinished
and roughly whitewashed with tiny white shells embedded in the dados, turquoise curtains in hung
front of the windows, and a large vase full of yellow gerberas sat on the teak dresser.

Fleur bustled in with a tray laden with phials, with Theo following close behind. She looked like
she'd been sleeping, yet still, in her silk dressing gown, she was radiant.

"'Ermione," she said kindly, "'ow are you?"

"I'm... fine?"

"Zat cannot be true," Fleur sniffed.

"No, really... I... I'm not in pain," she said with wonder, "I'm not in pain."

Fleur pursed her lips. "'Ave zis. Eet will make sure ze pain stays away –" She handed Hermione
some pale blue potion, "– and zis –" A colourless pungent potion, "– and zis –" A bright orange
potion. The last one tasted like sweet orange syrup.

"Where is everyone?" Hermione asked.

"Azleep," answered Fleur, "Eet's four in ze morning."

"What!" Hermione sputtered, "You mean I've been out for –"

"Eight hours, oui."

"Holy shit."

Both Fleur and Theo smirked at that.

"You're telling me?" Theo demanded, "You've been comatose. I'm the one who's been sitting at
your bedside... Eight hours of looking dour... it's probably given me wrinkles."
"I 'ave a potion for zat, too."

"Oh, you're a goddess, Fleur. Truly, a divine being, a spectacular woman –"

"Stop eet, silly boy," she laughed pertly, "'Ermione, you will need three more doses. I will see you
in a few hours."

"Thank you so much, Fleur. Goodnight."

"Yeah, sweet dreams, Fle–"

Theo's ardent wishes died out as Fleur had already left the room.

Aiming an exasperated smile at him, Hermione said, "Et tu?"

"What?"

"Just like every other male, you turn into an idiot around her."

He reared back resentfully. "Um, no. Actually, as you very well know, I'm always an idiot."

"Oh right," she conceded laughingly.

His look of good humour abruptly changed to one of anguish.

"Oh Hermione," he bemoaned, "How could you get caught? Fucking hell."

She lowered her eyes and stared at the pale blue duvet covering her legs.

"It was an accident. Ha – someone said You-Know-Who's name, and –"

"Come off it," he spat, "Someone. I know it was Potter. He admitted it."

"It was an accident!"

"Obviously it was an accident. I know he bloody well wouldn't call on the Snatchers because he
fancied some company. I'm just saying he's too boneheaded to think before he fucking speaks!"

"What happened, Theo?" she mumbled thickly, "How did we escape?"

He sighed. "Well, the moment you arrived at Malfoy Manor, the Order's contingency plan kicked
into action –"

"Contingency plan?" Hermione parroted, puzzled.

"Well, yes!" Theo exclaimed incredulously, "The three of you really do live in your own little
bubble, don't you? Did you honestly think the Order wouldn't have something planned for if...
when... you heroes got yourself caught?!"

"Oh," she whispered weakly.

His hardened expression melted a bit as he sat down on the chair beside her bed.
Taking her hand in his, he continued, "Draco informed Lupin as soon as he could – yes, Draco.
How can you still look surprised?!"

"I thought... At the Manor... He sold us out..."

"For Merlin's sake, what else could he have done? He would've hardly been able to do any good if
he'd blown his cover! So, the moment he could get away, he informed Lupin, who in turn rallied the
rest of us, and –"

"You as well?"

"Of course!" he said indignantly.

"Who else – "

"Luna, Shacklebolt, some Weasleys, Jones, Diggle... We called Dobby to get us through the Malfoy
wards –"

"Wait! Dobby the House-Elf?"

"Exactly how many Dobby's do you know?" he huffed, "Yeah, Dobby the House-Elf. Anyway,
when we got to the Manor... you were already unconscious... Draco had just let Potter, Weasley, and
Thomas out of the cellar... Then, well, we charged. There was a big, old melée, while Dobby
brought people back here in turns. We had them outnumbered... But fucking Bellatrix called You-
Know-Who. We were out of time. Panicked. And then, Dobby saved us. He was... unbelievable. He
dropped a blooming chandelier on Bellatrix. He disarmed – he actually disarmed – Narcissa. He
brought us here, I think, seconds before You-Know-Who reached the Manor."

Hermione was reeling.

She swallowed a few times, before shakily whispering, "Wow."

"Yeah," Theo said, but uncomfortably... there was still something he hadn't told her.

"What?" she asked at once.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Dobby... didn't make it."

"No," she groaned.

He shook his head; "Bellatrix chucked her knife at him just as he was disapparating. It... met its
mark."

"Oh god," she moaned, tears pooling in her eyes, "How – Harry –?"

"Not good. Kept trying to shake him awake..." he sighed, "We spent nearly the entire night digging
his grave manually. Luna made a speech... Potter thought he'd have liked that."

"Yes," she whimpered, "He would've."

"I'll take you to see it... later..."

"Yes, please."

"...but you need to sleep now. Hell, I need to sleep." He stood up, and then bent to lightly kiss her
forehead.

"Theo," she murmured, "Thank you."

He laid his palm against her cheek, and said, "Thank you for not dying."

When she awoke, daylight was filtering through the curtains, and it had turned the whole room
greenish-blue. She got uncertainly onto her feet, her legs wobbled and she had to grasp the bedside
table to keep from falling. Slowly, she inched towards the window and looked outside. Bill and
Fleur's house was perched on the edge of a cliff, surrounded by stalks of lavender. The sky was pale
blue, and beneath it was the sea, frothing and churning.

After a quick shower, she felt rejuvenated and much more stable. Stark naked, she peered closely at
her reflection in the bathroom mirror. There was a scrape on her knee, nail marks on her arm, and
multiple shallow cuts on her neck. She wanted to erase them completely; she wanted no residues of
that awful night to claim any part of her body... that's when she realised her wand had been taken
away by Greyback.

It was true what they said – the feeling of losing one's wand is akin to losing a limb.

It took her twice as long as usual to climb down stairs. She stood for a moment in the airy hallway,
listening to the sound of the crashing waves. The muted drone of conversation emitted from a room
to her left, so that's where she went.

It was a fairly small kitchen, with a fairly small table that was crowded with people pouring over
breakfast. There were Harry and Ron, Theo and Luna, Bill and Fleur, Dean and... Ollivander?
Perplexed Hermione knocked on the doorjamb to get their attention.

Harry got to her first and wrapped her up in his arms.

"How are you?" he said, "You were amazing – coming up with that story when she was hurting you
like that –"

"I'm okay," she replied softy, and then Ron took hold of her.

He didn't say anything, but held her long and tightly and when he lightly brushed his lips against
her cheek she pulled away quickly.
She squeezed into a tiny open space between Dean and Luna, both of whom patted her back and
smiled.

"It's good to see you, Dean," she said, helping herself to some hot scrambled eggs.

"Yeah," he grinned, scratching the back of his neck, (his arm, she noticed, was heavily bandaged,)
"Not exactly how I'd prefer to be reunited with my friends, though."

Hermione laughed, "What, trauma and torture aren't your idea of fun?"

"Nah. I say we grab a pint or something next time."

"Sure."

"I should warn you, Thomas," Theo threw in, "Drunk Hermione will prove to be only a little less
traumatising –"

"Shut up."

"And drunk Hermione and Potter – ooooh la. You might not survive it –"

"Shut up, Nott."

"'ermione," Fleur yelled over Dean, Theo, Bill, and Luna's laughter, "'urry up and eat please. Eet's
time for your potions."

But suddenly, the loud sound of someone apparating came from outside. Instantly, they were all
alert and on their feet, (with the exception of Ollivander, who made even blinking look tiring,) and
jumbled out of the room to the main door. Hermione missed her wand desperately.

"Who is it?" Bill called, pressing his ear against the wood. No reply. "Who is it?" he tried again.

Nothing.

Tentatively, he peeled back the door, wand gripped tightly in his hand...
He gasped. Then he charged outside.

The rest of them all crowded around the open door. Hermione grabbed onto Harry's upper arms for
leverage and peered over his shoulder. She saw a cloaked figure lying limply on the ground just
beyond the large veranda. Bill scooped the wilted, unconscious stranger up, and pulled one of their
arms over his shoulder; their head lolled forward limply.

"Who is that?" Ron shouted, but Bill didn't seem to hear.

 Hermione was unexpectedly jostled into Harry's back as Theo tore through the lot of them, looking
very white in the face. He took the stranger's other arm and braced one of his own around their
waist...

The stranger's hood fell back.

Draco Malfoy had arrived at Shell Cottage.

Chapter End Notes

1. "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.": The Thomas
theorem, formulated by William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas
2. "Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything...": The Beautiful and Damned, by F. Scott
Fitzgerald
3. "I've got some real estate here in my bag": America by Simon & Garfunkel
4. "The March to the Scaffold": Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz
5. Everyday by Buddy Holly
6. (Don’t Fear) The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult
7. It Won't Be Long by The Beatles
8. Have You Ever Seen The Rain? by Creedence Clearwater Revival
9. "Thine are the lidless eyes...": Hymn to Physical Pain, by Rudyard Kipling
10. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
11. Verwundeter, Otto Dix
 Thirty-Eight
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been borrowed from DH.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Though the hallway was open and draughty, the air felt thick. Hermione, Harry, Ron, and Luna
stood in a line by the wall, all with tension in their postures.

Bill and Theo had carried the unconscious Malfoy upstairs, and Fleur had hastily followed, with her
medical supplies in tow. Then, old Ollivander had wheezed and shuffled his way up three steps
before Dean hurried to help him climb.

“I hope he’s alright,” Hermione muttered, wringing her hands uneasily.

Ron clicked his tongue dismissively, and brusquely demanded, “What the fuck is he doing here?”

“He’s hurt!”

“Yeah, and? Couldn’t his mummy take care of him?”

“Ron! He’s been helping us...”

“Please. You were out cold, but he didn’t do much helping at his precious manor. Just stood there
like a sodding chump.”

Luna pushed away from the wall and faced Ron while wearing an abnormally sharp expression.

“He’s done a lot, Ron,” she said forcefully, “He used to show up hurt at my house too. But... it was
never this bad...”

She bit her lip and gazed up the staircase.

Then Dean reappeared and sat himself on the lowest step.

“Fleur’s working on him, I think,” he said, “The door’s closed, and I couldn’t hear anything...”

All of a sudden, amid great thundering treads, Bill charged down the stairs with a wild look about
him.

“They’re planning to attack the Burrow,” he cried frantically, “We have half an hour to move
everyone to Muriel’s... I have to go...”
“What?!” Ron spluttered, “How –”

“Malfoy had this in his hand,” Bill chucked a wad of parchment at Ron, as he pulled his boots and
cloak on.

Ron held the parchment out so they could all see; Attack on Weasley home 10 AM, it read, written
in a hand Hermione was familiar with.

“I’m coming with you,” Ron stated strongly.

“Yes,” Harry began, “Me t –”

“No,” Bill declared.

“Bill!”

“Harry, no. You know what we all went through to get you here! And you’re going to stay here. Oh,
stuff it, Ron. There’s time enough right now to get everyone to safety... It’s a good thing that
Ginny’s on holiday… If she’d been at Hogwarts they could have taken her before we reached
her…”

With that Bill walked out of the cottage. They heard the crack as he disapparated.

Ron let out a shuddering sigh and fell back heavily against the wall. Thinking about the Weasleys
being in the line of fire made Hermione’s insides squirm too, and she touched Ron’s arm an offered
a weakly consoling, “They’ll be okay.”

But he shook her hand away and growled, “Sure. You’re more worried about Malfoy anyway.”

“Ron, that’s not true.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he sniped, and then stomped off towards the back of the house, possibly to escape
into the back garden.

Two tiny pulsing spots of pain developed in Hermione’s temples as she slid down to the ground.
Head pressed against her knees, she groaned. Ron simply did not understand that Theo wouldn’t
ever be the same again if something were to happen to Malfoy.

Then Ginny’s face bloomed in her mind’s eye, and she was overcome with guilt.

Dumbledore could rave about the glory of love all he wanted, but sometimes, Hermione wished
that she really could stop herself from caring. From worrying. From being god damned
incapacitated by anxiety.

In the midst of her agonizing, Harry sat on his heels next to her… she was surprised; she thought
he’d have gone after Ron…

“Listen, Hermione,” he whispered, “While everyone’s busy, we should go talk to Griphook… and
Ollivander.”

She paused, wiping her tears (where did those come from?) on her sleeve, and blinked at him.
“What about?”

“Just… You’ll see.”

“But what about Ron?”

“We’ll fill him in later. Come on.”

Griphook the Goblin hadn’t bothered to wash, and he was splayed defiantly on Fleur’s pretty floral
bed sheet when Hermione and Harry entered ‘his’ room. In one hand he held the sword of
Gryffindor, and he used the other to stroke his short, pointy black beard. His beady eyes watched as
Hermione sat on the chair by the dressing table, and Harry stood with his arms crossed at the foot
of the bed.

“Sorry to bother you,” said Harry, “How are your legs?”

“Painful, but mending.”

It was astonishing, how quickly his eyes were darting between his two unwanted guests. He looked
hostile, yes... but there was a definite undercurrent of curiosity in his gaze.

“Griphook,” Harry commenced gravely, I need to ask –”

“You rescued me. A goblin,” Griphook interrupted bitterly.

“What?”

“You brought me here,” he spat, “Saved me.”

“Well, I take it you’re not sorry?” Harry asked with annoyance.

“No, Harry Potter,” Griphook replied slowly, “but... you are a very odd wizard.”

“Right. Well,” Harry muttered, “I need some help, Griphook, and you can give it to me...” He
stalled, and the Goblin frowned, “...I need to break into a Gringotts vault.”

*
During the short journey between Griphook’s room and Ollivander’s, Hermione grabbed Harry’s
wrist and asked in a zealous whisper: “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? There’s a
Horcrux in the Lestrange’s vault?”

“Yes! Bellatrix was terrified when she thought we’d been in there; she was beside herself. Why?
What did she think we’d seen, what else did she think we might have taken? Something she was
petrified You-Know-Who would find out about… I don’t think he’d have told Bellatrix it was a
Horcrux, though. Probably told her it was a treasured possession and asked her to place it in her
vault. The safest place in the world for anything you want to hide, Hagrid told me... except for
Hogwarts... Come on – Ollivander now.”

Ollivander’s room was crammed with single beds, five of them to be precise, and Hermione
inferred that it was where all the boys... the men... slept.

It was dark inside; the curtains had been tightly drawn, and the weary wandmaker was lying on the
bed furthest from the window, as though even the slightest hint of light would cause him pain.
Spending a year in a cellar would do that to a person.

“Mr Ollivander,” Harry murmured as he sat on the empty bed next to his, “I hope we’re not
disturbing you terribly.”

“My dear boy,” the skeletal old man croaked, “I thought I was doomed to die in that place. If you
hadn’t come, I would never have escaped. I am happy to help you in any way I can.”

Harry nodded, and from his mokeskin pouch he took out the broken fragments of his wand.

“Can you mend this?” he beseeched.

Ollivander surveyed the pieces carefully, and then shook his head with no little regret. “No. I am
sorry… very sorry… but a wand that has suffered this degree of damage cannot be repaired by any
means that I know of.”

Harry hung his head for a moment; Hermione yearned to comfort him, but didn’t know how.
Nonetheless, he recovered soon, and then took out two more wands.

“Can you identify these?”

Ollivander took the first in his hand and held it close to his clouded eyes; “Twelve-and-three-
quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belongs to Bellatrix Lestrange.”

“And this one?”

“Hawthorn and unicorn hair. Ten inches precisely. Reasonably springy. This was the wand of Draco
Malfoy.”

Harry started. “Was? Isn’t it still his?”

“Perhaps not. If you took it–”

“–I did–”

“–then it may be yours. Of course, the manner of taking matters. Much also depends upon the wand
itself. In general, however, where a wand has been won, its allegiance will change.”

Harry pursed his lips. This, apparently, was exactly the preface he’d hoped for. The situation was
primed for a conversation about wand loyalties, and how they are won... in particular, how the
loyalty of the most powerful wand in the world may be won.

Bunches of light purple lavender, tall shoots of vivid blue viper’s bugloss, clusters of pretty pink
sea thrift, stalks of bright yellow mullein, multiple shrubs of spindly green rosemary dotted with
pale blue flowers, wrinkly silvery-green clumps of sea kale... the tiny garden outside Shell Cottage
had a wild, rustic charm.

Ron was sitting atop the low boundary wall, swinging his legs vacantly. As he saw Hermione and
Harry making their way towards him, he waved somewhat sheepishly.

“Hey,” he began, then cleared his throat, “Er, sorry for having a go at you, Hermione.”

She hopped up on the wall next to him and bumped his shoulder.

“We saw Bill in the kitchen on the way out. Seems your family’s all settled in at Muriel’s.”

“Hah,” he barked, “Not for long. Fred and George aren’t going to let things remain settled. You
have no idea how much they love fucking with that old bat.”

“I can imagine,” Hermione smiled.

They both then looked at Harry, who hadn’t partaken in their amusement. He was staring out at the
heap of dirt under which poor Dobby lay. So Hermione took it upon herself to tell Ron about
everything they’d gleaned from their conversations with Griphook and Ollivander.

“Wow,” Ron breathed, looking awestruck, “So the Elder Wand really does exist.”

“It would...” Hermione muttered grudgingly, “...seem so.”

Then Harry spoke, and as he did, he kept rubbing his scar distractedly. She knew immediately that
he was half inside Voldemort’s head, and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from railing at
him.

“Gregorovitch had the Elder Wand a long time ago,” he said in a hushed tone, “I saw You-Know-
Who trying to find him. When he tracked him down, he found that Gregorovitch didn’t have it
anymore: It was stolen from him by Grindelwald and –” Harry paused and lightly shook his head,
“– and Grindelwald used the Elder Wand to become powerful. Then, at the height of his power,
when Dumbledore knew he was the only one who could stop him, he duelled Grindelwald and beat
him, and he took the Elder Wand.”

“Dumbledore had the Elder Wand?” Ron exclaimed, “But then – where is it now?”

“At Hogwarts,” Harry muttered, eyes shut.

Ron sprang off the wall; “But then, let’s go! Harry! Let’s go and get it before he does!”

Harry opened his eyes and looked dazedly at Ron.

“It’s too late for that.” He pressed his fingers against his forehead. “He knows where it is. He’s
there now.”

Ron turned purple.

“Harry!” he raged, “How long have you known this – why have you been wasting time? Why did
you talk to Griphook first? We could have gone – we could still go –”

“Ron,” Hermione cut in sharply; Harry had fallen to his knees.

“No,” he moaned, “Hermione’s right... Dumbledore didn’t want me to have it... didn’t want me to
take it. He wanted me to get the Horcruxes... I’m not supposed to ...I’m supposed to get the
Horcruxes....”

He slumped forward in a faint.

“Harry!” Hermione cried, leaping to his side, “Ron... Ron, help me!”

Together, they laid him on his back on the soft grass.

“Shall we take him inside?” Ron asked, his brow puckered.

“No,” she sighed, “There’ll be too many questions. We’ll just have to wait it out here.”

And so they did.

A perverse tale for all to enjoy: Once, there was an evil, unhinged witch who had a powerful wand,
and she used that powerful wand to torture a girl. Two days later, the girl was given that same wand
to use.

Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. When Hermione looked at it, all she knew, heard,
and felt was crucio crucio crucio.
Something horrible bubbled under her skin.

If help hadn’t arrived, that wand would’ve done to her what it had done to Frank and Alice
Longbottom. Or if luck had been on her side, it would have done to her what it had done to Sirius.

She picked it up, reluctantly, and it felt wrong and vile and icy cold, even though the rational part of
her knew that, just like any other wand, it was as good or bad as the one who wields it.

“Engorgio,” she chanted, aiming at a beautifully formed thrift flower. It grew, but all its petals fell
off – all its beauty was lost.

That wand was too accustomed to destruction... she hated it. She really hated it.

Setting it down on the garden table, she sat on a wrought iron chair and pulled a small corked vial
out of her beaded bag. The single strand of deep black hair within was like a helminth primed to
suck the blood out of any and everyone. How lucky it was that Fleur still hadn’t gotten around to
washing their clothes... how lucky it was that they’d found Bellatrix’s hair caught in the fibres of
Hermione’s jumper. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

She’d get the chance to inhabit the body that had tormented her. Naff sense of justice, oh world.

It was then that the one who claimed to be the creator of the warped, callous world, joined her.

“Hi, Theo,” she greeted softly.

“Hello,” he replied, sitting next to her.

“How is he?”

Theo ran a hand down his tired face.

“Better. Woke up for a bit, then Fleur potioned him up again, so he fell asleep.”

Hermione watched him as he chewed his tongue and scratched at the uncharacteristic scruff that
lined his jaw.

“But he’ll be... all right?”

“Yes.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“The usual,” Theo shrugged with affected airiness, “You-Know-Who went a bit potty after the
Chosen Potty escaped his clutches for the millionth time. Then Draco decided to use the last of his
strength to apparate here so that Bill could be warned about the attack on the Burrow.”

The gaze he fixed on her was both expectant and challenging, and she had to look away. There was
a lump in her throat made of guilt, empathy, and admiration – but she could neither expel it nor
swallow it down. It sat in her windpipe until her lungs were liquid; long after Theo had left her and
gone back inside.

Hermione, Harry, and Ron stood in the shadowy landing talking in heated whispers. They’d just
had a short, unpleasant meeting with Griphook, where the goblin, sitting like a proud Lord on his
overlarge bed, had refused to let them see the map of Gringotts that he had drawn, until they
promised to give him Gryffindor’s sword. It was a setback they hadn’t anticipated at all.

“He’s having a laugh,” Ron scoffed, “We can’t let him have that sword.”

Harry looked at Hermione uneasily.

“Is it true? Was the sword stolen by Gryffindor?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered dejectedly, “Wizarding history often skates over what the wizards
have done to other magical races, but there’s no account that I know of that says Gryffindor stole
the sword.”

“Codswallop. It’ll be one of those goblin stories,” said Ron indifferently, “about how the wizards
are always trying to get one over on them. I suppose we should think ourselves lucky he hasn’t
asked for one of our wands.”

“Goblins have got good reason to dislike wizards, Ron! They’ve been treated brutally in the past.”

“Well, they aren’t exactly fluffy little bunnies, though, are they? They’ve killed plenty of us.
They’ve fought dirty too.”

“But arguing with Griphook about whose race is most underhanded and violent isn’t going to make
him more likely to help us, is it?” Hermione snapped.

“Okay,” he said, throwing his hands up like he couldn’t deal with how difficult she was being,
“How’s this? We tell Griphook we need the sword until we get inside the vault and then he can
have it. There’s a fake in there, isn’t there? We switch them, and give him the fake.”

“He’d know the difference better than we would!” Hermione said with disbelief, “He’s the only one
who realised there had been a swap!”

“Yeah, but we could scarper before he realizes –”

Well, apparently, her glare still held some power, because Ron’s jaw snapped shut and his head
lowered.

“That... is despicable. Ask for his help, then double-cross him? And you wonder why goblins don’t
like wizards?”

“Alright, alright!” he growled, “It was the only thing I could think of! What’s your solution, then?”

“We need to offer him something else, something just as valuable.”

“Brilliant, I’ll go and get one of our ancient goblin-made swords and you can gift wrap it.”

As Hermione and Ron glared at each other, Harry spoke up – “Maybe he’s lying. Griphook, I mean.
Maybe Gryffindor didn’t take the sword. How do we know the goblin version of history’s right?”

“Does it make a difference?” Hermione sighed.

“Changes how I feel about it,” Harry muttered, ’We’ll... tell him he can have the sword after he’s
helped us get into the vault – but we’ll be careful to avoid telling him exactly when he can have it.”

“Harry!” Hermione exclaimed, “We can’t –”

“He can have it,” Harry said over her, “After we’ve used it on all of the Horcruxes. I’ll make sure
he gets it then. I’ll keep my word.”

“But that could be years!”

“I know that, but he needn’t. I won’t be lying... really.”

“I don’t like it,” Hermione said angrily.

“Nor do I, much,” Harry confessed.

“Well, I think its genius,” Ron chirruped with a grin, “Let’s go and tell –”

Suddenly, the door at the opposite end of the hallway flew open with a bang. And there, pale and
lean, in striped pyjamas and bare feet, stood Draco Malfoy in his considerably diminished glory. He
was glowering at Harry; his entire frame seemed to be trembling with strain.

“Give me my wand,” he rasped dangerously.

It took Harry a few seconds to gather his wits; then he squared his shoulders and said, “No.”

Malfoy’s eyes flashed. He took two steps forward and levelled the wand he was holding at Harry.
“I wasn’t asking, Potter. Give. Me. My. Wand.”

Theo and Luna appeared behind Malfoy, looking hassled.

“It’s not your wand anymore, Malfoy,” Harry said loftily, “Winners, keepers. Who lent you theirs?”

“My mother.”

Harry laughed, which really wasn’t the best thing to do in such situations.

“Expelliarmus,” Malfoy bellowed, but Harry cut him off with a quick shield charm. “I’m not
fucking around – give it back. Now.”

“I told you,” Harry snapped, “it isn’t your wand anymore! It won’t answer to you now... I won it
from you – ”

“Won it?! You snatched it out of my hand –”

(“Draco,” Theo called pleadingly, but was completely ignored.)

“Well, you were attacking –”

“I was not attacking anyone. Expelliarmus!”

Harry’s shield charm held. Ron sniggered. “Right. You were cowering in a corner. Served you
right, having your wand taken away.”

Silence iced over the walls, the stairs, the railing, and them.

Malfoy turned his enraged gaze on Ron, and asked in a voice that was fittingly frosty, “What would
you have had me do, Weasley? Attack? Maybe I should have helped dear Aunt Bella while she had
her fun with Granger here?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Ron thundered, “You should have fought with us! You’re supposed to be on our
side, aren’t you? I knew that was all bullshit – You coward!”

“Coward?” Malfoy stalked forward, brandishing his mother’s wand, and Ron quickly whipped out
his own, “You wanted me to fight with you? Given myself away? You fucking bellend. Who’d have
told you about the plan to burn your pathetic little hovel to the ground then? Your family would all
be dead now. Or worse. That pretty little sister of yours would be very popular among–”

“Confingro!” roared Ron, “Aduro!” shouted Harry, and “Protego!” cried Theo, Hermione and Luna.

“Stop it!” Hermione shrieked, “Stop!”

“Incisura!”

“Back off, Weasley” Theo snarled, storming ahead to stand next to Malfoy.
“Expelliarmus, Expelliarmus, EXPELLIARMUS!” Malfoy was unrelenting, and Harry was forced
to put his shield back up.

There was a strange suctioning noise, a flash of blue light, and all four boys were pinned against
the walls.
Luna, evidently, had had the good sense to run down and call Bill.

“You idiots,” he panted, glaring at each of them in turn, “What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

With the exception of Theo, they all struggled against the invisible force that held them.

“Sorry, Bill –”

“– this arsehole Death Eater –”

“– my wand back –”

“Not a fucking chance!”

“Shut up!” Bill bellowed.

And they did. Hermione was more than a little awed by the forcefulness the usually laidback man
could summon.

“Bill,” Ron began ardently, “You need to get rid of this Death Eater here –”

“Not another word! I’m not going to ask you to get along, because obviously that involves more
maturity than you are capable of showing. But I will not allow you to tear my house down. We’re
all on the same side here... Yes, Ron... nobody here is a Death Eater.”

“Mr Malfoy,” came a quivering voice from across the hall.

They all stared as Ollivander shuffled out of his room and stood before Malfoy.

“Please calm yourself. I will make you a new wand, as soon as I’ve recovered my strength.”

Malfoy blinked, and slowly, all fury drained away from his face. “I – erm – I don’t –”

“Young man,” Ollivander continued, “You showed me kindness during the darkest hours of my
long life. I would be honoured to make you another wand.”

“Thank you,” Malfoy muttered, frowning like he didn’t quite believe the old man.

After a long moment of silence, Bill let his prisoners down. Malfoy stormed back into his room,
Theo followed listlessly, Luna cautiously. Ron shoved past Bill and Harry and disappeared
downstairs. Sharing a hopeless look with Hermione, Bill went on to help Ollivander back into bed.
And that left two – Hermione and Harry – staring uncomfortably at all the closed doors.

“Tea?”

Fleur grinned up at them from the foot of the stairs, next to a nervous looking Dean and, oh... sure.
Why not? Tea!

“Honestly, Fleur,” Hermione insisted, “You and Bill should take this room. Luna and I will be
perfectly comfortable sleeping in the living room.”

From her table-transfigured-into-a-cot, Luna nodded in fervent agreement.

“Nonsense,” Fleur chided, “You are our guests. You must ‘ave ze room.”

“No, please –”

“I weel not ‘ear it,” Fleur added firmly, “Sleep well.”

And with that, she breezed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“Oh well,” Hermione sighed.

“You tried,” Luna smiled consolingly, “Goodnight, Hermione.”

“Goodnight.”

Luna curled up under her duvet and Hermione doused the lamps... it took three tries with Bellatrix’s
wand. She wandered over to her bed, but didn’t get in; she wasn’t ready for sleep yet. Her mind
was burdened, and she knew that if she closed her eyes, she risked reliving that awful night at
Malfoy Manor. So she strolled over to the window and gazed outside, where slowly, silently, now
the moon, walks the night in her silvery shoon.

The scene outside was all silver and black. Beyond the garden wall, at the edge of the cliff, stood a
tall, male figure facing the swirling sea, and it was like the moonlight itself had been spun into fine
gossamer strands and placed on his head. A few minutes later, he was joined by another tall, Theo-
shaped figure. They watched the sea, and Hermione watched them.
Yawning like a lion, (because it was a very wide yawn; she was in no way alluding to her
Gryffindor-ness, thank you very much,) Hermione dragged her feet all the way down to the kitchen,
desperate for a large mug of very, very sweet coffee.

Luna had been all sunshine and butterflies in the morning, skipping off to wake Theo in her very
special way, the details of which Hermione had expunged from her mind.

She stopped dead at the kitchen door, and dread pooled in her very empty belly. Couldn’t she catch
a break? Why did Malfoy have to be the only person at the table. Where were Bill and Fleur?
Dean? Ollivander. Anyone.
He appeared to be engrossed in reading the paper, and she considered waiting for someone else to
show up, but her stomach and head both protested so vehemently at that notion that she
straightened her spine and marched her way to the chair furthest away from Malfoy. She didn’t
look up to see if he’d acknowledged her presence.

The French press was full and steaming, much to Hermione’s relief. The delicious smell of coffee
filled the room as she poured the liquid into her mug. Then she added milk... just the right amount...
and then sugar... sugar...
Sugar...?

Oh honey honey.

The sugar was at the other end of the table, tightly wrapped up in long, pale fingers. Slowly, her
eyes lifted up to Malfoy’s face, and he was looking right at her. His expression was utterly blank,
but Hermione recognised a dare when she saw one. Her blood boiled a little.

“Pass the sugar, Malfoy.”

Her inflection was crisp and clear; perhaps a little higher than necessary, but two out of three
wasn’t bad.

“I think,” Malfoy said snootily, “You forgot a word there.”

“Please,” she uttered through gritted teeth.

“Hmm,” he spun the canister around thoughtfully, “If I give it to you, will you thank me?”

“Excuse me?”

“I just really want to know what earns your gratitude,” he continued lightly, “I mean, I’ve saved
your life on two occasions so far, and haven’t received a word of thanks. So will handing you this
little canister do it?”

Hermione stared at the ridiculous, coolly inquisitive façade he was presenting her with. She had
expected, if they spoke at all, another explosive showdown... but this... this was...

“Just pass me the damned sugar.”

“Damned?” He raised his eyebrows, “Is it damned because I’m holding it?”

“Accio sugar,” Hermione growled, thankful for her wandless summoning skills.
She was considerably less thankful for Malfoy’s seeker skills, as his hand shot out and stopped the
canister from zooming towards her.

“Sorry, Granger. I am a selfless man, it’s true, but there are limits to my generosity.” His mask had
slipped, he looked explicitly angry.

“You’re insane!”

“And you’re an intolerable little ingrate!”

“So that’s why you’re doing all this then?” Hermione spat, “You want to be showered with
appreciation and accolades and –”

“You don’t know the first thing about why I’m doing this!”

He was flushed in his anger, and his mouth was turned down. For a fleeting second, Hermione
considered just saying it... considered just thanking him... but she couldn’t. The words wouldn’t
form – they simply wouldn’t – not when he was looking at her the way he did when he said
Mudblood.

“You’re pathetic.”

He was on his feet instantaneously.

“I saved your life,” he rumbled.

She stood up, too. “Well, bully for you!”

“Oh, hey, hullo! What’s this here?”

Theo and Luna walked slowly into the kitchen, looking bright and lively.

“Just what I like to see early in the morning,” Theo quipped as he pulled a chair out for his
girlfriend, “Two of my favourite people looking like they want to kill each other.” He paused, as
though an unexpected thought had struck him, “That’s what it was, right? You weren’t about to
jump at each other and have it off...?”

“Theo!” two voices - one high, one low – cried, harmonised by their tone of horror.

Hermione sat back down quickly; she would never, ever in her whole entire life look at Malfoy
again.

“I was just making sure,” Theo said defensively, “Thin line, and all that.”

“You’re an arse,” Malfoy snapped.

“Draco, could you pass me the sugar?” Luna asked.

It couldn’t be helped, Hermione looked at Malfoy. Again, she found him looking back at her.

“What... didn’t I give you more than enough sugar earlier?”

Malfoy’s face twisted. “Here,” he barked, pushing the canister towards Luna.

“Thank you, Draco.”

He – bugger it all – smirked, and Hermione looked away. Luna began humming Greensleeves.

With many a thumps and bumps, them of the ungraceful gait - Harry, Ron, and Dean - appeared at
the kitchen door, and like Hermione, they froze.

“For Merlin's sake,” Theo lamented, “Just come sit down. Show Bill that you really are capable of
behaving like adults.”

Ron’s ears turned red, Harry scowled, Dean sniffed, but they all (surprisingly) obeyed.

“Where are Bill and Fleur?” Hermione asked.

“Muriel’s,” Ron muttered, “Needed to restock their potions stash.”

There was a long stretch of silence, during which everybody busied themselves with their mugs
(and Hermione finally got hold of some sugar.) There must have been moments in her life that had
been more uncomfortable than this, but she couldn’t remember them.

“So,” Theo drawled eventually, “What’s next, my young heroes?”

“What d’you mean?” Ron demanded pugnaciously.

“I mean, what are your plans? I doubt you’re going to stay here for much longer.”

“None of your fucking business.”

“All right,” Theo pronounced, looking down his nose at Ron, “Just keep in mind that I’m coming
with you.”

“No!” shouted Hermione, Harry, Ron, and Malfoy.

“Oh,” Theo gasped, looking most unconvincingly startled, “Er, actually, I am.”

“Absolutely not,” declared Hermione and Malfoy.

“Listen to me,” Theo said, suddenly terribly serious, “In the past two days, I have come this close
to losing both my best friends. I’m not going to let that happen again. I am going with you.”

“– Theo –”

“And you’re what?” Harry said, “Some kind of... Super-Wizard? If you’re with us, nothing bad will
happen?”

“Yes,” Theo snapped, “I’m also extraordinarily intelligent and astonishingly virile.”

“Twat,” Harry muttered.

“Um, Theo,” Hermione hedged, “I really don’t think –”

“I don’t care!” He slammed a fist on the table, “I can’t just sit around anymore, while you... you...
Hermione, please. I have to come with you. And – Merlin, just listen to me – I’m not dead weight!
I can duel! And while I’m not some sodding Super-Wizard, I can help!”

“These three here,” Malfoy cut in, “Are the epitome of hare-brained, asinine, Gryffindor
recklessness. Since when did you become suicidal –”

“Well, Draco, they’re obviously in desperate need of a Slytherin sidekick.”

“We don’t need you,” Ron grumbled.

“Yeah,” Harry seconded, “We’ve been managing just fine –”

“Oh sure. Fine. You got yourself caught by snatchers and Hermione nearly died.”

Harry and Theo glared at each other across the table. There was, however, a glint of that old guilt in
Harry’s eyes that was the albatross around his neck.

Hermione knew that he’d conceded a beat before he said, “Okay, listen...”

“What?!” Ron spluttered.

“...So here’s the plan...”

“Harry?!”

“You’re all barmy,” Dean breathed after Harry had finished, “Can I come too?”

“No.”

“Well, then!”

“We can’t have a small army barging into Gringotts!”

“You’ve got polyjuice?” Theo asked. Harry nodded. “Well, excellent. I have a few strands of my
father’s hair.”

“You just carry those around?” Ron asked, appalled.

“For emergencies,” Theo affirmed.

“Bloody weird.”
“Excuse me, as my father’s heir, I am entitled to some of his hair.”

A groan went around the table. Luna giggled.

“That,” Malfoy said, “Wasn’t funny the first time you said it, and it hasn’t been funny the
subsequent four-hundred times.”

“Luna laughed,” said Theo insolently.

“If you’ve got your father’s hair,” Ron slated, “Why don’t you go watch over Malfoy instead?”

Theo opened his mouth, but Malfoy held up a hand before he could speak.

“No,” he said, “Let me, please.”

“Go on.”

“See, Weasley, the Dark Lord and his followers may not be as brilliant as you, but I assure you that
they will notice if suddenly there are two Nott Seniors in their midst.”

Shaking his head, Harry looked at Malfoy from the corner of his eye. “We’re right, aren’t we?
There’s something in the Lestrange vault?”

Malfoy nodded once, sharply. “Something that scares her shitless.”

Later that day, in the early evening, Ollivander left. He was moving to Muriel’s house where Molly
Weasley would be able to take better care of him.

Exactly thirty hours later, when the stars were just beginning to dot the sky, Bill walked into the
cottage with a slim parcel that he handed to Malfoy.

“Your new wand,” he said, and laughed when Malfoy’s eyes widened.

Malfoy shredded through the paper enthusiastically, and then, with great reverence, he beheld the
glossy stick that emerged. He drew an arc over his head, conjuring a stream of twinkling golden
dust that reflected in his awe-stricken eyes.

Hermione turned away, overwhelmed by bitter, bitter envy.

Bracing herself, she sat at the edge of her bed and called out to Luna just as she was settling into
hers.

“Yes, Hermione?”

“Look,” she ventured, “I’m sure if you talked to Theo, he might agree to drop out of our operation.
He would listen to you.”

“Why would I do that?” Luna asked.

“He’s... I mean... he’s leaving you behind...” Hermione stammered, wincing at herself.

“Yes,” Luna agreed, “And that makes me sad, but I trust you to keep him safe. You will do that,
wont you?”

“Of course! But you’re... okay... with...”

“Have you heard of Amazonian Atar Pixies?”

“Um... no?”

“Well, they’re very rare. And they have a very special power: They reveal your soulmate.”

“Soulmate,” Hermione repeated. There went her attempt to have a serious conversation.

“Yes. And I’m almost sure that you are Theo’s soulmate.”

“Luna...”

“People have the wrong idea, you know. Soulmates aren’t your romantic ideal. They’re the person
you have the strongest bond with. It can be romantic, yes; but it can also be platonic, filial,
maternal...
“I thought it was Draco, at first; but then I saw the way he lights up around you... Come to think of
it, Theo’s heart is big enough for two soul mates,” Luna finished with a smile.

“Right,” Hermione murmured, for it was the only thing she could think to say.

“I know Theo loves me, Hermione. And I love him. And that is why I can’t ask him to stay.”
Bill held up his goblet of wine and he gushed, “To Teddy Remus Lupin: A great wizard in the
making!”

“To Teddy!”

Hermione had never seen Lupin beam so. He was walking on air. He went through four helpings of
wine in quick succession, before finally insisting he had to leave.

“Goodbye, goodbye – I’ll try and bring some pictures in a few days’ time. Draco, would you come
by before you return to Hogwarts? Dora really wants you to meet Teddy.”

“Yeah, alright,” Malfoy agreed, his manner just short of credibly nonchalant.

“Give Tonks our love,” Hermione said.

“Of course. Well. Goodbye.”

They all watched him walk across the veranda, down the rubbly path to the boundary wall... the
spring in his step was just lovely.

The drinking didn’t stop after Lupin had gone. They were all just so glad to have a reason to
celebrate. By and by, Fleur went into the kitchen to prepare dinner, and Hermione followed wanting
to help...

“Non please. I prepare meals by myself, zank you very much!”

So she trundled back into the living room, and found that Ron was the only one there.

“Where,” Hermione asked, “has everyone gone?”

Ron took a large sip from his glass. “Bill wanted a private word with Harry. I think he knows we’ve
made some sort of deal with Griphook; isn’t too happy about that. Griphook slipped away ages ago.
Everybody... else went to sit in the garden.”

“Shall we go join them?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on, Ron. At least try and –”

“No.”
“Well, fine. But I’m going.”

He shrugged. “Then go.”

The small group in the garden looked up when Hermione joined them, of which three offered her
smiles, and one a haughty raised brow.
She sat on the empty wrought iron chair next to Dean, across from Luna, Theo, and Malfoy.

“Guess what, Hermione,” Dean said, “Lupin’s going to take me to see my family day after.”

“That’s wonderful!”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed, staring out at the sea with narrowed eyes, “My dad just woke up from a
coma.”

“What happened to him?” Luna asked carefully.

“Death Eaters. They went after him just after I ran away,” he said in a low, gruff voice, “Right
outside the magistrate’s office, in full view of about a hundred steel mill workers who were
protesting out there. He’d gone to offer them legal representation... Honestly, I don’t know how he
survived. All because he has the shit buggering misfortune of being my father. And he isn’t even
my father, really. God knows where that arsehole ran off to.”

Nobody knew what to say. Twilight simmered around them, a wash of Payne’s grey shot with pink,
hovering over ever-moving waters. The distant screeching of seagulls harmonised with the
metrically gushing waves.

“He always says, Dean, fight for what’s right, and everything will be fine. What a load of bollocks,
yeah?” he added, louder and clearer than before, “He’s fed me so much bullshit. For years I
believed that my real father was Nelson Mandela.”

A loud, surprised laugh tore out of Hermione’s throat, and she slapped her palm over her mouth in
horror. She turned wide, guilty eyes towards Dean, but he was grinning.

“S’alright. He’d also convinced me that our postman was an Ukranian spy.”

Free to be amused, Hermione smiled as she said, “Mine told me the scar on his chin was from when
Johnny Rotten had punched him in the mouth. Later I found out that he’d simply walked into a
pole.”

“Mine told me the empty bulb sockets in our house where government installed surveillance
cameras,” said Dean.

“My dad told me that Thatcher was secretly a cannibal,” Hermione counteracted.

“My dad told me that if you leave cheese in water overnight, it turns into milk.”

“My dad told me money plant leaves are universally viable currency.”

Malfoy muttered, something something “muggles,” but it was drowned out by Dean and
Hermione’s chuckles.
“My dad,” Theo said loudly, “Told me that his personal House-Elf was a child-devouring Erkling. I
didn’t sleep for months.”

Now that wasn’t funny at all, but for some reason, the laughter swelled.

“That’s terrible!” Hermione choked over gasping peals of mirth.

“I know!” Theo cackled, “He also told me that I was... I was.... a dung beetle that he’d transfigured
into a little boy, and if I’d set even a toe out of line, he’d turn me back into one.”

“My father,” Malfoy intoned, “Told me it would be a really brilliant idea to pledge eternal fealty to
an evil, sadistic, ophiophilistic tyrant.”

“Oafy-wha – ?” Dean wheezed, laughing; still laughing.

Malfoy went on, “It’s my fault really, for believing him. This is the man who, before first year, told
me I was to befriend Potter as he was going to be the next Dark Lord.”

They were in hysterics, actual inexplicable hysterics...

Then: “My dad,” Luna piped up, “Hasn’t ever told me a single lie.”

And they exploded. For a moment, Hermione was worried that Luna’s feelings might be hurt, but
the girl was watching Theo throw his head back and cachinnate with rapt adoration. Dean had tears
in his eyes, and if, maybe, they were not all laughter-induced, this moment was exactly what he’d
needed.
Giggling and gasping into the back of her hand, Hermione got inexplicably caught up in the bizarre
sight of Malfoy laughing, not meanly, not contemptuously, but genuinely. He was all bright eyes,
and white teeth, and rosy cheeks, and it was...

Unsettling.

Yes, that’s what it was. Unsettling.

“By the way,” Malfoy asked two days later, “How exactly do you plan to double-cross a goblin?”

They were all holed up in Theo and Malfoy’s room, pouring over their plans for the twentieth time.

“Um,” said Harry, “We’re not sure about that yet.”

“Wonderful,” Malfoy carped.

“Truly,” Theo added.

“Well, do you have a better idea then?” Harry demanded angrily.

“Sure,” Malfoy replied glibly, “Not trying to double-cross a goblin.”

“Yes!” Hermione exclaimed before she could stop herself, “Thank you!”

Then she bit her lip in dismay.

A slow, evil grin spread across Malfoy’s stupid face.

“Why, Granger,” he drawled.

“Shut up. That’s not what I –”

“You’re welcome.”

“Shut up!”

“No, really, I –”

“Can we get back to work?” Ron snapped.

Hermione waited till the last possible moment before downing the tar like substance that Bellatrix’s
hair had turned polyjuice into. It was the worst thing she had ever tasted – no exceptions.

She felt the change happen; her limbs grew, her hair turned stringy, her face felt... heavier. She
didn’t look down as she changed into black, velvet robes.
She glanced out the window, and in the semi-darkness of dawn, she saw a sliver of her new face
reflected in the glass: A ripple of black hair, a single hooded eye.

“Crucio,” she whispered, and it came out in Bellatrix’s low rasp.

It was time to go; it was time to go.

*
Hermionetrix was trying very hard not to lose her temper as she went about altering Ron’s
appearance with a bit of transfiguration.

“I don’t like the beard too long”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this isn’t about looking handsome”

“It’s not that, it gets in the way! And I’d like my nose a bit shorter...”

Jesus Christ.

“There!” she said finally, “how does he look, Harry?

Harry looked him up and down. “Well, he’s not my type, but he’ll do. Where the hell is Nott?”

“Here!”

His voice was harsh and steely, nothing like she was expecting. Nott Snr had bequeathed nothing
but his jaw line to his son, which was a very good thing.

“You look awful,” Hermionetrix proclaimed.

“Me?!” Not-Snr spluttered, “Look at you!”

“Would you like me to kiss you, Theo?” Luna asked sweetly.

“Looking like this? No!”

“I don’t mind...”

“What the fuck, Luna! No!”

“We are wasting time,” Griphook grumbled over Ron’s sniggers.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “Let’s go.”

“Just... one moment, Harry,” Hermionetrix whispered.

She walked briskly over to Malfoy, who’d been standing a small distance away, eyeing them all
stonily. He watched her approach him with a sneer.

“Um,” she said.

“What?” he countered.

She breathed in, deeply.

“Thank you, Malfoy. For... everything.”

But his sneer remained.

 “I don’t know what’s weirder,” he muttered, “Hermione Granger thanking me, or fucking Aunt
Bellatrix thanking me.”

Hermionetrix attempted her best Bellatrix impression: her nose tipped upwards, her eyebrows
arched, and she said in the coldest, snootiest way she could, “I should think that that’s obvious.”

She thought he might scowl, or sneer some more, or say something cutting. Instead, what she got
from him was the ghost of a smirk.

Chapter End Notes

1. "slowly, silently, now the moon...": Silver, by Walter de la Mare

2. Sugar Sugar by The Archies
 Thirty-Nine
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been borrowed from DH.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

It was unnerving, owning the power that Bellatrix possessed and exerted on anyone in her path.
Silence fell in the Leaky Cauldron when Hermionetrix, Not-Snr, Transfigured-Ron, (dubbed
Dragomir Despard – Luna’s idea, much to Ron and Malfoy’s displeasure,) entered. Harry and
Griphook were well concealed under the invisibility cloak. The scant patrons who were huddled
around corner tables hunched low, as if attempting to squeeze themselves out of existence.

“Madam Lestrange, Mr Nott,” Tom the barman wittered, bowing his head. Candlelight reflected
brightly off his smooth, bald scalp.

Not-Snr sniffed, not even deigning to look at the man. Hermionetrix on the other hand, lost hold of
her senses and said, “Good morning.”

Tom’s head snapped up in surprise.

“Too polite!” hissed Harry’s voice in her ear, “You need to treat people like they’re scum!”

“Okay, okay!” she consented through her teeth.

In the early hours, Diagon Alley looked like an abandoned city; the shops were all barred and
bolted, and nobody was around. All was quiet. Still, hints of the new regime were visible in the
signboards: Harold’s House of Dark Secrets, The Deathly Apothecary, Book Shoppe - A Borkin and
Burke’s Franchise...

Dragomir let out a low whistle.

Almost all available surfaces were plastered with ‘wanted’ posters with Harry’s face on them.
Some showed Hermione and Ron. And there... one of Kingsley...

As they strode deeper down the lane, they began to notice people clustered around random corners.
Battered and tattered, they shrunk away into the shadows when they saw Hermionetrix and Not-
Snr.
It made her want to claw at her face. Ever so often, she’d catch her reflection in dark shop
windows, and she’d shudder every time. The shadow that bloomed beneath her feet was the one
that had slithered all over her when the world had been reduced to crucio.
She yelped in alarm when, abruptly, there was a wild-eyed man right in her face.

“My children!” he wailed, waving about a bloody stump of an arm, “Where are my children! What
has he done with them? You know! You know!”

He was crying, devastated, hysterical, and she lost her breath.

“I – I really –”

He sprang at her with a great, big bellow, but then... he was crumpled on the floor ten feet away.
Not-Snr and Dragomir both had their wands brandished.

“Keep moving,” Not-Snr muttered, “Come on.”

It took a lot of effort for her to tear her eyes away from the wretched man sobbing and clawing at
the ground with his one good hand. Drawn by the commotion, faces began appearing at various
windows, all united by their look of utter horror.

So much for making an inconspicuous entry. And god, if she didn’t get it together she’d bugger up
the entire enterprise. I am Bellatrix, I am Bellatrix, I am Bellatrix, I am –

“Why, Madam Lestrange!”

Exactly.

They whirled around all together to watch a stout, grey-haired wizard making his way towards
them.

I am Bellatrix, and I am an atrocious inhuman being.

She drew back her shoulders and sneered, “And what do you want?”

The man’s face went cold and hard, and Not-Snr unobtrusively tilted his head and whispered out of
the corner of his mouth, “Travers. Death Eater.”

“I merely sought to greet you,” said Travers frostily, “but if my presence is not welcome...”

Hermionetrix hastily tried to salvage the situation, “No, no, not at all, Travers. How are you?”

“Well, thank you. And good morning to you, too, Nott.”

Not-Snr nodded balefully, and Travers seemed to accept that as his manner.

He turned back to Hermionetrix and said, “I confess I am surprised to see you out and about,
Bellatrix.”

“Really? Why?” she asked haughtily.

“Well... I heard that the inhabitants of Malfoy Manor were confined to the house, after the... ah...
escape,” he responded delicately.
I am Bellatrix.

“The Dark Lord forgives those who have served him most faithfully in the past. Perhaps your credit
is not as good with him as mine is, Travers.”

Travers mouth thinned with anger, but the cloud of mistrust in his eyes lessened.

Looking down at the still weeping man on the ground he enquired, “How did this one offend you?”

“It does not matter,” Hermionetrix replied derisively, “He will not do so again.”

Travers nodded, impressed.

“Some of these wandless can be troublesome,” he said, “While they do nothing but beg I have no
objection, but one of them actually asked me to plead her case in the Ministry last week – but
whose wand are you using at the moment, Bellatrix? I heard that your own was –”

“I have my wand here,” Hermionetrix snapped, holding up Bellatrix’s wand, “I don’t know what
rumours you have been listening to, Travers, but you seem sadly misinformed.”

“I... I see,” Travers stuttered in surprise. Then he sneeringly looked at Dragomir and asked, “Who
is your friend? I do not recognize him.”

“This is Dragomir Despard. He speaks very little English, but he is in sympathy with the Dark
Lord’s aims. He has travelled here from Transylvania to see our new regime.”

“Indeed? How do you do, Dragomir?”

Dragomir held out his hand, (“’Ow you?”) and Travers reluctantly shook it.

“So what brings you all to Diagon Alley this early?”

“I need to visit Gringotts,” said Hermionetrix, getting seriously agitated by Traver’s inquisition.
Why wouldn’t he just go away?

“Alas, I also.” (Of bloody course!) “Gold, filthy gold! We cannot live without it, yet I confess I
deplore the necessity of consorting with our long-fingered friends. Shall we?”

Well they hardly had a choice in the matter. Just what was needed: A suspicious and attentive Death
Eater in their midst.

“So.... Nott,” Travers ventured as they walked, “I hear your son stood with the Order during the
incident.”

“You certainly hear a lot, Travers,” said Not-Snr with contempt.

“Well...”

“I have no son.”

“Right, yes, of course,” muttered Travers hurriedly, “It’s just that you had made such glorious,
high-ceilinged promises about what you’d do to your – er the boy – if you’d ever get your hands on
him...”
Not-Snr cracked his knuckles and glowered, “All the more pity that I wasn’t present at Malfoy
Manor that night. I intend to keep those promises, Travers. Or do you doubt...”

“Not at all!”

Hermionetrix kept her eyes fixed ahead, though she itched to glance over at her friend... just to get
some sort of sign that he was still indeed in there somewhere. The way he spoke was so ferocious,
so convincing, that it frightened her.

Soon enough, they were poised before the tall doors of Gringotts. At the entrance were two navy-
cloaked wizards holding golden batons.

“Ah, Probity Probes,” sighed Travers theatrically, “So crude – but so effective!”

As he was being checked, Hermionetrix heard the softest whisper of “Confundo; Confundo,” and
knew it was safe for her to pass.
Inside the enormous marble hall of the bank, the unlikely quartet (plus two,) stalked towards an
elderly goblin perched on a high stool. Travers went first, and then Hermionetrix stepped forward.

“Madam Lestrange!” the goblin gasped, “Dear me! How – how may I help you today?”

“I wish to enter my vault,” she replied arrogantly.

The goblin suffered a strange little spasm as he peered at her. In fact, everyone – goblin and human
– had stopped what they were doing to stare at her.

“You have identification?”

“Identification?” she screeched, “I – I have never been asked for identification before!”

“Think of who you are talking to, goblin!” Not-Snr growled.

The goblin ignored him.

“Your wand will do, madam.”

Her hands began to quake. They knew. It was obvious they knew that Bellatrix was not supposed to
have her own wand. Shit. But she had no choice. Slowly – and bitterly – she placed Bellatrix’s
actual wand before the goblin.

“Ah, you have had a new wand made, Madam Lestrange!”

“What?” What?! “No, no, that’s mine –”

“A new wand?” Travers sputtered, startled, “But you just said – and how could you have done?
Which wandmaker did you use?”

“I – um – you see –”

“Oh yes, I see,” said Travers, rather... blankly... as he stared down at the wand, “Yes, very
handsome. Is it working well? I always think wands require a little breaking in, don’t you?”
What the hell was going on? Somehow, she mustered the presence of mind to nod, and then the old
goblin clapped his hands, summoning a younger looking one.

“I shall need the Clankers,” he told him, and once he’d been handed a jingling leather bag
continued, “Good, good! Now, if you will follow me, Madam Lestrange, I shall take you to your
vault.”

The moment they entered into a stone torch-lit passage, Harry threw the cloak off himself and
Griphook.

“We’re in trouble,” he stated, “They suspect.”

Somehow, neither Travers nor the goblin seemed remotely perturbed by the sudden appearance of
the Undesirable Number One.

“They’re Imperiused,” Harry explained.

“Wicked stuff, Potter,” Not-Snr commended.

Harry spared him an impatient look. “I don’t think I did it strongly enough, I don’t know...”

“What do we do? Shall we get out now, while we can?” Dragomir asked frantically.

“If we can,” Hermionetrix muttered, glancing back at the door that had snapped shut behind them.
Loud voices were piercing through the heavy wood.
Harry shook his head, “We’ve got this far, I say we go on.”

“Good!” Griphook barked, “So, we need Bogrod here to control the cart; I no longer have the
authority. But there will not be room for the wizard.”

“Okay. Imperio!”

Traver’s blank expression glazed over some more, and he wandered away into the darkness.

“What are you making him do?” she whispered.

“Hide.”

*
She’d been on a rollercoaster ride only twice in her life, on two separate trips to Adventure Island.
She hadn’t particularly enjoyed either of those instances.

Hurtling through dark, twisty-turny channels in a bloody bucket, with no seatbelts of any sort was
far worse. Since she didn’t have a vault, she’d never seen this part of the bank before. Why was it
that the magical world insisted on the most bizarre, terrifying, and impractical ways to do basic
things?

Screech! – They swung around a sharp corner and Hermionetrix grabbed Not-Snr’s hand. She was
going to vomit for sure.

Suddenly, after another petrifying sharp turn, they were confronted with a gushing rapid
pummelling the track ahead.

“Fuck!” roared Not-Snr and Harry.

“No!” shouted Griphook.

Hermionetrix and Dragomir screamed.

But there was no stopping. They burst through the cascade, water soaked them through, and with
unexpected suddenness she was Hermione once more.

There was barely a moment to gasp – the cart turned over and tossed the lot of them. And they were
freefalling, whizzing down toward the unforgiving ground below...

“Molliare!” Hermione shrieked.

They all slowed and landed gently on the rocky floor.

“C-Cushioning Charm,” she heaved, as Ron helped her up. He was back to himself, and so was
Theo.

“The Thief’s Downfall!” Griphook said gravely, “It washes away all enchantment, all magical
concealment. They know there are imposters in Gringotts, they have set off defences against us!”

“Lumos!” they all murmured once inside the Lestrange’s vault.

Here it was then, Aladdin’s legendary cave; the light from their wands revealed mountains of gold
and silver, gems and jewels. Looking over at her companions, Hermione saw that they all wore
different expressions – Harry was determined, Ron was utterly enthralled, Theo unimpressed, and
Griphook... shifty.
What was her face doing?

She drifted away, carefully examining the endless piles. She saw Gryffindor’s fake sword, a solid
gold armour, an emerald encrusted candelabra, strings of pearls, a skull made of lapis lazuli, a
golden goblet dotted with diamonds and amethysts...

“Harry, could this be –? Aaaah!”

The goblet fell from her hands as she screamed. The blasted thing had burned her. She shoved her
scorched fingers into her mouth, and when she looked down, the cup had multiplied... she couldn’t
tell which was the one she’d originally picked up.

“They have added Germino and Flagrante Curses!” Griphook exclaimed.

“Okay, don’t touch anything!” Harry instructed pointlessly.

Or, not so pointlessly, as a second later, Ron tripped over a Faberge egg, and then there were about
thirty more of them.

“Oh, well done, Weasley,” Theo snapped.

“Sod off,” Ron grumbled, hopping around clutching his burned foot.

“Stand still! Don’t move!” Hermione ordered.

Every tiny corner of the vault was then examined with utmost care. Of course, it was difficult to
entirely avoid brushing against things...

“Ha!” Ron barked, “Whose fault is it now?”

“Shut up,” Theo griped as he scowled down at the surplus of onyx chalices strewn around him.

“So it’s no big deal when you fuck up, eh, Super-Wizard?”

“I will shove you into that priceless Japanese screen behind you, and then you’ll get scalded so
thoroughly that you’ll turn into one giant blister, and your skin will actually match your hair, and –”

“You wouldn’t dare, you prick –”

“Oh, really? J–”

“That’s enough, both of you!”

Hermione was tiptoeing her way through six towers of gold bricks when Harry’s exclamation (“It’s
there! It’s up there!”) caused her to come dangerously close to knocking one of them down.
She ran and saw that yes, indeed, there was a little golden cup sitting high up on a shelf far beyond
their reach.

Ron asked, “You’re sure that’s the one?”

“Definitely,” said Harry steadily, “It’s the one I saw in Hokey the House-Elf’s memory.”

“Merlin, I am dying to know what you three have been up to this past year,” said Theo.

Hermione burst out of the Lestrange’s vault with an agonised scream as burning hot metal pressed
and sizzled into her skin. She crashed sideways into Theo, and he helped steady her.

Ron, breathing heavily, cried “We’re done for!”

Goblins had surrounded them – were bearing down on them – flashing maces and daggers with
intent. Suddenly Griphook streaked past, waving Gryffindor’s sword while shouting, “Thieves!
Thieves! Help! Thieves!”

“Stupefy!” Harry roared, and his fury at being betrayed doubly redoubled the intensity of his spell.

Hermione, Theo, and Ron followed his lead: “Stupefy!”

Goblins scattered helter-skelter, and above the furore, a tethered dragon roared. A wave of fire
swept by over their heads.

“This way!”

“Harry – Harry – what are you doing?” Hermione yelled, watching in horror as he charged straight
towards the fuming dragon.

“Come on!”

Hermione grabbed Ron and Theo by the elbows and dragged them behind Harry as they continued
to aim spells at the goblins.

“Harry, what... what...?”

They were standing by the dragon’s foot, and the goblins had begun shooting arrows at them and...

“Get up,” Harry commanded, “Climb up, come on –”

WHAT!

“Huh?!”

“Potter, are you insane?!”

But Harry was already clambering up the dragon’s back. He held out his hand to Hermione looking
absolutely beside himself, and – Mother Superior jumped the gun – Hermione took it and let him
pull her up.

Onto the Dragon. She was sitting on the back of a great, big, fire-breathing dragon.

A blind fire-breathing Dragon.

“Mental. This. Is. Mental!” Ron huffed as he climbed behind her.

“Seconded. Fucking Seconded,” Theo agreed as he scrambled up after him.

And then Harry pointed his wand at the dragon’s tether and set it free.

The dragon did what you would expect a dragon that had been held captive in an underground cave
for years to do.

It soared.

Its sheer delight at finally being able to stretch its wings was palpable. It roared as it circled high
above London, it purred as it dashed through clouds.
Hermione, however, was the opposite of jubilant. Discomfort with heights and all that aside... there
was the little thing about the creature being blind. And if its inability to sense the presence of four
people on its back was anything to go by, then its other senses weren’t all that spiffy either.
Especially since Hermione was prone to screaming bloody murder every time the beast swerved,
and Theo and Ron were lobbing a whole array of swear words high into the open sky.
Harry was cool as a cucumber, though. He’d had a far worse interaction with a dragon back in
fourth year. But that was always the case with him... Harry had always seen worse. Excuse him
while he yawns through your abject terror.

The dragon wanted air as fresh and thin as possible, it seemed, and this quest compelled it to go
higher and higher and higher...

The ground below was nonspecific and greenbrown (and so far away - she promised herself that
she would not look down again); there was no telling where they’d reached. Hermione remembered
reading that dragons could fly for up to thirty-two hours without needing to stop. She didn’t have
the temerity to loosen her hold around Harry’s waist so she might check her watch... but from the
sun’s position, she hazarded a guess that it was sometime around noon. So that was five hours since
they’d escaped from Gringotts.

The dragon swerved to the right.

“Eeeep!” she yelped.

“What do you reckon it’s looking for?” Ron yelled over her head some time later.

“No idea!” Harry shouted back.

“It’s going to take us to fucking Helsinki, I’m telling you!” Theo bellowed.

On and on and on it went. But, thankfully, it had lost some of the initial fervor that had enthralled it
in the first leg of its flight. The dragon was now cruising around at a dreamy pace, and if, somehow,
she could bring herself to forget that she was hundreds of thousands of feet up in the air atop a
blind dragon, Hermione might’ve thought that it was almost… pleasant.

Her mind wandered periodically. She imagined a scenario where she was telling her parents about
this jaunt over dinner. (“Oh my!” gasped mum, and “But that’s absolutely mad!” raved dad.)

Theo said, “Moi is how you greet people in Finland, by the way.”

The sun was setting, so the sky darkened. Monsieur Dragon arced over a mountain range and let
out a contented rumble. It was suddenly very, very cold, and the chilly air felt marvelous against the
numerous burns on Hermione’s skin.

After another age of quiet flying, Ron piped up, “Is it my imagination or are we losing height?”

Putting much at risk, Hermione made herself look. He was right – the tops of trees were no longer
tiny green dots, and she could see miniature roads and little houses, all soaked in sunset hues. There
was a brook directly beneath them, (for men may come and men may go but it goes on forever,) and
she saw a herd of sheep being led into their enclosure by a man... Gabriel Oak, perhaps. They
passed a small forest, a church, a meadow, another farm...

Then the dragon was flying in circles over a lake. Circles that were getting tighter by the second as
it descended: A literal downward spiral. Hermione started to giggle which was batty, but then Harry
shocked the sanity back into her:

“I say we jump when it gets low enough! Straight into the water before it realizes we’re here!”
Oh dear.

“How,” Theo shouted, “Are you the boy who keeps living when all your ideas are so fucking mad!”

“They may be mad, but obviously they work! Okay then… now!”

Fuckfuckfuckfuck Hermione slid off fuck the dragon’s back and fuck whizzed through the icy air for
fuck an eternity, and landed with a huge, fucking horrifying SPLASH into icier waters.

She bobbed up and down, gasping, looking across large ripples to see Theo, Harry, and Ron
breaking through the surface of the water. The dragon was already miles away; a shadowy speck
against the cobalt sky.

Together, the four of them swam towards the nearest shore. Hermione nearly flew into a panic
when one of her legs got tangled up in a clump of reeds, but Ron came to her rescue, pulling her
free.

Hacking and spluttering, she crawled onto solid ground and collapsed. She could hear Ron’s
wheezes nearby and Harry’s breathless incantations as he cast protective spells around them.

For a long time they just lay on the grass, panting. Unmoving. Unbelieving.

And then it was back to business. Hermione sat up and began fumbling around in her bag, pulling
out a change of clothes for all. She fished out a phial of dittany for their burns, and four large
bottles of pumpkin juice.
In dry clothes and with healed skin, they blinked around at each other as they gulped juice like it
was heavenly nectar straight from Mount Olympus.

“Well, on the upside,” Ron remarked, “we got the cup. On the downside –”

“No sword,” Harry fumed.

“No sword. That double-crossing little scab.”

“Goblins, eh?” Theo quipped, “If only someone had warned you that it wasn’t a good idea to –”

“Nott, I swear, I –”

“What’ll happen to the dragon?” Hermione asked, mostly to stop their bickering, but also because
she was a bit concerned, “Will it be alright? I mean… its blind and not used to being out in the
wild…”

Ron looked at her bemusedly. “You sound like Hagrid. It’s a dragon, Hermione, it can look after
itself. It’s us we need to worry about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I don’t know how to break this to you,” he replied slowly, “but I think they might have
noticed we broke into Gringotts.”
Theo let out a great big snort of laughter. Ron gawked at him, startled, but then on his other side,
Harry fell onto his back and cracked up. After that it was inevitable; they guffawed till their throats
were raw.

Actually, until Harry’s gasps of hilarity turned into those of pain. Hermione, Ron, and Theo
scrambled to his side in alarm, and watched as he twitched and shuddered, lost in yet another
untimely foray into Voldemort’s mind.

“What's wrong with him?” Theo demanded, even as he continued to stare at Harry with horrified
fascination.

“He’s, um, having a vision,” Hermione explained weakly.

“Potter’s a seer?!”

“No. He has a... connection... of sorts... with You-Know-Who. He can see into his mind
sometimes.”

“That – buggering hell – is not normal.”

“No, really,” Ron intoned scornfully.

“All right. You need to tell me what’s up,” Theo stated emphatically, “I’ve gone along with things
so far, dragon et al, but now Potter here has gone for a stroll down Dark Lord Lane, and I want to
know why we went through hell to get hold of a bit of bric-a-brac,” he ended by tilting his head
towards Hufflepuff’s cup nestled innocuously in Ron’s hand.

“You’re right,” Hermione sighed.

“Hermione, no!” Ron exclaimed.

“...Imposters....” Harry moaned.

“Ron, we owe him the truth now, I think!”

“Yeah, Ron,” Theo seconded unhelpfully.

“Hermione, Harry doesn’t want to tell him!”

“This isn’t about Harry...”

“Of course it is!”

“It’s about You-Know-Who, Ron! It’s about everybody who’s fighting to bring him down! It’s
about you, and me, and –”

“He’ll just go off and tell Malfoy first thing!”

“No I won’t,” Theo snapped.

“Yeah, right...”
They glared lividly at each other. Hermione could sense something unpleasant churning about in
Ron’s head, poised to come shooting out of his mouth, so quickly she intervened –

“The cup’s a Horcrux.”

“What?!”

“Hermione.....!”

Theo instinctively flinched away from the small golden relic.

“Are you serious? A bloody Horcrux!”

“Yes.”

“You-Know-Who made a Horcrux!?”

“Six, actually.”

“Yeesh.”

“Yes.”

“So that’s what you’ve been doing all this while? Tracking down Horcruxes?”

“Basically.”

“Hold on a second,” Ron broke in angrily, “You know what a Horcrux is?”

“You know who my father is?” came Theo’s pat reply, "He just told me all about them during my
pre-Hogwarts lessons. One of the greatest magical accomplishments, according to him.”

“Your father is a sick bastard,” Ron spat.

“Finally something we can agree on.”

As they eyed each other guardedly, Harry resurfaced with a groan.

“He knows,” he rasped, “He knows and he’s going to check where the others are... and the last one
is at Hogwarts. I knew it. I knew it.”

Harry jumped into a standing position spryly, and it was hard to believe that just a moment ago he
was trembling feebly on the ground.

“What?” blurted Theo and Ron.

“But what did you see?” Hermione questioned, “How do you know?”

“I saw him find out about the cup, I – I was in his head,” Harry began pacing as the other three got
to their feet, “He’s seriously angry, and scared too. Can’t understand how we knew, and now he’s
going to check if the others are safe, the ring first. He thinks the Hogwarts one is safest, because
Snape’s there, because it’ll be hard not to be seen getting in. I think he’ll check that one last, but he
could still be there within hours –”

“Did you see where in Hogwarts it is?” Ron asked.

“No, he was concentrating on warning Snape, he didn’t think about exactly where it is – fuck – We
need to get going.”

“But how are we going to get in?” Hermione wondered fretfully.

“Hog’s Head,” said Theo immediately, “There’s a way into the Room of Requirement in there. It’s
what Draco’s been using all year.”

“Fine,” Harry assented grimly, “It’s a good thing it’s dark... Hermione, you can fit under the Cloak
with me, but first disillusion these two, yeah?”

She nodded and set to work, hoping Bellatrix’s wand would let her cast the charm as well as her
original wand had done. The results seemed satisfactory enough.

She walked slowly over to stand by Harry’s side.

“Okay, everybody ready?” He swung the cloak around the two of them, and – “One... two...
three...”

It had been a whirl: Seconds after they’d apparated to Hogsmeade, Death Eaters were on them –
though, thanks to the cloak and disillusionments, they were able to escape into an alleyway,
quickly.

“Let’s just leave!” Hermione hissed.

“Yeah! Disapparate now!” Theo agreed.

“Great idea,” Ron added.

(“We know you are here, Potter, and there’s no getting away! We’ll find you !”)

“They were ready for us,” whispered Harry. “They set up that spell to tell them we’d come. I
reckon they’ve done something to keep us here, trap us –”

“We have to try, Harry!” Hermione beseeched.

But then came Dementors, and there was no way the Death Eaters wouldn’t notice the brilliant
silver stag that chased them away.

The Death Eaters were in an uproar –

“You broke the curfew, you doddering old fuck!” shouted one.

“I still say I saw a stag patronus!” railed another.

The barman of the Hog’s Head stared them down.

“Stag? It’s a goat, idiot!”

Still under the cloak, Hermione peeped over the bar to watch the scene. Evidently, the goat
patronus had persuaded the assembly of Death Eaters, for she saw only their backs as they walked
out. The barman chained and bolted the front door behind them, then watched them for a while
through a window.

Abruptly, he spun around, and gruffly called out, “It’s safe. You can come out now,” and once they
had – “You bloody fools. What were you thinking, coming here?”

“Thank you,” Harry said to him, “We can’t thank you enough. You saved our lives!”

The barman merely grunted, before disappearing into an adjoining room.

“Cheerful bugger, isn’t he?” Theo whispered.

“Like a slice of Snape,” Hermione rejoined.

“With Pince drizzle,” Theo continued.

“And a Filch on the top.”

“I’m starving,” Ron moaned, and they all stared at him, quite disturbed. “What?”

Luckily for Ron, the barman returned with a plate laden with bread and cheese, and a jug full of
mead. They fell upon it like Icarus fell to the sea; with finality, with passion, with outstanding
grace.

“Fank oo, real goof,” said Ron with outstanding grace.

The barman nodded.

Harry swallowed a mouthful, cleared his throat and said, not as a question but a statement, “You’re
Aberforth.”

“Aye.”

Hermione stopped eating to stare at the man that Rita Skeeter had written off as an irredeemable
freak. Bearded like his brother, and bespectacled, too, his eyes were the same brilliant blue, and
they were narrowed as he watched Harry.

“Right then,” he said, “We need to think of the best way to get you out of here. Can’t be done by
night, you heard what happens if anyone moves outdoors during darkness...”

“No,” Harry cut in, “We aren’t leaving.”

“Don’t be stupid, boy!”

“We need to get into Hogwarts! If you can’t help us, we’ll wait till daybreak, leave you in peace,
and try to find a way in ourselves...”

“But you can help,” Theo added, “There’s a way in from here, don’t deny it. Where is it?”

“Please,” Hermione implored.

Aberforth looked at all of their faces closely, one by one, and then sighed, seeming to cave. He
turned to the portrait of a young girl on the wall behind him, and muttered, “You know what to do.”

She smiled, turned and walked away, receding into the tunnel painted behind her. And when she
eventually returned, she was not alone. The one with her possessed a much taller, much broader
frame.
And when the portrait swung open like a door and he tumbled out, Hermione gave a little whoop of
delight.

“Neville!”

Neville, looking more beaten and weathered than she had ever seen him, grinned broadly.

“I knew you’d come! I knew it!”

As they walked down the dark and narrow tunnel, Neville told them all about the many ways the
Carrows had terrorised the teachers and students of Hogwarts. He was so… cavalier about it all;
entirely unruffled. Though he was limping, and though one of his eyes was swollen shut, he
appeared genuinely and utterly delighted to see them all again.

Casually, he mentioned incidents that made Hermione’s stomach turn: Terry Boot getting beaten
up, the relentless use of the Cruciatus curse during lessons, Michael Corner getting chained up and
tortured, Padma suffering the wrath of Alecto for weeks, Seamus being sentenced to daily
lashings…

“My god, Neville,” she half-sobbed.

“We’re all alright, though,” he put an arm around her and smiled, “You’ll see. They’ll all be bloody
chuffed to see you!”

“Who are you?” Ron asked him with awe, and he chuckled.

“Well, here we are,” he announced as they arrived at a door. As he pulled it open he shouted, “Look
who it is! Didn’t I tell you?”

Harry walked through the opening first. He was greeted with a humungous roar, and so the
remaining three rushed on after him…

The Room of Requirement was larger than she had ever seen, full of beds, sofas, lamps, bookcases,
and colourful hangings depicting all four houses; but that wasn’t what rooted Hermione to the
ground. It was the massive throng of people that gathered around, hugging her, patting her back,
shaking her hand...

“Harry!” “It’s Potter – Potter!” “Ron!” “Hermione!” “Oh... Theo!”

“Okay, okay, calm down!” Neville ordered, and they all listened. He was, well and truly, their
leader.

“Wow,” Theo breathed, looking about him.

“Surpassed itself, hasn’t it?” Neville beamed.

“It’s all down to Neville,” Seamus said, “He really gets this room – knows exactly what to ask.
Neville’s the man!”

His face was so badly swollen, that his grin looked painful. Hermione hurriedly took some murtlap
essence out from her bag and handed it to him.

“So. What are you –”

Harry jerked and fell to his knees, hands rising up to find his scar.

“Harry! Are you alright?”

“Potter!”

“Harry!”

“What –”

“We need to get going,” Harry muttered through his teeth, looking hard at Hermione and Ron.

“What are we going to do, then, Harry?” asked Seamus, “What’s the plan?”

“Plan? Well, there’s something we – Ron, Hermione, and I – need to do, and then we’ll get out of
here.”

Everybody stopped chattering at once.

“What d’you mean, get out of here?”

“We haven’t come back to stay,” Harry replied shortly, “There’s something important we need to
do–”

“What is it?”

“I – I can’t tell you.”

Hermione saw Theo’s lips thin, Neville’s eyebrows push together, and Seamus’s nostrils flare.

“Why can’t you tell us?” Neville demanded, “It’s something to do with fighting You-Know-Who,
right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then we’ll help you.”

Cries of hear hear erupted across the room. Hermione saw so many faces that made her heart
leap...

“You don’t understand,” Harry mumbled feebly, “We – we can’t tell you. We’ve got to do it –
alone.”

“Oh, get over yourself, Potter!” Theo burst out, “I’m so tired of this solo woe-is-me-trip you have
going. Didn’t you hear what Longbottom said? We’re all fighting the same war. Let them bloody
help you!”

“Good man!” Seamus cheered.

Harry glared. “Dumbledore left the three of us a job and we weren’t supposed to tell! I mean, he
wanted us to do it, just the three of us.”

“We’re his army,” Neville said fervently, “Dumbledore’s Army. We’ve been keeping it going while
you three have been off on your own-”
“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic, mate,” Ron interjected.

“I’m sure it hasn’t but I don’t see why you can’t trust us! Everyone in this room’s been fighting and
they’ve been driven in here because the Carrows were hunting them down. Everyone in here’s
proven they’re loyal to Dumbledore – loyal to you.”

The uncomfortable silence that followed was, thankfully, short-lived. The door leading to the secret
tunnel popped open and Luna, Dean, and Malfoy strolled in. There were twin cries of delight from
Theo and Seamus as they both ran toward the new arrivals. Theo kissed Luna in a way that led to
many wolf whistles, and Seamus hugged Dean like they were meeting after twenty years.

Most bizarre of all, Neville went over to clap Malfoy on the back.

“Malfoy! Good to see you again, mate.”

“Longbottom,” Malfoy replied stiffly, “You look like shit.”

“Well, you haven’t been around to heal me, have you?”

(“Have we entered an alternate reality?” Ron whispered, dumbstruck.)

“What the hell are they doing here?” Harry demanded.

“I called them,” Neville responded, holding up a DA Galleon, “I promised I would when you’d
show up to help us reclaim Hogwarts.”

“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it Harry?” Luna trilled from between Theo’s arms, “We’re going to
fight them out of Hogwarts?”

Harry’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times.

“Listen,” he stuttered, “I’m sorry, but that’s not what we came back for. There’s something we’ve
got to do, and then –”

“You’re going to leave us in this mess?” Michael Corner spat.

“No!” said Ron, “What we’re doing will benefit everyone in the end, it’s all about trying to get rid
of You-Know-Who –”

“Then let us help!” said Neville angrily. “We want to be a part of it!”

They were saved by the door again: This time it marked the arrival of Fred, George, Lee Jordan,
and...

“Ginny!”
She smiled, brightly, widely, (her bright red hair just brushing the tops of her shoulders,) and threw
herself into Harry’s embrace.

“Little brother!” Fred and George cried in unison and tackled Ron.

“Aberforth’s getting a bit annoyed,” said Lee Jordan, “He wants a kip, and his bar’s turned into a
railway station.”

As Hermione hugged Ginny, George loosened his chokehold on Ron and conversationally
enquired, “So what’s the plan, Harry?”

“There isn’t one,” Harry groaned.

“Just going to make it up as we go along, are we? My favourite kind,” Fred rejoiced.

“That’s the Potter way,” said Theo dryly.

“You’ve got to stop this!” Harry begged Neville despairingly, “What did you call them all back for?
This is insane –”

“Why can’t they help?” said Ron suddenly.

“What?”

Ron pulled him and Hermione aside.

“They can help,” he whispered, “We don’t know where it is; we’ve got to find it fast. We don’t
have to tell them it’s a Horcrux.”

“Ron’s right,” Hermione agreed firmly, “We need them. You... You... don’t have to do everything
alone, Harry.”

He had a funny look on his face as he mulled that over, upset but also completely bewildered.

“All right,” he said in the end, and he turned towards the anxious crowd. “Okay.”

Ravenclaw’s lost diadem was a gamble by any definition, but it was the only lead they had.
Harry locked his hands behind his back and whispered to Hermione and Ron, “I’m going to go and
look at this statue of Ravenclaw... at least find out what the diadem looks like. Wait for me here and
keep, you know – the other one – safe.”

“Yes.”

“Sure.”

Harry looked askance at Cho, who jumped to her feet, but Ginny brusquely insisted, “No. Luna will
take Harry, won’t you, Luna?”

Luna smiled brightly, “Oooh, yes, I’d like to.”

And Cho sat back down looking decidedly cross.

“I’m coming too,” said Theo in a tone that brooked no arguments.

Once Harry, Luna, and Theo had gone, Hermione wandered around the large room, taking in
everything. It was like being inside an enormous bomb shelter.
The recent turn of events had given rise to an air of flagrant excitement, and all around, people
were chatting, convening, buzzing...

Terry Boot smiled at her as she passed the corner where he was huddled with Michael, Cho, Lisa,
and Mandy.
Ernie and Justin waved as she walked by.
She grinned when she saw Parvati and Lavender asking Angelina to plait their hair into serviceable,
battle-friendly styles.

Her eyebrows shot up when she saw Padma and Tracy sitting awfully close together, talking in
whispers, with their hands tightly clasped.

Then she got to where Fred, George, and Ginny were sitting with Malfoy.

“Draco,” sang Fred.

“Draaaaco,” crooned George.

They put their heads together, fluttered their eyelashes and sighed, “Oh, Draco!”
“What’s all this?” Hermione demanded of Ginny who shot her an amused look.

“Fred and George are imitating mum. She’s very grateful that Malfoy risked his life to warn us
about the attack on the Burrow.”

Malfoy looked very sorry indeed that he had done so.

“Would you like some cake, Draco?” said Fred.

“Is that horrid wooden chair too hard on your precious little arse, Draco?” said George.

Ginny snickered, “I won’t be surprised if mum declares him an honorary Weasley.”

Malfoy turned vaguely green. “Just fuck off will you?”

“But, George... do you think Draco dear will be able to pull off red hair?”

“With that face and those eyes? How can you even ask, Fred?”

“Oh sorry, sorry. Won't daddy Malfoy be thrilled...”

Hermione moved on. Neville and Dean were sitting with Seamus as some fifth year Ravenclaw girl
slathered murtlap essence all over his face.

“...need a wand,” Dean muttered.

Seamus gasped, “You don’t have a wand?!”

“Wait... I have a couple of spare ones,” said Neville reassuringly, “Nicked them from the Carrow’s
confiscated lot...”

Finally, at one corner of the room, sitting by the wall directly under the Gryffindor banner,
Hermione found Ron.

“Isn’t this the craziest thing you’ve ever seen?” he mumbled as she sat down next to him.

“Really, Ron,” she smiled, “After... well, everything... this is what throws you?”

“Er... yeah?”

Hermione laughed.

“I know what you mean though. This is weird. It’s incredible.”

They stared about them in amazement for a while.

Then, Ron looked at her questioningly. “What do you reckon... this diadem thing... do you think it’s
what we’re looking for?”
 “I don’t know,” Hermione mumbled, and just like that all her optimism came crashing down,
“Honestly, it better be. We have nothing else to go on.”

“Right.” Ron ran a hand through his hair anxiously.

“But,” she continued, “Even if it is a Horcrux... we have no way of getting rid of it, do we?”

“Fuck, you’re right,” Ron groaned, “Too bad we don’t have a couple the basilisk’s toothpicks... at...
hand...”

He trailed off, and a look of wonder bloomed across his face.

“Ron? What?”

“That’s it!” he exclaimed. His eyes were so wide... “The basilisk! Hermione....! The basilisk!”

“What are you –”

“It’s still here, innit? In the Chamber of Secrets... we can just go pick up a couple of its fangs and
–”

“Oh my god!” she gasped.

“Yeah?”

“Yes! Ron... Yes. That’s... That’s brilliant!”

“So shall we go then?”

“Absolutely! Ron, you’re a genius!”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” he grinned as she gaped. Looking over his shoulder he called,
“Oi, Neville... wouldn’t have some brooms lying about here, would you?”

Chapter End Notes

1. "Mother Superior jump the gun": Happiness Is a Warm Gun by The Beatles
2. "for men may come and men may go...": The Brook, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
3. Gabriel Oak: Farmer in Thomas Hardy's novel, Far from the Madding Crowd
 Forty
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been borrowed from DH.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

There they were, Hermione and Ron, staring at the snake-engraved sink tap that was the key to the
Chamber of Secrets; tense, anxious, frightened, exhilarated.... And Moaning Myrtle descended on
them.

“Oh look! It’s Ginger and the kitty-cat!”

“Go away, Myrtle!” Hermione snapped, while Ron made another series of hissing sounds at the tap.

“You’re always so rude,” she wailed, “Where’s Harry?”

Ron’s fifth attempt at Parseltongue fell flat.

“The last time I saw him, he hurt poor Draco so badly. They were fighting over me.”

Ron hissed. Hermione told Myrtle to shut up.

“Angry little pussy, aren’t you? You think you’re better than lonely, miserable Myrtle... but I don’t
see any boys fighting over you...”

The squat and sullen spectre fell silent as a low rumbling sound pervaded the air. The sink began to
rotate and disappear into the ground.

“You did it, Ron!” Hermione gasped.

“Bloody hell. I did, didn’t I?” he said with that quintessentially Ron look of gobsmackedness, “Um,
alright then,” he continued as he peered down the narrow tunnel that had revealed itself,
“Geronimo!”
 *

The Chamber was long and filled with snake-engravings. Every last surface was covered. A bit
much, Hermione thought. Yes, Salazar, you like snakes. Got it.

At the far end was an enormous statue of the man himself, all bearded and stern, like an ancient
sculpture of Poseidon. A diffused and faintly green mist filled the space, and twisting, turning,
coiling all over the stone floor was the skeleton of a colossal serpent.

“Look at the size of that thing,” Ron breathed.

“The Great Wall of China,” Hermione blurted with mindless awe. Harry had taken this monster on
all by himself. At twelve.

They walked around the chamber, searching for the creature’s head.

“Here!” Ron called from between two (snake-covered) pillars.

Hermione rushed over and baulked at the sight of the massive skull with spiky, yellowed, scythe-
like teeth. She stepped forward, and a couple of severing charms later, there was a small pile of
Basilisk fangs before her. She swallowed, delved into her bag, and took out Hufflepuff's golden
cup.

“Here,” she whispered quiveringly, holding it out to Ron.

His hand half-lifted... then dithered and dropped back to his side.

“No,” he stated with a shake of his head, “You do it.”

“Me?” she squeaked, startled, “Why?”

“You haven’t had the pleasure yet,” Ron shrugged, “It’s only fair that you get a go.”

Right.

Like they were in a playground, and he was offering her a turn on the swings.

“Okay.”

Kneeling on the damp, slimy ground, with the cup placed in front of her and a fang in hand,
Hermione found herself unable to move.

“Go on,” Ron murmured encouragingly, crouching down next to her, “Just do it.”

Just do it. She was hit with a paralyzing, primal fear that seemed to be emanating right out of the
cup. Just do it. Just –
She raised the fang high above her head and, eyes fixed on the Horcrux, took a deep breath and
struck. There was a deafening, awful screech – and it wasn’t that of metal being pierced. It was
human, but only in the loosest sense of the word. From within the small gash her strike had made, a
wisp of black smoke seeped out, and within seconds it got larger and sturdier till it towered over
her, a solid, vaguely anthropomorphic form.

“The Cleverest Witch of her age,” the... thing... the behemoth... the golem... spoke in a chorus
which was a culmination of so many voices she recognised, “Hermione Granger. What a tragic
waste.”

She stared up at the mountainous figure feeling all the various voices tug at different heartstrings.

“Cleverest Witch.... so much talent... such potential... that determination to prove yourself... all
squandered to be the doomed sidekick of a reckless martyr.”

“Hermione!” Ron shouted, “Stab it again!”

“Such a brilliant mind... such promising abilities... I can show you how to harness them... I can
teach you everything...”

Everything?

“You will be unstoppable... all those arcane secrets about magic that you wonder about will be
yours to hone...”

Ron put his hands on both her shoulders and shook her. Hard.

She gasped.

Lifting the fang up again, she brought it down on the cup with twice the force; a feral grunt –
almost a roar – tore out of her throat. The monstrous apparition exploded into billions of feathery
particles, and a painful scream echoed around the chamber.

The contrasting silence of the seconds that followed was breathtaking, and in a rare instance of
synchrony, Hermione and Ron let it linger.

“Well,” she panted after a while, “Just two more to go.”

“Yeah.”

“Did it...” she faltered, “Did it try to... distract... you as well? When you, um...”

Ron laughed nervously, and his entire face turned red.

“Oh, you have no idea. It was worse. Much worse.”

“...What –”

“We should go,” he said hurriedly, “Hopefully Harry’s had some luck with the diadem.”

“Yes. All right.”

Her legs were shaking as she stood up, and they picked up a good dozen of the Basilisk’s fangs
between them and shoved them into her bag. But as they were exiting the chamber and walking
into the tunnel that would lead them out, a high, steely voice cut into the gloom. It seemed to come
from everywhere and nowhere, from all around and within her head.

“I know you are preparing to fight. Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill
you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood. Give
me Harry Potter. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry
Potter, and you shall be rewarded. You have until midnight.”

Hermione and Ron shared one horror-stricken look, before he swiftly mounted the broom he’d been
carrying, and she hopped on behind him, and they took off.

They ran from corridor to corridor, passing clusters of students ready to fight, suits of armour
springing off their stands...

From the windows they could see threads of white-blue enchantments swirl around the grounds.
The entire foundation of the castle seemed to be trembling with magic.

“Hermione, Ron!” Dean called from beside a courtyard archway where he stood with Justin,
Parvati, and Alicia Spinnet.

“Have you seen Harry?” Ron asked.

“At the Great Hall about half an hour back. What–”

They shot off without waiting for him to finish.

They scuttled down one passageway... two... and at the third, someone skidded around the corner
and stumbled right into their path.
Harry’s frenzied green eyes widened and he bellowed, “Where the hell have you been?”

On the seventh floor, Hermione, Harry, and Ron encountered Ginny and Tonks staring out of a
shattered window, watching Grawp stomp around on the grounds, growling threateningly into the
night.

“Let’s hope he steps on some of them!” Ron said boisterously.

“As long as it’s not any of our lot,” Ginny whispered and aimed a jinx into a throng of Death Eaters
below.

“Good girl!” Aberforth called out, suddenly appearing through a cloud of dust. He had a small
army of students behind him. “They look like they might be breaching the north battlements;
they’ve brought giants of their own.”

As he continued to charge down the corridor, Tonks yelled after him, “Have you seen Remus?”

“He was duelling Dolohov – haven’t seen him since!”

“Tonks, I’m sure he’s okay –” Ginny began, but Tonks wasted no time in running off after
Aberforth.

Dragging a hand through his hair, Harry mumbled, “They’ll be all right,” not sounding confident in
the least. “Ginny,” he went on, “We’ll be back in a moment. Keep out of the way, keep safe...”

Just as they got to the wall beyond which the Room of Requirement lay, Ron exclaimed, “Hang on
a moment! We’ve forgotten someone!”

“Who?” Hermione asked.

“The house-elves, they’ll all be down in the kitchen, won’t they?”

“You mean we ought to get them fighting?” asked Harry blankly.

Ron gravely shook his head, “I mean we should tell them to get out. We don’t want any more
Dobby’s, do we? We can’t order them to die for us –”

“Seriously?” Hermione burst out, gawking at him, “Now? Now? You choose now to have your
lovely, endearing moment of enlightenment?”

“Er – What.”
“Now? There isn’t time for me to feel proud, or amazed, or vindicated, or –”

“It’s now or never, innit?” Ron grinned widely, glowingly, “Imagine if I had died an unenlightened
oppressor –”

“Excuse me,” Harry cut in dryly, “But could you save all that for after the battle?”

“Yeah – right – sorry –” Ron muttered.

Harry had to pace in front of the wall five-and-a-half times before a door appeared. They entered, it
shut behind them, and they were in a different world.

Absolute silence in the middle of a massive, post-apocalyptic landfill... A madman’s curiosity

shop... Salvador Dali’s brain. Towers of random objects sprawled across the cavernous room, some
touching the high ceiling.

“This way,” Harry said softly, “I think it’s down here...”

For a while, they wandered aimlessly among the heaps, centuries’ worth of rubbish piled up and
abandoned... Harry really didn’t seem to have a clue about where he was leading them.

“Accio Diadem!” Hermione murmured, but nothing happened.

“Let’s split up,” Harry suggested, “Look for a stone bust of an old man wearing a wig and a tiara.
It’s standing on a cupboard and it’s definitely somewhere around here.”

So they each veered off in different directions. Hermione peered closely through all the junk – the
trumpery and the frippery, the bits and bobs, and this and that...
Sometimes, she’d get so close to being sidetracked. She saw a beautiful bronze astrolabe with
Persian inscriptions... jars full of glowing liquids... so many books... a tall, inornate cabinet made of
dark wood...
She stopped dead as she stared at that one. Was this, perhaps, the infamous vanishing cabinet that
Malfoy had spent nearly a year mending? Was this innocuous looking object the very thing that had
marked the beginning of the nightmare they were stuck in?

Move on, Hermione.

She took a turn to the left and circled around a tower of old wooden chairs. She saw bottles, vases,
satchels, figurines... but no bust, no diadem.

By and by, as she neared what looked like a large stuffed river troll, Hermione heard voices. One
was Harry and the other –

“...gonna be rewarded,” Vincent Crabbe purred gleefully, “We ’ung back, Potter. We decided not to
go. Decided to bring you to ’im.”

“Good plan,” Harry commended sarcastically, “So how did you get in here?”
She could tell he was trying to keep Crabbe distracted. Gingerly, she peeked from behind the troll’s
thick arm, and saw that it wasn’t just Crabbe; Twiddledum and Twiddledee could never be
separated.

“We was hiding in the corridor outside,” Goyle said in his gravelly voice while looking supremely
pleased with himself, “We can do Diss-lusion Charms now! And then you turned up right in front
of us and said you was looking for a die-dum! The fuck’s a die-dum?”

“Harry? Are you talking to someone?”

Hermione swore under her breath. And Crabbe, showing surprising agility, pointed his wand at a
looming hill of furniture and trunks, and yelled, “Descendo!”

One by one, things began to go crashing down around the region where Ron’s voice had come
from. Harry aimed a quick finite at the teetering pile, and restored its stability.

“Harry?” Ron called once more, still hidden behind the junk, “What’s going on?”

“Harry?” Crabbe scowled and mimicked, “What’s going on—no, Potter! Crucio!”

WHAT?!

She leapt out from behind the troll and sent a Stunning Spell straight towards Crabbe. From the
corner of her eye, she saw Harry crash into the ground after a fearsome leap, and something small
and glittering flew high up in the air and fell in the middle of the mess of recently fallen furniture.

“It’s the Mudblood!” Crabbe roared, “Avada Kedavra!”

She dived to the side, winded, and barely had time to react when she heard Goyle growl, “Crucio!”

But the spell never hit her. Instead, Goyle’s wand flew out of his hand and disappeared within the
clutter beside him. Then, from the shadows between two towers, Malfoy emerged.

He walked slowly towards his former lackeys, (and as he passed Hermione he whispered ever so
softly – “That’s thrice now,”) somehow managing to coerce his face into that grating old smirk of
his.

“Draco?!” Goyle spluttered.

“Goyle,” he nodded, “Crabbe. Leave.”

“What the fuck d’you mean leave?” Crabbe thundered.

“I mean go away. Run along. Exit. See yourselves out.”

Crabbe seethed. “No.”

“Listen, you idiot... you’re in over your thick head here. Get out.”

“I don’t take your orders no more, Draco. You an’ your dad are finished.”

“Yeah,” Goyle spat, “I know what you’s doing. You want ‘im to yourself. Want to take ‘im to the
Dark Lord and make up for all your cock ups.”
“Oh, splendid deduction, Goyle,” Malfoy drawled, “Really excellent stuff. You’re such a genius.”

“Fuck y–”

In a flash, Ron emerged from between the rubble, shouting “Petrificus Totalus!”

The spell just grazed past Crabbe, who spun around lividly to retaliate.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Ron jumped behind a cello case to dodge the curse. Crabbe and the wandless Goyle both charged
after him.

“Shit,” Malfoy growled, and followed.

Harry grabbed Hermione’s arm and pointed at the heap before them, “It’s somewhere here! The
diadem! Look for it while I go and help R–”

A thunderous rumbling from behind had them spinning around... Ron, Malfoy, and Crabbe were
sprinting towards them, followed by a desecrating row of blazing flames.

“Like it hot, motherfucker?” Crabbe boomed.

The fire was spreading inordinately fast... “Aguamenti!” both Hermione and Harry howled. All that
emerged from their wands was vapour.

“RUN!” Malfoy screamed through a cough. Hermione and Harry loped along after him.

What followed was a haze. All Hermione knew was run run run run and fire. And it was no
ordinary fire. From the way it was consuming and annihilating everything it touched, it had to be
Fiendfyre. The only way to survive was to get as fucking far away from it as possible.
She scampered around like a headless chicken, shrieking as flames licked the air around her.
Drenched in sweat, dizzy, terrified... every shallow breath brought with it the sickening chary smell
of smoke and ash. Her hair tumbled out of its bun, and streaked out behind her as she ran. Shit, if
the fire were to catch it! She threw an arm behind her head and pulled the lot over her shoulder; all
the while running, running, running...

She hit a dead end. Before her was a wall, and around her was a ring of Fiendfyre. To her horror,
she saw that only Ron was with her – they’d lost Harry, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle...
She couldn’t breathe; this was it, the end, and the end was a hissing, roaring, blazing orange.

“What can we do?” she screamed, “What can we do?”

Ron ran around in a circle, looking for a way out, but she knew it was hopeless... the inferno was
closing in... The end...

“Ron! Hermione!”
The call came from above, and she nearly melted at the sight of Harry and Malfoy hovering over
them on brooms.

“Harry! HARRY – HELP!”

They dived, splitting when a flare rose up to guzzle them. Harry flew straight to Ron, seizing his
arm and –

“Grab on, Granger!” Malfoy belted. She took his hand, he hauled her up, and then directed his
broom straight up.

Hermione bit back a wail of alarm, pressing herself tightly against Malfoy’s back. Her arms locked
around his waist, and as they rose higher and higher, she buried her face between his shoulder
blades.
It was only when her axis had righted itself that she risked looking down. The burning sea stretched
endlessly. Only small islands remained – the tips of the tallest piles. Everything else – historical
treasure and debris alike – had been wiped out like it had never been.

“HARRY, LET’S GET OUT, LET’S GET OUT!” Ron shouted.

“MALFOY!” Harry called, “CAN YOU SEE THE DOOR?”

“NO!”

They flew around wildly, skimming close to the walls. The flames had begun taking shapes of
savage beasts with yawning mouths, desperate to swallow them whole. Lions, dragons, crocodiles,
snakes...
Fucking snakes.
She hated snakes. She was so sick of snakes.

“OVER THERE!” Harry roared, pointing. So it was, like the photo negative of the light at the end
of a tunnel, a dark opening visible through a blazing archway.

But Malfoy wheeled around and shot off in the opposite direction.

“What are you doing?” Hermione squealed, “What are you doing?”

“Goyle,” he yelled.

She craned her neck to look over Malfoy’s shoulder, and saw Goyle balancing precariously on top
of a crumbling pile of... something.

“Get on!” Malfoy ordered the moment they were close enough, “Hurry up!”

Goyle jumped on behind her, and the broom tipped backwards dangerously. Hermione screamed
and once again pushed her face into Malfoy’s back. Oh god they were going to slide right off and
fall into the Fiendfyre and –– Malfoy lurched forward, taking her with him; the broom straightened.

“THE DOOR, GETTOIT, THE DOOR!” Goyle chanted frantically. Malfoy sped up, zooming
through the thick smoke, through the fiery creatures, through the random objects being tossed
around... until Harry and Ron were visible once more.

Then it was Harry’s turn to abruptly spin his broom around and dive.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Malfoy cried.

“GO – GO – FOLLOW HIM,” Hermione urged.

“FUCK’S SAKE... WHAT IS HE DOING?”

Harry... and Ron... were circling a fire-dragon, even as the beast tried to close its jaws around them.
Then, swiftly, Harry dived again, and when he re-emerged, something charred but vaguely sparkly
hung around his wrist. The diadem. Damn it, why hadn’t she ever told him that Fiendfyre could
destroy Horcruxes?

“LETS GO,” he nodded, and shot toward the exit again.

Both Harry and Malfoy rolled into whatever the broom equivalent of sixth gear was. The hot air
beating against her face scalded her eyes, so she squeezed them shut. Involuntarily, she fisted the
front of Malfoy’s shirt.

Goyle was screaming in her ear... her lungs felt like they were constricting... sweat dripped down
the length of her spine...

“Get off me, Granger.”

Hermione’s eyes flew open, and she pulled in a gulp of fresh clean air. The smoke, the heat, the
crackling, thundering noises of fire were gone: They were back in the seventh floor corridor.
She jumped away from Malfoy, stumbling backwards off the broom and right into Ron’s chest, and
he dragged her away to the opposite side of the hallway. She slid down to the floor, wheezing,
pressing her hands against her buzzing heart. Harry and Ron dropped down on either side of her,
similarly staggered and out of breath. Goyle was lying on the floor like a beached whale,
whimpering and staring blankly up at the ceiling.

“C-Crabbe,” Malfoy choked, slumping against the wall, “Fuck. Crabbe...”

“He’s dead,” Ron muttered unnecessarily, and Malfoy’s brow furrowed with genuine regret.

Harry looked away. Hermione couldn’t.

The professors’ enchantments had given way – Death Eaters were everywhere. The fifth floor was
completely chaotic with seven groups of people locked in violent duels. Malfoy immediately
dashed off to lend a hand to Neville, who had two cloaked and hooded figures shooting hexes at
him.
Hermione looked around for someone to help, but suddenly, Fred and... Percy?!... jumped in
seemingly out of thin air, both trying to overpower a Death Eater each. Hermione pitched forward,
wand raised, incantation on her lips... and along with her spell, three more jets of light hit the
person duelling Percy. He fell to the ground and his hood slid off, revealing the clammy face and
streaked hair of Pius Thicknesse.

“Hello, Minister!” Percy sneered down at him, “Did I mention I’m resigning?”

Fred incapacitated his opponent with a jaunty flourish, and turned to beam at his older brother.

“You’re joking! You actually are joking, Perce... I don’t think I’ve heard you joke since you were
–”

BOOM.

Sheer energy tore ferociously across the air. Hermione was lifted off her feet and flung backwards.
Her hair whipped forward, blinding her. She could hear the wind whistling in her ears as she flew.

“Protego Maxima,” she shrieked, raising her hands to cover the back of her head. She landed hard
against a pillar and slid down its length; the harsh jagged stone shredded her knuckles. The blow
had knocked the wind out of her, and she gasped, her head spun, tiny stars bloomed across her
vision. She stayed absolutely still while her body pulled out of its state of shock.

One breath. Two Breaths.... Four.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. The entire side of the castle had been blown away. Before her, the
wall cut off abruptly, and beyond it was the night sky. She couldn’t see Harry, Ron, Fred, or Percy
anywhere. However, a short distance away, Neville was helping Hestia Jones to her feet... Malfoy
was pushing a pile of rubble off his legs...

“Are you all okay?” she called. Her voice was so frail; she didn’t think they’d heard her. But
Neville waved a hand at her, before offering it to Malfoy.

She lifted off the ground with feeble motions and got to her feet. Her entire back exploded with
pain. She winced, and dipped her fingers under her clothes to feel – argh even the tiniest of
pressure hurt. Her fingers came away wet with blood.

A noise from behind her: Harry was stumbling over the wreckage, making his way to her.

“No – no – no! No! Fred! No!”

Harry grasped her hand and together they tottered and staggered towards the source of that terrible
cry...

At the other end of the hallway, Ron and Percy were on their knees next to Fred’s prone form...
Fred who was spread-eagled, still, and glassy-eyed.

“No,” Hermione whispered in disbelief.

Harry and she began moving faster; a skid here, a trip there, till they were standing by Fred... by
Fred’s body. Hermione could only stare, her hands shaking, as Percy wailed into his chest and
Ron’s stricken eyes were fixed on his brother’s face.

“GET DOWN!”

Harry took hold of her and pulled her down. Neville sprinted by while parrying curses with three
Death Eaters.

“Percy, come on, we’ve got to move!” Harry urged, but Percy only shook his head.

Hermione turned, blinking away tears and gazed at the gaping hole ahead of them.

“Percy!” Ron begged, “Percy, you can’t do anything for him –” (Something large, thick, and hairy
peeped in from the opening...) “– We’re going to –”

She screamed.

The large, hairy thing was an Acromantula. Harry and Ron simultaneously sent a jinx its way, and
the strength of their combined spells knocked the creature down.

“It brought friends!” Harry bellowed. At least a dozen giant spiders – poured in. “Let’s move,
NOW!”

He finally managed to pry Percy off Fred, and together, they towed his... body... to a relatively
hidden alcove.

Spells came out of nowhere; one whizzed dangerously close to Hermione’s head... one struck Ron
on the knee...
She grabbed hold of his arm and began pulling him away....

“ROOKWOOD!” Percy’s roar was as fierce as Ares’ war cry, and he streaked across the floor
behind his target.

Ron immediately launched after him, but Hermione desperately held him back. It was difficult – he
was so much bigger and stronger than she was – “Lemme go, lemme go,” – but somehow she held
down his flailing arms and pushed him behind a tapestry.

“Ron! Ron... listen... please calm down – Harry, in here!”

“I have to go! I have to – need to –” he growled almost incoherently. He was trembling.

“Listen to me,” she sobbed, “Listen Ron!”

“I wanna help – I wanna kill Death Eaters –”

“Ron, we’re the only ones who can end it! Please – Ron – we need the snake; we’ve got to kill the
snake!”

Gradually, he stopped struggling, till finally, all that was left in him was grief, and he stooped till
his head dropped onto her shoulder.
“We will fight!” she promised him, stroking his hair gently, “We’ll have to. But let’s not lose sight
now of what we’re supposed to be d-doing! We’re the only ones who can end it!”

Ron lifted his head, looked closely and sorrowfully at her... then Harry... and nodded.

She wiped the tears off her cheeks and looked at Harry to say the words she never in a thousand
years thought she’d say: “You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he’ll have the snake
with him, won’t he? Do it, Harry – look inside him.”

It would forever remain one of the most impressive things she’d ever seen: A battalion of bounding
desks stampeding down a hallway, being led by a tousle-haired Professor McGonagall.

“CHARGE!”

“Harry, you get the Cloak on,” Hermione hissed, “Never mind us –”

Of course he tossed it over all three of them.

The fourth floor was packed with fighters. Students, teachers, Death Eaters were all over the
place... it was like Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette... except nobody was dancing and making
merry.

Dean versus Dolohov, Parvati versus Travers; Neville’s bloody grandmother versus Amycus
Carrow, (“That’s for tormenting my grandson, you scoundrel!”)

In that state of unrelenting flux, she didn’t know where to aim her wand.

Whooping and cackling, Peeves hovered overhead, bombing Death Eaters with Snargaluff pods.

“Let's go!” Harry shouted.

On the staircase, they encountered Kingsley duelling a masked Death Eater... a little below,
Flitwick and Yaxley were exchanging hexes. At the foot of the stairs, two bodies came crashing
down from a hole in the ceiling; Hermione made out the savage, gristly, animalistic form of Fenrir
Greyback as he made to sink his teeth into...

“NO!” she shrieked, blasting the monster off Lavender, who remained on the ground barely
moving. She wanted to check on her... she... but one of the boys steered her away...

Trelawney was dropping crystal balls from a balcony... Sprout was tossing about Venomous
Tentaculas...

The three of them were moving so fast – everything was a blur of motion, lights, and whizz fizzle
crash boom bang.

She saw a hefty fifth year Hufflepuff boy emit a growl and slide-tackle his opponent.

Then there were more Acromantulas scuttling about, snapping their fangs menacingly. Hogwart’s
soldiers and Death Eaters alike, stopped in their tracks to try and contain them...

“Don’t hurt ‘em, don’t hurt ‘em!” Hagrid cried appearing around a bend and running towards his
supposed friends.

Harry tore off the cloak and chased after him – “HAGRID, NO!”

“...HAGRID, COME BACK...!”

“...HAGRID...!”

The Acromantula’s retreated hastily from the onslaught of spells, and their favourite half-giant got
carried away with them.

A giant roamed the Entrance Hall nearly unopposed. He was enormous, massive, making even
Grawp – who suddenly burst through the large doorway – look runty. The giants sprung at each
other, and got entangled in a brutal wrestling match.
They crashed against the marble staircase, eviscerating a chunk of it, both growling and gnashing
their teeth...
They barrelled into the house point hourglasses, sending a cascade of glass and colourful gems
across the floor.
Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand – “Run!” – they raced onto the grounds. They saw the swarm of
giant spiders disappear into the Forbidden Forest... but they’d covered no more than six paces,
when the atmosphere turned arctic, and the din of war mellowed. Dread, despair, and hopelessness
bubbled deep in her heart, and all Hermione could do was keep herself standing.

Dementors – thousands, millions, trillions of Dementors – formed an arc in front of them. The
deadening mist that they carried along clung to her skin; their scratchy breathing told of all the
horrors that were soon to come...

She gave herself a solid shake.

“Come on! Patronuses! Come on! Expecto Patronum!”

Her otter bounced out of her wand, twirled, then evaporated. Shit! Happy thoughts, happy
thoughts... Christmas with mum and dad... sitting by the lake with Theo... dancing with Ginny...
laughing in the common room with Harry and Ron...

“Expecto Patronum!” ...a mere wisp of silver.

Ron’s terrier flickered and faded. His brother had just died... of course he couldn’t... but Harry!
Harry had always been able...

“Harry, Come on!” she yelled.

He was frozen. He hadn’t even lifted his arm.

Provence... mum and dad... “EXPECTO PATRONUM!” she tried again, but it was Fred’s blank
eyes and Hagrid that her head was full of; a puff of mist was all the came out of her wand.

From behind them, a silver hare, a boar, a fox, and a manta ray flew over their heads, soaring
straight towards the Dementors. Hermione looked around her in shock; Luna, Ernie, Seamus, and
Theo were unexpectedly by their side, holding up their respective wands.

“That’s right,” Luna egged them on, “That’s right... come on, think of something happy...”

“Something happy?” Harry whispered throatily.

“We’re all still here. We’re still fighting. Come on, now.”

Hermione looked at Luna... at all of them... at her friends’ faces... and an otter, robust and full-
bodied shot out of her wand. Harry’s stag and Ron’s terrier joined it. The Dementor’s didn’t stay for
much longer after that.

The unbearable coldness let off, and Hermione turned to Theo. “Where did you – how did you –”

“Luna taught me,” he replied, smiling wanly.

“Can’t thank you enough,” Ron muttered, nodding at their saviours one by one, “You just saved –”
He was interrupted by a sound like ten simultaneous thunderclaps. Another giant, even larger than
the one destroying the entrance hall, burst out from the forest.

“The Cloak!” Hermione said in an undertone, “Put the Cloak on!”

Harry complied, and snuffed out his wandlight.

She crawled behind Ron, who crawled behind Harry, down a painfully narrow tunnel. The opening
at the end was concealed by a large, rotting crate, and the three of them crouched to look out
through the miniscule gap between the crate and the wall. The Shrieking Shack was shambolic as
always: Grim, dingy, and dusty.

Nagini was suspended in a sphere in the centre of the room; Hermione blinked, and in that split
second when her eyes were closed, she saw that damned snake darting towards her in Bathilda’s
bedroom.

A table stretched across the length of their peephole, at one end of which, a ghostly pale, skeletal
hand tapped its fingers rhythmically against the wood.

At the brink of death, Severus Snape lost all his cold, sneering stateliness. He was bloodless and
slumped against a wall, with his limbs all bent at awkward angles like a discarded puppet.
Hermione didn’t want to see this – she did not want to be present for the moment in which his last
breath would leave him, and his heart would stop, and his face would slacken. But what could she
do but observe helplessly as Harry moved towards their fading former potions master?

Was he feeling pity... Would he tell Snape that he deserved such an end? She bit her lip to contain a
whimper... Ron took hold of her hand, but she shook him off.

She didn’t want comfort, she wanted to leave.

Harry crouched by Snape’s side, and they both stared at each other – one impassive, the other
devastated. Snape started to cry – dear lord – and burbling through the tears, he choked, “Take...
it... Take... it...”

His tears turned silver – the silver of ejected memories – and Hermione promptly conjured a flask
and shoved it into Harry’s hand.

Snape’s memories filled the flask to the brim. With his final burst of energy, the sorry, despicable
man grabbed Harry by the collar.

“Look... at... me...”

Hermione turned around, unable to watch any longer.

A while later, the sound of Snape's rasping, rattling breathing stopped completely.

The Death of the Hired Man.

Everything was suddenly very still.

The strange, disturbing calm thereafter didn’t last long. As before, Voldemort’s awful voice
resounded inside and out:

“You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained
heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen.
Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command
my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your
injured.
“I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather
than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour,
you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then the battle recommences. This time, I
shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man,
woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.”
Chapter End Notes

1. Bal du Moulin de la Galette, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

2. "The Death of the Hired Man", by Robert Frost
 Forty-One
Chapter Notes

Some of the dialogue here has been borrowed from DH.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Professor Flitwick's leg was hanging on by a thread of skin. The poor man was lying on a mattress
on the floor, breathing hard as a mediwizard tried to stick it back on. That was the first thing
Hermione saw as she dithered by the large arched doorway during Voldemort's temporary ceasefire.
Beyond him was another mattress where Michael Corner was getting his swollen eye tended to.
Next, on a stool, Parvati was sobbing inconsolably into her sister's shoulder. Hermione met Padma's
eyes with a question in her own... but all she got in lieu of a response was a heavy sigh.

The scene at the Great Hall was a compounded visual of the desolation of battle. It was a composite
image of the consequence – Impression, War.
There were no tables, no chairs, no decorous candle stands; no air of splendour. Mattresses laid out
in tidy lines all around the room accommodated the injured. The medical staff, in maroon robes,
rushed around administering potions and aid.

But it was the sounds that truly drove the reality home. Sobs, wails, gasps, cries of pain...

It was enough to make Hermione want to cover her ears and run. She'd been standing like a statue
for... well, who could say how long? Her heart was in her throat, and she couldn't cope with the
amount of emotion surging through her. And she was... alone? Where had Harry and Ron gone?
Really – how long had she been standing there?

"Miss?"

She shuddered and turned around. A kindly young mediwitch held up a jar of thick purple paste.

"Your back is bleeding, miss," she said, "May I?"

"No – no," Hermione stuttered, "I'm fine."

"Your shirt is soaked through."

"It's fine – I'm fine," she insisted shakily, "Please, there are people far worse off –"

"And they are being tended to," the mediwitch said gently, "Let me heal you. It won't take long."

Hermione sighed, and nodded, finally forcing herself to enter the Hall. The mediwitch made her sit
on a stool, and conjured a simple screen to cover them.
"Shirt off, please."

Hermione obeyed, twisting her matted, knotted, singed hair into a tight bun. Even cool air stung
against her exposed back, and she hissed and closed her eyes the moment it was touched.

"It'll be better in a mo," her healer assured her, "Dear me, I can't believe you were willing to ignore
this. And if you would let me tend to those burns on your arm as well..."

And it did get better. She could feel the harsh, throbbing pain recede, and the feeling of having
something wet and oozy on her skin disappeared.

"There. All done."

"Thank you," Hermione whispered, and slipped her shirt back on.

She stepped out from behind the screen and nearly walked straight into Oliver Wood carrying a...
a... body on his shoulder. He passed by, and she steeled herself to glance at the face hanging
halfway down his back. It was Colin. Scrawny, sweet, over-exuberant Colin Creevey. Dead.

Oliver carried Colin over to the middle of the hall. That was where the deceased lay in a line.
Hermione swallowed, and her throat was so parched, it was painful.
She knew, even as the nausea and unbearable terror paralysed her cognition, that that slow,
hesitating walk to the row of dead people was something she'd remember forever. She measured
every step, she counted every breath...

Next to Colin lay a young, bearded man whom she recognised to be the shop assistant at
Honeydukes. There was a boy from Ravenclaw and his skull seemed to have caved in. There were
men and women in Auror robes, faces she saw around Grimmauld place and the Burrow during
Order meetings... and oh god... there was Diggle. Dead.
Another Ravenclaw, three Hufflepuffs, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor... Lying with a dried up
gash across her throat was the girl Hermione had thought was probably called Martha.
Hufflepuff, Auror... Slytherin... Ravenclaw, and –

Hermione fell to her knees with a choking gasp. Lavender. No! She'd saved her! She'd blasted
Greyback off her. No no no no no.
Her eyes were half open. There was blood all over her face, and matting her hair; Lavender would
never have stood for that. Not her hair. Trembling, Hermione cast a cleaning charm. Free of blood,
and with her eyes closed, she looked like she was sleeping.

"I'm so, so sorry," Hermione whispered.

Then she stood up and walked on. Hufflepuff, a man with hair exactly like dad's, Gryffindor,
Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw.

Why the hell didn't she know all their names? There were so many that were just faces to her. Dead
faces.
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

She walked by six other unknown bodies.

And then there were two familiar bodies. Very, very familiar bodies. Hermione's hands flew up to
her mouth. Her vision swam. She wanted to scream, but she'd been hollowed out and filled with
cement because her feet were stuck to the ground and her ears had closed up. All she could hear
was a dull rushing sound. All she could see through her surging tunnel vision were Lupin and
Tonks. Lupin and Tonks lying side by side... ashen, still, quiet, and dead. Dead.
Lupin. Tonks.
Tonks' hair was mousy brown... the way she wore it when at her lowest. The lines and shadows on
Lupin's face seemed so much more prominent than usual.
Hermione couldn't bring herself to move. Maybe if she stood long enough they'd take pity on her
and wake up. Come on Tonks. And Lupin had always been so reliable.
Wake up, she urged, please, please, PLEASE wake up.
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please –

A wail that was the very soul of pathos sounded in her head.

No; not in her head.

The Weasleys were gathered around Fred's body a few metres away. Mrs Weasley, the source of
that piercing wail, was lying across her fallen son's chest. Mr Weasley sat close beside her, holding
his fist against his mouth as he cried. Bill and Fleur were crying, Charlie was hiding behind his
hands, Percy had his arm around Ron, Ginny stood a little apart mopping her blotchy face with a
handkerchief.
And kneeling by Fred's head was George. Hermione couldn't look at him for more than a fraction
of a second. But even in that tiny fragment of time, she registered the mask of shock,
discomposure, and agony that his face had become. It reflected the kind of pain that was savage,
that was unrivalled in its intensity.

Their grief was what finally unglued Hermione's feet.

She promptly strode towards Ginny, who looked up at her nearly as soon as she'd taken the first
step. Her face creased, like all at once, she'd lost the ability to keep herself together. Hermione ran.
She hugged her distraught friend tightly, and she pinched her own lips between her teeth to hold
back her whimpers as Ginny sobbed, "Fred... Fred... Fred..." into her shoulder.

Trapped in a purgatory, she almost found herself craving the brutal chaos of battle, the turbulent
heat of a raging fire, the all-consuming adrenaline rush experienced during a violent duel...

She was sitting now, on a bench she'd conjured once holding Ginny up had got too difficult.
Ginny's head was in her lap, and Hermione stroked the short, damp strands away from her face. She
wasn't crying anymore.

Mrs Weasley, too, had stopped weeping. Instead, she seemed to have appropriated George's look of
devastation, and that of course, was infinitely worse. Hermione cast her eyes around the hall,
searching for the smallest spark of something good to cauterise the giant, gaping open wound that
was her soul. By the door, Neville and Seamus were carrying more bodies inside. She felt the force
of a thousand knives twisting in her gut as she saw that one of them had dirty blond hair... But then
she noticed the Hufflepuff robes and hated herself for the immense relief that surged through her.

She looked at the crumbling walls, at the shattered floor. She watched the healers scuttling about
like wind-up toys. She glanced at Slughorn comforting the dozen or so students of his house who'd
opted to stay and fight. She glimpsed Professors McGonagall and Sprout whispering closely as the
former got a cut across her cheek mended.
But no matter how hard she tried, her eyes sought Fred. She didn't know how it was possible for
him to look the way he looked – he'd always been packed with life enough for a hundred people –
and now...

Her eyes sought Lupin and Tonks – she gasped, softly, for they were no longer alone. Luna was
sitting by Tonks' side, with one of her hands between both of hers. Next to her was Theo, with his
eyes mournfully downcast. Malfoy knelt in the space between Lupin and Tonks' heads, looking
from one to the other to the other to the other...
His hair that used to always look so neat, was falling messily into his eyes and hiding them from
the world. Or perhaps hiding the world from him?

Hermione's makeshift bench creaked. Ron eased himself down on Ginny's other side, and blinked
at Hermione, once, with faded, red-rimmed eyes. He squeezed his sister's shoulder, and she
immediately lifted off Hermione's lap and curled into his side. He put an arm around her and laid
his head on hers.

Feeling like an intruder, Hermione quietly slipped away. She wished Harry was around, but by his
marked absence, she'd deduced that he was in Dumbledore's old office, swimming around in
Snape's memories.
So she sidled up to Theo and Luna, and as unobtrusively as possible, sat down next to them. They
didn't speak at all; rather, they communicated through expressive looks and subtle nods. It didn't
feel right to say anything that wasn't profoundly, divinely meaningful. And nobody had anything
meaningful to say. Malfoy didn't look up even once.

*
Wasn't the hour up yet? Hermione's watch had broken.

"Oh, thank you, thank you! Ah, I'm just orl over t' place..."

On her way to see Flitwick, Hermione stopped to help a mediwitch who'd spilled all her supplies
while rushing from one patient to the next.
She kept her vision trained straight ahead as she passed the dead for the second time. At the far end
of the hall, Kingsley had gathered the remaining Aurors. Parvati was still crying all over Padma,
and now she knew why. Her best friend had died, and Hermione had not a single word to say to her.
Like a coward, she bowed her head and walked on.

But alas, the Charms' professor was no longer lying on his mattress.

"There are still lots of people buried under the rubble, he went to look for them," Michael Corner
said from the next mattress. His eye looked much better. "They told him to rest, and he said nothing
doing," he added proudly.

"How are you?" Hermione asked.

"Not bad. Pomfrey says the blindness is most likely temporary..."

She swallowed, "Oh... um..."

"Hermione!"

She spun around with alacrity to see Neville waving her over as he helped a young boy with an
injured leg. She bid Michael a hasty farewell and joined Neville just as he handed his charge over
to a mediwizard. He looked so much more than merely exhausted.

"Why don't you sit down, Neville?" she offered softly, "Let me take over for a while."

"Nah, s'alright," he said, rubbing his eyes tiredly; clearly the weakness of his flesh was nothing
when compared to the willingness of his spirit. "I'm okay. Why aren't you with Harry?"

"He... there was something he had to do..."

"Yeah. That's what he told me, and –"

A small man carrying a tray loaded with goblets of water stopped to offer them a drink. Hermione
felt a slow uneasiness build up inside her.

"Oh, Merlin, yes," Neville sighed, and chugged his lot in one go. "Ooof. That's better."

"Right. Neville. What did Harry tell you exactly?"

"Just that he has to do something. It's part of the plan. And he told me to kill the snake. You-Know-
Who's snake, that is, in case you or Ron were bus–"

"Where was he going?" Hermione demanded, her hands closing into fists.

"He didn't say..."

"Which way then, Neville!" she exclaimed impatiently, "The headmaster's office, or...?"

"Er, no. He went outside. Into the grounds – Oi, where are you off to?!"

Hermione tore across the Hall, sped past the dead, and skidded to a stop before Ron, who was still
cradling Ginny.

"Ron – shit – Harry – he's –" she panted.

"What?" Ron asked hoarsely.

"Harry – Harry's gone!"

"What do you mean?" Ginny spluttered, "Where's he gone?"

"Aah!" Hermione was furious with herself for taking so long to get the fucking point across. "He's
gone. To the forest! To turn himself in!"

"WHAT?"

"What?! WHAT?"

Ron and Ginny were on their feet in a flash. Ron took both their hands and began pulling them
ahead, but they'd barely made any progress when Voldemort's all-pervading voice swelled around
them.

"Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down
your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone.
"The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the
Boy Who Lived is finished. There will be no more war. Anybody who continues to resist, man,
woman, or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the castle
now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters
will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together."

The last syllable of that announcement echoed for an inconceivable stretch of time.
'...ther ...ther ...ther ...ther...'

Nobody moved, and silence was total and all-encompassing. Stillness and quiet so intense, that
Hermione imagined she could actually see the minute disturbances in the air that the last traces of
Voldemort's voice was causing. They were just words – no, arbitrary sounds that had the semblance
of words. It had been an empty speech. A ruse.

Because Harry could not be dead.

Ron's hand was still in hers and clammy with sweat. She pulled free of his increasingly tightening
grip; her mouth opened and closed around half-formed thoughts that would never materialise
vocally, because just then, a horrifying, nerve-jangling scream sounded from outside.

Like Hokusai's Great Wave, the entire population of the Great Hall rose and surged forward en-
masse, frothing with anxiety, churning with terror.

At the forefront, Hermione, Ron and Ginny were the first to walk out of the castle.

McGonagall was crumpled by the main doors. She was entirely bloodless... shaking...

They walked down the front steps...

Hermione barely noted the Death Eaters, Voldemort, his vile fucking snake, Bellatrix... Because
there was Hagrid – Oh, he was alive! – and – in his arms – limp and motionless –

"No!" she shrieked, stumbling, catching herself on her knees. "NO!" she choked, as bile bubbled up
her throat.

"Harry!"

"No!"

She heard Ron and Ginny mirror her devastating anguish... then the entire crowd behind them blew
up. It was all muted though, as Hermione's ears clogged up again. The ferocious roaring she could
hear was her own blood gushing about.

Harry's head was resting against Hagrid's enormous forearm. His eyes were closed. Forever.

"Oh," she groaned, wanting to curl up right there on the ground – to hell with Voldemort and his
fucking war. To hell with everything.

"Silence!" Voldemort boomed, and there was a shot of lightening, followed by a thunderclap, that
forced the multitude to comply. "It is over! Set him down, Hagrid, at my feet, where he belongs!"

Hagrid obeyed, though with a look of pure torture on his face, and he placed Harry gently on the
grass, straight on his back.

"You see? Voldemort hissed victoriously, "Harry Potter is dead! Do you understand now, deluded
ones?"
(Surely Hermione was deluded, and her tired eyes were playing mean tricks, for she was ready to
swear that Harry's left eye had just twitched.)

"He was nothing, ever, but a boy..."

(Harry, Harry, wake up, Harry.)

"...who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him!"

"He beat you!" Ron yelled, taking a bold step forward.

The throng cheered raucously, till another thunderclap reinforced silence.

"He was killed while trying to sneak out of the castle grounds," Voldemort cried, "Killed while
trying to save himself."

That's when a hundred simultaneous motions and sounds erupted, getting streamlined into one
blazing torrent of action –

A thick burst of arrows came flying out of the Forbidden Forest and rained down on the Death
Eaters, and as they scattered, Grawp emerged from around the side of the castle, crying for Hagrid.
In retaliation, Voldemort's army of giants roared... But then! A squawk from above! It was
Dumbledore's phoenix, a burst of brilliant red against the dark sky, and he dropped a misshapen
looking lump right into the middle of the crowd –

Hermione lost track of things when centaurs charged out of the forest, brandishing bows and
swords. Death Eaters swarmed forward to meet them. Thestrals descended from high above, their
hooves lashing out at the Giants who were trying to tear Grawp apart. They were all forced to
skitter back as one of the largest giants keeled over when Buckbeak went for his face with his
impressive talons. A mushroom cloud of dust erupted...

...There was sure to be a giant stampede imminently...

And in the midst of this mad chaos, when Death Eaters and Hogwart's defenders were all being
forced to retreat back into the castle, Neville let out a fierce cry like an enraged Berserker. He had
the sword of Gryffindor in his hand as he leapt forward and sliced Nagini's head right off.
It occurred to Hermione that she might die.

Of course, it had been a distinct possibility all year, but somehow, being locked in a duel with
Bellatrix Lestrange, while using the deranged witch's own wand doubled the probability of that
outcome.

Hermione was as scared as she'd ever been.

"Impudent little mudblood," Bellatrix growled, "I should have finished you off when I had a
chance. Did you miss me? Crucio!"

Hermione dived to the side frantically, and just then, a tiny little House-Elf scuttled right over to
Bellatrix and stabbed her leg with a fork. She howled in agony and aimed a kick at the House-Elf.

"How dare you?" she bellowed.

Hermione couldn't revel in the wonder of Bellatrix being battered by a House-Elf for the second
time for long.

"Avada Kedavra," and the poor, valiant Elf fell; its large globular eyes staring vacantly at the
ceiling.

Hermione lost it.

"Diffendo, Eviscero, SECTUMSEMPRA!"

Bellatrix only cackled, delighted by her unhinged fury.

"Oo-er! The mudblood's got a bit of fire! I'm almost impressed – Crucio!"

"I'll show you fire... INCENDIO!"

With a wave of her wand, Bellatrix's wiped out the giant ball of flames.

"Flagello!" Hermione roared.

Bellatrix spun out of the way, but the ends of her robes got shredded. She glared at Hermione with
furious disbelief.

"I am officially sick of you. Avada Ked –"

Bellatrix stumbled, and fell flat on her arse – a jelly-legs curse by the looks of it – revealing a
panting and wild-eyed Theo standing behind her.

"Nott!?" she screeched, "Oh you – you – well your father will just have to deal with not being the
one who kills you!"

She lifted her wand, primed and determined. Her eyes narrowed... her mouth opened... And
Hermione acted.
Without a thought, without a single misgiving or doubt, she levitated an enormous chunk of fallen
rock and mortar, and dropped it on Bellatrix. Unceremoniously, undramatically; Bellatrix didn't
even realise...

And now she never would.

What – what had she done?

Theo stepped around the boulder, gaping at her in awe. She swayed uncertainly towards him.

"NO!"

That vehement roar of utmost ferocity had Hermione spinning around... What she saw left her both
light headed and ossified: Lord Voldemort with his teeth bared, pointing his want directly at her.
Well now... now she really was going to die.

"STOP!"

...A powerful, commanding exclamation, in a voice she knew too well... but that simply was not
possible! Everybody – Voldemort included – looked this way and that witlessly...

At first it was just a subtle warping of light.

Then an audible flourish.
Then, what was once empty air was suddenly occupied.

Looking very much alive, Harry Potter walked calmly up to Voldemort, unarmed, unruffled, and
firmly announced to all the shocked bystanders: "I don't want anyone else to help. It's got to be like
this. It's got to be me."

The sky had begun to faintly lighten, as though in sync with what seemed to be the last showdown.
In the centre of the Great Hall, Harry and Voldemort stood facing each other. The distance between
them – some ten metres or so – fizzled with tempered electricity... electricity that radiated outwards
and ran into a giant ring of speechless spectators.
Hermione was sandwiched between Theo and Ron, and perhaps it was only their fortifying
presence that was keeping her from suffering a spontaneous brain haemorrhage. Straight across the
hall, beyond the fated rivals, she saw Ginny clinging desperately onto Charlie's arm, Neville, (still
holding the sword,) and Malfoy.

Voldemort raised his wand, and with his awful red eyes fixed on Harry hissed, "Who are you going
to use as a shield today, Potter?"

Harry met his stare unflinchingly. "Nobody. There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me.
Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good."

"One of us?" Voldemort taunted with a laugh, "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has
survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings? You don't even have a
wand! I am going to kill you, Harry Potter, and then I will kill every last one of your friends."

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," Harry countered boldly, "You won't be able to kill any
of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people –"

"But you did not!"

"I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. You
don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"

"You dare –"

"Yes, I dare," said Harry, "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important
things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"

There was hunger behind Voldemort's cold, waxy façade. He kept his wand raised, but it was clear
he wouldn't strike till Harry had revealed his secrets. Harry, like an angel of Mercy descended from
above, obligingly served Voldemort his last meal.

The final moment of abeyance – the last trough in the battle-wave – was a dialogue between hero
and villain.

And they first spoke of love. Severus Snape’s love for Lily Potter. Dumbledore’s love for the cause.

All through, Harry displayed a calm she’d never witnessed from him before. His empty hands
rested easily at his sides.

"Before you try to kill me,” he said, “I'd advise you think what you've done. Think, and try for
some remorse, Riddle."

"What is this?"

Really – what was that? She had never heard Harry speak like that. He had a plan, didn't he? He
had to have a plan. Had he a wand stashed under his jumper?

"It's your one last chance," Harry went on, "it's all you've got left. I've seen what you'll be
otherwise. Be a man... try... Try for some remorse."

"You dare—"

"Yes, I dare."

The tension between them grew more taught, more severe, more nerve-wrecking. Water forming a
dome above the brim of a goblet, just seconds away from spilling over.

"...That wand still isn't working properly for you because you murdered the wrong person. Severus
Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."

"He killed –"

"Aren't you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between
them! Dumbledore intended to die, undefeated, the wand's last true master. If all had gone as
planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"

"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort said with explicit glee, "I
stole the wand from its last master's tomb! Its power is mine!"

"You still don't get it, do you? Possessing the wand isn't enough! The wand chooses the wizard.
The Elder Wand recognised a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a
hand on it. The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."

Another series of gasps broke out around her. Hermione's eyes flickered past Harry and Voldemort
to look at Malfoy – he was astonished.

"But what does it matter? Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. After
I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy."

(Theo twitched. Across the room, Malfoy came back to himself; he glowered at Voldemort.)

"You're too late, you've missed your chance," said Harry, "I overpowered Draco weeks ago. It all
comes down to this, doesn't it? Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed?
Because if it does... I am the true master of the Elder Wand."

Voldemort hissed. His stance changed to a combative one. And Harry – like he had all those
months ago in Perkin's tent – raised his empty hand and shouted, "Accio Elder Wand!"

It slipped right out of Voldemort's cadaverous fingers, spun across the space in between, and landed
neatly in Harry's grasp.
Voldemort stumbled back in horror, in blind terror , "What – no – No –"

Harry didn't waste any more time. He pointed the most powerful wand at the most evil wizard and
crisply intoned, "Avada Kedavra!"

There was nothing graceful about the way Tom Riddle fell. One moment he was standing, petrified
with fear, and the next he was an inglorious heap on the ground, his vacant, expressionless face
drenched in the orange glow of dawn.

In the shocked silence that followed, the faint swish of air that sounded when Harry lowered his
hand was clearly audible – as was the soft expulsion of air that escaped from his lungs.

Then the Great Hall exploded. Cheers rang all around and burst out into the illusory sky above.

"YES!" – " YEAH!" – "HARRY...!" – "HE DID IT!" –

Jubilant cries echoed endlessly; people abandoned the circle formation and dashed ahead to pounce
on Harry.

Hermione found herself being lifted off the ground...

Ron spun her around in circles – "It's over! We did it!" – And then he was charging towards Harry,
too...

Theo pressed her to his side... she felt him kiss the top of her head... but soon he was off too,
dashing through the crowd in search of Luna.

Another set of arms hugged Hermione from behind. She only figured out who it was when he let go
and ran ahead, whooping with delight: Seamus.

"Oh Merlin! " – " Yes! " – " YES! "

The unbridled frenzy of joy bordered on madness. She was being pushed around, knocked aside by
bodies rushing ahead, and pulled into random embraces.

Grawp's celebratory roars were the loudest. House-Elves were banging their pots and pans with
forks and ladles. Aurors were rushing to and fro, apprehending Death Eaters before they could
escape...

It was all over. It really was over.

Hermione knew she ought to go to Harry. She thought that she might be one of the few people he'd
actually want to be with at the moment.

She simply couldn't bring herself to fight through the mob.

Instead, she walked backwards; back, back, back, until she'd broken free of the mass entirely. Then
she turned around and ran.

On the fifth floor there was an exquisite tapestry depicting a forest full of frolicking nymphs and
unicorns, in a style strongly redolent of Botticelli. The battle had left it in tatters. The Nymphs were
hiding behind trees, and the unicorns wandered about the blank landscape forlornly.

Right next to the tapestry, there was a giant hole in the wall. Hermione walked towards it, stepping
over piles of rubble and debris. She could see the new day breaking outside, all around the wrecked
castle walls, over the placid lake...

It turned everything a brilliant, saturated orange; it was reprehensibly beautiful. Oh, the merciless
cosmic consistency of the world at large... It could go bugger itself.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Where was her cheer, you ask? Where was her relief and optimism? – It had gone the way of Fred
Weasley. Her mind, which always insisted on jumping ten steps ahead, thought about tiny Teddy
Lupin, now an orphan.

It just wasn't fair. They had been fighting the good fight, doing the right thing. Why did they have
to pay the ultimate price? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.

Voldemort was dead, and that wasn't enough. Bellatrix was dead – because of her – and even that
wasn't enough. Nothing would ever be enough. We won, they'd shouted downstairs... but had they
really? Was this victory? Burying the cold, stiff corpses of good, brave, well-loved people... was
that really a victory?
As she gazed at the blazing Noldean sky and the bloody perspective it was trying to shove down
her throat, she felt an uncontainable rage. It speared through her like a shockwave, making her eyes
tear up and her teeth gnash together.
Jesus Christ, she wanted to maul something. Her skin was prickling. Her nerves were sizzling. She
wanted to – wanted to – wanted to –

There were footsteps from behind, and as much as she hungered to incinerate the intruders, she
took a breath, clenched her fists, and peered over her shoulder.

It was Theo. And Luna. And Malfoy.

And right then, she found her outlet.

She turned her back to the shimmering red-yellow, spinning around to glare at Malfoy. He stopped
dead in his tracks; the look on his face still held residues from the battle below.

"You," she fumed, "What are you doing here?"

The change in his face was instantaneous.

"What?" he scowled.

"What. Are. You. Doing. Here." She took three furious steps ahead, "Why the hell are you here?"

"Have you lost your mind?" Malfoy growled.

"Hermione..." Theo murmured.

"Shouldn't you be down in the Great Hall, basking in the glory of your triumph? Shouldn't you be
demanding that people thank you for all your contributions? Kiss your fucking boots? Or have you
come to collect mine? It's what... thrice... you've saved my life now, right? Oh, thank you, Malfoy."
She kicked a stone by her feet, and it skittered across the floor and hit the top of Malfoy's shoe.
"Thank you, and thank you."

Malfoy's hair and eyes had soaked up the orange light terrifically.

He looked daggers at her, and began in a menacing snarl – "Listen, you fucking–"

"No, you listen," she bayed, "Who do you think you are? Asking people to thank you like you aren't
a total piece of shit... Sitting by Tonks and Lupin like you fucking knew them. You didn't. You
wouldn't even accept them as human, let alone a part of your family. You arsehole. You smug...
you... you charlatan."

"Fucking bitch," Malfoy roared, and made to charge towards her.

Theo jumped in front of him just in time. "Let's go, Draco. Please, leave it. Let's –"

"Who do you think you are?" Malfoy yelled, struggling against Theo, "Let me go, Theo... someone
needs to shove that cunting shrew off her high horse–"
"Go to hell, Malfoy," Hermione spat, "You're the one on a high horse. Mighty proud of yourself,
aren't you? Think you've made up for – for – everything. God, if you spent even the rest of your life
apologising to the world, it wouldn't be enough."

Theo put all his strength into pushing Malfoy away, even as the latter fought to shake him off. Not
for a second did his flashing eyes move away from Hermione.

"I have nothing to apologise for!"

Hermione laughed. It was bitter, incredulous, and ugly.

"You tormented people. You made their lives hell. Harry, Ron... Neville –"

"Are you fucking ser– Grow up –"

"– And you can't exactly ask for Dumbledore's forgiveness now, can –"

Theo had managed to drag Malfoy halfway down the corridor.

"He should be apologising to me!"

Hermione laughed again – her harsh, ugly laugh – "Of course, he should. Nothing's ever on you, is
it? Everybody owes you something. Such an entitled bloo–"

"Shut the fuck up!"

But that was the last thing that could be said. Theo and Malfoy disappeared around the corner at the
end of the corridor.

"AARGH!" Hermione shrieked, and her cry echoed, drowning out the dwindling scuffling noise of
Malfoy's forced retreat.

Then there was utter silence, except for the mellowed twittering of birds. Luna was watching her
cautiously as though scared to come close.

"Oh god," Hermione gasped. Her arms wrapped around her ribs as she tried to hold herself
together. "Oh god," and she crumpled.
"Oh god, oh god, oh god."
Chapter End Notes
1. "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?": Anthem For Doomed Youth, by Wilfred
Owen
2. The Great Wave off Kanagawa, woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai
3. "The stars are not wanted now...": Funeral Blues, by W H Auden
 Forty-Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

PART III
Less than a year ago, the Hermione Granger who'd stood in front of Ginny's dresser had been all
dressed up for a wedding. In her beautiful lilac dress, she'd been at the prime of her prettiness.
Who was that girl, and who was this girl now... the one currently being reflected, emaciated, pale,
and haunted looking? Who was she with her pointy little shoulders, skinny legs sticking out of
shorts, with purple rings under her eyes and burnt, tangled hair?

Hermione took a pair of big bronze scissors and began cutting away the charred locks.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

The frayed curls fell haphazardly to the floor, so unlike the shiny, fiery strands that had surrounded
Ginny's feet less than a year ago.

Less than a year ago.

How had the world overturned in less than a year?

Snip. Snip. Snip.

The Burrow was quiet – so painfully quiet – so abnormally quiet – and perhaps quiet forevermore.
It had been fourteen hours since the fall of Voldemort, and George had locked himself up in what
used to be the room he'd shared with Fred. Where, less than a year ago, she'd snuck in to steal some
Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products.
And then she'd come out to find Fred waiting for her with a knowing little smile on his face. Less
than a year ago, and now he was dead.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

Early in the day, after she'd... lashed out at Draco Malfoy, Hermione had taken half an hour to
collect herself. Then Luna had put a gentle arm around her and taken her back down to the Great
Hall, where finally, Hermione got her audience with Harry.
They'd hugged for an endless moment, and she'd broken down against his chest, against his –
against all odds – still beating heart...

Snip. Snip. Snip.

Hermione, Harry, and Ron sat on the damp grass by Dumbledore's grave, after Harry had repaired
his beloved wand and slipped the elder wand back where it belonged. Kreacher appeared with a
plate full of sandwiches that they'd listlessly chomped on, while Harry revealed how he'd come to
be the boy who lived again... thanks to a mother's love, again. How preposterously lucky was it
that Voldemort had chosen Narcissa, out of all his toadies, to check Harry's robes and heartbeat?
Harry had looked right at Hermione, with a debilitated smile, and told her about his decision to fall
back on wandless magic over the unbiddable blackthorn in his possession.

It all sounded impossible. The whole thing. Dying, but not. Being tortured, but not. King's Cross
Limbo. Talking to a dead man. Choosing not to go "on"...

Snip. Snip. Snip.

That was the thing that Hermione was most stuck on. What did "on" mean? She wondered if she'd
have been able to come back, like Harry so easily had. How had he done that? The answer to life's
greatest mystery, what dreams may come once we have shuffled off this mortal coil, had been just a
train ride away.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

She hadn't realised it then, with all the chaos and madness, but in the chamber of secrets, when the
Horcrux had tried to distract her using the lure of knowledge and secrets, she'd been tempted.
Dangerously tempted.
So was the 'Cleverest Witch of Her Age' really a compliment at all, or a shameful, ironic
summation of her greatest weakness? Was she really such a doomed Faustian caricature?

Snip. Snip. Snip.

She'd have boarded that train. The living world was absolute shite anyway.

Hermione put the scissors down, and stared at herself without blinking till her vision blurred. Her
formerly waist-length mass of hair now fell to just about the middle of her back. With a sigh and a
flick of Bellatrix's wand, she vanished the pile of hair around her. Since Bellatrix had die– since
Hermione had killed Bellatrix, the wand had been working perfectly well for her. A trophy. How
lovely.

She'd so have boarded that train.

The sound of the door opening had her refocusing her eyes, and reflected over her shoulder, she
saw Ginny walking into the room.

"Hi," said Hermione softly.

"Hi," Ginny replied, softer still. She had two vials in her hand full of some purple-coloured potion.

"Dreamless sleep?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah. I thought we could use it. Gave some to Harry and Ron, too."

They both wandered over to their respective beds, with a vial in hand. Hermione slipped under the
covers, knocked back the potion in one gulp, and Ginny doused the lights.

She lay in the semi-darkness with just a sliver of moonlight slipping through the gauze curtains that
stretched across the window at the far end of the room, and waited desperately for oblivion to claim
her. She closed her eyes, and saw the image of a boulder falling on Bellatrix in slow motion. Her
eyes flew open again. God damn it, that was going to haunt her for fucking ever wasn't it? She was
never going to be free of Bellatrix. Her wand, her death, her insidious, deranged cackle - they
would follow her wherever she'd
When she woke up, sunlight was flooding into the room at an angle that suggested early afternoon.
For a moment, Hermione watched golden dust mites dance in the shafts of light.

Oblivion had come after all. But she didn't feel refreshed or revived. Just awake. And that was
enough of an accomplishment. Now, to get out of bed...

She threw the covers off, and swung her legs in an exaggerated arc before setting them on the floor.
Her bare feet look so small and pale against Ginny's burgundy carpet. She stood up and stretched;
her shoulders popped, and she tipped her head back, filling her lungs with air.

Awake. Alive. The war was over. And she was so scared.

There was a cup of steaming tea placed on her bedside table, and she blessed Ginny's endless
thoughtfulness. She breathed in the aromatic brew – English breakfast, just as she liked it – and
then took a sip. Strong, sweet, just as she liked it, the war was over and she was so very scared.

With slow, shuffling steps she went to stand by the window, letting the summer sun hit her face,
arms and bare legs. Sunshine on her skin, weaving into her hair, mingling with the steam from the
tea and wafting up her nose...

Sunshine, tea just as she liked it, a new day, and the war was over.

The orchard outside was blossoming. The trees were heavy with fruit, and wild flowers were
sprinkled all over the lush grass like colourful confetti. The sky was so blue, with only three-four
sparkling, fluffy white clouds to mar its smooth, gorgeous perfection. A beautiful summer's day;
the war was over.

There was a sudden disturbance by the edge of her vision, and then Ginny was walking up to the
grove. Actually, she was jogging: Her stride was quick and urgent. Harry followed moments later,
but kept a good distance from her.
Ginny paced madly in front of the trees; across the lush grass, under the blooming sky, warmed by
the golden sun... she paced ferociously. With abandon. With desperation. Harry stood at one side
and watched her.

The war was only over once you'd survived its aftermath.
 *

Day one was quiet. Breakfast was quiet. Tea was quiet, but for Mrs Weasley sniffling over her cup.
Dinner was quiet, but for Bill telling Ron to please pass the potatoes. George didn't make an
appearance.

Day two was quiet. The lunch they forgot to eat was quiet. Ginny grabbed her broom and
disappeared for hours. Ron and Harry played chess quietly. George didn't make an appearance.
Fred's hand on the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to Lost.

Day three was explosive.

Hermione, Harry, and Ron followed Mr Weasley through the floo into the Ministry of Magic
atrium. The traffic, the flurry of moving bodies popping in and out of the gilded fireplaces came to
a standstill. Everybody stopped to stare at them.

Hermione's mind was full of flashes from the last time they'd been there – her in Mafalda's body,
running terrified as Yaxley and his team of Death Eater's chased after them. She could still feel the
weight of the horcrux in her hand...

"Blimey," Ron breathed.

She looked at what had caught his eye, and gasped. Gone was the ghastly statue of a witch and
wizard on a throne of muggles, and gone was the tacky Fountain of Magical Brethren. Instead,
standing in the middle of the atrium was a large obelisk made of lustrous white gold. They walked
closer to see that it was inscribed from top to bottom with the names of all those who'd lost their
lives since Voldemort's reign of terror began. Both times. Hermione, Harry, and Ron circuited
around the structure while the crowd, still frozen, watched them.

"It was one of the first things Kingsley saw to, as Minister," Mr Weasley murmured.

Fred Weasley, she saw. Lavender Brown. Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks. Edward Tonks. Dirk
Cresswell. A little further ahead: Sirius Black. She stopped when Harry did, in front of James
Potter. Lily Potter.
"Harry!" a voice boomed from behind, and they all spun around. It was Kingsley, striding towards
them. He was a new man, in his Ministerial garb; sophisticated and imposing. His robes were crisp
and deep green, and his gold hoop earring glinted intensely even in the low lighting.

He shook their hands, one by one, with a warm smile. "It's good to see you all."

He gestured down the hall to the golden gates at the end, and led them through security. The poor
guards seemed at an utter loss to see the Minister of Magic and Harry Potter at the same time.

"Where's it happening then, Kingsley?" Mr Weasley asked as they stood waiting for a lift.

"Conference room three. Level two. They – everybody's already there, waiting." Harry squirmed,
and Kingsley caught it. "Don't worry," he tried to reassure him, "We've a strict schedule – ten
minutes for you to speak, five minutes of Q-and-A, and then you're out of there."

Hermione said, "And what about –"

"Rita Skeeter has been categorically banned from the Ministry for the day," Kingsley smirked.

Then they were in a lift going up and Hermione's stomach, liver, kidneys, et al jumped into her
throat. But even after the lift stopped, ("Level Two – Department of Magical Law Enforcement,")
there was no time to let her organs settle back in place. Kingsley marched them down a corridor to
a dark wood door flanked by two aurors. He pulled it open and she reeled under overwhelming
sensory overload.

A hundred flashlights attached to a hundred cameras went off. She was blinded. A deafening
applause broke out... whistles... hoots... cheers...

It was a good thing Mr Weasley kept his hand on her back as she staggered her way to the long
table that stretched across one end of the room.

Stage fright: Another awful old friend of Hermione Granger's. It didn't matter that Harry was the
one who was standing at the podium and telling a sea of rapt faces all about Horcruxes and horror;
she wanted to bolt. Her face was burning, both from mortification and due to the room's bright
lights. The constant clicking of cameras, the scratching of numerous quills running over parchment,
the sporadic gasps from the crowd at pivotal moments: It was all so dizzying.

She clasped her hands together and tried to focus on what Harry was saying.

"...erus Snape was loyal to Albus Dumbledore till the very end of his life. He sacrificed much for
our cause, and I will always be grateful to him. If I am standing here today, it is as much thanks to
him as it is to Dumbledore. He made certain that I had the means to destroy the last of Riddle's
Horcruxes, and he did his best to ensure that ultimately, the Elder Wand would end up in my
possession."
An astonished buzz floated across the room, and Harry waited patiently for it to die down. Six
cameras went off.

"So here's the thing: You have made me out to be some sort of lone hero... the saviour," Harry's
mouth twisted, "But that's... well... a load of bollocks. We have won the war, not me. People died
for it. Families have been ripped apart, lives destroyed... and to hail one person as the saviour is
disrespecting all those people. All I did was deliver the final blow, and that was only made possible
by my mother's love, my father's sacrifice, by Dumbledore's careful planning. I wouldn't be here if
it wasn't for Snape's loyalty, and the support of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. The real heroes are
the brave fighters of the Order of The Phoenix, so many of whom have lost their lives:
Nymphadora Tonks, Alastor Moody, Dedalus Diggle... Fred Weasley. The real heroes are the
teachers and students of Hogwarts; Dumbledore's Army who stood up to the atrocities taking place
in their school. The resistance – the people behind Potter Watch and The Quibbler – they are the
real heroes.
"These two sitting here – Ron and Hermione – they're... they're... they're the best friends anyone
could ever ask for."

And straight away, the sights and sounds of that overfilled room disappeared. Hermione stared at
Harry's profile with a breath stuck in her throat.

"They stuck by me through everything –" (Ron lowered his eyes with chagrin,) "– Since I was
eleven years old and had my first little rendezvous with the arch nemesis I never asked for. I
would've been lost without them – without Ron's quick-thinking and spiritedness, and Hermione's
unmatched brilliance and tremendous magical skills. They're the real heroes.
"So now you know everything I know. I have told you everything, and this is the last time I'm
going to speak about this. Tom Riddle took my parents away from me. He stole my childhood,
robbed me of my freedom, killed people I loved... but it's over now. I won't let him claim another
second of my life after this. I would thank you to respect that."

And he stepped away from the podium and walked straight to the door, his mouth set in a straight,
determined line, and his eyes hidden behind the glare that reflected off his glasses.

"Harry Potter!" The crowd cried, "Wait! Mr Potter! A question, please, Mr Potter!"

Hermione exchanged a startled glance with Ron, with Kingsley, with Mr Weasley, and the four of
them jumped up to follow Harry out the door.

"Show the reporters out, please, Matthew," Kingsley told one of the aurors outside.

They caught up with Harry in front of the lifts.

"I'm sorry," he muttered.

"No, no, Harry," Mr Weasley said promptly, "You did wonderfully."

Hermione, Kingsley, and Ron nodded in earnest agreement.

They didn't speak as they rode back up to the atrium, and only exchanged brief goodbyes once
standing before a fireplace.
But then Hermione cleared her throat. "Minister," she began.

"Come now, Hermione," he chided gently, "That's Kingsley to you."

"Right," she replied, averting her eyes.

She'd thought about saying this so many times in the past three days, as objectively, as
dispassionately as she could manage. But now her chin wobbled, and mouth dried up... oh, but she
had to say it.

"Kingsley. I need a portkey."

"A portkey...?"

"Yes. To Melbourne. Australia. I'd... uh... My parents moved there, before the war. I'd like to bring
them back."

"But of course," he affirmed, and she finally found the courage to look him in the eye, "When
would you like it?"

"Um... ten days from now?"

"Consider it done, Hermione."

She couldn't sleep that night so she wandered out in the garden by herself, breathing in the heady
smell of jasmine. She looked heavenwards and sighed.

When he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

*
The next morning, nobody looked at the papers.

"How's Luna?" Hermione asked.

"Fine," Theo said with a sigh, running a hand through his shaggy hair, "She has to tend to Xeno all
day. He isn't doing too well."

She winced. "I thought the healer's had fixed him?"

"The best they could. His right side is still almost completely paralysed."

He'd come to visit her that evening, four days after the fall of Voldemort, and Hermione was so
grateful to have a reason to be away from the oppressive gloom that shrouded everyone at the
Burrow. She'd never felt like such an unwelcome stranger in that house before.

They were sitting by that same damned scummy pond where Moody had deposited George and...
Fred... less than a year ago.

Theo was – as always – wearing the scarf she'd made for him. She couldn't remember the last time
she'd seen him without it.

"How's everyone in there?" he asked, pointing to the burrow with his thumb.

"Not good," Hermione whispered, "George never leaves his room. Ginny is angry most of the time.
Mrs Weasley keeps crying. Ron doesn't talk. Percy and Charlie don't talk. Mr Weasley is always
away at the Ministry – I think he hates being at home. Bill and Fleur come by sometimes... but they
barely talk either."

She squeezed her eyes shut before she could cry.

"And Potter?"

"He's actually doing better than anyone else. He is... free."

They lapsed into a bout of silence, watching tiny frogs splash in and out of the water. The radial
ripples they caused, green and silver waves of motion, were hypnotic, especially when shot with
the bright purple of the reflected sky of dusk.

Eventually, Theo leant back on his hands and said, "I'm selling Nott manor."

"Seriously?" Hermione spluttered, glancing at him with wide eyes.

He tipped his head back, and his hair, tinted blue, fell away from his face. "Yeah. It's never been my
home. I don't want it. There are some Dittany cultivators who're interested in buying the land, and
I'm getting a nice tidy sum for it. They're going to tear the manor down and I couldn't be happier."

"But... but where will you live?"

"Malfoy manor for now. There's one wing that isn't flooded with aurors."

"You aren't staying with Luna?"

"No," he ground out thinly, "Narcissa and Lucius are in custody. Draco shouldn't have to deal with
all that alone."

Guilt tickled Hermione's throat – this was the closest Theo would get to berating her for tearing into
Malfoy; and it was enough. More than enough. She stared vacantly, awkwardly at the pond.

"But anyway..." Theo went on, "The chap who's helping me negotiate the sale has found me a nice,
spacious flat near Diagon."

With a nonchalant shrug, he turned to look at her.

"But what about you? When are you going to get your parents back?"

"Soon," she said shakily, "After the funerals. I've spoken to Kingsley... asked him to fix me a
portkey."

Theo nodded, then reached out to put an arm around her. She laid her head on his shoulder and took
in a deep breath.

"Um... Theo?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you... I mean... do you think you might maybe consider... that is... if you want..."

"Spit it out, darling."

"Right... do you think you could... come with me?"

Hermione braced herself for his refusal. It was a little selfish of her to ask, what with his estate
issues, and Malfoy and Luna needing all the help they could get, and –
"Are you seriously asking me that?"

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"...What the hell?" He jostled her off his shoulder, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Did you think I'd
refuse? You shouldn't even have to ask, Hermione. Tell me the time and place, and I'll be there. Of
course I'll be there. Silly fucking goose."

She laughed a watery laugh.

"C'mere," he said, and pulled her back into his side.

The sun set on another day.

"Theo. Thank y–"

"Shut up."

Late in the morning of day five, Hermione slipped into plain black dress robes that she'd borrowed
from Ginny, and had had to shrink more than the usual amount. She pulled her hair back into a prim
bun, stepped into plain black shoes, and walked out of Ginny's room. She heard sobs as she passed
the bathroom.

Harry and Charlie were the only ones in the garden when she arrived. Charlie was smoking,
blowing perfect rings into the air. Harry tried to smile at her, but all his face did was twitch
awkwardly. The three of them waited in silence. Bill and Fleur apparated in a few minutes later.
Then Ron stomped across the lawn. Then Percy. Mr Weasley. Ginny walked over with her splotchy
face held high. Harry took her hand. But all the while, they only exchanged terse nods, and nothing
more. All in black, all hyper-aware of what they were about to do...
It was only after an undertaker had portkeyed into the garden with a simple wooden casket that,
finally, Mrs Weasley showed up, a white lace handkerchief obscuring her face, and behind her,
walking stiffly with his eyes locked on the progression of his feet, was George.

He looked old, which was something neither of the twins had ever looked before, but everything
else about him was perfectly in place. His hair was combed back, revealing the hole on one side of
his head. His robes were neat and free of creases. His expression was stoic.
The party walked slowly through grassy, sun-dappled fields full of dandelions, daisies, bluebells,
and poppies; through flourishing trees out of which wafted the intoxicating aroma of ripe fruit. A
gentle, constant breeze flirted with the hems of their sombre robes.
The undertaker was leading the way: Charon ferrying the gathering to their personal hell. Fred's
casket was being carried by his siblings: Ron, Percy, and Bill on one side, and George, Ginny, and
Charlie on the other. It was too plain, too austere to be Fred's final resting place. It wasn't right –
wasn't right at all.
The Weasley parents followed behind, clutching each other for support. Hermione and Harry
brought up the rear. Nobody spoke, the birds sang, the bees hummed, and the leaves rustled.

More people joined them along the way. Aunt Muriel, (her feathery hat replaced by a black netted
veil,) Theo, Luna, and (Hermione blinked uncomfortably,) Malfoy. Then there came a few Weasley
cousins, Kingsley, and Angelina. Lee Jordan, looking utterly faded, hastened to the front of the line
to walk silently by George's side.
There were more people gathered around the spot where Fred was to be entombed, amongst the
graves of a hundred other Weasleys. Oliver, Alicia, Katie... many people from his year whose
names Hermione didn't know. She nodded at Neville, Seamus, and Dean. McGonagall was there,
with red-rimmed eyes, as were Hagrid, Hooch, Pomfrey, Sprout, and Flitwick. She was immensely
surprised to see Argus Filch, of all people, standing to one corner, looking solemn.

Unlike Dumbledore's funeral – the only other magical funeral she'd attended – there was no
minister-like figure presiding over the event. The Weasley siblings lay their brother down on the
ground, and Mr Weasley stepped forward. He stared at the unadorned casket for a long while,
before finally whispering, "Goodbye, my boy," and waving his wand. The tomb he constructed was
sleek and made of deep amethyst. On the headstone, in bright orange, was written:

Here lies Fred Weasley, beloved son and brother.

Wherever he goes there will be joy and laughter.

Purple and orange.

Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes colours. Now that was fitting.

Mr Weasley stepped back, and immediately his wife fell into him, crying dreadfully. One by one,
the attendees walked up to conjure flowers before the tombstone.

Flitwick outdid everyone by conjuring lilies made of stardust. Angelina bent and pressed a gentle
kiss against the stone. Lee was trembling so badly his tulips were wonky.
When it was Hermione's turn, she created a dense bushel of yellow and orange nasturtiums to grow
around the entire tomb, encircling it in a vibrant ring. Someone squeezed her hand as she lowered
her – Bellatrix's – wand, and she turned to see Ginny, offering her a weak, watery smile.

Hermione stepped away then, and watched the show go on from a distance. She watched as Alicia
all but collapsed and had to be carried away. Theo and Luna, together, produced a delicate archway
of bellflowers. Malfoy's tegetes and Sprout's sunflowers rather complemented her nasturtiums.

Most people left after they'd made their offering – the crowd thinned. Hagrid gave her a sorrowful
wave as he trudged by.
Ultimately, just the Weasleys, Lee, Angelina, Harry, Theo, Luna, and Malfoy remained, the last
three of whom walked up to Hermione. Well, Theo and Luna did, and Malfoy lingered stiffly some
distance away.

"We'll be leaving now," Theo told her, "Luna needs to get back to her dad."

"How is he now?" Hermione asked, puckering her brow at Luna.

"Better," Luna whispered, "Healers come to check up on him every day. And of course, pickled
Gulping Plimpy fins are helping immeasurably."

"That's good news," Hermione muttered.

Theo smiled down at Luna with a great deal of affection before looking back at Hermione.

"So... I'll see you later?"

"Yes. Okay."

They walked away, and as Malfoy made to follow, Hermione said goodbye to prudence, and called
out, "Malfoy! Wait!"

He froze. Theo froze. Luna froze. All three of them turned back to gape at her.

Right.

Hermione cleared her throat. "Could I – May I – have a word? Please. Malfoy."

He was looking at her so blankly that she wanted the ground to swallow her up.

It was Theo who spoke in his stead: "Er... Hermione... Are you –"

"It's fine," Malfoy interrupted suddenly, "Theo, it's fine. You go on. I'll meet you there."

With an uncertain, worried glance between the two, Theo nodded... but made no move to actually
go on. Luna had to take his hand and drag him away; and even then, he kept looking over his
shoulder...

"Well, Granger. What is it?"

She jumped and looked up at Malfoy, now standing much closer. He was tall, and having him stare
down at her with those cold grey eyes of his stole away the last of her nerve.

"Um," she stammered.

"Well?" he demanded. His hair was still uncharacteristically unkempt, hanging in locks over his
brow.

"Okay," she started awkwardly, "Look. I just... I wanted to apolo–"

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I said no, Granger. Don't fucking apologise."

"Why on earth not?"

Had she been nervous? All she felt now was affronted and annoyed.

"I don't want to hear it."

"That's not – why are you –"

"Now if that's all..." he said gruffly, and made to turn away.

"That is not all!" she hissed.

She grabbed the sleeve of his robe and pulled him back to face her.

He glared with incredulous antagonism. "What the hell?"

"Why won't you let me say it?" He simply continued to glare. "Do you think you'll have to
apologise too? Oh, don't worry, I don't expect any repentance from you for your behaviour in the
past –"

"Shut up. Neither of us is going to apologise, alright? Nobody is going to forgive anybody. I just
hope, for Theo's sake, you can keep things civil from here on."

"Me?!" Hermione fumed, "Me? Because, historically, Malfoy, you're the one who's been a prat!"

"And you're the one who seems to love living in the past," he snapped.

They glowered at each other for five seconds. Five seconds that Hermione counted in her head –
five seconds that allowed her to document the near-imperceptible way in which his left eyebrow
twitched, the way his nostrils subtly flared. Five seconds after which his gaze left hers and travelled
to the side of her neck where... where she knew her tiny mole resided. Almost subconsciously, she
lifted her hand to touch the spot, and his eyes snapped back to hers.

She sucked in a breath through her teeth.

"I can be civil," she whispered.

"Good," he whispered back curtly, "And thankfully, I doubt we'll have to interact all that much
anyway."

Then suddenly, he spun around and left... forcing her to watch him walk away. The sunlight on his
hair was dazzling as he made his way past gravestones –

Gravestones.
They were in a graveyard. She blinked up at the cornflower blue sky and shuddered. For a while,
she had actually forgotten.

She rushed back over to Fred's tomb – now as blossoming and bright as he had been – and took her
place beside Harry, Ginny, and Ron.

No sooner did they arrive back at the Burrow, than George charged back indoors. They heard the
slam of his door closing all the way out in the garden.

Later that night, Hermione sat alone by the window in Ginny's room, once again watching the stars
as sleep evaded her. Her eyes ached for repose, her head throbbed, but she remained one hundred
percent alert. All the lights were doused; the temperature in the room was perfect. She felt like shit.

There was a knock on the door and she jumped, without there being any reason to do so. It could
only be a Weasley. Or Harry.

"Come in," she called out and stood up and faced the door. Ron shuffled in.

"Hey," he mumbled, "Mind if I kip here tonight? Gin wants to be with Harry, and... you know..." he
trailed off, making a face.

"Um, sure," Hermione replied hesitatingly.

She watched him in the delicate light of the moon, his pale face, his ragged hair, and he watched
her back, intensely... too intensely...

With the abruptness of a thunderclap, his head dropped and he started to cry. Hermione raced
forward to throw her arms around him.
"Hermione," he gasped, "Hermione – my – my – family – is broken. It's ruined. Fuck, Merlin,
shit... Fred."

For a long, long stretch of time, she held him and gently patted his back, all the while standing on
the tips of her toes and fighting to hold in her own tears. He sobbed into her hair, crying for his
brother, his family... but that did eventually peter out. And then the character of their embrace
changed.
Ron's hands drifted upwards, pulling her t-shirt up as they went. His head turned so that his lips
brushed against her temple...

Hermione was a good three feet away from him in a flash.

He swayed as though in a daze, and blinked blearily at her. "Hermio – wha–?"

She swallowed, and looked away.

"I'm sorry, Ron. I'm sorry. I can't."

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, "You can't? It's us, Hermione – you and me –"

From the corner of her eye, she saw him take a step towards her, his hand lifted... and so she backed
away some more.

"I'm sorry. I... I can't..."

"Hermione. Look at me." She shook her head. "Look at me."

She did, and wasn't he just the most wretched thing she'd ever seen?

His brother was dead, he was a frayed, devastated mess, his eyes were full of anguish and he said,
"Please."

"Ron, I ca–"

"I'm in love with you," he declared, "I've been in love with you for years. But you know that. And
you... you're in love with me, aren't you? This... us... it's meant to happen. Innit, Hermione?"

His brow creased with sincerity, his sad, cobalt-in-the-moonlight eyes pleaded with her. She bit her
lip and just... shook her head. Again. And he recoiled at the rejection. Again.

"You – you – are in love with me, aren't you?"

She couldn't speak.

"Hermione. Say it. Say you love me."

"I can't," she said in the smallest voice she'd ever used.

"What."
 His expression sucked all the air out of the room, out of her lungs, and left the world in a crushing
vacuum. Hurt, fury, and disenchantment claimed his face, all at once. And he stood there long
enough for its image to be imprinted onto her brain before storming out of the room.

Chapter End Notes

1. "what dreams may come once we have shuffled off this mortal coil": from Act III, Scene 1;
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
2. "When he shall die..." from Act III, Scene 3; Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
 Forty-Three
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Not surprisingly, Hermione didn't sleep that night either.

Ron left, and she stood frozen in the moonlit room for eons. Would misery and heartache ever end?
Would she ever feel anything but complete devastation?

Devastation: That's what every aspect of Ron had conveyed. What if she had let him kiss her and
touch her? She could have given him a moment of relief, much like she had taken from Pete the
year before. Oh, but it could never have been as clinical as that with Ron.

She felt too horrified to cry... and she had no right to cry. She had hurt him... hurt him so badly.

Like an iron-limbed automaton, she returned to her spot by the window and curled up with her
knees pressed against her chest. There she sat till the moon faded into a gradually lightening sky.

At dawn, a man and his dog scampered across a distant field. Sometime later, a little bird landed on
the window ledge and shook the dew off its brown wings.
Mrs Weasley came out to feed the chickens. An aeroplane streaked across the sky.

Then the door to Ginny's room flew open, and Harry barged in.

"What the hell happened, Hermione?" he demanded.

Hermione didn't move from her corner, and she merely sighed, looking away from her agitated
friend and back out the window.

"Don't. Please."

"Don't what?!" Harry railed, "Ron woke Gin and me up in a towering rage a while back, muttering
something about you being a... treacherous bitch, and threw us out of his room. Now he's locked
himself in there and won't come out. So tell me! What happened?"

"Harry... please."

"Hermione, he was fucking crying."

She squeezed her eyes shut and wrestled with her squirming insides.

"He told me he's in love with me," she whispered.

Harry was quiet for so long that she was forced to look over to check if he was still there. And he
was – wild-haired and wearing a puzzled expression.

"O...kay?" he said uncomfortably, "That's... good, right? It's what you've wanted to hear for a long
time. How did it get all bollixed up, then?"

"Harry..." she muttered, and looked away again.

"You didn't..." he sputtered incredulously, "You... You didn't turn him down, did you?"

Her lack of response said it all. She felt his anger and disbelief bleed into the air and envelop her.

"You did?! Hermione, what the fu– Why?!"

"I don't feel that way about him."

"Since when?" he raged, "I've watched you two for years, dancing around each other, fighting,
being jealous and petty, making my life bloody difficult... and when he finally decides to man up,
you suddenly don't feel that way about him? That makes no sense!"

"It wasn't sudden," she replied thickly, (don't you dare cry.)

"Since when, then?"

"A while."

And that was all she was willing to say.

"Fuck's sake," Harry growled, "How could you do that to him? He was in a state... there was no
reason to stomp all over is heart –"

"Do you think I wanted to do that?" Hermione hissed, jumping to her feet and rounding on him,
"Do you really believe I wanted to hurt him? What would you have had me do?"

"You could have given him a chance! You could have made him feel a little less shitty!"

"How long? How long should I have kept up a charade before it would've been okay to break his
heart?"

Harry huffed, pulling an agitated hand through his hair.

"It wouldn't have to be a bloody charade. He's mad for you. You should've seen what the horcrux
showed him before he destroyed it. It was basically all about you. And you wanted him too, once...
maybe if you'd given him a chance, you'd have..." He trailed off.

"I'd have what?" Hermione spat with barely contained despair; her legs were shaking with the effort
it took to keep standing, "I'd have come around? Maybe decided, hey all right, why not? When
have you known me to be that fickle, Harry? When have you known me to make unconsidered
decisions? Do you think I just went on a random whim when I realised I don't love Ron that way?"

"No..." he sighed tiredly, "Of course not..."

"Then what, Harry? What, what, what? We're so wrong for each other – and you know that. You
know that. It could've been so much uglier... and giving in would have been unfair... to him... to
me... I know he hates me now... and he'll probably never stop hating me... I hate me, Harry... I...
I..."

She was hyperventilating, and Harry was staring at her in wide-eyed horror. She spun away from
him once more, striding back to the window to press her forehead against the sun-warmed glass.
Her vision was foggy – so she had succumbed to tears after all.

She heard his feet shuffling, and assumed he was leaving... until she felt two hands settle on her
shoulders. Harry rested his chin on the top of her head and murmured, "Sorry. I just really wanted
something good to happen, you know?"

Hermione blinked until the moisture collected in her eyes had cleared. When she looked out of the
window again, she saw Ginny on a broom, circling the orchard at breakneck speed.

Reality demands
that we also mention this:
Life goes on.

Hermione had maintained her policy of not reading the Prophet ever since Harry's press conference
at the Ministry. The only reason she had some idea of the news was because Mr Weasley would
return from work every evening, laden with information. He'd temporarily been assigned the role of
scouring through all the documents of the past year, picking out individuals who'd been faithful to
Voldemort's regime.
Thanks to him, Hermione knew about the hundreds who'd been imperiused, the hundreds who'd
been persecuted and were now being given reparations. She knew that all dementors had been
rounded up and locked away in the lowest rung of cells in Azkaban; the prison was now guarded by
aurors. She knew about the flurry of fast-track trials – as many as ten a day – being conducted by
the Wizengamot. Death Eaters, corrupt officials, snatchers, et al were being jailed. Hermione heard
about Yaxley, Umbridge, the Carrows, Dolohov, Nott Snr, Greyback... all being locked up for good.

On the evening of the sixth day after the war, Mr Weasley emerged from the fireplace and threw a
newspaper on the kitchen table. Then he walked purposefully towards the kitchen cabinet and
began pulling out glasses.

The rest of the occupants of the room – all the Weasleys (sans George,) Lee Jordan, (who was the
only person George allowed into his room,) Harry, and Hermione – gathered around the table. The
headline read: Augustus Rookwood, Ex-Unspeakable and known Death Eater, sentenced to life
imprisonment.

Mrs Weasley let out a keening wail and fell into the nearest chair. Fleur promptly put an arm
around her. Everybody else was frozen... with relief? With bitterness? With a feeling of futility?
Staggered by the shocking hollowness of retribution?

Mr Weasley handed them a tumbler full of firewhisky each.

Day seven saw them all congregated at Andromeda Tonks' back garden, dressed once again in
sober black dress robes. Once again, the pulsating bloom of summer mocked the occasion; the
garden was full of poppies and peonies.

Under the shade of a lush chestnut tree were three caskets.

Andromeda was a statue before them. She held a bundle of blankets, housing the tiny, sleeping
form of Teddy Lupin pressed against her bosom. Her face was the epitome of grace and composure;
she had Bellatrix's features, it was true, but instead of flashing ruthless insanity, they exuded
constraint and self-control. It was heartbreaking to behold.

As a complete contrast, to her right was Professor Sprout: Dishevelled, broken, and sobbing
miserably into a soiled handkerchief.

" I'm a proud Hufflepuff, I am," said Tonks with a brilliant grin, "It's the best damn house. You
know, in my fifth year, I sat the whole lot – first year to seventh year – down in the common room
and taught them 'Yellow Submarine.' Merlin, how it stuck! It became our anthem. Drove Sprout up
the wall, it did!"

To Andromeda's left was Malfoy, and his demeanour was similar to his aunt's. His jaw and fists
were clenched, his eyes were lowered. Theo stood next to him, correspondingly sombre, and his
arm was drawn around Luna, who was crying softly. Even Xenophilius had made it this time. In a
bright blue wheel chair with a healer in tow, he was alarmingly skeletal. His once puffy hair had
wilted.
The Weasleys all stood together in a cluster, watching Andromeda with profound understanding on
their faces. All, except George, that is. Mrs Weasley had stood outside his door for hours, begging
him to come out, to no avail. A lot of the usual suspects where there – Kingsley along with a small
army of aurors, Hagrid, McGonagall, Flitwick, Hestia, and... Honestly, etcetera.
"Wotcher," the pink haired woman said with a small wave, "I'm Tonks. Don't listen to what anybody
else says in regard to my name, yeah? Nice to meet you."

Nearest to Lupin's casket slouched Harry, mourning the loss of yet another father-figure.

"You're the cleverest witch of your age I've ever met, Hermione."

"I'm not. If I'd been a bit cleverer, I'd have told everyone what you are!"

Here's what Remus Lupin was: One of the bravest people she'd ever known. Brave for not letting
his condition beat him down, brave for carrying on even after everyone he cared for died, brave for
surviving the death of the man he loved, brave for being endlessly kind rather than bitter, brave for
putting away all his self-doubt and misgivings so that he may be a good father to his son.

The son who will never know him. God, it was all so miserable.

Only moments after Kingsley had entombed the caskets in soft grey marble, Teddy Lupin woke up.
His loud, gurgling wails broke through the heavy poignancy around them. Immediately,
Andromeda turned around and walked back into her house, head bent as she cooed and shushed at
the bundle in her arms. Malfoy and Mrs Weasley went after her.

Hermione attended three funerals on day eight.

First, there was Diggle's, held in a small graveyard somewhere in Somerset. His wife was as tall as
he had been short; very stork-like. They laid him to rest just a few minutes after sunrise, and his
tomb of pure white turned gold as the early rays of morning struck it.

Just four hours afterwards, Hermione stood between Harry and Dean in a muggle cemetery,
attending the last rites of Colin Creevey. She barely saw anything beyond Dennis, so small and lost,
clinging to his mother's side. Almost the entire Gryffindor house had turned up, as well as many
people from other houses, in Colin's year.
Before his coffin was lowered into the ground, Neville and Seamus covered it with a blazing red
Gryffindor banner.

Later, just before five o'clock, she was sitting outside a small mausoleum attached to a reasonable-
sized estate. It was rather fitting, she thought, that the evening sky was lavender. There was a
speech being made, about a beautiful girl with a beautiful soul, but all Hermione could think of was
the girl who'd called her boring, stuck-up, swotty, ugly...

Stop it.

Lavender's mother, (an older, more voluptuous version of her daughter,) and father, (a tall, swarthy
man with thinning hair,) were beside themselves. Parvati and Padma were three seats away, and it
was like they'd been transported, undisturbed from when she'd seen them in the Great Hall a week
ago.

There was another speech being made, about a brave, strong-willed girl with a heart of gold... and it
was true. Ultimately, that's who Lavender Brown proved to be.

Her... ugh... body... wrapped up in pale pink silk was carried inside the mausoleum by her weeping
father. The congregation stood as that happened. Hermione couldn't help but notice Ron – his
shoulders slumped and his eyes full of tears – and she went up to him and took his hand.
He let her hold onto it... for all of five minutes... until the ceremony came to an end, and he yanked
his hand away and stormed off.

At night she curled up under a thin linen sheet and Moon River played in her head in a beautiful,
incessant loop. In the next bed lay a disgruntled Ginny who blamed her for not being able to spend
the night with Harry anymore.

Two drifters off to see the world

There's such a crazy world to see

The crazy world was a flatland, and the ground was a carpet of clayey, ochre sand, sparingly
shooting out short stalks of brittle, yellow grass. Barren trees with twisting branches sprung up
here and there. The air shimmered and rippled with heat.

...Chasing after our rainbow's end...

The horizon line was defined by a purple, mountainous stripe. In the middle-ground sat the
dilapidated ruins of the Tower of Babel, out of which a row of... crows? Dementors?... flew out and
soared in a sweeping arch above her head.
The sky was pale blue. Cloudless. Glistening.
Hermione turned as she followed their flight...
...My dream maker
Heartbreaker
Wherever you're going I'm going the same...

She ran through the desert forever, staring at the dark flying shapes, half-blinded by the dazzling
sky.

...What I see, who I become

We're all chasing after our end
Chasing after our ends...

She stumbled, and she screamed as she fell. The hot sand scalded her. With a gasp she sat up to see
what she had tripped over... and it was a skull, made of lapis lazuli.
Then one of the black shapes in the sky swooped towards her... closer... closer... and it was
Bellatrix, and she pounced on her, loomed over her... her deranged face filled Hermione's vision...

"HOW DID YOU GET INTO MY VAULT," Bellatrix shrieked.

"No – please –" Hermione gasped.

Suddenly, all the black flying things closed in... turned orange... blazing... they were ruthless flames
of a raging fiendfire...

"NO!"

She was in Ginny's room, sitting up in her bed. Panting. Sweating. Shivering. She looked about her
in a terrorised daze.

In the dark room, Ginny's eyes were black as they looked at her, before turning their blank gaze to
the ceiling.

On the morning of day nine, Hermione sat at the Weasley kitchen table shelling peas. She lost
herself in the mindless mundanity of the task, paying no mind to Ginny as she clumped out into the
garden with her broom, nor to Harry, who followed with one of his own.

Plop-plop-plop, the peas spilled out of their pods into the bowl before her.

But she couldn't ignore the loud shouts that broke out from somewhere above. She didn't even get a
chance to stand before thump, thud, bang, a bundle of bodies plodded down the stairs.
"NO! NO!" Mrs Weasley was half-sobbing, half-yelling, "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! He has
to talk to me! HE HAS TO!"

"Mum..." Charlie implored. His arms were locked around her, trying to keep her from charging
back up the stairs.

"NO!" Mrs Weasley shrieked, "He has to come out! He has to talk to me! GEORGE! GEORGE! I
AM YOUR MOTHER AND YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME!"

"Mum, please, calm down..."

Ron and Percy had come down to the kitchen too, gazing plaintively at their mother.

"He was my son! Fred was my boy and I lost him! I lost one boy and I shan't lose another!
GEORGE! YOU HEAR ME – GEORGE! COME DOWN HERE AT ONCE!"

"Mum," Percy said forcefully. He went to stand in front of her and put both his hands on her
shoulders. "Mum. Enough. Please, mum."

"He's... George... I... Oh, Freddy..."

With that, Mrs Weasley broke down, teetering forward into Percy's arms. He led her into the sitting
room, saying, "Shhh, it'll be okay..."

"No... No... It won't..."

When they had gone, Charlie breathed out heavily. He dug into his pocket to pull out a pack of
cigarettes and shuffled out into the garden. The door closed behind him with a loud slam, and it left
Hermione alone in the kitchen with Ron.

"Enjoyed the show?" he sneered.

Hermione stared at him with wide eyes and a quivering chin.

"Must be fun for you, eh, watching the destruction from the outside? Because perfect Hermione
Granger hasn't lost a thing. Even the fucking war couldn't touch you. Perfect, perfect. You're alive,
your fucking Slytherin chums are alive, you'll go off and get your parents back... everything's
sodding dandy in the life of Hermione Granger."

"Ron –" she whispered piteously.

"We lost everything... everything. And you lost nothing. Not that you care, right? I saw you, at
Fred's funeral... chatting up fucking Malfoy."

"Ron," she choked, "Ron, I wasn't –"

"Yes. You. Were. Just... get out of here. Bloody hell, why are you here? Why the bleeding shite are
you here? Just get the–"

"Shut up, Ron. Shut up now."

Both Hermione and Ron jumped and looked towards the door. Unbeknown to them, Harry and
Ginny had returned, and stood framed by the doorway wearing equally horrified expressions.

"What," Ron spat poisonously, "I'm just speaking the truth. She," he pointed viciously at Hermione,
"Is living off our generosity, having a merry fucking time slagging around with Slytherin cunts –"

"Do not talk about her like that," Ginny roared, pulling her wand out. But Harry with his seeker-
reflexes, caught her wrist before she could inflict any damage. "Get off me, Harry!"

"Let's all... please calm down..." Harry whispered with desperation.

"THE FUCK I WILL –" Ginny thundered.

"Oh, right," Ron fumed, "One slag will defend another, yeah?"

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" Ginny screamed, the same time as Harry growled, "Watch it, Ron..."

"Are you all quite insane?"

And it was Percy this time, speaking from the door that led to the living room. He looked from
Ron's purple face to Hermione's bloodless one... from Harry restraining Ginny, to Ginny trying to
launch herself at Ron.

"Our mother," he gritted out through clenched teeth, "Is in the next room, terribly upset. Stop this
ridiculous, childish nonsense at once. Ron, get out."

"Excuse me, wha–"

"Get out. Walk your bloody temper off. Come back when you can speak civilly again."

"You're not the boss–"

"I swear to Godric, Ron, I will hex you if you don't leave right now." And surprisingly, albeit with a
furious glare, Ron followed the command of the brother he claimed to not respect at all. "Ginny,"
Percy continued after Ron had flounced away, "Go to your room," and with an angry hiss, she
acquiesced too.

Percy levelled a profoundly unimpressed look on Harry and Hermione before leaving. The awful
ringing silence he left behind was thicker than slime. Just to break through it, Hermione scraped
back her chair loudly as she got to her feet.
Not wanted, not wanted, not wanted. Had Ron voiced the sentiments of the entire Weasley clan?
She'd never felt like such a sick parasite before... Not wanted.

"Hermione..." Harry whispered uncertainly.

She shook her head at him and turned away. With an inconspicuous sniff, she went over to the
pantry and brought out a box of lemon balm tea leaves.

"I'm going to make some tea for Mrs Weasley. Would you like a cup?"
"Er... sure..." Harry muttered.

Hermione put the kettle on.

When Ron got back, the sun had set and everybody was gathered in the sitting room, co-existing in
silence. Wordlessly, he ensconced himself in an armchair by a window, which he stared moodily
out of.

Ginny glowered at him. She and Hermione were sitting on the floor by Mrs Weasley's feet, helping
her untangle a mountain of wool. They were doing it without magic, painstakingly, as again, the
absorption that such a tedious task provided was truly welcome.

They heard the floo go off in the kitchen, and Mr Weasley's voice was heard calling out: "Molly?
Percy?"

"In here, Arthur," Mrs Weasley called back.

He wasn't alone. He walked primly into the room, and close after him entered Kingsley, in faun-
coloured robes and carrying a dragonhide briefcase.

"Oooh," Mrs Weasley squeaked, "Kingsley! Er – Minister, Er –"

Kingsley rolled his eyes, "We've been over this, Molly. I'm still the same person... the person who
rather loves your gooseberry pie..."

"Of course, of course," she muttered, "Do sit down..."

"So what brings you here?" Mrs Weasley asked after she'd handed him a hefty slice of pie.

"A couple of things," he smiled, "And thank you so much for this. You've salvaged a really rotten
day." He helped himself to a forkful and closed his eyes blissfully. "Well, let's get down to it, I
suppose. First, Percy."

The man in question started and blinked at Kingsley through his horn-rimmed glasses.

"Me, Minister?"
"Yes. I'm sure Arthur's been telling you how hectic things are getting in the Ministry. It's pure
madness on most days. We're woefully understaffed. So many have been sacked, imprisoned, or are
currently receiving treatment at Mungo's. We're in desperate need for efficient, organised, steadfast
workers..."

"Are you –" Percy stammered, "Are you saying –"

"Come back to work, Percy. I would like to offer you your old job again: I could really use a good
senior assistant."

"I don't know what to say," Percy replied thickly, "I... I've made mistakes, Minister... bad choices..."

"Who hasn't?" said Kingsley with a shrug, "I know you're a hard worker. So what will it be? Can I
expect you in my office bright and early tomorrow morning?"

Percy swallowed, and needlessly straightened his glasses. "Yes. Absolutely."

"Wonderful," Kingsley exclaimed. He finished up the last of his pie, and then he set the empty plate
on the centre table. "I would like to talk to Harry, Hermione, and Ron privately now, please."

The others rose and exited the room promptly, (Ginny kept looking suspiciously over her shoulder,)
and the remaining three all seated themselves on the sofa in front of Kingsley.

First, he looked at Harry.

"As the chief representative of the British Ministry of Magic, I would like to inform you that the
government wishes to award you an Order of Merlin, First Class–"

"No," said Harry, promptly.

Kingsley smirked, "Perhaps you will prefer my suggestion? A collective award, for all those who
fought –"

"Yes," said Harry without delay.

"All right." Kingsley was most amused. "There is a small ceremony planned for the fifteenth... if
you all could please make an appearance..." He then popped open his briefcase and turned to
Hermione and said, "These are for you." He held out a pillbox hat and a wooden spatula. "The hat
will take you to the Ministry of Magic head office in Melbourne on the sixteenth of May at nine
p.m. sharp. This one... the spatula... will bring you back here. The date and time is up to you; a
simple expurgo will activate the portkey."

Hermione set the objects on her lap with reverence. "Thank you."

Kingsley waved away her thanks and proceeded to hand them a crisp white envelope each. The
letter inside read:
SUMMONS TO WITNESS AT THE TRIALS OF LUCIUS MALFOY AND NARCISSA MALFOY

To,
Hermione Jean Granger,

You are required to attend to give evidence in court at the hearing of this proceeding on Wednesday,
the 13 th of May, 1998, at The Ministry of Magic, London, at 11 am sharp, and are to remain until
your attendance is no longer required.

Issued by (Interim) Chief Warlock

Tiberius Ogden

"What d'you need us for?" Ron grunted, "Lock them up."

Both Hermione and Harry opened their mouths to speak, but were cut off by Kingsley.

"It isn't that easy, Ron," he said, suddenly seeming tired.

"Because of their twatty son's deal with Lupin, yeah?"

"Well, yes. Which is why I need you to be at the Ministry at nine – there's going to be a closed...
trial... of sorts for Draco. I've tried my best to shut it down, but the Wizengamot insists, and I don't
have the power to overrule them. It'll just be Ogden, two other members, and I... and a few
witnesses... it's all ridiculous, of course... as far as I'm concerned, Draco Malfoy does not deserve
punishment."

Ron scoffed, "And all the shit he pulled in sixth year?"

"Under duress?" Kingsley asked with a frown, "His actions after are what I'm concerned with. I
have spoken to Andromeda Tonks, Neville, Seamus, Bill, Theodore, and Luna... they've all agreed
to speak in his favour. Now if the three of you would agree –"

"Yes," Hermione said with an immediacy that surprised her.

Harry nodded, and Ron... looked away.

"Ron?" Kingsley prompted.

"Fine," he muttered, not meeting the Minister's eye, "He... helped protect my family... so I suppose.
Just this once. Then we're even, and I can hate the bastard with a clear conscience."

Harry laughed; Kingsley's lips twitched.

"As for the trials of Lucius and Narcissa –"

"She lied to Voldemort... it's what kept me alive..." Harry mumbled.

"Yes," Kingsley averred, "Are you willing to testify on her behalf?"

"Yeah."

"Well then. With that, and the conditions of Draco's deal, I have no doubt that she'll escape
Azkaban. And Lucius –"

"You can't be serious," Ron blurted.

"Oh, he's going to jail. For a good long time," said Kingsley with promise, "Just, unfortunately, not
for life." He held up his hand as Ron made to protest again. "Not ideal... I know. But again, it's
what Remus promised Draco, and I am going to honour his promise for him."

Obviously, nobody objected to that. They remained lost in their own musings for some time, until
Kingsley clapped and rubbed is palms together.

"There's one more thing – oh, don't look so worried – these are happier tidings! I had gone to
Hogwarts yesterday to see how the repair work is coming along, and I'm pleased to tell you... it's
nearly complete; nearly restored to its former glory. We'd called in a team from France to help with
the architectural restructuring, and –"

"Why is it," Hermione interrupted, fighting to keep a tremor out of her voice, "That it was so easy
to get foreign aid now, and not during the actual war?"

Kingsley sighed and turned his eyes heavenwards.

"We have very strict non-interventional policies in place, Hermione. It's difficult enough to
maintain the Statute of Secrecy during times of conflict, domestically, without it becoming an
international–"

"But surely the rest of the magical world knew that Voldemort would not be satisfied with taking
over merely Britain!" Hermione exclaimed incredulously, "He was out for world domination –
everybody's lives were at stake!"

"There are laws, Hermione, that are –"

"Preposterous!"

"...Maybe so..." suddenly he smiled, "This is, actually, a good preamble for what I was about to say
– Hogwarts is almost ready to be reopened, and you will be getting your letters soon – Minerva
wants to give the students in your batch a chance to redo their final year. However, I have an
alternative proposition for you: Come work for the Ministry. As I said to Percy, we're short-staffed,
and you three are some of the finest young people I know. Pick your department – Harry, I know
you've always wanted to be an auror... and you, Ron. Hermione the International Magical Office of
Law will be honoured to have you."

She gaped at him with something akin to panic swirling in her gut.

The war was over, and he was offering a fresh start, a new life, a complete change of pace.

"But... what about our NEWTs?" she spluttered. Her heart was thudding so disturbingly.
Kingsley threw back his head and guffawed.

"Completely unnecessary, Hermione. I think you've rather proved yourselves already... you don't
need grades, or a piece of parchment to validate your abilities! ...So? Internships and training will
commence on the first of September."

"I'm in," Harry said with a short, sure nod.

Ron, who'd gone back to scowling out of the window, shrugged. "Sure. Whatever."

A fresh start, a new life, a complete change of pace...

No.

She wasn't ready. She wasn't... complete. Hermione Granger did not skip steps.

"I'm sorry, Kingsley," she said, "I will have to decline. I want to go back to Hogwarts, I want to
complete my education. I think –"

She broke off to stare at Harry – He was chuckling.

"Kingsley, she wouldn't be Hermione if she didn't jump at the chance to go back to school. I'm sure
she's been looking forward to sitting for her NEWTs since our first day at Hogwarts."

"Not the first," Hermione mumbled, giving Harry the first genuine smile she'd indulged in in a
long, long time.

"No?" he asked her fondly.

"Before. Since I'd read about them in Hogwarts: A History."

He grinned, and it was full of so much fondness that she wanted to hug him.

Kingsley, too, was grinning as he stood up.

"Fair enough. But remember, there will always be an opening for you at the Ministry." He
smoothened down his robes and picked up his briefcase. "I must be going now... thank you for your
time. I'll see you tomorrow."

He left, and the reminder of what the next day was to bring fell like a bucket of ice cold water on
Hermione's cheery mood.
Day ten: The Ministry of Magic atrium.

Hermione's shoes clicked in tandem with Harry, Ron, and Percy's footsteps as they marched
towards the lifts. Out of habit, Hermione looked at her wrist to check for the time – she still wore
her broken watch, stuck at twelve-forty AM. Her watch was still stuck on the night of the final
battle.

As the lift descended, Hermione was once again thrown back to her morning as Mafalda, standing
stricken behind Umbridge. The feeling got stronger and stronger as they walked down the
Department of Mysteries corridor, down the flight of stairs leading to the courtrooms...

"Here," said Percy after leading them to a large, dark door, "Courtroom six."

They were, evidently, the last to arrive. The highest bench was already occupied by Kingsley (who
smiled encouragingly,) Ogden, (who also smiled), and two witches in plum coloured robes – one
curious, one sneering. Percy went to sit by Kingsley, parchment and quill in hand, leaving
Hermione, Harry, and Ron to take a seat on the benches that lined the sides of the room.
There sat Andromeda, expressionless, and Neville, in expensive silk dress robes. Seamus, with his
face completely healed gave them a little wave. Luna smiled. Bill nodded.

Hermione sat down beside Theo, but he wouldn't look at her. He was sitting absolutely still, staring
at the straight-backed wooden chair in the middle of the room as he chewed at his tongue; a sure
sign of internal chaos. He twitched oddly when the door opened, and Malfoy walked in, flanked by
two Aurors.

Hermione watched him closely, trying to gauge something out of the cold aloofness of his
demeanour. Just as he lowered himself into the chair, he said something to his escorts, and they
laughed, one even thumped his back good naturedly.

Ogden cleared his throat.

"Closed hearing to determine the culpability of Draco Lucius Malfoy in his role as a Death Eater
under the service of Tom Marvolo Riddle, otherwise known as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

"Interrogators: Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister of Magic, Tiberius Ogden, Chief Warlock, Edwina
Lumbard, senior member, Wizengamot..."

Ogden droned on, naming everybody in the room. Hermione rolled her shoulders, overcome with a
need to fidget. She had a lump in her throat.

"...Court Scribe: Percy Weasley..."

Luna had clasped Theo's hand. Seamus was drawing invisible spirals on the floor with his shoe.
Hermione bit her lips between her teeth.
She looked at Malfoy again; his arms rested along the slim arms of his chair, and his fingers were
drumming against the edges intermittently, as though tapping against phantom piano keys. And
when had he decided to stop combing back his hair, she wondered inanely. Was his spine so taught
with fear, or pride? Hang it all, she was nervous for Draco Malfoy.

"...Neville Longbottom, and Seamus Finnigan.

"The charges against the accused are as follows: That he did freely and willingly join the ranks of
the followers of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, those that called themselves the Death Eaters,"
(Malfoy's hands curled into fists,) "That he did invite He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to take
sanctuary in his home," (Malfoy's calm facade dropped; he glowered at Ogden,) "That he did, under
the orders of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, spend the majority of his sixth year at Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry securing a way to introduce Death Eaters into the castle. That
he did, through his actions, cause near-fatal accidents to befall his fellow students, Ronald Weasley
and Katie Bell," (Malfoy's lip curled,) "That he did, ultimately , succeed in completing his mission
on the thirtieth of June, 1997, which resulted in a battle that injured many. That he did, disarm a
weakened and sickly Albus Dumbledore, and threaten to take his life. That he did subsequently,
live as a fugitive from justice. That he did, continue to serve He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named loyally
and –"

"Not true," Malfoy cut in loudly.

"You will be given a chance to speak later, Mr Malfoy!" the sneering witch – Edwina – shouted.

"Er..." Ogden stammered uncomfortably, "Right then. Do you, Draco Lucius Malfoy, deny the
previously stated charges?"

"I deny their premise," Malfoy replied, slow and sharp, "I was neither free nor willing when I was
being marked. Had I refused, my parents and I would have been killed."

Suddenly, the pace of his speech trebled,

"The Dark Lord, mind you, doesn't ask. I wasn't offered the mark, and I didn't invite him into my
home –" he paused to laugh bitterly, "–This is such bullshit. Did you hear yourself prattle? What do
you think, we had the Dark Lord over for tea, and he was completely delightful, offered to give me
a sweet little tattoo, and we enjoyed his company so much that we simply had to have him stay
on?"

"Your insolence is highly inappropriate, Mr Malfoy!" Edwina snapped. (Hermione heard Theo let
out a quiet groan.)

Ogden, however, looked thoroughly chastised as he fretfully shuffled his papers around. The other
witch – Zoya something – seemed stricken.

Malfoy wasn't done: "And just so you know, I never served the Dark Lord out of loyalty. Never.
And if you've seen Remus' memories, which I'm sure you have, you'll know that I tried to get out of
it multiple times... But apparently Dumbledore had big plans that couldn't be derailed, right?"

"Look, Draco," Kingsley began tiredly.

"What is this, Minister?" Malfoy spat, "I was promised I wouldn't have to deal with any of this. I
answered all of Remus' questions, under the influence of Veritaserum! We had a deal! We had a
deal, and you broke it! You've taken my mother into custody, you're treating me like a criminal...
I've helped, spied, and fought for your side..."

"Hear, hear!" Neville and Seamus chorused.

"You tell 'em, Ferret boy," Seamus added.

Sneery Edwina was beside herself, "Order! Order in the court!"

Like true Gryffindors, Neville and Seamus took their time settling down, and Malfoy, the
inscrutable prat, was smirking at them. Hermione thought Theo might chew his tongue right off.

Eventually, after calm had been restored, Kingsley stood up and turned to the other three at his
bench.

"I'm afraid," he said authoritatively, "This farce has gone on for too long. You have seen Remus
Lupin's memories, and I, along with numerous members of the Order have told you about the role
Mr Malfoy has played in the war. Now if you insist on hearing the testimonies of these witnesses,
so be it, but I can assure you that if you don't vote in this young man's favour, I will make it my
personal mission to keep appealing on his behalf until the verdict is overturned."

"This is intimidation!" Edwina shrieked.

"This is honouring an agreement!"

"Please, please calm yourselves," poor old Ogden implored, "Let's put it to a vote, shall we? All in
favour of dismissal...?"

He raised his hand, and so did Zoya Something.

"All right. Case dismissed." He jumped to his feet. "We have another trial to get to in an hour, and I
would truly appreciate some refreshments before that. Minister?"

A slightly dazed Kingsley, a ludicrously jaunty Ogden along with Sweet and Sneery left the
courtroom. That's when Seamus punched his fist into the air, and Theo leapt off the bench. Malfoy
had hardly got to his feet when Theo reached him and whacked him on the shoulder.

"What the–"

"You Merlin be damned moron. Couldn't you control yourself for ten fucking minutes?"

"What are you talking about? Everything turned out just fine?" Malfoy scowled.

"But what if it hadn't?"

He didn't get a chance to answer. A bailiff of some sort in light purple robes came to inform him
that his parents were in a holding room and wished to see him. He rushed off, and Theo rushed off.
Ron whispered something to Harry and hurried away as well.

Andromeda muttered a hoarse, "I must get back to my grandson," and left.

Hermione, Harry, and Luna lingered in the empty courtroom for a while after Neville, Seamus, and
Bill had bid them farewell.

"Well, that was something," Harry quipped.

Hermione nodded dumbly.

"Theo was so worried," Luna said, "But I'd told him they couldn't possibly put Draco in Azkaban.
They'd have saved themselves so much trouble if they'd bother to look at his aura."

As they sauntered out into the stone corridor, Hermione asked Harry.

"Where did Ron go?"

"To see Reg Cattermole," he replied, peering at her from the corner of his eye, "He wants to
apologise for getting his family into trouble."

While waiting for the next trial to begin, Hermione pondered over the impossible complexity of
human nature until she felt acutely, unbearably... uncomfortable.

The trials of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had lasted for an hour. They'd sat through the proceedings
with stony expressions, speaking in monosyllables as much as possible. Narcissa Malfoy, though
exponentially less polished than usual, managed to display some elegance. Thanks to Harry's
testimony and her son's deal, she had been acquitted. Her husband was sentenced to a twenty year
jail term. Hermione hadn't really looked at him much, not even while relating the events that had
taken place at Malfoy Manor; the impression she was left with was long, limp, tangled white hair,
hollow eyes, and sunken cheekbones.

The moment it was over, Theo and Malfoy had taken Narcissa away, doing their best to shield her
from reporters and photographers. She'd been deathly white.
Sat on the floor by the window once more, Hermione told Ginny all that had happened. The sun
was setting and Ginny's head was ablaze.

"Harry told me you've all been offered jobs at the ministry," she said, leaning back against her
arms.

"Yes."

"And he told me you've decided you'd rather go back to Hogwarts."

Hermione looked out at the world, squinting against its radiance.

"Harry said I wouldn't be me if I didn't go back."

"Hah. No. You wouldn't. And... Hermione... I'm really glad that you are. I'm really glad that you'll
be there."

They smiled at each other.

"And," Ginny continued, "I'm really glad that you're here right now. I know I've been a bit of a
bitch –"

"Ginny, no..."

"Definitely a bit of a bitch, but knowing you're there... it's meant a lot. So just... don't listen to what
Ron says..."

Hermione sighed, and she pressed a palm against her eyes.

"He's so angry, Ginny."

"Well, of course he is. It's how we Weasleys process hurt, you see. There was no way this could've
gone well. He'll heal."

"But do you think he'll ever forgive me?" she asked in a small voice.

"I don't know."

Eleven days after the war, she wandered deep into the orchard with her copy of Hogwarts: A
History, trying to relive the wonder she'd felt as an eleven year old. She couldn't get beyond the
chapter about the Great Hall; printed words described a lavish room with a spectacular ceiling, and
her mind showed her images of people bleeding and crying, of a line of dead bodies. Her mind
showed her chaos and flashing lights, madness and desperation... and a large chunk of mortar
falling upon an unsuspecting –

Hermione shut the book and pulled out Bellatrix's wand, balancing it on her open palm. She'd
barely done any magic in the past eleven days. Two days later, she'd have to use this wand to bring
back her parents – this wand – this wand – this wand. Her idea of penance was a silly one.

The man on stage was a complete sodding dunce.

"...and though many lives were lost, the legacy of this war is the victory of good over evil, of light
over dark, of love over hate..."

A total prick. Hermione wanted to pull off her shoe and hurl it at him.

On the twelfth day, she was in a jam-packed auditorium in some corner of the Ministry, listening to
a brain-dead hack wax poetic about the nightmare they'd lived through.

"...will be honoured for their sacrifice – their valour will live on through us. They fought a
righteous battle for a glorious new world..."

There was no righteousness in war; no glory in battle. This man – this sap – knew nothing. He'd
probably hidden away during the entire thing... He wouldn't have been talking like that if he'd seen
what it had really been like.
If he'd seen his friends fall to a pointless death. If he'd seen how a mother looked upon losing her
child. If he'd felt the terror of facing death, a giant snake, a roaring blaze...
If he'd been hurt, cursed, tortured...

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

She looked to her left, to a row of frosty faces. Harry, Ron, Dean, and Seamus' eyes were glazed
like they were back in Binns' classroom. Ginny looked like she was a second away from casting a
Bat-Bogey hex. She looked to her right, to another row of frosty faces. Neville's eyes were
narrowed; Luna was examining the speaker like she thought he wasn't quite sane. And Theo and
Malfoy... with identical expressions of disgust like they each had a whole lemon in their mouths...
Hermione began to giggle and it rang out like the tinkling of a dinner bell. On either side, the once
frosty faces turned to stare at her with disbelief... before almost collectively thinking oh what the
hell, and joining right in with her.

Her tiny little giggle had triggered a cloudburst of laughter, and Mr Chest-Thumper stood up on his
pedestal fuming in affronted silence.

"You nutter, I love you," Theo sniggered, plucking at her sleeve.

The "ceremony" had dissolved very quickly once the audience realised that they could laugh their
way to the end. After days of fights and funerals it had felt so surreal to be lost in a sea of
laughter...

They were walking to the lifts in a double file of sorts: Harry and Ron preceded Hermione and
Theo, who preceded Malfoy and Neville...
Two rows of photographers flanked their path.

"Mr Potter, Mr Potter – this way – please! Mr Malfoy! Ms Lovegood! Neville Longbottom...!."

"By the way..."

"Hm?"

" Give us a smile, Ms Granger, C'maaan! Mr Potter, Mr Potter! Nott and Malfoy – Slytherin
turncoats – over here, halloa!"

"Are you sure you want to come with me tomorrow? I mean..."

"Do you want me to throw you to the hounds?"

"Mr Longbottom – pretend you're holding a sword! A picture of Potter, Weasley, and Granger... go
on!"

Then they were in a lift, shooting up towards the atrium.

Their short journey to the Ministry fireplaces was much more peaceful. Luna skipped over to
Theo's other side.

"You saved the day, Hermione," she said.

"She really did," Theo seconded, putting an arm around each girls' shoulders.

"You're leaving tomorrow aren't you?"

"Yes, Luna."

"I hope it goes well. If only daddy had been able to complete the diadem he'd been making, I'd have
let you borrow it."

"That's very kind of you."

Even in the atrium, however, people kept pausing to gawk at them. When one pretty young thing
stopped dead to blink at Theo, his walk turned into a strut. He unceremoniously pulled Hermione
and Luna closer, offered the woman a rakish smile, crooning, "Well hello, there."

In unison, Hermione and Luna threw Theo's arms off. Hermione daintily stepped closer to Luna
and looped her arm around the other girl's.

"Hey!" Theo cried in an injured tone.

They ignored him, and picked up their pace.

"Oi!"

Luna tittered.

Her beaded bag was packed, with all the photographs she'd taken from her parents' attic spread
across the top. There was so much rubbish in there though. It still had more than half of Harry and
Ron's clothes... a mini apothecary... The bloody portrait of Phineas Nigellus...
She'd empty it out. Later.

From Ginny's room she climbed up one floor. Standing in the landing, she breathed in heavily, and
then knocked on the door to the left.

"George?" she called, "It's me, Hermione."

Not a voice, not a sound of acknowledgement.

"I'm leaving tonight. Er... right now. I don't know for how long... and I – I – suppose I just wanted
to say goodbye."

Silence.

"Um, take care of yourself."

She let herself linger for ten seconds.

The Weasleys and Harry were all in the kitchen, waiting to see her off. She got an exceptionally
warm hug from Mrs Weasley.

"Best of luck," they murmured, "Keep in touch, let us know if you need anything."

Ginny squeezed her hand.

"Come," said Harry with a tilt of his head, "I'll walk you out."

Ron was standing by the threshold, and as his eyes met hers, he offered her a gruff, "Take care
now."

"You too, Ron," Hermione whispered, because it didn't sound like he was being sarcastic.

Harry shoved his hands into his pockets as they moved towards the closest hillock; Theo's
silhouette could be seen standing on the very top. It was the very same one upon which she'd sat
less than a year ago, after she'd altered mum and dad's memories.

She'd come full circle in a way – a jagged circle with a blade like edge. She almost couldn't believe
she had been the one living through all she had lived through.

Circle: A continuous curved line, the points of which are always the same distance away from a
fixed central point.

Ha – she couldn't claim to have known such consistency. A circle is a whole... and wasn't it just so
fucking poetic that on coming to the end of this circle of hers, she was feeling anything but?
Chapter End Notes

1. "Reality demands that we also mention this...": Reality Demands, by Wisława Szymborska
2. Moon River, as sung by Audrey Hepburn
3. "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest...": Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred
Owen
 Forty-Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“Welcome to the British Ministry Of Magic consulate, Victoria,” said the robotic voice of a female
announcer the moment Hermione and Theo appeared inside a small stone chamber.

While Hermione was still reeling from the tumultuous after-effects of portkey-travel, a tall man
with the most abundant head of sandy hair greeted them with a pleasant, “Good morning!”

His name, he revealed, was Timothy Preston, and would they please feel free to let him know what
he could do for them...?

“Minister Shacklebolt told me to ensure that everything you need is taken care of.”

“Right, thank you,” Hermione mumbled, blinking at the early morning sky visible through the high
windows in the room; it had been night just seconds ago. “Could you tell us a cheap hotel or hostel
we could stay at? Muggle preferably – I’d like to have access to a telepho –”

“What she means,” Theo cut in, grabbing Hermione’s elbow, “Is that we’d like an expensive,
luxurious hotel to stay at. The best the city has to offer.”

“Theo –”

“Hush.”

“Er, of course,” Preston replied, “I’ll look right into it.”

Hermione stood in the living room of the Residence Suite of The Langham, thunderstruck,
overwhelmed, and more than a little appalled. The opulence was otherworldly: Lavish carpets on
hardwood floors, heavy drapes over enormous windows looking over the sprawling city outside,
impossibly expensive furniture and fittings, vases full of orchids... and not to mention the fact that
it had two giant bedrooms, two glorious bathrooms, a dining room, a kitchen...

“I can’t let you pay for this,” Hermione squeaked.

“Pshaw,” Theo scoffed, throwing himself onto a fluffy sofa, “I just sold a mansion, got custody of
my ancestral vault... Hermione, I’m loaded. I’m so rich, it’s disgusting. This is nothing, especially
if you consider the Galleon to Australian Dollar exchange rate.”

“Hmph.”

Hermione squirmed. She clasped her hands together. She shuffled her feet.

“Oh, sit down, would you?” Theo groaned, and when she scuffled over to a brocade armchair and
perched on its edge, he rolled his eyes. “I’m going to explore the kitchen. You hungry?”

Hermione shook her head.

She stared out the window, at the Yarra River shimmering a placid blue, and sighed.

Fragmen recreo, she thought over the buzzing white noise in her head. Fragmen recreo, Fragmen
recreo, Fragmen recreo.

Theo had fallen asleep not long after he’d discovered the wonders of refrigeration, sliced meat, and
Coke, (he’d kept his palm against the warm, humming side of the fridge, while staring at its cold
interior like a worn traveller who’d just discovered Shangri-La,) and Hermione had slipped into one
of the bedrooms and apparated away from the city centre to the beachside suburb of Mentone,
specifically, to the alley next to a tidy, whitewashed building.

CHIPPER CHOPPERS: THE WILKINS’ DENTAL PRACTICE.

A sob was swaddled in a laugh and placed on the sigh that rushed out through her teeth – that had
to have been dad’s idea. She could imagine mum’s exasperation as she agreed to the name, hating
it, but helpless against dad’s gleeful enthusiasm.

Chipper Choppers?! Are you insane, Robert?

No. Not Robert. Wendell.

Hermione disillusioned herself and waited outside the tinted glass doors, pressed against the side of
the wall. When a youngish man opened the door to go in, Hermione seized the chance to slip inside
with him. Her hand brushed against the man’s jacket and she started – they both froze – but then he
shook his head and moved on.
Hermione found herself in a neat little waiting room, with a floor of polished white marble and
cool, mint green walls. A frosted glass door that undoubtedly led to her parents’ offices graced one
of those walls. There were potted palms at every corner, and rows of dark green chairs. There was a
shelf stocked with all kinds of books, the customary magazine rack, a coffee table that held small
bottles of water and a bowl of sugar-free mints. The reception was in one corner: A sturdy desk
behind which sat a girl, (she looked no older than Hermione,) with bleached blond hair tied up in a
high ponytail.

“Good morning, Mr Yang!” she greeted the man whom Hermione had entered with, “Lady Doc will
be with ya in a moment. Have a seat!”

Hermione nestled herself beside the largest plant in the room. She watched the girl at the reception
stare listlessly at her computer. She looked at the large Japanese landscape painting hung on the
opposite wall. She was both rigid and jittery. She was both trembling and frozen. She was –

The telephone at the reception rang.

“Yeah?” The girl answered, “Yeah. Alright. Sure, Doc.” She hung up and tilted her head at Mr
Yang, “Room number two, sir.”

Over the next few hours – three, according to the clock above the reception – a steady stream of
patients walked in and out of the clinic. Her parents had done well for themselves, which really
wasn’t a surprise. The sheer number of loyal patrons they had gathered over the years back home
had been unrivalled by any other clinic in the near vicinity.

By half past twelve, the waiting area had emptied. It was time to break for lunch, Hermione
supposed. The receptionist leapt off her chair, picked up her bag and shot out. Five minutes of
silence followed, and Hermione used the time to bite all the skin off her lower lip.
Then she heard a door open; a knot formed in her chest. She heard it shut with a soft snap... heard
the gentle clicking of heels on marble...

She felt her before she saw her. Mum. Something in the air maybe... or maybe the exact tenor of the
footfalls... something instinctive, intuitive...

Mum had chopped her hair off and was sporting a charming, Mia Farrow-esque cut. Her freckles
had come out, dotting her nose and upper arms. She was humming to herself as she paused in front
of the reception to drop a file on the desk and put on the light coat that had previously been draped
over her arm. It was such a familiar move, the way she tilted her head as she pushed her arms
through the sleeves, then shrugged her shoulders to set it in place.
Hermione was so enraptured that she nearly toppled into the plant beside her when dad walked into
her line of vision. Was she imagining it, or were his unruly curls truly a little more salt than pepper
than before? His skin had a light tan, the crow’s feet and laugh lines on his face were deeper; he’d
obviously been spending a lot of time outdoors.

He sauntered over to mum and chucked a file onto the reception desk as well, saying, “Has she ever
lingered a moment longer than necessary?”

(On hearing his voice, Hermione felt a wave of terrible, splintering affection that doubled when her
mum said–)

“Olivia? Never.”
Dad grinned widely and placed a hand on the small of mum’s back as they walked out of the
building.

Theo was mashing his fist across the buttons of the remote control as he sat before the telly with
big, round eyes.

“Hermione!” he cried, “This thing’s bloody mad!”

First the headlines. In Brisbane today, a –

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Hermione asked, walking over to sit beside him on the
sofa.

“Nope.”

Sautee the finely chopped shallots till golden-brown in colour... yes... like this... then add a
tablespoon of –

“You’re going to break the remote, Theo.”

“...”

“Theo!”

“What?”

Don't want to close my eyes

I don't want to fall asleep
'Cause I'd miss you baby

Hermione snatched the remote from his hand.

“Hey! What??”

“You were going to break it.”

“No I wasn’t!”
I'd still miss you baby
And I don't want to miss a –

With a click of a button, Hermione wiped the screen clear off an emotional Steven Tyler, and Theo
shot a petulant glare at her.

“Where’ve you been anyway?” he grumbled.

She looked away from him and peered at the remote in her hand. “I went to my parents’ clinic.”

He was quiet for a while. She ran her thumb nail along the grooves between the number buttons.

“Oh.”

“Hm.”

“Did you see them?”

“Yes.”

“And...?”

“They’re fine. Happy.”

He fell silent again. Hermione’s thumb nail travelled over to the volume control buttons. It left a
temporary dent on the rubbery material.

“You’re wondering if restoring their memories is a good idea after all,” Theo stated matter-of-
factly.

It would never not surprise her that he could read her so well.

“I – I’m,” Hermione stuttered, “They’re happy, Theo. The moment I bring them back... they’ll be
crushed. And – and angry and devastated –”

“And they’ll deal with it. If one thing’s clear from what you’ve told me about them, it’s that they’re
very strong.”

“Not where I’m concerned,” Hermione muttered, “I’m their weakness and I... I did this to them.
They won’t... they won’t recover! They’ll –”

“They will –”

“They’ll never forgive me! They’ll hate me.”

Theo sucked in a long breath and pried the remote gently from her hands.

“Now who’s going to break it?” he murmured kindly. Then he put an arm around her and said,
“They could never hate you. You know that. You know them. They’re your parents.”
“Not anymore. They’re successful, happy people. What right do I have to fuck with that? How can
I... how can I... do that to them?! It made sense the first time, yes. It kept them alive. But now?
Now? I can’t! I just... I cannot.”

“Hermione,” he rested his chin on the top of her head, “You deserve to have your parents back,
after everything you’ve –”

“So I selfishly just go and ruin their lives?”

“They deserve to have you back.”

“They can’t miss what they’ll never know they had. Oh god.”

She buried her face into his shoulder, brimming with the need for a cathartic cry, but controlling
herself for she knew that it would be nothing more than a fleeting fix.

“I’m so tired of feeling guilty,” she burbled, “I’m so tired of feeling wretched. I’m so tired of being
tired.”

“I know,” he said as he twined one of her curls around his finger, “I know. You don’t have to decide
right now, Hermione. Take your time... think it over.”

“Okay,” she agreed in a weary whisper.

So she thought it over. For three days she vacillated, lost in her tormenting dilemma, making and
unmaking decisions as she draped herself on various bits of furniture in their fancy suite. It was
torture – and she did not use that word lightly.

The pain she felt then was no less searing than what she had felt at the end of Bellatrix’s wand. The
wand that she was, on the forth morning, spinning artlessly between her fingers has she lay across
the foot of her bed, staring at the high ceiling of her room. It was the position she had been in all
night.

“Did you sleep at all?”

Hermione turned her head to look at Theo leaning against the door frame. He had a can of coke in
his hand.

“A little.” She hadn’t.

He raised his brows sceptically but didn’t comment, choosing instead to watch her fiddle with the
wand in her hand.

“You know Ollivander has reopened his shop, right? There’s no need for you to be using her
wand.”

“It isn’t hers anymore.”

“But... I mean...”

“I killed her.”

“Yeah.”

“It works fine for me now.”

“Okay.”

“It’s just a wand.”

“I know.”

Hermione turned back to stare at the ceiling and she heard Theo sigh.

“You really should eat something, Hermione.”

“Maybe later.”

She knew she was frustrating him, and she knew she was being unbearably difficult. She knew
these things but still she persisted, hoping that he’ll get sick of her and go back home.
Oh, how she didn’t want him to go back home. But... she did want him to go, because then her
misery would be whole and complete.

These were her thoughts and she hated herself.

“Let's go out for a bit.”

“Why?”
“Just...” Theo shrugged, trying for lightness but chewing his tongue frantically, “It’s nice out. This
is what they call winter around here, can you believe it?”

“Where will we go?”

“Anywhere. What do they call it here... walkabout?”

He took her down to Southgate Avenue, where there were pubs, cafes, and restaurants galore, and
they strolled among the tall structures of steel, glass, and concrete for hours. The wind was nippy in
the best way – a light sting against her skin. She took in a deep gulp of cool and clean air and
looked up at the heavens: Home of the almighty, apparently. The Lord, God, Allah, Vishnu, Zeus,
Odin... She was playing their game now, wasn’t she?

She revisited the Wilkins’ clinic a week after her first visit. It was just as packed, and she didn’t
bother going inside. She stood – disillusioned – outside, just minutes before closing time.
Sure enough, not too long later, the blond receptionist skipped out. And then, five... seven... ten
minutes after that...

“Sullivan brat is a damned menace I tell you,” dad grumbled as he held the door open for mum,
“He tried to bite my finger off SIX TIMES!”

Mum grinned, her face rosy in the light of the setting sun.

“Why do you think I conveniently had an urgent phone call to attend to the moment I saw him in
the waiting room?”

“You cow!”

They kept walking down the pavement, rather than going towards the row of cars parked across the
street. Hermione followed. She was so focused on tailing them that she knocked into at least a
dozen people – there would probably be a news report tomorrow about how this area was suddenly
haunted.

At a T-junction they turned left, and landed on a road running alongside a beach. Mum pulled her
jacket tighter against her body as the cold sea breeze rushed to greet them. They walked on ahead
for another ten minutes or so.

The house they entered was a pretty, stucco-finished thing with large windows. The patio was
enormous, complete with a grill and deckchairs. The gentle sound of moving water tied the whole
scene together beautifully.
Hermione followed them down their smooth concrete path, (so unlike the rocky pathway back
home). Mum ran her fingers over the straight top of the tidy hedge that ran along it, (so unlike the
unruly hedgerow back home.)

“I’ve been dreaming of wine all evening,” she murmured.

“And as the man of your dreams who makes all your dreams come true, I will ensure that you –”

She cut him off with a kiss and they both walked into their home, and their daughter-who-wasn’t...
finally knew.

“Maybe we should go over the plan one more time?”

Hermione bit her lip and glanced at Theo. He was immersed in some ludicrous show called Who
Dares Wins.

“Morgan’s dried up tits – he’s not really going to jump! Oh fuck me, he is! He’s going to jump!
He’s – Hey! Why do you keep doing that?!”

Hermione had switched the telly off.

She glared at him. “I said,” she gritted out, “We should go over the plan one more time.”

“I know it backwards. And I also have a good handle on what I have to do: Nod along and smile.
I’m good at nodding, and my smile is a wonder of the world. I have it covered. Don’t you worry
about it, darling. I’m solid. I’m ready and rearing to go. I’m –”

“Jesus.”

“Erm, no. His dad, actually.”

She couldn’t stop the exasperated smile and eye-roll that that quip inspired, and Theo, delighted at
the reaction, nudged her shoulder with his.

“It’ll be fine, Hermione.”

In a flash, the smile slipped of her face. “Until it won’t.”

He shook his head, “I didn’t say it’ll be easy, or pleasant, or quick... but it will be fine. It will be.”

“How did you become such an optimist?” she asked, keeping her voice low to ensure that it
wouldn’t tremble.
“I’m not an optimist. But where you’re concerned, Hermione... I always hope for nothing short of
the best.”

Here’s what had happened: Time had frozen for a spell, with mum and dad framed in their
doorway, looking at each other and smiling. Time had frozen and they had turned into a picture: A
picture nearly identical to one in Hermione’s beaded bag... with just one difference. The one in
Hermione’s bag included her.
And at that precise moment, she knew. She belonged in the picture in front of her too. She belonged
with them, and to them. They belonged to her.

It was that simple. Nothing in the world would be right until they’d found each other again.

She held onto Theo’s wrist like it was the only thing tethering her to the ground. The innocuous
wooden door in front of her seemed to get larger and larger with every passing second...

“Er... planning to knock?” Theo asked with the kind of mild curiosity generally reserved for asking
your local grocer about his wife’s health while he bagged your goods.

“Yes,” Hermione whispered.

The door was enormous really and definitely burning hot to touch and it probably secretly had
teeth.

“Hermione?”

“What?”

“Knock.”

“Yes.”

....

“Hermione!”
She lifted her hand and pounded on the door like a maniac: Loud, with machinegun-like
persistence. (“Bloody hell, you – !!”)

The door was yanked open and dad blinked down at them in alarm.

“Hul...lo?” he said, eyes darting from her to Theo, and back.

“Hello,” Hermione gasped, and then he looked straight at her.

It wasn’t the right look. It wasn’t the way he was supposed to look at her – the way he’d always
looked at her – with immeasurable warmth and uncontainable delight. She wasn’t being nostalgic
or emotional; dad always used to look at her like she was a miracle he was blessed to behold. So
badly did she ache to see that look on him, so badly did she want him to pull her into his arms that
it stunned her speechless.

“Yes?” he prompted, cocking his brow.

Theo smiled. Widely.

“We’re sorry to bother you, uh, sir,” Hermione pulled herself together and began awkwardly, (more
than a little distracted by the way Theo was ardently nodding,) “My name is Hermione, and this is
Theodore.” (- Cue for Theodore to offer another devastating smile -) “We’re students... from the
department of Anthropology in LSE... here on an exchange program. We’re doing a survey on
British expats and integration and...” Hermione waved her hand about desperately, “such things,
and, um, if you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you... and your wife... a few questions.”

Looking highly sceptical, dad eyed the two of them for a moment before asking, “How did you find
out about us?”

“Well, you’re quite famous around here, sir,” Hermione gushed. She grinned her most charming
grin – “Everybody’s favourite dentist couple.”

It worked. It always used to work, and the fact that it did once more, when dad wasn’t really dad
gave her a glimmer of hope.

“Come on in,” he said cheerfully, it was almost, nearly right.

He led them down a short hallway, with eggshell walls covered with an impressive collection of
prints and paintings.
Hermione didn’t look at them; she knew them all. Her focus was on the back of her father’s head.
Those curls, his curls, her curls......... she clasped her hands together to stop herself from running up
to him and hugging him from behind.

“Who was it?” said a voice from the room they were just about to enter.
“Couple of kids from back home. They’ve got some questions for us.”

Mum was comfortably coiled on an armchair with a book in her lap, wearing an ugly, misshapen
muffler that Hermione had knitted for her during the height of her SPEW days. Why on earth had
she kept that when all its sentimental value had been erased from her mind?

“Um... come again?” mum enquired, smiling gently at the two strange young people in her home.
(They must’ve looked very strange: Hermione knew her cheeks had to be scarlet and Theo...
Hadn’t. Stopped. Beaming. For a second.)
Hermione barely looked at the pretty sitting room – at the large windows and the many bookshelves
and the rustic furniture – once again, she found herself unable to formulate a sentence.

Dad shrugged, “Students from... LSE, yes?” (Theo nodded. ) “Righto. Tell the lady why you’re
here then,” dad said pointing towards a sofa for them to sit on, “I’ll get us something to drink.
Fresh lemonade all right? I make the most fantastic lemonade you’ll ever taste. Tell them, Monica.”

Mum rolled her eyes and deadpanned, “He makes the most fantastic lemonade you’ll ever taste.”

“Well,” mum said once dad had gone, still with her lovely, good-natured smile.

Hermione swallowed all her emotions and gave her the same flimsy excuse she had given dad.
Mum squinted, watching her closely as she explained.

“I see,” she stated after Hermione’s voice had petered out, “What exactly are you hoping to prove?”

“The... the ease of social integration in first world countries, post-globalisation.”

“Hmm. Fascinating.”

They were rescued from mum’s penetrating stare (and the intensity of her Academic Persona,) by
the arrival of dad, carrying a tray with four tall glasses of pale yellow liquid. Dad’s famous
lemonade – it had been a summer staple her entire life.

The moment the tray was set on the coffee table, Hermione launched into action.

“Excuse me,” she said politely, “Would you mind if I took a closer look at your bookshelf? I’ve
been unable to stop staring at it...”

As she’d hoped, both her parents brightened, and accompanied her to their vast collection of books.

“How have you organised these?” she breathed with believable awe, running her fingers along the
books’ spines. She quizzed them relentlessly about things she already knew: Why was Spinoza next
to Wittgenstein? Were the fiction novels categorised by style... oh, and geography!"

She froze when, on the small bit of wall between the second and third bookshelf, she encountered a
framed photograph: The ex-Grangers standing in front of a fountain in Hyde park, with a gap
between them where a tiny girl of about three could easily have fit.

“That’s a lovely photograph,” she croaked.

Mum and dad came to stand on either side of her, unconsciously mimicking the picture as it used to
be.

“Thank you,” mum murmured, “This was what... 81? 82?”

“82,” dad said, turning to smile at mum.

Then he looked down at Hermione and – – his eyes widened. He stared back up at mum.

“Blimey,” he breathed, “Damned if you both don’t loo–”

“You were right, Mr Wilkins,” Theo broke in loudly, “Best lemonade I’ve ever had.”

“I – er – yes – thank you,” dad muttered.

They went back to sit and Theo gave Hermione the subtlest of nods.

“You’ve got to try this,” he urged, pushing the only remaining unspiked glass towards her.

The last of her parents’ memories – the last night they’d known her – had been restored. The final
silvery thread had seeped through their skulls and back into their minds.

Hermione dropped her hand and took a step back.

“I’m done.”

“Shall we wake them?” Tentatively, Theo placed a hand on her shoulder.

“In a minute.”

A minute passed. Then three more. Mum and Dad were slumped against each other breathing
erratically, and their eyes were darting around behind their closed eyelids.

“I can’t do it, Theo.”

The room was so silent, such a pretty little cocoon of peace. Hermione thought she was going to
die.

“Shall I?” he whispered, ducking his head to look at her face.

“Okay,” she tried to say, but couldn’t quite manage it.

With a reassuring squeeze of her shoulder, he placed himself before the sleeping couple, and
without fanfare or ceremony, uttered, “Renervate.”

He stepped back when mum let out a soft hum, and dad sucked in a sharp breath. Hermione
watched them slowly come to, on dread-anticipation-burgeoning-wonder shaped tenterhooks: A
slow build-up of O Fortuna in her head...

“Ugh,” dad groaned, and pressed his palms against his eyes.

Mum’s eyelashes fluttered as she sluggishly blinked into a state of wakefulness.

“What,” she croaked, “What happened?”

“Mum?” Hermione whispered, “Dad?”

They both jerked like they’d been electrocuted. Their heads snapped towards her with violent
celerity.

“Hermione?” dad gasped, “What – Hermione?”

He was on his feet a moment later, eyes wide with an untethered terror.

“Dad – calm down – I can explain –”

“Explain? What? Explain what? What happened – you... I didn’t know you... I...”

He reached towards her and shrank back in one fluid move. Still on the sofa, mum whimpered.
Both her hands were pressed against her mouth as she fixed a look of utter dismay on her daughter.

“It’s okay,” Hermione begged, and she took a step toward them... only to see them flinch. “Mum...
dad... everything will be okay now. Please, please calm down... yes, sit down dad... I’ll explain...
I’ll tell you what happened.”

Dad lowered himself back onto the sofa, never once looking away from her. Mum, however, didn’t
lower her hands.

“What do you remember?”

“Remember?” dad muttered weakly.

“Yes... what is the last thing you –”

“You and... this boy... you said you’re students... I believed you. I didn’t know you. You. I didn’t
know you, Hermione! What the – I haven’t... this whole year... I didn’t...”

“Do you remember the last night at home?” Hermione interrupted his panicked stuttering, keeping
her tone as soft and even as she could, “You’d sent me up to my room to pack; we were meant to
leave for Australia the next day. You both were watching telly, and I got you some tea, and...”
She broke off abruptly, and something swirled in both her parents’ eyes.

“I remember the tea... then...” dad blinked. Then he exploded, “Jesus Christ! Then what? I
remember waking up... and suddenly we’re... I’m not... WHAT WAS IN THAT BLOODY TEA,
HERMIONE?”

He’d never yelled at her before. Not like that. Not in that heart-rending, scary manner.

“Nothing. There wasn’t anything in – well, a drop of sleeping draught but –”

“WHAT?”

“After you fell asleep... I... ugh.” She hung her head and confessed in one breath: "Modified your
memories. I changed your identities, made it so that you moved here for good. And I made you
forget you ever had a daughter.”

She’d dropped the bomb, and it’s chilling, devastating repercussion lasted for an eternal moment.
The silence after an earth-shattering explosion is always the most profound. Above her fingertips,
mum’s eyes were brimming with unshed tears. Dad’s mouth had fallen open in horror.

“What?” he hissed by and by, “You did what?”

“I – um, I –”

“Why? Why would you – how dare you –”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Hermione wailed in desperation, “They were coming after me! They
would have used you to get to me! They would have hurt you... tortured you –”

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Who are they?!”

“Death Eaters,” she cried, “Voldemort! There was a war... I had to keep you safe, or else they’d
have – no listen – I’m... Listen, mum! I was a target! They knew I was friends with Harry – not to
mention a muggleborn – and they knew where you lived, and... and I did what I had to do to keep
you safe! To keep you alive!”

Mum squeezed her eyes shut.

“A war?! That's your excuse?” dad bayed, “A sodding war? You violated our minds because of a
war that nobody noticed happened?!”

“It was mostly confined to the magical community – but you’d been seeing the news, hadn’t you?
All those murders, the so-called natural disasters...”

“It’s true,” Theo piped up hoarsely from behind her, “It got very –”

“Who are you?” dad snapped.

“He’s my friend. Theo. He –”

“Why didn’t you tell us any of this? Why didn’t you talk to us? You had no right to do this. How
could you? To me? To your mother?”

“I’m sorry!” Hermione cried, “I am so, so, so very sorry. Please believe me. If I thought I had any
other option, I’d –”

“Get out.”

It appeared that mum had finally removed her hands from her face. Her mouth was turned down in
a livid scowl.

“Mum.... what...?”

“Get. Out.”

“No, please,” Hermione implored, half raising her hand, “Just let me –”

“GET OUT,” mum shot up to her feet, “Get out... NOW.”

“You’d better leave,” Dad ground out. He was glaring determinedly out of a window.

Hermione felt her soul rumple.

“Just........ Please......”

She was pulled out the room by Theo’s gently coaxing arms.....

“If you would just listen!”

His arms wrapped around her the moment they were back in the hallway....

“No... Please. Please...”

He disapparated them and the final syllable of her anguished plea dissolved into nothing.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Ron’s face morphed into dad’s face morphed into mum’s face.

She’d tried to apologise to them all – she’d tried to apologise to Malfoy. She was delirious with
guilt and grief, so she pushed open the window of her room and whispered an apology to Bellatrix
out into the night.

She dragged her head back inside at the sound of a knock: “Yeah?”

Theo popped his head around the door, mouth pressed into a straight line. “I take it you aren’t
joining me for supper then?”

“Nope,” Hermione answered, dragging her fingers through her hair.

He huffed, “Well I have something for you,” and held out a small phial.

“Dreamless sleep?”

“Yes.”

“No thank you,” she declined emphatically.

“You need to sleep, Hermione,” he ground out impatiently, “When was the last time you slept?”

She shrugged.

“Well, it shows,” Theo continued, “You look ghastly.”

She smiled thinly, “But don’t you think these purple rings make my eyes pop?”

The unamused look he levelled on her made her want to apologise again.

The next morning, Hermione sat down in front of the telly with a bag of crisps and a bottle of wine.

*
Later that afternoon, she was still in front of the telly, the former bag of crisps was a crumpled ball
on the floor, and the bottle of wine was nearly empty.

Theo didn’t seem to be around.

In the evening, the room got steadily darker and darker, and she remained in front of the telly with a
fresh bottle of wine. There was some inane game show going on, and the host was an obnoxious,
vivacious bugger with gleaming teeth. He probably had a great dentist.

At night she gently rolled off the sofa and onto the thick carpet. The room was awash with
flickering, unnatural blue light spilling out of the television screen which she had muted, and with
the way her vision was swimming, she could pretend she was underwater.

Droooooooooooooooowninggggggg.

With a small fump, a head landed beside hers, and her eyelids fluttered as she smiled at Theo.

“Hi,” she breathed.

“Alright?” he asked with a half smile of his own.

“Completely blotto.”

He chuckled, and they both stared up at the chandelier above them.

“You know,” Hermione drawled, “There was a chandelier hanging over me when Bellatrix was
torturing me, too. It was much grander than this one.”

Theo’s pinkie brushed against hers as he said, “Well, nothing but the best for the Malfoys.”

“Of course,” she snorted, “But the point is... this is torture too. This. Right now. Let's go back ho–
Ha! Let’s go back to England.”
“Let’s just hang around a little longer.”

“For what? For fucking what?”

She slapped her hands over her eyes. Hard.

“Give them some time, Hermione,” Theo advised softly, “Just a little more time.”

“What the fuck is that?!”

Those were the first words out of Theo’s mouth when he woke up. They’d both fallen asleep on the
carpet at some point last night, and Hermione had managed two full hours of shut eye.
But now, the sun was streaming in through the windows and Theo rubbed his eyes as he gaped,
appalled, at the telly.

“They’re bananas,” Hermione told him, “In pyjamas.”

“I can see that!” he snapped, “But... just... why?”

Hermione tilted her head, “I’m not sure.”

“What the hell are they eating?”

“Munchy honey cakes.”

“Good grief, they’re terrifying. Luna would love them.”

It was late in the evening when their telephone rang.

“HERMIONE!” Theo hollered from the sitting room, “WHAT’S IT DOING?!”

Sighing, she rolled off her bed and shuffled over to where he was perched, charily poking the
receiver.

“Is this how muggles communicate? It’s worse than a howler!”

“Oh, move off,” she muttered, “Hello?”

“Good evening, Ms Granger. Reception. There are two people here – a Mr and Mrs Granger
waiting to –”

“Send them up,” Hermione rushed out.

“Of course.”

Hermione set the receiver down in a daze, her breathing escalated till she was near-
hyperventilating.

“What?” Theo demanded, “What is it?”

“They’re here! My parents... they’re here!”

“Ah.”

“What do you mean ‘ah’?! How did they know where to find me?”

“Well,” he hedged, “I may have nipped out while you were determinedly getting pissed yesterday,
and I may have gone by their place and left a note on the front door...”

“You did what?” she stared at him.

“Well, I had to give them the option of reaching out to you if they wanted it... and you know they’d
have wanted it...”

But before Hermione could respond, a little tinkle announced the arrival of her parents. They were
there – right there – behind the door. Her legs had turned to lead, so it was left up to Theo to walk
over and let them in.

The light from the corridor puddled around the threshold, and she fixed her eyes on it. She watched
two pairs of shoes – scuffy grey brogues and shiny black boots – step into the pool and make their
way towards her. As they approached, her eyes climbed upwards, and she took in their faces: grim,
tired, and faded. All the abundant joy she had witnessed a few days back had dissipated. She was to
blame for that.

“H–h–hello,” she whispered, clasping her hands together.

Dad nodded. Mum looked away.

“Thank you... thank you for coming.”

Mum still wouldn’t look at her. Dad sighed.

“You wanted us to listen,” he said curtly, “So we’ll listen. Tell us everything, Hermione... all that
you’ve been hiding and omitting for god knows how many years.”

“Yes, okay, I’ll –”

“No lies. I need... we deserve to know everything.”

“I will tell you everything,” she avowed and swallowed thickly, “I promise.”

Their shadows loomed large and grotesquely distorted, thrown onto the walls by the light of a
single lamp. There were four glasses, a bottle of scotch, and a bucket of ice sitting on the table, the
last of which was dotted with tiny drops of condensation. Everybody was technically silent, but the
impact of Hermione’s monologue seemed to boom and echo around the room like the sound of a
hundred brass gongs.
A monologue is exactly what she had launched into, and she told her parents everything. All the
horrible things she’d had to contend with over the years, things that she had glossed over or not
mentioned at all. Dad had sunk lower and lower in his chair as she’d gone on, interrupting only two
or three times to ask a question. Mum had begun crying very early on... and she hadn’t stopped. But
she still wouldn’t look at Hermione.

“Well, that’s what happened,” Hermione mumbled weakly.

Dad reached out to pour himself another healthy helping of scotch, and downed it in one go.

“You mean to tell me that I nearly lost you a dozen times since you joined that blasted school and...
honestly... what kind of hellish school is it? What is this world you’re a part of? God damn it. Every
year we let you go to that place, thinking you’re learning how to pull fucking rabbits out of a hat,
and you’re out there fighting for your life, fighting against some evil –”

He broke off to pour himself another glass. Mum sniffed loudly.

“How could you not tell us?” dad demanded furiously, “How could you not say a word? We’re your
parents! We are supposed to protect you, not you us! What were you thinking!”

“They were witches and wizards, dad,” Hermione muttered, imploring him to understand, “who
hated people with no magic. They would have tortured you and ki–”

“FINE!” dad thundered, “I get it. We’re weak little muggy things who didn’t stand a chance! But
we’re not stupid, are we? You should have told us! And you should have let us take care of you...
take you away from all that!”
Hermione closed her eyes.

“How could I have left, dad? Left Harry? Ron? Ginny? All my friends? All the other muggleborns
and halfbloods who didn’t stand a chance?”

“Bugger that!”

“No, dad. I did what you taught me. I fought for what was right. I fought alongside my friends and
for my rights, and against oppression and tyranny –”

“Oh shut up,” mum sobbed. Still, she didn’t look at her.

“Mum,” Hermione entreated, putting all her everything in the word.

“What if you had died, Hermione,” dad asked hoarsely, “What would we have done?”

“That’s why I made you forget me,” she replied, closing her eyes once more.

“My god,” dad groaned, “I can’t believe you did this. I just... shit... I can’t. Can’t believe it.”

Then he laughed a pained humourless laugh that hurt every bit as much as her mother’s tears did.

Quietude roared again... until Theo cleared his throat.

“If I may,” he enquired in a low voice.

“Ha,” dad barked yanking his hair off his forehead, “Go ahead.”

“I have the happy advantage of being well-acquainted with the other side – the Death Eaters. My
father’s one of them. Charming fellow, terrorised me, killed my mum, worked tirelessly to legalise
muggle hunting once more, etcetera, etcetera. Now, I’m sure Hermione has convinced you that this
war was serious business already, but let me tell you that taking her away would’ve amounted to
fuck al – er, pardon me – nothing. The Dark – Voldemort had great ambitions... and if he hadn’t
been defeated, you lot would’ve spent the rest of your lives running. And they would’ve been very
short lives.
“Because if it wasn’t for Hermione... Voldemort... would not have been defeated. Potter would’ve
been long dead if it wasn’t for her, and we’d all be languishing under the rule of an unhinged,
bloodthirsty despot. She wasn’t just a foot soldier in this war, Mr and Mrs Granger – she was in the
vanguard. If it wasn’t for her staggering brilliance and bravery, we’d all have been done for.”

Hermione wanted the floor to swallow her up, and she peer down at it pathetically, hoping that it
would oblige. But who ever listened to her, right?

The floor did not swallow her up.

She looked up when the motion of mum tugging at dad’s sleeve caught her eye.

“Right,” dad nodded and stood up, “We’ll be off then.”

“Wait... what...?” Hermione gasped, a new wave of dread washing over her.
Was that it then?

“It’s late,” dad replied, “We should head back. But...” he coughed awkwardly, “I am making dinner
tomorrow – that vague estimation of paella that you love so much – so... it would be nice if you
could come by. Monica doesn’t appreciate it half as much.”

“Evelyn,” mum rasped, “My name is Evelyn.”

Then she walked out the door, and Hermione didn’t even get a parting glance. Dad let out a
shuddering sigh and followed.

“Are you okay?”

“I suppose.”

“Dinner is a good sign?”

“I hope so.”

They were sitting on some steps on the Yarra river promenade, watching people meander around in
their Sunday best.

“I don’t think mum will ever forgive me.”

Theo shook his head, “She will.”

“You don’t know that,” Hermione replied dully.

“Oh, I think I do,” he quirked his mouth at her, “You, darling, are impossible to stay angry at. Ask
me. You’re adorable when repentant... it’s irresistible. Do you think I let just anyone get away with
ignoring me? I mean, you somehow even got Draco to stop wanting to obliterate you for screaming
at him.”

She felt her face heat up and she looked away... a gust of wind skidded over the water and rushed to
cool her down again.
 *

She received a letter from Harry and Ginny via the consulate sometime around noon. They asked
her how everything was going and she sent a reply saying everything was going well.

Dad’s (vague estimation of) paella was as sumptuous as ever, yet Hermione struggled to keep
eating. She was hyperaware of the way dad was watching her so closely, and the way mum wasn’t
looking at her at all.

Theo, however, was scarfing down spoonful after spoonful.

“Excellent stuff, Mr Granger,” he pronounced, “Truly exemplary.”

“Er, thank you,” dad mumbled. He pushed his food around his plate for a moment before asking,
“So... how long have you two been together?”

It was truly unfortunate that Hermione was taking a sip of water at the time.

“No,” Theo said hastily, as she hacked out a lung, “Not together, sir. I’m the greatest person
Hermione knows, but that’s about it. I have a girlfriend... she’s wonderfully dotty. Hermione
introduced us, actually; just another reason why I’m so desperately grateful to her. She’s truly the
best friend a bloke could ask for... except when she’s throwing a tantrum for no reason, or when
she’s making me spend hours in the library, or when she’s the reason I have to endure death defying
situations... like riding on the back of a blind dragon... alongside a Weasley. But all worth it of
course, when you weigh the pros and cons. She’s brilliant, isn’t she? So compassionate, and yet so
ferocious... I mean, she’s the only person I know who can make my prat of a brother shut up. It’s
glorious. Furthermore, I’ve even come to find that –”

“Theo,” Hermione choked, “Why don’t you shut up?”

He was affronted in the most Theo manner.

“Well excuse me for trying to extol your virtues so that your parents decide to forgive you sooner!”

She could only open and close her mouth wordlessly at that. But then, amazingly, dad laughed. It
wasn't a real expression of mirth, but it was a definite Dad Laugh. Hermione shot a startled glance
at Theo and he grinned back at her triumphantly. She then stole a surreptitious look at mum, and
though she was still steadfastly staring down at her plate, she was most definitely feeling
something. She never could resist dad’s laugh.

The evening was blustery and dad lit up a small fire in the back garden for them to sit around.

“I’m going to bed,” mum announced not five minutes after they’d settled.

“Evie, come on...” dad murmured, reaching for her hand.

“Goodnight,” she said firmly and walked back inside.

Staring at the bright flames as they flickered and disappeared into smoke, Hermione conjured all
sorts of trite metaphors about life’s inconsistencies. She felt odd. Vacantly burdened. Squeamishly
comfortable.

Dad swept a hand through his hair.

“You’ll be moving in here now, wont you?” he asked Hermione.

“I...” she swallowed, “I hadn’t planned on it.”

“Of course you are,” dad said decisively, “We’ve a spare room that could only have been meant for
you. I see no other reason for us to have decided to paint the walls purple.”

“Is that wise, dad?” she wondered, “I don’t think mum would like it.”

“She’ll come around, Hermione. You know her, don’t you? She always comes around.”

But it’s different this time, she wanted to say... instead she found herself rolling her eyes when Theo
proclaimed, “That’s exactly what I told her!”

“On what basis did you make that claim?” dad asked with raised brows, even as his mouth twitched
with amusement.

“Man’s intuition,” Theo replied superciliously.

“Right,” dad grinned, then turned to Hermione, “This chap’s a nutter. Where on earth did you find
him?”

Hermione huffed a laugh. “Oh, he’s always been around, skulking all over Hogwarts like a surly
bat –”
“Sod off, Hermione –”

“But then he suddenly attached himself to me, and I couldn’t shake him off. Not only was he
unspeakably persistent, he didn’t even ease me into his true personality. I was delivered the full
Theo experience from the get go.”

“Sounds harrowing,” dad muttered with faux-gravity.

“She was charmed, I tell you! Utterly charmed –”

“Then I sicced Luna at him – thought that would shake him up a little... but he went and fell in love
with her –”

“Unbelievable.”

“She fell in love with me too! Because I’m a gem–”

“And then I had to endure months of him pining –”

“I did not pine!”

“– getting all flustered and ridiculous –”

“– and speaking of pining... do you really want me to bring up your ginger obsession?”

“–finish all the sweets and cakes you used to send me! Literally gobble them up like some sort of
monster –”

“You offered! You bloody well offered!”

“You know,” dad broke in in a firm voice, “We do have neighbours. I don’t think they care for
screaming young men.”

“Honestly, Theo,” Hermione shook her head, “Do control yourself.”

He stuck his tongue out at her, and she laughed.

Only Theo could’ve done that. Only Theo could have taken a moment that really ought to have
been heavy and severe, and turned it into one full of bubbling lightness.

“Well then,” she whispered in the last few minutes they had left in their suite.
“Well then,” Theo parroted.

They hugged each other tightly.

In the lift he said, “How long do you plan on staying?”

She replied, “I’m not sure... but I’ll be back well before term starts.”

“Mm. Good.”

“Give my love to Luna. And Ginny and Harry if you see them.”

“I will never give Potter love, Hermione. Not even for you.”

“Prat.”

“But if I come across Thomas, Finnigan, or Longbottom... yeah. I’ll give them your love.”

“Gosh, thanks,” Hermione intoned dryly.

“And who else...” Theo quirked his brow at her, “Bill and Fleur?”

“Sure?”

“Xenophilius?”

“Er...”

“Draco?”

Hermione stuck her nose in the air and declared, “I will never send Malfoy love, Theo. Not even for
you.”

For the rest of the journey down to the lobby Theo wore a small, enigmatic smile on his face as he
hummed the Bananas in Pyjamas theme song.

The walls of the room were her favourite shade of purple. The bed had two large, fluffy pillows –
just as she preferred it. Above the bed was a framed print of bottles painted by Morandi. There was
an enormous bookshelf running across the length of one wall, half full of novels that she loved,
poetry anthologies, art history tomes, and political treatises.
 It was, to summarise, exactly the sort of room she’d claim as her own. Her parents had made it so
even when they didn’t know she existed; it seemed to her that while she had successfully erased
herself from her parents’ minds, she hadn’t been able to remove herself from their... souls? Ah, that
annoying schism once more.

Nonetheless, whatever... impulse... had driven them to prepare this room was something Hermione
cherished.

She set her beaded bag on the floor, and sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh. From the open
window, a cold breeze rushed in, tickling the ceramic chime that hung from its frame and caused it
to dingle melodically. She could see the tops of trees and the blurry hint of the bay beyond.

“All settled in?”

Hermione started, then gathered herself and smiled faintly at her father who’d appeared at her door.

“Yes,” she replied, “Thank you.”

He stared at her.

“Dinner will be ready in an hour or so. I’m making grilled chicken.”

“Sounds fantastic.”

He continued to stare at her.

She blinked awkwardly, fighting the urge to wring her hands... until finally, he raised his arms and
said, “Oh come here, you little monkey.”

She sobbed, wailed, gasped – made some sort of noise – and ran to him. He hauled her up into his
arms, squeezed her, and it was like being bathed in mad, overpowering relief. Fear, hunger, hurt,
torture, death – she’d seen it all and now there she was, being soothed in an embrace that made her
feel safe, full, warm, and loved. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the slightly
rough fabric of dad’s shirt.

Chapter End Notes

1. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith

2. "O Fortuna": Movement in Carl Orff's cantata 'Carmina Burana'
3. "Man hands on misery to man...": This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin
 Forty-Five
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Home is where the heart is. But what would you call it if the heart is broken?

It had been a week. Every morning, Hermione pretended to be asleep as her parents got ready and
left for work. Then she wandered around the empty house, picking up books at random to read, or
staring glassy-eyed at the telly, or walking down to the beach.

Dad had been trying to be cheerful. He’d smile at her, ramble about his day as he fixed dinner and
Hermione stood by him, chopping or peeling things as he’d request. And while the tightness in his
eyes hadn’t disappeared, and he’d still flinch every time Hermione made a sudden movement, he
was coping far better than mum, who still wasn’t speaking to her. She wouldn’t even look at her. It
was truly the worst Hermione had ever felt in her life. She felt repulsive.

Well, most of the time. There were moments when her indignation would reign supreme: Moments
when she’d feel that no matter how hurtful her actions had been, her parents were alive because of
it. And by some miracle, she was alive too. We’re all alive, mum! Don’t you see how phenomenal
that is?!

“So now we don’t know whether to stick with the name, or change it to Granger,” dad said as he
and Hermione sat sipping tea in the kitchen one evening, “We’re quite well known as the Wilkins...
it’d be odd and inconvenient to change it. And I don’t know. Are we supposed to go around telling
people we aren’t called Wendell and Monica anymore?”

Hermione squirmed. Though he had spoken lightly and conversationally, his posture was rigid. He
was not feeling light or conversational.

“Um,” she rasped, “You... plan on staying here?”

“Yeah. We spoke about it, your mum and I. We like it here. Not to mention the fact that all our
brothers and sisters are furious that we left with barely a word and haven’t felt the need to stay in
touch all year. Was that part of your curse?”

“It wasn’t a curse, dad.”

“Whatever,” he said curtly, “The point is, their collective wrath is not something either your mother
or I have the energy or patience to deal with.”

“And you’re... you’re going to remain as the Wilkins?”

Dad shrugged, “Professionally, at least.”

“I – I see.”

She wasn’t prepared for how badly that stung. She had been so sure that they would go back with
her and become the Grangers in their house in Hampstead again. Maybe when they’d all be back
with the right names, in the right place... everything would be right again.

But they were going to inhabit their new guise and they would stay in their new home and their
new lives, all which had nothing to do with her.

“Why are you crying?” dad asked, looking flustered.

“It's nothing.”

“It’s never nothing.”

“It’s just – I – I thought we’d all go back home. Together.”

He sighed heavily, and shifted his chair closer to hers, so he could put an arm around her.

“This is our home now, Hermione.”

“O–Okay then.”

She turned her face away as she felt it scrunch up with anguish.

“Damn it, Hermione,” dad cried, “You messed with our minds! There had to be some
repercussions! We’ve spent a year here building a life and reputation, growing roots... this is who
we are now!”

“I get it –”

“No you don’t! You did your spell, you blotted yourself out of our memories, but we were still us.
We came to Melbourne, we set up our clinic, we made a life here. It wasn’t all some dream we can
wake up and walk away from. Besides... I... I can’t imagine going back to that house. My life’s
been fractured, Hermione. I can’t go back.”

She nodded, and while still looking at the floor said, “And I can’t stay here.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” dad began, “Er... hey. Do you mind looking at me?
There you go, my pretty girl. Now. I don’t think I’m very comfortable with the idea of you going
back to that school.”

“Wh–What?”
“Are you really surprised, after everything you’ve told me?” he asked incredulously.

“Voldemort is dead, dad. It’s not going to be like that anymore.”

“Look, Hermione,” he insisted, “There hasn’t been a year of your life since age eleven that you
haven’t faced grave danger. And it’s all because of that school! How do you think I feel, as you
father, as someone who’s done his sodding best to keep you sheltered and safe –”

“As someone who’s taught me the importance of education, I think you’d understand why I have to
go back!” she retaliated.

“Ha!” dad barked, “What education? What are you even learning?! What has that place done to
you that you feel justified in doing what you did to us?”

Hermione’s chair scraped loudly as she shot up to her feet.

“I told you why I did it! You said you understood –”

“I understood why you did it, sure. I just don’t understand how. How could you even bring yourself
to –”

“Do you think it was easy?” She was shouting now. “Do you think I didn’t agonise over it
endlessly? That it didn’t wreck me? Do you think I don’t feel awful – absolutely bloody awful – for
doing that to you?! But I do not regret it, dad. No. I don’t. Because you’re alive. You know, Lupin –
who was also killed by the way – had told me that one of the first places the Death Eater’s planned
to attack was our neighbourhood. Think that’s a coincidence? And Theo told you what would have
happened if I had run away with you. This was... it was the only thing I could think of while I –
while I taught myself to survive, and spent my time planning and practicing and and god, knowing
that Harry could very possibly die – and that would be the end – and – I just – he was counting on
me to have answers – and I – I – I saw you dead, dad. You and mum... when I was being tortured...
please, dad –”

Her words died out to make way for great, gasping sobs, and she folded her arms around her waist,
nearly doubling over. Dad gripped her shoulder with one hand, but otherwise didn’t move. And
though her vision was foggy, she could tell that he was crying too.

It was around ten in the morning when she stepped out of her room, clad in a tracksuit, ready to run
laps by the sea. Being unable to sleep was killing her, so she thought she’d tire herself until she
couldn’t possibly stay awake.

But in the hallway she encountered mum, struggling to manoeuvre a wheeled suitcase while
checking her pager. There was also a bulky duffle bag on her shoulder. She froze when she noticed
Hermione.

“Um, would you like some help?”

Mum faltered, oddly deer-in-the-headlights-like, considering. Hermione just hoped she wouldn’t
ignore her, because she simply couldn’t couldn’t handle another blatant rebuff.

“No thank you,” mum gritted out, “I’ll manage.”

Hermione pushed her luck: “Where are you off to?”

“Seminar in Perth.”

And then mum rushed past her, the wheels on her trolley-bag scraped against the wall and left a
razor thin scratch on the blue wallpaper.

“Bye,” Hermione muttered to the empty corridor.

She huffed and panted, bent over with her hands against her knees. She must have run for over an
hour. Beads of sweat dotted her temples and her legs burnt from overexertion.

Such a magnificent feeling.

It was an overcast afternoon, but sunlight still broke through the cloudy canopy above dazzlingly,
catching random waves being tossed around by the wind. The wind that Hermione had run against.
She looked back at the path she had sprinted – the tiny craters that her haphazard footfalls had
created – before unceremoniously dropping to the ground with a thump. She lay back and squinted
against the flashing beams of light, while her hands clenched and dug into the sand.
Sand: The tighter you tried to hold onto it, the quicker it slipped through your fingers.

*
By the time she got back home, her sweat had dried off and so had her endorphin-fuelled high. She
stood under a hot gush of water for twenty minutes before crawling into bed and she slept till the
sun had set and dad came to call her down for supper.

Three days after mum had left, dad took off from work. Hermione became aware of this at six in
the morning, when he pounded at her door and demand that she get dressed, (“Sturdy, comfy
clothes, alright?”) and hurry downstairs.

“What’s the matter?” she asked him.

“We’re going for a walk,” he replied nonchalantly.

So they went for a walk. Dad took her to Mentone beach, down a small path along the coastline.
The beauty of the seaside when the day was just being born was, of course, sublime.

“The Heidelberg School artists used to camp about here,” dad said, gesturing around him.

“Australian Impressionists?”

“Yeah. You can see why, right? I mean, this sort of landscape is just...”

He trailed off, so Hermione muttered, “Made for light and colour exploration.”

“Heh,” dad chuckled, “Exactement. Now come on, we’re not here to stroll. A brisk early morning
walk is very good for the Englishman’s – and woman’s – heart.”

Hermione’s legs were still so stiff from her run that she suffered, (oh she suffered!) but she suffered
in silence. The nippy air felt good against her face as it heated up.

“So dad,” she huffed, “How’d you manage to take off work?”

“When your mother isn’t around, sweetheart, I’m the boss. I gave myself a holiday. I’m very
generous that way.”

She laughed, and he laughed at her laugh. Frothy waves on one side, dusky wilderness on the other,
and for the first time in a long time, Hermione felt centred.

They were quite for some time, before dad exclaimed, “Oh Hermione... you’ll never guess who
stops by the clinic every time he’s in town!”

“Who?” she asked, piqued.

“Well... guess!”

“Dad, you just said I’ll never guess.”

“Hmph,” he grunted, but his grin was intact. “Steve Waugh! I’m officially Steve bloody Waugh’s
dentist. When he’s in town. ...Which, to be honest, isn’t all that often...”

She raised her brow.

“Well, alright. He’s visited twice.”

“That’s serious patronage, dad. Wow.”

Dad scowled. “You’re so like your mother. That’s exactly what she’d said.”

The mention of mum sobered Hermione immediately, and dad realised it. They fell into silence
again, and this time it lasted for a much longer spell of time.

They reached a jetty, shooting off the shore and placing them in the middle of sea and sky like they
were standing on the edge of the earth. Dad stooped to rest his elbows against the wooden railing
and peered at the horizon.

“You should talk to mum,” he said, “When she gets back.”

Hermione stood next to him, laid her head on his shoulder, and muttered, “She doesn’t want to talk
to me.”

“She does, my love. She really does. But she’s... feeling so much that she doesn’t know how to
start. You need to make her talk to you.” When she didn’t respond, he sighed and gently nudged her
head with his shoulder. “Hey... you know her. She sulks, but she always wants to talk things out.
Promise me you’ll try.”

Hermione lifted her hand and rested it on his wrist.

“I’ll try. I promise.”

A little blue and white bird landed atop a corner post and shook its wings... and then fluttered off
again.

“I never fully realised what it meant,” Dad murmured, “You being a witch. Never really
internalised it. It was such a bizarre and... whacky... thing. Then you’d come back from school and
tell me you can make things fly, and turn teapots into mice and what not... and I just,” he sighed
again, “Everything was so fantastical that I didn’t involve myself enough. You spoke about things,
about your life and ambitions – and I was so terribly proud, never doubt that – but I just listened.
That’s all. I didn’t question you enough... I didn’t pay close enough attention... I... damn it... I’ve
not been a very good father to you, have I?”

She was aghast, and she immediately straightened to stare at him.

“You are a wonderful father! You and mum have been the most supportive and loving –”

“Supportive and loving, sure,” dad interrupted with a sardonic twist to his mouth, “But absent.
We’ve been absent. I will never forgive myself for that. I should have grilled you for answers. I
should have been more aware! My little girl had been playing with her life year after year, and I
didn’t have an effing clue! What kind of father am I? Tell me... why didn’t I push to meet your
teachers even once in six years? I talked to Arthur about electric generators for hours but I didn’t
once ask him about how he thought our kids were doing. I didn’t ask him about the school, or how
your world functions. I didn’t bother to learn much about anything that constituted your new life.
And I am... I’m so ashamed, Hermione. I’m so very sorry –”

“Dad...” she choked out, “Don’t.”

“If I had involved myself more... been a father rather than a dumb, enthralled spectator, maybe you
wouldn’t have done what you did. Maybe you would have trusted me with the truth. Maybe we
could have helped each other. Maybe... maybe... oh, I don’t know.”

The cracks in the cloudy sky were golden yellow like syrup.

“I want to be able to move on,” Hermione sniffled, “I want to move past the chaos, the violence,
the hurt. I want to go back to school, and ace the N.E.W.T.s. I want to get a job that I’ve earned,
and that’ll let me work for things I care about. I want to live my life, and hang around with my
friends, and sit down for dinner with you and mum while we talk about... about... Rumi. I want to
feel okay. I just want to finally feel okay.”

That little blue and white bird returned to perch on the same post as before, this time with a winged
insect in its beak.

“You know I love you more than anything in the world, don’t you?” dad asked.

As Hermione walked into her parent’s clinic, she thought about the last time she’d been there:
Terrified. Disillusioned, in more than one way.
She was utterly visible this time, and the girl at the reception shot her a look the moment she
entered.

“Hello,” she said with forced pleasantness, “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” Hermione replied, “It’s fine. I’m just waiting for da– er, Dr Wilkins.”

“Don’t have an appointment, do ya? Well, we’ll be breaking for lunch right now, I’ll see if I can fit
you in later in the afternoon...”

“No, that isn’t necessary; I’m not a patient, I –”

“Hermione!”

She spun around to see dad jogging towards her with a big smile on his face.

“Ready for lunch?”

“Absolutely,” she smiled.

“Great.” He then regarded his receptionist, (who was looking most curious,) and said, “Olivia, this
is my daughter.”

“Now where’d you get a daughter from?”

Dad sighed tragically. “Look, Olivia, if your parents haven’t told you about the facts of life yet, I
really can’t help you.”

“Ooh, you’re funny, doc,” Olivia sniped dryly, “I mean, I’ve never seen her around before.”

“I was at boarding school. In Scotland,” Hermione told her, grinning.

“Right. Beaut. What’s your name again?”

“Hermione.”

Olivia peered at dad. “You and lady doc are really good at naming things, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said simply, “Now we’ll be off, alright? Be good. And for the love of god, please be back
on time.”

“Sure thing,” Olivia grinned, and waved as dad led Hermione out of the building.

The letter arrived in the mid-morning... that familiar crisp white envelope with the Hogwarts’ seal.
But her name and address weren’t written in spidery cursive and the usual glittering purple ink, no;
they were neatly printed across the front in sharp, no-nonsense black.

Headmistress McGonagall was pleased to let her know that Hogwarts was ready to reopen. She
would be delighted if Ms Granger would return to complete her schooling. She had immense faith
in Ms Granger’s abilities, blah bloody blah. She was also pleased to announce that Ms Granger had
been appointed as Hogwarts' Head Girl for the year, 1998-99.

Hermione didn’t stop to mourn the demise of another childhood dream when she sent the shiny
golden badge back to McGonagall, along with a terse letter expressing (something akin to) regret.
She did not second guess her decision to, for once, decline a badge and the responsibility it
entailed. You see Headmistress, Ms Granger would like to be accountable for no one but herself for
a while.

That night when she woke up with a gasp after another nightmare about giant snakes and
desecrating fire and Tonks, Fred, Lupin, Colin, Lavender... she walked over to her window to press
her face against the cool glass. When she pulled away, the glass was wet and splotchy.

Those were the dreams she chose to mourn.

“Here,” dad said in a conspiratorial quasi-whisper as he shoved two bottles of beer in her hand, “Go
on.”

Mum had returned the day before, twisting at the door to drag her suitcase in, and Hermione hadn’t
given her a moment’s notice – she’d barrelled into her and hugged her.
It stunned her, the immediacy with which mum embraced her back. And not in a perfunctory,
placating manner, either. Mum held her tightly, (one long squeeze during which Hermione felt the
kind of wholesomeness that she’d been craving,) for a few moments. But the second her arms
slipped away, she walked around Hermione and disappeared upstairs.

That brought her to the current moment: Six-thirty in the evening, and dad was in the kitchen,
steaming fish for dinner.

“Go on!!” he urged, gesturing wildly towards the patio where mum was draped on a deck chair.

“I’m going,” Hermione gritted out.

With trepidation sitting like an iron ball in her throat, she dawdled towards the door and out; mum
looked up at her, eyed the bottles in her hand, and sighed.

Shaking her head in a way that was almost amused she asked, “Your father’s idea?”

Mum was looking at her and speaking to her.

“Yes,” Hermione blinked, “Um, here.”

She handed her a bottle, and sat down diffidently on the chair beside her.

“Didn’t think to give you a bottle opener, did he?”

“Oh. Oh no. It’s no problem, I’ll...” But when Hermione took out Bellatrix’s wand to sort out their
problem, mum blanched and recoiled away from her. “Sorry!” Hermione gasped, “I’m sorry! I’ll –”

“It’s fine,” mum muttered tightly as she slowly straightened her posture once more, “You can... It’s
fine.”

She held her bottle out and Hermione sheepishly tapped Bellatrix’s wand on its cap.

“Sorry.”

They sipped from their bottles to the tune of meticulous chirping – a hundred cicadas making their
strange, esoteric music. The light from inside fell in small specks across the patio floor, and threw
weird shadows all across the lawn.

“It’s a lovely garden, mum.”

“Thank you. Nothing like the old one, I know. But the climate here is a bit different.”

Hermione breathed a laugh. “Quite an understatement, that.”

Mum didn’t respond, making Hermione wonder if she’d somehow offended her by attempting to
make rubbish small talk. (To be fair... it was mum who had brought up the weather.)

“How was the seminar?” she tried again.

“Dull.”

“Ah. That’s a pity.”

“Hm.”

They sipped from their bottles, and now the chirping of crickets felt like a horrendously appropriate
sound effect.

“Dad took me to the clinic the other day. It’s very nice.”

“Thank you.”

“And I met Olivia. She seems like quite a character.”

“She is.”

They sipped from their bottles, and Hermione was so close to tears.

“So does that friend of yours.”

She all but spat the sip she’d been taking right back into the bottle in her haste to reply.

“Huh?”

“Theo. He seems like quite a character, too.”

As always, the thought of Theo’s character made her smile. “Oh, he really, really is.”

“He’s gone back to England?”

“Yes. Though he said he might visit sometime.”

“Your dad thinks he’s fantastic.”

“He’s not wrong.”

One corner of mum’s mouth quirked up in an approximation of a half-smile.

“He’s the one you mentioned in your letters, right? The one who you had us send one of Mabel’s
famous mud cakes for?”

“Yes,” Hermione nodded eagerly, “He practically inhaled the whole thing. He also loved her
cinnamon biscuits. And her butterscotch fudge. And her date and walnut loaf.”

That earned her a full smile.

The next couple of sips were laced with hope and hazard. Hermione knew very well that they could
continue talking in that manner all evening; it would be pleasant... and so very wrong. Glossing
over the resentment just wouldn’t do.

“Are you ready to talk to me, mum?” she asked in a small voice. Mum’s only reaction was one
prolonged blink, and a loud exhale. “Please?”

“What do you need me to say?” mum whispered hoarsely.

“I – I know you’re angry, and –”

“Angry?!” she spat, “Hermione, I’m furious. The kind of fury that’s almost incomprehensible!”

“God, I know. I know, I know. And I wish I hadn’t had to do that to you. But...” her voice withered
as mum’s eyes flashed.

“But what?”

“I vastly prefer you being angry with me than you not being here at all.”
Oh but that was apparently the wrong thing to say. Mum set her beer bottle down on the ground
with a kind of dangerous slowness. She sat up till her back was ramrod straight.

“And I,” she hissed, “Would vastly prefer having control over my own mind.”

“I didn’t change who you are mum,” Hermione said in the same small voice, “I didn’t touch your
thoughts, feelings, or rationale. I just –”

“You just zapped yourself from my head. Yes.” Mum’s tone was getting louder with each word,
“And tell me, do you think any of those thoughts and feelings have any meaning to me without
you? To hell with everything else. You are what matters to me more than any of that! And what if
you had –––– died. What then?”

“You wouldn’t have known–”

“I wouldn’t have known. My daughter is dead, and I wouldn’t know. Don’t give me that bullshit
about it not mattering because I didn’t remember you. No matter what the scenario, you are and
always will me my daughter. You took that away from me. And if you had died, Hermione... Oh. If
that had happened, I would want to feel every second of it. I’d want to be consumed by the sheer
agony of it.”

Hermione opened her mouth to speak but mum wouldn’t allow it.

“I don’t give a damn about the ethicality of what you did. I can’t even think about anything beyond
the fact that you stole yourself away from me and happily leapt into a suicide mission.”

Mum got up and left after that. She didn’t join dad and Hermione for dinner.

Breakfast the next morning was as strained as Hermione expected. Mum was puffy-eyed, dad was
white-faced, and she didn’t even want to know what her own face was like.

Four days went by and Hermione kept up her daily runs by the beach. She read Of Human Bondage
for the second time.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they
are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each
time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
One Sunday, when Hermione came back from her run practically shaking from the exertion, she
found mum waiting for her in the kitchen.

“I think you might be overdoing it,” she said.

Hermione tried to remain impassive... as opposed to screaming, or freezing, or jolly well exploding
with anxiety.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re far too thin. You look ill. Sit,” she commanded, nodding her head towards a chair.

Hermione complied, and seconds later there was a tall glass in front of her.

“Um?”

“Chocolate milkshake,” mum supplied, and sat down on the seat opposite her.

“Thank you.”

Hermione kept her eyes on the layer of froth lining the rim of her glass as she drank. Mum didn’t
say anything, but she was watching her so very closely.

“You need to take bigger servings of your meals, too,” mum ordered once Hermione had finished.

“Okay.”

“Are you drinking enough water?”

“I think so?”

Mum snorted delicately. “No. You aren’t. And you’re clearly not sleeping very much either.”

“It’s a lot better now,” Hermione mumbled, fiddling with the band around her wrist, “I’m managing
to sleep through most of the night. I think being here has helped... it’s so completely removed
from... from... everything.”

“That’s good,” said mum with narrowed eyes, “Do you really think going back to that school is the
best idea then? Isn’t it central to the trauma you’ve been through?”

Hermione suppressed a sigh. But of course she’d share dad’s opinion on that matter; however mum
had the remarkable ability to remain clinical in such situations.
“It’s more than just that. And I want to see Hogwarts become Hogwarts again – not the place of the
final battle – the place where my friends died – but the place where I finally felt...”

“Finally felt what?” mum insisted impatiently.

“Like I wasn’t a complete freak.”

Mum’s face twitched. After exactly four seconds she asked, “Are Harry and Ron going back as
well?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“They accepted jobs at the ministry.”

“Weren’t you offered one too?” Mum looked annoyed.

“Yes.”

“Well, why didn’t you take it?”

“I want to pass my exams first.”

Mum’s annoyance turned into something far too complicated to label.

“I see. What about Theo?”

“He’ll be there. And Luna and Ginny. Dean, too... I think. And –”

“You probably want to have a shower,” mum cut in abruptly.

Hermione sucked in a breath.

“...Yes. I mean... okay.”

“There’s a lovely little bookshop nearby; just twenty minutes away. Hurry down and I’ll take you.”

A crooked sort of peace descended upon the Grangers over the next week. June had trickled into
July, and the air turned colder, the wind sharper.

Mum had set up a daily routine for her. She ran, she read, she ate, (seeing which, dad’s cooking got
more and more elaborate,) and she slept. Sometimes her nightmares would wake her up within
minutes. Sometimes strange shadows would turn her blood into ice. Sometimes she’d
spontaneously burst into tears while standing under the shower.

But she also watched bad telly with dad and laughed till her stomach hurt. She pruned the garden
with mum. She walked over to their clinic every afternoon and chatted with Olivia while she waited
for them to join her for lunch. One evening, they sat out around the smouldering fire pit and
Hermione took in their faces and asked them if she could show them something. They didn’t flinch
when she pulled out Bellatrix’s wand, and were delighted by the sight of her shimmering otter
patronus.

The day Hermione finally decided to restore all their old photographs was a difficult one. They
spread the lot out on the living room floor, and all three of them had tears in their eyes.

Dad tried to teach her driving one day. Hermione refused point blank the next day. One evening,
they gathered around the telly to watch a film about the RMS Titanic that had got rave reviews.
Mum fell asleep halfway through and dad was more focused on a sports magazine. Hermione found
it quite tedious as well. (Except for the male lead, who was rather... well. But he also reminded her
– vaguely – of Malfoy and that certainly was tedious. Malfoy was more like the vile fiancé,
anyway.)

And finally, the day that Theo was meant to visit arrived. Hermione came out after a long shower,
steaming and humming... and she paused in front of the mirror.

Her skin was glowing, and her cheeks were flushed scarlet. Her hair had grown considerably; the
rings under her eyes were absent.
She stared at her reflection and thought, Hermione Granger, and... Blimey! It was a perfect fit.

She sat with her face pressed against a window, staring at the gate to the house like a hyper-vigilant
watchdog. Dad was sitting in a nearby armchair, ostensibly reading the paper, but mostly he was
laughing. At her. The moment she saw his lanky frame step into the garden pathway, she was off
like a rocket. She dashed towards him with a humungous grin that he mirrored and then she was
being spun around as he hugged her.

“Hello,” she said laughingly.

“Hello, you,” said Theo.

She dragged him towards the house, and mum and dad were standing at the door, smiling
indulgently.

“Dr and Dr Granger! Lovely to see you again!”

“You too, lad,” dad chuckeld, “Come on in. Can I offer you some –”

“Lemonade? Merlin, yes. I have dreamed of that lemonade so many times in the past two months.”

With another chuckle, dad disappeared into the kitchen.

“Well this is a nice change,” Theo exclaimed loudly when mum affectionately ruffled Hermione’s
hair as they sat in the living room.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “It’s all right, Theo. We’ve talked and things are getting better. You
really don’t have to be obnoxious and make uncomfortable jokes.”

“Really?” he beamed, “Thank Theo.”

“Thank... what?” mum spluttered.

“No!” Hermione moaned, “Please don’t ask.”

But by the size of Theo’s grin, she knew it was too late.

The locals were hosting a small market that day, selling trinkets, baubles, and plants. A row of
diverse food trucks lined the back. Mum, dad, Theo, and Hermione roamed amongst the colourful
spread while sipping hot cider from paper cups.

At a clothes stall, Theo bought a Bananas in Pyjamas t-shirt.

“You know that’s for a three year old, right?”

“I am a wizard,” he declared loftily, “Perfectly adept at casting growing charms.”

At the same stall, he also insisted on buying scarves for mum and Hermione.
“You really don’t –”

“Don’t be absurd, young man –”

“Oh, I insist. You’ve paid for all my food and I know I don’t eat like a bird.”

He took advantage of the fact that mum’s hands were full of Agave plants, and threw a wad of
money at the seller. He also bought a long tie-and-die gypsy skirt for Luna.

They wandered further, and dad got caught at an antique shop that was selling a cricket ball that
may or may not have been used during the 1992 world cup final. Mum stayed back to stop him
from spending an exorbitant sum on it, (“What do you want it for, anyway... England lost that
final!”) and Theo and Hermione strolled ahead.

At one point, he stopped dead.

“I need that lamp,” he declared.

The lamp in question, covered in seashells coated in glitter, was the tackiest thing Hermione had
ever seen.

“That’s the tackiest thing I have ever seen,” she said.

“Exactly. I need that lamp. For the centre table in my new flat.”

“Did you hear me correctly? I said it’s tacky.”

“And did you hear me say exactly? It’s for my flatmate.”

“Yes... I suppose... if anyone could appreciate the, ah, uniqueness of that lamp, it’s Luna.”

“I won’t be living with Luna.”

“No?” Hermione blinked.

“Nope. Xeno still needs her around, apparently. Laying it on a little thick, if you ask me.”

“I see.”

“Yeah. I need that lamp.”

“But wait,” Hermione stuttered, “If you’re not living with Luna, then who...”

She broke off when Theo shot a who-do-you-think look at her.

But of course. Who else? Hermione considered the hideous lamp once again, and pictured grey
eyes widening in horror. A sneer. What the fuck....?!

“You need that lamp,” she affirmed.

 *

“... and so she set a flock of angry canaries at him,” Theo finished his unnecessary rendition of a
certain anecdote from Hermione’s life with much relish.

“Can you stop,” Hermione groaned, attempting to shake her hair forward to cover her face while
dad’s laughter resounded all around the room.

“And one time,” Theo went on after spearing more of dad’s fine lasagne into his mouth, “She kept
wizarding Britain’s top journalist trapped in a jar for weeks.”

“Excuse me?!” mum exclaimed.

“I would hardly call her a journalist –”

“Oh, and let me tell you about how she organised a dissident group – an army if you will – in fifth
year to stick it to the establishment, and turn out the malicious woman who was out to ruin
Hogwarts.”

“Umbridge is actually evil, alright! She deserved –”

“Deserved to be carried through the forest by a herd of blood-thirsty centaurs?”

“Excuse me, what?!” mum sputtered, while dad continued to laugh.

“You should have heard my inquisitorial housemates moaning about you lot that year.”

“Shameless sycophants, all of them!”

“I’m sorry,” mum interjected, “Can we go back to the blood thirsty centaurs?”

Long after dinner, and long after mum and dad had retired to bed, Hermione took Theo down to the
shore. He conjured a thick woollen blanket and they lay side by side, like they used to by the
Hogwarts’ lake.

“McGonagall wanted me to be Head Girl, you know,” Hermione told him. The sky was so thick
with clouds that not a single star was visible.

“Hmm.”

“I turned it down.”

“I know. She gave the job to Susan Bones.”

“Oh,” Hermione smiled, “She’ll be good for it.”

“You know who the head boy is?”

“No. Who is it?”

Theo didn’t reply till she’d looked at him, and with a face full of glee he said, “Longbottom.”

Hermione felt the top of her head fly off.

“Oh my..... wow!”

“Right? Would you have ever thought...?”

“No! But he deserves it. Absolutely.” And she laughed with pure delight, “He must be thrilled!”

“He is. When he told me he was about six shots of firewhisky down, and singing songs about
glory.”

Grinning, Hermione wondered, “When was that?”

“Draco’s birthday. Finnigan made it his personal mission to get us all plastered.”

“Dra – uh – what?”

Theo smirked, “It was one wild party, Hermione. Thomas was there too, and he taught us how to
dribble a football using a stuffed troll’s head. Tracey and Padma Patil were there. Joined at the hip,
they are, and......”

“...And?” she prompted when he suddenly stopped speaking.

“Oh. Sorry. I got distracted by the thought of the two of them joined at the –”

“You’re a prat.”

“Yeah. Oh, and Bill and Fleur showed up too. Did you know Bill can chug a galleon of beer
without breathing? Corner passed out in an alleyway. I shagged Luna in a bathroom stall. So... to
summarise... it’s a crazy new world back home, full of strange friendships and stranger bedfellows.
You’d better prepare yourself.”
For a whole week after Theo left, Hermione had to recap every detail of every year she’d spent at
Hogwarts. She cursed her best friend to hell. After all, she had already told her parents all the big
things that’d happened. Broadly.

It led them to in depth discussions about how the Magical bureaucracy worked, and about how the
Magical media worked, to how the media in general worked, until finally, they were talking about
human rights and morality, and Hermione had once again turned into a complete heroine in their
eyes.

Well, perhaps Theo didn’t have to go to hell after all.

“I was angrier with myself than I was with you.”

It was the morning after the crescendo of their discussions, and Hermione and her mother were
sitting in the garden sipping tea.

“What do you mean?” Hermione probed.

“I understood why you’d done it even before the initial flash of red hot rage had dissipated. I – I got
it. You wanted to keep us safe and happy because you love us. You stayed with your friends
because you are loyal and compassionate. You opposed that Lord and you fought for your rightful
place in the world because you are brave and strong. And you are brilliantly intelligent and capable,
so of course you had to be a pivotal part of the resistance.
“That’s when it hit me... you aren’t the woman I’d hoped I’d raised you to be. You’re better.
You’re... just... so... amazing. I was furious with you, yes; but that didn’t stop me from feeling
proud. I was in awe – in helpless awe – and I hated myself for it.”

Hermione had no words in her head, no voice in her throat. She felt cut off from all her faculties,
and could only feel things she couldn’t name.

“I wanted to be a mother angry with her daughter. I wanted to focus on what ifs and worst case
scenarios, but all I could think was – now, there’s a woman!
“Look, Hermione... I’m not saying that my resentment has disappeared, or that I’m not hurt
anymore. I am. But you should know how I feel about the kind of person you’ve become. I always
knew you were extraordinary, my darling... anyone who’s met you can confirm that. Just think of
what it means that you’ve surpassed even my expectations!”

For hours Hermione lay with her head in mum’s lap, crying uncontrollably. Fingers gently carded
through her hair, and the morning carried on.
Lobster, Hermione decided, was not her favourite food. Performing bloody surgery to get to her
lunch was not something she cared for.

“Isn’t it brilliant?” dad gushed.

They walked back to the clinic at a leisurely pace, and the moment they stepped inside, mum
grumbled, “Well, of course Olivia isn’t here. Damn it, Mr Ivanekov will be here any second. Oh,
er... Hermione... do you mind manning the reception till she gets here?”

It took a lot to keep from making a face.

“Of course not.”

She just really, really didn’t want to.

“Okay. Extension one for my office, and two for your dad’s. But send Ivanekov to him please.”

With that, she rushed away, and dad followed while muttering, “I always get that painful bugger.”

Hermione dealt with Mr Ivanekov, (she would swear he was part of the mafia,) and Missus Jo, and
Ms Browning and Mr Prakash, before Olivia swaggered in.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your job,” Hermione replied tersely.

“Oops. Late again, am I? Sorry.”

“It’s quite alright.” Stupid girl.

“It's my birthday on Saturday. My friends and I are going to a bar by the beach to celebrate. It'll be
nice if you show up.”

Hermione’s brows lifted in surprise.

“Oh. I...”

“Come on. Let’s get you rotten. My boyfriend Matty's got hold of some really cool herbs, if you
know what I mean...” Olivia winked wickedly.

...it’s a crazy new world...

“Sure. I’ll come. Thanks.”

It had started with one light beer. One innocent, harmless light beer that had loosened her nerves
enough to vaguely enjoy the company of five complete strangers. There was Olivia, her boyfriend
Matty, a Jake, a Matthew, a Jenny, and a Tabatha.

But then three rounds of tequila shots happened. Then somebody pressed a fucking strong gin and
tonic into her hand. Then two shots of something awful and pink that Jake insisted they try
happened. Then another... one... two... what... rounds of tequila....

They were a giggling, stumbling hoard when they left the bar. Hermione was moving in a time
lapse. Blink, and she was outside the bar, and blink, she was at a beach. The whole world was the
sea and it was made of waves. Her heeled boots weren’t letting her walk on sand, so Matthew lifted
her off the ground and carried her. She may have whooped, and perhaps that’s what encouraged
him to swing her around and around.

She vomited behind a bush.

They sat on the floor of a small blue gazebo that was floating through pure black nothingness.
Matty pulled out two fat rolls of paper.

“Happy birthday, baby,” he said to Olivia, “Best weed old Vic has to offer.”

After her first drag, Hermione coughed for seventy five years. The rest of them laughed and
laughed dissonantly. After her second drag, she thought she might vomit again. After her third drag,
she felt the railing behind her hit her back obladi oblada life goes on, brah.

Forth drag, Tabatha and Jake were saying some bullshit about how the universe was magical. Ha.
What did they know? Fifth drag and the unbearable lightness of being. Suspended in nothingness.

Dawn was blooming when Hermione peeled herself off the floor. Her companions were strewn
carelessly around her in various, undignified poses.
Well, all except...
Hermione stood up, (Jesus Christ!) and closed her eyes against the wave of swirling nausea that
that triggered. She staggered to the other end of the gazebo, and collapsed against a post.

Olivia and Matty were sitting right at the edge of the shore; the water must’ve been coming all the
way up to the place where their legs lay, tangled together.
They made a rather cheesy silhouette, posed against a standard sunrise-by-the-sea background.
...But then she tipped her head up to look at him, and he bent his down to kiss her, and something in
Hermione’s soul twisted so terribly, it gutted her. She was an echo chamber for loneliness.

The couple on the beach fell onto their backs, and Matty rolled them so that he was hovering over
Olivia ––––

Hermione turned away, and pressed her palms against her eyes for a moment. Just a moment.

She gathered her hair into a bun, stepped over the scattered bodies and set off on the long walk to
her parent’s home.

She broke the news over breakfast: “I think it’s time I went back.”

“Already?!” dad baulked, “But term doesn’t begin till September!”

“I know... but it’s Harry’s birthday on Friday, and I have to get all my books and supplies ready.
There’s also a very ill-tempered portrait in my bag that needs to be returned to his rightful place.”

She wondered what state 12, Grimmauld Place would be in.

Mum set her fork and knife down. “When will you leave?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

“So soon!”

Hermione sighed and offered her parents a small, sad smile.

“I’ll be back for the Christmas hols.”

“Not soon enough,” dad groused.

Chapter End Notes

1. "It is an illusion that youth is happy...": Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham

2. Ob‐La‐Di, Ob‐La‐Da by The Beatles
 Forty-Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Percy and Mr Weasley met Hermione outside the lifts in the British Ministry of Magic. It was quite
late in the evening – nearing nine – and she was surprised to see them.

“We’ve been working overtime this whole month, trying to get things back in order,” Mr Weasley
explained as they walked towards the atrium, “Every time we think we’ve got things on track,
something else goes wrong.”

Percy added, “Just two days ago, a group of snatchers that had got away, waylaid a muggle bus in
Brixton. Nobody was hurt,” he hastened to assure Hermione at her gasp, “But we had a lot of
obliviating to do. Not to mention, more trials – and now we know about at least a dozen nooks all
over the country where more fugitives are hiding. Poor aurors are getting run ragged. Well, here we
are. Ahem – The Burrow.”

She’d barely just stepped out of the blazing green flames, and the world narrowed down to a
squeal, a hug, and bright red hair.

“Hello, Ginny,” she laughed and hugged her back.

“Herms!” she cried, “You’re back.”

With a scowl, Hermione pretended to turn back towards the fireplace.

“And I’m leaving again.”

“Oh come now,” Ginny grinned and began dragging her towards the kitchen, “No herms, no foul.”

They were all there in the kitchen, waiting to greet her with smiles and a table laden with food. But
George wasn’t among them.

“So lovely to see you again,” Mrs Weasley cooed, shoving her onto a chair and pouring her a glass
of pumpkin juice.

Hermione hummed a reply, and beamed when the occupant in the chair next to her nudged her with
his shoulder.

“Alright, Hermione?”

“Not bad. You?”

Harry smiled, “Not bad. How’d it go then? Your letters were surprisingly brief - almost disturbingly
so. I was expecting the usual thirty feet long parchment full of every little thought you –”

“Oh shut up,” she laughed, “I’m not that bad.”

She spooned some carrots onto her plate and Harry peered at her.

“You didn’t answer my question. How’d it go?”

“It...” she sighed, “It went fine. They have their memories back, but they’re going to stay put in
Australia... for now. I’ll visit them again in Christmas. They told me to tell you hello. Um, Charlie,
could you pass me the gravy, please?”

Harry didn’t push her further, and they ate, listening to Mr Weasley talk about his day at work. It
was only after pudding had been dished around that Hermione risked a peek at Ron. She choked on
an inhale when she realised that he was already looking right at her. Tentatively, she turned the
corners of her mouth upwards... and he jerked his head. It was a nod, she was certain.

After everything she’d been through with her parents, Hermione recognised that every little
gesture, every little acknowledgement counted.

Under the light of a single taper, she ended up telling Ginny every detail of her stay in Australia.
They were quiet for a long time afterwards, each lying in their respective beds, watching the
candlelight cast moving liquid shadows on the ceiling of Ginny’s room.

“How have you been sleeping?” Hermione asked by and by.

“Much better,” Ginny replied with a sigh, “I used to need to fly for hours to tire myself... or have
Harry really brutally, unforgivingly pound me into a mattress. Really savage like, I mean –”

“Please stop.”

“Shove off.” From the corner of her eye, Hermione saw Ginny turn her head and smirk. “Tell me
something, you went and got completely pissed on a beach, with two stray blokes around, and you
didn’t shag either of them?”

“No Ginny, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Ginny.”
“But isn’t that your thing? Experience something traumatic, and then find the closest pri–”

“I will suffocate you with your silly Harpies cushion and feel no remorse.”

Ginny giggled.

“I went running,” Hermione muttered as she flipped over to lie on her stomach, “On the beach.
Every day.”

“Nice,” Ginny muttered around a yawn.

She was obviously close to nodding off, and Hermione, who was still running on Australia time,
was wide awake.

“George still hasn’t left his room?”

Ginny didn’t reply and they didn’t speak anymore that night. For a long time after the other girl had
fallen asleep, Hermione lay in bed and read The Ballad of Reading Gaol; Wilde’s heart rending
lament rang across eras to knock the breath out of her.

And when the first hints of dawn seeped into the sky, she put her book away, slipped on her
trainers, and walked out into the early morning.
She ran around the orchard, until the ease of it frustrated her. So she ran up hills, trying to recreate
the strain of running through sand. She ran for... some stretch of time... she still hadn’t mended or
replaced her watch.

When the sky had turned hazy gold, she sat atop a hillock – her hillock – and scanned her
surroundings dazedly. She felt so dislocated and jarred – less than a day ago, her life was eternal
frothy waves and sand, a tidy tiled patio, a telly, mum and dad and a faltering reconciliation...
But suddenly she was here: Trees and hills and scummy ponds, broken people and broken systems;
brokenness that was a part of her and that she was a part of. She’d have to set aside her peace of
mind and start a separate course of healing here, in this world.

Her world? They were both hers, weren’t they? Or were they just territories that she’d appropriated
by accident and a twist of fate? The feeling of homelessness was a sick punch in the gut, and she
missed her parents so terribly, it hurt.

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

A month from now she’d be back at Hogwarts. The rapidity and brusqueness of things made her
whole body sway. Her head began swimming with that familiar, welcomed lethargy that physical
exertion bestowed. Somehow, she willed herself to get up and trudge back to the Burrow.
Harry’s eighteenth birthday was a sober event. Of course, Mrs Weasley, bless her soul, did the very
best she could to make it special. There was a cake that was smothered in chocolate, and there was
a lavish spread of delicacies, including two plates full of Harry’s favourite treacle tart.
But Hermione was sure that they were all remembering Harry’s last birthday, when Fred and
George had insisted on decorating the garden with balloons and lights. When Tonks had hand-fed
Lupin, and he had looked drained beyond measure.

They were out in the garden, anticipating an influx of expected and unexpected guests. Hagrid
came by, his massive boots leaving craters across the lawn where earlier, the afternoon’s shower
had softened the soil. He wrapped Harry up in one of his near-fatal hugs, looking very mawkish.
Professor McGonagall showed up as well, and when Hermione smiled at her, all she got was a
slightly frosty nod in return.

(“Oooh,” Theo breathed into her ear, “Bad move, turning down head girl.”)

Neville, Dean, and Seamus apparated in together, and while Hermione rushed to congratulate
Neville on his newly acquired designation, she saw Dean and Seamus pounding Theo on the back
with easy camaraderie.
Right. They had bonded on Malfoy’s birthday. She wondered if he might show up as well...

She shook her head at herself.

When dinner had been done with, they moved into the living room so that Harry could open his
presents.
Hagrid stepped outside briefly, and returned with a cage, inside which was an owl. White and
brown – and rather small and fluffy – with beautiful, large amber eyes, it hooted softy when Harry
stroked the top of its head in awe.

“Thank you,” he said to Hagrid arduously, his eyes suspiciously bright.

Hagrid bashfully scratched the back of his head. “Thought it was righ’ that I be the one ter.... yeh
know,” he muttered roughly.

(“You should name it Hermione,” Theo suggested.

“Jesus, yes!” Dean exclaimed, “It kind of does look like –”

Hermione’s withering glare shut him down.)

Harry was overcome again, when he saw the present Ginny and Hermione had pooled their
resources to buy. He gazed enraptured at the brand new broom in his hands.

“I know it’s no Firebolt,” Hermione began, but her words petered out when Harry walked over and
hugged her tightly.
He pulled Ginny out of her seat, and uncaring about the fact that her entire family was in
attendance, he set her down on his lap.

McGonagall had bought him a series of books about Aurors. The Weasleys had all chipped in to
buy him a set of half a dozen robes in various colours. Luna had made him a painting of Dobby
surrounded by decorous wreaths of pastel-coloured flowers.
Harry let out a short shaky laugh, and because Hermione knew him so well, she could see his
irritation at not being able to completely reign in his emotions. Ginny kissed his temple, right then,
and he nearly came undone.

That was when the boys – Dean, Seamus, Neville, and Theo – handed over their gift: A bloody
crate full of firewhisky and a Honeydukes hamper. Mrs Weasley and McGonagall’s identical looks
of disapproval had them all sniggering, and the tension ebbed away. Percy brought out another
package, (“From Minister Shacklebolt; he’s sorry he couldn’t make it,”) which contained a dragon-
hide wand-holster.

Eventually, one of the bottles in the crate was opened, and they all drank to Harry’s health. Hagrid,
Mrs Weasley, and Bill all claimed to want to make a toast, but Harry shook his head.

“No. Please. This... this is enough. More than enough,” he sighed and stared into his glass, “I know,
alright? I know. Thank you... all of you.”

A cosy, brilliant lull set in. McGonagall left very soon after, and then Luna, (who had to get back to
give her father his potions,) and Theo. Bill and Fleur left, Hagrid left.
Hermione settled deep into a sofa, slowly sipped her drink and looked around the room, smiling to
herself. Harry was playing exploding snap with Neville, Dean, and Seamus, Ginny still on his lap,
cheering him on. Percy and Mr Weasley were deep in conversation, the latter had his wife’s feet on
his lap and he gently massaged the soles. Charlie had cracked open a window to smoke, and he
stared pensively into the night.

Hermione started when the sofa creaked and started again when she saw who’d taken a seat next to
her.

“Ron,” she gasped softly.

He cleared his throat. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

He looked horribly uncomfortable, almost like he regretted making the overture, but Hermione was
too dazed and delighted to care. He had come to her.

“Amazing isn’t it,” she murmured.

“What?” he asked with a frown.

Hermione gestured towards the rowdy group gathered around the coffee table.

“It’s Harry’s eighteenth birthday.”

Ron blinked, and Hermione watched as his mouth curled into a small smile.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “It’s bloody amazing.”

It was nearly midnight when the last of their guests got ready to leave. Seamus stood up and
stretched and yawned in an obnoxiously loud manner.

“Aright then, mate,” Dean said to Harry, “We’ll see you around.”

Just as they got to the door, the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs made every single one of
them freeze. In one collective motion, they all turned around –

“George!” Mrs Weasley cried.

Nobody else seemed to be able to manage a word.

“Yeah,” George muttered. His voice was raspy from lack of use. “Happy birthday, Harry.”

“Th–thanks.”

“Could you all come out to the garden for a bit?” he asked and walked out without waiting for their
affirmation.

Hermione exchanged a startled glance with Ginny as they all hastened to follow.

Once outside, George set a small box on the ground, took about ten steps back, and then set it
aflame with his wand.

All of a sudden, the world was alit! Tiny explosions sounded one after the other and sparkling,
dazzling colours bloomed across the inky sky. Patented Weasley fireworks: beautiful, spectacular,
in every imaginable colour, forming stars, and planets, and spinning wheels, and exotic birds with
twinkling plumes. It was a majestic show... staggering, in fact... and while the audience remained
captivated, George slipped away and returned to his prison.
Hermione was alone in Ginny’s room that night, since her roommate had gone off to give her
boyfriend a special, private birthday present.

She plodded about the space moodily, too foggy-headed to put her mind to a book. She pulled
Bellatrix’s wand out of her pocket and conjured her patronus to keep her company. The little otter
bounded around the room, and for a while Hermione contemplated giving chase to tire herself out...
but shit; who had the energy for that.

She thought back to how gaunt and wan George had looked, and juxtaposed it with Harry’s
overwhelmed countenance while going through his gifts. She remembered Ron’s reluctant smile,
and Neville’s broad glowing one. The affection in Ginny’s eyes as she looked at Harry... the
gentleness with which Mr Weasley touched his wife...

She was almost too aware of the moment Bellatrix’s wand slipped through her fingers. The silvery
light in the room vanished, and abruptly, she was asleep.

On a bright and warm Saturday afternoon, Hermione and Ginny decided to go to Diagon Alley to
get their books for school. It was the first clear day they had seen after four days of relentless rain.
Hermione was really looking forward to seeing Diagon Alley restored to its former splendour: The
way it had looked under Voldemort’s regime was an image she was quite ready to expunge from
her mind.

Feeling bizarrely optimistic, she slipped into the pretty, sleeveless purple blouse that mum had
bought for her as a “gift for the birthday I’d missed,” and hopped down to the kitchen for breakfast,
where Ginny, Harry, Percy, and the Weasley-parents were already seated.

“Ron’s sleeping in again?” Hermione asked Harry.

It turned out that their ceasefire had been temporary: Ron had gone right back to avoiding her after
Harry’s birthday.

“Of course,” Harry chuckled, “Says he needs to sleep all he can before Auror training starts.”

“Are you coming with us to Diagon?”

“Yes he is,” Ginny replied for him.

Eyebrows raised, Harry shrugged. “Apparently I am. But I will be wearing the cloak.”
Hermione smiled at his expression and the smell wafting from her cup of earl grey.

“I’m going to see Theo’s new place after we’re done shopping. Would you like to come as well?”

“Yes,” said Ginny.

“No,” said Harry.

“Um,” Hermione continued as she spread butter on her toast, “There is a chance that Malfoy will be
there, too.”

“Okay,” said Ginny.

“I’m not going,” said Harry.

“You are,” Ginny assured him with a patronising pat on the back of his hand.

And that was that.

Flourish and Blotts was packed with students and parents, teeming with witches and wizards young
and old, swarming with all manner of magical folk... and Hermione thought her heart might burst.
She stood immobilised by the door, gawking and breathing it all in, and Ginny had to drag her
inside.

“You were blocking the way! Damn, Hermione... I know books get you all flustered, but –”

“It’s not just the books,” Hermione shot her a glare, “It’s everything. All this... I mean...”

“I know what you mean.” She squeezed the elbow she’d been using to tow her around.

With her booklist in hand, Hermione strolled among the towering shelves. She was Mary Lennox in
her secret garden. She was Wordsworth among his daffodils. She was Holly Golightly at Tiffany’s.

At one point, she paused to help a hapless muggleborn and his parents.

“Are you a muggleborn, too?” the little boy asked shyly.

“Yes,” she replied, “Yes, I am.”

 *

All the seedy, unsavoury shops had been re-replaced by their original edifices. They ambled down
the alley in companionable silence. Ollivander’s shop had the gleam of a place freshly renovated.
Florean Fortescue’s seemed to be in the process of being mended.

“I wonder who’s going to run it now,” Ginny mused.

Neither of them looked at the shop with the bright orange and purple façade, all barred and
boarded.

Stares and whispers followed them all around. The crowd parted for them. “It’s Hermione
Granger!” she heard often enough to make her dislike her own name. Some people even pointed.
She couldn’t imagine the chaos that would’ve descended had Harry not been invisible.

“I hate this,” she grumbled.

Ginny suppressed a smile, and she heard Harry’s snigger. It sounded horribly smug.

“So where is their flat?” Harry muttered in her ear after they’d reached the other end of the alley.

Gringotts loomed before them, betraying no evidence that not too long ago a great, big dragon had
burst out of it.

“Huh?”

“Nott’s place, Hermione,” Harry repeated impatiently, “Where is it?”

“Right.” She tore her eyes away from the imposing building. “Er... Luna said she’d meet us here
and – Oh! There she is. Luna. Here... Luna! Hello!”

Dressed in the skirt Theo had bought for her and with a wreath of daisies on her head, Luna looked
like a prime oddity amongst the crowd swelling around her.

“Hullo, Hermione,” she said pleasantly, “Hullo, Ginny. Hullo, Harry.”

An incorporeal “What?!” caused a nearby group of kids to jump and scatter.

“How did you...” Ginny hissed, “How did you know Harry was here?”

“I sensed him,” Luna stated casually, “Harry has a very forceful presence. Come on then.”
Luna led them down a small path between two shops, past a row of workshops to a small park,
opposite which was a multi-storied building made of polished grey sandstone and dotted with tall
arched windows.

“Posh,” Ginny sniffed.

“Well, what did you expect?” Harry’s disembodied voice said scathingly, “Just the sort of place
prodigal purebloods would put up.”

They walked through a lobby – all shiny marble and potted plants – and into a glass lift that took
them up and up...

Hermione was not prepared for the sight that greeted her when she walked into flat number
seventy-two.

She didn’t notice the furniture, she didn’t cast her eye about to take in the fixtures, the colour of the
walls or the paintings on them; all she could do was stare at Theo and Malfoy in the centre of a vast
sitting room, poised in duelling stance and snarling at each other.

“What the hell is going on?” Ginny exclaimed.

“Hermione!” Theo raced towards her, “Thank Merlin. Help me! How do you undo a permanent
sticking charm?”

“Um – what–?”

“Tell me!”

She blinked. “A finite ought to do it?”

“That didn't work” Theo bellowed.

In the background, Malfoy barked a laugh.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Um... what incantation did you use to stick... whatever it is you’ve stuck?” She wasn’t sure she
wanted to know.

“I didn’t!” Theo wailed.

“Oh. Only the caster can undo a permanent sticking charm.”

Theo gnashed his teeth and spun around.

“Undo it, you fucker,” he howled at Malfoy.

“First undo the one you put on that lamp!” Malfoy retorted bitingly.
“No!”

“Then the wallpaper fucking stays!”

Hermione’s quickly glanced at the walls – a tasteful, innocuous cream –

“Draco, I swear –”

“Bugger off! You asked for it!”

“Remove. It. Now.”

“Not a chance!” Malfoy growled through his teeth.

“It’s my bedroom, arsehole!”

“And this is my drawing room –”

“Our drawing room! Shared space! And I say the lamp stays!”

“Then so does the wallpaper!”

They were back in combat mode, knees bent and wands trained on each other.

“How the fuck am I supposed to sleep in a room like that?” Theo demanded, shooting a hex at
Malfoy.

Nimbly, Malfoy deflected it. “Do you think I care? Sleep here then. Next to your ghastly, tacky
lamp!”

“Glittering purple snakeskin—”

The moment Theo uttered those words, Hermione knew she was a lost cause. She felt it in the pit of
her stomach, and then it burst out of her, small and breathy, but unmistakably... a giggle.
She slapped a hand on her mouth but it was too late. Both the combatants turned to look at her.
Theo had a hilariously scandalised – borderline hurt – look on his face, while Malfoy just arched
his brows. One lock of his hair fell right down the middle of his forehead like a plum line, bringing
to prominence the ridiculous symmetry of his features.

From somewhere behind her, Hermione heard Ginny rasp, “snakeskin,” at which Theo boomed,
“Can you bloody well believe it? He’s even covered the ceiling! It’s seizure-inducing!”

“Excellent!” Malfoy snapped, “I hope you have a sodding seizure the next time you and Lovegood
are trying to bring the building down with your loud rutt–”

“We are young, enthusiastic lovers! Just because you aren’t getting any –”
“Silencing charms!” Malfoy roared, “Silencing charms, you boneheaded bellend!”

“Ah! That’s never going to happen now! And you want me to sleep here in this room? Fine. I’ll
sleep here. I’ll sleep here with Luna. All over your precious velvet upholstery!”

“I’ll kill you! I’ll drag you down to the middle of Diagon Alley and publicly behead you –”

“FIX MY ROOM!”

“NO!”

“I THINK!” Luna burst out in a volume so unlike her norm that everybody jumped, “I think that
snakeskin will be a very intriguing texture to feel against my back. Much more so than velvet.”

And Hermione was off again, laughing insanely into her hand. Ginny was faring no better.

“Dear god,” Harry groaned.

Theo looked flabbergasted, his mouth hanging half open. But the best part of it all was, without a
doubt, the expression on Malfoy’s face.

George made an appearance on Ginny’s birthday as well. He’d been calm and taciturn all through
dinner, and handed Ginny a special deluxe Skiving Snackbox, which he claimed she’d absolutely
need now that she was planning to go back to school.

He retired back to his room not long after that.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Hermione asked later, when it was just the two of them in Ginny’s room, “That
he’s making things again?”

“I hope so,” Ginny replied as she twirled before her mirror in a brand new white sundress.

Then three days later when Charlie was leaving for Romania and Mrs Weasley was falling to
pieces, George came down again and tossed a smart turquoise blue waistcoat at his departing
brother.

“Fireproof, dust-repellent, and will loudly announce when you’re feeling hot and bothered. You
know. Like that.”
“Gosh, thanks,” Charlie drawled. He may have been trying to sound dry and sarcastic, but his grin
let him down.

The day-long rain had simmered to a pleasant pitter-patter, so Hermione stowed away her big blue
brolly. She was trudging alone through wet and grey London. Against the darkly monotonous city
landscape full of muted silhouettes and shadowy figures, lampposts and headlights and windows
glowed like radioactive elements. The cacophony of water drizzling against the pavement, of cars
and busses whizzing across the road, of blazing horns, of random, endless conversations made the
air even denser.

It swept her up and carried her away... as cities often do.

There was a group of four young people in front of her, dressed in a lot of denim, and sharing a
cigarette. Their bubbling laughter got drowned out by a passing double-decker, and Hermione fell
in love with the sound of its motor: The guttural purr it made, the way its wheels crunched the wet
gravel underneath.

“Fuck off, you tosser!”

The boys in front got into a playfight, and the girls laughed and rolled their eyes.

“Chavs!”

“Honestly!”

Hermione stopped at the corner of the street, stepped into a telephone box, and listened to the sound
of her breaths in the jarring peace within. Then she made a call.

Ring-ring... Ring-ring... Ring-ring... Ring–

“Hello?”

“Hello, mum.”

They couldn’t talk for long, but it was wonderful nonetheless. Hermione stepped back out into the
world feeling less remote.
For once she was glad it was raining.

Diagon Alley was crowded like mad at four in the afternoon and Hermione was grateful for having
a reason to keep her hood up. Nobody could spot her hair, (twice as large thanks to the humidity,)
and recognise her.
As she made her way down the cobbled street, she noted that Fortescue’s had reopened. There was
a swarm outside, and above it floated a charmed harmonica playing a whimsical tune.

She took the same route as the last time – first to Gringotts, and down the side alley. When she
knocked on the door to Theo and Malfoy’s flat, it opened of its own accord.

“Welcome Hermione,” the door... er, said, “Theodore is in the second bedroom and expecting you.”

Hermione thanked the plain panel of dark wood and strolled down the long hallway. She was able
to inspect the place this time, and she admired the elegant damask wallpaper and the intermittent,
contrasting panels.

At the end of the hallway were two closed doors and one that was slightly ajar, around which
Hermione peeked and –

“What on earth are you doing!?”

“Decorating,” Theo replied flippantly.

What that explanation didn’t quite indicate was the fact that he was covering every conceivable
surface in the room with large pink, orange, red, and yellow butterflies.

“Theo,” Hermione breathed in horror, “Have you lost your mind?”

“Nope,” he stated decisively as he placed a red butterfly on top of a bedpost, “He had it coming.”

“Are you using perman–”

“–ent sticking charms? But of course.”

Malfoy’s room looked like a little girl’s dream. ...A not completely sane little girl. His bookshelves
and his carpet were covered. His stylish mahogany desk was covered. His beautiful grand piano
was covered. His velvet settee was covered.

Hermione Granger was standing in Draco Malfoy’s bedroom, and that actually wasn’t the most
absurd part of the situation.

She groaned, and Theo blinked up at her from where he was working by the bed.
“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? He’ll murder you.”

“Nah,” he scoffed, planting butterflies across the headboard.

“This is so stupid.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“It’ll force him to fix my walls. I think it’s brilliant.”

“You’re so stupid.”

He placed a pink butterfly on Malfoy’s bedside lamp and sniffed.

“I am not.”

“What if he walks in right now?”

“He won’t,” Theo said confidently, admiring the yellow-orange-pink-yellow-orange-pink sequence

he had arranged on the side table, “He’s visiting Narcissa, and he’s meeting your Gryffindor lads
for drinks at the Leaky, after. He isn’t going to see this till late at night.” He paused to grin
wickedly. “And he’ll be drunk off his arse.”

“It was nice knowing you,” Hermione muttered weakly.

“Have you so little faith in me? Ouch.”

“You’ll be saying a lot worse than ouch soon enough.”

“Pshaw.” Theo waved away her concerns merrily. “Come here and tell me if this spot needs more
pink.”

“I will have absolutely nothing to do with this madness.”

“Yes, more pink. Definitely more pink. There can never be enough pink.”

By the third week of August, the rain had intensified. Watching it thunder and pour from inside the
burrow while drinking rich hot chocolate was an agreeable way to pass some time. Hermione was
alone in the kitchen, and she’d dragged a chair to the open door so she could bask in the fresh
petrichor.

“Have you seen Ginny and Harry?”

“Hmm?” Hermione looked over her shoulder at Mrs Weasley.

“Ginny and Harry. Would you happen to know where they are? I asked Ron and he didn’t know.”

Ginny and Harry were locked up in Charlie’s now vacant room.

“I haven’t seen them.”

“Oh,” Mrs Weasley wrung her hands. There was so much grey in her hair that hadn’t been there
before.

“Will you sit with me?” Hermione enquired, “And would you like some cocoa?”

“I–” she blinked, “I – yes – thank you, dear. That sounds lovely.”

Once they were settled Mrs Weasley asked to hear about the details about her trip to Australia.
Hermione painted a pretty picture: A watercolour beach landscape, with a laughing woman and
man with wild hair. It resonated oddly well with the rain and fresh greenery outside, and swirled
sweetly through the decadent beverages they sipped on. Mrs Weasley smiled as Hermione spoke
and crinkles formed at the corners of her faraway eyes.

The absolute second the rain stopped a different kind of thundering erupted. Harry, Ron, and Ginny
stomped down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Well, there you are!” Mrs Weasley belted.

“No time to talk, mum!” Ginny sang, “We’re going to play quidditch.”

They were gone as suddenly and as boisterously as they’d arrived.

“Are you going to join them?”

“Certainly not!” Hermione proclaimed, “More cocoa?”

And so they sat with freshly topped mugs, making empty conversation.
Wet soil squelched under the weight of every step she took. The bottoms of her trainers were caked
with mud. And she felt good.

Up three hills and back down; she’d had a good run that afternoon. She pulled her hair out of its
ponytail and shook it free. A long shower was the need of the hour. She rolled her neck anticipating
the satisfaction of feeling warm water on her skin.

But when she stepped into the Burrow all her plans turned to dust. Mrs Weasley was sitting at the
kitchen table crying, and Ginny was curled into her side. Ron was pacing by the fireplace, looking
ill. Instantly, Hermione was gripped by an appalling, all-consuming terror that rooted her feet to the
ground. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly around escalated breaths.

Harry walked around the table and murmured into her ear, “It’s George. He’s gone.”

“What?!” she hissed, her heart juddered to a stop.

“When Mrs Weasley went to give him tea, his door was open and he wasn’t there. That was over an
hour ago.”

“Oh god. But... the clock...”

“Just says he’s travelling.” Harry inhaled deeply, his face carefully blank as it usually got when he
was highly stressed, “Mr Weasley and Percy went to the Ministry to get a search party together.
Bill’s scouting Diagon. There’s nothing else we can do.”

“Has anyone spoken to Lee or Angelina?”

“Yeah. They don’t know anything. But they’re looking around too.”

Hermione gnawed at her lip as her eyes flickered back to Mrs Weasley and Ginny.

“Can’t the Ministry track him somehow? They must –”

“I dunno,” Harry muttered.

The fireplace let out a loud whoosh, and Charlie burst into the room.

“Just got dad’s owl! Have you found him?” he exclaimed.

“No,” Ron replied hoarsely, as Mrs Weasley’s wails redoubled.

“Shit,” Charlie spat, and marched over to kneel on the floor by his mother.
The next time the fireplace glowed green, it was Bill. He didn’t say a word; simply shook his head
gravely.

For twenty minutes they all existed there, not speaking, stewing in anxiety until Ron exploded:
“Fuck this. This is mad, just sitting here. Let’s go and look for him!”

“The aurors are on it, Ron,” Bill said with forced calm.

“I don’t care! We can’t just –”

The fireplace roared to life. And it was George.

A high-pitched, unearthly wail tore out of Mrs Weasley’s throat.

“YOU!” she shrieked, “You – where – oh, you!”

“Are you alright?” Bill asked urgently, rushing towards him.

The remaining five merely stared at him with amazement. He stared back, blinking owlishly from
beneath his hood.

“I’m fine?” he replied tilting his head.

“Where were you?” Ginny demanded angrily, “You don’t come out of your room for months – and
then you disappear, just like that, without saying a word!”

“Er, sorry?”

“SORRY!” At least four different voices echoed the word with incredulous anger.

“Are you mad?” Ron sputtered, “You just went off and –”

“I went to the shop. Our... my... shop.”

“No you didn’t,” Bill snapped, “I checked.”

George shrugged. “We must have missed each other. I was there. You can check with Verity if
you’d like.”

“Who’s – what – damn it,” Bill growled, “I’d better go tell Kingsley to call off the aurors.”

He stalked off and flooed away.

“What?” George asked the room at large that was eyeing him closely.
“What’d you go to the shop for?” Charlie posed carefully.

“Well, it’s high time I got it going again, yeah?”

“Oh,” Ginny gasped softly, and she was the only one who was able to muster a reaction.

Hermione could see George seizing up, uncomfortable under such strong scrutiny.

“Yeah, alright then,” he garbled, “If that’s all....”

He pulled back his hood and Mrs Weasley screamed.

“George! Georgie! Oh, but what is that?!”

That was what stood in place of the once gaping hole at the side of George’s head. That was a
prosthetic ear of some kind. That was a bright and gleaming gold.

“Holy shite!” Ron cried.

“I like it,” George muttered stonily.

The light from the candle on the kitchen table lit the shell of his new ear in the most dazzling way.

“Oh dear,” Mrs Weasley moaned with dismay, “Let me take you to Mungo’s. They’ll fix you a nice,
very real looking one.”

“No, thank you.”

“George, please –”

“I like it,” he ground out.

Charlie guffawed, “You know what? So do I.”

“Honestly, Charlie, it’s not –”

“George Weasley,” Ginny said with pomp, “Roguish buccaneer. Forget having a gold earring, he
has a gold ear.”

Mrs Weasley’s mouth thinned with disapproval, but Hermione found herself speaking before she
could stop herself.

“There was a Danish astronomer called Tycho who lost his nose in a duel, and he replaced it with a
solid gold one. I believe he was very popular amongst the lady folk.”

As George’s eyes flitted across the room’s occupants, a slow smile spread across his face.

“And I’ll bet this chap Tycho wasn’t half as good looking as I am.”

“Oh, of course not,” Hermione beamed back.

A few minutes later, when George’s ear was catching the light of the setting sun, Mr Weasley, Bill,
and Percy returned. The first let his head fall into his hands, the second said, “Cool,” and the third
walked into a chair.

A little while later after they’d eaten, Hermione and Harry went out for a walk around the garden,
so that the Weasleys may have some time to themselves. George’s sudden decision to get back
among the living had given the entire family a new lease on life.

“Not exactly sudden though, is it?” Harry said, “He’d been locked in his room for so long. He must
have gone through things. Worked it out.”

“All on his own?”

Harry simply shrugged... but then he was used to pushing through hard times by himself. George
had never been alone; not since the day he was born.

They strolled around the house, and to the nearest pond where patches of reflected sky poked
through a thick layer of moss. There were so many clouds hanging above them... surely it was
bound to rain again soon.

“Training’s going to start next week,” said Harry.

“Are you looking forward to it?”

“Yes. Oh fuck, yes. Just sitting around has been... you know.” He made a face and turned his eyes
heavenwards.

“I know,” Hermione agreed.

“I’ve been thinking,” he hedged, “That I want to move out of here. I can’t expect the Weasley’s to
put me up forever.”

“They want you here. You know that. You’re family.”

He sighed and looked at her. His hands went to perform their habitual tic of rubbing the back of his
neck.

“Yeah, I know. But I want my own place. I mean, I have my own place. I think it’s time that I –”
“Oh my god, Grimmauld Place!”

“Yes, I–”

“We have to go there!” Hermione gazed at him with wide-eyed consternation.

“Yes, that’s what I’m –”

“No – Harry – it’s Phineas Nigellus! He’s still in my bag!”

His mouth and eyes rounded in slow motion, and then he was laughing.

“It’s not that funny!” Hermione cried.

“It is! It’s – it’s – been a year! He’s been trapped in your bag for a whole year!”

Hermione huffed, “Well it’s not like he doesn’t have other portraits he can visit!”

“Not in his precious ancestral home he doesn’t! God, he must be so furious.”

“Yes, well,” Hermione began, but she was interrupted by the appearance of a vast, gleaming
patronus in the shape of a manta ray.

It spoke in the voice of Theo: “Help me. Quickly. Wards in the living room are down; apparate
right in. Please, please, hurry.”

Harry whispered something in shock, and Hermione didn’t bother saying anything back. She
grabbed his wrist and spun on the spot.

When they appeared inside the large drawing room, they found Malfoy sitting in an armchair, legs
stretched out and loosely crossed at the ankles, ostensibly reading. He didn’t look up at all, even
though their arrival had been a loud one, and merely said, “He’s in his room.”

And then one corner of his mouth pulled up into a smirk.

Jesus. How had she ended up getting so involved in this ridiculous, childish prank-war they had
going? She groaned, bracing herself to see something undoubtedly preposterous, and set off down
the hallway.
Harry followed. “What is happening?”

“I don’t have the energy or the words to explain it,” Hermione grumbled.

She’d prepared herself. She’d been ready for anything. She opened the door to Theo’s room, and a
gush of air left her lungs to the tune of, “holy fuck.”

His room was thick with shimmering silver spangled ropes. They fell from the ceiling to the floor
like vines, and they clashed hideously with the glittery, scales covering his walls. Theo was in the
centre of the room, tangled up in a bunch of them, suspended a few feet above the floor. His arms
were pulled taut and away from him, so despite having his wand in his hand, it was pointing
stupidly towards the ceiling. His legs, in contrast, were curled and pressed against his stomach in a
way that could not possibly be comfortable.

“Help. Me.” he croaked.

“Damn,” Harry breathed, and he ran his fingers down one rope –

“POTTER NOOOooooo!”

In an instant, there were ten more ropes around them.

“You twat!” Theo growled, “They’ve got the Lestrange vault curse thing on them!”

“Well you could’ve mentioned that!” Harry spat and backed out of the room.

“As you can see, I’m a bit...”

“Caught up?”

“Oh, hardy har, Hermione. Get me out of these, will you, please.”

Hermione sighed for the enth time, slipped out Bellatrix’s wand, and cast a repelling charm on
herself. It was effective – the twinkling ropes didn’t touch her and she managed to get to Theo to
cast the same charm on him. He slipped through the silvery snarl.

“Oh, look,” Hermione grinned, “I’ve un-Nott-ed you.”

He glowered, “Do I look like I’m in the mood for – Argh! I’m in the mood to skin a fucking blond
wankstain. DRACO!”

He flew out of the room like a vengeful demon, and the iridescent ropes went berserk, first
swinging away from him... then swinging back into place... then swinging away again when
Hermione ran after him.

Back in the living room, Theo (red-faced, furious,) and Malfoy (completely indifferent,) were
facing off.

“Too far, Draco!”

“I don’t see how it was any worse than the butterflies.”

(“Butterflies?” Harry asked in an undertone. Hermione rolled her eyes.)

“I was stuck! They fucking grabbed me!”

“Ah yes...” Malfoy looked down his nose at Theo, “How did you escape?”

His eyes did the quickest of darts towards Hermione.

“Bugger off! If you think you’re going to get away with this –”

“Sure, sure,” Malfoy drawled, “I think you should be more concerned about the fact that you can’t
enter your room anymore.”

“Unfortunately, you git, you didn’t make those things immune to repelling charms, and –”

Malfoy frowned softly, “Didn’t I?”

“No! And just you wait, you piece of shit, I’m going to – Hey! Draco? Where are you – NO!
COME BACK HERE..... DON’T YOU DARE.......... DRACO.......... DRACO..........”

Left alone, Hermione and Harry listened to the slow fade of thundering footsteps and yelling.

With utmost tiredness, Harry whined, “Are we going to –”

“Leave?” Hermione completed, “Yes.”

“Oh thank fu–”

He disapparated.

On a damp and drizzly Sunday morning, Hermione, Harry, Ginny, and Bill apparated to 12,
Grimmauld Place. Staring at its scuffed, black front door, Hermione had a sudden flashback of
awful panic...

...The fingers gripping her robes... Harry’s hand in hers, slick with sweat... having to cast the
quickest of spells... she remembered the dense forest... Ron writhing on the floor, his blood
everywhere...
She shuddered.

Ron had refused to go along with them when they’d asked. “No thanks,” he’d grunted coldly, his
eyes fixed on Hermione. It could be said that the time after they’d escaped from the Ministry was
when the fissure in their relationship had started to grow. The locket, Ron’s burgeoning resentment,
the way he’d abandoned them –

But that was all over now. They were here to launch a new chapter in Harry’s life. She took a deep
breath and shoved away old memories as Bill pushed open the door.

“Stand back, all of you,” he instructed, “Mad-Eye’s curses are painfully complex; this will take a
while.

So while Bill got rid of the tongue-tying curse and dust-bunny Dumbledore, the three of them sat
on the steps and watched puddles form.

How scared they’d been when they were taking shelter here. Apparating under the invisibility
cloak, peeking out from behind curtains at this very view: Watching Death Eaters standing by the
fence that was now covered in ivy.

Hermione looked at Harry from the corner of her eye and wondered what he was thinking about.

“All done!” Bill called from inside.

They stepped in cautiously; Hermione’s heart was trouncing in her chest as her mind assaulted her
with visuals: A hurt and angry Lupin storming away after his row with Harry... Fred and George
being chastised by their mother for doing magic all over the place... Tonks with a pig’s snout at the
dinner table... Sirius, lounging broodily in a poufy, moth-eaten chair... Snape stalking down the
halls with arms full of parchments and secrets.

She registered Ginny’s soft, “wow!” before she had the presence of mind to understand what they
were looking at. But when she did, her wonder was much like her friend’s. The bleak old house was
positively gleaming. Gone was the overpowering stale, musty, dusty smell – the air had a hint of
lemon and pine. The gas lamps were all lit, and the crystal chandelier above glittered like diamonds
made of fire. The grimy curtain that used to cover Walburga Black’s portrait had been replaced with
royal blue silk.

“Blimey!” Harry intoned.

“Master has returned!”

They looked at the door leading to the dining room, and there was Kreacher, wrapped in a perfectly
pressed linen sheet.

“Kreacher, the place looks amazing!” Hermione gushed, smiling toothily at the elf that regarded her
sourly.
He did, nonetheless, spit out an acidic, “Thank you, miss,” before turning back to Harry and
bowing. “Kreacher has been waiting for Master Harry Potter for months. Rooms have been
prepared for you, Master, and for your...” (He paused, possibly to remind himself that blood slurs
were not nice,) “...Friends.”

“Thanks, Kreacher!” Harry cheered, “This is great! Hey... you wouldn’t happen to have any walnut
cake lying around, would you?”

Hermione suppressed a growl at the sheer presumption, but of course Kreacher nodded and led
them into the dining room.

“You do it.”

“What?! Why?”

“Please, Harry!”

“You’re the one who shoved him into your bag!”

“And you’re the one who said it was brilliant of me to do so!”

“No, actually, I’m quite sure it was Ron who said that.”

“Haaaarryyyyy!”

“Nope.”

“I hate you.”

“I’ll do it!” Ginny snapped, yanking Hermione’s bag away.

She set it on the (perfectly clean and carpeted) floor, and as she rummaged about with her entire
arm inside the bag, Hermione and Harry exchanged a sheepish look.

“Ah! There it is!”

The framed canvas Ginny drew out was... empty.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Harry muttered after they’d put it back up on the wall.

“I hope he returns in the middle of the night and pitches a fit.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to send you a howler so that you won’t miss out.”

Hermione stuck her tongue out at him.

“You know I will,” Harry threatened, “And of course I’ll ask my dear new owl Herms to –”

“If you don’t change his name, Harry, I’ll –”

“I think it’s a hoot,” Ginny chipped in with a daft grin.

They climbed further up the stairs to explore the bedrooms, passing by those awful mounted
House-Elf heads.

“Definitely getting rid of those,” Harry muttered softly.

Harry was all packed up and ready to leave the Burrow early next day, when Ron descended with a
trunk in tow, unceremoniously announcing that he was going to live with Harry.

“Auror trainees have mad work hours, it just makes sense... Oh come now, mum, please don’t cry!
Bloody hell, s’not like I’m moving to Tibet!”

Mrs Weasley hadn’t stopped crying since. To put that into perspective, it was now seven in the
evening. Hermione and Ginny were the only ones in the house with her.

“For Godric’s sake, they said they’ll visit every weekend!” Ginny cried with exasperation as they
sat to eat. Mrs Weasley was diluting her stew with tears, and that was tragic as it was rather
excellent stew.

“Oh, I know!” she blubbered, “I’m being silly. But once they start work, I just know I’ll barely get
to see them. Charlie’s gone, Bill has his own life, you and Hermione are going off to Hogwarts...
I’ll just... I’m going to be alone... George has his shop... Arthur and Percy have the Ministry...”

“Oh mum,” Ginny whispered, and flew around the table to her side, “I don’t have to go –”

“Yes, you do!” Mrs Weasley barked forcefully. She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes. “You have
to go finish your schooling, young lady. Don’t go thinking I resent any one of you for having things
to do! The only thing keeping me sane is seeing you move on with your lives! I want you to be
happy and productive – all of you. Don’t pay attention to this, dear... I’m an old woman now.
Weak.”
“You are the absolute farthest thing from weak!” Ginny sputtered, “If we’re moving on, it’s all
thanks to the strength we draw from you!”

“Oh!” Mrs Weasley broke into a fresh bout of tears.

Hermione twisted her napkin tightly between her fingers. She wanted so desperately to slip away,
but there was no way to do so without making a ruckus and disturbing the moment. It reminded her
so much of her talk with mum in her garden, and her conversation with dad on the jetty. It was so
raw, so personal, and she felt like a shameless voyeur, sitting there and staring down at her lap.

How had the month already gone by?

Hermione was having one of those too-frequent, mind-boggling, demi-existential crises. Would the
next year in school be about nothing but reminders of the final battle? Would she find herself eating
toast in the Great Hall at the exact spot where someone’s dead body had lain? Would she spend the
entire time running away from ghosts of the past, fighting, grasping, and begging for some
composure?
How would she be able to think about transfiguration in a room where blood might still linger in
the dirt between the stones? Could she learn to perform brand new magic with a wand that had
flayed her inside and out, and look at stars from a tower above which she couldn’t not picture a
terrible snake-tongued skull?

Her school books were in a pile by her open trunk, and it was the first time ever that she hadn’t read
them all before term had begun. She hadn’t even flipped through them. She hadn’t even cracked
them open.

But she would. She’d devour them and absorb every word, and pour it all out onto her exam
parchments. She’d talk about transfiguration, and perform brand new magic because that’s what it
was all about, wasn’t it? The great, strenuous task of persevering, ‘in spite of’. Overcoming, or
whatever.

It got George back into the shop that he’d never be able to separate from memories of his twin, and
it got Harry to move into the house where he’d lived as a miserable fugitive, and where his beloved
godfather had lived as a miserable fugitive. A brave lot from Dumbledore’s Army was going back
to Hogwarts after suffering through unrelenting torture and trauma within those verysame walls.
Were they proving a point to the universe, or to themselves? Hermione didn’t know. All she knew
was that something was simmering inside her – an enormously confusing concoction of gristly,
barbed fear and softer, lighter anticipation. She fell into a mad conflux of emotions.
 This too shall pass?
–Can it get better –
–Will it get worse –

With palms pressed tightly against her eyes she let stars explode behind her lids and wondered if
she’d actually really grown in this past year of dreadful chaos. It was true that she sometimes
couldn’t recognise herself... but was it growth?

All her growth was the conveying of a corpse of hope.

She dragged the corpse and packed it along with her books.

Chapter End Notes

1. The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde

2. Landslide, by Fleetwood Mac
3. Mary Lennox, from The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
4. Holly Golightly, from Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote
5. "All her growth was the conveying of a corpse of hope": The Rainbow, by D H Lawrence
 Forty-Seven

There was a crowd and there was conversation; there were students of all ages and families of all
sizes. Superficially, nothing was amiss – platform nine and three quarters looked as it always had,
year after year.

Everything was different.

It wasn’t because Hermione hadn’t had her parents drive her to the station, or because there was
only George and no Fred, or because she saw fewer familiar faces than usual. It was the
atmosphere, oppressive with its overriding heaviness. Parents held their children for longer.

The last time Hermione was here, she’d been plagued by a certain hyper-awareness and foreboding.
This time she felt disassociated.

The Hogwarts Express fizzled and hissed as it came to a gradual stop, its chrome red body and
gleaming windows reflected the hundreds of faces that watched its arrival.

“It’s going to be so strange,” Hermione muttered, “Getting on board without you and Ron.”

Harry half-smiled in a rueful manner. “Look at it this way – there’ll be no twats around to distract
you from your studies.”

As if on cue, a voice speared through the multitude: “Hi there, buddy!”

“Hello, Theo,” Hermione said, biting her lip as Harry laughed, “Luna. How’s your father?”

“Much better,” Luna replied happily, “He’s marrying his nurse.”

“What?!” Hermione, Harry, and Ginny, (who’d just escaped from her mother’s clutches,) cried.

Theo stared upwards and pursed his lips, looking determined to say nothing.

“He’s... marrying... his... nurse...” Luna repeated her words extremely slowly. “Oh look, it’s
Neville!”

Indeed it was, and the intriguing subject of Xenophilius’ great love affair was unceremoniously and
unfortunately dropped. Instead, they stood around quietly and listened to Neville’s grandmother’s
acidic monologue against muggle fashion. (“What is that scrap of cloth she’s wearing? A skirt! You
call that a skirt?”)

Therefore it came as no little relief when the warning bell sounded and it was time for them to
climb aboard.
Her mind was full of Ron’s half-arsed wave, Mrs Weasley’s highly dramatic weeping, and Harry’s
long parting hug. She blindly followed Theo down the train, passing by open compartment doors
with students stowing away their luggage and chattering indistinguishably. It was a strange thing to
be witnessing while only partly paying attention - like she was standing still, unmoving, and flashes
of random people’s lives were flying past her. In one compartment, four first years were meeting
for the first time; perhaps they’d become friends for life. In another, three Ravenclaws and a
Slytherin were arguing about charms. In yet another, an amorous couple was reuniting. Further on,
there were two strangers, silently staring out the window. She witnessed beginnings and middles,
friendships and love, excitement and quietude... an astonishing medley of lives like a series of
Edward Hopper paintings.

They were walking in line, with Neville in the lead, followed by Luna, Theo, Hermione, and finally
Ginny who had receded into herself much like Hermione had.

“Here we are!” Neville declared eventually, coming to a stop.

Hermione emerged from her stupor like a mole bursting out of the soil.

Dean greeted them cheerfully when they entered, smiling warmly at all, one by one. He was
stretched across the entire length of one row of seats, so Theo returned his salutation by knocking
his feet to the ground.
On the opposite row, by the seat closest to the window, was Malfoy, with his hair artfully
dishevelled and robes loose around his neck. He nodded at Luna, sneered at Theo, and ignored
Hermione entirely, and nodded once again at Ginny.

He said to Neville, “Where’s your crown, Longbottom? And what are you doing here? Shouldn’t
you be in your special, gilded, ruby studded head boy cabin?”

“No thanks,” Neville replied as he shoved his trunk under the bench.

“You don’t sound bitter at all,” Theo said with glee, and when Malfoy sneered at him again, he
beamed. “Dear me, Draco. Are you still sulking?”

“Fuck off.”

“Aw, come on. It’s just a harmless little singing fountain in the middle of your room! I think it looks
lovely with all those butterflies fluttering around it.”
Malfoy set his jaw and glared out the window.

“It’s such an enchanting scene, I tell you,” Theo went on, “And don’t you just love how it actually
never stops singing? It was a tricky charm to master... but I did it. For you.”

“What’s it singing?” Dean asked.

Theo’s answering smile was angelic.

“Bananas in Pyjamas.”

The countryside zipped by in broad strokes of green and grey, the landscape lush with rain. Little
drops struck against the window, splattering like tiny water balloons.
The atmosphere inside the compartment was one of ease. Luna, Neville, Theo and Ginny were
playing gobstones, (Luna’s “improved” version,) as Dean cheered them on. Malfoy was still staring
unwaveringly outside, and Hermione lost herself in her new transfiguration text book.

Chapter One: Advanced Human Transfiguration.

Well, she’d successfully altered Ron’s appearance before their Gringott’s break-in. She supposed
she’d be able to manage that.

“Hey,” she heard in her ear, and looked up into Dean’s smiling face.

“Yes?”

His smile widened. “Nothing. You just looked so much like... you, you know?”

“Hermione Granger reading a book?”

“Exactly. It’s comforting.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Theo muttered without looking away from the little rocks in front of him, “I
think I prefer the sight of Hermione screaming bloody murder from the back of a blind dragon.”

“Me?” Hermione sputtered, “I was screaming?”

“Yes, you were,” Theo informed her.

“Was I the one raving about ending up in Poland?”

“Finland.”
“Aha!”

She tapped him on the arm with her book, and he acted as though she had brutally battered him.
And she loved him for it. She loved them all for it, actually; that they could sit there after
everything, and make inane jokes about it all.

(“Oi!” Neville cried, pointing at Theo, “That’s cheating you lousy Slytherin! Watch it! Don’t you
know I’m a powerful, world famous snake-slayer?”)

As she chuckled, Hermione’s eyes wandered to the lone quiet member of the lot. The dense cloud
cover outside had rendered reflective the glass before him; and Malfoy was watching them. She
might have believed that he was peering through the mirror image, but then their gazes met. Her
laughter died, and she blinked... and when her eyes reopened he’d looked away.

She shook her head, and turned her attention back to Dean.

“So why isn’t Seamus here?”

“His grandmother died.”

“Oh! I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Ha,” Dean barked, “You’d be the only one. Nasty old shrew, she was. Fucking batty, bitter old
crone.”

“I think that’s how they make all grandmothers,” Neville mused idly.

“But she did one good thing before copping it,” Dean went on.

“And what’s that?” Hermione asked.

“She left him a mountain of galleons.”

“That’s nice.”

(“Stop. Cheating. Nott.” Ginny growled.

“I am not! Oh. Heh. I am Nott. That never gets old.”)

“Bugger’s over the moon.”

“Has he any plans for this fortune?”

(“Luna, my star, tell these horrible people that I am not a cheater.”

“As the official creator of Gobgood Lovestones, I hereby declare that Theo is not a cheater.”

“You're a cheater, too!”)

“Yeah. He’s bought a pub.”

Hermione was laughing again.

“That’s just so... so...”

“So Seamus?”

“God, yes!”

Dean sniggered, “Well he’s completely obsessed with making it perfect. Obviously, NEWTs and all
that shit is hardly as important.”

“What’s it called then?”

“Finnigan’s.”

“Of course.”

“I mean... what else could it be? He wants me to paint a mural over the Christmas hols.”

“That’s wonderful. Any ideas?”

“A Toulouse-Lautrec Moulin Rouge sort of scene," he replied with patly, "But with Leprechauns.”

Ginny had looped her arm around Hermione’s as they moved towards the carriages that would take
them to the castle. When they stepped out from under the station’s roof, Hermione drew out
Bellatrix’s wand and cast a quick water repelling charm over the both of them.

“Thanks,” Ginny said and peered upwards, “I really hope this bloody rain stops before quidditch
practice begins.”

“Who’s the captain this year?” Hermione asked, trying to sound like she cared.

“Demelza,” Ginny replied loftily, and her eye twitched.

Thestrals stood in a long line, scuffing the ground with their hooves and shaking their giant wings.
“Over here!” Neville shouted, waving them over to a carriage, but Hermione sucked in a sharp
breath and jogged off in the other direction.

When she’d reached the Thestral with the oddly short tail, it snorted affectionately and nuzzled her
hand.

“Hello,” she whispered as she ran her fingers down the silky mane that she’d once clung to for dear
life, “How are you?”

The thestral responded with another expulsion of air.

“I hardly think about that night anymore,” she told it, “So much happened after –”

“What are you doing?”

Hermione looked irritably over her shoulder.

“Catching up,” she snapped.

“With a thestral.” Theo clarified.

“I look forward to it every year, too,” Luna cut in happily, “They’re such lovely company.”

Hermione cocked a brow at Theo, daring him to say something now.

“Oh, let’s just get in,” he mumbled, taking Luna’s hand and pulling her into a coach. Hermione
gave her thestral a parting pat and followed.

...She immediately wished she’d gone back to where Neville and Ginny were.

Theo and Luna sat side by side, so it left her to take the seat next to Malfoy. Save for a barely
noticeable huff, he didn’t react at all.

They rode in silence, looking out at Hogsmeade and the evening sky. Like Diagon, every building
here had been restored, and that old, quaint charm of the village was right back to what it once was.
But there was no erasing the visions being superimposed upon the scene: Of running from Death
Eaters, of Aberforth, and Neville’s scarred face.

The beat of the Thestrals’ hooves against the ground was the rhythm of Hermione’s heart... and
they accelerated in tandem. The rickety motion of their vehicle racing over cobbled streets jangled
her no worse than the convulsing of her soul. She took in big gulps of rain-fresh air and peeked at
the opposite seats. Light from the lampposts outside was sweeping over Theo and Luna’s faces
periodically, revealing their strained expressions. She didn’t care to look at Malfoy; it was bad
enough that most of the tension inside that small space seemed to be radiating from him. But before
she looked back out, she did, from the extreme corner of her eye, notice that his hands were closed
in tight fists on his knees.

Phoenix analogies were trite, particularly in this context, so Hermione actively did not think that
Hogwarts rose like one from the horizon. She did not think back to its crumbled, broken... ashy...
state, and marvel at how sturdy and whole it now looked.
But it wasn’t like seeing it again for the first time. Yet again, a ghostly film appeared before her
vision and she saw fiendfire. She heard explosions, and walls caving in. The sizzle of a curse that
just flew by her ear. Percy’s cry of no no no, Hagrid being carried away by giant spiders, Greyback
on Lavender, Harry! No! Harry! Bellatrix raising her wand at Theo –

She breathed out and it broke into a sob. What the hell... she was actually crying. She blinked hard
– once, twice, thrice – and after the teary layer had gone from her eyes, she forced herself to look at
the castle; she forced herself to see the present. Every window was lit and glowing.

They neared the grounds where the Whomping Willow’s branches twisted as though paralysed in
the middle of a feral dance. She turned to look at the other side, to see that familiar column of
smoke that would be leaking out of Hagrid’s hut. What she was confronted with instead was
Malfoy’s profile, blanched and tight. The bright lights emitting from the castle had given him a thin
golden outline. Hermione followed the line down his face and throat and robes, to the space on the
seat between them, finally reaching her own hands. They were clasped together tightly, pale and
trembling. She heard a small whimper and looked up to see Luna bury her face into Theo’s neck,
and he put his arm around her and sighed. His eyes found Hermione and they seemed to ask, are we
ready for this, and Hermione stared back. She had no idea what her face was telling him – she had
no idea what to think of his question – but he would read and understand what she was feeling
anyway.

As their carriage slowed, some part of its mechanism creaked. They were well in the grounds, and
the main entrance to Hogwarts, that large archway, was the light at the end of her tunnel vision.
Clip clop clip clop clip clop
They were in the courtyard where Harry’s believed to be dead body had lain. Ginny’s awful cry,
Hagrid’s anguished sobs, Voldemort’s sick delight all echoed in her ears. And then they came to a
stop. For a moment, none of them moved. Hermione and Theo looked at each other again and –

Are we ready for this?

We have to be.

Theo was the first to disembark, and he held out his hand to help Luna and Hermione down. They
were soon joined by Neville, Ginny, Dean... and Ernie Macmillan, who shook everybody’s hands
like he was going to solicit them for votes.

“Difficult business isn’t it, coming back?” he muttered, “Yes, indeed. Quite difficult. Although I
must commend those responsible for rebuilding the old place...”

He carried on rambling as he walked, and Hermione hung back so that she wouldn’t have to listen.
Theo, Luna, Ginny, and Malfoy had had the same idea. She watched their backs as they trundled
down the pathway, slowly getting swallowed up by the luminousity emitting from the castle. She
inhaled deeply, and it was like her lungs where crumpled paper bags that crackled as they filled
with air.

“Come on,” she whispered to Ginny who’d been staring at the spot where Harry had lain. “Come
on.”
There had been so many poignant, heavy instances in Hermione’s life – instances she could recall
in high detail and in saturated Technicolour. The kind of moments when time slowed so every
second was embossed onto her mind, reshaping her cerebral crevices so her brain was like the wall
reliefs in Buddhist temples, telling the story of her life in images.

She was far from the enlightened one.

Another poignant, heavy instance as she climbed up the steps to the entrance hall -

Step one: The stones under her feet felt solid and lumpy, like her heart that had jumped up into her
throat.
Step two: The insides of the hall became clearer as her eyes got accustomed to the light.
Step three: The polished wooden doors were on either side of her like arms open for an embrace.
She could see the shining marble banister of the grand staircase that had been decimated during the
battle.

And then she was inside.

Every occupant of every painting was standing and watching. Every torch was blazing, and every
gem in the house point hour glasses was glinting. Hermione’s vision swam again, but she shook her
head before another flashback could assault her. A large hand squeezed her arm, and she turned to
offer Theo a tight smile.

We’re ready, right?

Right.

The Great Hall was quiet. Her group appeared to be one of the last to arrive.

That terrifying, awful row of dead across the centre of this room...

The room that was full of floating candles hovering under an open sky; that had long wooden tables
and benches and colourful banners and tall bronze candelabras.
No dead bodies.
No dead bodies.
No dead bodies.
She was shaking as she made her way to the Gryffindor table, seating herself between Neville and
Ginny. She watched Luna float over to the Ravenclaw table after pressing a kiss on Theo’s cheek.
Theo and Malfoy walked stiffly across the room to the Slytherin table.

Hermione tracked and noted other faces from her year: Zabini, Greengrass, and Tracy Davis.
Padma, Michael, Anthony, Terry, Lisa, and Mandy. Ernie, Hannah, Susan, and Justin.

Parvati wasn’t there. Would Hermione be alone in her dorm? To think she’d longed for that every
year...

From the teacher’s table, Hagrid waved at her. Professor Slughorn had busied himself with a bottle
of wine, but every other professor was watching their students with absolute focus. A few had eyes
too bright. Madam Pomfrey was dabbing at hers with a handkerchief. Trelawney was outright
bawling.
And at the centre, Professor McGonagall sat with her back straight, and it looked completely wrong
for that seat to be occupied by anyone but a towering man with a long white beard. Hermione
hadn’t thought about Dumbledore for quite some time... and now that she did, she realised that the
edge of bitterness hadn’t faded yet. Honestly, she didn’t think she’d ever forgive him. Then there
was the absence of Snape – another jarring anomaly. The table looked incomplete without his
sallow, sneering face.
The self-appointed puppet master was hailed as the epitome of Gryffindor-ness. The Slytherin was
self-sacrificing. There was no veracity in those stupid houses. The red and gold scarf around
Hermione’s neck was yet another pointless, meaningless label forced onto her. She wanted to tear it
off herself.

The silence in the hall meant that they were heard long before they appeared. Shuffling, tentative
footsteps conveyed their trepidation and uncertainty. Professor Sprout led them in, the fifty-odd
children that gazed about themselves with round eyes that were full of stars made out of reflected
candle flames.

The sorting began and the hapless kids were sent into their respective boxes. The little boy whom
Hermione had helped in Flourish and Blotts got sorted into Hufflepuff, and when she smiled at him
he tripped over nothing.

The feast had tasted like chalk and sawdust, prepared by the unappreciated rank of Hogwarts’
soldiers. Not among them was the one who’d been murdered in front of her. Not among them was
brave, barmy, devoted, free-spirited Dobby.

Ugh, this is just what she’d been afraid of; spending every second remembering things she was
supposed to be moving past. And it had just been an hour and a half since she’d stepped into the
castle.

The sound of clinking cutlery stemmed and soon the food disappeared. Professor – Headmistress
McGonagall fluidly got to her feet and cast a serious, searching look around the hall.

“Good evening, students,” she intoned in her brittle, matter of fact way.

There was no playful twinkle in her eyes, her voice was not gentle and comforting in a way that
forced you to trust her, only to later find out that she’d been manipulating you all along. Poor
Harry, Hermione thought and bit her lip. He spoke of Dumbledore with reverence once again, and
it had everything to do with this strange death vision.

“...new dawn, and a new era in the history of Hogwarts and the history of Wizardkind.”

She really hadn’t expected that kind of sentimentalism from someone like McGonagall. Blether.
She watched Luna make her glove tap dance on the Ravenclaw table.

“...extremely proud of each and every one of you, for the way you stood to defend your school and
your peers...”

Theo and Malfoy were watching Luna too, and it looked like it was killing them to keep their
laughter contained. Hermione averted her eyes immediately, lest she catch their mirth. They fell
instead on Neville, and he was listening to McGonagall drone on with such rapt solemnity that
Hermione damn near lost it anyway.

“...know that the late – the great – Albus Dumbledore would be so honoured to have called you all
his students...”

Christ, Hermione had to bite her lips between her teeth and curl her toes to stay in control. She felt
Ginny nudge her side sharply.

“What’s wrong with you?!” she hissed at her through her teeth.

Seriously, what was wrong with her –

“...each of you demonstrated the finest traits and characteristics that your houses espouse...”

A soft, silly laugh gushed out of her and she slapped her hands over her mouth. On either side of
her, ten people turned to stare. Dean winked at her. The idiot.

“But that said, this year is going to be tough. You will need to work thrice as hard to learn all that
you missed out on last year, as well as cover your current year’s curriculum. Expect no leniency as
far as academics are concerned. It is also my pleasure to introduce to you the new members of our
esteemed faculty: Professor Herbert Jansen, who will be teaching Muggle Studies, and Auror
Hestia Jones, who will be taking over Defence Against the Dark Arts.
“Now, please head back to your respective common rooms and have a good night’s rest. Hogwarts
is truly delighted to have you all back within its walls. I request the students re-doing their seventh
year to stay back, please.”

The cacophony that ensued was achingly familiar, and it sobered Hermione up at once. God, but the
way she was oscillating between emotions would surely drive her mad very soon. Among the
scuffling feet and chairs being scraped, Ginny bade them farewell. The call of “first years, this
way,” rebounded all around, gliding over a muddle of random phrases –

“– Fuck, I’m so tired –”

“– chocolate soufflé was as good as ever –”

“– I just... I just can’t believe that she won’t be with us anymore!”

When the room was cleared of all but Hermione and her classmates, McGonagall stepped around
the staff table and walked so she was nearer to the doors, gesturing them all to come closer. Now
that the gathering was more intimate, and they were all who they were, their old professor dropped
her stern facade a tad.

She smiled at them, though her eyes were sad, and she said, “It is absolutely wonderful to see you
all.”

She looked at them, one by one, and while nobody could ever possibly accuse McGonagall of
having a grandmotherly air, this was as close as she’d get to it.

“For a long time we – the staff, board of governors, and I – had thought we’d be putting you all up
in your respective house towers, like always. It would have just been a matter of fitting in an extra
room or two, and of course that wouldn’t have been a bother.
“But then I thought about what you all have been through...” she sighed heavily and looked a
hundred years older, “You rose to the challenge last year so admirably. You rallied together, forgot
your enmities and took care of the school, of the younger children, of each other–”

McGonagall broke off again, and her gaze shifted to something far, far away.

“The bonds and friendships you have formed are something not even – not even Albus could have
– Oh, dear. We... have converted the dark tower into a dormitory for you. Mr Filch will show you
the way. Goodnight.”

She left as abruptly as Filch suddenly sprung out from behind the large wooden doors.

“C’mon” he muttered, and they tottered after him.

Not that Hermione needed his help in finding the place. So here was something to unite her and
Harry and Ron again: They would all be living in a place Sirius had felt hopeless in.
Her room was essentially identical to her old dorm, but much smaller. There was a four-poster bed,
a thick carpet on the floor, a wardrobe, a desk and chair, and a tiny attached bathroom. Very
serviceable, perfectly comfortable, and decked in the safely neutral colours of purple and copper.

Purple and copper suffused the round common room outside her closed door, too.

Hermione shed her clothes as she slowly ambled over to the window. Standing before it in nothing
but her shirt and knickers, she wrapped her arms around herself and looked out at the dark cloudy
sky and the darker grounds. She stared until an onslaught of raindrops against the pane startled her.
Fifteen minutes later she was curled up in bed, as wide awake as she’d ever been, listening to the
downpour and intermittent rumbles of thunder.
 Forty-Eight
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

A flurry of owls descended upon them during breakfast. Hermione was examining her timetable
when Herms (damn you, Potter,) landed in front of Ginny bearing a missive from Harry.

“A letter on the first day,” Hermione said smilingly, “He’s really doing his best to be a good
boyfriend, isn’t he?”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “He’s anxious, what with him being there, and me being here... with Dean.”

“Don’t tell me he’s actually worried!”

“He is. Said some bullshit about me being too popular for my own good. So he’s going to remind
me he exists every day.”

“Right,” Hermione huffed, turning away from her bowl of porridge that had been usurped by owls,
“If there’s one person it’s easy to forget in the wizarding world, it’s Harry Potter.”

Ginny was lost not long after that, falling into her letter. Hermione returned to admiring her
schedule. Charms, Transfiguration, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Arithmancy, Herbology,
Potions, and Ancient Runes spread neatly across the week with an hour off every day. She was
most looking forward to drowning in course work, beginning...

Now.

The bell sounded, signalling the launch of their first lesson.

“Herbology?” Hermione asked Ginny. Ginny did not respond. “Hullo? Ginny! Herbology?”

She started. “Oh, yes. Yes. Herbology.”

With a faint smile she stowed away Harry’s note, and they both set off towards the greenhouses.

The marsh-like ground squelched under their boots and the sky above rumbled forebodingly –
perfectly gloomy weather to set the day going. They collected people along the way: Theo and
Luna, Neville, Anthony, and Malfoy, Padma and Tracy...

“I really hope it won’t be those Venomous Tentaculas again,” Theo groused.

Seeing him in his Hogwarts robes, with his hair in his eyes, wearing the bluegreen scarf and a
petulant expression, made Hermione grin.
“They’re actually really fascinating,” Neville countered with Neville-like earnestness.

The badge pinned on his lapel matched the twinkle in his eye.

“You think Bubotuber pods are fascinating,” Malfoy sniped.

“Well, they are!”

Sprout set them the task of repotting walking plants. It was difficult as the roots were fond of
chucking away soil quicker than a human could cover them. Soon enough, dirt was flying
everywhere, landing on clothing, in eyes, mouths...

(“Motherfffffrthh!” Anthony spat. His hands grabbed the shoot as though wanting to strangle it.)

...And hair. There was mud in Hermione’s hair and her hair wasn’t made to have mud in it. It was a
mysterious portal where things could get lost forever...

“HEEL, YOU FIEND!” someone yelled from across the room.

“Freezing charms!” Sprout shouted over the din, “Use freezing charms!”

A collective groan went around – they were all united by the frustration that came with ‘now why
didn’t I think of that?’

With her brilliant, exemplary, war-sharpened reflexes, Hermione whipped out Bellatrix’s wand
and.... En-garde!.... cast the spell. The plant froze, fell harmlessly into its pot, and she blew at the
end of the wand like a total heroine.

“Oh, bravo,” Ginny lauded sarcastically.

Her walking plant tossed a lump of mud at her head.

“Good boy,” Hermione told it.

She attended Ancient Runes and sat next to Theo as Professor Babbling ran them through the range
of scripts they’d be deciphering that year.

She spent the lunch hour shaking soil out of her hair in a courtyard while a couple of boys played
football with a hat they’d transfigured into a crude ball.
She sat through Slughorn’s bloated lecture on Alihotsy Draughts and tried her best to smile when
he Oh miss Granger-ed her at the end of the class.

She turned Terry Boot’s rather large ears into horns without batting an eyelid in Transfiguration.

“You’re really so brilliant,” he gushed at her, and she didn’t roll her eyes.

The day had made her feel preoccupied in the best possible way. She was high on the smell wafting
out of every crisp roll of parchment she unfurled. She was exhilarated by the rush that came with
taking down her first lot of notes for the year. She kept her head down and focused, she performed
her tasks with thoroughness.

Thus, it was understandable that it took her the whole day to notice the stares. It was only when she
was walking alone to the Great Hall for supper that she became aware of them: The side-glances,
the shameless gawking, the murmurs. Some of the younger students would stop dead just to gape at
her with stupid round eyes. One slightly older boy with oily ringlets and sallow skin had actually
winked at her; his yellow teeth would have made her parents weep. Hermione kept her gaze locked
straight ahead as she walked as fast as she could without breaking into a run. She longed for the
time she could scurry around the castle with a bulging satchel and ink-stained fingers, and nobody
would give her a second look.

There was a burst of relief when she saw Neville and Dean waving at her from the Gryffindor table.

“So?” Dean began, shifting to make room for her on the bench, “Good first day?”

“It’s been okay,” she replied, eyeing a plate piled with lamb chops.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “Not bad.”

When heading back to the common room, she found Ginny standing like a statue on the fifth floor.
She was staring at a wall with glazed eyes. Hermione cautiously approached her, and in the gentlest
of voices said, “Ginny?”

In spite of the mildness of her tone, Ginny jumped.

“This is the place, right?”

“Y–Yes.”

“Tell me how it happened.”

Hermione inhaled deeply. She’d already told her what’d happened countless times during dark
nights when they’d both lain wide awake and anxious in their beds. Ginny never reacted, she only
sighed and closed her eyes... and then asked her again a few nights later.

“We – Harry, Ron, and I – came running down here from The Room of Requirement, and saw Fred
and Percy duelling a couple of Death Eaters. We stopped to help. They were quite a team, you
know? Holding their own. Full of confidence. Percy... Percy made a joke... I don’t – I don’t
remember what it was, but Fred was laughing, and then suddenly... out of nowhere... a huge
explosion struck and we were all sent flying in different directions. I hit a pillar – that one right
there – it took me a few moments to recover. Then... Then Harry and I found each other, and just as
we were beginning to look for the others, we heard Percy cry out. It was over there... that’s where
he – where they were.”

“Fuck,” Ginny choked.

She fell against a wall, slid down to the floor, and buried her face between her knees. Hermione sat
next to her and tipped her head back to stare at the ceiling. She stayed there quietly while Ginny
cried and cried and cried.

The private “eighth year” common room, (as the real seventh years called it,) was an odd place. As
homey as the Gryffindor one, yes, but it was seriously strange to see that particular assortment of
people gathered together in one room, lounging, studying, or playing cards. Dean had brought
Seamus’ gramophone with him, and was currently in the process of introducing his peers to
Radiohead.

Blaise Zabini was not a fan.

“If you do not shut that infernal thing down, I will eviscerate it,” he growled one evening over a
haunting, lilting chant of nice dream, nice dream, nice dream.

“Nah.”

“I’m not joking–”

“You’re outnumbered, Zabini.”

Not long after that, he disappeared up the stairs leading to the boy’s dormitories.

Both he and Daphne Greengrass were surly and stand-offish. They didn’t speak to anyone but each
other, and stayed locked in their rooms most of the time. Hermione felt like she got the lion’s (–no
house-associations, please–) the largest share of their contempt: They scowled at her for doing
awfully obtrusive things like sitting, or breathing.

“Wanker,” Dean spat after Zabini’s retreating back, “Anyway, I’m knackered. Hagrid made us
chase flitterbies around the ground today. I’m off to bed, mates.”

“Bye,” Hermione muttered, not really looking up from her very first homework assignment - an
essay on Alihotsy. It was due in a week, and hers was just a paragraph away from completion.

“Put that away,” Theo whined, “I’m bored.”

“Tough,” she snapped.

“Hermione!”

“Go play with Neville or Malfoy.”

“They aren’t here!”

She finally looked up, and saw that besides Justin and Michael playing chess by the fireplace, the
common room was empty.

She blinked. “Where is everyone?”

“Bed, darling,” Theo sighed, “It’s past midnight.”

“Oh! Why are you still here?”

“Keeping you company, obviously. But I can see that you don’t give a shit. Merlin, it’s such a
thankless job, being your friend. I dote on you and what do I get? Go play with Neville or Malfoy,
she says. Brushes me aside, she does. I give and I give and I try so hard to – OW! You hexed me!”

“Don’t be such a baby. It was a mild tweaking jinx.”

“Mild tweaking jinx, she says! Oh me! Such is my misery! Put upon for all eternity. You kick me
and you hurt me, and yet I love you like my own blood! And you – you! Ah, I cannot even speak of
the injustice anymore without welling up! Woe is –”

“Oh god, fine,” she cut in while pinching the bridge of her nose, “I’ll stop working, you attention-
seeking freak.”

“Brilliant!” Theo grinned, “How about we – Oh, hello there, Draco!”

Hermione stiffened immediately.

She hadn’t been prepared to deal with so much Malfoy, and so often. Although, to be fair, she
didn’t have to deal with anything more than his presence...
During classes. Between classes. In the common room at half past midnight.
He never spoke to her, barely acknowledged her existence, and she returned the favour. But the
discomfort of having him around never went away. At odd times, his voice would float over to her,
making a dry remark to someone or the other, and she’d shake her head at the bizarreness of the
laughter that would invariably follow. Her friends liked him. Or at least, they tolerated him and they
thought he was amusing. It was in these moments that she felt completely alienated. She wasn’t a
part of this merry group that had suffered and strived together in the castle. The bond they’d formed
was quite powerful – the understanding they shared was strong enough to extinguish the animosity
that had previously existed between them.

She took a deep breath and watched him approach with apprehension. He was wearing a plain
black shirt and joggers, and his hair was a mess. His frame seemed to be thrumming with irritation.

“Can’t sleep again?” Theo asked as he eyed him speculatively.

Malfoy replied with a sharp, “No,” and shot a pointed glance at Hermione, clearly indicating that
he did not wish to discuss it in front of her.

“Well I,” Hermione said, her voice a little too high, “I’m going to bed.”

She pulled out Bellatrix’s wand to quickly spell her belongings into her bag and get away from
there as soon as –

“What the hell?”

She froze and blinked quizzically at Malfoy. “I beg your pardon?”

“Is that aun – That’s Bellatrix’s wand!”

He looked aghast, eyes narrowed and mouth turned down.

“No,” Hermione answered quickly, and jumped to her feet.

“Cut the bullshit, Granger, I’d recognise it anywhere. That’s Bellatrix’s wand!”

“Bellatrix Lestrange is dead, and dead people don’t have wa–”

“I told you to cut the bullshit,” he snarled, “What’s wrong with you? Why would you keep that?”

“Leave it, Draco.”

“I needed a wand, you know, since mine was taken from me when I’d swung by your lovely home.
I’m sure you remember.”

Malfoy took a step closer, and his upper lip curled menacingly. “This wand? Of all the –”

Hermione’s blood boiled over with no warning.

“It’s a perfectly good wand!” she said through gritted teeth, “And –”
“No. It. Isn’t.”

“– and wands were a bit hard to come by while I was on the run!”

“Yes, Granger,” he matched her tone, “While you were on the run. But seeing the amount you ate at
dinner, I doubt you’ll be running anytime soon–”

“Excuse me?”

“Stop. Both of you... please!”

“I’m sure somewhere in that outstanding brain of yours, you might have registered that the war is
over? Go to Ollivander’s, get a new fucking wand, and destroy that monstrosity!”

“I don’t want to!”

She’d ended up shrieking that last sentence. In the quiet common room, the echoes of her voice
lingered for a painfully long time. Some part of her knew that Theo was deeply distressed, and that
Justin and Michael were probably watching the scene with perverse fascination. But mostly she
didn’t care because all her concentration was focused on stopping herself from inflicting bodily
harm on the pushy arsehole in front of her.

Something shifted in his expression. Anger made way for clarity swathed in disgust.

“Ah,” he pronounced harshly, “I see.”

Hermione waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t. His face fell back into its usual arrangement,
and besides his rage-reddened cheeks, nothing about him betrayed his fury.

“Ooooookay, then. Let’s all just call it a day now, hmm?”

“It’s a trophy, isn’t it?”

“What?” Hermione hissed.

“Of course. Little goody-goody Granger slayed the evil witch and now she goes about brandishing
her wand like a ba–”

“Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Please, it’s painfully obvious, and such a depressing cliché.”

He’d also reverted to his bored, condescending manner of speaking, and she... wanted to hit him.

“Get rid of the wand, Granger. I don’t care for your trite symbolism.”

Hermione clenched her fists. “Well, I don’t care for... what you care for.”
“Eloquent,” he drawled, arching a single brow.

“Go fuck yourself. Goodnight, Theo.”

She stormed away before she could explode with rage... or worse... burst into tears. She could feel
them building up, a messy mix of anger, helplessness, and... god damn it... hurt. She heard Theo
loudly chastising Malfoy, calling him a “prick” – among other things – and she sped up so that she
wouldn’t have to hear what Malfoy said in retaliation.
Her vision was already blurring by the time she’d reached her room. There was something vicious
bubbling inside her, and the moment the door slammed shut behind her, she hurled the blasted
wand across the room. It sparked as it hit a wall and fell with a clatter onto the floor.

Pacing around madly in her room, she clamped down on her overbearing desire to scream. A
trophy? A fucking trophy? That wand had bobbed before her while she’d experienced the worse
pain of her life... a trophy?! That wand had made her a killer... a trophy?!

It had been with her through awful life defining moments, preyed upon her and made her a
predator... trite symbolism – that ignorant bastard... it was tied to her and she was shackled to it.
Couldn’t he see – didn’t he understand – she would never be free of it.

The weekend brought with it more downpours, pelting the earth with pitiless abandon. The world
outside was a solid sheet of grey, and Hermione gazed at it through tall arched windows in the
library.

Ah, the Hogwarts library.

She was immensely glad she hadn’t seen how the battle had ravaged it. As far as she was
concerned, it remained as it always had been... and it was simply perfect. Her beautiful little
sanctuary.

Curled up in an armchair, she penned a letter to her parents, one to Mrs Weasley, one to Harry, and
one to Ron. She kept them light and short, making an added effort to sound friendly in the last one,
even though she didn’t think Ron would bother to read it.

Afterwards, she pulled her hair forward to fall across her face and closed her eyes.
On Sunday, at five-thirty in the morning, she slipped on her trainers and went out for a run. The
grounds by the lake were soggy, so she charmed her shoes to prevent them from sinking. She
panted as she ran up and down the length of the forest; humidity was making it difficult to breathe.
Halfway through her third lap she doubled over. A light drizzle had commenced, and the moisture
mingled with her sweat most unpleasantly. She walked back slowly, savouring the picture that
Hogwarts made at dawn: A perfect fairytale castle.

Alas, her determined march towards her bathroom was unfortunately deterred when she got to the
common room. Neville and Hannah Abbot were entwined on a sofa, kissing like their lives
depended on it. In addition to that, they were both topless.

“Oh my god!” Hermione squealed, and immediately turned her back to them.

“Hermione! Shit!”

“No... It’s fine... I’m so sorry. Please... er, carry on.”

She did the speediest, most awkward side shuffle and got the hell away from them. When she was
finally free of her damp clothes and standing under a cascade of warm water, her thoughts
wandered. She felt a twang of hot envy for everybody who was getting to wade through the war’s
aftermath with a lover by their side. She always, always noticed the way they reached out to each
other in moments of weakness, and the way their smiles sometimes held the kind of blinding joy
that had no reason to exist in the current times. How amazing it must be to have a warm, solid body
pressed against yours during the darkest of nights.

She wanted that. She really wanted that. She wanted –

Ugh.

She leant against the tiled wall, her eyes fluttered shut and she rubbed between her legs and thought
back to the way she’d felt that night with Pete – tightness, trembles, so much warmth, and alarming
fullness. Pressure built and coiled deep inside her, and she rubbed relentlessly. As tremors
shimmied down her legs, she slid lower down the wall and her knees bent inelegantly to lend her
better access and to support her.
When relief came it was far too short and too miserably mild to actually be called so. A broken sob
tore its way out of her – like an alarm to indicate that maximum frustration levels had been reached.

She got back into bed without bothering to dress, and conjured six fluffy pillows to enclose herself
within. Thus ensconced, she lay there and thought about how miserable it was that Ron hadn’t been
who she’d built him up to be. She missed a happy ending that never could have been.
From her bag, she summoned her charmed galleon to inform Theo that she wouldn’t be showing up
at Hogsmeade that day.
Hestia Jones was the kind of lively young teacher you couldn’t help but admire. She’d been
teaching them advanced variants of protego, and Hermione felt like laughing in every lesson. After
all, she could cast them all wandlessly, in bad weather, when shaken and injured, (with a raving,
unconscious Harry Potter on the ground beside her,) after just barely evading Voldemort’s
clutches...

Yes, that made her want to laugh. Was it late-onset cruciatus-inflicted insanity? She felt insane.

Hestia told them to write an essay and set them off when the bell rang. Hermione, keen to make
most of her free period in the library, went flying back as someone pulled at the strap of her bag.

“What’s your problem?” she huffed at her assailant.

“Let's go for a walk.”

“Theo, it’s pouring.”

“I didn’t say outside, did I?” He rolled his eyes. “Walk with me.”

He led her to the viaduct and the moment they stepped onto it, cold wind slapped against her face.
She swiftly cast a warming charm over the both of them.
They strolled down that narrow strip of stone as brutal rain roared like deafening white noise on
either side. It was like balancing on the thin line of sanity. Like walking a tightrope through
oblivion. She ran her fingers along the rough stones to her right, and her fingers came away icy and
damp.

“Look,” Theo sighed bracingly, “I’m sorry about what Draco said.”

Hermione’s lip curled involuntarily. “You don’t have to apologise on his behalf.”

“I know. But I am sorry. He shouldn’t have said any of what he did.”

“Yes, well, that’s never stopped him before.”

Theo sighed once more, and lightly touched her arm to bring her to a halt.

“Hermione. Come on. He’s trying to be less of a dick. He is. It’s just that he doesn’t have very good
memories involving that wand.”

“Oh, I wonder what that’s like,” Hermione snapped. She shrugged his hand off and recommenced
her stroll.
He followed, but didn’t say anything for a long time. Only when they’d walked the length of the
bridge and back did he, once again, stop her.

With both his hands on her shoulders, he looked searchingly at her face for a long moment, and
said, “Do you think that maybe he has a point?”

“I’m sorry, what?!”

“Why are you still holding onto Bellatrix’s wand, Hermione?”

She whacked his arms away and made to charge back inside the castle, but he stopped her again by
grabbing her elbow.

“Listen to me. Please.”

“No. No.” She tried to pull free, but he wouldn’t let her. “We spoke about this Theo! In Australia...
I told you... and... and you said all right!”

He drew her closer and gave her the sort of soft, kind smile that she really did not want to see at
that moment.

“I said all right because you were under far too much stress at the time. I’m still amazed at how you
held it all together. And I promise I’ll say all right again if you just tell me why you’re so adamant
on keeping Bell–”

“IT’S NOT HERS!” Hermione’s cry got engulfed by a thunder clap. “It’s just a wand –”

“It clearly isn’t.”

“Stop it,” she turned her face away and whispered, “Please, stop.”

He hugged her tightly then, one hand hooked around her shoulders and the other flat against the
back of her head.

It’s raining, it’s pouring,

Self-pity is so boring.

“Let's go,” she muttered after pulling away, and she went on to babble, “We should get started on
this week’s runes assignment. It’s quite tricky. How about Thursday afternoon, after potions?”

“Sure,” he agreed, and slung an arm around her.

Arithmancy was the best. They had just one project for the whole year: Decoding Delphi’s personal
diary of predictions. First, they had to translate the original Ancient Greek to Latin, and then they
had to apply complex isopsephy.
Sat at her favourite table in the library, Hermione was surrounded by three fat dictionaries. It was
one of the most challenging tasks she’d put her mind to in a long time, and she was giddy with
excitement.

“Hello. Mind if I join you?”

It took her a moment to pull herself out of her work. Padma was standing gawkily at the other end
of her table with a wry look on her face.

“Not at all,” Hermione told her.

“Thanks.” Padma sat down and began piling the table with her own books. “Working on the
translation? It’s insanely difficult, isn’t it?”

“Only in the best way possible!”

“Of course!”

After working in silence for half an hour, Hermione hesitatingly put forth the question that she’d
been wanting to ask since day one – “How’s Parvati?”

Padma swallowed thickly and replied without looking up from her parchment.

“Not good. Lavender’s death really messed her up. She couldn’t bring herself to come back here.
We’ve had to get her a permanent caretaker after she took an overdose of calming draught.”

“Oh no,” Hermione gasped.

“My parents found her in time, luckily. But they have to work; they can’t watch her all day.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hermione murmured.

“Yeah,” Padma breathed, “Me too. I really tried to help her out of it. Kept trying to talk to her, but
she just doesn’t want to. We visited our grandparents in India for a few weeks to see if the change
of scenery would help. It didn’t. I don’t know what to do.”

“George Weasley was like that too. He stayed locked in his room for almost the entire summer. And
then one day he just snapped out of it. He seems much better now, and, er, maybe Parvati just needs
some time, too?”

Shrugging sadly, Padma muttered, “Maybe.”

They both returned to their work.

But the air around them was unbearably heavy. In her infinite wisdom, Hermione decided to change
the subject:
“So. You and Tracey Davis, huh?” she blurted.

That was what she came up with? Wasn’t she a prized moron? But to her surprise, Padma smiled.

“Yeah. Me and Tracey Davis.” She seemed soothed by just the thought.

Hermione’s grin marked the end of their conversation, and the scratching of quills against
parchment was the only sound to be heard.

With the first two weeks gone by, the castle of Hogwarts appeared to have settled into a regular
rhythm, moving to the sound of raindrops and fluttering robes.
Hermione couldn’t stop staring at it in the early morning mist and light as she made her way back
after her run. Her gaze scanned it from end to end – from the Greenhouses to the Quidditch hoops.
A flock of yellow-orange crossbills exploded off the tops of distant trees and flew in an arc over the
castle.

Lovely.

It looked serene, she felt serene, and she smiled to herself. She walked past the old pumpkin patch
where Buckbeak was lying fast asleep; she thought she really ought to pay Hagrid a visit sometime
soon. She swung her arms in a jaunty manner as her scuffy trainers hit the cobbled path leading to
the main entrance.

Today would be a good day. Yes. She’d go to Hogsmeade with her friends, have butterbeer, stop by
Scrivenshaft’s, and maybe –

The sound of thudding footfalls from behind had her spinning around. It was Malfoy. With
windswept hair and a broom in hand, he looked back at her and said, “Granger.”

She ran.

No.
No way.
It was going to be a good day and good days certainly did not involve an altercation with that prat.

“Granger!” he called again and she ran faster... but he (and his cursed long legs) caught up easily,
overtaking her and forcing her to stop by planting himself directly in her path. She considered
going around him and escaping; however, the determined look in his eyes stalled her. He would
inevitably give chase and catch her again.
 “Well?” she snapped with a scowl, and crossed her arms expectantly.

His mouth opened. He wavered. His expression was a strange combination of irritation and
resignation. He watched her silently, carefully, and just as she was about to spit out another well, he
spoke.

“I – I owe you an...” Gosh, he was really struggling, “An apology.”

“I see.” Hermione raised her eyebrows.

A low, irritated rumble emitted out of his throat.

“Well, I’m sor–”

“Remember when I tried to apologise to you at Fred’s funeral and you refused to let me?”

She nearly laughed out loud at the pure loathing on his face. And that was extremely odd, because
she was also extremely furious.

“Alright, look –”

“Isn’t that also when you said that we should keep things civil between us? For Theo?”

“Listen you – Granger,” he growled... then stopped to take in a deep breath. “I reacted badly.”

“No, really?”

Malfoy’s stormy eyes narrowed. “Do you really have to be so difficult?”

“Me?!?” Hermione sputtered with outrage, “Difficult... Do I have to be –”

“Forget it,” he muttered and stalked off.

She gaped after him, unable to speak or move till he was a good distance away.

“Was that your idea of an apology?” she yelled when he was nearly past the main doors.

She didn’t know whether he’d heard her or not.

Chapter End Notes

1. "(Nice Dream)" by Radiohead

 Forty-Nine
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Hermione’s eyes opened slowly at dawn, blearily sweeping across her room: A patchwork of
diffused purple light and deep shadows. She sat up, her mad mass of hair fell all around her, and
she raised her arms high above her head to stretch. Rolling her neck, she kicked away her duvet and
set her bare feet onto the plum rug by her bed. She bent to touch her toes, holding the pose until the
muscles in the back of her thighs felt a pull. Her hair tumbled forward, spilling onto the floor.
Such was her daily morning routine: She’d stretch, drink a glass of water, splash some on her face,
pull her hair up, yank on her joggers, slip on her trainers, and then step outside into the cool
morning to get her blood rushing and her heart thumping.

It was her daily routine and she followed it every day, just as she did on that day; on just another
regular old Saturday.

Murky clouds had begun to bloom by the time she had finished. She kept a measured pace while
returning to her room, looking about the same old ground and at the same old castle on that very,
very regular day.
She spent a long time washing herself, generously slathering her skin with her favourite orange
body wash. She conditioned her hair twice. She shaved her legs very carefully. She sang along with
the sound of hundreds of drops of water hitting against the tiles.

Baby's good to me, you know

She's happy as can be, you know
She said so
I'm in love with her and I feel fine

She felt fine as she towelled herself off, and as she rubbed lotion onto herself, and as she roughly
dried her hair with Bellatrix’s wand, and as she put on a pair of jeans and a light jumper. She helped
herself to another glass of water. She sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the back of her door.

Bugger.

She shouldn’t have gone for that run.

It had given her an appetite, and that really messed up her plan for that very ordinary day: SIR
ADGO, i.e., Stay In Room And Don’t Go Out. Sir Adgo had the temperament of Scrooge, and
looked like W.G. Grace. A fine thing to aspire –

Shit, she was starving.

With an annoyed huff, she stood up, and decided it was still quite early. Perhaps nobody else would
be awake, and she could run down to the Great Hall, scarf down a plate of eggs, and run back up.
Okay.

She nodded to herself.

But it was a mistake.

A big mistake. She knew it the moment she set foot in the common room.

They stood in a bloody line; Theo, Ginny, Luna, Neville, and Dean, all with giant shit-eating grins
on their faces.

“Happy birthday!” they chorused.

Hermione promptly spun around to return to quiet sanity, and – And someone caught her by the
shoulders and dragged her back.

“Don’t be a downer,” Theo muttered as he hugged her to his side.

Hermione scowled as she was passed around, from one embrace to the other, ending up with Ginny
gripping her arms and hopping on the spot like a deranged bunny rabbit.

“We’re going to Hogsmeade after breakfast, all right?”

“Ginny,” Hermione groaned, “Please–”

“To the bookshop,” Ginny went on loudly, “Everybody wants to buy you a present.”

Somewhat mollified, Hermione let herself be dragged down by Ginny and Theo, both of whom had
apprehended one of her arms each.

“And then,” Ginny beamed, “There’s a surprise!”

“What is it?”

“A surprise, you ninny.”

It was highly disturbing, the number of people who wished her on the way. Random, unknown first
years to seventh years, from all houses, threw ‘happy birthday’s at her in a way that made her want
to duck for cover.

“What is this?” she hissed, “Was there some kind of public announcement?”

“A couple of days after the – the whole... battle... thing – the Prophet published a very detailed
biography of Hermione Granger,” Theo replied wryly.

“What?” she reeled, “How dare they!”

“You’re a public figure, buddy. Better get used to it.”

Grumbling, Hermione settled down at the Gryffindor table and was angrily buttering her toast when
an owl descended before her bearing an enormous package. From her parents no doubt and that was
enough to make her smile a little. Over the course of the next half hour, two more parcels arrived:
one wrapped in no-nonsense brown paper, and one shabbily bundled in bright yellow. She looked
over at the faculty table to exchange a grin with McGonagall and Hagrid.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Ginny warbled, bouncing on the balls of her feet with pointless
excitement.

“Ugh,” Hermione grunted, “I need to go back to my room.”

“Sorry, no,” Theo stated with finality.

“I can’t lug these around!” she wailed, indicating towards her armful of presents, “And I don’t have
my jacket. It’s nippy outside.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Fine. Go with her, Theo. I don’t trust her. We’ll meet you at the entrance.”

The carriage ride to Hogsmeade was not peaceful. Theo rambled on and on about what cake
Hermione’s parents might have sent. Ginny’s eyes twinkled with glee over her soon to be revealed
surprise. Luna was spewing some waffle about the significance of the number nineteen that not
even Neville was pretending to listen to. Hermione decided then and there that she would choose
the most expensive books in the shop for them to buy for her.

Nevertheless, she was still Hermione Granger, the girl who turned into a contented little lump
whenever she found herself surrounded by books. She took her time pacing between the shelves,
picking out tomes that piqued her interest and thumbing through them. If her companions were
bored, they spoke nothing of it.
Afterwards, with a large paper bag in hand, they tripped into Honeydukes, and then Zonko’s, and
then Gladrags, for no reason at all. It was not nearly as bad as Hermione had dreaded.
Simply wandering around the village with her friends... Well. There were worse ways to spend the
day. Sir Adgo wouldn’t need to be visited by any ghosts tonight.

At around eleven, they decided to head to the Three Broomsticks for a bite and a pint, and just as
they were turning the corner, Ginny grabbed Hermione’s arm and whispered, “There you are.
Surprise.”

Hermione squealed when she spotted her messy haired, bespectacled surprise, and rushed to hug
him.
“Harry!”

“Happy birthday!” he said into her hair as he held her.

“You’re here!” She broke away to beam at him.

“Well, of course! I couldn’t miss your birthday, could I... Gran.”

She shoved his shoulder playfully and another very familiar voice piped up from behind her.

“Happy birthday, Hermione.”

She turned with dizzying speed and stared at Ron in amazement. He looked pained, and kept his
hands crossed tightly across his chest, clearly rejecting the hug she wasn’t stupid enough to offer
him.

“Thanks,” she breathed, feeling a stiff smile spread across her face.

He nodded, and then scowled up at the dull sky.

“Looks like rain again. Let’s go in?”

They went in, breathing a collective sigh of relief at the toasty warmth, and found a corner table to
settle around.

“Rosmerta,” Ron called in that detestable manner that he put on around her, “Jolly good to see you
again. Looking lovely as always.”

He shot a glance at Hermione in between every other word. Was he hoping for an embarrassing
display of jealousy like she’d been - unfortunately - prone to in the past? She didn’t know what to
do with herself, so she just gazed down at the grimy menu before her like it was a cipher she was
trying to decode.
They placed their order and Rosmerta, with a flick of her hair, told them that it was all on the
house.

“I won’t have you lot paying in my establishment. Don’t you even try it.”

Ron stared at her hips as she sashayed away.

“Hey, Weasley,” Theo remarked, “No joke this time?”

“Get bent.”

“Ah, all right. I mean, it’ll be hard to top that last one. What was it? A hag and a healer and a –
hey!”

Ron threw a napkin ring at him.

Hot food, warm butterbeer, and good company was a combination one really couldn’t go wrong
with. After the initial discomfort, Ron settled down once he and Harry began regaling the table
with stories from auror training.
“It’s basically been like a series of D.A.D.A. lessons so far – but a lot more gruelling, obviously.
Oh, and our supervisor was very impressed by how quickly I picked up wandless magic, by the
way. Nobody else has managed it so far. He said I must’ve had a very remarkable instructor.”

He winked at Hermione and she flushed with pleasure.

During a lull, Ginny asked, “How’s George?”

“Not bad,” Ron answered around a mouthful of steak, “Been helping him with the shop on the
weekends. It’s fucking swamped all day... George and Verity can barely handle it. But it’s good.
Keeps him busy, you know.”

“Yes,” Ginny murmured.

Four rounds of butterbeer later, they parted. Hermione hugged Harry, waved at Ron and set off
towards the castle. Ginny had stayed behind, Neville had gone to meet Hannah, and Theo and Luna
got lost in their own world, strolling along with their arms wrapped around each other.

“Did you have fun then?” Dean smiled down at her.

“Yes,” she assured him, smiling back, “Thank you. It was lovely.”

“I have another present for you, by the way.”

“Oh,” she started, “You didn’t have to –”

“From Seamus,” he continued, “He’s cut a deal with a booze supplier, you see. Two bottles of
prime firewhisky await you.”

“Brilliant,” she laughed.

Theo’s fifth guess turned out to be right. It was a rich black forest cake that her parents had sent
her, and Hermione brought it out to the common room in the evening to share with everybody. On
Ginny and Theo’s insistence, she was made to blow out candles and awkwardly stand there while
everybody sang the birthday song. (In the middle of that tortuous rendition, Zabini and Greengrass
stalked off.)
It was followed by a lot of (unnecessary) individual wishes and a lot of oh thank you, thank you on
her part. Padma patted her on the back, and Tracey Davis spoke to her for the first time ever.

“Happy birthday.”
Hermione tried to not let that sully her opinion of the girl.

“Oh thank you, thank you.”

Terry Boot hugged her, which she thought was quite uncalled for... and when he didn’t let go for a
solid four seconds, she decided it was downright inappropriate.

It was when she was looking around the room to ensure that everybody had got a piece that she
noticed Malfoy sitting by a window, reading.

Hermione swallowed, sucked in a breath, rolled her shoulders, tapped her right foot, performed a
whole assortment of similar procrastinating motions, before picking up a plate and walking over to
him.

He looked up as she approached; first at her face, then at the cake, and back at her face. During that
little dance, one of his eyebrows climbed up his forehead, and at the final upward glance, Hermione
was blessed to witness the nonpareil image of Draco Malfoy With An Arched Brow. It was almost a
visual trope; an expression so completely bound to the single-dimensional notion of Malfoy The
Smug Bigot And Bully, that she almost laughed. Her amusement must've shown, because both his
brows pulled down, and please look, here we have the classic Draco Malfoy Scowl.

He sat up straight as she got closer, gently shutting his book. The scowl persisted.

“Here,” she said in a ridiculously high voice, and thrust the plate towards him. When all he did was
eye it mistrustfully, she huffed. “Go on, Malfoy. I haven’t poisoned it. It’s just a slice of birthday
cake.”

He looked back at her, and the scowl was gone. His face was just... blank. Every line was smooth,
and every angle was sharp. He kept looking at her as he accepted the cake. Hermione turned away
the moment her hand was free, but she’d taken no more than a step and a half, when his voice, soft
and a bit gravelly, washed over her.

“Happy birthday.”

She froze, but she didn’t turn around.

“Thank you.”

Over an hour later, less than a quarter of the cake remained. Hagrid’s rock cakes were untouched.
The second bottle of firewhisky was half empty.
Half full?
Hermione rolled her eyes at herself. Even so, she was smiling. She supposed the bottle was half full
after all. Well, it was, until Dean took care of it.

Another round made its way, Hermione followed Dean and the bottle. First there was Theo, (still
eating cake,) and Luna, (who was feeding him the cake.) Then there were Padma and Tracey,
playing a rowdy game of exploding snap with Justin and Susan. Neville had Hannah squirming and
giggling on his lap as he tickled her, and from the next chair, Malfoy rolled his eyes. Michael was
doing a highly dramatised re-enactment of Neville beheading Nagini, with Anthony playing the
snake.

“Ow! I told you! Not so hard!”

“Hah! That’s the exact opposite of what your mum said to me last night!”

“You arsehole!”

Anthony chased him into the boy’s dorms.

Lisa waved to nobody in particular as she shuffled towards the girl’s dorms. And Terry – damn it.
Terry was coming towards her. Hermione slid off the sofa and dropped onto the carpet next to
Ginny, and rested her head on the other girl’s shoulder.

“So,” Ginny murmured, “It was a good day, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Hermione yawned, after which her face settled, once again, into a smile.

Around one at night, she decided it was time to head to bed after realising that the reason the
conversation she’d been engaged in had seemed one-sided was that Ginny had fallen asleep.
Hermione conjured a blanket for her... and one for Dean, who was asleep on an armchair, and one
for Justin who was asleep at the table, surrounded by playing cards.

“Goodnight,” she muttered to Theo and Luna – the last two stragglers in the room – still cozied up
together.

“Wait!” Theo cried. He stumbled towards her and pushed a small wrapped box into her hand,
“Don’t forget your present.”

“You already bought me a book.”

“Yeah, so?” he challenged with narrowed eyes.

“Nothing,” she laughed, reaching out to squeeze his hand, “Thanks.”

She cried once she had unwrapped it. He’d got her a watch.
The Art of Transfiguration in Ancient Greece: Separating Myth from Reality was the title of the
book McGonagall had given Hermione for her birthday. It was an unbelievably fascinating study,
pulling down the great gods from their mountain top and deeming them nothing more than
exceptionally talented witches and wizards. She remained transfixed to the book for three days,
barely aware of life going on around her. The only reason she made it to lessons on time was the
perfectly functional, pretty silver-strapped watch bound around her wrist. When Theo had first seen
her wearing it, his smile was a beautiful thing to behold.

At six-forty-seven in the evening, sharp, she finally pulled out of the world of Greek legends to a
nearly empty common room. Besides Justin and Anthony slaving over their Defence Against the
Dark Art’s homework, nobody was around.

Hermione dropped the book back into her bag and stretched, feeling a hundred kinks and knots in
her back. Perhaps a hot shower would help sort them out. But just as she stood to act on that idea,
Theo sauntered into the room with his robes and scarf draped over an arm and his shirt untucked.

“Well hullo,” he grinned, “Look who’s returned to the land of the living!”

Hermione ran a hand across her lightly burning eyes.

“Where is everybody?”

“On the third floor. Some genius charmed all the suits of armour to dance the Furlana. It’s quite a
show.”

“Oh my god!” Hermione gasped as her eyes widened, “Why are we here then? Let’s go!”

“Nah,” he drawled, and dumped his belongings onto an armchair, “Too crowded. And you’re so
tiny, you won’t be able to see anything.”

“Theooooo,” she whined plaintively.

She couldn’t get the image out of her head, and she really, really wanted to see it.

“Come with me. I want to show you something better.”

Without waiting for her to agree he took hold of her arm and pulled her up the narrow stairway that
led to the tip of their tower. It was a tiny room with a conical ceiling and a large, round window. It
had recently been assigned the official snogging (and other things) room, and she couldn’t imagine
why he was taking her up there.

“How is this better than dancing armours?” she griped once they’d climbed.

“Have some patience, will you?”

He pushed the window open and stepped out onto the ledge.

“What are you doing?” Hermione shrieked.

“Hey!” he snapped, “Don’t startle me like that! Do you want me to fall off?”

“Get back in here!”

“You come out here!”

He’d walked off somewhere, and she, terrified to her core, peeked out the window and saw him
sitting comfortably on the ledge, with his legs hanging down in empty air.

“Get back here this instance.”

“Calm down, darling,” he chided sweetly, “And join me. The view is spectacular.”

“It’s the exact same view from inside, without the danger of plummeting to certain death!”
Hermione’s voice was shrill with panic.

Unperturbed, Theo shook his head. “And that makes all the difference, you see? It’s amazing out
here. Come on.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“You won’t fall, Hermione,” he said with some exasperation, “This ledge is wide enough for a
hippogriff.”

“No, it isn’t!”

He laughed, stood up and walked closer, extending his hand out.

“Trust me, Hermione. It’s worth it.”

“I – no. I can’t.”

And although those were the words that came out of her mouth, her hand reached out and took his
of its own accord.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” she hyperventilated as he drew her out and, “oh shit,” once when
she was standing on the ledge. She scurried into his arms and looked anywhere but down.
“That’s it,” he cooed, “Good girl. Now let’s sit down, shall we? Easy, see?”

She felt a bit better once there was solid stone under her bum, and she hugged her legs to her chest
so that they weren’t dangling above an enormous drop.

“Open your eyes, you goose.”

“I can’t.”

“Hermione.”

She counted to five in her head with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then she let them open. The
first thing she thought of was Monet’s San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. A scorching, speckled
gradient of primary colours wrapped around her. The lake reflected the sky perfectly, and nothing
else existed in that psychedelic wonderland.
While Hermione stared out in awe, Theo lay back against the slanting roof with his arms tucked
behind his head. They didn’t need words to validate the scenery. But it wasn’t long before they
were interrupted.

“Are you insane?”

Malfoy and Ginny were standing at the window looking scandalised.

“Only a little,” Theo responded glibly.

“I’ve been looking for you for ages!” Ginny keened, “And you’re sitting... here. Wait.” She gaped
at Theo. “How did you manage to get Hermione out there!”

“I’m very persuasive. And even if I wasn’t, Hermione follows my every command.”

“Did you need something?” Hermione asked after she’d whacked Theo on the arm.

“Well... yeah. But it doesn’t matter now. Supper’s nearly over.”

“Oh.”

“Why are you even out there?” Malfoy asked with his patented sneer.

“The view,” Hermione and Theo said at the same time.

“You know the view’s the same from inside here, don’t you?”

While Hermione looked away, Theo chuckled.

“Hmm... I think I’ve heard that before.”

Getting back inside was no less terrifying. Her legs shook precariously as she stood, and she kept
both her hands pressed against the roof as she scuttled towards the window. Theo’s reassuring hand
on her back did little to calm her. Just as she was stepping in, her foot got caught on the window
frame and she tripped. Her arms reached out automatically as a startled squeak tore out of her, and
she grabbed onto whatever she could manage to find.

It took her mortifyingly long to realise that the thing she’d grabbed was Malfoy. One hand on his
chest, the other at his waist, the blank white expanse of his shirt flooding her vision. Pushing away
hastily, she muttered an apology, hating how hot her face felt. He was Malfoy With An Arched Brow
again, and he didn’t tell her it was okay, or that it was no big deal, or ask her if her foot was
throbbing in pain or not, (it was.) He merely dusted the wrinkles off his shirt and turned away to
watch Theo, who looked quite frazzled, leap in through the window.

“Shit, Hermione, are you all right?”

“Fine,” she mumbled.

“Can we go back down before people think we’re up to all sorts of naughtiness here?” Ginny
enquired impishly.

Malfoy made a terrible face, and was the first to charge out of the room.

September slipped away like a raindrop dripping down a frosted pane of glass, and soon enough,
the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness was upon them. Caught in the whirlwind of her
timetable, Hermione went from day to day with her old vigour.

Charms textbook in one hand, and the dead weight of Bellatrix’s wand in the other, she stood in the
middle of the common room, trying to figure out how to undo Neville’s disastrous atmospheric
charm, even as hot desert wind blistered all around her. No matter how many times she tried it,
Meteolojinx Recanto just didn’t seem to do it. Even finite didn’t work.

“Seriously Longbottom, you’re the biggest twat that ever lived,” Zabini growled, pulling his sweat-
damp shirt away from his skin.

“I said I’m sorry!” Neville cried, “It’s not like I did it deliberately!”

“Hello a – ah! Holy fuck, what happened here?” Dean, who’d just walked in gaped at the sand
dunes around him with shock.

“Neville,” the entire room chanted.

Three weeks after her birthday, she was back in the Three Broomsticks with Harry and Ron, and
this time they’d brought George along. He looked well, Hermione thought, dressed in smart purple
robes. His gold ear had a small fanged earring dangling from it.

“Present from Bill,” he said with a grin.

They mostly just engaged in small talk, light and pleasant, and they ate enormous amounts of food.
George had more luck with Rosmerta than Ron had ever managed – she giggled at all of his jokes.
The resulting scowl on Ron’s face was so endearing that she couldn’t help but grin at him. And to
her astonishment and great relief, he smiled back.

She returned to the castle alone – Harry had dragged Ginny away for some alone time not long
after they’d eaten. The pathway was littered with fallen leaves, and the air smelt crisp and earthy
after a hard spell of rain. With a full belly and a fuller heart, Hermione thought about the letter she
would write to her parents when she got back to her room.

“You there! Young scholar! Are you ready to delve into the arcane depths of runic lore?”

Hermione giggled at Theo’s subsequent groan, and pushed a fresh sheet of parchment towards him.

“Chin up, lad. We’ve been looking forward to this all week!”

“You’ve been looking forward to this all week. And stop it. Stop being so cheerful. I like my
Hermione all sullen and surly.”

“When am I ever sullen and surly?”

Theo blinked at her in surprise.

“You’re always surly.”

“What rubbish.”
She grinned as she opened Spellman’s Syllabary, and Theo groaned again.

“Well, then,” Hermione began with relish, “We should begin with the–”

“Theo!”

They both jumped as Malfoy entered the room with his usual aura of grating entitlement.

“Yeah?”

“Get up. We’re going flying.”

“Er–”

“Have you looked outside? The sun’s out. Fuck knows when that’ll happen again.”

“Not a good time, Draco –”

“Get moving!”

“Theo is working on his ancient runes assignment right now,” Hermione spoke up in a clipped
manner.

Malfoy didn’t even bother looking at her. “You can work on that later, it isn’t going anywhere.”

“Look Draco, we planned this a week ago.”

“You planned to do your homework a week in advance?” Malfoy was obviously appalled. “What
on earth have you become? Good grief, just put it off for an hour.”

“We will not be putting anything off for your sake, Malfoy,” Hermione seethed, “We’re trying to
work here, please go away.”

Finally, finally he deigned to look her way. It was a disdainful look, but that didn’t matter. She
matched his scorn with her own, and then some.

“Stop trying to turn Theo into an unendurable bore like yourself.”

“Draco!”

“Sod off, Malfoy. Maybe he’d actually rather do his work than spend an hour mindlessly flying
around with you.”

“No one remotely sane would enjoy being harped at by a painful swot who –”

“I’m sure being harped at is better than listening to an egomaniac go on about how expensive his
broom is and how finely he doth fly–”
“What are you – argh! Let’s just ask him what he prefers then?”

“Fine!”

“Yeah! Theo?”

Hermione and Malfoy looked at the boy who’d sunk deep into the back of his armchair, and had a
fist pressed against his mouth. His eyes betrayed his panic.

“Well?!” Hermione demanded.

He straightened his back slowly while uncovering his mouth, and then said, “Ahem.”

“Just tell this raging bint that you want to fly and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Hermione spoke through her teeth, “Or, you tell that obnoxious prat that you’d prefer to get some
work done, and tell him to get lost.”

“Um.”

“Theo!” Both Hermione and Malfoy exclaimed his name with frustration.

He sighed, looking absolutely wretched, and turned mournful eyes towards Malfoy. “See, we’d
planned this a week ago–”

“Fine.”

“Wait – Draco – hey!”

Hermione watched Malfoy storm away with not-so-quiet satisfaction, only just stopping herself
from patting Theo on the back and saying, “Good choice.” But Theo didn’t stop staring at the door
Malfoy had just disappeared behind. His brow was furrowed and he was chewing his tongue, and
alarm bells went off in Hermione’s head.

“Is everything all right?”

“He likes to fly when he’s upset.”

“Okay?”

Theo sighed and shot her a helpless glance. “It’s how he stems a meltdown. He flies. If he was
being so insistent, it probably means things must be quite... quite bad.”

She let that sink in, biting down on her lip as she felt a pang of sympathy, followed by irritation at
that pang for popping up.

“Just go,” she sighed, and turned back to her book.

“Wha – But – I’m here, I–”

“Theo. Just go. He obviously needs you right now.”

She could sense him watching her, so she subtly shook her hair forward.

“Will you be alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” she rolled her eyes, “I have my runes. I’ll be just perfect.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind? Are you absolu-u-u-u-tely sure you aren’t angry?”

“Oh, for god’s sake –”

“I mean... you were so furious before.”

She shrugged. “He brings out the worst in me.”

“Hm.”

Theo continued to watch her; seconds went by and he didn’t stop.

“Why won’t you leave?” she moaned, rubbing her face wearily.

“I’m going,” he mumbled.

He stood up, ruffled her hair, and left.

It happened again four days later.

Hermione’s temper was the kind of storm that Shakespeare would’ve interpreted as an omen of
doom. She stomped her feet against the ground as she marched towards the common room.
Electricity crackled through her hair and buzzed in her ears.
She threw open the common room door hard enough for it to slam against the wall, and growled
like a feral cat:

“THEODORE!”

He was playing chess with Malfoy and fell off his chair at her call.

“Fucking Salazar!” he clutched at his chest, “Hermione? What the – Oh! Oh shit!”

“Remembered me, have you?” she fumed.

“Damn it, I’m so sorry! I –”

“An hour and a half! I waited for you for an hour and a half in the library, and you’re here faffing
about with this idiot!”

“Hold on a second! How dare –”

“I am so, so sorry!” he approached her with desperate contrition smeared all over his face, “I
genuinely lost track of the time! Please believe me, I fully intended to show up!”

“An hour and a half –”

“Let me make it up to you!” he pleaded, “We won’t leave the library until we’ve finished the whole
project, alright?”

“Excuse me,” Malfoy piped up indignantly, “We’re in the middle of a game!”

“We’ll finish it later, Draco,” Theo replied quickly, “Shall we, Hermione?”

She took a calming breath and nodded, but Malfoy shot all her calm to hell.

“We won’t be able to finish it later! Someone or the other will grab the board soon enough –”

“Keep an eye on it then!”

“You want me to sit here like a bloody chump while you take Merlin knows how long finishing up
your project?”

“Don’t be difficult, Draco!” Theo beseeched.

“If anyone’s difficult here, it’s that deranged fucking cow you insist on keeping around –”

“Shut up –”

“What did you just call me?”

“I called you a deranged cow, Granger.” Malfoy eyed her derisively. “When will you realise that
you were a mere substitute while I had – er – other things to deal with?”

Hermione’s storm burst forth again, more dangerous than ever.

“Other things? Ha! Is that what you call your little assassination plot?”

“Fuck off. No, seriously, fuck off. Theo’s a soft-hearted chap, so he’s still letting you hang around.
But its better you realise that he prefers spending time with his real friend who isn’t a dreadful wet
blanket–”

She knew he was just running his mouth. She knew that Theo was shouting at him for doing so.
She knew that she should spare him no more than a rude gesture and walk away. But her storm had
reached its pinnacle. It swelled and howled and suffused her soul... and suddenly she was fourteen
years old again, charging towards that same smirking face with her hand raised –
Theo caught her around the waist with one arm, lifted her off the ground and carried her away. She
thrashed and flailed and ordered him to put her down but of course he didn’t listen. All the while,
Malfoy’s acerbic laughter coiled around her constrictingly.

He carried her till they were at the staircase, and when he did put her down, he kept a firm hold on
her as though worried that she’d bolt right back.

“Breathe.”

She glowered instead.

“I’m so sorry,” he sighed.

“I’m sorry. How are you friends with someone so horrible? How do you stand to be around him?”

Theo ran a hand across his brow dejectedly. “It seems that... you bring out the worst in him, too.”

“His worst his worse than my worst!” she burst out furiously.

A surprised chuckle bubbled out of him. “My, that’s quite a tongue-twister.”

“Gah,” she spat, “He’s an absolute shit. I wish you’d let me –”

“Absolutely not. The last time you slapped him, I had to hear about it for months.” Keeping his arm
around her, he began leading her downstairs. “So I had to stop you, for the sake of my sanity. Not
because I don’t think he deserve it.”

They didn’t talk the rest of the way, until they were seated on their table in the corner of the library.
Hermione’s anger hadn’t faded yet, but she could feel something else simmering underneath it.
Something that lodged a pre-emptive lump in her throat.

“I really shouldn’t have any need to say this,” Theo said, interrupting her chaotic feelings, “But you
know that he was talking utter bullshit, right? I don’t want you to have another... episode... where
you decide to run off and not talk to me, and I have to hunt you down, and then there’s such a fuss,
and I have to get seriously angry, and you end up crying, and –”

“Shut it.”

“I just need to make sure –”

“Theo. I know.”

“Okay, good.”

She did know, but that didn’t mean she didn’t resent the fact that she had to compete for Theo’s
time. Time that was scarce; schoolwork and Luna took up most of it. God help her, but for a second
– just a second, mind you – she thought things were better when Malfoy was busy with other
things.
“I’ll get him to apologise to you.”

“Oh, please don’t. If I have to be a part of one more apology scene with Malfoy, I’ll explode. Then
you’ll have to gather all the little fragments of my brilliant brain spattered about.”

“Brilliant brain?” he laughed.

“You know it’s true,” she shrugged, “No more apologies, okay? Just live with the hand you’ve been
dealt. You’re doomed to be best friends with two people who will forever snipe at each other.”

“Hm.”

And again, eight days later.

Up until that day, Malfoy had gone back to stonily ignoring Hermione, while Theo treated him with
icy aloofness. She’d spent most of her time researching for a potion’s assignment with Padma,
Tracy, and Michael, but the time had come for her to put that research into practice.
She skipped down the stairs from the dorms as she wrapped a scarf around her neck. In the
common room, Theo was standing rather vacantly with his bag on his back.

“Hello!” she sang, and he smiled. “Would you like to accompany me to forage for asphodel in the
forest?”

Out from behind the sofa, Malfoy popped.

“Theo and I are going to the library.”

Hermione huffed while she tried to recover from the mild heart-attack he’d given her.

“Were you actually hiding there, waiting for an opportune moment to –”

“Don’t be daft,” he frowned, “I’d dropped my quill-case.”

He made quite a show of shoving the case into his bag.

Theo turned to Hermione. “Would you like to join–”

“No!” Hermione and Malfoy yelped.

 “It’s okay,” she continued tightly, “I really need to collect ingredients for my potion. I’ll... I’ll see
you later.”

She forced herself to smile reassuringly, for Theo looked dreadfully uncomfortable.

It took her half an hour to collect the required number of asphodel blooms, after which, with a
basket full of pretty white flowers, she sat on a rock by the lake to watch Buckbeak make wide
circuits high in the sky. Hagrid stood close by and chattered on about the hippogriff’s moulting
habits. He was very cheerful and very sweet, but Hermione was bored to death.

Chapter End Notes

1. I Feel Fine by The Beatles

2. San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, Claude Monet
3. "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness": Reference to To Autumn, by John Keats
 Fifty
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

On Halloween morning, rows of pumpkins lined the walls of the entrance hall. All around, people
were chattering excitedly about what the evening’s feast would be like. Hermione scoffed to herself
as she walked into the Great Hall; she’d be happy as long as there wasn’t a troll mucking about in a
bathroom.

She’d only just helped herself to some fruit when an owl dropped an envelope before her. Her
vague melancholia turned to proper gloom as she read the letter within.

...needn’t bother asking for a portkey to Australia – your father and I are coming to England for
Christmas. Your aunt is unspeakably angry with us for disappearing, and has “requested” that we
visit so that she may make her displeasure abundantly clear to us. Seeing as this whole thing is
basically your doing, it’s only fair that you join us for this painfully uncomfortable occasion. Don’t
even think about remaining at school – I am not above writing to your headmistress.

“Well, what’s brought on the bloody strawberry massacre of 1998?”

Hermione blinked at her bowl of desecrated fruit, and then at Ginny.

“I just found out that my sunny Australian holiday has been called off.”

“Brilliant!” Ginny beamed.

“Excuse me?”

“Well I’m sorry for you and all,” she paused to take a flippant sip of coffee, “But this means you
can come to the Burrow!”

“I’m going to be at my aunt’s, in bloody Cornwall,” Hermione grumbled.

“Close enough for you to apparate!”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“Like I said,” Ginny joyously dumped a fried egg on her plate, “Brilliant!”

“What’s brilliant?” Dean asked as he and Neville plopped down on the bench opposite them.

“Hermione’s going to be in town for the hols!”

“But that is brilliant!” Dean grinned, “You can come for Finnigan’s grand opening. It’s on new
year’s eve – Shay’s got a huge party planned –”

Neville groaned. “I’m still not over the last party Seamus had planned.”

“Lightweight!”

But even as she smiled through breakfast, Hermione’s mind was far away, stewing in panic. Aunt
Malorie possessed a fiery temper that was a family trait on her mother’s side. The holidays were
going to be full of bitterness and, heaven help her, she’d had enough of that. All she’d wanted was
a proper break.

As the day dragged on, her mood worsened. She moped while everyone in the common room
passed around sweets. She moped while cordially turning down an invitation to Nearly Headless
Nick’s deathday party. She moped through the evening feast and later while she brushed her teeth.
She moped in her sleep.

The next day, she moped while she considered the possibility that her aunt’s hostility would undo
the progress she’d made with her parents over the summer.
But that thought came tied up with a possible solution: Well, not a solution per say – a temporary
reprieve. She knew someone around whom it was quite impossible to be sullen, for he simply
wouldn’t allow it. Someone who was overwhelmingly likable and talked unabashedly through
uncomfortable moments.

It came to her late in the afternoon while she’d been in the library looking for spells that could fake
illness well enough to fool McGonagall. She took off for the common room at once, praying that
Theo hadn’t already made plans for the entirety of the holidays. Surely, Luna and Malfoy hadn’t
usurped all his time –

In the common room, he was lying upside down on the sofa.... deep in conversation with Malfoy.
And she’d only noticed the latter when she’d covered a fair bit of her purposeful march towards her
target.

So the scene was as such: Theo’s upside-down face watching her curiously and Malfoy’s angry face
eyeing her threateningly, while she stood panting and frazzled before them.

“What is it, Hermi–” Theo began.

“Go away.”

She huffed, ignored Malfoy, and said, “May I have a word with you, Theo?”
“No, you may not.”

“Sure,” Theo murmured and he straightened.

“Theo,” Malfoy growled.

“It’ll only take a minute,” Hermione said, still addressing Theo alone.

“It can wait!” Malfoy barked decisively.

“No, it can’t!” Hermione snapped.

For all she knew, Malfoy could’ve been cementing Theo’s holiday plans the moment before she’d
interrupted them.

Theo stood up.

“Um?”

“Over there,” Hermione gestured to the opposite corner of the room.

“All ri–”

“Sit back down, Theo.”

Incensed, Hermione rounded on Malfoy. “What is your problem?”

“You know very well what my problem is, you –”

“Shut up!” Theo howled. “Shut up, shut up! Fuck you – both of you. I’ve had enough of your
sodding pointless belligerence, pissing on me like a pair of territorial crups. I am so sick of both of
you... I... I can’t even look at you right now!”

As he furiously swiped at his bag and shouldered it, Hermione asked in a timid voice: “Where are
you going?”

“To Luna,” he snapped, “My sweet, wonderful, amiable Luna, who’s honestly the only person in
the world who makes sense to me anymore.”

Malfoy muttered, “She’s got potions for the next –”

“So what? I’d rather sit outside the lab, on the frozen dungeon floor for forty-five minutes than be
around either of you for even a second longer. Fare-fucking-well.”

The entire room was witness to her disgrace. When Theo had stormed off, a dozen pair of eyes
stared at her standing and blinking down at her feet in shame. She began a slow and contrite shuffle
towards her room, not daring to look up.

“This is your fault.”

Ooooh, she was going to hex him till he was nothing but primordial ooze.
“My fault?!” She wheeled around and spat, “My fault?”

“Yes!”

Malfoy stood up and glared daggers at her.

“You’re the one who barged into the room and demanded he do as you say. And he always fucking
does as you say. I don’t know what sort of hold you have on him, but –”

“I do not –”

“It’s not right!” Malfoy thundered, “You take advantage of him! We were just fine, sitting over here
before you stuck your oar in. Everything was fine before you–”

“What absolute rot –”

“Would you give it a rest?!”

It was Neville of all people, shouting at them to cut it out. She looked at him, and the sea of
unimpressed faces behind him: Dean, Hannah, Padma, Tracy, Anthony, Justin...

“Sorry,” she mumbled and walked away, not sparing Malfoy another glance.

She really hated it when Theo was upset with her.

Just like the other times it’d happened, she shot him frequent repentant peeks and racked her brains
to figure out how to set things right.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him during the walk from Greenhouse one to the Transfiguration
classroom.

“Hmph,” he grunted and then kept determinedly silent as she rambled on about how quirky she
found the dung beetles that hid in manure sacks.

Over dinner, she observed Malfoy employing a similar tactic. He was waving his fork about as he
talked and talked and talked, and Theo kept his eyes on his plate and chewed disinterestedly.

Clearly, things could not go on that way.

Two days of torment passed. Hermione had forgotten about her aunt, and all her previous
predicaments. She stopped wondering what excuses her parents had made up for their year-long
absence, or whether her last charms assignment was truly, completely perfect.

That night, she sat at her desk in her room, wearing her dad’s old uni jumper, tapping a pen against
a blank parchment. Grids and schedules hovered around her, and she examined them all carefully,
many times over, before she began to write.

It was three in the morning when her work was finally complete. She fell back into bed, but the
nervy energy that filled her wouldn’t let her so much as close her eyes.

Time crawled.

She plaited and undid her hair.

She read poetry.

My hands are stone, and my voice a groan,

And the worst of death is past.
I am but a little maiden still,
My little white feet are sore.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

When the first hint of dawn arrived, she slithered out for her run, using the time to screw her
patience to the sticking-place.

A shower, a pep-talk, and a few anxious gulps later, she was walking across the common room to
the boys’ dorms. It was a crisp November morning with a perfect square of sunlight spreading
across one side of the room. Warm light kissed the tops of furniture and caressed the drapes on the
walls – a metaphor for hope, she dared to believe.

I have confidence in sunshine, she thought as she climbed upstairs and marched down a dim, door-
lined corridor. When she stood before the door that read Draco Malfoy, she thought, Besides, which
you see, I have confidence in me!
So why don’t you knock?

Hermione tapped her knuckles against the door, quickly, 1-2-3-4-5 times, then wrapped her hands
tightly around the strap of her satchel and waited.

At first, a loud thump sounded through the wood, followed by a muffled oath. Then footsteps,
getting louder by the second –

The door was pulled open with some aggression, and Malfoy with disarmingly tousled hair and a
wonkily buttoned shirt stood before her, wearing a sneer – a sneer that promptly morphed into a
very thorough scowl.

“What the bloody fuck are you doing here?”

Hermione straightened her spine and lifted her chin.

“We have to figure out this whole situation with Theo.”

His scowl – impossibly – deepened.

“We?”

“Yes. We don’t agree on many, many things, Malfoy, but I’m sure you’re as averse to upsetting
Theo as I am.”

“I’m sure I – huh.” He cut himself off and considered her through narrowed eyes. “I suppose you
have a plan?”

She ignored how sarcastic and sceptical he sounded, and simply replied, “Yes.”

“Well let’s hear it,” he drawled.

“Can I come inside?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Then where do you suggest we have this conversation?” Hermione’s grip on her satchel strap
tightened.

“Right here.”

“Are you serious?!”

She looked pointedly at the closed doors around them. People would be emerging for breakfast any
time now...

His intense scowl reappeared as he struggled with himself for a moment or two, after which he
growled, “Wait here,” and slammed the door in her face.

It didn’t take her long to get over the shock of that move, and she was soon fighting the urge to
blast his bloody door down. He was far too odious and pugnacious for this to work. She ought to
just walk away... what had she been think–

The door reopened and Malfoy walked out, dressed in proper school robes with relatively tidier
hair.

“Come on,” he muttered, and led the way back to the common room and towards –

“We’re going to the snogging room?!” she blurted.

Malfoy’s face twisted with horror.

“To talk. Don’t get any ideas, Granger.”

“Ugh,” she spat, “I wasn’t even think–”

“I’m warning you, if you try anything, I’ll –”

“Stop that right now!” she yelped, “What if it’s already, er, occupied?”

“Then obviously we’ll have to go somewhere else. Idiot.”

He began climbing faster, and she trotted along to keep up.

“Why can’t you just talk normally? You said – you said you’d be civil –”

“You irritate the fuck out of me, Granger. I can’t help it. Not that you’ve been very civil either –”

“Well, that’s because you –”

“Oh, look we’re here,” he declared loudly over her, “And see, not a soul in sight. Now out with it.
Tell me what your supposedly brilliant mind has come up with.”

The snog –– The room was filled with light that poured in through its large circular window.
Standing in that bright little cone Hermione shot Malfoy a look of pure poison as she pulled a
parchment out of her bag.

“I’ve made us a schedule,” she said through her teeth, “Divided the week – equally – between the
two of us, so that we each get time with Theo without ever stepping on each other’s toes. As you
can see, the weekends are a bit open –”

“You’re joking.”

He looked at the parchment contemptuously.

Hermione took a moment to bite the insides of her cheeks before she ground out, “I am not.”

“You think you can decide what I want to do with my time?”

“I assume you want to spend it with Theo!” she hissed.

“Yes,” he spat, “I want to spend time with Theo when I want to spend time with Theo. Not when
you’ve decided it’s okay.”

Deep. Breaths. Hermione.

That’s it.

“I didn’t decide – bah. I looked over all our timetables very carefully, all right? Yours, Theo’s, and
mine. I’ve taken into consideration when the best time for flying is, and when –”

“Ah, so you’ve even decided when I’d like to go flying, is it?”

“For fuck’s sake, Malfoy!” Hermione exclaimed.

And she stamped her foot. Like a bloody child.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Would you prefer that we keep going this way then? Playing tug-of-war with that poor boy until
he decides we’re not worth the trouble anymore? Look, I get it. You – you resent me. But the fact
is, I’m not going anywhere, he doesn’t want me going anywhere, and you’re just going to have to
deal with it. This –” she flapped her parchment roughly, “This is a way out of this mess. Would you
at least look at it?”

Oh, he was furious. His eyes were mere slits and his cheeks were flaming. But Hermione felt her
face burning too – she knew she looked no better.

“Why even bother showing it to me?” he rasped, “If it’s such a great plan, you should go straight to
Theo and save the day. As is your wont, right?”

She sucked in a breath and looked towards the peaked ceiling.

“I believe it will go down much better if we put up a united front.”

That drew a laugh out of him; a strained, humourless laugh. She levelled her gaze back onto him
and saw that his face had gone utterly blank, and he was staring at her parchment again. A slight
disturbance caught her eye, and she looked down to see him tapping non-existent piano keys
against the side of his leg. His hand twitched... clenched... and lifted.

“Show it here.”

Hermione counted the rafters hanging above as Malfoy took his time going over her hard work. She
was strung so tight, waiting for him to tear it apart; literally even.

But eventually, all he said was, “I’m not free on Thursday evenings.”

“Okay,” she breathed, “Is Wednes–”

“Yeah.”

“So shall we go to Theo now?”

“Fuck no,” Malfoy groaned dramatically, “I need a barrel of strong tea and a solid breakfast after
dealing with so much of... you.”

Hermione sniffed. “So after Arithmancy? We all have a free –”

“Nope. I have plans.” He turned away and continued to talk as he strutted obnoxiously towards the
exit. “I’ll be in the common room around six. Make sure you add that to your schedule.”

At 5:56pm, sharp, she stood at the base of the stairs leading to the boys’ dormitories, parchment in
hand, tapping her foot as each second passed. Malfoy wandered into the common room at 6:07pm,
greeted her with a weary sigh, and proceeded to stomp up the steps wordlessly.

“You’re late,” she grumbled as she followed.

He ignored her.

When they arrived at Theo’s room, they both, simultaneously raised their hands to knock, and the
resulting, unnecessarily cacophonic rap had Theo pulling his door open with an alarmed, “What the
hell?”

And when he saw the two of them standing there, he said, “What... the... hell?”

Hermione cleared her throat. “Hi.”

He gaped between her and Malfoy. “Hi?”

“Could we come in? We’d like to talk to you.”

Theo wheezed, “What? Both of you?”

“Yeah,” Malfoy replied, “We’re presenting a united front.”

Hermione could hear the smirk in his voice. Her hand (the one that wasn’t holding her precious
schedule,) curled into a fist.

“I’m scared,” Theo blurted. But he moved aside to let them through.

Theo’s room was exactly like hers... but terribly messy. His chair was piled high with clothes, his
desk was littered with open books and quills and parchment. His bed was rumpled.

“Merlin, what a wreck,” Malfoy remarked, “Were you practicing conjuring tornadoes in here?”

“Bugger that,” Theo snapped with impatience. “What’s going on?”

He perched himself on the arm of his over-burdened chair and looked at his unexpected guests with
frank curiosity.

Hermione sighed. “Well, first, I want to say I’m really sorry... again... for putting you in such an
uncomfortable situation... again.”

She waited for Malfoy to echo her sentiment, but (of course) he didn’t. So she went on.

“Here. I think this should make life easier for you.”

It was difficult to stop herself from wringing her hands while Theo scanned the schedule. It was
equally difficult to keep from checking if Malfoy’s expression was as disdainful as she thought it
might be.

The suspense ended when Theo looked up, lips twitching bemusedly, and said, “You’ve made us a
timetable.”

“Yes,” she muttered, “I just thought that it’s a fair and practical way to manage this situation. Do
you disapprove?”

“Of course not,” He grinned. “It’s such a perfectly Hermione thing to do – and hence, perfectly
perfect.”

“So you don’t mind that she’s dictating how you spend your day?” Malfoy asked incredulously.

“No,” he shrugged, “This is basically how I want to spend my day anyway.”

Hermione beamed.

“Seriously?” Malfoy spat, “You don’t find it at all obnoxious?”

“I think this is great. And it’s a whole lot more than you’ve done.”

Hermione simply had to look at Malfoy then. His affronted expression did not disappoint.

“Just because I’m not presumptuous enough to–”

“HA HA HA,” said Hermione.

His head snapped towards her with a dangerous glare, but before he could retort, Theo jumped to
his feet.

“Oh look. I have an hour of Hermione-time now. Jolly good. Spiffy. Come on.”

He grabbed her arm and dragged her out the room, past stony-faced Malfoy. He pulled her
downstairs, right across the common room... and out... and didn’t stop till they’d left the eighth year
tower far behind.
Malfoy could stick his condescension somewhere unpleasant and painful, because Hermione’s
schedule worked wonderfully. In the weeks that followed, she spent many tranquil hours with her
friend, without any aggravating interruptions. She even got to ask him to visit her at her aunts over
the holidays.

And in the hours when she knew Theo was with Malfoy, she made sure she stayed far away from
all the places they might be, lest the mere sight of her may instigate Malfoy’s chronic irritability.
She studied with Padma, sat with Neville at the quidditch stands, watching Dean, Ginny and the
rest of the quiddich team practice, or just curled up peacefully in her favourite corner of the library.

Life would have been good, lovely even, save for the fact that Bellatrix’s wand was suddenly being
ever, ever, ever so slightly resistant to her commands. She felt twitchy when she held it, and her
magic didn’t flow as smoothly and effortlessly as it should. A new, sickening ordeal set up shop in
her life.
It was a horrible helpless compulsion that kept her going back and back and back again to that
wand, while a simultaneous revulsion built up inside, tossing and turning till she was forced to hide
the wand away from her sight.

One night she woke up shaking, sweating, teeth clenched – emerging from a nightmare that hadn’t
visited her in quite some time. She sat back against the headboard with her arms drawn tightly
around her knees, trying to calm herself down as moonbeams glanced off the wand at her bedside.
She used her wandless abilities to send it flying inside the drawer of her dresser.

And for the rest of the long night, she sat in that same position, trying not to stare at the drawer. She
focused on the photographs that she’d stuck above her desk: One of her with her parents, with
Harry and Ron, with Ginny, with Theo...

Moonlight and laughter.

She hid behind her hands.

Harry, Ron, and George visited again on Saturday, for the first quiddich match of the season.
Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff. They ate breakfast at the Great Hall, causing a stir among the student
body.
Everybody stared. Harry grumbled. Ron preened. Hermione stirred sugar into her tea.

“Oh shit. Shit. Shit. We have to leave.” Harry exclaimed suddenly, “Slughorn’s coming – shit – we
have to leave.”

He shot out of the hall like a rocket, and cackling, the rest of them followed.

“Good weather for a game,” George commented, tilting his head heavenwards.

“Yeah,” Ron agreed wistfully.

Harry slung his arm around Ginny and kissed the top of her head.

“Best of luck. And don’t let the fact that you’re just the girlfriend of the greatest seeker Hogwarts
has ever seen stress you out.”

“Just the girlfriend?” Ginny shoved him away. “Just the girlfriend?!”

Theo and Luna were waiting for them by the stands, him looking half-embarrassed, half-amused by
Luna’s outrageous lion hat.
Whether it was by design, or shrewd planning on Harry’s part, (Hermione suspected the latter,) she
ended up next to Ron. She sat stiff as a board, chuckling perfunctorily as George asked Luna if she
could make more hats like that for him to sell at his shop.

“Does it do anything besides roaring?”

“Try tickling his nose.”

“Tickling his – ARGH! Fucking thing bit me!”

“See, it does that too.”

“Heh,” Ron whispered to her, “Always liked Luna.”

“Oh sure,” she replied wryly, “Me too.”

He gave her an awkward smile and –

– And the crowd roared as both teams soared in.

The match didn’t last very long, with Gryffindor dominating the entire time. And when Ginny
caught the snitch after performing a rather spectacular dive, she swooped close to the stands to
present Harry with two gloating fingers.
It appeared to be getting colder and colder by the day.

Hermione’s morning runs had to be pushed as the sun got terribly sluggish about rising. She barely
had time to squeeze in a hasty shower and a quick breakfast before racing off for her lessons.
Lessons during which she could do nothing but endure the malevolence thrumming through
Bellatrix’s wand.
No book on wandlore could explain why a wand would start acting up for no reason. Although, it
wasn’t actually malfunctioning in anyway; it was just unbearably repellent to her.

It led her to believe that perhaps, it was all purely psychological.

She watched, with hollow and sunken eyes, as November turned into December. Right as the hour
passed and another wave of nausea bled into her through the wand in her hand, she knew what she
was going to gift herself that Christmas.

Fucking release.

Sat by the window with their legs, like sunflower stalks, reaching towards the warmth of the sun,
Hermione and Theo were busy with Ancient Runes.
Well, Hermione was certainly busy, and she decided to give Theo the benefit of the doubt. Her quill
and mind were racing at too fast a pace for her to actually pay him close enough attention. An
anecdote from the life of Brân the Blessed was slowly taking shape on her parchment.

“Why are you all done up like a dog’s dinner?”

Hermione glanced at Theo in confusion... but he wasn’t talking to her.

Malfoy was wearing black robes that fitted his frame like a dinner jacket. His hair was slicked back
– not plastered to his skull like it used to be, but loosely.
“I’m going out,” he said. Then he smirked at Hermione, “So don’t worry, Granger. You can wipe
that constipated look off your face.”

She scowled.

“Not much better.”

“Hold on,” Theo interjected, “What do you mean you’re going out?”

“To Hogsmeade.” Malfoy arched his brow. “I have a date.”

“You have a date?! Since when are you dating?”

“It’s been known to happen,” Malfoy replied snootily.

“No – but –” Theo’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times. “With whom?”

“Mandy Brocklehurst.”

“Who in the living fuck is Mandy Brocklehurst?”

“As if you don’t know.”

“I don't know.”

“Our year. Ravenclaw. Dark hair. Gorgeously long set of pins.”

Malfoy looked disturbingly pleased with himself.

“Since when have you been seeing Mandy Broccoli-whazzit?!” Theo demanded.

Malfoy’s smile slipped and he narrowed his eyes.

“Been a week or so.”

“A week or so!” (Theo’s voice squeaked at ‘so’.) “And you’re telling me now?”

“How long did it take you to tell me about Luna?”

“That’s not the same thing!”

“Isn’t it?”

“No!”

Malfoy shrugged and walked away, waving over his shoulder as Theo called him to STOP!

“I don’t believe this!” he fumed as he glared at the door Malfoy had just disappeared behind. “I
don’t fucking believe this.”

Torn between the desire to be sensitive and the desperate urge to laugh, Hermione bit the insides of
her lips and asked, “Hmm?”
 “Honestly!” he thundered as he spun back around to face her, “Who the hell is Mandy
Bowtruckle?”

“Brocklehurst. She’s in four of your classes, Theo.”

“Bah,” he choked, “Draco isn’t supposed to be with a sodding Bowtruckle!”

“Brockle–”

“I don't care!”

Bless him, he looked so peeved. She really mustn’t laugh.

“Who’s he supposed to be with then?”

Theo muttered under his breath.

“Huh?”

“Have you figured out page thirteen yet? What’s this bloody rune that looks like a ruptured
bollock?”

“Ahem. Let me have a look...”

They only worked after that. He remained grouchy as hell, and she was completely nonplussed.

Chapter End Notes

1. "My hands are stone, and my voice a groan...": The Witch by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
2. I Have Confidence by Julie Andrews, from The Sound of Music
 Fifty-One
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

There was a small red ‘O’ glistening above her Runes assignment.

“How did you do?” she turned to Theo and asked.

He was busy grimacing at something above her head.

“That’s her, isn’t it? The Bowtruckle?”

She glanced over her shoulder and sighed. “That’s Mandy, yes.”

“Pff.” He looked away. “Nothing special, is she? You know, she actually does look a bit like a
Bowtruckle.”

“Theodore.”

“What? Look at her, all long and twiggy.”

“You’re being a prat,” Hermione snapped.

He stuck his tongue out at her. “I got an A.”

“An A?!” She stared at him, appalled. “How is that possible?”

“I was distracted,” he sniffed.

She frowned and began putting her books back into her bag.

“NEWT's are just a few months away, you know?”

“Five months, Hermione. Five.”

“Still!” she cried, “You can’t let yourself get distracted so easily...”

She spent the entire journey to the dungeons telling him about how he must start to get serious
about his studies. Perhaps she overdid it... perhaps she overdid it a lot. It just felt so good to sound
like an obnoxious swot that she kept breaking into giggles in the middle of her tirade.

“You’re so absurd,” he observed as he laughed with... at... her.

Theo could say all he wanted about Mandy, swayed by the inexplicable bitterness that had taken
him over, but there was no denying that she was a looker.

At dinner, she and Malfoy walked into the Great Hall like they were the guests of honour. She was
nearly as tall as him – slender and modelesque – and she kissed his cheek before they parted for
their respective tables. Malfoy loped over to where Theo was sat, brushing his hair to the side and
smirking as the latter made a face. He pointed towards the dish of leek soup, and Theo, without
missing a beat, pushed the dish further down the table.

“Arsehole!”

Ginny threw down her bag onto the floor with unnecessary force, and she fell onto the bench next
to Hermione.

“Potter,” she snarled as she piled food onto her plate – an amount that would’ve made Ron proud to
call her his sister.

“Something on your mind, Ginny?” Hermione asked cautiously.

“That – that moron – that complete tosspot – isn’t going to be here for Christmas!”

Her exclamation was shrill with righteous anger.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s going to bloody China!”

“China?” Hermione sputtered.

“That’s what I said, didn’t I? Both him and Ron, as a part of their training program.”

“But – but – China?”

“Yeah! To learn some secret duelling techniques.” Ginny put on a ridiculous deep voice and
continued: “That’s all I can tell you about it, Gin. Once in a lifetime opportunity, Gin. I’m sure you
understand, Gin. Bloody sodding wretched–”

“But during Christmas? Can’t they go any other time?”

“No. Apparently that’s the only time Shifu is willing to give.”

“Tch,” Hermione made a sympathetic face, “I’m sorry, Ginny.”

“I thought we’d finally get some time together again! And mum was so looking forward to having a
full house! Stupid, stupid, ah!”
She ate in silence while Hermione shook her head madly in warning to anyone who tried to ask
what the matter was.

“I can only come by after the twenty-eighth,” Theo said, “I’ll be in Brittany for Christmas.”

Hermione frowned. “What on earth will you be doing in Brittany?”

“Visiting Narcissa. The Malfoy’s have a lovely little place on the coast.”

“I see.”

“She’s not been keeping very well; a bit down in the dumps.” Theo – surprisingly – grinned.
“Draco seems to think that having me around makes things less uncomfortable. Isn’t that simply
mad?”

“Ho hum,” she drawled.

It was a cold Sunday evening, and they were thawing in the library after returning from
Hogsmeade. He’d stretched himself across three chairs, with his soggy, muddy boots propped up on
the arm of the last one, despite Hermione’s overt disapproval.

“Anyway, so let’s see if I have this right: Your Aunt Malorie is married to Jack, and they have a
nine year old son named Jeremy, who’s the sweetest little boy you know.”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s Pat, Jack’s sister who hates your mother, and by extension, you.”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like a grand old time.”

Hermione groaned, and Theo tugged at a lock of her hair and laughed.

“By the end of my visit,” he declared, “I promise she’ll love you simply because you brought me
into her life.”

She stood up, tapped his head with her notebook, and disappeared behind the shelves in search of a
book about incarceration spells for her essay. She skimmed her fingers across leather-bound spines,
as a monotonous thump thump thump commenced on the other side of the shelf.
An obvious attempt by an infuriating twit to draw her away from the books. Well, she wasn’t going
to oblige.

Thump thump thump

Pince would get to him before she would and that would serve him right.

Thump thump thump

Thump thump thump thump thump thump - it suddenly stopped.

“Draco?”

She froze, with a book half pulled out in her hand.

Thud! – The sound of boots hitting the ground. A noise of a chair being pulled back. The swish of a
cloak being removed. A heavy sigh. Followed by silence.

“You all right?” Theo asked, concern evident in his tone.

“No,” Malfoy replied, crisply. Coldly.

Theo sighed. “Look, don’t pitch a fit, but you should know that Her–”

“They cut his hair off.”

Another short silence befell them. One a penny, two a penny – Hermione gently pushed the book
back into place.

“What?” Theo breathed.

Malfoy’s voice was gritty with emotion. “Those Azkaban arsewipes cut Lucius Malfoy’s hair off.
Can you even picture it?”

“Draco...”

“He was standing there in that hideous, filthy grey uniform, his hair shorn... and he – he smiled.
You know what he said? Guess, Theo. Just guess what he said to me.”

“D-Draco...”

“He said, ‘oh you turned out to be the most Slytherin of us Malfoy men.’ Ha!” Malfoy’s laugh was
like the sound of glass getting crushed under your shoe. “The first thing he’s said to me since –
since he found out that I’d deflected.”

Another stretch of quiet.

“He asked about mother, of course. And he asked about you. Told me to give you his regards,
worthless as they are. Here you go then, Theo. Have his regards. Do what you will with his bloody
regards–”

SLAM! It sounded like a fist hitting wood.

“Then he asked me how my lessons are going. My fucking lessons. That hollow husk of the man I
used to know asked – asked about –”

Malfoy broke off with a choking gasp, and Hermione’s blood turned to ice. She needed to leave.
She ought to have left ages ago.

Slowly and delicately, she peeked around the side of the shelf. Just as she’d hoped, both boys had
their back to her. Theo’s spine was so straight with tension it looked painful. And Malfoy’s was
completely stooped, with his face buried in his hands. She cast a muffling charm on her feet, and
quickly darted out from her hiding place. She streaked across them, charging down the aisle in a
jog.
But of course, because she was trying to be as careful and stealthy as possible, her foot hit a chair
just as she was a few paces away from turning the corner. The subsequent noise was like nails
against a blackboard.

She stopped dead, filled with unimaginable horror. There was absolute silence behind her... but she
knew – she just knew – that they had to be staring at her.

Hermione broke into a run. She ran like she was being chased out of the Ministry of Magic by a
mass of angry Death Eaters. She ran without stopping until she was panting outside the library
doors. Then, limbs feeling like jelly, she walked woodenly all the way up to her room.

Malfoy’s gasp kept ringing in her ears.

Early on Monday morning, Theo was waiting for her in the common room.

She approached him with shame and apprehension, but all he said as he handed her her bag was,
“You’d left this in the library.”

“Thanks,” she muttered.

He looked down at her with tired eyes; she bit her lip and looked away.

She didn’t get to say anything to him as they walked down to breakfast, since Luna had been
waiting for him outside the common room. She saw Malfoy in potions, way on the other side of the
classroom. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing at him over and over again – as he chopped
dandelion roots, as he stirred his potion, as he measured pickled slugs. She waited for him to
glower, sneer, or throw a hex at her. But nothing came her way.

At the end of the day, when the whole batch was in the common room, she waited for him to charge
over to her and scream. The anticipation had her making all sorts of ridiculous mistakes in her
homework. And yet, midnight struck and nothing happened. He remained ensconced in his room...
or wherever he was.

And the next day, while she and Theo were walking by the lake, she asked, “How angry is he?”

The sun was blazing behind them and their misshapen shadows stretched long and sharp on the
ground before.

“Honestly?” His sigh was a physical thing: A murky cloud of mist on that cold, cold day. “I don’t
think he has any energy left to be angry with you.”

Hermione pulled at the ends of her muffler until they were at exactly the same length. A slip of mist
escaped her lips, too: Aureate and wispy. She wrapped her fingers around Theo’s elbow, giving it a
subtle squeeze. The corners of his mouth pulled up in the saddest smile she’d ever seen.

The topaz yellow sky diffused as it touched the ground; the evening’s haze curled and coiled
around Hogwarts like tidal waves. Like angry smoke. Like tendrils of fiendfyre. She could imagine
the heads of serpents and dragons and frenzied beasts howling and roaring amid the fog, their
gaping, gnashing mouths reaching towards her as she whizzed across on the back of a broom,
holding tightly onto Malfoy...

(...Three hundred and sixty five days ago, Hermione and Harry had been practicing seamless
apparition while under his cloak. Cold, scared, miserable, broken after Ron’s apparent desertion...)

Now: She was standing outside the owlery, and a thick stare of owls flew over her head.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Their shadows slid across her one by one, each tearing off a piece. They ripped and ripped and
ripped away at her until she was left bare before the world... until she was nothing but a wilted
weed of a girl who’d been tormented all night by visions of a giant snake bursting out of the skin of
a dead woman.

Flitwick introduced them to Protean charms in the last week before the holidays, and Hermione
was utterly bored. She tried in vain to help Neville with his, before leaving him in Ginny’s
reasonably capable hands.

She got completely immersed in doodling an elaborate pattern made out of runes. By the end of the
lesson, her rune-mandala looked like a chandelier, as seen from the floor.

Walking out of the classroom, she smiled idly as Neville grumbled about her having the audacity to
master the charm back in fifth year. Ginny countered by asking him why he hadn’t come to terms
with the fact that Hermione was a genius yet.
Theo was only a few steps ahead, flanked by the blond heads of Luna and Malfoy. They appeared
to be having a pleasant exchange, if the grins she saw every time they turned to look at each other
were anything to go by.

Terry Boot jumped in, remarking that Ravenclaw had been robbed by the sorting hat. Ginny
retorted that, no, sorry – Hermione’s nerves were completely scarlet and gold.

Up ahead, Luna wrapped her arm around Theo’s waist and said something that turned the tops of
the boy’s cheeks bright pink. The sound of Malfoy's laughter bounced all around the passageway.

“Sort this out, Hermione,” Terry urged, “Ravenclaw or Gryffindor? Where do you think you really
belong?”
She chuckled mindlessly in lieu of a response. I belong in bed, she wanted to say. In bed with a
book and a mug of spiked hot chocolate.

How was the term over? How had four entire months gone by? How was she sitting in a carriage,
racing towards the Hogsmeade station?
Hermione felt like she was a tiny, flea-sized creature sitting inside a vast automaton, screaming and
screaming at it to slow down, but this body – this independent thing – kept moving, jumping out of
the coach, walking along the platform, climbing onto the train...

Theo’s hand was warm and steady on her shoulder as he gently pushed her into a compartment. She
sat by a window, staring at the turrets and towers that rose out of a thicket of trees in the distance.
Her friends poured in one by one: There was Ginny, looking as lost as Hermione felt, and Luna
content in the circle of Theo’s arms. There was Neville, leafing through the latest edition of The
New Journal of Herbology, and Hannah by his side.

“Where’s Draco?” Theo asked Dean, who was the last to enter.

“Dunno,” he replied as he pulled his black woollen hat off his head, “I think I saw him with Mandy
Brockle–”

“Oh Salazar,” Theo groused.

The train’s whistle sounded, accompanied by the long drawn hiss of steam... and then they were
off, with the dull chug-chug gradually gaining speed. Hermione turned away from the window,
dizzy with motion sickness.

“Exploding snap. You in?” Dean asked.

She shrugged. “Sure.”

“I thought we could play gobstones again,” Luna chimed in hopefully.

“You mean your barmy version? No thanks!”

Chapter End Notes

1. "I have looked upon those brilliant creatures...": The Wild Swans at Coole, by W. B. Yeats
 Fifty-Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

There was a two-storey house in Truro, surrounded by pine trees and spindly undergrowth. Its
slanted roof was dusted with snow like powdered sugar. Colours had lost their potency, as though
they’d been overlaid by grey, white, and black films – the sludge on the surrounding road, the tall
street lamps, the house’s rough walls, the grim sky, the fake poinsettia flowers on the windows, the
wreath hung on the front door...

A winter's day
In a deep and dark
December

Hermione was not allowed the luxury of being a rock or an island. She was sitting at the kitchen
table in that two-storey house, picking at a hangnail while Uncle Jack scrambled eggs and whistled
an egregiously lively tune. It sounded like Shake, Rattle, and Roll, but she couldn’t be sure. Aunt
Malorie and mum were at two ends of the table not looking at each other, and dad was boring holes
into the sports section of the paper. Young Jeremy was glued to the telly in the other room. The
blaring clamour of Christmas themed cartoons barged into the kitchen and wrapped around Uncle
Jack’s whistling in a very distressing way.

Her thumb was bleeding.

“More eggs, Hermione?”

She smiled thinly and shook her head. “No, thank you.”

Uncle Jack resumed whistling as he scraped the entire lot of eggs onto her plate. She poked at them
listlessly with her fork – she wasn’t hungry at all.

“A YEAR!” Aunt Malorie burst out, “A WHOLE YEAR, EVIE!”

Mum groaned. “I’m sorry! I’ve said I was sorry a hundred times! The whole move was very
spontaneous and–”

“That's not the point! You moved away, packed up your house and disappeared without a word!
Not one call, or email, or letter–”

“We’d just been so busy!”

“Too busy to send one line?” Aunt Malorie shrieked, “I mean besides the stupid Oh, we’re moving
to Australia for good thing you left me with! A whole year! You could have been dead for all I
knew!”

Mum’s expression betrayed her anguish. Hermione wished so badly that she could own up; that she
could just admit that it had all been her doing... to avoid exactly that possibility that her aunt had
feared.

“I’m your sister! Don't you care about me? I’ve been a jolly good sister to you, haven’t I? Not like
Jack’s useless little –”

“Hey, hey!” Uncle Jack spluttered, “Why are you dragging Pat into this?”

“Why shouldn’t I? She’s been sponging off us for years now!”

“You told her to move in!”

“Yes! Three years ago, right after she’d been laid off! I was being nice! I didn’t expect her to make
it a permanent–”

“She’s my baby sister!”

“She’s an unemployed, thirty-two year old wastrel!”

It was Christmas Eve and Hermione was caught in the middle of a raging domestic. Fantastic. She
looked at mum, who was massaging her temples, and dad who –

Oh dear god.

Dad was barely holding in his laughter.

Hermione looked away at once. His laughter seldom remained just his own...

“Hullooooooooo!”

A pitchy voice perforated through the argument in the kitchen as the front door slammed shut.
Consequently, there was absolute silence in the kitchen when Pat made her entrance.

As she shuffled in, dragging her chunky high-heeled boots she droned, “Oh, you lot’re here.”

She offered Hermione and her parents a reluctant half smile before helping herself to some toast.
Her hair was tightly permed, her makeup was smeared, and her dark blue dress was horribly
crushed.

“Where have you been the past two days?” Aunt Malorie demanded.

“Nick’s place,” she replied indolently.

“Who’s Nick? You’ve never mentioned him before?”

“Nick’s the bloke from the pub, in’he? And you won’t hear me mentioning him again.” Pat began
shuffling back towards the kitchen door. “Bloody mediocre shag, he was.”
“Patricia! Watch yourself!”

“Why?” she shrugged uncaringly, “Just ‘cos weenie little Hermione Granger’s here? Not so little
anymore, is she? I’m going to bed, ta. Don’t wake me unless the house is, like, burning down.”

She left, and Aunt Malorie turned her fury back onto Uncle Jack.

“You see! You see that! How are you okay with having her here, having her around our young,
impressionable son! You tell her, Jack. You bloody well tell her to clean her act up or I’m kicking
her out!”

And that’s when dad’s self-control caved and he tried to vanish behind the paper, perhaps
momentarily forgetting that it wasn't soundproof.

She woke to a suitably white Christmas, getting a fragmented view of the world outside from her
cot by the frost covered window. It was barely light outside – a cold blue hue – and everything was
so quiet. But that was owing to the silencing charm she’d cast on Pat, who was asleep on the next
bed, sprawled like her arms and legs were trying to touch all four corners of it. Her snores
reminded Hermione of Fluffy, the three-headed dog.

She got out from under the covers, jammed her feet into warm, downy slippers, and softly trod
downstairs. The silence trailed behind her; heavier than her shadow, colder than the air.

In the living room, the medium sized, haphazardly decorated tree was planted in an enormous pile
of presents. Hermione felt herself smile involuntarily as she sat down beside them and began
pulling out those that came from her friends, delivered by owls overnight.

There was quite an assortment: A Weasley jumper, a hamper from George, earrings from Ginny
(dangling silver quills), a mug from Luna featuring a red and blue whatsit, a gorgeous (and
indisputably expensive) jewelled strap for her watch from Theo, a sprig of dittany from Neville,
firewhisky from Seamus, (and wrapped around it, a flyer: FINNIGAN’S PUB GRAND OPENING
ON NEW YEAR’S EVE! COME ONE, COME ALL!)

Her hand paused over two gifts wrapped in red paper dotted with animated golden Chinese dragons
and, without a warning, she felt teary. She missed Harry and Ron with a sudden fierceness. Ron had
sent her a big box of mooncakes shaped like curled up cats. And Harry...

She gasped.

Harry had sent her a jade pendant. A little cluster of Hellebores, just like the ones that comprised
the wreath she’d placed on his parents’ graves last year.
 *

When the rest of the house awoke, they went through the paces. The hugs, the wishes, (Aunt
Malorie stood stonily at the side, Pat sniffed grouchily into her coffee,) and the gift exchanging.
After that, Hermione sat on the floor with Jeremy, helping him set up his brand new race car track.
Behind her was a towering stack of books that her parents had carefully picked for her. She smiled
as the young boy ooh'ed and aah'ed over the series of loop-the-loops they’d set up, and her fingers
floated up and gently touched the pendant she’d strung around her neck.

She even ate breakfast with her cousin right there on the floor, foregoing the awful icy atmosphere
surrounding the grownups in the kitchen.

In the afternoon, Pat went back upstairs for a kip, and Uncle Jack took Jeremy out to build a
snowman. Hermione made to join them but mum stopped her.

“Come here for a minute, will you?”

She suppressed a weary sigh and went to join her mother on the living room sofa. Dad sat himself
down on the coffee table in front of them. He had an envelope in his hand.

“Hermione,” he said with strange seriousness, “We sold the house.”

She blinked rapidly as his words sunk in.

“What?”

“The house... The Hampstead house. We sold it.”

“You...” she whispered, “You sold... Oh god, you really aren’t coming back, are you?”

“No, dear,” mum replied kindly, and took her hand. “And obviously, you aren’t going to live
there...” she stopped and eyed Aunt Malorie who was watching them closely, “We got a tidy
package for it. Prime property and all that.”

“That’s... nice,” Hermione croaked.

“So here,” Dad said, “For you.”

He held out the envelope.

Her hands were trembling as she flipped open the flap and pulled out a –

“Holy shit!”

“I told you we got a good deal,” mum grinned.

“Why – are you – You’re giving this to me?” She gaped down at the cheque in horror.

“Yes.”

“I can’t accept this!” she cried, “It’s too much!”

Dad frowned. “What do you mean you can’t accept it?”

“It’s too much! How can I – How – I can’t –”

“Can’t accept money from your parents? Are you serious?” Dad asked incredulously, “You’re still
our child, not even out of school yet... what on earth do you mean you can’t accept it?”

“I just...” She couldn’t breathe. It truly was a monstrous sum. “It’s...”

“Look my darling,” mum placed her hand on Hermione’s hair, “You’re going to start living out in
the real world now. You’ll need to get yourself a place to stay, set things up. I want you to... want
for nothing while you’re figuring things out. And I know you’ll figure things out, little genius that
you are. Let this be your safety net. Let me take care of you–”

Like I wasn’t able to before. It was unsaid, but Hermione heard it clear as day. She looked from one
parent to the other, welling up and breathless, and they smiled at her. Kindly, like they always had.
Like she hadn’t derailed their lives completely. Like it wasn’t entirely her fault that there was a
bitter woman sneering at them right then.

She didn’t deserve them. They were – they were so –

Like always, mum knew right away that she needed to be held. She let a few tears seep into her
mother’s shoulder... drew in a long breath... and said, “Thank you.”

That night her DA Galleon carried a message – will b back on 29 afternoon.

Don’t ask her how the following two days passed. She’d freeze into a corny Roy Lichtenstein
painting with a speech bubble that said 'It’s been hell!'

Books and endless games of ‘Guess Who?’ with Jeremy. Uncomfortable meals and suffering
through hours spent in Pat’s company while the woman kept asking her why she didn’t have a
boyfriend. Was she truly thirty-two? Hermione hadn’t met such an irredeemable airhead since she’d
shared a dorm with Parvati and Lav–

She snuck into her parents room on the night of the twenty-sixth, (after a particularly grating supper
during which her aunt and uncle had got into a row over whose turn it was to do the dishes,) and
they’d opened Seamus’ whisky and she’d told them about her past few months at Hogwarts.
Academic stuff, mostly.

On the twenty-seventh she pulled dad aside while mum and aunt Malorie were busy with their
sniffy posturing.

“I’m going to Diagon Alley. Come with?”

His fine brown eyes turned round. “Jesus. Yeah. Absolutely.”

She’d been thinking a lot about what he’d said about hating himself for not getting more involved
in the magical part of her life, and it killed her that he felt guilty about it. But his delight (following
complete horror after his first experience of side-along apparition,) at standing in the middle of the
busy, riotous, colourful shopping area cheered her up immediately. She took him to Weasley’s
Wizard Wheezes and introduced him to George, (who gave him a Reusable Hangman, gratis,) and
to Flourish and Blotts, and Fortescue's. They went to Gringotts where she got all sorts of ugly
sneers from the Goblins, and opened her very first magical bank account.
Then she slipped her arm through his, and led him to the southern end of the alley, to the narrow
shop, once shabby, but now spruced up and tidy. The freshly painted gold lettering atop the door –
Ollivander’s: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC – glinted even in the low winter sunlight.

“Oh, I remember this place,” Dad breathed in awe.

A little bell tinkled as they entered. The interior looked just as she remembered: cramped, dark,
with floor to ceiling shelves piled with slim boxes.

“Ah, Ms Granger. Took you long enough.”

He materialised from the shadows like a spectre, fragile and wizened in overlarge navy robes.

“Mr Ollivander,” Hermione nodded, “How are you?”

“Alive, my dear,” he rasped, “I consider that a great accomplishment as each day passes. And I see
you’ve brought your father along! Lovely to meet you again, sir.”
They shook hands – his looking more skeletal and paper-thin than ever against dad’s large, sturdy,
leather glove encased one.

“Now then, Ms Granger. I suppose you’re finally here to replace that wand you’ve been carrying?”

“I don’t understand, Mr Ollivander. It was working just fine, until recently. Obviously, it’s no
longer loyal to – to –”

“It isn’t. Of course not. But it will not answer readily to you either; not when it knows your history
and the part it’s played.”

He held up his hand as Hermione made to interrupt.

“Let me amend that – not when you know the part it’s played. I suppose, up until recently, you
haven’t let yourself think about it, have you? Wands are highly sensitive, Ms Granger. They know
where your heart is. The wand is not rejecting you. You are rejecting the wand.”

Her stomach twisted with an overwhelming sickness.

“I thought,” she mumbled, “I thought I had gotten past that. That I was strong enough to –”

“This isn’t about mettle, dear girl. It’s far more visceral than that. The Cruciatus curse leaves deep,
deep scars. I would know.”

He held out his frail hand expectantly. Hermione reached for her pocket... paused... dipped her
fingers in... paused...

(Dad was leaning against a shelf and watching her vigilantly.)

...she placed Bellatrix’s wand in Ollivander’s grasp; he immediately shuffled away and put it inside
a small cabinet, and – and –

And.

It was gone from her sight, and her life. Her shoulders caved. She closed her eyes for a brief
moment. And when she opened them once more, Ollivander was back in front of her, wearing a
small smile.

“How do you feel, Ms Granger?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you want to feel?”

“Like myself.”

His smile widened, and something in his eyes, shrouded behind a layer of cataract, sparkled.

“Then I suggest we go back to the moment that started it all: Vine wood – from the same tree as
your original wand – dragon heartstring core...”
The moment the slim stick of wood touched her fingers, that murky little shop lit up with the light
of a billion stars.

Since Theo didn’t know exactly where Aunt Malorie’s house was, Hermione had to go to his flat to
fetch him. As instructed, she apparated straight into the sitting room of his and Malfoy’s place.

“Theo,” she called, though the room was empty, and waited.

Some time passed, and he didn’t show up.

She slowly made her way across the room, feeling strangely nervous. Her hand dragged along the
velvety top of the sofa as she passed it, and she dawdled by the small shelf that was full of antique
ornaments. The hallway outside was similarly deserted, and as she crept down its length, the
discomfort in her gut expanded.
All three doors at the end of the hall were closed, but through the one on the left, the sweet sound
of piano music spilled out. It wasn’t any piece she could recognise; rather, it sounded like a random
sequence of chords, as though the player was performing practice exercises. The tempo increased
with each round, so smoothly and expertly, that it infiltrated her heart rate and began pulling it
along.

It was hypnotic.

Again – faster – again – faster – again – faster –

She placed the tips of her fingers on the door in the hope of absorbing some of those incredible
vibrations.

“Hermione?”

She jumped back and spun around, squeaking a “Yes, hi,” to Theo who’d just stepped out of his
room.

He looked between her and Malfoy’s door a couple of times, brows raised, and said, “That’s not my
room.”

“Yes – I – wasn’t sure,” she blabbered, “I’d forgotten.”

Theo gave her such a look as the piano music continued to spin around them, faster and faster and
faster and faster....

“Riiiiiiight,” he drawled, “Your confusion is completely understandable.”

“Come on,” she muttered holding her hand out for him to take, “We should get going.”

He grinned widely, and with one last glance towards Malfoy’s door, took her hand.

“Simply superlative, Dr Granger. I am in awe... in deep awe... of your culinary gift. Why, I am just
coming from France, where the best of the Malfoy family House-Elv–”

(Hermione coughed loudly.)

“–meals every day, but nothing came close to the sumptuous food you have blessed me with this
evening. I’ll remember these potatoes for years. And this gravy! This gravy! Dr Granger... sir... I
will dream about this gravy!”

“Please call me Robert,” dad deadpanned.

Mum shook her head, laughing. “You are the most supremely ridiculous young man I have ever
met.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Ridiculously fit, I’ll say,” Pat added.

“Er.”

“So you’re saying he isn’t your boyfriend, Hermione?”

“He is not,” she replied tiredly.

“Mint.”

“I do have a girlfriend though,” Theo supplied hurriedly.

Pat leaned forward (her hair fell into her plate). “Well she ain’t here now, is she, dah-ling.”

A low groan went around the table, quickly followed by a fresh bottle of wine, (The previous one
had been monopolised by Pat.) The kitchen was warm, the table was full, and Hermione’s parents
looked like their old happy selves again. She turned to smile at Theo, for bringing his unique élan
into her life.

After pudding had been demolished, they sat together around the living room fire.

“So what are we in the mood for?” Uncle Jack asked, standing by his fancy new CD player. I have
the latest Madonna album.”

Dad baulked.

“Don’t you have any decent music?”

They went on arguing for a long time before good old Blur was playing softly in the room.

“I miss France,” mum sighed, “We should go again.”

Jeremy was asleep on her lap, and she ran a tender finger down his cheek.

“Take him to bed, Jack,” Aunt Malorie ordered.

“I just sat down!” he bit back.

“Well he’s too big for me to carry now, isn’t he?”

Grumbling mutinously, Uncle Jack gathered his son from mum’s lap and stomped upstairs.

Mum and dad tumbled down memory lane, remembering their holidays from years ago. Hermione
was distracted by what was going on on her right –

“So Theo...” Pat settled on the arm of the chair he was sitting on, “Tell me more about yourself.”

“Um.”

“Such nice hair. I love long hair on a bloke, y'know. You look like a Beatle.”

“What? A beetle?!”

She twirled a strand of his hair around her finger. “Mhmmmm. Yeah.”

“For heaven’s sake, Malorie!” I’ve had enough of your bloody sulking!”

Mum’s unexpected explosion sucked all the air out of the room.
Come on, come on, come on
Get through it
Come on, come on, come on
Love's the greatest thing
Come on, come on, come on

“I’ve had enough!” Mum jumped to her feet. “You’re angry with me, yes, fine. Rightfully so. But
I’ve apologised countless times, and I’m here now. Just let it go, will you?”

“I will not let it go! You’ve always been this way, haven’t you?” Aunt Malorie’s voice shook with
emotion. “You live your life, you do what you want, and you don’t give me a second thought!”

“That’s not–”

“You didn’t tell me when you moved away, you didn’t tell me when you were pregnant for the
longest time, you – you won’t even tell me where your daughter’s going to school!”

“I told you, it’s a –”

“Boarding school for gifted kids! Sure! What’s it called, where is it? What –”

“Oh, all right calm down, Malorie,” dad interjected with a forced smile, “Truth is, Hermione here is
a witch. She goes to a secret school to learn magic.”

Theo laughed extra loudly.

But all that accomplished was setting Aunt Malorie’s temper on fire.

“YOU KEEP QUIET, stupid, preposterous arse!”

“Don’t you talk to him like that!” mum barked.

“I will do as I –”

“No! He’s my husband! And just because your marriage has gone to the dogs –”

Aunt Malorie burst into tears.

Hermione stood up, grabbed Theo’s arm and dragged him outside, to the back garden. They settled
on the small bench under a fir tree, and Hermione cast a quick, wandless warming charm around
them. For a fairly long while, they sat in silence. The evening was so still that the voices from
inside had nothing to block them from blearing out to where they were sitting.

“Wow,” Theo breathed, by and by.

“I’m so sorry,” Hermione murmured.

“Nah, I’m sorry. I was supposed to make this less uncomfortable.”

“Oh, god, this wasn’t on you!”

“I know,” he sighed, “And it was far too... explosive... for me to dissipate.”

“Yeah,” Hermione rubbed her eyes tiredly, “It’s been building up all week. Yeesh. Families.”

He laughed. “Honestly. Your mum and aunt won’t stop fighting. My dad’s a sadistic psychopath
locked up in prison.”

“Show off,” she grinned.

He poked her with his elbow, and then slid lower on the bench so he could rest his head lightly
against her shoulder.

“I wish Draco was here,” he said.

She stiffened at once.

“Am I not good enough company?”

“You goose. He’d keep Pat busy. What a fucking nightmare she is.”

“She really is. But you’re saying that Malfoy would go for her?”

“No,” Theo snorted, “She would go for him. I mean, he is much better looking than I am.”

“Not a chance,” Hermione scoffed.

“You know I can always tell when you’re lying.”

“Oh, shut up.” She was glad he couldn’t see her face.

“I bet your cheeks are cherry red right now.”

Stupid Theo. She jostled his head.

“Ow!”

“Are you okay?” she whispered to mum the next morning over tea.

They were sitting on the steps outside the house, watching dad and Uncle Jack play cricket with
Jeremy and a few of his friends.

Mum shrugged dolefully, her face scrunched up in a sad grimace.

“She’s been stewing in resentment for years... I had no idea...”

“HOWZAT!” yelled Uncle Jack.

“No ball!” Dad intoned crisply.

“What?!”

“No. Ball.”

“The fuck it was!”

All the young boys burst into a mad cackle.

Hermione and mum took delicate sips from their respective cups.

“She’s refusing to leave her room. I knocked for ages, and... nothing.” Mum sighed.

“Oh.”

“If it wasn’t for Jeremy – he really adores your father, doesn’t he – and the fact that I really want to
see you off, I’d be at the airport right now.”

Hermione swallowed, and set her cup down. She hated her aunt then, so much. Mum took her hand
in hers and squeezed it.

“Some of dad’s mates from school are having a get-together tomorrow. Will you come with us?”

“I’ve promised my friend Seamus I’ll go for his party tomorrow night. And I’ve to stop by the
Burrow first – Ginny’s orders.”

“I see.” Mum exhaled heavily.

“LBW! Clear as day!”

“No, sorry. Not out.”

“Rubbish!”
Ginny squealed and hugged her tightly the moment she stepped through the front door of the
burrow, early in the evening on the last day of the year.

“Finally!” she exclaimed, and she proceeded to follow Hermione around the room as she greeted
the rest of the Weasley family. Charlie was home as well, lounging by the fire.

“Tell me,” George asked as he pulled her into a loose, one-armed hug, “Did Ron, by any chance,
give you a box of mooncakes for Christmas?”

“He did.”

“Ha! That’s nine so far! Useless twatbiscuit. We’re drowning in the stuff here!”

Hermione was dragged upstairs soon after by Ginny, who pulled her into her room and slammed
the door shut.

“My family is driving me barmy,” she claimed, “They’re being so–”

“Oh, please,” Hermione cut in, “You have no idea what I’ve had to deal with–”

“Pshaw,” Ginny jeered, “I’m so looking forward to getting shit-faced tonight.”

“Now that we can agree on.”

She threw herself on Ginny’s bed and groaned. The past week’s stress had wreaked havoc on her
back muscles.

“I have nothing to wear,” Ginny lamented.

“There’s a small black suitcase in here,” Hermione said, pushing her beaded bag across the bed,
“My uncle’s sister Pat is an absolute cow, who gifted me a pile of her old dresses for Christmas...”

She drifted off to the sound of Ginny’s low murmurs of “hmm... not bad,” and “ugh... who would
wear something like that?” It was that disquieting sort of sleep where she knew she was dreaming:
There was a washed out quality to the world around her. Voices echoed. She dreamt about being
back in Australia, sat on the beach at dawn...

Mum jogged past her – “Hello, sweetheart,” she called – and Hermione watched her till she was
nothing but a spot in the distance. Then she leant back on her arms, tipping her head back and
closing her eyes against the harsh light of the sun.

“Hmm... not bad.”

She smiled as she heard Ginny settling down beside her. She opened her eyes when a similar noise
came from her other side, to see Theo plopping down on the sand with a grin.

“It’s good to be back,” he said.

“It is,” she agreed.

For a while, nobody spoke. They listened to the wind and the sea and the endless birdcalls: The
sound of pure tranquillity. People came and went like shimmering ghosts –
Neville informed them that he’d buried his Remberall here years ago and had come to collect it.
Harry went by on a broom.
Dad brought them lemonade, but a blink later, both he and the glasses had disappeared.

“Oh no,” Theo groaned, and Hermione jumped when she saw Malfoy and Mandy in their midst.
“Fucking Bowtruckle,” Theo grumbled... Hermione blinked again, and...
Mandy was gone.
Theo and Ginny were gone.

It was just her and Malfoy. He was standing tall in front of her and she was swallowed up by his
shadow. Inexplicably, the sun was setting, and he was a pillar of paleness against its warm, russet
hues.

“Don’t you have better things to do than listening in on other people’s conversations?”

“I– I–”

She floated into a standing position and backed away. Back back back back back at a dizzying
speed until Malfoy had been replaced by the ruins of Ozymendias.

“Hermione, we have to go,” said Ginny.

But where was she? There was only sand and sea and ‘two vast and trunkless legs of stone’....

“Hermione, come on.”

“Hey, wake up. We’ve to be there in half an hour.”

She sat up, rubbing her eyes. It was completely dark outside, and Ginny had lit all the lamps in her
room. She was standing in front of her mirror, holding Pat’s slinky, wine red dress with a feathery
trim against herself.

“I don’t need half an hour to get ready,” Hermione muttered grumpily.

“Your hair sure does.”

“Can’t we just leave it like this?”

Ginny gave her a highly imperious look. “Nope!”

Half an hour later, her hair was pin-straight and falling down her shoulders and back in an entirely
unfamiliar but extremely pleasing way. She’d put on Pat’s halter dress, black and floral... short...
and she couldn’t deny she felt a kick of joy that it was her looking like that.
George let out a wolf whistle when she walked into the sitting room, and she rolled her eyes, even
as she felt her face turn hot. He was wearing a purple Dragon-skin coat and a gold scarf that
matched his ear perfectly.

“You’re an eyesore,” Ginny told him.

“And you look like you belong on Muriel’s head.”

They continued to bicker as Hermione and Ginny put on their cloaks. Just as the three of them
stood poised before the front door, Hermione pulled out her wand – her wand – HER wand – from
her bag to cast a snow-repelling charm on herself. They stepped out into the icy night, walked three
steps down the garden path, and spun into non-existence.

Finnigin’s pub was located between a grimy pawn shop and a menagerie. From the outside, it
looked quite innocuous; a simple wooden door on a brick facade, but the interior was a whole other
story.

It seemed that they were the first to arrive. Warmth enveloped Hermione the moment she stepped
in, and she quickly removed her cloak and handed it over to the large coat rack that extended an
arm out for her. The place was fashioned after the old taverns of yore: A low ceiling, rough stone
walls, and chunky wooden chairs around large tables. The shelves behind the bar were filled to
their limit with bottles, flanked by two enormous casks. There were candles on every table, and
strings of lights with real fairies criss-crossed around the ramparts. It looked seedy in a deliberately
exotic way.

On the largest wall, framed by two half-pillars, was Dean’s masterpiece. Hermione excused herself
from Ginny and went over to take a closer look. It was exactly how he’d described it: The pastel
extravagance of Toulouse-Lautrec, but with leprechauns. They danced across the length of the wall;
frenzied, profligate...

The artist himself sauntered over with his hands in his pockets.

“What d’you think?”

“It’s magnificent,” Hermione replied with a grin.

“Thanks!” he beamed, “I think it’s turned out well. And it’s got me drinks on the house for life.”

“Wouldn’t you get that anyway?”

“All right,” he revised, “Guilt free drinks on the house.”

George joined them, murmuring a suitably amazed, “Not bad, Thomas.” He examined the mural
intently for a moment, and declared, “I want one in my shop.”

“Sure,” Dean agreed, “Not Leprechauns, surely?”

“No. Pygmy puffs. And garden gnomes. Pulling confetti out of their arses.”

“George!”

“Come on, Hermione! Picture it. It’ll be a thing of beauty. Incidentally, Dean... what did Ron send
you for Christmas?”

“Um...” Dean scratched his head, “A box of some Chinese cake things–”

“Unbelievable! That half-sprung todger! Un-fucking-believable!”

Hermione broke away from them to walk along the wall, drinking in the rapt expressions of the
mad dancers. They were so lost in their drunken delirium and jubilance... she wondered what that
felt like. How freeing it must be...

“Hermione!”

His voice had her spinning around with a big smile. Looking quite smart in a blue shirt and black
trousers, Theo waved her over from the bar. The pub had filled up while she’d been lost in her
musings, flooded with faces she knew well, and not so well, and some that she didn’t know at all.

She rushed over and said “Hello,” to him and Luna, who was wearing floor length cherry red
tasselled dress robes, and offered what she hoped was a polite nod to Malfoy and Mandy.

“You look beautiful, Hermione!” Luna sang.

“Absolutely,” Theo seconded brightly.

Hermione was just about to reciprocate with something equally complimentary, when all the lights
dimmed. A spotlight fell on the shelves behind the bar, which slid to the side to reveal the man of
the hour, their host and sole proprietor of the establishment, Seamus Finnigan, decked in dazzling
emerald green robes.

“Failte friends! Welcome to the grand opening of Finnigan's pub, the best fucking place for a pint in
all of England. Make merry. Go wild. LET’S GET LEGLESS!”

The crowd roared, cheered, clapped, stomped their feet...

Cries of “Yeah!”, “Brilliant!”, and “Wooooh!”, (and one “You glorious bastard!” – Dean,
incontrovertibly,) bounced off the walls.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a glass was pushed into Hermione’s hand, full of some pungent and
dark liquid...
She shrugged, clinked her glass against Theo’s, and downed the lot in one go.

There was something white hot and piercing assaulting her eyelids. The throbbing in her ears – she
couldn’t tell if it was the reverberation of drum beats or pulsating nerves in her temples.

Her head was a block of cement, and her body was a thin plastic bag filled with churning fluid.

It was awful.

She squeezed her eyes before peeling them open.

A white coffered ceiling hung above her; she appeared to be lying on a sinfully soft sofa, with a
fleece blanket draped over her.

Where was she?

She sat up – oh shit, bad idea – and slumped, pressing the heels of her palms against her aching
eyes. Burning hot bile climbed up to the back of her throat.

She groaned and dragged her hands down her face until they were cupping her throat. Swallowing
made her realise how terribly dry it was.

Where the hell was she?

Once again, she made an attempt to open her eyes. There was barely any light in the room; thick
drapes hung over the windows, the fireplace was unlit, all the lamps where doused... but she could
see enough to realise that she was in Theo’s sitting room. The confusion that that recognition
brought did nothing to help the state of her head. Because how on earth had she landed up here?

Again, she closed her eyes and tried to think back...

Finnigan’s pub... the diverse array of drinks... music, loud thumping music... she remembered
dancing with George, Ginny, Neville, and Hannah... practically inhaling a round of shots with Theo
and... and then?

All thoughts ceased when the scent of luscious, aromatic tea curled around her quite... quite...
sensuously. She groaned again and opened her eyes. Tea. She could really use some tea. She
cringed as she pulled the blanket off herself: Her dress had ridden up to her waist. Then, keeping a
bracing hand on an arm of the sofa, she stood up.
Death, she thought, death to Seamus Finnigan. Her legs shook and ached, but she shuffled her way
out of the room, one hand on her stomach, and the other grabbing onto the nearest bit of furniture
for support.

She staggered down the hallway, keeping close to the wall, moaning and groaning at odd intervals.

And her eyes narrowed into slits the second she arrived at the kitchen. It was illegally bright in
there.

“Ugh,” she gurgled.

Mandy and Malfoy looked up at her from the kitchen table. The table upon which was a pot of
holy, life-giving tea. Hermione practically threw herself upon it – she fell gawkily into a chair and
pulled the pot into an embrace.

“Are you planning on pouring it straight into your mouth?” Malfoy asked mordantly.

His voice made her hurt, and honestly, she wasn’t above doing exactly that. Thankfully, Mandy was
magnanimous enough to hand her a cup.

The first gulp was the best thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life.
Wow.
She went in for a second.
And a third.

And a –

“How are you feeling?” Mandy enquired softly.

With a heavy sigh, Hermione looked up. She was able to keep her eyes properly open now, and saw
that Mandy was wearing the shirt that Malfoy had on last night. He was in a plain black jumper,
and looking down his nose at her.

“Like hell,” she rasped.

Mandy giggled, albeit apologetically. “Yes... that is to be expected.”

Hermione took a fifth, sixth, and seventh sip. She pushed her hair away from her face, too scared to
think about what it must look like. Keeping her gaze on the rim of her cup she ventured – “What...
what happened last night?”

“You don’t remember?” Malfoy sounded vaguely amused.

Despairingly and warily, she peeked up at him through her eyelashes, (he even looked amused,) and
shook her head.

He cocked an eyebrow as he studied her for a moment.

“Well then,” he drawled slowly. He stood up, turned his back to her, and busied himself with the
French press on the shiny kitchen counter. “You really don’t remember climbing onto the bar and
flashing your knickers at the crowd?”

Hermione nearly spat out a mouthful of tea.

WHAT.
Holy fuck, what???
She was going to kill herself. She was going to kill herself that very second. She was going to –

“Don’t be mean, Draco,” Mandy chastised, “Don’t worry, Hermione. Nothing like that happened.”

“Gah,” she gasped, slapping her hand against her chest. Her heart – that had been thrashing around
like a trapped animal – gradually began to calm down. She glared at Malfoy’s back with all the fury
her weary, beaten body could muster, but he didn’t even have the decency to turn around.

Before she could snarl at him, however, Theo stumbled into the kitchen, looking like he’d travelled
a hundred miles through a storm.

“Oh,” he said to Hermione, “You’re up.”

“Yes, I –”

He was scowling at her. What the hell?

“All right,” she demanded angrily, “Will someone tell me what happened?”

Theo huffed. “You don’t remember?”

“Obviously not! That’s why I’m asking.”

He rolled his eyes moodily, but perked up when Malfoy returned to the table and set a steaming
mug of coffee before him.

“Ah, bless your soul, Draco.”

“Where’s Luna?” Malfoy asked as he pulled the teapot away from Hermione, (the fiend!)

“Still asleep.”

“Hm.”

Hermione’s patience ran out.

“Please –”

“How far do you remember?” Theo presented the question baldly, roughly... a tone she didn’t care
for one bit.

“I don’t know!” she bemoaned, “I can’t seem to–”

Blurry, zipping images flickered across her mind’s eye... disconnected and strange. Yet, one
particular notion lingered, and it made her feel sick again.

She cleared her throat. “Tell me. Was... I mean, did... Is there any chance that... that... Terry Boot
was involved?”

Mandy squealed. “So you do remember!”

“Not really, I just –”

“Oh, it was so romantic! I never knew he had it in him, honestly. I was blown away! I mean, I
know I can never expect something like that from this chap!”

She poked Malfoy’s shoulder; he wrinkled his nose.

“Look,” Hermione croaked, filled with dread, “You’re going to have to elaborate.”

“At midnight,” Theo began irritably, “That pillock stood on a chair, silenced the music and
everything, and shouted in that thin, peaky voice of his, ‘Ladies and gents – my new year’s
resolution!’ Then he ran over to you, dipped you over his arm, and kissed you. And you, my dear
one, did not stop him. Quite the opposite in fact.”

“No,” Hermione breathed.

“Yes,” Theo countered harshly, “Oh, and you should know, for the rest of the night, he called you
his girlfriend. And the only reason you didn’t wake up in his bed today morning, was because I
refused to let you leave with him.”

“Thank you,” Hermione whispered, staring down at her lap.

She felt a blazing need to smack her head against the table. Instead, she buried her face in her
hands.

“Noooo,” she keened into her palms.

Maybe she could stay like that forever. They could bathe her in molten bronze and make a
sculpture out of her. The Non-Thinker. The Drinker. The What-The-Hell-Were-You-Thinking-er.

Yep, she was never moving.

“Hermione,” Theo sighed. He sounded kind again and he laid a hand on her shoulder, so she braved
a glance at him, and –

“JESUS CHRIST!” she shrieked.

He nearly fell off his chair, but honestly, how else was one supposed to react when one’s friend
appeared to have spontaneously sprouted a spectacular set of antlers?

“What?!” Theo yelped.

Hermione couldn’t form any words; she just pointed above his head as her jaw hung down to the
floor.
She gaped as Theo’s hands flew upwards and encountered the bony growth on top of his head. He
let out a panicked howl as he jumped up – his chair fell back with a loud thud.

“What the fuck?? What the fuck?!” He looked this way and that wildly. “What is this – what – I
need a mirror!”

After he’d fled from the room, Hermione turned her wide eyes to the other two: Mandy looked
bewildered... Malfoy was smirking behind his cup.

“DRACO MALFOY!”

With a roar like a thunderclap, Theo burst into the kitchen once more, blistering, fuming, seething...

“You absolute dick. What have you done?”

“What are you talking about?” Malfoy rejoined airily, “I just made you coffee.”

“YOU!” Theo bellowed, with his finger pointing back and forth between Malfoy and his empty
coffee mug, “YOU!”

“Yes...?”

“YOU!”

“I don’t have all day, Theo. You’re going to have to... buck up.”

Theo collapsed against the counter, letting out a strangled sigh.

“I fucking hate you.”

“Sure.”

“How... fuck... how long are these going to stay?”

“How long did I have to suffer that singing fountain?”

“Three wee – You can't be serious!”

“Oh, yes,” Malfoy affirmed coolly, “And I wouldn’t try vanishing them, or disintegrating them,
or.... well, using any kind of spell on them.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Theo gritted out, “You’re an arsehole.”

“Such stag-gering wit.”

Hermione made... a sound... and Theo rounded on her with fiery eyes.

“Have something to say?”

Her mouth twisted to the side contemplatively. Apparently, hangovers decimated her intelligence
and tact, because this is what she came up with: “Oh... deer?”
A shocked laugh erupted out of Malfoy. His head turned towards her suddenly, with his eyebrows
raised high and his lips pulled up in a crooked grin.

“I can’t believe you did this, Draco!” Mandy chuckled and leaned into his side.

“I hate you as well, Hermione,” Theo grumbled. He set his chair right again and sat down sulkily.

The time that followed was edgy. Hermione wanted to laugh, but with the shock having worn off,
she was once again thinking about the things she’d done while utterly sozzled... and she wanted to
cry.

Five minutes passed. Somebody had to say something or her head would explode.

As luck would have it, Luna strolled in.

“Hello all,” she chimed, looking fresh as a daisy and aggravatingly untouched by the night before.

Her eyes landed on Theo and she froze. She looked at his antlers speculatively, then at his entirely
disgruntled expression.

She smiled. “I always suspected you were some kind of satyr.”

Oh dea – Oh no. If he had looked angry before...

“That’s not funny,” he snapped.

Luna made a great show of bending to look under the table.

“Do you also have hooves?”

“Luna.” he rumbled warningly.

“And a tail? Please tell me you have a tail!”

“THAT’S IT!”

Theo charged towards her and grabbed her. He picked her up and carried her away, as she giggled
and squealed...

A door slammed, and then there was silence.

Hermione rested her throbbing, fuzzy, overwrought head on the table and burst into laughter. Loud,
full, cathartic laughter that made her whole frame shake. She could hear Malfoy and Mandy
laughing along as well, through the wood against which her ear was pressed and in the air around
her.

Welcome to the new year.

Chapter End Notes

1. I Am a Rock by Simon & Garfunkel

2. Shake, Rattle, and Roll by Bill Haley & His Comets
3. Tender by Blur
4. Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Fifty-Three
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

It was just like old times: Dad pushing the trolley, mum keeping her tightly by her side, making
Hermione feel as though she’d need a prying bar to free herself.

King’s Cross was packed with the post-holiday crowd.

“Look, there’s Theo,” Hermione exclaimed on spotting his signature overlong hair and newly
acquired head gear. She was almost sure the antlers looked larger.

She waved him over, standing on the tips of her toes and stretching her arm as high as it would go.
He spotted her promptly enough, and made his way through the swarm.

(“Christmas is over, wanker!” someone yelled.

“Why is he...?”

“Don’t ask, mum.”)

“Hullo, Granger gang!”

“Aren’t you festive,” dad chipped teasingly.

“Please don’t start, Robert.”

“I’m sorry,” mum added, “But you’re going to have to explain.”

“Thing is, Evelyn–”

“I don’t think I said you could call me that.”

“Evelyn, the thing is... my flatmate is a foul prat.”

“He did this to you?”

“Yes.”

“Are they bigger than before?” Hermione asked.

“I... er... I tried to vanish them away.” Theo grumbled shamefacedly.

“Why? He told you not to!”

“I thought he was bluffing!”

“And why exactly did he give you antlers?” dad asked.

“Well–” Theo paused to jeer at a group that was pointing at him. “It’s like I told you, Robert. He’s a
foul prat.”

Hermione offered a more accurate explanation - “It’s because Theo installed an obnoxious singing
fountain in his room.”

“Because he put sparkly death-vines in my room!”

“Because you put a billion butterflies in his!”

“Because he papered my room with pink glittering snakeskin!”

“Because you bought that ghastly lamp!”

“Because he... I mean I...”

Theo stopped in his tracks and glared at her.

“Are you taking his side?”

“I am taking the side of Justice,” she sniffed.

“Justice my arse –”

“Well, this flatmate sounds like a hoot,” dad said, “You should bring him with you the next time
you visit.”

Theo’s indignation disappeared like that, and he began to snigger.

“Oh, sure. I’ll do that. Won’t that be brilliant, Hermione?”

She huffed, pushed past him, and threw herself through the barrier and into platform nine and three
quarters...

...Nearly barrelling straight into Luna.

“Gosh!” she gasped, arms flailing at her sides to keep herself from tipping over, “Why are you
standing so close to the entrance, Luna?!”

“I was waiting for Theo,” she shrugged, “Why are you looking so distressed?”

“Because we both quite nearly cracked our heads open on the platform!”

“Hm” Luna mused, “But that didn’t happen, did it?”

Hermione gave up, and steered Luna some distance away, so that when mum, dad, and Theo
stepped in, their path was unimpeded.

“Buckie!” Luna sang.

“I told you to stop calling me that!”

Biting back a laugh, Hermione introduced her parents to the strange girl.

The strange girl who said, “A pleasure to meet your acquaintance, sir, madam,” and curtseyed.

“What – is she –?” Hermione sputtered in a whisper to Theo.

“I told her dentists are muggle royalty.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

He scowled. “She gave me a giant bottle of antler polish.”

Mum and dad kept walking along her window as the Hogwarts Express leisurely rolled into
motion. Hermione wished they wouldn’t, so that she could wipe her eyes before the moisture that
had built up in them could spill over.

Bye, she mouthed as she waved. And waved and waved –

“No, you may not touch them, Thomas!” Theo raged next to her.

The train was running now; her parents fell behind. Hermione twisted away from the window with
a lump in her throat.

“Daddy’s wedding is on the twenty-fifth, next month,” Luna announced, and began handing out
large brown envelopes, “The gorse field will be in full bloom by then. Everybody must wear
yellow.”

“Stop trying to touch them!”

“Cor! They’re actually, honest to god, real antlers!”

Within the envelope was a golden disk, which when held in the palm of her hand, blossomed into a
stalk of gorse, that sang the contents of the invite.

“....cordially inviiii-iiited tooooo...”

The compartment door slid open and Malfoy and Mandy stepped in.

“Brilliant job with the antlers, mate!” Dean cheered, and Malfoy smirked as he settled right
opposite Theo.

“Here, Draco,” Luna said, “For daddy’s wedding. Sorry, Mandy, but we aren’t friends. Come with
me, Theo... I want to give Neville his card.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Can’t you give it to him later?”

“I’d like to give it to him now.”

“I’m not going any –”

“Plan on hiding away for the next three weeks?” Malfoy drawled with sadistic glee.

“Get bent!”

“Are you worried about what people will say?” Dean asked, “Are you worried that they’ll laugh
and call you names?”

“Sod of–”

“Worried that they won’t let you join in any reindeer games?”

Luna dragged Theo away before he could disembowel Dean.

When they returned, they brought Neville and Hannah along with them. The compartment was
filled to its capacity... and it was loud. Dean was in high spirits, and took it upon himself to drench
everyone in joy. There was much laughter, teasing, chattering –

Hermione pressed herself as deeply into her corner as she could, pulled her legs up, and dived into
a book. She didn’t want to bother with them, and they didn’t bother her.

At nine o’clock in the evening, the body of the house at the Théâtre des Variétés was still all but
empty...
...

A steady pain behind her eyes: She blinked and looked up.

Night had fallen, and the train’s lamps weren’t bright enough to read by. She slipped her wand out
of her pocket and swiftly conjured a tiny bluebell flame to hover over her book.
The group in the compartment hadn’t mellowed in the least. They’d decorated Theo’s antlers with
gorse flowers, while he looked like he’d finally achieved the level of Zen necessary to endure such
behaviour without suffering a stroke.

She cast a zippy glance across their faces, but froze dead when she found Malfoy staring intently at
her wand.

She stowed it away quickly, feeling slightly panicked, and his eyes lifted. He was utterly
expressionless as they exchanged one fleeting look... and then he turned away.

She felt angry – angry – as she glared down at the paperback on her lap. He’d think it was because
of what he had said. He was probably feeling triumphant, smug, and vindicated. There was a
prickling need to look his way one more time... and she resolutely clamped down on it.

Vandeuvres smiled his thin smile, and made a little movement to signify he did not care. Assuredly,
‘twas not he who would ever have prevented poor, dear Blanche scoring a success. He was more
interested by the spectacle which Steiner was presenting to the table at large.

There were times when literature found the perfect moment to deliver a stinging lash to an
unhealed wound.

She hopped off the train and onto the platform of Hogsmeade station, and the steam fizzing out
from under the train mingled with the night’s fog.

The burnt out ends of smokey days...

Little flecks of snow swirled like flies around lamps. There was an indistinguishable figure
standing atop the bridge that arched over the tracks: a dark lump and the glowing end of a cigarette.
Hermione kept behind her friends, still not ready to engage, still not feeling solid enough to coax
her facial muscles into a smile. She kept looking at the strange bridge-top figure... was it looking
back? Were they connected, the two of them, in their moment of loneliness?

“...And remember how Goldstein thought he could juggle six beer bottles, and...”

Ah, they were talking about the party. Hermione slowed her pace even more. She studied her shoes
as she walked – so dark against the snow, so dark that they seemed to blend into her shadow. It was
like she was melting; melting into absolute blackness... melting into an abyss –
Someone was walking over her grave. There was an unsettling tremor going on in her stomach that
was sure to explode out of her as some sort of madness.

“Coming, Hermione?” Ginny called with one foot inside a thestral carriage, and she nodded in
response and followed.

Dean, Neville, and Hannah were already inside, still nauseatingly merry, so she focused intensely
outside the window, at the fog and the darkness.

“Are you okay?” Ginny murmured close to her ear.

“Yeah,” she whispered back, without turning.

That evening, the common room was alit with mirth as people wittered over Theo’s antlers and he
continued to accept their mockery with a resigned, self-effacing grace. Malfoy stood to one side,
arms crossed and lightly smirking, like an artist observing the observers of his great masterpiece.
The gramophone was blasting awful metal nonsense.

Hermione slipped away into her room. She wanted to escape the racket and she absolutely needed
to escape Terry’s persevering stare.

Her room. Her generic, warm, comfortable room.

She undressed and pulled the curtains aside so that moonlight spread across the space, eliminating
the need for any other source of illumination. She lay in bed, counting her breaths and thought....
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow she’d stow away the looming disquietude that was choking her soul, and tomorrow
she’d get up and be good.
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.

The narrow concrete road curved in a smooth path around the lake, and her footsteps fell upon it
with rhythmic uniformity.
Thud, thud, and thud, thud.
It was so cold, that the sweat that had built up around the back of her neck made her shiver.

Just twenty minutes into her run, it began to snow, thick and fast.
She vanished her conjured road with a flick of her wand, and trudged back towards the castle,
trembling all the way.

A hot shower later, with her hair in a bun and books in her bag, she descended the stairs swaddled
in stony determination to take whatever the day had to offer with unflappable optimism.
But that was all well until she saw Terry waiting for her by the common room door.

“Hi,” he said cautiously, with his hands deep in his pockets.

“Oh. Hello.”

“I... I think we should talk.”

“I’m terribly hungry,” she blurted out with desperation.

“Well, alright. Later then? In the evening, after supper?”

She envisioned pulling her fortitude closer around herself like a cloak and replied, “Yes, okay.”

*
She barely ate that evening; all she could think about was what she’d felt waking up on the first day
of the new year – nausea, amnesia, and regret.

He was standing expectantly outside the Great Hall, and she nodded bracingly as she approached
him. He suggested that they walk and she agreed, crossing her arms across her torso.

“So,” he began, once they were in a secluded part of a fifth-floor corridor.

Hermione waited for him to continue, but he seemed to be measuring his words with great
apprehension. He bit his lip, cast his eyes around the space, drawing out the awful awkward silence
until Hermione couldn’t stop herself from –

“I’m sorry!” he rushed out the moment her mouth opened. “I shouldn’t have – I don’t know what I
was thinking! I was... shit, I was so plastered!”

“So was I,” Hermione mumbled, “Honestly, I don’t remember much of... anything.”

“Brilliant,” he muttered bitterly, “Just... brilliant. This was so not how I’d hoped to do this.”

She blinked, taking in his unhappy expression. He still wasn’t looking at her.

“What do you mean?” she hedged.

“I’m sure you know well enough by now that I...” He fumbled with his sleeves and finally glanced
at her with a puckered brow. “That I fancy you. And now I’ve gone and bollocksed it up, haven’t
I?”

“Terry...”

What if she just ran?

“Give me another chance?” he begged... so earnestly that it was her turn to look away. “Please. I
think you’re brilliant and very pretty, and I’m so sorry for acting like an idiot.”

“It wasn’t just you,” she whispered, wondering if her guts really were lying in a pile by her feet, “I
was completely out of it, and – um –”

“Give me another chance,” he repeated, and took a step closer.

(Um.)

“I’ll do better. Let me show you...”

(Oh dear.)

“Go to Hogsmeade with me on Saturday? Like a – a proper date, yeah?”

(No?)

“Go on, Hermione. You know I’m not actually a total twat.”
“Okay,” she said softly.

And when she looked back up at him, he was grinning so widely.

“Good. Good. Excellent. There will be no alcohol, all right? I won’t even drink butterbeer.”

She emitted a little laugh, and squeezed her folded arms against her body.

“We should head back.”

“Yeah.”

She let him talk most of the way. He graciously (over) compensated for her reticence by retelling
every second of their shared lessons that day, she hmm’ed and haha yes’ed wherever necessary.
Once inside the common room, he gawkily half-lifted his arms as though he was going to hug her,
but thought better of it, and made do with a stiff wave. Hermione still wasn’t able to unstick her
tightly crossed arms.

“I’ll see you around,” he smiled.

She nodded and wheeled around, swaying uncertainly on the spot for a moment or two... until she
saw a pair of antlers by the window and dashed towards them gratefully.

“Hi, Buckie,” she sighed as she sank down beside him.

“What did he want?” Theo asked a bit roughly.

“To apologise. For the whole...” She waved her hand about. “Thingy.”

“Ah. And?”

“And nothing?”

“Hermione. And?”

“Fine,” she huffed, and fell limply against the back of the sofa, “We’re going to Hogsmeade this
weekend.”

“Together?”

“Together.”

He leaned back as well, eyeing her carefully – and a little circumspectly.

“Congratulations.”

“Heh.”

She pushed stray curls away from her face and rubbed her eyes so hard that she was briefly blinded
by little blooms of white hot light. In that interim, Neville and Hannah made their way over to the
armchairs in front of her and Theo.

“You look tired, Hermione,” Neville remarked kindly.

“Hmm.”

“I have just the thing; hold on.” He fished a box out of his bag and held it out to her. “Mooncake?”

On Saturday morning, she let the conditioner sit in her hair for a full five minutes.

Anaemic sunlight withered into her room and slithered along her side as she stood before her
mirror and twisted the top half of her hair into a bun. The remaining strands drizzled down her
back, dark against the cream lambswool of her decidedly un-baggy jumper. She put on the quill
earrings Ginny had given her for Christmas.

Pretty. He thought she was very pretty.

She swiped some colour across her mouth and wound a grey chequered scarf around her neck. The
moment was so unlike moments it ought to have been exactly like.
Take for instance, her feelings before the Yule Ball. Jittery in the best possible way, nervous but
practically floating into the air with excitement. It had, (she rolled her eyes as she pulled on her
boots,) been a childish fantasy come to life.
Then there had been that time she’d gone to Pete’s house, long after her parents had fallen asleep,
with a heart full of fire and a mind full of intent. Nervousness had been prevalent then as well... but
overruled by determination... curiosity... desire...
It had been all blissful anticipation for the short period of time when she’d thought she was going
to Slughorn’s party with Ron...

What was this feeling she was stuck with now? The door closed behind her with a snap.

Terry was charming.

In The Three Broomsticks they sat, across from each other at a table close to the fireplace, sipping
on hot chocolate. He laughed a lot – and smiled even more – as they discussed the week’s Charms
assignment. He didn’t glance at Rosmerta’s behind when she passed by. He didn’t tap his fingers
against the table, or grimace, or sigh, or betray any such signs of impatience and boredom.

And though he didn’t quite bring anything new to the table, (all his notions and opinions were
things she’d already considered,) it was gratifying to be able to discuss such matters outside the
purview of her own head.
He’d make a great study-mate... like Padma. The fact that he wanted to be more than that didn’t
have to be a problem. She’d kissed Padma too. Maybe that was how Hermione Granger established
intellectual partnerships.

Sealed with a kiss.

I'll see you in the sunlight

I'll hear your voice everywhere
I'll run to tenderly –

“Hermione? You still there?”

She cleared her throat and mumbled, “Yes, sorry. You were saying?”

“I asked if you’d read anything about volume or density effecting the efficacy of Protean charms,”
Terry said.

And Terry smiled.

By the time she’d polished off her cocoa, Hermione was more or less at ease. They walked out into
a brighter day. The sun was stronger at noon – though its warmth was heavily diluted by icy,
restless winds. They engaged in the kind of casual small talk that didn’t require more than half your
mind to participate in. (No more than an hour after they’d part, Hermione would forget everything
that was said.)

Yet, she was not bored or discontented. In fact, she cherished every laugh she drew out of him, and
smiled to herself every time his arm brushed against hers – which was quite frequently, as they
were strolling quite close to one another.
They made a stop at the book shop, browsed for an hour and came out empty handed. They re-
entered the pub and shared a beef hotpot.

Bypassing the carriages, they chose to walk their way back to Hogwarts. He told her about his
family, (his American ancestors, his muggle ancestors, his parents, and his sister,) and she
reciprocated.

Then, secreted behind a pillar just a few feet from their common room, he took her hand and said,
“I had a wonderful time today, Hermione.”

She stared at his thumb as he stroked it along her knuckles and replied, “I did, too.”
He kissed her cheek for much longer than the average duration of a standard cheek-kiss.

The next day she had to endure two interrogations.

1. Ginny:

“Soooo, how was it?”

“Nice.”

“What a depressingly tepid word.”

“Oh god, all right. It was lovely.”

Ginny smirked. “Better. What did you do?”

“We talked. Walked. Went to the bookstore.”

“Merlin. He’s perfect for you, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know about that,” Hermione mumbled.

“When are you seeing him again?”

“At three... in the potion’s lab.”

“Oh, you know that’s not what I meant!”

“Ha. Yes. We’re going out again next week.”

“That’s great!”

2. Theo:

“Well, how’d it go then?”

“It was ni – lovely.”

“What did you do?”

“Ate at The Three Broomsticks, walked about, went to the bookstore...”

“And? What did you talk about?”

“This and that.”

“What and what?”

“Oh, nothing significant. Charms. Our families. Stuff.”

“Stuff.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going out again?”

“Yes. Next weekend.”

He pursed his lips and made to drag a hand through his hair... but was impeded by his antlers. So he
swore and scowled and huffed and grumbled.

“Why the hell have both my best friends decided to go out with random Ravenclaws with weird last
names?”

“Seriously?” Hermione levelled a pointed look at him.

“What?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Excuse me? Luna’s not – she doesn’t have a – Luna isn’t random!”

“Sure,” Hermione grinned, “Not now, but –”

“Shut it. Boot is a sap and the Bowtruckle is a bore. Luna is a glorious, divine creature and I am
stalking away from you now – stalking the fuck away in a righteous strop – for suggesting that the
three are similar in any way.”

Terry was waiting for her in the morning, and he walked with her down to the Great Hall for
breakfast. It happened again the next two days, and Hermione realised that he intended to make a...
thing... out of it. He even chaperoned her between lessons, which would have been pleasant since
they mostly talked about the things they’d learned... but for the fact that on the fourth day, he seized
her hand.

And then that became a regular.

Hermione loathed the way people stared. He had a bounce in his step as he rabbitted on about the
merits of black soil, and she shambled along uneasily, begging her palm to become sweaty and
clammy and generally unpleasant to hold.
They were going to the library to meet with Padma, Tracy, Anthony, and Ernie, to make a diligent
revision plan for the upcoming N.E.W.T.s.

“We probably should put aside the maximum amount of time for Arithmancy, Potions, and Defence
Against the Dark Arts,” Terry bloviated.

“That’s right,” she agreed, “Wait, I need to show you something–”

She wrenched her hand free and stuck it into her bag, pretending to fish around for a piece of
parchment that was sitting right on top.

“Here,” she declared, “I’ve made a rough schedule – what do you think?”

Owing to the dismal paucity of things to do at Hogsmeade, their second date ended up being more
or less identical to the first. The weather was blustery and their steps were slow; they traced a path
encircling the entire village.
Not many people were out and about. Eventually, they wandered a bit away from the main street, to
the barren grove that crowded around the Shrieking Shack.
There were plenty of silent stretches as they ambulated amid the ashen trunks. At times she revelled
at the arm around her waist and at the young man it was attached to; the young man who thought
she was brilliant, who smiled when she smiled, simply because she had smiled. At other times she
thought about all the studying she could have been doing instead.

“Ah! Sunlight. Finally!”

It was barely anything: A weak puddle of light between two heaps of bramble, but Hermione
helplessly chuckled at Terry’s enthusiasm.

“Not nearly enough to thaw me, I’m afraid.”

“You’re right,” he agreed, “Shall we head back then?”

She looked over her shoulder, at the seemingly endless frozen road they had to trudge back
through.

“Yes, we –”

He ran his hand along her arm, and when she turned back, she found him standing very, very close.

All of a sudden, the stillness around them deepened tenfold.

He was hesitant, timid. His eyes were wide, his face was red, and he put his gloved fingers under
her chin and tilted her face up. When he kissed her, she closed her eyes and laid her palms against
his chest. She focused on the warmth, the softness, and the gentle caresses of his lips against hers.
It was nice... really nice. She’d forgotten how good kissing felt.
He didn’t push her too far, didn’t try to deepen their tentative buss. They traded smiles after they
broke apart; he pressed his thumbs against her cheeks that were undoubtedly blazing.

As they tramped back to the castle, she kept her hands in her pockets.

He kissed her again, at the foot of the eighth year tower.

The arrival of the second half of January marked the official implementation of Hermione
Granger’s Vanquishment of Newts Plan, (No animals were harmed during the making and/or
execution of this plan.)

With her new wand and her unquenchable drive, she would absorb every last word in her books and
master every single spell and grasp, support, and counter every supposition and –

She would trip over absolutely nothing and knock her knee against the corner of a table.

Argh.

She stood in the middle of the common room, rubbing her painful kneecap, and she cursed divine
intervention or whatever it was that had deemed it necessary to humble her mushrooming bravado.

“Hermione – calm down, good man – Hermione!”

Theo beckoned from one of the armchairs by the fireplace, and in the one across from him sat a
seething Malfoy. She approached them cautiously, eyes darting between Malfoy and the glinting
silver bells hanging off Theo’s antlers. She came to a halt behind a third chair, resting her still
ringing leg against the back of it.
“Hurt yourself, did you?” Theo grinned.

She scowled. “You're wearing bells.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “The antlers will be gone in two days... I’m letting Luna have her fun till
then. At least it’s only bells now. Up until an hour ago I –”

“Did you need something?” she interrupted brusquely.

He was eating into her Transfiguration hour. And dear god, HER KNEE.
Theo eyed her tartly for her tone, drawing out his pause vindictively.

“Not me. Draco here needs your help.”

“I,” Malfoy snarled slowly, “Do not need –”

“Can it!” Theo ordered, “You need help. I’m bored to tears watching you whimper over that
parchment.”

“Then you should just bugger off!”

“We were supposed to go flying!”

“Oh, now you want to –”

Theo turned to her, eyes pleading. “Hermione. Help him. Please.”

Malfoy turned to her, eyes flashing. “Not necessary.”

She craned her neck to catch a glimpse of what he was working on.

“Arithmancy homework?” she ventured.

He opened his mouth – to rebuke her, no doubt – but then closed it on a huff. Firelight swirled in
his eyes of cinder; shadows pooled along his cheekbones and under his jaw.

“The Chytroi prophesy,” he muttered lowly, “There’s something off with the calculations – I’ve
gone over it a hundred times, but end up with a seven digit decimal each time.”

“May I see?”

She stretched out her arm, and he, with a great big long-suffering heave, deposited his work in her
hand.

There it was, his tidy slanting cursive, just like it was on those slips of paper that remained between
the pages of her books.

“You’re missing something,” she announced as she handed his parchment back to him.
“No, really?” he scoffed.

“Or, rather... nothing.”

His lip curled.

“Actually, it’s what you aren’t missing.”

“What?”

“You aren’t missing nothing. You need to remove nothing.”

“Are you ins–” He frowned down at his parchment “–Oh.”

“What just happened?” Theo asked as Malfoy vanished his calculations and started over.

“Modern Arithmency has embraced zero as an integer, but the Ancient Greeks hadn’t. To estimate
the probability of predictions made in that context, you have to accommodate their number
system.”

“Righto. Of course.”

Theo stretched and sat back with his arms behind his head.

Hermione watched Malfoy work for a beat. His head was bent and his hair hung over his brow. His
parchment rested on the arm of his chair, and his quill moved quickly across it. The veins in his
hand were underscored by shadows.

And before she could stop herself she blurted out: “Well, Malfoy. Aren’t you going to thank me?”

If she hadn’t been looking at him so closely, she might have missed the infinitesimal twitch his
wrist performed. But he didn’t sneer or scowl or glare. He didn’t even look up.

“Not a chance, Granger.”

Grinning widely, she pushed away from the chair and went on her way.

There was no hand holding happening that morning. Rather, Hermione and Terry were unwittingly
part of a parade while going down for breakfast: A swarm led by Theo, who was jubilantly singing
about his unadorned head to the tune of the William Tell Overture.

(“I am – I am – I’m antler-free – I am – I am – I’m antler-free – I am – I am – I’m antler-free–”)

Her hands were pressed to her sides as she nearly doubled over with laughter.

She ate in a hurry, eager to talk to Theo before class because being around him when he was in one
of his silly moods was much too fun to miss out on.

He beamed and slung his arm around her shoulder as they walked across the bright white snow-
carpet in the central courtyard.

“I feel lighter,” he crooned, “I feel free! I can finally sleep the right way again!”

“What do you mean?”

“I could hardly put my head in its rightful place on my bed, could I? Haven’t you noticed that
horned creatures never put headboards on their beds?”

“Right.” She giggled. “So can we expect some sort of retribution soon? Will Malfoy develop a pair
of yellow bat wings tomorrow?”

“Nah. Tempting... but nah. We have an unspoken deal – no pranks outside the flat.”

Hermione shot him an incredulous look. “And you’re abiding by that? I mean, it wasn’t like you
only suffered those antlers inside your flat...”

“I know,” he exhaled dramatically, “Damned bastard found a loophole. But I’m not going to exploit
it. Thing is, darling, with someone as competitive as Draco, it’s always better to err to the side of
caution. For the sake of my general well-being I’m going to let him have this victory. For now.”

“That’s jolly sensible of you,” she grinned.

“Jolly sensible, that’s me. It’s also why I’d never make any sort of wager with you. You’re even
worse than him.”

“How dare you!” she glared, but it was in jest. His cheerfulness was far too contagious.

“And in conclusion I’d like to say this: With or without antlers, I am tremendously handsome.”

“Oh yes. So bucking handsome – Eep!”

She jumped away as he lunged towards her, and sped into the DADA classroom. Hestia was
already there, standing readily by the blackboard; Theo could do nought but make a funny face at
her.
Days replaced days in which she spent much time with Terry, sequestered in nooks and alcoves,
engaged in exchanges of incremental intimacy: Gentle tame kisses to deeper bolder kisses to
touching over clothes then under clothes...

It was all very systematic, like they were following some sanctioned manual that gave step by step
instructions for being in a romantic relationship.

That isn’t to say that she felt like she was simply going through the motions. She liked arching into
him when they kissed, his fingers digging into her back and hers tangled in his hair. She liked his
hands on her bum and his mouth on her neck.
He had winsome eyes, she thought. Kind. Hazel.

His exuberance was untiring. She’d often pull away, to breathe, to check the time, to get her head
straight, but he’d draw her close again. He’d touch her face and say, “You’re so beautiful,
Hermione,” or “I’m mad about you, Hermione,” and she’d laugh nervously and kiss him again.

Fee-fi-fo-fum,
The world is full of thoughtless scum.

Hermione and her wrath were a searing desert wind. She swept from the library to the common
room like a hot flurry, sandblasting the walls and leaving a trail of smoke in her wake. The door
opened on its own, and she flinched; Theo stood at the threshold.

“Well, look at that face like thunder,” he remarked gaily.

“Shut up.”

“What’s wrong?”

“This stupid school is what’s wrong. Having a billion people sit for the NEWT's at once is what’s
wrong. There isn’t a single copy of Early Numerology left in the library! And I don’t know where in
god’s name Padma is, so I can’t even ask to borrow hers, and – Why are you laughing?!”

“You’re just so furious!”

“And you find that funny?” she hissed.

“Yes! I mean – No – I – I – I think Draco has that book.”

“Bully for him!”

“C’mere.”

He grasped her by the elbow and dragged her inside, and kept dragging her across the room
making a steady beeline towards –––

No.

She desperately tried to wrench herself free from his hold but he did not relent. He did not relent
until they were standing right in front of the table Malfoy was sat at. It was crowded with
parchments and open books and spare quills. He looked up at them and blinked disorientedly for a
second, before donning his typical expression of unimpressed, single-brow-arched, nose-in-the-air
condescension.

“What?”

“That book there,” Theo began while gesturing vaguely towards all the tomes scattered about, “Is it
Numero-whatsit?”

“No,” Malfoy replied shortly.

“Yes, it is!” Hermione exclaimed haplessly, “Early Numerology! It’s right there!”

Malfoy turned his stony gaze onto her.

“And what of it?” he drawled.

“I need it.”

“Too bad. As you can clearly see, I’m currently using it.”

She glowered. “Yes, well... the library has run out. Will you be finished with it any time soon?”

“No.”

He was such an arse. She prepared to flounce away, but Theo yanked her back in place.

“Well there’s no reason you can’t share the book.”

Hermione and Malfoy, as one, cried, “Absolutely not!”

With a smarmy grin, Theo dragged her to the chair on the other end of the table and forced her
down into it.

“Stop manhandling me!” she growled, and he ignored her, placing his hands firmly on her
shoulders to keep her from springing up and away.
 “Now, kids... daddy has to go meet mummy for an intensely hot broom cupboard shag. Do you
think you can behave?”

Malfoy grimaced. “Go away before I’m forced to reacquaint you with your antlers.”

Theo kissed the top of Hermione’s head and left.

The silence after his departure was absolute. She didn’t really know what to do, and she didn’t
know what her face was conveying. But whatever it was, it sure as hell irritated Malfoy. His
appearance suggested as much, with mild undertones of disgust.

She sighed, suddenly so tired of talking, second guessing, and playing along with the nuanced
attributes of all her different associations. Fuck it.

“Could we just share the book?” she muttered, and added a “Please,” when Malfoy’s nose
wrinkled.

His face smoothened out in slow motion; a rather fascinating metamorphosis. Eventually,
impassively, he pushed Early Numerology to the centre of the table with his index finger. Her
shoulders relaxed with relief, and the circumstances didn’t matter anymore. She could get her
assignment done. After she’d taken quills and parchment from her bag, she set it on the floor by her
feet.

They would stay that way for over an hour; quiet, unremitting, barely ever looking away from their
respective work. The angle of the sun would change; their shadows would swell and shrink.

But before that, when Hermione’s ink-loaded quill was poised an inch above her parchment, she
said, “Malfoy?”

He looked back questioningly.

“Thank you.”

One side of his mouth pulled up, high up. It wasn’t a smirk, and it wasn’t a grin... It was something
in between.

“Fuck off,” he said.

Chapter End Notes

1. The book Hermione reads in the train is Nana, by Émile Zola
2. "The burnt out ends of smokey days" and "You tossed a blanket from the bed...": Preludes,
by T. S. Eliot
3. Sealed with a Kiss by Brian Hyland
 Fifty-Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Leafless branches on pitch black tree-silhouettes swayed to a divine beat. The moon was a perfect
semicircle; a half disc made of prime marble on a velvety sky. Hermione’s room was a dark
extension of the winter night.

She pulled her chair up to the window and sat with her knees pressed against her chest. She was
flustered, mortified, and sore between her legs.
Staring outside, she drew in a deep breath and thought back to the evening that had led to this
wretched moment.

Supper. Warm chicken casserole. Cabinet pudding. Neville accidentally tipping his tumbler...

Terry drew her to his side as she was exiting the great hall, and instead of holding her hand, he
slipped his inside her robes and laid it against the small of her back. His fingers trailed up and
down her spine in the most distracting way. When he whisperingly asked her if she’d like to come
up to his room for a bit, she gladly agreed.
What followed was to be expected. They kissed, touched, and clothes were shed piece by piece. He
looked into her eyes with a question, and she nodded affirmatively.
Then they were on his bed. He lay on top of her – so much bulkier than she’d realised – progressing
with purpose towards the inevitable –

But then she – (“Oh, god,” she groaned and buried her face between her knees,) – she wasn’t able
to... to... unclench.

Terry stroked, coaxed, and gently cajoled. He even tried to pull away but she insisted, no please I
want this, bringing them back to the same humiliating cross point. Eventually, he used a spell on
her. Do you trust me, and he laid his wand against her and – (she whimpered and cringed so hard
that her joints creaked) – and they went through with... whatever.

There was no question of her enjoying a second of it.

At least Terry got off, and after, he held her close and cooed reassurances in her ear. It’s never
smooth sailing the first time.

She didn’t correct him. She didn’t asked why on earth he knew a spell like that. She stayed
absolutely quiet with nausea churning at the back of her throat, and she waited for him to fall
asleep.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long. She slipped out of his bed, got dressed, and tumbled over to her
room, where she swiftly undressed again, and performed a series of spells on herself. A hot shower
followed. Under that scorching cascade, she slathered body wash all over herself to eradicate the
pungent smell that lingered around her from Terry’s room. She scrubbed around her neck, down her
chest, her ribs...
Her hand iced over as it got to the base of her stomach. When she finally got going again, her eyes
were squeezed shut.

She put on fresh knickers and her dad’s old jumper.

She pulled her chair up to the window and sat with her knees pressed against her chest. She was
flustered, mortified, and sore between her legs.
So flustered, so very mortified, shit, she didn’t know what to do anymore.

She didn’t want to live anymore.

Well, that was dramatic.

This hadn’t happened with Pete; not even close. Perhaps it was because she’d been out of her mind
and so desperately wanting a distraction? But what went wrong? Why did that have to happen?
How was she ever going to look Terry in the eye again?

She straightened her legs and they exploded with pins and needles from being constricted for so
long. Like Mr Wobblyman, she rocked her way to bed, where she curled into a foetal position. It
goes without saying that she barely slept that night.

She was pressed against the wall by the door between the girls’ dorms and the common room.
There were just fifteen minutes left before breakfast ended; she’d spent most of the hour cowering
in her room, hoping that Terry would give up waiting for her and leave.
And yet, there she stood by the door jamb, too scared to peek and see if he was still around or not.
Perhaps she could conjure a mirror? Why oh why hadn’t she asked Harry for his cloak? Surely her
need was greater than whatever auror business he’d use it for.

The sound of feet tripping down the stairs paused her planning, and she looked over, smiling wanly
at Padma and Tracey. They both looked puzzled by the picture she made.

“What are you doing?” Padma asked.

“Nothing,” she answered in a fairly sullen manner.

“Really? Because to me, it looks like you’re hiding.”

Hermione could only purse her lips and sniff.

A very malicious grin spread across Padma’s face.

“Are you hiding from Terry?”

“No.”

“You are!” she laughed, “What did he do to warrant this?”

“He didn’t do anything!”

“Well then. What did you do?”

“Nothing!”

“Stop being a cow, Padma,” Tracey chided, “Hermione, would you like me to check and see if he’s
there?”

“Yes, please,” Hermione mumbled in a small voice.

Tracey’s demeanour cracked; she was fighting a smile as she peeped around the door.

“All clear,” she assured, and smirked when Padma let out a giggle.

“Thanks.”

Bypassing the Great Hall, she headed straight towards the greenhouses. She inhaled great big gulps
of clean, cold air and listened to the sound of snow crunching beneath her boots. Boots. Boot.

Just like that she was back to square one.

She hurried out after the lesson was over. She had felt his eyes on her the whole bloody time.

“Hermione!” she heard him call out from behind, but Ginny, Demelza, and Dean were up ahead
and she rushed to them.

Even quiddich talk was better than facing Terry.

But by the end of the day, she felt childish and guilty over the crestfallen look she’d seen on his
face every time she dodged him.
That evening, she dragged herself to the library, where she knew he was studying with a few of his
mates. A “few” turned out to be a few too many – and when she asked Terry if she could have a
word in private, she saw Padma struggle to stifle a smile.

“So now you want to talk?” he responded coolly and crossed his arms.

“Yes, please,” she croaked.

He got up with a heavy roll of his eyes and led her to a vacant corner. Hermione, for good measure,
cast a quick muffliato around them.

“Well?” he stated, eyes narrowed with ill-temper.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult–”

“Difficult?” he echoed with disbelief, “You’ve been a nightmare.”

She flushed and wrung her hands.

“I was just so embarrassed, you see!”

“What for?” he cried. “Seriously, what the hell for? Sure, it was awkward initially, but it happens,
all right? Specially the first time–”

Again, she said nothing.

“– besides... it got so bloody good after that, yeah?” He stepped right up to her and tucked her hair
behind her ear.

“Right,” she whispered, blinking rapidly.

“You see?” he lowered his voice to match, “Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

He kissed her and she forsook all her hang-ups and simply fell into it. Her tired brain appreciated
his affection like never before.

“Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Ms Granger?” asked Scrimgeour.

“No, I’m not,” retorted Hermione. “I’m hoping to do some good in the world!”
That combat-ready, idealistic version of her had scoffed at a career in law. The slightly older,
world-weary version of her scoffed at that.

On a Saturday morning, she sat in Headmistress McGonagall’s highly organised office, seeking
some clarity. It jarred and disturbed her to be like this – to only have a fuzzy plan for the future
based on a throwaway comment by not one, but two Ministers of Magic.

In her youthful zeal, she had rejected the thought of becoming a cog in the shambling bureaucratic
machinery. She had so many plans, most of which led to her piloting a revolution, setting off great
change...

Then she learned that after you’ve fought a war and skirted around dystopia, all you really want is
to find the peaceful way to do things.

And yet, how entirely mad was it that she was going straight from school into the business of law
making, without spending any time actually studying law?

“You learn on the job,” McGonagall reassured her, “The first few years, you will mostly be tailing
an official, sitting for meetings, researching...”

“But is that enough?” she questioned fretfully, “Shouldn’t there be some sort of test to gauge
whether candidates understands the law well enough?”

“I’m sure the department does not take this lightly, Ms Granger. If they do not believe you to be up
for the job, the will make it abundantly clear.”

“O-Of course,” she stammered.

From his gilded frame, the portrait of Phineas Nigellus tsked loudly. “I for one wouldn’t consider
this young lady capable of any–”

“Yes, thank you, Phineas,” McGonagall snapped.

Hermione left forty minutes later, with a comprehensive list of reference books, a contact, (one
Madam Gemma Mandrake, head of the Wizengamot Administration Services,) and not even a
smidgen of confidence. The only thing she was glad about was the fact that Dumbledore’s portrait
had remained empty.
It was noon, and they slinked into his room after indulging in a couple of boozy hot toddies at
Hog’s Head. The air was buttery golden like the steaming beverage in her mug had been... like
Terry’s eyes in that light... like the ends of her hair when it spilled over her face as she bent to pull
off her socks...

“Does this make up for the last time then?” he asked slyly as he buttoned up his trousers.

Her answering smile was genuine.

“More than.”

“God, look at you,” he murmured, and she flushed, standing there in just her t-shirt and knickers.

He took her hand (of course he did,) as they returned downstairs... but she pulled them apart the
moment they did, for downstairs there was quite a scene.

At the centre of it was Malfoy. His hair was all over the place, his shirt was half tucked out and
wrinkled, and he was positively flaming with anger. Theo and Neville were close behind – the
former looking equally furious, the latter a bit terrified. Facing off against him, scowling feverishly
– Ginny. Everybody else had formed a ring around them.

“What’s going on?” Hermione whispered to Dean who was sat on an armchair at the fringe.

He pulled a face. “Some fifth year tried to deck Malfoy because his Dark Mark was showing.”

“So according to you, Weasley,” Malfoy growled, “I deserve to get the shit beaten out of me?”

“That’s not what I’m saying! You just need to have the decency to keep that Mark covered out of –”

“I shouldn’t have to do any such –”

“Out of respect for the people to whom it means the death of a loved one!”

“Oh, you think it’s a symbol of happiness to me? You think it’s something I like seeing? But there’s
nothing I can do about it, and I’m not going to fucking hide it because some wimpy little twat can’t
handle –”

“That kid – Alex – his mother was killed! She was decapitated and left under a Dark Mark! How
dare you call him wimpy? How dare you go around flashing that hideous thing –”
“I am not ashamed of it!” Malfoy roared. He was leaning forward like he was ready to spring; his
tiger-footed rage was making him visibly quiver. “I did what I had to do! And if you have a
problem with –”

“This is not about you!” Ginny spat, “This is far bigger than you and your feelings, and –”

Something that felt a lot like delirium took over Hermione. She didn’t know where it came from,
but it carried her into the thick of the commotion, and it made her reach out and touch Ginny’s
shoulder.

“Leave it,” she told her firmly, “Malfoy’s right. People will just have to deal with his Mark.”

“What?!” Ginny hissed, aghast, but Hermione ignored her.

She was too focused on Malfoy, the way hints of confusion began to seep into his posture and the
angle at which his eyebrows slanted. When his eyes where fixed on her, she lifted her chin
defiantly.

“Isn’t that right, Malfoy? It’s just the emblem of the darkest and vilest wizard of our age. Nothing
to make a fuss about. Nothing seriously distressing, like say... a wand.”

Oof, the way his face fell slack with shock was exquisite. Then he sucked in a deep breath, and he
seemed to swell. Fury bloomed high on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose.
She held her breath.
Surely she was in for it now.
His eyes were round; opened wide. His pupils had constricted into two tiny specks floating in
whirlpool storm clouds. She’d had it.

Except... not.

Malfoy turned around and marched away. He tore through the huddle of spectators, kicked a ripple
on the carpet, and thudded his way up to the boys’ dorms. Everybody turned to watch him go, and
when he’d disappeared from sight, they all turned to stare at her. She wanted to crumble.

“Was that really necessary?”

Theo now stood right before her and his look, voice, tone, everything seared his disappointment
into her very soul.
It wasn’t really necessary.
But no. Actually –

“Yes, it was!” she replied hotly, suppressing the discomfort that was bubbling away somewhere
inside her.

He seemed to be on the cusp of retorting, when he suddenly snapped his head to the right and
barked, “Where are you going?”
Alarmed at having been put on the spot in such a manner, Mandy blinked vulnerably. “I – erm –
I’m going to check up on Dra–”

“No!” Theo growled, “Now is not the time for you to show him your compassion, or your tits, or
whatever it is you’re good f–”

“Theodore!” Hermione reached out and shoved him. He grit his teeth insolently and she glared
back in horrified disbelief. She hadn’t ever seen him like this. It was like... any second now... he’d
burst apart...

“Theo. Stop it.”

Luna appeared at his side and took one of his clenched fists in both her hands. He sighed heavily
and swayed on his feet; his eyes fell to his and Luna’s hands, Luna’s face, then Hermione’s... and
finally he looked a bit like himself again.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled at Mandy’s feet, “That was an... atrocious thing to say. I am truly, very
sorry. But trust me, Draco needs to be left alone right now.”

He let Luna lead him out of the room, and left behind such astonishment, so many shuddering
exhales, so many scandalised looks. Hermione saw Terry making purposeful strides towards her, so
with superhuman immediacy, she scurried away into her own room.

Sunlight had lost its allure – she closed her curtains with a careless wave of her hand. She sank to
the floor by the foot of her bed with her legs stretched out before her. There was a loose thread
hanging out from the hem of her jeans. Her wand was on her lap and she felt, most patently, the
subtle alchemy of shifting conceptions.
It wasn’t like he could go out and purchase a new arm. And... He shouldn’t have to. She ran a
finger across the delicate, twining pattern that twisted around her wand and imagined what it might
have been like if she hadn’t been able to free herself from the physical reminder of her most
traumatic moment.
I’m not ashamed of this, he’d said, but Hermione thought he really was. She had been wretchedly
ashamed of Bellatrix’s wand, and nothing about its hold on her had been directly caused by a
choice she’d made herself. He’d seen terrible things too, hadn’t he? Every time he looked at his
arm he must be reminded...

Blast it all, she felt terrible.

She thought people putting the Mark above all that Malfoy had done right. She thought about
Theo’s meltdown, about Malfoy breaking down over his dad in the library, and about Harry talking
about the moment of Dumbledore’s death.

That room in Malfoy manor with the mirrors and the chandelier: Moments before Bellatrix arrived,
Malfoy had stared into her face and grudgingly confirmed her identity...

She pressed cold fingertips against burning eyes and swallowed.

She finally found Theo again long after dark, gazing pensively out of a window a short distance
away from the entrance to their common room. He turned when he heard her approaching
footsteps, and bound towards at once. Before she could so much as open her mouth, he’d pulled her
into a tight hug.
Her cheek was pressed against his chest, his rested on the top of her head, and they held on for a
long time.

“I was an arse,” he rasped when they broke apart.

She wiped the corner of her eyes with her thumbs and replied, “I suppose I was too.”

“A bit,” he agreed, laughing humourlessly, “Are you up for a walk? I don’t want to go back in there
for a while. People keep staring, and fucking Zabini has been shooting awful, smug smiles at me...”

“What has he got to be smug about?” she demanded with bewilderment.

“He believes this is comeuppance, Draco getting roughed up, and all. That’s what he gets for
turning his back on his real friends.”

Theo’s mouth was one thin line. With his head bowed, the top half of his face was completely
concealed by his dishevelled fringe and its considerable shadow. She reached out and swept it to
the side.

“In that case, he’s the arse.”

He bestowed the smallest of smiles upon her, though it was obviously something he struggled with.
Then they took a long walk, from one end of the castle to the other. He didn’t want to talk, and she
didn’t want to force him to.

Hermione’s schedule was running away from her.

At times she panicked. Her hair would be a fuzzy shock of static, and with ink on all fingers she’d
be flapping about amid a pile of books, convinced that she was going to fail all her NEWTs. She’d
have no choice but to move to Australia to become the receptionist at her parents’ clinic. Olivia
would hate her for getting her fired. She’d have no friends. Mum and dad would be so let down.

Whatever became of Hermione Granger? I hear she was last spotted living in a tree in the
Gondwana Rainforest...

At other times, she was. That’s it; she just was.

Like the afternoon she sat with Luna and Theo, happily arranging her notes on legislative reforms
while they discussed the details of the wedding they were all soon to attend. Or the time she helped
Neville in the greenhouses, or the hours she spent with Terry – studying silently, chatting idly,
having sex...
That nightmarish instance of their first time provoked no more than the smallest spike of shame.
Sex, she quickly came to realise, was just as good for her mood as running was.

The present moment was one of panic. Hermione had been so lost in revising and preparing that
she forgot – she actually forgot – about homework.

She forgot about homework.

Don’t even try telling her she wasn’t the biggest dunderhead in the world.

Ancient runes was due the next day. Arithmancy, the day after that. It was six in the evening.

Twenty four inches of parchment and two broken quills later, she was just about halfway through
her first task.

“What are you up to?” Theo’s voice floated over from... somewhere.

“Go away,” she snapped.

Fifty inches of parchment and one minor ink-blotting incident later, she was through.

“Oh god,” she moaned and hunched over so that her forehead rested against the tops of her knees.
“Yes, God is here, not to worry.”

She turned her head to look at him without bothering to sit up again.

“Hi.”

Clearly fighting a smile Theo asked, “What was this all about then?”

“Rune’s homework.”

“The assignment we got three days ago?”

“Yes.”

“And you only just completed it?”

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“Ugh.”

She turned her face back into her knees. He chuckled, and she felt him fiddle with something on
her head... the next second, her bun came undone, and her hair tumbled all around.

“You know, when you sit like this, your hair covers every last inch of you... except for half your
legs. You look like a haystack with stumpy legs.”

“How nice.”

“You’re being a bore, Hermione.”

“Ho hum.”

He clicked his tongue and poked her shoulder, and she veered to the side like the rag doll she was.
Still didn’t sit up though. No thanks, I’ll pass.

“Did you know,” he maundered on, “Ginny and Draco seemed to have buried the hatchet.”

“Lov-er-ly,” she drawled, like Oh, wouldn’t it be lov-er-ly.

Oh, so lov-er-ly sittin'

Abso-bloomin'-lutely still
I would never budge till spring
Crept over me window sill.

“They all played quiddich together... her and him, Thomas, Corner...”

“Hm.”

“Not that she understands a dot of what he’s been through or going through. I wouldn’t expect her
to. There’s only one other person I know who understands what it means to do something difficult
and morally questionable to ensure the safety of one’s parents–”
She shot up. She tossed her head back, and her wild, unencumbered hair flew back in a huge arc.
He tracked it with his eyes and grinned.

“Impressive.”

“What I did to my parents is not the same as pledging allegiance to Voldemort, plotting murder, and
putting a castle full of children in peril!” she argued hotly.

Theo rolled his eyes. “So if Voldemort had his wand pointed at Robert and Evelyn, and said you
must kill Dumbledore or they die, you’d have...? What? Thumbed your nose at him?”

She glared. He looked back, unimpressed.

He lowered his head to say go on. She growled and looked away.

“I know what you’re trying to do.”

“What am I trying to do, Hermione?”

“You,” she fumed, “Know full well. Constantly pointing out how similar we are, pushing us to
study together... you think you can trick me into... into...” oh, it felt ridiculous to say out loud,
“becoming his friend.”

“And why can’t you be?” he retorted glibly.

“Are you serious?” she spluttered.

“Yes! I’m hardly reaching when I’m talking about your similarities!”

“All right. Okay. We share some vague character traits–”

“Not vague!”

“– that’s all anybody needs right? Wonderful! We’ll be great buddies–”

“Oh, you said buddies!”

“And it’ll all be dandy until one day he calls me a mudblood and that’ll be on you. Are you fine
with that?”

He fell silent.

He was silent for quite some time. She realised that there was no one else around – what time was it
– well shit – one-thirty AM.

“He isn’t like that anymore.”

“Huh?”
“His beliefs have changed in the most remarkable way.”

“Right,” she scoffed, “Just like that.”

“Not just like that,” he snapped, “Nobody goes through hell and comes out unchanged.”

“Have you talked about it? With him?”

“Obviously. At length.”

“And?”

“That’s between him and me, sorry. If you want to know, you’ll have to speak to him yourself. I can
assure you, your doubts will all float away. And, from an intellectual point of view, his perspective
is fascinating. Really, truly, captivating. Intellectually.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes witheringly. “Is that your idea of clever manipulation? You’re such a
lousy Slytherin.”

“No, buddy, that was mockery. I was mocking you.”

Grrrr.

“I’m going to bed,” she announced with irritated finality, and quickly began chucking her things
into her bag.

“Do you really think I’d put up with him if he still thought you were inferior? Do you think so little
of me? And by the way... the Bowtruckle’s a half-blood.”

“And who’s to say he isn’t using her to make a point? A... statement, if you will. Like you, when
you first befriended me to–”

“Don’t you dare bring that up.”

“Hmph. Fine.”

Her bag was packed and she was getting out of there.

But Theo had one final play.

“Okay, hang everything I’ve said. Can’t you get along with him for me?”

She was already on her feet, and shouldering her bag. Thanks but no thanks, Theo.

“That’s quite unnecessary.”

“Well, excuse me!” He latched onto her wrist and wouldn’t let her leave. “Unnecessary?”

“We have a schedule, don’t we?” she sniffed, “And it’s working just fine–”

“Oh, your fucking schedule,” he said with a dismissive laugh, “It’s anything but fine. Do you really
think I enjoy running between the two of you like the child of a broken marriage? Remember all
that time ago, I told you he’s my family, and you’re my family, and bloody hell, Hermione, is it so
bad to want to be able to sit in one room with my family and have a reasonably pleasant time? Is it
wrong for me to want the most important people in my life to just be nice to one-another? Merlin,
the world would be a better place if everybody was more like Luna.”

She couldn’t find the right words to say. He appeared to sense her struggle and laughed ruefully.
Sadly.

“How’s that for manipulation?” he murmured, and let go of her wrist.

“I’ll try,” she whispered.

“Okay. Thank you.”

He got to his feet and stood before her with solemn dark blue eyes – this incredible person who
deserved to have some semblance of a happy family after everything he’d been through.

“If I don’t wake up on time tomorrow, I’m going to blame you.”

She laughed breathily, and bid him goodnight.

Hermione wandered listlessly into the library, hoping against all odds that Padma had decided to
skip Care of Magical Creatures in favour of being available with her copy of Early Numerology.

But alas, she scoured the place from corner to corner, and found no Padmas hanging around. Time
to give up, she supposed. Slumped defeatedly, she shambled down aisles, she went past bookcase
after bookcase...

A strange glow from between a miniscule crack between two shelves stopped her in her tracks.
Pressing an eye against the gap, she recognised it to be a head of platinum blond hair. Malfoy was
sitting alone at a small table and, Jesus Christ, she was having the worst bout of bad luck. She
really did need to get that assignment done, though – it had to be submitted the next day...

And that decided the matter.

She bounced on the balls of her feet... once... and again... biting into her lower lip till it hurt. A
sloping shaft of sunshine fell right upon him, lighting him up like the cruellest salvation there ever
was.

Suddenly, she practically pounced, launching out of her hiding place and bounding over to the seat
opposite his.

She busied herself with setting up her workstation – spent a silly amount of time placing her inkpot
and parchment exactly so – trying to take no notice of what her peripheral vision was telling her:
He’d frozen, and he was watching her.
Still without meeting his gaze, she reached out towards Early Numerology and pulled it closer so it
was equidistant to them both. Then, promptly, she began to write. Six uneasily printed numbers
later, she heard the scratching of his quill.

She breathed out. Heavily.

Many minutes went by. She stopped for a spell, to rotate her wrist and stretch her shoulders. Malfoy
was still scribbling away, his posture straight and so unlike her own. The sun had sunk a notch; its
beams now engulfing his form like a halo. His hair looked pure white, gleaming as his shirt was.
His left hand was resting on the table, with the index finger marking a spot on his reference notes,
and the other four curled inwards. His skin was milky and smooth, warmed subtly by the sun’s light
that bounced off his knuckles and made the sparse smattering of pale hair on his arm glitter. Long,
straight, slender fingers radiating out of a large palm, which led to a lean but strong wrist: It was a
beautiful hand. Hermione thought about Myron’s Discobolus and the way his hand elegantly
hovered by his knee as he –

“What?”

She jerked her head up and he was glaring at her with flinty eyes and downturned lips.

“No!” she cried in panicked haste, “No, I wasn’t looking for your mark! Honestly, Malfoy, I was
just... just...”

...Admiring your hand?

Her mouth closed with a click of her teeth and she dropped back into her work feeling unbelievably
hot under the collar. She didn’t dare look up again.

On the plus side, she finally completed her assignment.

Quite suddenly, it was February. The weather began a teasing game of sending down random
suggestions of warmth that never fully manifested or lingered.
After a particularly distressing lesson during which Hestia hurled iron balls at them for Blasting
curse practice, Hermione lay naked beside Terry – also naked – finally getting a chance to catch her
breath.
“Let’s do something different tomorrow,” he suggested softly, running his fingers along her
clavicle, “How d’you feel about a picnic by the lake?”

“I can’t.”

His hand stopped moving.

“Why not?”

“Harry and Ron are visiting.”

“I see,” he muttered stiffly, “Will you be with them the whole day though?”

“More or less. I haven’t seen them in months.”

He looked very carefully and very pointedly at her for a long moment, like he was waiting for her
to invite him to join them.

Which simply was not going to happen.

They left together some time later, for Arithmancy. He was abnormally quiet, and made no attempts
to touch her in any way. Hermione only felt a little bad – there was no chance she was going to risk
bringing him along, not until she knew where she stood with Ron. And besides... he would just
mess up their dynamic.
All she wanted was to spend a few peaceful hours with her oldest friends.

He didn’t wait for her after Professor Vector had dismissed the class; having a proper sulk and what
not.

Well, fine.

She wasn’t going to let it bother her, not when she was going to see Harry and Ron again in less
than twenty-four hours, and in her hand she held her assignment that was topped with a shining
green ‘O’.

Just as she was turning the corner to climb up the stairs for Ancient Runes, she spotted Malfoy
standing by a floral tapestry, peering down at his assignment. She faltered momentarily, but
gathered herself swiftly enough. She squared her shoulders and strode over to him.

“How’d you fare?”

He blinked at her with a funny look on his face, and it was hard to tell whether it was stupefaction
or outrage because she’d had the audacity to speak to him.

However, he didn’t immediately bite her head off, which caused her to wonder if Theo had upended
a bucket full of guilt on him as well. He turned his parchment over to reveal a familiar green ‘O’.

“Me as well,” she mumbled, a bit sheepishly as it was painfully obvious that he didn’t care at all.

“Well, of course you got an O!”

They both jumped as Mandy joined them, wearing a perfectly cheerful grin.

“In fact,” she continued, “You getting anything less than a perfect score would probably be a sign
of the apocalypse. How are you not in Ravenclaw?”

Oh, not that again. Hermione sighed and tiredly eyed the two in front of her, all tall and imposing;
smiley and frowny.

“But then again,” Mandy went on, “A lot of the Sorting Hat’s calls make no sense. I mean, why is
Michael in Ravenclaw? Not the sharpest quill around is he? And don’t even get me started on
Loony Lovegood.”

Hermione bristled – prepared to attack – but Malfoy beat her to the punch.

“Don’t call her that,” he barked angrily.

Mandy was chagrined. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I know she’s Theo’s
girlfriend–”

“She’s my friend.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Hermione’s ears were full of a strange squeaky-buzzing sound as she frantically thought of an
acceptable way to remove herself from the situation.

“Were you headed for Runes, Hermione?” Mandy inquired uncomfortably.

“Um. Yes.”

“Shall we?”

Bloody hell, no. But there was no way out of it now. She wordlessly fell into step alongside Mandy,
leaving Malfoy and his churlishness behind. And naturally, they weren’t going to walk along in
silence.

“I wasn’t having a go at Luna, honestly!”

“No,” Hermione ground out, “You were just suggesting that she’s too stupid for your esteemed
house.”
“Give me a break, Hermione!” Mandy exclaimed, “You have to admit she lacks all the necessary
qualities–”

“I will admit to no such thing. Luna is one of the most sharp and insightful people I’ve ever met.”

(She’d almost qualified that with an unconventionally.)

“Perhaps,” Mandy muttered softly, “I suppose I don’t really know her that well. As for the whole...
‘Loony’ thing – well – we’ve always called her that. It isn’t even an insult really –”

“It is an insult, though.” Hermione was fast losing her patience. “People have bullied her for years.
It’s not right.”

They’d arrived at the classroom by then, and Hermione stomped off to sit next to Theo.

“What’s got into you?” he asked, taking in her annoyed countenance.

“Oh, you know,” she repined, “Damn Bowtruckle.”

A delighted little chuckle tore out of him.

“At last, my stars have aligned.”

Arm in arm, Hermione and Ginny bravely fought back against the force of cold winds. Together,
they slogged their way across shops, searching for black and red.
Ginny spotted them first. She let out a shriek, tore away from Hermione and ran. Harry stumbled
back when she crashed into him, but wasted little time before lifting her up and spinning her.

When Hermione got to them, it was evident that the reunited lovers weren’t going to separate
anytime soon. She looked at Ron – there he was, lanky, blue-eyed, freckled, grinning – and... What
the hell – she threw her arms around him. He hugged her back just as tightly, and laughed when
they parted.

“Hello, Ron.” She beamed.

“Hi there – oh, bloody hell.”

She looked over her shoulder and saw Harry and Ginny snogging like it was the only chance they’d
ever get. It, along with Ron’s nauseated expression, made her beam even harder.

“Let’s give them some time alone, shall we?” she suggested.
Ron grumbled, but agreed.

As they strolled towards The Three Broomsticks, their shadows knocking together with every step,
Hermione said, “Well. How are you?”

“Good. Brilliant. China was incredible, Hermione. I – erm.”

A bright flush crept up his neck.

“What is it?” she pressed anxiously.

“Erm. See... the thing is. Fuck. Okay.”

He stopped and she stopped, and they faced each other under a lamppost at the side of the road.

“I suppose I should get this over with,” he sighed, “Hermione. I’m sorry.”

She was not expecting that.

“I’m sorry for the stuff I said to you, and the way I behaved. I was out of line.”

“I understood,” she whispered, taken aback by his intensity, “Everything was so awful and I’d – I’d
just–”

“Broken my heart? Ha. Yeah. It was pretty shite, to be honest. But it’s no excuse. Look, I know I’ve
done it a lot – got all shirty and lashed out at you. But you should know it won’t happen again. I’ve
become one with the unplanned rhythms of the universe.”

She blinked. Many times.

“...What?”

“It’s Taoism. Shifu got me into it, and... by Godric, Hermione, it’s changed my life. Non-action.
Non-forcing. Spontaneity. I know how to deal with the world now. I know how to be.”

Hermione didn’t know what to say. She floundered like a fish out of water and –

“Please tell me he isn’t nattering on about his Taoist bullshit already!”

She spun around and flew to hug Harry, who grinned when he saw the jade pendant hanging from
her neck. He squeezed her so tightly, she teared up – it was so so so so so good to see him again.

“Hi,” she breathed, overwhelmed.

“It’s not bullshit!” Ron spewed indignantly. “I’m enlightened.”

“Bah,” Harry gibed, “Enlightened. You’re deluded. And that’s not surprising, considering the
amount of Maotai you put away.”
 “Taoism doesn’t say you can’t have a good time!”

“And that,” Harry announced, “Is Ron’s real philosophy: Enlightenment via extreme self-
indulgence.”

“You know what? I’ll take it.”

Laughing, they spilled into the pub and sat down to an afternoon of butterbeer, chips, and endless
conversation.

By evening, a sizeable crowd had flocked around them: Most of Dumbledore’s Army, (not
including Terry,) and at least a dozen starry-eyed people who really had no business being there.
(Ginny moved from her chair onto Harry’s lap when Romilda Vane and her lackeys showed up.)
Luna brought Theo and wedding invitations for Harry and Ron. Seamus burst in with a raucous
“Owaya!” George handed Ron an enormous box that contained a mooncake the size of a tyre.

Hermione sat between her partners in multiple crimes and heroics, and she didn’t stop grinning for
a second as they regaled the gathering with tales of their adventures in China.

Chapter End Notes

1. Wouldn't It Be Loverly, from My Fair Lady.

2. Discobolus, Myron of Eleutherae
 Fifty-Five

Valentine’s day.

Sunday.

Such a fortuitous coincidence.

Terry had his fingers wrapped around Hermione’s wrist as he led her down corridors and stairs,
taking her to some wonderful surprise that she was absolutely going to love. He was sure.
He kept singing of his surety with a big grin, an expression she did her best to mimic.

On the fifth floor, while he was telling her something about weather vanes, a figure – a veritable
blur of black and white – rushed by, only narrowly missing crashing right into them.
Hermione dug her heels into the ground and spun around, just in time to see the figure skid to a
halt.

“Granger!” Malfoy exclaimed wildly, “Theo – he’s in the hospital wing!”

“What?!” she shrieked, pulling away from Terry, “What happened?!”

But he’d already taken off; was already turning the corner...

And she sped off after him.

With a roar in her ears – a thunderous mix of whistling air and thumping pulses and echoes of Pan
screaming – she ran, chasing Malfoy’s billowing cloak.
When she got to the hospital wing the doors were closing behind him, and she burst through before
they could complete their venture. She ran to the bed at the far end of the room where Malfoy had
stopped with his hands gripping the footboard.

“Oh, Salazar,” Theo groaned when he saw her, “You as well?!”

Semi-recumbent and surrounded by many fluffy pillows, head wrapped up in gauze, he was
scowling petulantly. One leg was under the covers and one out, the latter encased in a heavy cast.

“What happened to you?” Hermione panted. Her hands flew to the base of her throat in alarm.
“How did–”

“Who told you I’m here?” Theo interrupted with a snappy huff.

Her eyes darted towards Malfoy, who was still catching his breath and staring dumbly at the injured
party.

“He did.”
“And who told you?” Theo addressed Malfoy.

It snapped him out of his daze.

“What the fuck happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Clearly something did!” Hermione cried shrilly, “Do you not remember? How hard did you hit
your head?”

“I’m fine,” he ground out.

She took a step back. “I’m going to get Madam Pomf–”

“No!” Theo sat up immediately, “Don’t! I fell, alright? It was a silly accident, and I’ll be fine. Just
fine.”

When he was sure that Hermione was staying put, he fell back against his pillows.

“You both can go now.”

“I’m not budging until you explain,” Malfoy retorted firmly.

Hermione nodded in earnest agreement.

Theo’s mouth was dramatically turned down and twitching. His eyes were narrowed, and brow was
furrowed. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was obviously quite hurt, Hermione might’ve laughed at
such childish sulking.

“It’s like I told you. I fell.”

“How?” Malfoy demanded, leaning forward impatiently, “Down the stairs? Off a broom? Tripped
over something?”

Theo crossed his arms and turned his face away. “Out of a tree.”

It was the kind of unexpected revelation that was bound to be succeeded by a spell of flabbergasted
silence.

“You fell out of a tree,” Hermione parroted – just to make sure.

He grunted.

“And what, pray tell, were you doing up a tree?” Malfoy asked with perfect dryness.

Theo didn’t respond. Hermione had to repeat his name four times, in four different tones of
escalating desperation, before he snapped his face back towards her with barefaced fury.
“It’s Valentine’s day,” he all but shouted, “I wanted to do something romantic for Luna!”

She bit her lips between her teeth as she considered him for a moment.

“Something romantic... up in a tree.”

Her inflection made him unnecessarily indignant. “It – it – it means something to us, damn it. I’m
not insane. That tree is special! I was conjuring a few odds and ends on the upper branches when
Luna suddenly showed up early, and... and it startled me, so... so... uh, I–”

“You decided to give a very literal demonstration of how you fell for her,” Malfoy drawled.

“Naff. Off.”

Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh –

Malfoy had shed his strained stance entirely. He was now standing upright, shoulders relaxed,
hands in his pockets. Amusement danced in his eyes as he brazenly faced Theo’s ire.

“Break your leg, did you?” he asked.

“And sliced open my head,” Theo grumbled.

“So romantic.”

“Do not push me right now, Draco.”

As an ill-fated spectator to this clash of smirk and glare, Hermione stood silently to the side with
her nails digging into her palms. After what seemed like several hours, she was rescued from that
impasse by the arrival of Luna.

“Oh, good,” she said as she daintily settled on the side of Theo’s bed, “You’re both here.”

Theo glowered. “Did you tell them?”

“Only Draco,” she smiled, “Couldn’t find Hermione anywhere.”

She had a small glass jar in her hand that was full of a pale pink paste.

“What’s that, Luna?” Hermione asked.

“It’s a heal-all salve,” she replied as she began unscrewing the lid, “Really works wonders.”

The second the lid came off, a most intolerably ghastly stench exploded across the room. With
various howls of distress, Hermione, Theo, and Malfoy recoiled.

“What’s in there?” Hermione yelped, slapping her hands across her nose and mouth.

“Stink sap, mostly. It’s loaded with remedial properties.”

“No, it isn’t!” Malfoy balked.

“Get that shit away from me!” Theo bayed.

Tut-tutting, Luna shifted closer to him.

“Don’t be a child, Theo. This will have you feeling better in no time.”

“No!” he wailed, “No! Luna – no – help me – Draco! Where are you going?!” (Malfoy was already
halfway to the door.) “Hermione!” he gasped, “Hermione! Tell her – Hermione – please–”

Hermione’s eyes had begun to water.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” she mumbled, and backed away.

And away.

And away...

The twin doors slammed shut behind her and she finally allowed herself to draw in a huge breath.

“My god,” she choked. A little ahead, Malfoy had stuck his head out of an open window, which
seemed like an excellent idea.

She rushed over to his side to fill her lungs with fresh, cool air.

“Oh, I hope Pomfrey comes out before Luna can actually slather that stuff on him,” she muttered
breathlessly.

Outside, the forest with all its evergreens formed a woolly carpet, and she wondered which one of
them was Theo’s special tree.

“I hope she doesn’t.”

She turned to observe his profile, faintly lit by the misty morning light.

“You’re terrible,” she told him.

He rolled his eyes and pushed away from the window. Hermione watched him saunter off, his cloak
fluttering around his ankles...

Suddenly, she remembered.

Terry. Oh shit, Terry and his surprise.

She barrelled ahead. He’d probably... maybe... hopefully... be in the common room. She knew he
was going to be upset and difficult – although why he hadn’t come along when he’d heard that
Theo was in the hospital wing was beyond her.

Unfortunately, her brisk march and Malfoy’s long-stepped saunter appeared to have the exact same
velocity. And so, they were walking side by side down the passageway. If she moved any faster,
she’d be jogging. If she slowed down, she’d be wasting time. Why the hell couldn’t he adjust his
pace?

Hermione snuck him a look from the corner of her eye. He didn’t even seem to have registered her
presence, despite the fact that there couldn’t be more than four feet between them. He was staring
ahead in an abstracted sort of way, moving along mechanically...
She turned away.
(There were still four floors to go.)
She glanced back.
(He was looking at the large landscape painting on the wall.)

“I’m really looking forward to the next section of Delphi’s diary,” she blurted out, far too loudly.

Malfoy faltered, and looked down at her with a jerk. His eyebrows drew together in a soft frown.

“What?”

“It’s bound to be so interesting,” she babbled, and her pitch went all over the place. “Particularly
the bits about Apollo.”

He cleared his throat. His mouth was thinned and his posture stiff – the general appearance of
someone who wished to be elsewhere – but he squared his shoulders and said in his usual clipped
manner: “The alchemist?”

“Ah, yes,” Hermione answered, still too fast and high, “According to muggle mythology, he’s the
sun god, and Delphi was located in his temple. Where he’d slain a serpent... a drako... incidentally.”

“Fascinating.”

“Isn’t it? Muggle mythology has deified the entire ancient Greek magical community.”

“Is that so?”

Once again, she stole a peek. His expression hadn’t changed; it was like he was only playing along
to keep from being overtly rude. Well, that just wasn’t on.

With her eyes fixed steadily on him, she said, “The whole saga is compiled in an epic poem,
Theogony, by Hesiod. I don’t have the original, but I do have a book about it. I can lend it to you if
you want.”

Success! He turned her way with brows raised high, mouth pursed to the side with... surprise?
Bemusement? Consideration? She arched a single brow in retaliation.

If he dared to utter even a lone impolite word, she’d remind him that he’d had no problem reading
her books before.
In fact, she wanted him to refuse, just to get a chance to say him.

“Yeah,” he said, “All right.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

She wasn’t sure how her face had reacted, but it triggered a tiny smile on his. A tiny victorious
smile. The slimy bugger.

“Brilliant,” she declared through gritted teeth. She let her hair fall around her face as she rooted
around in her beaded pouch.
Through it all they hadn’t stopped walking, maintaining a consistent distance-time ratio.

“Here.”

She barked like she was giving an order. He accepted the book with grace... Grace that was negated
by the smugness that the curve of his mouth conveyed.

“Thank you, Granger,” he pronounced slowly.

“You’re welcome.”

“Do you generally carry this book around with you?”

“I carry all my books around with me.”

“Really?”

She glared up at him; he was watching her doubtfully; sardonically. She shook her pouch and it
made a racket like a giant, loaded trunk would.

“Undetectable Extension charm.”

He pushed the inside of his cheek with his tongue, eyeing her little bag closely. “Is that legal?”

Infinitely more so than a Dark Mark.

“Yes,” she snapped.

“Right.”

Finally, they arrived at their common room. The door opened and they parted ways wordlessly.
Hermione shook her head to set it back on track.

She scanned the room from corner to corner, but Terry was nowhere to be found. She repeated the
search twice – just in case – but the only people around were Justin, Susan, and Michael,
conversing by the fireplace. She inhaled deeply and made her way up the stairs to the boys’
dormitories.

“Terry?” she called through his door when her first two knocks proved to be fruitless. “Terry?”

He opened the door after her fifth knock, and stood before her all dour and stony faced.

“What is it?”

And though his disposition was exactly what she’d expected, it riled her up.

“Theo’s fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”

He sneered. “What happened to him?”

“He had a bit of an accident. Broke his leg.”

“Hm. Well I’m glad he’s going to be all right.”

There was a long bout of awful silence as they stared each other down, after which, in a show of
exemplary inner-strength, Hermione forced herself to smile.

“So shall we go see about that surprise now?”

“No. I’m not in the mood.”

“I see. May I come in then?”

“Why?”

“I think we should talk.”

He laughed bitterly as he stepped aside to let her pass. She slipped in and stood by his bed – the bed
she’d rolled around in just the night before – and he slammed the door shut. He settled way on the
other side of the room, on a chair by his desk.

“Look,” she began, “I’m sorry your plans got derailed. But you have to understand... Theo was
hurt. I had to go to him.”

“You didn’t just go to him, Hermione,” Terry growled, “You ran off without a bloody word!”

“I thought you’d come along as well!”

“Sure, because that’s all I’m supposed to do, yeah? Wag my tail and follow you around?”

“What? You’re being ridiculous!”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes! Theo’s my best friend! I would’ve–”

“I thought Potter and Weasley were your best friends.”

She slowly closed and opened her eyes.

“They are.”

“Ha!” Terry snarled, “They’re all your best friends, eh? And they’re all blokes.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” she demanded disbelievingly.

“You don’t see why I would find the whole thing dodgy? These blokes for whom you’re constantly
ditching me–”

“Ditching?” she shrieked, “He was in the hospital wing! Did you expect me to ignore that?”

He jumped to his feet and took four furious steps towards her.

“What about the time you told me to fuck off and went to meet Potter and Weasley in
Hogsmeade?”
“That is not how it happened!”

“That is exactly how it happened. Do you really expect me to believe that there’s nothing going on
between you and all the many blokes you put before me?”

“Are you mad?” she sputtered, “Are you absolutely insane? Harry’s with Ginny. Theo’s utterly
besotted with Luna. And – and – um.”

“Yes,” he rumbled lowly, “Go on. What about Weasley then? Everybody knows you both have been
dancing around each other for years.”

She felt her fists tighten and her eyes narrowed into slits as she hissed, “There is nothing between
me and Ron.”

“I saw you, you know. That day in Hogsmeade. The way you jumped into his arms...”

“I was seeing him after ages! Am I not allowed to hug my be – my friend?”

“That wasn’t a hug, Hermione.” He spat her name out like it was an expletive. “You threw yourself
at him.”

“What absolute rubbish. You’re making a fool out of yourself.”

He wilted. It happened in a flash: All traces of truculence dissipated out of his frame, and he
slumped.

“You don’t even listen to me when I talk,” he whispered hoarsely.

She flinched. “That’s not true.”

“Please don’t deny it. I’m not an idiot... you certainly aren’t... and... I know it. You know it. I talk
and you smile and nod along like you’re indulging me, but it’s clear as day that you aren’t paying
attention. Do you have any idea how shitty that makes me feel?”

Something with an unforgiving grip caught hold of Hermione’s throat. She tried to swallow but it
was impossible.

“I – I didn’t mean to–”

“I know.” His face crumpled. “I’ve seen you with your... friends. You’re considerate... attentive...
engaging. I wanted to be with that person so badly. But now I know... it’s me. I just don’t interest
you.”

“Terry...” she croaked.

What should she say? What could she say?

“Please leave,” he murmured, and turned right around.

She stared with glassy eyes at his back for five beats of her racing heart. Then she left.
It wasn’t long before everybody knew that Hermione Granger and Terry Boot had broken up. The
result of that juicy bit of gossip was the usual, robust supply of whispers and stares.
But that wasn’t what bothered Hermione the most. It was the fact that she didn’t feel like she’d
been in a relationship at all. The whole thing felt like a far-off, fuzzy fragment of life that she could
only vaguely remember; and all the conversations, the walks and kisses and lying naked and spent
were things she could easily bundle up and add to her metaphorical cabinet of experiences.

Terry avoided her at all costs, and she responded in kind. In the week that followed, she saw him in
and outside class, and when their eyes would meet, he’d look away quickly... crestfallen... and
she’d let out a shaky breath.

She knew that look. Terry, Ron, Padma.

Hermione Granger, leaving a trail of broken hearts in her wake. Who would have ever thought...?

Ginny tried to talk to her about it. Hermione took to steering clear of her as well. Theo, bless him,
never did. He sat with her, easy and companionable, accepting her reserve for what it was.

(The one time she’d broken and rasped, “I feel like I’m an awful person,” he’d nudged her shoulder
and told her that she knew that wasn’t true.

“I can collect signatures if you’d like. There isn’t enough parchment in the world.”)

She got O’s in all her homework assignments.

(Three days after the ‘break up’, Padma – with seemingly authentic regret – “suggested” that she
stay away from their study group.

“Just for some time? He’s not quite in a state to be around you right now.”)
She pushed herself every morning, to run faster... for longer...

And on Friday, she overdid it. It was already ten minutes into breakfast when she burst into the
common room, a frazzled mess with shaking legs, one shoelace undone, hair half tumbling out of
its ponytail...

“Granger.”

She stopped and spun around. “Malfoy?”

Well of course it had to be him when she looked so terribly frightful.

He loped over leisurely, as though he knew she was in a hurry. Then, with a look of inquisitive
distaste, (like she was some sort of strange specimen), he handed her a book with a picture of a
black-figure amphora on the cover.

She held the book against her chest and asked, “Did you read it?”

“Of course I bloody read it.”

“What did you think?”

While he appeared to mull over her question, she rocked back and forth on her feet. It was true that
she was running dreadfully late, but she was simply too curious...

“I think,” he said slowly, “That it’s fucking hilarious that they made that sleazy old lush Dionysus
the god of wine. Years from now, future generations will be reading about Horace Slughorn, god of
crystallised pineapple.”

Hermione nearly dropped the book, surprised by the loudness of her own laugh.

“They will read about how our lives were thrown asunder by the prophesies of the oracle in the
North Tower attic.”

His lips curled up microscopically. “And about the king of the gods, with his long white beard and
dubious morals.”

“And about the demi-god who was the hero of the age–”

She bit her tongue. His expression was utterly blank.

Gesturing awkwardly towards the girls’ dorms with her thumb, she mumbled, “I have to... erm...”

He shrugged one shoulder. She scarpered.

As she zipped through her mundane morning tasks, she couldn’t stop dithering between relief and
annoyance. On the one hand, she was glad she’d stopped when she had. Yet, she was equally
irritated that she hadn’t pressed on and initiated a conversation about how happily the gods mixed
and mated with mortals.

She should have done it. She should have asked whether he’d consider her to be a goddess or a
mortal. She pictured his disgust and dismissal. She pictured brandishing her wand and showing him
where she truly belonged.

She imagined him rolling his eyes and calling her the goddess of musty books and horrid hair. She
imagined calling him the god of asinine smirks and posturing.

The overgrown path circling the Shrieking Shack looked very different when stripped of snow.
Tufts of yellow grass and clumps of weeds knotted around thorny bushes. The trees were chalky
and dry as ever.
Hermione strolled along in a mawkish mood. This is where Terry had kissed her for the first time.
This is where she’d been so captivated by the joy of physical intimacy that she’d let things get too
out of hand.

Her life had become a never-ending sequence of putting unpleasantries to rest. Of little rituals and
ceremonies, funerals and shopping expeditions to bury things and move on. Move on, move on,
move on.

Get tortured, move on.

Devastate your parents, move on.
Lose a friend, move on.
Break a heart, move on.
Keep Calm and Carry On.

Wartime propaganda as a motto for life after war.

Forward March!

“I don’t think our friendship will last very long if we study together,” Ginny groused.

“Hush.”
Hermione’s hand was pressed against the space between Ginny’s shoulder blades. She pushed the
reluctant girl across the library, to a corner far away from where her old group gathered. Except that
corner table that was nearly always unoccupied, wasn’t unoccupied at all.

“About time you showed up!” Dean called.

“Shh!” Susan reprimanded hotly.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, head girl–”

Hermione gaped at them all – Dean, Susan, Neville, Hannah, Luna, Theo, Mandy, and Malfoy.

“What is this?”

Theo stood up neatly and drew her to an empty chair.

“We’ve formed a study group,” he explained, “But the thing is, we’re pants at studying. And being
in a group. And studying in a group. Help us, won’t you?”

“Nicely done, Theo,” Ginny grinned, “Very subtle.”

“What–”

“Don’t listen to her, Hermione,” Theo decreed while gripping her chin and twisting her face away
from Ginny, “Everyone here would love it if you’d teach us your ways.”

“THEO’S PUT A STICKING CHARM ON ME!” Malfoy yelled.

“SHH!” Susan hissed.

“He’s a liar,” Theo averred.

Hermione aimed a venomous, wide-eyed look at Theo.

“You’re being deliberately patronising to anger me. You think I’ll be so affronted that I’ll make you
study as punishment, to call your ‘bluff’ as it were, and thus realise your purpose of distracting me.
But honestly, sod it. As much as I want to storm away, the NEWTs are a mere hundred and thirteen
days away. Let’s begin with Transfiguration.”

There were a couple of sniggers nestled amid the flurry that followed as everybody pulled out
books and parchment. Theo was beaming.

“All right,” Hermione announced, “Theory of Human Transfiguration and its Limitations, page–”

“Theo, you better let me go right now, or else I’ll–”

“Page sixty-fo–”

“SHHHH!”

“...Sorry, Susan.”
On the morning of Xenophilius Lovegood’s wedding, Hermione changed the colour of a russet
sundress to Naples yellow. She gathered her hair into a low bun, pulled on a short cream coat, and
went down to the common room.

“You look lovely,” Theo told her warmly. He was in bright yellow dress robes, with the scarf she’d
given him worn around his neck like a cravat.

“You as well,” she smiled, “Hufflepuff colours suit you.”

He scoffed, pinching her upper arm lightly before leading her out.

The corridor was flush with yellow fabric. Luna, charming in a simple, flowing tunic reached up to
kiss Theo’s cheek. Dean was in mustard, Neville in chrome, Ginny in lacy pale gold, and Malfoy in
ochre, with a tan leather cloak.

He smirked at Theo. “Don’t you look like the consummate Hufflepuff.”

Hermione turned away as Theo’s scoffed once again.

The sunny, chattering, rustling congregation went down to the headmistress’s office, from where
they’d be flooing over to the Lovegood residence.

It was a tight fit up the revolving staircase. Hermione was sandwiched between Ginny and Neville.
She kept her hands on the latter’s back to keep him from falling back onto her. She didn’t dare
move a muscle till they spilt onto the thick carpet of McGonagall’s office.

“Good morning,” she greeted from behind her desk, and as Hermione participated in the
reciprocatory buzz, she wondered why on earth anyone would consider yellow tartan as appropriate
wedding wear.

*
The woman Xenophilius was marrying was called Jamila, and she had a round face with a beautiful
smile, nestled in a halo of tight black curls.
The ceremony was lovely. In the midst of a field of bright grouse flowers, man and woman made
tender vows to forever cherish each other. A glowing thread bound their wrists together.

There was no stuffy formality to be found: No rows of chairs, no alter, no aisle. Just a gathering, a
couple, and their commitment.
Hermione stood between Harry and Ron, awash with muddled emotions. A pang in the heart
always found a way to pollute happiness. Unfortunately, they weren’t like oil and water that never
mixed; and the resulting blend tasted a lot like ennui.

The couple kissed and the circle of flowers around them exploded. Petals danced, flitted and darted
about like humming birds. Applause broke out. Mrs Weasley was smiling through her sobs, Luna
hugged her father, Ginny leant against Harry’s chest, George and Angelina held hands – it was all
love, joy, and yellow flowers. The cold, the ominous clouds above, the threat of a downpour
couldn’t touch them.

During the reception, plain wooden tables and chairs were conjured, along with a buffet that
Hermione wouldn’t risk tasting. After a painful incident involving Ron and a mystery pie, they took
to surreptitiously vanishing everything they put on their plate – after all, they had to at least give
the impression of eating.

“The whole point of a wedding is good food,” Ron thundered, “What’s this bloody thing about
then? Why am I here?”

“But what about embracing spontaneity? What about being one with the–”

“Hermione,” he begged, “Don’t.”

It went along in that manner till late afternoon. Luna brought out a music box which emitted a
lilting melody of flutes and lutes.
Xenophilius and Jamila danced as the sun began setting, scorching the field with its parting hues.
Little by little, more people joined in. Arthur spun a flustered Molly round and around. Ginny
dragged Harry off, George held Angelina close as they swayed leisurely.

“When did that happen?” Hermione whispered to Ron.

“Huh? Oh that. Dunno. When I got back from China, they were already a thing.”

“It’s nice.” She smiled as she watched George rest his chin on Angelina’s shoulder and close his
eyes.

“Hm. Yeah.”

It got darker, and the dancing didn’t stop. Fairies – swarms and swarms of fairies – rose from the
blooms and stalks, flashing, twinkling, whizzing...
Seamus had somehow procured a bag of chocolate frogs to assuage those (i.e., Ron) who claimed
they were on the brink of starvation. The pack of hungry hounds crowded around this unexpected
treat, and Hermione broke away in search of company that wasn’t so single-minded.

She found a table occupied by Theo, Luna, Neville, and Malfoy, and promptly sank into the lone
vacant chair left among them.

Neville’s brow puckered as he looked at her, and then at the spot that she had escaped from.
“What’s going on there?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Theo, let’s dance,” Luna said and fisted the sleeve of his robes.

“What, again?”

“Yes, again.”

He chuckled. “As my lady wishes.”

The three that remained sat mutely for quite some time. Harry and Ginny made a short appearance.
Silence reigned still. They fled.

“Oh, what’s the time,” Malfoy whinged after forever and a minute had gone by.

Hermione checked her watch. “Quarter to six. Still forty-five minutes before we can esca – er –
leave.”

His answering exhale was heavy with frustration. “Fan. Tastic.”

“I’ve got cards,” Neville supplied with a feeble smile.

The mindlessness of Exploding Snap was exactly what was needed. Six rounds and many singed
fingers later, it was time to leave. She lost twice, Neville lost four times, and she was absolutely
positive that Malfoy had cheated, though she couldn’t figure out how.

He was grinning in a full, demented way as they stood to go, and even had the audacity to wink at
Neville who was pouting over the burns he had suffered.

Terry was in the common room when she passed by in her stupid dress. She kept her head down
and sprinted up to her room to change for dinner.
That new-fangled study group met again the next day, to tackle shield charms. Hermione Granger
was in lecture mode: poised, articulate, absolutely not officious.

“And so,” she concluded, “The most powerful form of the shield charm is Protego Horribilis,
and–”

“Diabolica.”

Malfoy popped up like a foetid blister.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Protego Diabolica is the most powerful form of the shield charm.”

To properly communicate her disparagement, she lifted her nose into the air.

“It isn’t exactly a defensive spell.”

“That’s not the point. If we’re comparing the various kinds of protego–”

“Well fine!” It wasn’t easy being forceful while maintaining a low volume. “The most powerful,
defensive form–”

“Purely protective and non-offensive, Granger. Vicious it may be, but Diabolica is still quite useful
defensively.”

“If,” Hermione seethed, snapping her book shut with unintended violence, “Malfoy is quite
finished being pointlessly pedantic–”

“Pointlessly?” His eyes widened as he gasped facetiously. “Attention to detail is very important. It’s
the difference between an E and an O.”

She turned sharply to the boy sitting beside her with a fist covering his laughing mouth.

“Theo,” she railed (softly), “Let him go. Please.”

“You heard the queen,” Malfoy jeered, “Let me go.”

Theo cackled. “I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage, Draco; fool me twice and all that. So.” He
rubbed his hands together with glee, “What’s it going to be now? Herbology?”
 Fifty-Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The time between supper and sleep were Hermione’s private study hours, during which she holed
up in her room and immersed herself in heavy-duty revision.
On that particular night, however, she wasn’t revising. Then again, the task she was involved in
demanded some rather challenging spellwork – it could be considered brushing up on charms.

She pieced a network of gears into place, cast a modified Piertotum Locomotor, and set up a button
to trigger a dormant concealing charm. And finally, at half past two, she coated her project in
brilliant green paint, and curled up in bed.

In the morning, she raced downstairs, with her hair still damp from the shower. She’d overslept,
and only just managed to get ready before breakfast began. In the common room, Theo and Malfoy
were walking towards the exit.

“Theo!” she called and scurried forward.

“Don’t,” Malfoy muttered under his breath as she passed him.

Sparing him no more than a fleeting frown, she turned to smile beamingly at Theo. “Happy bir–”

“NOT YET!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, causing her to jump back in fright. “After! Twelve!
P.m.! You know this!”

“Right,” she breathed, “You maniac.”

Theo harrumphed and continued on his way. Malfoy followed. And as the door slowly closed
behind him, he looked over his shoulder and bestowed a dreadfully self-satisfied grin upon her.
At thirty minutes to the sanctified hour, she tramped towards the edge of the Forbidden forest,
where Luna had organised a small get-together. Hermione was one of the first to arrive; Luna was
still in the process of hanging streamers on the trees.
There was a large rug on the ground, with a crate of butterbeer, a basket of food, and a pile of
plates. Hermione set down the large box she’d been carrying and quickly moved to assist, conjuring
colourful balloons at Luna's request.

In small spurts, other people began turning up, and finally, at noon (sharp!) the guest of honour
arrived.

“Happy birthday,” the crowd chorused.

“Thank you, thank you,” Theo bowed graciously, nonsensically. His gaze dropped onto the box on
the rug, and then snapped up to Hermione for confirmation.

She nodded and he leapt and dived like a deep cover fielder.

“Please tell me it’s the chocolate one from last – yes!”

They ate and drank well into the afternoon, warmed by butterbeer, hot rolls, and laughter as Seamus
relayed a story of a brawl that had broken out in his pub a week ago.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but joined in the merriment in spite of herself. Theo was leaning against
a tree with Luna on his chest; his happiness was plain. Dean was sitting to one side with a
sketchpad and pencil. Ginny was lying on her stomach with her legs in the air. Neville stretched
beside Hannah, who was skimming her fingers over grass. Malfoy lay indolently with his head on
Mandy’s lap.

Those brightly coloured streamers and balloons were swaying in the wind. The lake was iridescent,
the sky was blue.

“I’m telling you, it was wild! This one chap breaks a bottle over his mate's head screaming down
with the Falcons, and that mucker doesn't react. Not even a blink! Your man decks the first chap till
he's a bleeding mess on the floor, says fuck you, downs his drink, snogs his lass, and then.... then...
Argh, me 'ead, he says!”

Evening fell, people trickled away, Theo and Luna disappeared into the forest for a "walk", and
Hermione was the last one left on the rug.
It was getting chilly. She ran her hands down her cloak while muttering a warming charm. She took
a sip from her bottle, and immediately wrinkled her nose in distaste. The butterbeer had gone flat
and cold. The hazy hue of dusk stained everything – it was like she was looking at the world
through violet gauze curtains.
Birds made a racket while settling into their nests. The lake gushed. It gushed and gushed, gushed,
gushed. The wind rushed, rushed, rushed, rushed–
From inside the castle, the call for dinner sounded.

The tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells–

“Can we go in? Have you caught that cold you’ve been waiting on?”

“Hardy har,” Hermione droned, and stood up. “Where’s Luna?”

“Inside,” Theo replied, “Where it’s warm.”

“I want to give you your present.”

“Here? Now? Can’t it wait–”

“No,” she answered steadily, “I prefer there be no witnesses.”

While he stutteringly articulated his apprehension, she reached into her bag and took out a small
package wrapped in plain blue paper. And then she was the apprehensive one as he tore it open.

“Wow. An alarm clock. Nice.”

He held the clock close to his eyes, smiling in the most credible way.

She bit the corner of her lip and elucidated: “It isn’t just an alarm clock. I’ve done some work on it.
You see that slot in the back? Once you write someone’s name there, they’ll be the only one who’ll
hear it ring.”

“That’s really clever magic!” he commended, looking duly impressed.

“Yes, well–” She paused to stop him from spelling his own name on it. “You should give it to
Malfoy.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve put a locomotion charm on it. It doesn’t just ring; it runs. Scuttles about like a high speed
windup toy. It’s also immune to summons, stunners, fire, the reductor curse, and most hexes. And
when it’s finally caught and you press the button on top to shut it off... it disappears. Only to
reappear when it’s time to ring again.”

All through her explanation, Theo’s grin had grown wider and wider.

He said, “And here I thought you couldn’t possibly top this scarf.”
They started back towards the castle and he put his arm around her like he always did.

“Do not implicate me, though, Theodore Nott,” she warned, “Do not or else I’ll–”

“Of course I won’t! But honestly – this will be the best revenge. Thank you.”

“Well, those antlers were brutal.”

Hogwarts rose before them and the sun set behind them.

“Do thank Robert and Evie for the cake, will you?”

“Thank them yourself. And mum will skin you alive if you call her that. Only dad is allowed to.”

On the first day of March, she sent Ron an owl with a card, a bar of Honeyduke’s chocolate, and an
invisible-to-all-but-him wand holster.
While coming down from the Owlery, in a show up prime arseholery, the universe threw Terry in
her path.

“Um, hullo,” she stuttered.

He brushed past her wordlessly.

All she could do was roll her eyes. She felt an odd urge to talk to Harry, to tell him, hey, guess what
– I’ve got myself into a Cho Chang situation. He was at his best when being drolly self-
deprecating; he’d know exactly what to say to that.

She should’ve known it was coming. It was bound to.

Hestia’s expression reflected grave solemnity. Her hands were clasped behind her back.

“Of all known curses, one of the most dangerous is Fiendfyre. It’s a hundred times hotter and more
hazardous than regular fire. It’s savage, sentient, and capable of consuming any and every thing
that comes in its path. It can bring down an entire country in days.”

A bone-rattling shudder passed through Hermione’s body. Breathing became laborious, like she
was choking to suck in air through clouds of smoke and flying ash. She closed her eyes and the
backs of her lids were painted orange.

Orange that writhed, twisted, and soared. Burning, searing orange wrapped around her, reached
out to grab her, tried to devour her – all she could smell was smoke – all she could feel was heat
and the texture of Malfoy’s shirt against her cheek –

Her eyes opened and sought him out. He was far across of the room, staring straight ahead. Back
straight and arms crossed. Mouth pursed. So pale.

He had to be thinking about it too. He had to be wondering if those flames were still performing
their deadly dance; whether they would do so eternally, locked up in the room that nobody could
ever require. Was he thinking about scorching panic and blistering fear? Was he thinking about the
friend he’d lost?

“Only the most proficient castor can control it. Even stopping the spell is near impossible – once
cast, flames seem to pour out in an unstoppable stream. It can only be quenched if the castor has the
skill to do so, or with flawless, powerful general counter spells. Yes, spells. This is not something a
lone witch or wizard can handle. If you ever, Merlin forbid, find yourself at its mercy... run. Run
like the wind.”

She ran and she ran and the ends of her hair were singed. Then it was her and Ron in a corner,
surrounded by flames and flames, hissing, roaring, crackling, closing in –

The bell rang. She gasped.

A low commotion broke out as the class was dismissed. Chairs were dragging, feet were shuffling;
the chatter had an undertone of awe.
Malfoy was one of the first to rush out of the room, and impetuously, Hermione followed.

She had to jog to keep up, darting between pillars and clusters of students. He was striding along
with purpose and precision, climbing up one staircase after the other, until finally they arrived at
the seventh floor.
She watched from a distance as he paced before that infamous wall, willing a door into existence.

It had meant so many things to her, that door. A gateway to freedom, a symbol of rebellion, a safe
haven, an enigma...

Up and down Malfoy marched with escalating agitation – to no avail. On his tenth or so attempt,
she stirred from her corner and approached him.
“I don’t think it’s going to show up,” she whispered.

He stopped dead and spun around to face her. It seemed that looking at her worsened his distress, if
the grimace that overtook his face was anything to go by. He turned to stare at the empty wall...
and... Swallowed.

“What were you asking for?” she asked carefully.

“The room of hidden things.”

His voice was hollow. He was hollow.

“Fiendfyre is capable of destroying a Horcrux. I’m sure it must’ve broken the room’s enchantments
as well.”

He didn’t respond. Remained fixated on the wall.

So she left him there. Her skin was prickling, her eyes were burning, her brain was relentlessly
conjuring flashing images of a ruthless inferno – she kept walking until she was out in a courtyard,
where there was fresh air and an open sky.

She couldn’t sleep that night.

She sat up with a book that detailed each and every wizarding law, and every single amendment,
until the constitution was pouring out of her ears and messing with her constitution.

She felt ill. When the time came, she packed up her bag and went downstairs.
Dwelling on fiendfyre had reignited her memory in the worst possible way. She spent a week in a
fog, remembering all the things that had happened later that night, and she sank back into a familiar
pit of anguish.
The image of Fred’s lifeless body drove her into a state of unbridled madness, and she wrote a long,
rambling letter to George about absolutely nothing – a letter she didn’t send.

She sat on the Quiddich stands for hours, just watching Ginny fly around, her hair shining like
Fred’s had shone when he whizzed about swinging his beaters bat.

She stopped in the middle of her morning run to bawl, because the pinky dawn sky reminded her of
Tonks’ hair.

The fog lifted suddenly, in an abrupt, clarifying moment, and she quickly climbed aboard a
textbook. Words, theories, a swish and a flick, what-fucking-ever. Anything to stay afloat.
Her life had been fuelled by great expectations – her own and that of others – and there was no
point in letting emotional meltdowns overpower them.

She kept repeating that thought to herself all through the afternoon, which was, in keeping with the
aforementioned topic... one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:
When it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Her table in the library had thankfully declared summer. Submerged in the light, she contemplated
the stack of parchment in front of her. One at a time, she thought, one at a time.

The sound of vigorous footsteps shattered her flimsy resolve. Frustration promptly filled the
ensuing vacuum and she grumbled, wondering who the hell would dare to intrude into her corner.

Malfoy emerged from between bookshelves and offered her a stiff nod as he settled on a chair at
the other end of the table. His sleeves were once again rolled up just so, keeping his Mark hidden.
His tie was loose, his expression was apathetic. He had a way about him that made her feel like she
was the one imposing.
It was insupportable.

“What are you doing here?” –She fought hard to make that enquiry in an even, placating tone.

“According to your study schedule,” he sneered, “We’re supposed to be brushing up on Arithmancy

right now.”

“That’s correct.”
She blinked.
She absolutely had not expected him to show up.
She blinked again.
If Theo ever decided to enter active politics, the world would truly be doomed.

She sat up straight.

“These are exam papers from the last ten years. The first section deals with the history of
Arithmancy – mostly objective type questions – we could, um, quiz each other?”

He took his time sighing, in a very lord, give me strength kind of way, so she thanked the lord for
giving her the patience to deal with such affected behaviour.

“Okay.”

In the 1980 Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles final, Bjorn Borg met John McEnroe in an engaging
tussle. Both were in their prime, seemingly matched in power and skill. Their fourth set tie-break
lasted over twenty minutes, and resulted in thirty-four contested points.
It was a story dad had told her many times over the years.

Nineteen years later, in the Hogwarts library, she threw questions at Malfoy, which he answered
and followed with counter-questions, which she answered and –

What a rally!

“Who was the first person to apply Arithmatic principles to the Latin alphabet?”

“Agrippa. Who employed multiplication instead of addition in one of the earliest–”

“Apollonius of Perga. What is the numerical value of Sargon the–”

“Sixteen thousand, two hundred and eighty-three. Where was–”

“Sargon the Great, Malfoy.”

Game, set, match.

“What?”

“Not Sargon the second; I was asking about Sargon the Great.”
(In other words: You lose.)

“What the fuck does he have to do with any of this?” Malfoy barked, “He died long before the
emergence of Gematria.”

She shrugged lightly. “Trick question.”

His eyes were simmering with vexation. “Bloody stupid question.”

“I didn’t set the paper. You can stop glaring at me.”

Smiling widely, she divided the second lot of parchments between them.

“Comparative calculations now. The one who finishes first wins.”

The entire group met again a few days later to study Herbology, led by (a slightly pleased, slightly
abashed) Neville. He came up with an impressive system to help them learn. They were each given
a chart with a list of plants in one column, and the others, (labelled properties, uses, soil type,
etcetera,) were left blank and filled over the course of their conference, as he quizzed them.

In an unfortunate display, Hermione and Malfoy’s voices drowned out everybody else’s, as they
each scrabbled to answer Neville’s questions before the other.

She found herself getting more and more riled up, but maintained a two point lead. He was getting
increasingly aggressive.

“Do you mind?” Ginny groused by and by, “We’d all like a chance to participate, thanks.”

The tameness of an Ancient Runes session, later that evening, was a welcome reprieve, even
though the dynamic between that particular set of five was a bit strange.
Things got more than a bit strange when Luna (who had no reason to be there,) decided to interject
with one of her wild theories about ancient ciphers. Nevertheless, they made it past that interruption
unscathed, as Mandy had been going out of her way to be kind, and Susan was incapable of being
anything but. Theo also made sure to keep them from getting too serious for long stretches of time.
Why was she being plagued by intermittent fits of melancholia?

While walking down to the dungeons, a draught caused all the tapestries in the passageway to
flutter. Their wispy shadows struck in her a kind of all-pervading terror, and she fell against the
cold stone wall, her heart in her throat...

...Thrashing, scrambling, trying to claw its way out...

“What’s the matter?”

Theo pulled her aside and examined her penetratingly, full of concern and whatnot.

All she could do was shrug in a surly way and mutter, “I don’t know.”

Her mood was the temperamental equivalent of a surly shrug as he dragged her out for one of their
walks. He talked about the odd, confusing weather they were suffering; she didn’t speak at all. His
shoulders were stiff, his inflection was stilted, but he didn’t ask her what was wrong again.
The free period before dinner had been allotted to Potions.

With the exception of Neville and Hannah, the whole bunch was present, and they looked up at
Hermione expectantly when she reached. She, in turn, avoided their eyes by locking hers on the
floor.

She sat down quietly and poured all her focus onto a piece of parchment, not saying a word as
silence hovered all around. They were waiting for her to take charge.

Ya, boo, sucks to you. She took a leaf out of Neville’s book and began drawing neat, perfectly
straight lines, to tabulate potion ingredients and their primary uses.

Aconite: Wolfsbane, Fever-Reducing Potion

Much to her relief, nobody questioned her. She imagined Theo shaking his head warningly at
anyone who tried.

Aconite Fluid: Doxy Repellent

Alihotsy: Laughing Potion

She heard rustling all around – the crackle of parchment being straightened, of pages being
flipped...

Her list progressed from Ammoniacum to Belladonna without any disturbances.

Betony: Mad dog bites

“Luna,” Dean proclaimed, “Oh, Luna. Some day I’d like to paint your portrait.”

“Would you now?” Luna asked with interest.

Bezoar: Antidote to Common Poisons

Billywig Sting: Awakening Potion

Billywig Sting Slime: Wiggenweld Potion

“Yes,” Dean affirmed, “Your face softly lit, emitting an ethereal glow, long hair bound in a scarf...
lips softly parted–”

“Watch it, Thomas!” Theo growled.

“–looking seductively over your shoulder... The Girl with a Radish Earring.”

“It’s a Dirigible Plum.”

“Bless you.”

Boom Berry: Wiggenweld Potion

Boomslang Skin: Polyjuice Potion

“What about me?” Ginny demanded, “I went out with you – don’t I get a painting for my
troubles?”

Bubotuber Pus: Tumour Reduction potions, Beautifying Potions

Dean cleared his throat. “Of course. In a dress of shimmering gold and mauve... hair spread around
your face... flowers in hand...”

“That’s a bit much–”

“You will be my Ophelia, tragically drowning in a river.”

“You bastard!”

The air shook with ill-suppressed sniggers.

Bundimun Secretion: Cleaning Fluids

“What about Hermione, then?” Theo – the sod – broached, “Will you paint her?”

“Of course! She will be my–”

“Medusa.”

Castor Oil: Love Potion Antidote, Hair Potions

Caterpillar: Shrinking Solution

Draco Malfoy’s head on fire.

“No, actually – with those tresses and rosy complexion, Hermione will be my Odalisque.”

“You’re wasting a perfect Gorgon-model,” Malfoy droned on.

“She will be surrounded by smoke and silk and oil lamps–”

“That hair can so easily be turned into a clump of snakes–”

“Draped on a chaise–”

“To say nothing about–”

“Completely naked.”

Absolute silence. Hermione’s furiously scribbling hand stilled. She could feel all their eyes on her.
Fearfully, slowly, she looked up, and that indeed was the case: Everybody was staring.

Her face burned as she hissed, “Stop picturing it!”

In a move that was eerily synchronised, they all, as one, tilted their heads to the right.

“I said, stop!”

Theo opened his mouth to say something, and Theo’s opinion on the matter was the last thing she
wanted to hear. She balled up her meticulously tidy chart and threw it at him.

Malfoy didn’t show up for the next Arithmancy meeting and she was glad.

She felt explosive. Her mind was buzzing with anxiety, her heart was racing, and when she picked
up her quill to start writing, she realised her fingers were trembling. Her whole frame was quaking,
in fact.
She let out a muffled whimper and buried her face in her hands. One lock of hair fell out of her bun
and tickled the side of her neck–

She jumped up wildly, unable to breathe –

 *

......

Clarity came late at night when she resurfaced from a stifling nightmare with a gasp. Her limbs
ached with the memory of pain. There were tears streaming out of her eyes, her lungs were aflame,
and music rumbled in her ears.

Seasons don't fear the reaper

Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, we can be like they are –

Her brain hadn’t registered the date, but it was etched into her physiology, like muscle memory, or
like... Like an alarm that only she could hear.

She jumped out of bed, stumbled, crashed into her desk. Her vision swam and she saw crazed eyes,
the edge of a knife, a chandelier...

Her pale, shaking hand grabbed her cloak and she ran out of the room.

Terror and hysteria took her up to the blasted snogging room. She pushed the large window open;
cool, brittle air kissed her skin. She felt the ghost of Greyback’s rough hand on the back of her
neck.

We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper

She stepped out onto the ledge, and her childish dread of heights was easily eclipsed in that
moment when the only thing she could think about was the feeling of having all her worst fears
turned into red-hot shards that pierced and shredded her soul... Ugh.
Damn Bellatrix to hell.
But she’d seen to that hadn’t she? What must the Aurors have found when they removed that rock?
A mushy pancake of blood and guts, sprinkled liberally with bits of bone?
She shuddered violently as she crept closer to the rim of the ledge, and the night spread out before
her in all directions – the whole ridiculous, malicious, wonderful world - A study in Prussian blue.
She raised her forearms and wandlessly conjured a score of bluebell flames. They twinkled like the
hottest stars in the universe, and moved in a slow orbit around her.

This – this – is who she was, stripped to the bone. Her life, love, and opinions condensed to present
one concise image: A girl on the edge, with magic coursing through her veins, flowing out of her
pores, surrounding her with dazzling light...

Hermione Granger. Witch.

She laughed out loud, and it was the sound of her ultimate reality. It was her primordial, eternal
echo. It would resound forever in her universe, where she made her own stars.
She let out a strangled sound, but Theo didn’t relent. He’d wrapped her in a tight hug the moment
he saw her the next morning, in the entrance hall.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, “I’m so damn sorry. I can’t believe I didn’t realise–”

She extracted herself from his hold and clutched both his elbows in what she hoped was a firm and
comforting manner.

“It’s fine, Theo. No, honestly. I didn’t really remember until last night. Before that, I just felt... off,
without knowing why.”

“I could see that,” he said, peering down at her regretfully, “I should’ve been around, or – or –
something.”

“It wouldn’t have helped.” She gave his arms a squeeze before letting go. “And I promise you I’m
fine now.”

“Ah,” he sighed, and leant heavily against the banister, “I saw Draco looking pretty off as well, so I
pestered him until he finally – and shit, then Susan told me you’d already gone to bed–”

“What did he have to look off about?”

Theo’s troubled appearance slipped away as his eyes tightened. “He was tortured that evening, too,
if you remember.”

Hermione’s face crumpled. “God,” she groaned, “I’m sorry. Is he...”

“He’s fine.”

“It’s never going to end, is it?” she whispered, “George’s – Fred’s – birthday is coming up. I don’t
know how the Weasley’s are going to handle it.”

He reached towards her and took her hand.

“It won’t end. But it will get easier.”

She twisted her mouth to the side as she took in the solemnity of his expression.

“I know.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?” he asked.

“Not really. You should be proud, though. I went out on the ledge, all by myself.”

“The what?”
 “The ledge around the roof of our tower–”

“No, Hermione,” he chided, “Call it by its official name, please.”

“Oh, fine. I went up to Theo’s Peak all by myself.”

He beamed. “Let’s go up there now!”

“No, thanks!” she refused most emphatically, “I’ve had my fill.”

So of course they ended up going anyway. He collected Luna and Malfoy, she hauled Ginny along,
and ten minutes later, they were up on the roof.

Hermione could sense the burbling turmoil behind every move Ginny made; perhaps she was
especially attuned to it because she’d felt the same way so recently. There was nothing to be done
about it. The pot was going to boil over on the first of April. She sat close to her, with her legs
stretched out so the heels of her shoes glanced off the edge.
Theo and Luna reclined against the roof, softly whispering to each other about clouds and their
shapes. Beyond them, Malfoy’s back was curved as he sat cross-legged with his elbows on his
knees. He squinted against the sun’s brightness; the light got caught and tangled up in his fair
eyelashes.

The atmosphere was nothing like the night before; it was vibrant, sunlit, and held the dewy,
blossoming promise of early spring.

Chapter End Notes

1. "The tintinnabulation that so musically wells...": The Bells, by Edgar Allan Poe
2. "One of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold...": Great
Expectations, by Charles Dickens

A special thanks to TheLastLynx for making an absolutely gorgeous aesthetic for this story -
it's played a part in the second to last segment of this chapter.
 Fifty-Seven

Ginny’s face was bloodless and her eyes were bloodshot.

It was four o’clock on the first day of the cruellest month, and she shuffled alongside Hermione
towards McGonagall’s office. They’d been granted special permission to take the evening off.

The castle was, predictably, full of pranksters, and the floor was littered (in spite of Filch’s
persistent, cantankerous sweeping,) with purple and orange wrappers that read Weasleys' Wizard
Wheezes.

“Gotcha!” and “Fooled you!” and “Ha-ha, you numpty!” echoed off the walls, weaving around
Peeves’ ubiquitous cackle.

In the long run, everybody was made a fool by fate’s cruel tricks.

When they arrived at her office, McGonagall placed both her hands on Ginny’s shoulders.

“Give your family my regards,” she said softly, with extreme gentleness.

Ginny nodded. She pulled away and practically leapt into the fireplace with a garbled cry of, “The
Burrow.”

Hermione offered the headmistress a weak smile as she followed.

Five-thirty.

The Burrow’s kitchen was swamped with deep purple shadows. The curtains were drawn and the
only sources of light were the twenty-one candles that flickered atop a large chocolate cake, which
was placed at the centre of the table around which all but three chairs were occupied.

Nobody thought to light up a few lamps. Nobody so much as moved or spoke.

Six o’clock.
Nothing changed.

But at ten past six, the floo roared. The entire gathering started.

It was Angelina, looking utterly worn and drained. Her braided hair seemed wilted, her robes were
rumpled, her eyes were rimmed with red.

“I’m sorry,” she sputtered thickly, “He won’t leave his room. I’ve been trying for hours but–”

“He isn’t coming?” Mrs Weasley’s voice was a hollow rasp.

“No – I’m sorry – he isn’t.”

There was an enormous CRASH! – Mrs Weasley had tossed the cake onto the floor. She was on her
feet, panting, staring down at the mess with wild eyes.

“Molly–” Mr Weasley began...

She let out a tormented howl. A gasp went around the table, but that was just the preamble. She
broke down completely, wailing and weeping loudly and unreservedly. She backed away from the
table, hands reaching out to grab fistfuls of air like she was desperately seeking anything to hold on
to.

Bill was the first one to get to her. He pulled her to him, even as she screamed and protested. Then
Ginny, Charlie, Percy, and Mr Weasley were there too. They patted her, and shushed her, (but she
kept howling,) and coaxingly began leading her upstairs.

“Fleur, calming draught, hurry,” Bill muttered as they passed.

Hermione stood as Fleur fluttered to the pantry, not sure what to do. Should she follow them up?
Should she help Fleur? Should she –

She saw a tall figure slip outside into the back garden and she went after it at once.

Ron tore across the lawn, all the way to the far wall. In the dark, she could barely make out his
face, but the wretched urgency of this pacing was telling enough. Hermione dithered by the door,
watching him get consumed by his agony. Finally, he collapsed on a log amid a thicket of weeds.
He was bent over with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands – and she flew to him.
She sat down next to him cautiously and laid a palm on his back. She could feel the vibrations of
his muffled sobs.

“Oh, Ron,” she whispered, and bent to rest her cheek against the back of his head.

His hair felt like grass, and smelled vaguely of some generic minty shampoo: The scent that had
once wafted out of Amortentia.
She gently stroked his back, and with her eyes half-closed, tried to think about pretty, tranquil
things, hoping those thoughts would seep out of her head and into his.
There was a slight disturbance – moving shadows, muted rustles, and a creak – and Harry sat at
Ron’s other side. He kept his gaze locked on the far distance. His shoulders were stiff and his jaw
was clenched.

When an erratic breath escaped out of Ron, he placed a hand on his shoulder and gripped it firmly.

Hermione couldn’t say how long they stayed that way. Eventually, Ron moved, and she lifted her
head to allow him to straighten his posture.

His entire face was red, swollen, and clammy. She wanted so badly to wipe it and hug him, but he
took care of the former himself. Then he stood up, dusted the back of his trousers and said, “Okay.”

“Ron?” Harry broached.

“Yeah. Alright. ’kay.”

He began walking towards the gate.

“Where are you going, Ron?” Hermione called, quickly rising as well and skittering behind him.

“To George’s,” he grunted.

She stopped dead, and so did Harry.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Don’t know,” Ron shrugged, “I know I’m not Fred... not even close. But I’m going to sit outside
his bloody door for however long and remind him that he still has four brothers and a sister. I’ll sit
there till he fucking gets it.”

He breathed in and closed his eyes, calming himself down; he was never good at apparating under
pressure. He opened his eyes, ready to spin –

“Oi, Ron – Wait for us, kid!”

It was Charlie, stomping towards them. And behind him was Percy, followed by Bill with his arm
around Ginny.
The Weasley siblings stood in a line, all equally sombre and determined. They had always been so
different from each other, such strong individuals, but in that moment they were the same blood
and that was that.

The sound of their disapparition rent the sky and all that was left was the dark silhouettes of trees
and hills. Harry and Hermione wandered back to the log and sat down. A little while later, Fleur
joined them, with three glasses of wine levitating before her.

“How’s Mrs Weasley?” Hermione asked.

“I 'ave given 'er a calming draught and zum dreamless sleep potion. Hopefully she will be better
when she wakes up.”

Cicadas broke into song. Something – a frog perhaps – leapt into the pond with a splash.
Harry raised his glass and said, “To Fred Weasley.”

“To Fred,” Hermione and Fleur chorused.

The wine was sweet and fruity like a temperate spring evening.

The later it got, the more evident it became that Ron and the rest had no plans of returning. Mrs
Weasley was dead to the world and Mr Weasley stayed by her side. Fleur made them some
sandwiches which they ate out in the garden.

By and by, Hermione stood up and stretched.

“I should get back to Hogwarts.”

“Hogwash,” Harry replied, “Come with me to Grimmauld Place. Let’s get drunk.”

He looked at her imploringly from over the rim of his glasses and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“All right. But you’ll have to let me borrow your owl so I can let McGonagall know.”

“Only if you call him by his name.”

She kicked his foot. “Prat. You’ll have to let me borrow Herms–”

“Why, of course!”

They bid Fleur farewell and apparated to that very familiar door with a silver knocker. Harry let
them in, and she was once again thrown by how perfect the house looked, all agleam and spick and
span.
A crusty drone pulled her attention away from the glittering chandelier.

“Master Harry Potter,” Kreacher croaked, “And... a guest.”

“Right you are,” Harry said cheerfully, “Could you bring us a bottle of firewhisky and two glasses,
please?”

And so the day ended with Hermione sprawled on the sofa where she’d once spent so many fitful
nights. Except back then, it had been tattered, musty, and generally foul. Now it was plush and
clean. She had a glass of whisky in one hand, and McGonagall’s reply to her letter in the other.
“She says, as you see fit, Ms Granger. Can’t you just hear her disapproval?”

Harry grinned. “I can picture it.” He pushed his glasses down his nose, pursed his lips, lowered his
brows...

Hermione nearly tumbled to the ground laughing.

They made it through one bottle and talked about auror training and NEWT's prep. Halfway
through the second bottle, they reminisced about the Weasley twins’ rebellion against Umbridge.
When Harry clumsily summoned a third bottle, he told her he loved Ginny so fucking much,
Hermione and she narrated the god-awful mess she’d made of her dalliance with Terry.

He poured himself another glass and she shook her head so vigorously that she maybe, possibly,
messed up her pivot joint forever.

“I’m duh-hun,” she declared, “If I have one more sip I will die.”

“That’ll be a sad thing,” Harry mused.

“Do you remember the last time we got this... this... out-offit?”

“Yeah. Fucking tent.”

“Fucking tent,” she agreed, “You know, I’ve still got my DA galleon, if you’d like to chat with
Theo–”

Harry offered her a sneer. Then he downed the remainder of his drink in one gulp. How was he still
up, she wondered, he’d had the lion’s share of the booze. He pulled down a sofa cushion and lay on
the floor.

“Y’know what, Hermione,” he slurred, “You’re my four brothers and a sister.”

“What?” she giggled.

“I mean... say I locked myself in a room and all, I know you’d sit outside the door. Can’t be sure
about anybody else, but you... you’d be there.”

“I would. And you’d–”

“Do the same for you? Yeah. ’Course. But I’d wear full armour, in case you get cross. Don’t want
to end up trapped in a jar, with canary shaped spots or–”

“Oh, shut up.” She giggled once more.

Hermione apparated to Hogsmeade early in the morning, while Harry was still fast asleep on the
floor. It was a Friday, and she had a full day of lessons ahead of her.

She hurried to her room and indulged in a long, sumptuous shower. Yet, it was still only seven by
the time she was dressed. She made herself a crown of braids. She sat by her window and leafed
through her notes on explosive hexes. At five to eight she let her hair down, and shook it so it fell
in its usual, atrocious disarray.

Theo was leaning against the chair directly in front of the staircase as she descended.

“How are you?” he asked at once.

She filled him in as they went to the Great Hall.

She sat before her empty plate long after she’d had her fill of tea and breakfast, thinking that Ginny
would turn up at any moment.

She didn’t.

Hermione remained on edge throughout her lessons. Ginny was absent all day...

...Until she suddenly showed up during dinner. She took a seat next to Hermione and began piling
her plate up, not saying a word. Hermione kept watching her from the corner of her eye, and if this
annoyed her, she didn’t let it show.
After eating, they ambled out together.

Unable to contain herself any longer, Hermione asked, “So what happened?”

“He didn’t come out till three. Looked damned awful when he did, but Charlie had come loaded
with alcohol, so we just drank... a lot. And talked about Fred. I don’t know if it was plain horrible,
or us making the best of a horrible situation... I know I nodded off at some point.”

She fell quiet as they neared a group of third year students.

“Today morning,” she continued once they were in the clear, “We went home and had breakfast.
Mum had made her usual spread. George wore an earring shaped like a jester’s hat on his stupid
gold ear. Mum told him it was atrocious. Dad, Percy, and Bill... Harry and Ron... went to work. It
was all perfectly normal.”

They were near the Gryffindor common room by then; the fat lady gave them a friendly wave.

“I’m exhausted,” Ginny wheezed.

“Yeah,” Hermione replied delicately, “You should get some sleep.”

Ginny nodded, but lingered for a second or two as tears misted over her eyes.

“Sometimes I hate that the world had the gall to go on after he died.”
The theory of potion making was intricate and deserved to be understood and internalised with full
clarity. But Hermione knew it by heart – word for word. Her preoccupied state of mind wouldn’t
cost her a whole lot.

Keep telling yourself that.

She was sitting with a book on her lap as Ginny recited the fundamental laws, unwaveringly and
accurately. The past hour she’d been in control; spirited, vivacious, and wholly and truly Ginny.

“Yes, perfect,” Hermione said after she finished.

She smiled and then it was Dean’s turn to elaborate on known exceptions. Hermione passed the
book to Theo to check him, while she rubbed her weary eyes.

She was experiencing a strange duality of existence: Everything that had happened last year was
overlapping over the present in a very disconcerting way.
The group that was sitting around her in the library was, (with the exception of Ginny, Susan, and
Mandy,) the same group that had sat in the garden at Shell Cottage, on that surprisingly wonderful
day in the middle of hell. Little Teddy was born... Lupin had arrived with stars in his eyes...

And Lupin was dead.

She rubbed her eyes harder, until she could actually see the sun setting over churning waves, hear
the rush of water, smell the heady aroma of flowers and damp air...

Theo’s head thrown back in laughter, Luna’s quiet chuckle, Dean laugh-crying over his dad, and
Malfoy... recuperating from torture just like her... alight with –

“You alright?”

She pulled her hands off her face and blinked away the spots that spanned before her vision. Theo’s
troubled, wrinkled countenance emerged as they receded.

“Fine,” she murmured, “Who’s next?”

*
Then came another Arithmancy hour, and she was once again alone with Malfoy. She had, out of
habit, initiated another competition: A race against time and each other to verify a series of
astrological forecasts.
And again, she was awfully distracted. Her eyes kept leaping away from her work to scrutinise him,
while he remained diligently focused. He bent close to his parchment, then away quickly when the
top of his quill brushed against his chin. His free hand absently came up to scratch the spot, fingers
curling in and out. His Mark, as expected, was hidden.

How many more Weasley’s would have been dead if he hadn’t used the last of his strength to
apparate and warn Bill?

His brows were drawn low at sharp angles almost parallel to the lines of his jaw.

Words left her mouth before she could so much as think about their appropriateness: “What was it
like... when... when you decided to deflect? When you first went to Lupin?”

He stiffened immediately. His look of concentration morphed into a heavy grimace, and he raised
his head to fix her with the fiercest of glares.

“What was it like killing Bellatrix?”

Ah, she should have anticipated such a rebuttal... had she given her question any consideration. She
felt, at once, like the proverbial deer in the headlights and like a wild, cornered animal. Stunned,
panicked, and ready to lash out with viciousness.
But she sat with those emotions for a moment, regarding the bottomless rancour of his expression.
Then she decided to take a completely different route. She pulled her face to the side, staring
blankly at the fuzzy halo of light around the lamp on their table.

“At that time – when it happened – I honestly don’t think I felt anything. I mean, I don’t remember
feeling anything. She was throwing curses at me. Harry was – I thought he was dead. Tonks was
dead, Fred was dead, Lupin and Lavender were dead. She’d just killed an innocent house elf in
front of me and it reminded me of poor Dobby. And then she turned her wand onto Theo and I – I –
Not him. That’s all I could think – all I cared about. Not him. And now... I don’t think about it. If I
do – about the way I’d so easily, brutally snuffed the life out of another human being – I – I would
just–”

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”

She sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes darted back his way. His aspect had turned analytical, in
an uncertain, narrow-eyed and speculative kind of way.

“...Yes.”

“She wasn’t really human, Granger. She hadn’t been for a while.”

She knew that. And he’d said it in a way that implied that she ought to know that. Hermione bit her
lip. He leant back in his chair and crossed his arms.

“That was from Crime and Punishment,” she said with a certain degree of stupefaction.

He didn’t flinch as he confirmed, “It was.”

“You read it.”

“It’s what I generally do with books.”

“Right.”

She had been sure – an assumption that she felt was corroborated by his stone-facedness – that
Malfoy would never want to bring up the whole book thing. Perhaps the quote had flown out of his
mouth without his consent. He was waiting for her next words while she had no idea what to say.
She picked up her quill once more, just so that she had something to do besides flounder. Maybe
she could get back to work, and then oh so casually ask him what he’d thought about the book. All
airy-like, barely looking up, casually flipping her hair over her shoulder, she’d say, oh by the way,
Malfoy, what did you –

“Don’t think I didn’t know what you were trying to do, Granger, sending me all that dark, gloomy
literature.”

Her quill-laden hand fell upon the table with a soft thud.

“Excuse me?”

His arms remained tightly crossed, but he leaned forward, peering at her with his head lowered.
Another unspoken challenge that prompted in her another wave of discombobulation.

“You saw how close to the edge I was; you were trying to push me over. You wanted me to do
myself in.”

She recoiled at the outrageous, vilifying ludicrousness of that statement and cried, “I did not! That’s
preposterous! I – I gave you Wodehouse!”

“Then what where you up to?”

“Theo told me you were...” she let out a strange semi-vocal expulsion of frustration, “He hinted
that you might have been reconsidering... Well, he seemed to believe that reading some books by
muggles might, um, help you.”

“Ah! So you were trying to fix me!”

His expression was strange – a mix between deep scorn and mocking amusement; candlelight and a
muddle of objectionable sentiments shimmered over his face.

She felt fury scale up her spine.

“Well, clearly it worked!”

It was his turn to retreat. His hands collapsed into his lap and he jerked back. There was a moment
in which his face went absolutely taut with offence. His outrage was so satisfying... until he took a
moment to blink up at the ceiling, and in that process, somehow wrestled his face back into a state
of mild and contemptuous humour.

“Good grief. Sure. It worked. You fixed me. I was broken and brainwashed, being tossed around in
the tidal wave of war. But now I am of sound mind and soul; no longer a vile ideologue, but a ray
of syrupy sodding sunshine – all thanks to Hermione Granger and her books.”

He waved a hand in her direction like, behold – a profound oddity!

How dare he make fun of her for it. How dare he make light of the fact that she’d bloody well
curated and ––– she had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from throwing that in his face. His
disgustingly entertained face, like he had no memory of the empty, hopeless wreck he’d been back
then.

But was that something anyone could forget?

She knew exactly what he was doing. That determined smirk, that testing arch of his brow...

It was a sad fact of her life that the phrase for Theo’s sake, was something that’d been running
through her mind with increasing frequency whenever she was around Malfoy, in a completely
unironic way. She was doing things in his name like she’d finally found a deity she believed in.
But if Malfoy could resign himself to it, she most certainly could as well.

She pressed her indignation down to her feet, trying to stomp, stomp, stomp it out of existence.

“Pfff,” she scoffed, “I’ll have you know that my books and I have done a great deal. Just ask
Harry.”

His mouth quivered and stretched wider.

“Fuck, are you taking credit for all of The Chosen Prat’s accomplishments, too?”

“I am not,” she rejoined, “Not all – just... just ask Harry!”

“A – I will do no such thing. Willingly conversing with Potter, about you of all things, is high on
the list of things I’ll never do. And B – I had no idea you were this deluded, Granger. Unbelieva–”

“I have to get to Ancient Runes,” she supplied superciliously as she shoved her belongings into her
bag... and took another something out of it.

When she looked back up, he was immersed in his calculations again. Just like that.

“Here,” she muttered.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a book, Malfoy. One of those things that you claim to generally read.”

“The Myth of Sisyphus?”

As she turned to leave, she heard the satisfying crack of a crisp spine, and the melodious sound of a
page being turned.

All the professors were at their most unforgiving during lessons, and every lesson involved
gruelling exercises and class assignments aimed to prepare them for the toughest possible exam
papers.

After a turbulent hour in greenhouse one, where Sprout had set up a line of dying plants that they
had to rescue within a ridiculously short amount of time, Hermione dawdled back towards the
castle covered in leaves. Everything was going fine for her until she got to the godforsaken
Bouncing Bulb.

She felt weighed down by her satchel even though it had a weightless charm on it.

She draaaagged herself up to the common room and melted into the first vacant armchair she
found.

The sensation of something being pulled out of her hair had her jumping forward, and she huffed at
Luna who simply grinned and continued to deforest her mane.

“Fun lesson, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Hermione groaned. “In the immortal words of Ron Weasley – that was mental.”

Soon enough, Theo came over to assist Luna. Hermione sat there feeling like a gorilla that was
having lice picked out of its fur by its gorilla-mates.
Days later, she was back on that same armchair, working on an essay for Flitwick. It was
technically dinnertime, but she decided to save time by scarfing down a bag of crisps and some
biscuits that her parents had so kindly sent for her.
She had written two feet on the importance of regulating weather-modifying charms. But her
reverie was shattered when a book landed on the table before her. She started and glanced up and
saw Malfoy’s back as he paced quickly towards the door.

“Malfoy!” she called, “Malfoy!”

He turned slowly, resignation warring with reluctance and painting his face a funny colour.

“What?”

“You’re done?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

She had to admit she was a little dumbfounded that he’d managed to finish it within a week – an
insanely hectic week, at that. But she was careful enough to keep her expression stoic, and not
sputter out her disbelief like she quite was tempted to.

“What did you make of it?”

He sighed again and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he walked closer.

“You’re really obsessed with making points, aren’t you?”

“Oh, that’s me is it?” she taunted.

“Yes.”

“And was my point successfully made?” she asked brusquely.

He scowled.

“What? Do you disagree with one of the greatest philosophical thinkers of all time?”

“I don’t know what I think,” he barked.

Her mouth opened uselessly for three seconds before she snapped it shut once more. He half turned
to leave.

“I would have thought,” she whispered, “The fact that you’re still here, proves that–”

“Our lives weren’t merely absurd, Granger,” he growled, “We weren’t grappling with the ultimate,
inescapable futility of life. It was the most desperately hellish situation, and... and...”

He broke off on an angry breath.

“But you still chose to struggle against it, didn’t you?”

“Not because I acknowledged and accepted the circumstances; not because I was unbound by hope.
Hope was probably the only thing–”

And once again, he cut himself off. He was glaring at her with thunderous disgust and she wanted
to squirm. She wished he would at least sit down – having this exchange while he loomed over her
was maddening. She couldn’t really stand up without looking ridiculous... or aggressive.

“The third kind of absurd man,” she muttered, “The one who relinquishes all promise of eternity...
action over contemplation...”

“Bah,” he scoffed, “I contemplated a lot of things. But certainly not about the meaninglessness of
victory. That wouldn’t have got me anywhere.”

Hermione stared at her knees, and gulped.

Her tone was quivery and pitchy when she whispered, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“Are you happy?” he countered bitterly.

She laughed. It was dull and dry. After a moment, she chanced looking up at him again. But he was
busy boring holes into Titian’s painting of Sisyphus that graced the cover of her book.

“It’s a metaphor, Malfoy,” she said, “Remove it from this context for a moment and you’ll see that
it’s applicable in the case of any hardship, big or small.”

His eyes flickered back towards her and narrowed.

“So your point was for me to focus on the merit of always struggling, and to brush over the entire
chunk that examined the nature of life and the world?”

“I–”

“In that case, Granger, your point was not successfully made.”

“Oh well then.”

Resentment and shame simmered low in her stomach. Yet they were quenched by the time they
reached the back of her throat, doused by his awful, haunted expression.

“My point was,” she said instead, more shakily than ever, “That I would never want anyone to do
themself in.”

He didn’t say anything to that, just watched her in a steady, austere manner.

“Coming for dinner, Draco?”

It was Mandy. She came to a hesitant stop next to Malfoy and laid a hand on his elbow.
“Sure.”

When the common room door closed behind them, Hermione tipped her head against the back of
her chair and gazed at the ceiling.
 Fifty-Eight
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“I applied Arithmancy on nearly all of Trelawney’s predictions in third year!” she stated with acute
(and slightly shrill) exasperation, “They were so sensational and woolly, and that’s exactly what the
calculations showed – I can’t begin to tell you how many of them had zero probability of coming to
fruition!”

Malfoy scoffed, lounging in his chair with an over-the-top show of patience like he was indulging a
raving lunatic.

“And yet you spent a good chunk of your life courting death because of one of her oh so woolly
prophecies. Potter’s entire life was dictated by it.”

“But that,” she rejoined hotly, “Was because Voldemort–” (he winced so faintly that it may just
have been a trick of the candlelight) “–had decided to take the prophecy seriously! He made it valid
by giving it merit it didn’t deserve. He marked Harry as his equal, and Harry being Harry couldn’t
back away from the responsibility of doing the right thing–”

“So it’s all down to Potter’s messiah complex and The Da – you kno – his paranoia?”

“Yes! Trelawney simply rambles semi-ambiguously, and she’s only a seer because people have
decided she is.”

This debate was taking place as they worked on an Arithmancy assignment for a lesson that was
just half an hour away. There was a part of her brain that was screaming at her for wasting time, but
that part was easily overpowered by her desire to...
Get.
Him.
To.
Concede.

He dropped his quill on the table between them and set his elbow no the arm of his chair. He tilted
his head, resting his temple against two fingers, thus stepping up his languid disposition.

“Let's say the prophecy only came about because of fear and gullibility. You still have to admit that
the whole thing played out exactly as she had foretold.”

“Pff.” Hermione rolled her eyes. “That’s because she’s an expert at phrasing and walking the line
between vagueness and suggestion.”

“I don’t understand. Is she a blithering fool or is she a shrewd genius?”

“People can be both, you know,” Hermione sniffed.

He grinned. Something in his gaze sharpened.

“Indeed.”

The implication was clear. Hermione felt her hackles rise.

“All right,” he continued as, in a fluid motion, he straightened his head and dropped his hand onto
his lap, “Is Delphi the same way then? Was she a fraud as well? A devious-puppet-master-cum-
deranged-babbler?”

Hermione attempted to execute a casual shrug though her shoulders were stiff with umbrage.

“Perhaps. She was allegedly high on ethylene fumes, anyway. If she hadn’t opened her mouth – or
her supposed third eye – we might never have known the pathos of Greek tragedy.”

“And yet, there on that parchment in front of you, you have numbers that prove her predictions had
at least some merit. And these calculations have nothing to do with how seriously people decided to
take what she said–”

“But the answer is never one, is it? We calculate the likelihood of something happening, but have
we ever come across a prediction that’s proved to be certain? I mean, I could say it’s going to rain
tomorrow–”

“It isn’t.”

“And it’ll fall somewhere between zero and one–”

“Definitely zero.”

“Does that mean I’m a seer too? Well, all right! Beware, Malfoy – before the midnight hour, all
your hair is going to fall off!”

He was sniggering at her with one side of his mouth pulled higher than the other.

“Put on monstrous glasses, drape yourself in trumpery beads, and you’ll look remarkably like
Trelawney.”

“Oh, off with you!”

“In a bit. I need to get this assignment done first.”

“Right–” she cleared her throat, “–So we should move on to–”

“Just one more thing, though.”

“What?” she sighed.

“How do you propose we test the true veracity of a prophecy?”

“W-ell,” she hedged, “If such a thing does exist... I suppose it can be proved if the maker of said
prophecy is kept in complete isolation, and makes the prediction to an unbiassed, uninvolved party.
And it’ll have to be something precise – not a bit of clever phrasing or something vague and open
to interpretation...”

She didn’t need his look of derisive scepticism to know she sounded ridiculous.

“Sure,” he drawled, “Let’s lock someone up until they say something that’s exactly to your
specifications. And keep them there until it is fulfilled... or isn’t... but who knows how long that’ll
take? I mean, it only took seventeen years for the Potter-prophecy to come true. So let’s just keep
them locked up forever, right? That’s really bloody ethical.”

Seriously. Malfoy was calling her out for being unethical.

“It was purely hypothetical!” she sputtered defensively.

“And you do realise that no-sodding-one can ever make a specific prophecy in an isolated
environment, don’t you?”

“So you admit it’s a sham?”

“True seers are said to react to the magic around them... like weathervanes for magical energy, if
you will. I do believe it is perfectly possible to be intensely attuned to that. As for the way they
choose to verbalise those inklings...”

“Go on,” Hermione urged with narrowed eyes.

“Just a load of artistic liberties.”

She reared back so suddenly that it was dizzying.

“Huh?”

“You know. A bit of suggestive flimflam. Cleverly crafted ambiguity.”

“But – what – you just–”

“True, unconditional prophecies are a myth. Trelawney’s definitely full of it.”

“Malfoy!” she yowled, “If that’s what you – What the hell was all this about?!”

He feigned a yawn. He cracked his knuckles, he sat up straight, he picked up his quill.

“We really ought to get back to this assignment – only fifteen minutes more to finish it,” he said.

“But!! Just hold on a minute–”

“Fifteen minutes, Granger.”

He began writing. Hermione’s mind reeled with vehement incredulity as she glared at his bowed,
stylishly tousled head. Fifteen minutes... fifteen minutes... how long would it take to empty her
inkpot all over those pale locks?

He smirked haughtily, as though he could hear her thoughts.

Fifteen minutes.

She got back to work, too.

The ceiling of the Great Hall was bright blue and clear with a flurry of owls circling beneath it.

Hermione ignored the Daily Prophet in favour of drizzling honey into her bowl of porridge. She
was in the mood for something terribly sweet, and she went about her task in a Pollock-ish manner.
Finally, after she felt she had achieved some compositional harmony, she turned to the paper.

Her spoon fell into the bowl with a dull splodge.

MINISTRY PASSES GROUNDBREAKING BILL FOR THE REHABILITATION OF

WAREWOLF ATTACK VICTIMS:

10th April 1999: Following a six hour long deliberation with the Wizengamot, a committee led by
the Minister for Magic himself was successful in launching its program to aid the scores of people
whose lives were destroyed by Fenrir Greyback’s pack of werewolves. Under this act, (unofficially
dubbed Lupin’s Law,) victims that have so far been under the care of St. Mungo’s Lycanthropy
Centre will be offered a lifetime’s supply of Wolfsbane potion. The Ministry will assign a counsellor
to help the adults secure jobs and housing.

An additional clause of this act has ensured that the many young orphaned children will be looked
after. The construction of a sprawling mansion is underway at a property donated by Andromeda
Tonks, (widow of the late Edward Tonks, and mother to the late Nyphadora Tonks.) The orphanage
is to be maintained partially by the Department for the Regulation and Control for Magical
creatures, supplemented by donations made by various anonymous sources –

Hermione’s eyes had misted over. She stared through the blur at the photograph accompanying the
article: It showed Kingsley striding across the dungeons of the Ministry, followed closely by Percy,
Andromeda, and various figures in plum robes, including Tiberius Ogden.
She pushed the paper across the table to Ginny and Neville and shovelled a spoonful of porridge
into her mouth. It was much, much too sweet.

She saw many things in her honey-drip painting. She saw Lupin’s rare, truly delighted smile that
she’d only ever seen around Harry or when he spoke about his son. She saw his son, pink-faced,
dimpled, waving his fist about. She saw the thing with feathers that perches in the soul –
And she saw herself in plum robes, marching through the Ministry, steeped in the glow of
something momentous and significant.

Since the day was so fine, and it a Sunday to boot, Hermione agreed to follow Ginny into the
quidditch pitch after breakfast. She took a pew at a sunny spot in the stands and composed a letter
to her parents as Luna, Neville, Hannah, Susan and Mandy chatted and discussed the game taking
place above their heads.

It was three a side, and while Ginny, Dean, Demelza, and Malfoy were all competent chasers and
Michael minded his three hoops, Theo couldn’t be less interested in performing his duties as a
keeper. He floated idly and lazily around the pitch, paying no attention to Ginny and Dean’s fury.
He swooped over to where Luna was sat and kissed her; Malfoy and Demelza scored some twelve
goals each.

An hour later, he was still utterly unaffected by his team’s devastating loss. A few of them decided
to head to Hogsmeade, and all the way, Dean and Ginny harped away at him. He told Dean that he
looked quite sexy when he was angry.

They ate sandwiches at a new deli that had opened by the book shop.

Hermione supposed it was the weather that was making everyone completely crazy. Spring in the
air – the season of blossoming love, flowers, butterflies, and blah-blah.

It wasn’t long after their lunch that Harry showed up and whisked Ginny away. He’d actually
petted Hermione’s head as he’d left – he was in that kind of mood. Neville and Hannah disappeared
soon after.

During the walk back to the castle, Theo and Luna were in one of their bubbles. Once inside,
Mandy whispered something in Malfoy’s ear, causing him to smirk and drag her off somewhere
down a third floor corridor.
So ultimately, it was just Hermione, Dean, and Michael climbing up staircases.

“Do you know,” Dean grumbled, “How long it’s been since I’ve had a half-decent snog?”

“Don’t look at me,” Hermione warned at once.

“I wasn’t,” he insisted irritably.

“Nor me,” Michael piped up.

Dean bared his teeth at him.

“I’ve got to send this off,” Hermione said, waving her letter as she broke away from the boys. She
went up to the owlery and watched the owl carrying her letter fly off and away until it was a mere
speck in the sky... until it disappeared into the blue.

She wasn’t wistful anymore, though her soul craved a kind of blossoming too. For the first time,
she felt in control of her path. Fifty-eight days till the NEWT's. Though she knew full well that life
did all it could to veer its players off course, she was going to try her damnedest not to let it.

There were no words to describe how vexed Hermione had been – and still was – by the sole
Exceeds Expectations in her OWL result sheet. She begged Hestia to give her extra practice
assignments.

She was on schedule, determined, equanimous, and sleeping no more than four hours a day.

Morning run – twenty-five minutes. Five minutes to sprint back to her room. Fifteen minutes to
shower. One hour of revision before breakfast.

She was perfectly aware of how her peers looked at her when she brought her strident persona out
during their group sessions. Increasingly, she found that they were just getting together out of habit;
they could no longer work on the same things because very few of them were at the same stage that
she was.
Tough as it was to admit, the subject she felt most accomplished in was Arithmancy. With Malfoy,
she’d somehow found an ideal blend of competitiveness and productivity, (often fuelled by
irritation, but that hardly mattered.) She was already halfway through a second notebook – they’d
done dozens of mock exams, scores of calculations, proved and evaluated numerous prophecies...

And just when she’d be at the risk of feeling smug or complacent, he’d show her up and she’d be
irritated into productivity all over again.
Like for instance, at that moment, she was unreservedly, out-and-out desperate to beat him for once
after he’d finished tabulating three of Delphi’s predictions before her–––

“Shut up!”

Stunned, Hermione snapped her head up.

“Excuse me?”

He was glaring at her like she’d spit in his eye and called him a ferret.

“Stop bloody muttering, would you?”

“I was not muttering!”

“You were,” he persisted irritably, “You’ve called Delphi every name in the book.”

“No, I–”

Ahem. She felt embarrassment flood her face.

Her eyes dropped to her lap and she mumbled, “I didn’t realise I was saying that out loud. Er,
sorry.”

There was no response from him for some time, so she risked a glance–

Yes. It was as expected. That same old questioning-Hermione-Granger’s-sanity look that she’d
witnessed on all too many faces.

“It’s just all this... this... flowery rubbish she spouted!” she said with fanatical intent to defend
herself. “Paragraph after paragraph of baroque superfluous...ness... before she actually gets to the
point!”

Malfoy’s mouth lifted into a wry half smile.

“You aren’t fond of the occasional poetic turn of phrase? I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s hardly occasional!” she protested, “And it’s so unnecessary here! Such a waste of my time,
trudging through all this when there are so many other things to do!”

“How terribly inconsiderate of the great Oracle to not have considered your pre-exam schedule
while making her monumental prophecies.”

“She was a seer,” Hermione sniffed, “She should have seen it coming.”

He laughed.
He laughed out loud with a kind of guileless amusement that was rich and infectious and left her
grinning at the top of her quill.
“Well, Granger,” he declared with great pomposity, “You know what you must do.”

He paused long enough for Hermione to huff and ask, “Oh, what must I do, Malfoy?”

“Persevere.” There was an enigmatic lilt in buried in his enunciation. “Keep pushing that boulder
up the slope.”

Her grin was threatening to return with reinforcements. She sucked in her cheeks and said, (as
dryly as she could possibly manage in that moment,) “You’re hilarious.”

“I know.”

He returned to his work, but Hermione dithered. It said a lot about the poor state of her mind that
that small pretence at witticism had felt tremendously refreshing. She yearned for it to have lasted a
little longer. It gnawed at her insides as she slowly dipped her quill into her ink pot and it protested
as she pressed the tip against her parchment. She tried to look at the page of Greek characters
before her but they all fused into a muddy haze.

“You know,” she ventured somewhat hesitatingly, “there are many more works in Camus’ oeuvre
that are considered must reads.”

His hand stilled and he looked up at her over curved brows.

“All situated somewhere on the scale of bleakness, I suppose?”

“Well, yes,” she acceded with a shrug, “There’s one – possibly his most famous work of fiction –
The Outsider–”

“I’ve read it.”

She put her quill down and settled against the back of her chair. He had a familiar, incongruent
blend of humour and contempt swirling about his face, under a thin veneer of apathy. She decided
to label it his ‘in a dilemma’ expression – though she was the one who was really wavering
between approaches; it seemed like that was how he always looked when she was in such a state of
mind.
Perhaps she should call it his, ‘I’ll bet you can’t possibly pick the right thing to say, Granger’
expression. It was both frightening and downright galling that the onus was always on her. She
should simply get back to work and put an end to the ridiculous deadlock.

“There’s a bookshop near the visitor’s entrance of the Ministry. I popped in before my trial.”

Hermione could’ve sworn she heard a farcically exaggerated noise of screeching breaks as her
thoughts halted.

“Of course, I only read it after... but the irony wasn’t lost on me. Certainly not when the memory of
waiting in my holding cell was so fresh in my mind. So you needn’t bother pushing this bit of
depressing introspection unto me – I’ve been through it quite, quite thoroughly.”

“That wasn’t why I brought it up!” Hermione objected.

And it truly wasn’t. There was no part of her that conflated Malfoy with Meursault – she knew he
could cry bitter, broken tears out of worry for his mother. She hastened to say something vaguely
reassuring... but he positively killed the sentiment as it began to climb out of her voice box.

He scoffed. He rolled his eyes. “Bullshit.”

So she scowled, grabbed her bag off the floor, and summoned a thick, heavy book from within her
beaded pouch.

“Here you go,” she spat, “The Pickwick Papers. One of the most clever and riotously funny books
ever written. While there is a bit of incarceration involved, even a sourpuss like you–”

“What the f– Sourpuss?”

“–hilarious, and completely unrelatable. Unless some untoward ex-girlfriend of yours has dragged
you to court for a breach of promise...?”

He shook his head with very grave, deliberate solemnity.

“Well then,” she concluded, “You’re safe from any dangerous introspection.”

Malfoy turned the book over, running a finger along the spine as he read the back. His mouth was
pursed to the side contemplatively.

“Spiffy new plan of action,” he declared after he’d finished. He sat back and placed his interlocked
fingers on top of the book, all crisp and businesslike. “I daresay this is a much more effective
means of sabotaging–”

“Oh, what is it now?!”

“Come on. Giving me a... what was it? Riotously funny and bloody fat book to read less than two
months before the NEWT's? What is that if not sabotage? You’re trying to get me to fail.”

Hermione wished she had his remarkable facial control. How she struggled to keep down her
laughter, while he maintained nothing more than a subtle smirk!

“Why on earth would I want to do that?” She dragged her voice as she spoke, hoping to sound
convincingly fed-up.

He looked down his nose at his her.

“You feel threatened by me, of course.”

“Oh, please–”

“Tell me, Granger... is this book full of flowery prose?”

Hermione leant forward and waited until he met her eyes.

“It’s the absolute Dickens.”

She let herself laugh at her own awful joke, and when he didn’t crack a smile, she laughed harder
still.

It was sacred, ritualistic circumambulation, it was Caesarian ambition, churning an ocean of milk,
running her hands through her hair, slapping her face to keep awake during balmy afternoons and
post-lunch lethargy...

She stuck a list of topics (classified by subject) on the back of her door. Every night, at least three
things had to be crossed out.

Three days after she’d sent them her letter, Hermione received a response from her parents. They’d
also sent her a small bag of treats and two large, bright white, multi-pocket folders – one for her,
and one for Theo.

Outside the Ancient Runes classroom, she handed it to him and said, “Here. They’re sending you
stationery, which means that they’ve decided that you’re their child. Welcome to the family.”

“Theodore Granger,” he mused smilingly, “I like it.”

“Nott-Granger.”

“Yes, Granger.”

“Nott-quite-Granger? It matters Nott. Granger or Nott, you’re still–”

“Hermione,” he chuckled, “You need to sleep more.”

“No, I do... No–”

“Don’t.”

“Okay, I will Nott.”

He groaned and buried his face in his folder; the devastation of his pose was much diminished by
the fact that it had Chipper Choppers embossed on the cover in glinting sliver letters.
Hermione dragged herself through the common room door after a miserable, half-arsed jog around
the grounds. She was lightheaded and couldn’t stop yawning. The purpose of her run – providing a
boost of invigoration – had definitely not been accomplished.

She expected to find the room empty at that early hour, but much to her surprise, she found Malfoy
sitting by the large window with a book in his lap. Her book.

She dragged herself over to him. Somewhere along the way her foot hit a desk, and the noise jerked
him out of the book. He blinked disorientedly while she parked herself on the arm of a nearby chair
because she just couldn’t stay on her feet.

“Are you happy with the unrelenting hilarity of those Pickwickian adventures?”

Tinged blue and pink by the early morning light, he closed the book, (but not before marking his
page with a black filigree bookmark.)

“You were wrong about it being completely unrelatable.”

“Oh?”

“I’m pretty sure Theo is based on Sam Weller.”

Laughter bubble out of her as she nodded in agreement. “Somewhat, I suppose. And what about
you then? Are you like Mr Winkle, with your delusions of sportiness?”

He sneered, but it didn’t seem very vicious.

She continued, “Although, if Theo’s Sam, you could be Pickwick... with the way he watches out for
you–”

...He grinned so widely and unexpectedly that her breath caught in her lungs.

“So he’s my valet, eh?”

“No,” she refuted at once, “I was alluding to the parallels in personality only.”

“Right.”

“Yes, that’s right!” If he would stop grinning, she might be able to shoot him down properly.
“Like... like you’re the idle and rich Bertie Wooster, and he’s the clever and resourceful Jeeves–”

“Still my valet, though.”

“Not the poi–”

“And you,” he drawled, “Are most certainly an overbearing Aunt Agatha in the making.”

“I am not a snob!” she snapped, “And while I’m well aware that you treat your friends like
underlings, that was certainly not what I was getting at!”
It was only after his expression turned unreservedly frosty that she realised how open and
easygoing it had been before. Shame pickle at her inside and out, while her brain decided to supply
her with the memory of him bound before her, urgently seeking her commitment to Theo’s safety –
She wished she could snatch back her words and run away. Chagrin clung to her well-established
exhaustion and she felt fucking heavy – but unfortunately not heavy enough to sink through the
ground.

The colour of his eyes was made to communicate fury. Like ice sparkling over cold, hard granite.

She gulped. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Don’t worry, Granger,” he ground out in a disturbingly even tone, “For once you delivered the
exact point you were aiming to make.”

“Honestly, Malfoy, I–”

“Yeah, fuck off.”

He stood up and walked away, up the stairs to the boys’ dorms. She watched him go in silent
shame. He’d left the book behind.

That night Hermione decided, though she absolutely hated doing that dance with him, that she
would tender a proper apology to Malfoy. She’d felt awful the whole day, a feeling that had reached
its zenith when she remembered that one of his underlings was dead, and the way in which Malfoy
collapsed against a wall afterwards...

Yes, she would be copiously repentant. She didn’t expect him to be gracious about it – but that was
all beyond her control.

I apologise, Malfoy.

I regret what I said, Malfoy.

She lay in bed and practiced saying the words out loud. They sat like something bitter on her
tongue; combined with the twisting in her gut, she thought that this was what dysentery felt like.
Alas, she caught no more than fleeting glimpses of him the next day. He was there during lessons;
but then he vanished. He wasn’t around for meals, he wasn’t in the library, he wasn’t in the
common room. Perturbed, she finally had no choice but to question Theo. He was in a rush to meet
Luna before curfew, and paused in a strange sprinter’s stance when she stopped him just a few
meters away from the door.

“Where’s Malfoy?”

“Why?” he asked inquisitively.

“Arithmancy... stuff,” she replied patly.

“In his room, I think.” He straightened and turned so he was facing her properly. “Do you want me
to get him?”

“No! Oh no. It’s not urgent or anything.”

Theo left with a quizzical air, looking at her for the long moment it took for the door to close
between them. Hermione sighed and took a seat on the sofa next to Padma, whose aspect towards
her had thawed considerably in the past week. It most probably had something to do with the fact
that Terry was frequently spotted in the company of a sixth year Ravenclaw, (named Lucy or Lacey
or something.) Well good for him and all that.
She stayed there after Padma called it a night, and long after Theo returned looking terribly
mussed. At some ungodly hour, a trio of House-Elves showed up to clean the room and she, to their
everlasting horror, insisted on helping them.

It was three in the morning when she finally went to bed, and it was the kind of unsettling sleep that
felt like she had awoken mere moments after her head had hit the pillow. Her watch, however, told
her that it had been four hours.

As she washed, she wished she was made of sugar or sand so that she’d crumble and melt under the
surge of hot water. Pulling her socks on felt like an enormous task; she flopped back in bed after
she had finished, head swimming, eyes burning, eyes watering, eyelids fluttering...

Her eyes flew open and it was eight-thirty and – bugger – she dashed out of her room in a deranged
panic, bursting into the common room that was... full of people not in their uniforms?

Dash it all, it was Saturday.

Very sheepishly, she rolled along back into her room to change. She took a moment to observe
herself in the mirror, trying to will the intensely high colour off her face. She ran her fingers
through her manic hair and twisted it up into a high bun.

When she returned downstairs, Theo was waiting for her, obviously having witnessed her
embarrassment.

“What is going on with you?” he asked as he led her out by the elbow.

“Nothing,” she sighed, “I’m ravenous.”

She fished a couple of chocolate bars out of her bag, (honestly, her parents were saints,) and
together they walked around an open courtyard as they ate.

“You really need to pace yourself, Hermione.”

“You’re eating ten times faster than I am!”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” he snapped, “You already know that whole curriculum
backwards. Stop being absurd.”

Of course when he said absurd, her thoughts immediately jumped to Malfoy. But then she realised
that Theo looked more than simply annoyed with her...er, eccentricities. There was something just
off about him, too.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He didn’t say anything – just leaned back against a pillar and looked at her with his mouth turned
downwards in a way that said not now, please. So she went and stood next to him and rested her
head against the warm stone. Sunlight felt good on her face; when she closed her eyes it seeped
through her eyelids, and the world glowed orange like a blazing rock salt lamp.

On Sunday afternoon, Hermione was the first one to arrive at the library for an hour of charms
revision. She didn’t waste any time waiting, and immersed herself in her notes on conjuring
charms. The rest of them straggled in in ones and twos, muttering hullo and making a general
racket as they got their books and other paraphernalia out. She didn’t really acknowledge any of
them... except Theo, for he plucked away the quill holding her hair up rather than going through the
effort of retrieving his own. Him, she scowled at.

“Where’s Draco?” Neville asked just as Hermione was about to set the hour’s agenda.
She paused and looked around: He really wasn’t there. Surely... it couldn’t possibly be because of
her, could it?

That’s when Mandy piped up, in a manner that was aberrantly testy – “Yes. Where is Draco?”

Theo took his time in settling, in draping his robes over the back of his chair and placing his
parchment exactly between his inkpot and textbook. Mandy’s mouth was tightening by the second.

Finally, he replied, “Draco isn’t here.”

A few people laughed, but Mandy was not one of them.

“Where is he, Theo?”

He gave her a blank stare. “He has some personal business to attend to.”

“That’s exactly what he told me before he left!”

“Then what are you asking me for?”

“I want to know what exactly this personal business is! He’s been a beast all weekend,” Mandy
lashed out at a volume that probably gave Susan an ulcer.

Theo, unperturbed, said, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

“I’m his girlfriend! I ought to know–”

“If he thought you ought to know he would have told you. Now, if you’re through tormenting poor
Susan, I suggest you stop shrieking in the library. Hermione, darling, lead the way.”

She tried - she really did - but conducting anything through air that was frigid and so thick was
difficult. Ultimately, they all sat reading quietly on their own. Hermione was torn in three
directions: her notes, Theo, (stiff as a board and chewing his tongue,) and Neville, because he had
around a hundred questions about water charms.

On her way down for supper, Hermione encountered Theo and Luna at the top of the grand
staircase. She was whispering fervently as she held his face in her hands. Then, with a quick kiss on
his mouth, she left. He remained standing there, frowning at the tops of his shoes.

“Theo,” she begged, “What’s wrong?”

He gave her the same pleading look as before, but she must’ve come across as considerably less
amenable so he sighed. “Draco’s gone to visit Lucius again. And you know me. I’m a pathological
worrier.”

“Oh,” she squeaked.

“Yeah. I’m going to stand outside McGonagall’s office and wait for him to come back... should be
any time now. I’ll see you later.”

Hermione gave his arm a squeeze as he went by. Then she went down to the Great Hall. She sat, as
usual, next to Ginny, and helped herself to food as usual. She could scarcely eat any of it.

The Forbidden Forest glittered like a quadrillion-faceted emerald. Sunlight glanced off leaves that
lightly fluttered in the morning breeze.

See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!

Descending Gods have found Elysium here.

Hermione walked down a corridor at a gentle pace, admiring nature every time it made an
appearance, framed perfectly within large arches. She had successfully performed non-verbal
human transfiguration ten times in a row, and there was still plenty of time before she was due in
the dungeons for Potions. She’d been gifted a short breather, and rather than filling it with some
more revision, she’d decided to take a stroll. Theo would approve.

The air wafting in through the open panes smelt warm and sugary, like mum’s clothes after she’d
spent the day outside. Hermione was especially fond of hugging her in those instances. It was the
kind of weather that compelled dad to make lemonade six times a day. He’d take her to the park to
fly a kite, and they’d come home to find mum walking barefooted through the lawn, watering her
precious flowerbeds–

When she first spotted him at the end of the passageway, she felt he might blind her. He was
practically glowing, stark against the dark grey and brown stone behind him. He was leaning
forward with his arms crossed and resting on the balustrade, staring outside and evidently lost in
thought.

Hermione approached him with slow, measured steps. She was simultaneously bracing herself,
going over her words in her head, and pulling out The Pickwick Papers from her bag. It was
remarkable that she didn’t stumble.
She did, however, make quite an infernal stomp stomp stomping racket as she walked, and, quite
unsurprisingly, that grabbed his attention. She was forced to cover a good distance while he
watched her, hobbling as she was with one hand in her bag and hair flying about in the wind.

She was completely flustered by the time she was near enough to speak to him. He was all coolly
blank and unruffled, staring at her without bothering to fully turn her way. She breathed in once, for
courage, and immediately registered something sharp, woody, and mildly citrusy that was not just
the summer air. It was better.

Oh, just get this over with.

She held out the book like a blessed offering and said, “Look. ...Draco. I apologise for what I said
that morning.”

Because she was forcing herself to properly face him, she had the singular pleasure of witnessing
the way his appearance changed. He looked from the book to her face in rapid succession. His
eyebrows climbed up and his mouth curled into a wickedly amused smirk. He twisted just a
fraction, so only one of his elbows was resting on the railing.

“Palms up... Calling me by my first name... What is this, Granger – some sort of psychological
ploy?”

Yes.

“No!”

“A pitifully obvious one.”

Hermione’s entire face was burning, and she just could not meet his eye anymore. She thrust the
book at him, (thankfully he accepted it before it could fall to the floor,) and turned to the grounds.

“Oh look!” she exclaimed and pointed at Sprout who was tending to a few shrubs behind the
greenhouses, “Have you ever seen a more fitting Demeter?”

She laughed when he did, pretending that it was aimed at her quip and not at her. It was a piss-poor
attempt.

“And there goes Hephaestus, I suppose?”

She chanced a glance at him from the corner of her eye to find that he too was peering down at the
grounds. She followed his gaze and found Hagrid, dragging a sack full of... something... from the
forest to his hut.

“Dear god, no. I really don’t fancy placing him in a forge, surrounded by fire and dangerous
implements.”

“Ha! You’re right,” he guffawed, “Stupid, lumbering oaf would burn the place down in seconds.”

“Don’t call him that!” she snapped, all at once peeved. She also felt a stab of guilt; she hadn’t been
to see Hagrid in ages.

“You said it first, not me!” Malfoy countered snootily, “He’s the epitome of incompetence–”
“He’s not incompe–”

“For fuck’s sake. You have to admit he’s a lousy teacher. I can’t believe McGonagall let him
continue. Makes you wonder if she has any business calling herself Minerva.”

Hermione didn’t want to fight with him again, so she didn’t dispute his assertion. Also... she rather
agreed with him. There was no reason besides blind loyalty and sentimentality to pick Hagrid over
Grubbly-Plank.

“Professor Vector would be a suitable Athena, wouldn’t she?” she mused with renewed amiability.

“Eh, I suppose,” he granted.

She stole another glance: He was staring straight ahead, squinting slightly against the glare. It was
just so weird standing beside him like that, having a daft but reasonably jovial conversation. He
seemed at ease, and she felt – well, at that moment she was utterly bemused – but before, for a
moment, she’d been entertained and perfectly... okay.

Holy shit, this was Malfoy. Not for the first time, she was engaging in a casual and enjoyable
conversation with Malfoy. It was Malfoy who turned to regard her at her sudden silence, quirking a
brow, all curious and even-tempered –

“Filch could be Hephaestus.” She blurted out, “I mean, he... limps about.”

“Why not? I’m sure he’s secretly capable of fashioning the most impressive and exquisite artillery.”

“You never know.”

“I agree. He’s definitely a man of many hidden talents. He’s got that air about him.”

She dipped her head as she laughed, and when she looked up again, he had resumed his perusal of
the world outside, albeit with a small, crooked smile.

“Pomfrey as Artemis?” he proposed.

“Yes. And Flitwick is Poseidon.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she shrugged, “My head is full of water charms.”

She watched as a tiny bracket appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Then there’s Hermes–”

“Ludo Bagman.”

He laughed at that, out loud and everything, and once again she was sucked into a vortex of
‘what?!’ and gobsmackedness.

“A long time ago, I would have thought Snape was Hephaestus, but now I think of him as Janus,
the two-faced one.”

She said that without thinking, so caught in the moment. His face fell like a flame that had been
doused and she could have kicked herself had both her feet not been lodged firmly in her mouth.

With his new, regrettable grimness he mumbled, “If my father is to be believed, I am the two-faced
one.”

Was she meant to have heard that?

“I’m sure you know better than to believe what your father says by now,” she retorted in a voice as
low as his had been.

He grimaced. With an exasperated, almost disgusted sigh he pushed away from the arch and started
striding down the corridor.

“Wha – Malfoy?”

“Potions,” he grunted by way of explanation, without looking back.

She got moving as well, but her accompanying sigh was resigned and deflated. What an
unfortunate turn of events. Again.

On arriving at the dungeons, Malfoy was instantly assailed by Mandy who looked just about as
happy as she had in the library the day before. Hermione skittered over to where Theo, Luna, and
Ginny were standing.

“Where’ve you been?” Ginny asked.

She forced herself to smile and replied, “Took a brief, rejuvenating turn around the castle. Looked
outside at the birds and trees. Didn’t think about the NEWT's even once.”

“Good girl,” Theo cheered.

They filled into the classroom, taking their places as the god of crystallised pineapple bombarded
them with an affable chant of come in, come in. He looked upon them rather indulgently with his
round, protruding eyes.

“Just a little over a month before we bid each other farewell!” he sighed, “I must admit, you all
have won a special place in my heart. Yes, yes, very special indeed.”

He wasn’t bothered at all by the fact that most of the class seemed revolted by that prospect.

“Now, while the rest of you prepare a quick Occulus potion, I have a special assignment for my top
five students. Ms Granger – but of course – Ms Patil, Mr Goldstein, Ms Bones, and Mr Malfoy... if
you will make your way to this corner table here.”

They did, slothfully as their path was impeded by a very slow moving man. He’d set up a long,
rectangular table with five large cauldrons. Hermione claimed a corner seat with her back to the
wall. She caught Theo and Ginny’s eyes as she sat, and they both pulled different but equally silly
faces at her.
Padma took the seat next to her and they exchanged a smile. At the edge of her vision, two seats
down on the opposite side, Malfoy was dancing his fingers along the edge of the table.

“Excellent, excellent,” Slughorn beamed, “I’m sure you are simply dying to know what I have
planned for you!” He produced a parchment from his waistcoat pocket, (Hermione couldn’t believe
there was room enough in there for his hand,) and created five duplicates of it with a flick of his
wand.
“These,” he explained, “Are instructions for brewing a Repleo draught – the most powerful
replenishing potion in existence. There’s never enough at Mungo’s because it’s notoriously difficult
to make. Requires extreme precision. Brew it successfully and your examiners will award you an
outstanding without a second’s hesitation.”

Hermione grabbed her parchment with no little zeal, full of the heady exhilaration that comes with
a new, unexpected challenge. The ingredient list was vast – thirty items in absurdly exact amounts.
The potion would take a month to prepare. She looked around her, thrilled, hoping to find someone
to share her enthusiasm. She didn’t have to look too far – Padma appeared as keen as she was.
Anthony, steadfastly team Boot, refused to acknowledge her, and Susan was still going through the
instructions.

The first order of business was to extract the juice of sixteen and a half boom berries. A tricky task,
as they were fond of exploding when poked the wrong way. She stopped after five, to flex her
fingers, and to edge away from Padma who was softly cursing at the dangerous sounds emitting out
of her berries.

“You’re squeezing the sides when you cut it,” Malfoy muttered suddenly, “Don’t do that.”

“How else do I get it to stay in place?” Padma wailed.

“Like this – make an L with your hand... yeah, nestle the berry between your palm and thumb.
Good, now press down with the tip of your knife – there you go then.”

“Wow! Thanks, Malfoy!”

“Sure,” he shrugged.

Hermione picked up a berry to test his method as well: It took the burden off her cramping fingers
completely. Wow, indeed. She looked up just in time to catch him watching her attempt.
Chapter End Notes

1. "the thing with feathers that perches in the soul": Hope is the thing with feathers, by Emily
Dickinson
2. "See what delights in sylvan scenes appear...": Summer - The Second Pastoral, or Alexis by
Alexander Pope.
 Fifty-Nine
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

There was a part of her – the part that pressed ice under her eyes every morning and prevented her
from meeting Theo’s particular, penetrative gaze – that knew she was stretching herself too thin.

Between the idea

And the reality
Between the motion
And the act...

Fell Hermione.

(Literally, flat on her arse, as she attempted to annotate the annotations in her Runes textbook while
skipping down a staircase.)

She was the shadow, too – of herself, of her perseverance. Just a spectral mass that hovered and
performed the things that Real Hermione had instructed her to perform. (After which, Real
Hermione had crawled into a titanium sarcophagus and gone to sleep.)

Shadow Hermione carried on.

Now to Transfiguration, now to the greenhouses, and now... now... racing up to the library, and now
to her room because everywhere else was so noisy –

The walking shadow strutting and fretting her hour upon the stage –

But her resolve never wavered and her schedule never slipped. So really, Hermione Granger was
fine.

She was fine at seven thirty on a Friday evening, in the library that was more crowded than usual,
but still reasonably quiet.

The mild light-headedness she was experiencing was pleasant. The throbbing behind her eyes had
an interesting tempo. The fact that she had slid so low in her chair because she couldn’t hold herself
up was easily ignorable.

See? Fine.

She took a break after a foot-long elaboration on planetary cycles to massage the base of her
thumb. Across the table, Malfoy – with his impeccable posture and all – continued to write on a
parchment that was quite clearly longer than a foot. How on earth had he managed to surpass her?

She slipped a little further down, and rested her head against the back of her chair. Her neck had
been having a hard time handling the weight of her head.

“Did you ever go back to that muggle bookshop?” she asked with a barely perceptible crackle in
her voice.

There was this thing he did – an understated stiffening of sorts – every time she spoke to him
unexpectedly; like he was bracing himself or summoning divine patience or something. It annoyed
her that he did it and it annoyed her that she noticed it.

“Once,” he muttered, (clipped, clear-cut – thank you very much,) then went on to flip very
deliberately through his textbook.

Hermione hummed, (airy, intrigued – I see, do go on,) and asked, “Buy anything?”

She lifted her arms behind her head and gripped the top rail of her chair, stretching her shoulder
blades in a very satisfying manner. He huffed and closed his eyes in a theatrical show of
aggravation before looking at her.

His face said that he was looking at the shoddiest, most pathetic creature he’d ever seen.

His voice said, “I didn’t get a chance to.”

“How come?” she persisted.

She kicked her legs out, pulling them taught and straight and dragging herself lower. Her elbows
folded awkwardly on either side of her head like blinkers. They put her entire focus on the
crotchety person in front of her.

He huffed again, but this time he loosened. His shoulders relaxed.

“I was just browsing, minding my own business, when a woman as old as the hills barged in and
shoved a book into my face.” He paused then, giving Hermione a shifty, speculative look. “She was
short. Terrible hair, grating voice... now I’m wondering if she was you in disguise.”

“Hardy har,” Hermione mumbled.

She had an appalling, outrageous idea that involved sliding right off her chair... crawling under the
table... sitting on the floor by his feet and resting her heavy head on his lap while he draped is very,
very soft looking cloak over her –

Fucking hell. She forced herself to shimmy inelegantly into a more upright position as he went on –

“She began climbing all over me, shoving this bloody book at me while screeching, embrace the
word o' god, lad. what are orl these books compared to the word o' god! Let the lord guide you to
salvation – screeching, I tell you – and I tried to shove her off over and over again–”

His put-on accent was absolutely atrocious. Hermione gasped, “Oh god!” and began to laugh.

“Exactly,” he drawled darkly, “She was raving. Then the owner came along – Slughorn-shaped
bloke – and he began shouting at her – What’s tha' doing, mum? leave the customers alone! Get art
o' the shop! Mum, gi’ over, mum!”

Hermione, stooped and boneless, choked out, “What did you do?”

“I fucking scarpered, of course. They were primed to bring the building down with their howling.”

"I suppose that encounter did nothing to inspire an interest in actually reading the Bible?”

“I am quite done with dogmatic belief systems and their terrifying propagators.”

Oh, well done, you laggard, she thought but didn’t say.

Instead, she went with: “If the Bible-woman and Voldemort were pitted against each other, who do
you think would win?”

Her upper body had spilled onto the table by this time. She looked up at him through her eyelashes,
waiting for him to turn cold.

But he grinned, he grinned, and said, “She would, without a doubt. You know how he was;
performative and dramatic... all those long speeches and flourishes. Bible-woman would’ve bashed
him over the head before he could even begin his dance.”

“Incidentally,” Hermione laughed, “Aggressive proponents like her are actually called Bible-
bashers.”

“How appropriate.”

Ginny dragged her down staircase after staircase at a frenzied pace, but Hermione was fine because
that wild and physically taxing bout of manhandling was prefaced by the phrase, Harry’s here. That
fact effectively negated her intense fatigue and left her in a state that was, as previously mentioned
–

F I N E.

They spilled out of the main doors and into the courtyard, where Harry was perched on the low
stone stairs. He wasn’t alone – Percy was standing right next to him with his hands full of
important looking parchments. That isn’t to say that the parchments themselves possessed any
qualities that suggested importance: It was the way he held them, and his lofty expression, that lent
them that status.

Hermione and Ginny settled on either side of Harry, and he put his arm around the latter and kissed
her temple.

“Hi,” he grumbled.

“What brings you here?” Hermione asked.

“Kingsley dragged me along to speak to McGonagall,” he replied with a shrug, “To talk about this
war-anniversary do they’re planning. And it’s always nice to have me around when talking about
shit like that, you know.”

Percy clicked his tongue. “The Minister respects you a great deal, Harry. By keeping you in the
loop he is–”

“Yeah, Yeah,” Harry scoffed, “He asked me if I would make a speech, too.”

“What did you say to that?” Ginny asked.

Harry stuck out his tongue and blew a loud raspberry. Percy pursed his lips.

Ha. Percy pursed his prissy lips.

“And where is this... do... happening?” Hermione enquired around a yawn.

“Here, of course,” Harry said blandly, “The Great Hall.”

“So what – the whole student body is to attend?” said Ginny.

“Only those of age,” Percy answered, “And it isn’t a do,” he added with a scowl, “It’s a memorial
dinner.”

Persecuted Percy pursed his prissy lips primly.

“You know what Ron said?” Harry interjected, “It ought to be a don’t. As in, don’t do it.”

Persecuted Percy pursed his prim lips with pristine pissy prissiness.
“I should get back to the Headmistresses office to see if I am needed. Ginny, Hermione... Harry–”
he nodded to them in turn, “I’ll see you later.”

He left and Harry groaned and planted his face in Ginny’s hair.

For some time, they were silent. The early afternoon sun was harsh, its white hot light flooded the
ground and kissed the tips of their shoes. Hermione yawned again and reached up to rub her eyes.

“Are you all right?”

She blinked around at Harry who was eyeing her with some concern. But Ginny spoke up before
she could –

“The NEWT's are a little over a month away, and she’s Hermione Granger – of course she isn’t all
right.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Hermione opposed deftly, “How’s Ron?”

“Good. He um... he...” Harry gave her a funny, uneasy peek, “He’s on a date with Verity.”

“Who’s that?”

“The shop assistant at Wheezes.”

“Oh. Right.”

Hermione stared at her knees, taken aback. That was, irrefutably, an unexpected development.

“No!” Harry moaned, “No! Don’t tell me you’re jealous. I can’t deal with jealous Hermione
again–”

“Sod off, I’m not jealous!”

“The worst part of sixth year, it was.”

“Oh really? That was the worst part?”

“Yes!” he affirmed as Ginny laughed, “You were so painfully, obviously over-the-top–”

“And what about you then?” she exclaimed, “Hissing and spitting every time Ginny showed up
with Dean?”

“I was the epitome of dignity and composure–”

They went on in that vein till they were all grinning and finally, Hermione left to give the two of
them some time alone.

She walked slowly and lightly; floated like a butterfly down corridors – Catch her if you can! It
was as dark inside as it was bright outside, and dazzling streaks of dustlight criss-crossed across
passageways through high windows.
She yawned, trying to remember if Verity had brown hair or blonde.

As she turned a corner and drifted into the sixth floor, her journey that had thus far been unimpeded
by anyone of consequence came to a pause. Malfoy was leaning against the wall, with one leg
folded and resting against the stones behind him. He was eating something out of a brightly
coloured packet – Apple Rings, she realised as she got nearer.

The distance between them shrank and shrank, and she wondered how exactly she ought to go
about acknowledging his existence, and if she ought to at all. A nod? A brisk Malfoy as she breezed
past? Dare she... smile?

Before she knew it, she was standing right before him, and tumbling out of her mouth were the
words, “Hello, Draco.”

Well, that was one way to do it.

He kept looking at something over her head, but his mouth twitched upwards with amusement.

“Am I supposed to be particularly pissed off with you about something?” he asked

She rolled her eyes, (but not too dramatically, for she was sure they were too tired to perform
something that impressive), and replied, “Your name is Draco, is it not?”

“However did you find out?”

“So why shouldn’t I call you by your name?”

“That’s a fair point, Hermione.”

Never before had her name been said with such scathing mockery and contumely. It was that same
inflection with which people might say cockroach, or Tory.
Or mudblood.

He still wasn’t looking at her and she wanted him out of her sight. But then something danced at
the bottom edge of her vision, and looking down, she saw it was his packet of Apple Rings. He’d
turned the mouth towards her, and as she blinked, he shook it. Twice.
Nonplussed, stumped, thrown for a fucking loop, she reached in and took one. And not a moment
after, he carelessly took one for himself and chucked it into his mouth. One that her hand maybe,
possibly could’ve brushed against.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

“Hm,” he grunted.

But his eyes were even now fixed on something behind her.

“What are you looking at?” she wondered out loud.

Once again, his mouth twitched. “Longbottom and Abbott are having a flaming row over there in
what they believe is a well concealed alcove.”
“What?”

Hermione spun around. There was a cluster of pillars in front of her, so she shifted a bit to the side
and – sure enough – she saw Neville and Hannah embrangled in an exchange that involved a lot of
heated gesticulation.

“Oh–! But what’s happened?” she cried.

“Not a clue,” Malfoy replied, “They’ve put up a bloody silencing charm. But – Ah! She just
thumped him again! Hah! That’s the third time!”

He sounded preposterously blithesome. She, with an equal amount of outrage, whirled about to face
him once more.

“You’re foul!”

“Sure–”

“Standing here – scarfing down sweets like – like they’re some sort of spectacle–”

“They are.”

“Well, I refuse to participate!”

“Nobody asked you to,” he drawled, “Toddle along.”

He’d kept watching the poor couple keenly through that entire exchange. Not once had his focus
wavered. Arse.

Hermione cleared her throat. “I will do just that.”

“Brilliant.”

“But first I want another Apple Ring.”

A pithy little laugh burst out of his throat, and it inserted itself perfectly within the stream of
crackles that the packet made as he held it out to her. She was tempted to pull out a whole handful...
but made do with just two rings.

She left then. And only when she’d reached the foot of the staircase leading up to the seventh floor
did she look back over her shoulder.

He was still standing right where she’d left him, chomping away and being a prat.
Hermione had been marching to Herbology while caught up in extracting her textbook from her
bag when, in her state of regrettable distraction, she’d collided into Susan. There was an Ouch! and
an Oh no! and all the contents of her bag had fallen pell-mell onto the dusty ground.
But that was fine, and she was fine. Nothing that couldn’t be solved with some summoning and
cleaning charms and a group of helpful friends. All was well. She wasn’t even late for her lesson.
Her head wasn’t even swimming all that much.

She made a last minute amendment to her seating plan, abandoning the stool next to Ginny in
favour of the one beside a rather forlorn looking Neville.

“Are you okay?” she whispered after their task for the day had been set. (Surprisingly tame for
Sprout: They’d been provided with a pile of leaves and simply had to identify which plant they
belonged to.)

“Yeah? Well... no. Not really.”

He twirled a shrivelfig leaf between two fingers and stared at it morosely.

“What’s the matter?” she ventured cautiously.

“Hannah’s furious with me,” he mumbled, “I took up this offer to go to Switzerland after school,
and... well, I didn’t really consult her about it, and she doesn’t think we’ll be able to make things
work...”

“Wait... Switzerland?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “The Institut d'Etudes Herbologiques has offered me a researcher’s position–”

“Wow! Neville that’s incredible!”

“I still don’t believe it, honestly. I didn’t even apply myself. Never thought I’d... I mean... Professor
Sprout did it, all of it.”

“She made the right call,” Hermione smiled, “You deserve this. Absolutely.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course! And just give Hannah some time.”

He looked glumly over to where his fractious paramour sat, pointedly ignoring him.

“She’ll come around,” Hermione pressed, “It’s obvious to one and all that you’re a brilliant
herbologist.”

He flushed, and at long last, mustered up a smile.

After the lesson, she watched him timidly approach Hannah and offer to carry her bag. She refused,
but didn’t stomp away from him either. They walked towards the castle together, with a good three
feet between them.
“Did you find out what happened?”

Malfoy – and Theo, Luna, Ginny, and Dean – had appeared by her side, all looking askance.

“None of your business,” Hermione snapped.

“Let me guess,” Malfoy prattled on, “Did he accidentally set her hair on fire? No? Her skirt? Her
tits? Dear god, not her fan–”

“Shut up!” she yelped.

“Nah,” Theo countered, pretending Hermione hadn’t spoken, “Finnigan’s the pyromaniac. Our
friend Neville Longbottom has other issues.”

“Coordination?” Dean ventured.

“Yep,” Theo agreed, “He was probably aiming for one thing, and ended up going somewhere...
else.”

“You are all vile,” Hermione ground out, looking at Ginny and Luna to back her up.

But Ginny was sniggering and Luna –

Luna said, “I’m sure Neville is a wonderful lover. I’ve kissed him, and he was very good at it. Oh,
don’t worry Theo – it was before you and I got together.”

It was moments like these that convinced Hermione that Luna was honestly the most brilliant one
of them all. For hours after her proclamation, Theo had kittens over and over again as he badgered
her for the background, explanation, and justification for that kiss. Everybody else watched with
amusement. The subject of Neville and Hannah’s relationship didn’t come up again.

Hermione was not fine.

Dad’s birthday was a day and a half away, and taking the time difference into account, she had to
send his present by that night at the latest.
For context, it was already eleven thirty p.m., and she still had a good portion of the scarf left to
knit. Why had she decided to gift him a handmade scarf? Just because he’d been so enthusiastic in
his appreciation for the one she had knitted for Theo? She could just as easily have picked up a
book and he’d have been thrilled.

But no – she’d chosen to knit, and now she was stuck trying to mind her needle and the book that
was hovering in front of her, as there was also a considerable amount of reading to get through for
Arithmancy the next morning.
Hermione was not fine. Hermione felt downright hysterical. Every time she’d get caught up in
reading she’d end up missing a few stitches, and then she’d get involved in amending her error and
forget about reading and everything was just awful. Simply frightful.
But the thin, light wool in English-cricket-team-blue was going along the business of becoming a
scarf rather well. She hoped it would make dad feel better about being stuck in a sea of Aussies
while the world cup commenced back in England.

Then, a few minutes short of midnight, Theo wandered down into the common room, sat beside her
on the sofa, and very patly informed her that she looked like a nut job.

“I know,” she croaked, and much to her chagrin, she felt her eyes well up a little.

Which, of course, horrified Theo into a tizzy of sorts, enough to compel him to snatch up her
hovering book and begin to read it out loud.

(That made her want to cry even more, but she reined it in for his sake.)

Her life got somewhat easier after that. Somewhat because the text was littered with equations and
Greek symbols that Theo had no idea how to navigate. Nevertheless, he stuck with it for five entire
pages before –

“Oh, fuck me!” he groaned, “This page is full of damnable swiggly things!”

“It’s all right, Theo,” she placated gently, “You’ve been enormously helpful. I’ll manage just fine
now.”

He frowned. “No, you won’t. Not if we want Robert to get our scarf on time.”

“Our scarf?”

“I’ll try my best to – Oh good!” He perked up suddenly; “Problem solved! Draco! Come here, will
you!”

“What are you calling him for?!” Hermione demanded in alarm.

But Theo paid her no mind, waving animatedly at something – someone – behind her. An odd
sensation that she could best describe as ‘internal squirming’ took her under its thrall.

(“Theo. This is not necessary!”

“Would you prefer I call that arse-faced pillock, Longbottom? Can he even read? He’ll probably
just try to kiss you!”

“Get over that, will you–”

“No. Now hush. Draco! Draco!”)

As her insides writhed, she simply stared at her deftly flashing needles, and two figures came over
and occupied the corner of her vision.

“What?” said Malfoy, in a tetchy sort of way that did not bode well for anyone.

“Be a good lad and read the rest of this chapter, will you?”

The needles clicked against each other like clashing swords.

“What are you doing with an Arithmancy book?”

“Not for me, silly chap. As you can see, Hermione’s a bit occupied, and we can help her out by
reading aloud to her.”

“Occupied,” Malfoy intoned blandly, “With... knitting.”

And that’s when Hermione finally looked up. Malfoy was grimacing at her labour like it was cat
vomit. Just behind him, Mandy was watching the whole scene with open boredom.

“Well, Hermione clearly needs to rethink her priorities.” He turned to Theo, “Goodnight.”

Theo grinned. “You owe me a favour, Draco.”

“Yes,” he replied with a scowl, “You. Not Granger.”

“Well, since if you refuse, I’ll be stuck trying to plough my way though this shit, it’s definitely me
you’ll be helping.”

“Or,” Malfoy argued, “Granger can handle herself like the big girl she is, and we both can–”

“But look at her! She isn’t big at all–”

“Honestly, Theo,” Hermione cut in cogently, “I’ll manage–”

“See! Well, goodnight.”

Malfoy spun around, but Theo caught the end of his robe and yanked him back.

“I told you to hush, Hermione,” he reprimanded pleasantly, “Don’t mind Draco, you know he’s so
dramatic. Draco, Draco... you owe me one, you prick!”

“Get your paws off me!” Malfoy growled.

But then, much to Hermione’s great shock, he snatched the book from Theo and fell into the vacant
armchair in front of them.

“Are you seriously–?!” Mandy sputtered.

“Yeah,” he snapped.

And then he began to read.

Hermione gaped at him for the duration of four sentences. Mandy, highly aggravated, sat on the
arm of his chair, and for a brief second, her arm hovered over his shoulders before landing limply
on her own lap. Theo put his feet up on the centre table and sat back comfortably.

The text poured out of Draco with practiced fluidity: He’d obviously already prepared for the next
day’s lesson. Even the way he recited equations had an easy staccato rhythm. Every word seeped
through the fog around her mind. She wove a scarf and he wove a bridge from the book to her
brain.

Perhaps it was fatigue and relief – perhaps it was the way he said Theta – but she wondered...
What if she, like Penelope, undid her stitches night after night so that he would have to keep
reading to her?

Instead she knitted faster than ever, even taking a chance on adding the crown-and-three-lions
emblem in one corner. It was tiny and wonky, but quite satisfactorily discernable.

Malfoy made it past the “swiggly” pages and moved onto the next that was full of medieval
suppositions about Ancient Greek methodology. His opinions coloured his tone, and by the time he
was through, she knew how little he thought of Gabriele of Padua, and how impressive he found
Leonardo of Pisa. He wasn’t wrong.

The last two pages dealt with fine-tuned modernised versions of that methodology. That bit he read
at double his previous pace, somehow without compromising the clarity. Or perhaps he hadn’t
changed a thing, and Hermione’s brain was up to its usual late night antics.

The scarf was one-quarter away from completion.

“...opened a way for great advancement in the field of Arithmancy.” – With that, he snapped the
book shut and dumped it on the table by Theo’s feet. Both he and Mandy had walked away before
Hermione had time to internalise their departure.

“Thanks!” she called to his back, and he didn’t acknowledge it.

She went back to knitting in silence that was occasionally disrupted by Theo’s erratic snores.

The day had gone by quite finely.

She hadn’t overslept, despite getting just an hour and a half of shut-eye. The Arithmancy lesson had
been a whole lot of fun; she’s even out-performed Malfoy, (and he’d looked sour and splenetic
about that fact.)
By the time she settled down for dinner, she felt placid like someone who’d been lobotomised and
she watched the day die its ruddy death through the Great Hall ceiling. She was meant to meet the
group in the library after, for Transfiguration practice, but she’d already made her excuses. The fact
was that by then, everybody was very aware of the date that was creeping up on them and it
showed on their faces. And they tried their hardest to nullify that by acting out, with Ginny being
the most outrageous of them all. Just that morning, she’d set off a few dung bombs in a corridor
that Filch was cleaning - an ode to Fred or something - and ran off cackling louder than Peeves.

Hermione wanted none of that.

She slipped away and found a small windowed nook to sit in and read through her notes on her
own. As the sky darkened, her reflection appeared in the glass, her reflection, HER, and it would
never again be Bellatrix’s.

She rested her forehead against her reflection’s and closed her eyes –––

She woke up with a start, kicking her legs out and causing her book to fall to the floor.

“Shit,” she hissed, and slipped off the ledge.

Hastily, she gathered her belongings and checked her watch: Eleven-twenty.

Three times she nearly tripped over her own feet in her scurry to get to the common room. She had
to be in the forest by midnight to collect mallowsweet leaves for her Repleo draught, (cut with a
copper clipper that was – bugger it all – sitting on her bedside table.)
She nearly collided into Draco at the entrance. She was rushing through the door with her hair in
her face, and he was looking down, slipping a drawstring pouch into his pocket and –

“Oh!” She dug her heels into the ground and stopped inches away from his chest. She blinked up at
his blank face as she regained her bearings. Then she asked, “Are you headed to the forest?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“All right... good. Me too,” she gabbled, “Just have to collect something from my room. Would you
wait for me? Yeah, okay. I’ll just – just be back–”

She made her way up the stairs in a solid sprint. Five minutes to, to five minutes after midnight:
That was the small window the potion afforded them to collect the herb.

When she raced back down, Malfoy was nowhere to be found. Bastard. She shifted into fifth gear,
scuttling down, down, and down, and she finally caught up with him on the fifth floor.

“You!” she gasped as she fell into step with him, “You didn’t wait!”

“Didn’t want to,” he jabbed nonchalantly.

“I hardly took two minutes–”

“I don’t care how long you took. I’m not exactly interested in company right now, and certainly not
yours.”

Hermione’s temper sparked at once. “Well, too bloody bad! I have the same assignment as you, as
you well know. I’m not coming along for the pleasure of your company either!”

He made a dismissive, mocking sound through his teeth. “Then let’s not talk.”

“I remember the last time we were in the forest together at night. You were terrified by the prospect
of being alone–”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know... detention. In first year!”

“First–?! Oh, Merlin, shut the fuck up, Granger.”

“Fine!”

Yes – fine. Fine finefinefine. She moved to the opposite railing of the staircase, and they descended
to the main entrance in absolute zero silence.
The grounds were quiet and empty. The summer night was all warmth, cut by gentle cool breezes.
The sky was full of stars and an enormous moon. Hermione peaked at Malfoy just as he glanced up
at the sky and scowled. There was certainly something off about him. He seemed taut with tension,
his left hand kept flexing, and his mouth was turned down. Well, clearly he was as affected by what
was looming as anyone else.
Yet, he was the only one being an arse about it.

As they neared the edge of the forest, Hermione spotted Padma, Susan, and Anthony just stepping
into it. She didn’t call out to them.

Hermione and Malfoy lit their wands the moment the forest engulfed them. Tree trunks bleached by
moonlight towered around them like the columns of a marble sepulchre. Crickets sang over and
under the noise of their muted footfalls and the tender rustling of their cloaks.
Hermione trained her wand on the various shrubs around her hunting for small leaves with those
telltale serrated edges.
She couldn’t see her other three classmates anymore. Just one surly, sulky Malfoy person. She
wished she possessed the level of dickishness required to be such a slave to her moods. She had
every reason to be snapping and barking at people too. How on earth had Theo put up with him all
his life?

All thoughts ceased when she spotted a tuft of mallowsweet clumped around a thicket of trees. She
dropped to her knees and began snipping – and Malfoy followed suit. However, she had to stop
within moments.

“These aren’t mature enough,” she muttered, “We should go further.”

“Okay,” he replied gruffly.

They squeezed their way through the trees, and crouched low, scrutinising each sprig and twig
carefully. Malfoy swore when he walked into a low branch. Hermione giggled.
Little by little, scrounging around in that dense patch of vegetation, they managed to fill their
pouches with leaves.

Hermione was dusting the back of her cloak, ready to head back, when a flicker of light caught her
eye. It was a flash amid the deeply intertwined branches of two trees. Piqued, she moved closer,
and with a wave of her hand, rendered the twigs transparent, revealing a clearing...

“Oh my god,” she breathed, “Malfoy! Look!”

She’d stumbled upon an actual centaur ritual! They stood in a circle, bare-chests smeared with
something red, and their hind legs clicking against the ground in perfect synchrony.

“Shit! We need to leave!” Malfoy whispered frantically.

“What?” she hissed back, “Are you mad? Do you have any idea how rare–”

“They’re centaurs, you idiot! Do you have any idea what they’ll do if they spot us?”

One of the centaurs – with dark hair and a darker tail – trotted over to the centre of the circle, where
there was a small pile of shrubbery, and lit it on fire.

“That’s mallowsweet, isn’t it? And sage? Oh, they’re going to–”

“Granger, get back here!”

Hermione stepped on a twig and the noise it made rang out like a gun shot. And everything she
thought she knew about centaurs went flying out the window. They didn’t leap into a fury. They
didn’t come bounding towards her screaming bloody murder.
No: She’d startled them, and they collapsed. Every one of them. Flop. Thud. Like fainting goats.

“Run!” Malfoy ordered, and this time she obeyed.

Running through the thicket was like wading through a swamp. Malfoy was ahead of her, chanting
“fuck fuck fuck fuck,” which finally drove the severity of the situation into Hermione’s head. Was
this divine comeuppance for what she’d done to Umbridge? Surely whoever was up there agreed
that the old bag got what she deserved?

They made it out of the forest unpursued. No hoofs thudded in their wake. No arrows whizzed by
their heads – or indeed plunged into their backs.

Hermione laid one hand against her heart when they finally slowed, and brought the other up to
wipe her forehead.

“Oh... oh my,” she murmured.

“What is wrong with you?” Malfoy seethed through his teeth, “Why were you trying to get us
killed?”

“I wasn’t–”
“Trying to sneak up on a hoard of fucking centaurs! You know they’re psychotic, don’t you? They
would have skinned us–”

“They didn’t though,” she countered shakily, “They didn’t at all. Did you see that? They just – just
keeled over.”

“Yes, but–”

“Just toppled over like skittles–”

“Yes, I was there–”

“Did you know they could do that? I mean... Why did they do that?”

“Bad centaur of gravity?”

Hermione stopped walking. He kept walking. She stared at his gliding shoulders. Then she rushed
back to his side.

“Did you just say–”

“I said what I said.”

“Malfoy. That was terrible.”

“I don’t augury.”

Unfortunately, she wasn’t too stunned to not laugh anymore.

So she laughed, and she said “I’m afraid your head is skrewt up.”

She watched his profile carefully and his lips curled up faintly.

“Imp-possible,” he declared.

“Oh, con-troll yourself.”

“You have no erkling of what good humour is.”

She let out a groan that was a laugh or a laugh that was a groan and said, “Please stop. You can’t
expect me to keep goblin up such awful puns. I refuse.”

“House-Elf-ish of you, Granger.”

“Ha!” she exclaimed, “That’s the most absurd one, because House-Elves are actually the least –
Hey?”

He made a tortured sound and began to strive off away from her in the middle of her sentence.

“Malfoy?”

“Do not start on the sodding House-Elves!” he called without turning.

 “I wasn’t – Argh!” She sped up to keep pace with him. “I wasn’t starting on anything. I was merely
pointing out that – Malfoy?!?!”

He broke into a proper run, sailing across the grounds like some ethereal creature of the night. As if
they hadn’t run enough already – fucking lout – Ugh – she took off after him.

“Malfoy!” she cried in a tone of unfortunately pitiable desperation, and it didn’t make a dent.

He kept running. His hair flopped up and down like molten silver waves. The wind, so kind to the
slothful, was brutal to those in haste. It slammed against her face and she felt her throat and eyes
dry up. Nevertheless, Hermione had been running for nearly a year – she was no slouch. Malfoy’s
long limbs could only get him so far.
He began running out of steam halfway up the grand staircase. By the time Hermione got to the
top, he was slumped by a window with his hands on his knees. She clutched the newel post and fell
into a similar pose as him.

But even through her gasps, she managed to throw out the words – “House...Elves... no-ot...
selfish.”

Draco chuckled, and she looked up in surprise.

He was standing in the confluence of silver moonlight and golden lamplight. His eyes were aimed
heavenwards with exasperation, but he still chuckled as he straightened and pushed his hair away
from his brow.

Chapter End Notes

1. "Between the idea And the reality": The Hollow Men, by T. S. Eliot
2. "The walking shadow strutting and fretting..." from Act V, Scene 5; Macbeth, by William
Shakespeare
3. "floated like a butterfly down corridors – Catch her if you can!": Reference to Muhammad
Ali by Johnny Wakelin
 Sixty
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Hermione forced herself through a considerable throng of people huddled outside the library,
clutching her satchel tightly against her side. The crowd mystified her, but not enough to really
investigate. She’d made an initial inquiry, only to be told, “You mean you don’t know?” by some
overly excited fifth year, who then promptly went back to whispering along with similarly wound
up companions. Hermione simply shrugged and pushed forward; it was probably something stupid
anyway. She had more important matters to tend to – starting with runes and ending with charms.

She stumbled upon another surprise when she reached her usual table: Theo and Malfoy, in high
spirits and laughing.

“Hello,” she muttered as she set her bag on the floor and took a seat.

“Hermione!” Theo exclaimed, “Where have you been all afternoon?”

“With Professor Babbling,” she replied, “Going over a practice assignment–”

“Ah!”

Theo grinned and Malfoy rolled his eyes.

“–but tell me... what’s all the commotion about? There’s a proper mob out there.”

“Oh that,” Theo said, grinning wider than ever, “Draco, why don’t you explain? It’s your tale to tell
after all.”

Malfoy smirked and shook his head. “Nah, you go on. You’ll obviously enjoy telling it a lot more.”

“Well, all right. Thank you.” Theo rubbed his palms together with relish and began, “So you see,
Draco here just got spectacularly dumped, via flaming row–”

“It wasn’t a row,” Malfoy objected.

“Fine. Dumped via flaming diatribe. In public, no less. Picture it, Hermione – just picture it! There
they were in the courtyard outside the Great Hall: Draco Malfoy and the Bowtruckle facing off;
him all stoic and silent while she sputtered and fumed like a spastic steam engine... a crowd around
them. Think of the final Potter-Voldy showdown. Same tension, same animosity.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes again.

“She called him all sorts of thing. Selfish bastard came up quite a few times, if I remember
correctly. Oh, and inconsiderate hard-hearted louse... right, Draco?”

“Yeah. Twice.”
“Mhm. Then she screeched we’re through, Draco! We’re through!–” here Theo put on a high
pitched voice, “–and scurried away. Left our man here to face a stunned and judgemental
audience.”

“Oh my,” Hermione breathed.

“Yep,” Theo agreed and sniggered vacantly.

Malfoy shot him an amused glance. Hermione sniggered, then quickly bit her lip.

“It must have been quite, er...”

“Humiliating?” Theo supplied, “Absolutely.”

“Au contraire,” Malfoy drawled, “It couldn’t have turned out better for me.”

Theo slapped both his hands on the table and scoffed. “I agree that being shot of her is a blessing...
but surely you’d have wanted a more dignified end?”

“No. You see, now I’m the wronged party. The one who was scorned and humiliated in public. I
have the people’s sympathies. I like sympathy. I especially like sympathy when it comes from
pretty girls.”

Hermione let out a little gasp of outrage. (And Theo threw back his head and laughed.)

“You’re quite an arse, you know?” she informed Malfoy.

He didn’t reply, but simply leaned back in his chair and grinned.

So she clarified: “It’s not something to be proud of!”

“Is it not?” he feigned a look of concern, “I had no idea! And here I’ve been working so hard,
trying my damnedest to be an arse–”

“Oh dear,” Hermione interrupted, “There goes the one thing I thought you were effortlessly good
at.”

He laughed effusively while looking straight at her, and Hermione’s train of thought went shooting
out of the back of her head.

“So here’s a pretty girl whose sympathy you don’t have,” Theo declared.

“Eh, not a problem,” Malfoy shrugged, “Why, just a while ago, I was approached by the bold and
buxom Romilda Vane, and she–”

“I’d be careful around her,” Hermione warned at once.

Malfoy set his elbow on the table and leaned forward. “Why’s that?”

“She tried to dose Harry with a love potion once.”

Theo let out a low whistle, while Malfoy scowled.

“She was interested in Potter?”

“Interested is putting it mildly.”

“Blech. Well, that’s killed my interest in her. Oh but tell me, Granger... how much of a fool did
Potter make of himself?”

“He didn’t at all. She’d spiked a box of cauldron cakes, but Ron got to them first.”

Hermione looked away from him and stared at her hands. The memory of that episode sobered her
at once.

Both Malfoy and Theo were greatly amused.

“Of course he did,” Malfoy jeered, “Nothing edible is safe when Weasley’s around, right? But I
daresay he couldn’t possibly have made a bigger fool of himself by that point.”

Hermione’s eyes shot up and fixed him with a frosty glare.

“Actually,” she ground out, “Harry took him to Slughorn immediately. And there he sampled some
mead from a very special bottle. So all in all, Romilda’s love potion wasn’t the worst thing he was
poisoned with that evening. She was definitely the lesser of two evils.”

It was like she’d yanked the smug glee right off his face, and left him bare and bitter. She waited
for the inevitable ire, the indignation, the denunciation...

He dragged his chair back and stood up. He paused, just for a moment, burning vicious hostility
right into her soul. And then he left.

Just moments after he’d gone, Theo ran a hand down his face and groaned, “Hermione.”

“What?” she snapped.

“Why?” He kept his face covered and his voice was muffled. “What was the need? You promised
me you–”

“I said I’d be friendly,” she hissed, “I did not say I’d coddle him.”

“Argh.”

His hands fell onto his lap and revealed a tired, hassled expression. The dimness in his eyes and
droop of his shoulders affected her as they always did. And so she sighed–

“I’m sorry.”

He blinked. “For what you said?”

“No. For snapping at you.”

He chuckled, bereft of all humour, and examined his thumbnail while chewing on his tongue.
“Will you be upset if I leave to check on him?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

She reached out and squeezed his arm. “Go.”

He offered her a grave nod and went.

Alone at the large table, Hermione squared her shoulders and reached into her bag. She had more
important matters to tend to – starting with runes and ending with charms.

Nobody seemed interested in studying anymore. More often than not, Hermione was alone with her
books, huddled in library corners.

It was quiet. Always so quiet.

And lonely.

After weeks of being with and in a group, she actually missed being the one primly trying to steer
conversations back to work-related matters while her friends were determined to talk about
everything but. She missed glaring at Dean, and elbowing Theo to shut it, and rolling her eyes
when Ginny complained in a surprisingly Ron-esque manner.
She missed getting impatient with Neville, and she missed Susan’s unending shushing, and she –
well, she found herself thinking about Arithmancy with Malfoy a lot more than she cared for.

Yet, the quiet of the library was still normal, in a sense. It was the quiet that had swept the castle
that really did her head in. The entire student body seemed to have gone into a solemn meditative
state.

Two days before the second of May – Friday – she thought she might scream just to tear a hole
through the oppressiveness. In the potion’s lab, Malfoy, Susan, Padma, and Anthony were each
stirring chamomile into their respective potions. Hermione stared down into her cauldron, at the
bubbling sap green liquid within, and swallowed her hysteria down.
A few minutes later, Slughorn entered to make a casual round, and even he wasn’t himself. His
distinctive beam had been dialled down to an unenthusiastic smile, and he merely whispered his
approval as he checked each cauldron.
“Very good, Ms Granger,” he murmured, “Perfect, as usual.”

“Thank you, Professor,” she whispered back.

They all finished the task at the same time, and made a wordless exit as a group. And they all went
in separate directions once out of the dungeons.
Hermione made a lone trek up to the owlery to send her parents’ a letter she’d written four days
ago, in another lifetime.

Later that evening, all through supper, she couldn’t stop looking at Ginny over and over again.

Over the impossibly soft hum of conversation, and the contrastingly loud sound of cutlery, Ginny’s
gloom seemed to sound out like a call to prayer. Like the haunting cry of an Azan at sunset. Her
head was bowed and she chewed with mournful reluctance.
Hermione looked back at her own plate, took a bite, glanced around the room, and then fixed her
attention right back at Ginny.

She abandoned her food when Ginny got up to leave, hastily following her out the Hall.

Once at her side, she plucked the other girl’s sleeve and asked, “Want to walk for a bit?”

Ginny agreed, and so they wandered. In silence... of course in silence. Hermione kept her pace
passive and slow, letting Ginny take them where she pleased. And inevitably, they ended up in the
corridor where Fred had breathed his last.
Hermione hung back while Ginny walked straight up to the spot where he had lain, and watched
with a lump in her throat as she plopped down right there. She looked up at her expectantly, and so
Hermione unstuck her feet and joined her. A cold shudder ran through her body as she sat, much
like the feeling of having a ghost float through you.

Ginny sighed. “I can’t believe it’s going to be a year.”

Hermione hummed (she hoped) sympathetically. She was itching to fidget, but she fought the urge.
She curled her hands into fists and put them firmly on her lap.

“Sometimes...” Ginny began, and then stopped. She caressed the stones in front of her with
trembling fingers.

“Yes?” Hermione prompted gently.

“Sometimes... I... Shit.” She closed her eyes. “Sometimes I wish it had been Percy. Instead of
Fred.”
Hermione didn’t know whether she ought to reach out and place a comforting hand on her shoulder.
She didn’t know if she should say something, breathe a certain way...
She bit her lip and stared; Ginny kept her eyes closed.

“But then I feel so awful... like such a – like the shittiest person in existence. So I write to him. To
Percy. I’ve written to him so much this year; more than I have in my whole life. And I think he
knows why. He’s a clever chap, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Hermione mumbled.

“I’m pretty sure he wishes it was him too.”

Hermione’s vision turned blurry with a film of tears. After she’d blinked them away, she saw that
Ginny’s now open eyes were still dry.

“Have you heard from George recently?” she asked.

“I got a letter a few days ago. He isn’t coming for the do day after. He’s going away for a while.”

“Where?”

Ginny shrugged. “Didn’t say. But he said not to worry, that Angelina will be with him, and that
he’ll be back in time for my birthday.”

“That’s... four months away.”

“I know. But he needs this, don’t you think? You were different after you came back from
Australia. Harry and Ron have been doing so much better post-China. Maybe there’s something to
it.”

“Yes,” Hermione broached shakily, “A change of scenery and all that.”

“Yeah. And all that.”

Ginny breathed in then out, deeply and slowly, and stood up. Hermione scrambled to join her. She
went with her all the way to the Gryffindor tower, where she bid her goodnight with a hug.

Then she was alone again, ambling in suffocating silence to the eighth year common room.

She woke with a start on the anniversary of the day she’d worn Bellatrix’s skin. She knew she’d
been having a terrible nightmare, but the details eluded her. All she was left with was bile coating
the back of her throat, and a barely repressible inclination to cry.
It was Saturday and the morning had broken. She put on her running shoes and stepped into the
clear and summery air.

The hours passed slowly. Hermione spent the whole day in the library, wearing her dad’s Genesis t-
shirt as a security blanket. She didn’t move all day, save for a couple of loo-breaks. She didn’t eat
because she wasn’t hungry, she didn’t get up to stretch because she didn’t want to, she didn’t walk
over to pop open a window when the air got too stifling.
Nobody came by to bother her.
It wasn’t like she’d been all that productive either. Her greatest achievement was a doodle in the
corner of her parchment, of Linus clutching his security blanket. Somehow, it ended up looking
more like Cornelius Fudge, and she scratched its face out thoroughly.

She’d even put her head down on the table and fallen asleep. When she woke up, it was past seven.
Her stomach rumbled. Time to head down for supper, she supposed.

But she couldn’t do it.

She wasn’t ready to face the entire student and teacher body sitting tight lipped about their silent
screaming. She wandered once again to the fifth floor, to the rich forest tapestry with its jewel tones
and classical splendour. Wood nymphs were caught up in a ritualistic dance, while unicorns trotted
in and out of the woods. The thick and ornate brocade border shone with the muted intensity of
antique gold.

She went to stand by the window and looked out at the calm evening. She placed her palms on the
wall where there once was a yawning hole. The moon, huge and almost full, threw its beams to skid
over the surface of the lake and paint the strong and firm towers of the castle.

Such a quiet night. So dark.

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

She was one sunrise away from another circle, another ring of her spiral, and all she could do was
watch the loops spin round and around her. Once again, she wanted to scream. She wanted to shout
so loudly that the smooth gradient of the sky – silver to black – might shatter into an inharmonious
mosaic.

She nearly did when a warm hand landed on her shoulder. But a low murmur of, “Hello, buddy,”
stalled her.

“What’s wrong with you?” she hissed, “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Sorry,” Theo mumbled.

He placed his other hand on her other shoulder, and rested his chin on the top of her head. And it
wasn’t long before Hermione’s heartbeat slowed, and she was nothing but grateful to have him with
her. They shared the silence of the night for a while.

“Luna told me you’d be here,” he said, by and by.

Hermione sniffed, rubbing her face against her sleeve. “How did she know?”

“No idea. I was seeing her off at the Ravenclaw tower, and she said, you should go find Hermione, I
think she might be stuck on the fifth floor.”

“I’m not stu–” she sighed. “She really is something else.”

“She is.”

Theo moved his hands to her upper arms and turned her around.

He lowered his head to peer into her face and asked, “You’re losing it a bit, aren’t you?”

Hermione didn’t bother denying it. She nodded and bit her lips between her teeth to keep her chin
from wobbling.

“Come with me,” he sighed.

He steered her down the corridor, and Hermione shuffled along blindly. Her mind wandered,
getting lost in the inky black cracks in the floor. They were walking on an elaborate warren. The
cracks made up the most complicated labyrinth imaginable. The deeper she looked into them, the
more the stones around them faded. If only she could fill them in with molten gold: A touch of
kintsugi to heal them forever.

“Hermione?”

Oh, they’d stopped walking.

She looked up, but the cracks didn’t fade from her vision. They spread over Theo’s face and broke
it into fragments.
She blinked quickly, multiple times.

“Yes?”

“Music’s good for the soul isn’t it?”

That was when she realised they were outside the music room. Again. Another circle.
“I suppose,” she mumbled.

He made to pull her in but she resisted.

“Hermione?”

“Aren’t you going to–”

She freed her arm from his grasp and gestured up and down her body.

“Cop a feel? No thanks.”

“No, you git. Aren’t you going to disillusion me?”

“Nah.”

Then he pulled her with more force than she was capable of opposing.

Just like the last time, Malfoy was sitting behind the piano in the middle of the room. He looked up
when they entered and frowned. The tapers where burning low and were few in number: two by the
door and one glinting on a stand next to the piano, encasing him in a fuzzy orb of light.
Theo picked one from the side of the door and dragged Hermione to the chaise. He placed the
candle on the floor as he sat, and its light spilled into the cracks and turned them...
Golden.

“Sit, Hermione.”

She did. Woodenly.

“I’m actually done here,” Malfoy called in a brittle voice. He was looking down at the piano keys,
still frowning deeply.

“No,” Theo contested, “You aren’t. And you know you won’t be able to sleep if you don’t play.”

He sighed. And slowly, like the leaves of a touch-me-not plant unfurl once danger has passed, his
scowl faded. He closed his eyes. His hands lifted, poised elegantly over the keys, his long fingers
so perfectly still that Hermione twitched with anticipation.

And then they descended with the suddenness of a snapping whip, and the silence... the fucking all-
pervading, maddening, parasitic silence... was blown apart.

Hermione might have recognised what he was playing, (it did sound vaguely familiar,) had he been
playing it at its intended tempo. But whatever it was had been sped up tenfold, a hundredfold, and it
was perfect, perfect, perfect.

It was the scream caught in her throat.

Draco’s head was bent and he was staring down beadily as his arms and shoulders rose and fell
tumultuously. His sleeves were rolled up all the way to his elbows, exposing, after ages, his faded
Dark Mark. It was distorted slightly by the veins that stood out on his forearm.
The music was utterly frenzied and booming. It wasn’t thunder, it wasn’t crashing waves, or some
vagrant god’s fury –
It was war.
It was the roar of combating giants, and the fall of a thousand trampling feet. It was the death rattle,
and a choir of cacophonic screams. It was the howl of your best friend as you held him back when
all he wanted was to avenge his fallen brother –
And he pushed and he pushed –
It was a cry of No Harry No
A giant thrashing snake
The sickening THUD of an enormous boulder
Charge Avada Kedevra Rookwood Kill
It was the sizzle of a hex, the clash of opposing curses, the clatter of a falling wand.

Hermione gripped her knees, till her hands were snow white.

He showed no mercy, even when he stopped. There was no slow petering out. He didn’t bring them
down gently. He just stopped. Just left them hanging in that discord. And even though silence had
technically regrouped, it was powerless.
Draco was panting, hands still fixed in position, and that added to the impression that the music
was still playing. He jerked into motion abruptly, and swung his legs around the bench. He got up
and walked to the door without a word or look of acknowledgement.

Just as suddenly, Hermione felt Theo tugging at her arm.

The cracks were screaming out at her, a screaming chorus harmonising with the inexorable
phantom-music. They seemed to be bottomless, reaching down to the core of the earth... angry
jagged fissures that could ooze lava at any point...

They were making her dizzy. She looked away, stumbled, frantically grabbed onto Theo’s elbow...

He said something she couldn’t quite hear. Her heart rate was spiralling out of control.

Draco was a good twenty paces ahead of them, marching with purpose or desperation or both. His
head was bowed just a little, but his back was straight. His shoulder blades looked taut with strain,
stiff and unyielding like they’d felt against her cheek when they’d sailed over blistering fiendfyre.

...Lava spurting from the cracks...

“God, I just–”

“Hermione? What – what is it?”

“I just – just – wait here, please. Stay right here.”

She whimpered and dashed to the nearest window, throwing it open with such vigour that it was
amazing it didn’t blow apart. She leaned out as far as she could. Cool breeze soothed her scorching
face. She filled her lungs with fresh air and breathed out hard, hoping that it would expel her
demons.
The sky was smooth as ever – not a cloud, not a crack.
She only turned around when her heartbeat had stabilised. Theo was still exactly where she’d left
him, looking at her with misty eyes. Draco was long gone.

There was a moth on the canopy of her four poster bed. Hermione could only make out its
silhouette through the gauze. She lifted her hand and shot up a small gust of air. The cloth
ballooned out and the moth took off, fluttered mindlessly around the room once before landing on
her stomach.
It wasn’t a moth at all. It was a little folded up piece of parchment that read:
Do behave tonight. Theo is watching you.
She shook her head and laughed, sitting up unwillingly. Outside her open window, dusk was
progressively darkening... she couldn’t possibly procrastinate any longer.

She showered slowly, took an unnecessarily long time washing her hair. Then, wrapped in a towel,
she rummaged through Pat’s cast-offs, looking for something suitable to wear. She ended up
choosing a simple and plain olive green slip dress.

She dried her hair and left it to froth and frizz as it wanted to. Harry’s gift to her – the jade pendant
– was the only jewellery she wore.

Not remotely in the mood to linger in front of the mirror, she left her room; which happened to be
at the exact same time that Hannah and Daphne were leaving theirs. The latter, with a demeanour as
icy as her blue dress robes, stalked away immediately. The former smiled and walked down the
stairs with Hermione. They didn’t have anything to say to each other, but Hermione was dreading
the moment she would skip off with Neville. Maybe she could attach herself to them anyway? She
knew Theo had gone to fetch Luna, and nearly everyone was probably already downstairs. She just
wanted somebody by her side.

Her hopes were dashed when Neville and Hannah got engaged in an extremely long and forceful
cuddle. She moved ahead and stood by an armchair, forlornly drumming her fingers against its
headrest. She wished she hadn’t dallied for so long.

Oh, she was being pathetic. She absolutely could walk into the Great Hall alone.

Her resolve was further strengthened when Terry and Anthony popped out from the boys’ dorms
and Terry looked at her.

The corridors were largely full of curious younger students. Hermione ignored the whispers and
nudges, staring straight ahead and nowhere else.
There was a thin golden arc drawn around the base of the Grand Staircase: An age line. She
wondered whether there were some unfortunate kids with long beards currently moping in some
corner.
The doors to the Great Hall were closed, and their frame was decorated with golden gladioli,
emitting a strangely welcoming glow. As she stepped closer, she could discern a distinct humming
noise, and she knew all she had to do was pass right through the doors. For a moment she wavered,
(she tapped her heels together three times,) and then she dived in.

Fortunately, the hall was filled to the brim. It felt a lot like she’d walked through the barrier at
King’s Cross, except that the people chatting and mingling were carrying beverages instead of
trolleys, and were better dressed. The long house tables had been replaced with smaller circular
tables, arranged in concentric circles around the largest centre table... which was where she was
expected.

Hermione edged her way inward with her arms wrapped around her waist. Perhaps not the most
confident of stances, but she wasn’t keen on brushing against anyone. Even the slightest graze may
end up being a catalyst for small talk.

The place had been beautifully decked up. Golden floral arrangements in tall vases stood in the
spaces between tables.

“’Ermione!” she heard when she’d just about reached her middle of the hall, and it was Fleur,
waving at her from a table in the innermost circle.

The Weasley table was missing one George, one Charlie, and one Ron. Hermione went around to
Mrs Weasley and put one arm around her shoulders in an awkward sort of side hug. The woman
smiled and patted her hand, but she was clearly very out of sorts. Ginny and Mr Weasley were both
turned towards her, as if ready to spring from their seats and leap to her side at a moment’s notice.
Hermione concluded the customary hello’s and how are you’s and left with as much haste as
propriety would allow.

When she finally got to her seat, she was met with a multi-voiced cry of her name.

“Good evening,” she said, nodding at Kingsley, McGonagall, and the assorted collection of
Ministry and Wizengamot members. She didn’t bother studying them at all, and quickly looked to
her left. Ron, and just beyond him, Harry. They grinned at her, with strain, yes, but also the kind of
purity that she’d missed so much.

“Hi,” she grinned back.

Harry was sporting a stubble, and it suited him. In contrast, Ron was clean shaven and his hair was
freshly cut. He was also wearing a set of very striking Chinese style burgundy robes with gold
embroidery.

“You both look extremely smart,” she told them.

“Thanks,” Harry laughed, and rubbed his jaw.

“You look lovely too,” Ron said, “I mean, of course you do.”
Then he turned distinctly red.

Hermione looked away. The glass in front of her was tragically empty.

“It’s like the Yule Ball,” Ron muttered into her ear, “Tell it what you want.”

“Right.” She skimmed the mouth of the glass with one finger. “Merlot.”

Instantly the plain tumbler turned into a wine glass filled with rich crimson liquid.

The three of them were mostly left alone. They chatted amid themselves, in relative privacy as
Kingsley’s booming voice dominated the airwaves. Hermione heard all about their first real
mission – tracking down a maverick group of self-proclaimed Death Eaters... who actually turned
out to be a lot of jobless pranksters.

“It was mortifying,” Harry groaned.

“I still say it was a set up,” Ron insisted, “Robards was testing us. Look at him, smug twat.”

He pointed completely not subtly at a man sitting only a few seats down.

“Hermione, we’re useless without you,” Harry added as he kicked Ron from under the table. Also
not very subtly.

To say the whole event was an utter failure might be a touch too harsh, but it was exactly what
Hermione was thinking.

Not long after she’d put away her second glass of wine, Kingsley made a one minute long, generic
speech about strength and progress. Then it was time to eat, and it seemed like all conversation
died. She wondered how many people were remembering the circumstances under which they’d
dined a year back. She was thinking about how she’d barely been able to choke down half a bowl
of soup in the Burrow... how she’d run up to cut away the burnt ends of her hair.

“...told them don’t do it...”

Ron was grumbling under his breath, as he savagely cut into his steak.

His family – save for him and Ginny – were the first to depart. They appeared to set off a domino
effect, as more and more people took their leave. Even before pudding was served, the whole
bundle of officials at their table stood to go, and Hermione took the opportunity to sneak away. She
zipped over to a table in the second circle and dropped into the lone empty seat. Theo and Luna
smiled at her, and she opened her mouth to say –

A mordant voice spoke up from her other side: “Oh look, we’ve been graced by the company of a
guest of honour.”

Hermione turned to scowl at Malfoy, but he wasn’t even looking at her.

Dressed in plain but sharp grey robes, he was tinkling the ice cubes in his glass of firewhisky and
watching the woman who’d been so harsh at his trial leave the Great Hall.

Over the next half hour, Hermione developed an itch on the souls of her feet that was begging her
to sprint to her room. She did her best to keep chattering; in addition to the three already
mentioned, the table housed Dean, Seamus, Neville, and Hannah as well, so there weren’t ever any
lulls to stew in.

But then the food and dishes were cleared, and Neville and Hannah left. Dean and Seamus
wandered to the other end of the hall.

After they’d moved, the table next to theirs was revealed, where Harry was sitting next to
Andromeda, and cradling Teddy Lupin in his arms. Even from a distance, Hermione could tell his
eyes were bright like their hue had been picked right out of the aurora borealis. Ginny stood behind
him with her hands clasped, watching the whole scene tenderly.

Hermione called for her third glass of wine. She could very well take advantage of the fact that all
classes for the next day had been cancelled.

Kingsley left, Andromeda left. A group of Aurors left. Slughorn and Vector left. A few moments
later, Luna said she was going to spend some time with her father. So Theo put his head down on
the table in a sulk.

The hall was more than half empty.

“Fuck it all,” Malfoy muttered.

He reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of whisky. He reached in again and pulled out an
unexpectedly large green bottle of who knows what. Then he reached in again and out came a
small bottle of some clear spirit.
Hermione was both mystified and mesmerised by the spread. Malfoy jarred her out of her
stupefaction in the most unexpected way.

“Hey, Weasley! Over here,” he called.

What?

Ron took a detour from his journey to Harry and Ginny and barked, “What do you want?”

“What’ve you got in that hipflask you’re carrying?”

“What’s it to you?”
“I have a feeling I can make good use of it.”

“Sod off!”

Malfoy offered his absolute worst smirk and gestured to the bottles in front of him. “You see these?
I’m going to concoct the greatest beverage ever made. If you contribute, you’ll get to partake.”

“You’re mental.”

Ron’s eyes narrowed at he took in each bottle. He tapped a nail against his hipflask, and pursed his
lips shiftily.

“Maotai. It’s a Chinese–”

“I know what it is,” said Malfoy shortly, “So what’s it going to be?”

Ron placed his loot on the table. Hermione thought her jaw might get unhinged and fall to the floor
as he settled into the chair Neville had vacated, and leaned forward as though grudgingly interested.
She whipped her head around when Theo began to chuckle. He looked up at her with gleaming
eyes... and winked.

Malfoy set to work with the methodical precision of a veteran potioneer. He conjured four wide
mouthed shot glasses and began tipping the various liquors into them, pretending like he knew
exactly how much of each needed to go in, adjusting the height with which the liquid fell like it
mattered.
Hermione sat back and stared at his profile, still not able to digest what was going on. He was
smiling slightly, and his eyelashes fanned over his high cheekbones that were flushed pink – the
way, she’d noticed, that they did when he was in his cups. The line of his nose and the lock of hair
falling over his forehead displayed extreme compositional harmony.
“And done,” he announced. He pushed one glass full of muddy ochre awfulness towards Theo.
“One for Theodore, the Fucking Bore–”

“Prick!”

“One for Granger the Grating. One for the Weasel King, and one for Malfoy the Magnificent.
Bottoms up.”

Was this some kind of go at redemption? Was this a peace offering? Did Ron even realise...? Draco
had offered him a drink, not poisoned, and he’d accepted, and –

Ron threw the drink down in one gulp, and resurfaced red-faced and sputtering, “ACK! Fuck! Oh
shit!”

He slumped and thumped his chest.

When Theo had his, he died a similar death. Malfoy simply grimaced and coughed lightly.

“Another?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ron replied.

“Hermione hasn’t touched hers!” Theo bleated.

“Hurry up, Hermione!”

She frowned. Bringing the glass up to her mouth made her aware of how pungent it smelt.

“Get on with it, will you–”

She gulped it down.

And it promptly tried to make its way back up again.

“Gah,” she choked and clutched her throat, “Omigord.”

Her eyes were watering and they were all laughing at her. She felt goose pimples break out all over
her body and closed her eyes to suppress a shudder. It had tasted bloody foul.

By the time she’d somewhat recovered, there was another glass in front of her.

“No,” she asserted, “No more.”

“Oh, grow up, Granger.”

She looked up, affronted, only to watch as Malfoy, Ron, and Theo all knocked back their shots at
the same time. It was too much of a challenge for her to back out of. The second one was just as
bad as the first. Surely her oesophagus had melted. She could see shooting stars streaking across
her peripheral vision.

“One more?”
“Fuck off, Malfoy. ‘M going home.”

Ron swiped his hipflask off the table and staggered away. He also nearly collided with a vase.

“One more without Maotai,” Draco amended.

He didn’t wait for a response. Once the drinks were fixed, he shoved them towards Hermione and
Theo, and their fates where sealed.

“Not much better,” Theo gasped, later.

“Not at all,” Hermione agreed.

Her hands and legs and lungs and heart where buzzing and burning.

Theo dragged his chair back and tried to stand... in vain.

“O Sa-lah-zaaar,” he wailed. It took him four tries to succeed. “I need Luna.”

And so it was that Hermione and Draco remained alone at the table. She didn’t want to leave.

“One more?”

“Yes.”

Why did she say that, you ask? Well, shut up.
She sagged deep into her chair. When Draco put her glass before her, she couldn’t reach out far
enough to get to it. He chuckled, picked it up and brought it to her, leaning back into his own chair
in the process. He was gripping the glass at the base, and Hermione took hold of the top. The tip of
her little finger touched the tip of his thumb.
All the vibrations in her chest and extremities plunged into the bottom of her stomach in one fell
swoop. She inhaled sharply, and when she looked up at his face, he was watching her expectantly
with a single arched brow.

“Shall we?” he ventured in a low voice.

“Yes,” she breathed.

After that one, she felt like her head had blown off her shoulders and shot through the ceiling. Well,
technically, since the ceiling was the sky, her head had blown off into space. And there it would
float for evermore.

“If you say one more,” she warned, “I will... You... Don’t you dare say one more.”

He sniggered.

She held out her glass to him. This time, his thumb ran along the length of her finger. Her head,
wherever it was, performed a somersault. The thrumming in her gut acquired an electrical charge.
The point of contact was scorching.

He had no problem placing her glass on the table with his long, capable, piano playing arms.
“I’m surprised you’re still standing."

“What?”

His hair really shone, didn’t it?

“I said, I’m surprised you’re still–”

“I’m sitting.”

“Psh, twit.” He pushed some of that shiny hair back and continued, “You don’t look like you’d
have a very high tolerance.”

It was Hermione’s turn to scoff. “After all that I’ve been through, what’s a bit of alcohol?”

His grin was wide and toothy. The colour in his cheeks had all the delicious decadence of rococo
pink. She wondered if it was warm to touch. His eyes were lidded, foggy with a drunken haze...
She wanted to lean in and look right into them to ascertain their exact shade.

But she leaned in and whispered, “How about another one?”

Bad idea, baaaaad idea, screamed her head from beyond the Milky Way. But he looked positively
delighted so her head could go dive into a black hole.

Not again.

She’d woken up on a sofa – a realisation that she gathered after a quick eye open/eye shut motion –
and the long moments that followed were just a blaring repetition of not again.

Not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again

“I know you’re awake.”

She cracked open one eye and looked at Ginny sprawled on the floor, surrounded by cushions. She
too looked like she had just woken up.

“Urgh.”

“Indeed,” Ginny deadpanned, “How awful are you feeling?”

“Very,” Hermione croaked inaudibly. “Ahem. Very.”

Ginny smirked. “I should think so.”

They weren’t the only one’s who’d decided to kip in the common room. Seamus was snoring from
the window seat.

“What–” Hermione shifted, propping herself up on one elbow, “–Ah, shit. What happened?”

“You got completely cabbaged. I think you must have figured that out by now.”

She whimpered and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes, but...”

“Well, see, Harry and I had slipped away for a bit, and when we came back, you had your arse
planted on the floor, and Malfoy had just about wet himself laughing.”

“No!”

“Um, yes.”

“Did anyone... who else saw...” Hermione’s hand fell away from her face and she gasped with
horror. “Did McGonagall–”

“No. She was too busy chewing up Dean and Seamus for trying to modify a few paintings. Did you
know that apparently nobody appreciates tits on medieval knights?”

Hermione sat up properly, and yes, it fucking hurt to sit. The cloak that had been draped over her
slipped to the ground.

“But Ginny, how did I get here?”

“Harry carried you,” she grinned, “Obviously he couldn’t go up to the girls’ dorms, and I wasn’t
sober enough to be of any help, so... this sofa it had to be.”

Hermione felt like she was looking at the world through a fishbowl. Everything was bleary and
wavy. Her eyes closed of their own accord and her head snapped back. They flew open again when
Ginny squealed.

“Oh Merlin! You’re still drunk.”

“I... ugh... think you might be right. God, oh god, I’m going to be sick.”

All aches and instability forgotten, she slapped a palm against her mouth and bolted. Her bare feet
slapped against the floor and her elbow suffered a painful collision along the way, but somehow she
made it to her room, to the loo, in time to throw up violently.
Once she was through, she put down the toilet seat and sat, bending forward till her head rested
between her knees. Her brain was a sneakoscope whizzing like mad inside her skull. Her entire GI
tract was burning.

She closed her eyes and didn’t move for ages. Not asleep, not awake, just aware that the world was
an eddying bay and she was a jellyfish.

“Aaaaargh,” she moaned when she stood up.

She had to stay that way for a long while too, with her hands pressed against her stomach. Only
when she was sure she wasn’t going to collapse, she slipped the straps off her shoulders and let her
dress fall to the ground. She stood under a hot spray. No matter how much shampoo and body wash
she used, she could still smell alcohol.
She brushed her teeth twice.

Before getting dressed, she turned her back to the mirror and peered over her shoulder. There were
indeed splodgy bruises on her bum. A touch of murtlap essence was the need of the hour.
She considered just falling back into bed, but she couldn’t bear the thought of being shut in that
room all by herself. She was actually still feeling a bit tipsy; she needed some fresh air.

Downstairs, Ginny was just on her way out too.

“You look better,” she quipped.

“Shower helped,” Hermione shrugged.

“Yeah, I’m going in for one of those too. Where are you off to?”

“A walk.”

As they strolled down the passageway together, Hermione looked at Ginny from the corner of her
eye.

“Did I say anything stupid while I was out of it?”

Ginny cackled. “You went on about Malfoy being the best drink maker in the world.”

“I didn’t. Please tell me I didn’t.”

“You did. You kept trying to steal Harry’s glasses while he carried you, you giggled a lot. You
passed out somewhere between the sixth and seventh floor.”

“That’s it,” she lamented, “I’m never drinking again. Theo is going to kill me.”

“What for?”

“He told me to watch myself–”

“He’s got no right to criticise you,” Ginny beamed, “He was babbling when Dean and Neville
dragged him up to his room.”

They branched off in opposite directions at the staircase. Students were lolling about the castle in
casual clothing, at ease. It seemed that they were allowing themselves some normalcy once again,
now that the ‘big day’ had gone by. There was chattering, laughter, coughs, sighs, arguments
galore... and absolutely no silence. Hermione marched through it all and out into the Hogwarts’
grounds.
It was another beautiful day. Somewhere under that same glorious blue sky, George was taking
stock of a new landscape. Mrs Weasley was probably at her son’s grave.
And speaking of graves, Dumbledore’s white tomb gleamed from a distance, so stark against the
vivid green of the grass around it. She averted her eyes and headed towards the other end of the
lake. She would sit on the shore, and bask in a morning of bucolic peace. She would roll up her
jeans and let the sun cleanse her. She would let her skin absorb the earthy scent of the grass. She
would –

She would come to a dead halt when she’d spot Draco sprawled in the exact spot she’d hoped to
claim.

However, she didn’t feel any desire to flee. On the contrary, she felt an inexplicable gladness, and
her legs carried her towards him even before she had decided that’s what she’d do. She just really
wanted to talk to him, about anything really.
Dressed in a long sleeved t-shirt and joggers, he was lying flat on his back, arms behind his head,
and eyes closed. They opened at the sound of her approach; his brow rose in his customary way.
Hermione had to smile.

“How’s your arse?”

Her smile dropped.

“None of your business.”

He sniggered as she gingerly settled a short distance away from him.

“It’s all your fault,” she accused.

“Nonsense. That last one was your idea.”

“The whole... thing... was your idea.”

He flouted her assertion with a flippant grunt, and closed his eyes again.

“How are you feeling?” she queried.

“I feel like I’m dead.”

Hermione leaned back on her arms and gazed upwards. “That’s a strange thing to say.”

“Okay.”

“What I mean is–”

“Please don’t elaborate.”

“You can’t feel like you’re dead, because you’ve never actually been dead. You have no
experience, no idea what deadness feels like. So at best, you can claim to feel like what you
imagine being dead feels like.”
“Granger,” he groaned, agonised.

She allowed herself a secretive vindictive grin.

“Don’t feel bad, though. Nobody knows what being dead feels like. Aside from ghosts, of course,
but they must always feel dead – that’s just their way – so it’s a bit redundant.”

“All right. Thank you for burying me under such a teetering pile of bullshit–”

“Harry died. Kind of. But I don’t think that counts. He had a very singular experience. I don’t think
you meant that you felt dead in a particularly singular way–”

“How about this,” he barked, “You make me wish I was dead.”

She glanced his way to find him glaring at her. “Yes, you could say that. It would be stupidly
dramatic, but sure.”

“Your incessant nattering will be the death of me.”

“Ye–”

“The inane, incomprehensible pedantry of your argument is potentially deadly.”

“All ri–”

“If I imagine the bleakness of death, all I can envision is a rocky desert and your voice echoing
endlessly.”

“And you Draco – you bore me to death and I–”

“Ah, ah!” he crowed, “You mean I bore you to what you think death might be like.”

“Damn it!” she grumbled.

He laughed. She knew he was looking at her, but she couldn’t look back. Over the grassy fragrance
she’d been craving, she could smell his cologne.

“There’s a muggle artist called Damien Hirst. One of his most famous works is a tiger shark
preserved in formaldehyde, stored in a giant glass display case.”

He was silent for a while. She tried to picture what expression he might be wearing. Probably one
that conveyed how daft he found her.

“An actual shark?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s... art?”

“Yes. But can you guess what he titled it?”

“Oh, do tell. I’m on tenterhooks,” he droned.

“It’s called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.”
 He practically guffawed, and she just had to look. His eyes were squeezed shut, his head was
thrown back against the grass, platinum blond spilling into green...
She was laughing right along with him.

As he calmed, he opened his eyes and stared at her. She had to turn away again.

Quietude reigned after that. The sun got hotter with each passing minute, adding to Hermione’s
headiness. She so badly wanted to lie down. She was dying to lie down. Watching sunlight dance
on rippling water was hypnotic.

Draco stood up and dusted the back of his joggers.

“You’re going?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thomas and Finnigan said they be up for some quidditch about now. See you around,
Granger.”

“See you,” she mumbled.

She watched him walk away, getting smaller and smaller, till she lost the battle against gravity and
lay down. A sigh escaped her lips and she stretched out her arms as though hoping for something
divine to burst through the sky and embrace her.

Chapter End Notes

1. Linus Van Pelt from Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz

2. "But not to call me back or say good-bye...": Acquainted with the Night, by Robert Frost
 Sixty-One

Theo wouldn’t stop moaning and it was driving Hermione up the wall.

He’d been that way for the past two days, ever since Xenophilius had witnessed him in a state of
drunken disgrace. Naturally, he blamed Draco. He was stewing in an awful strop, scowling and
growling and categorically not speaking to that sadistic, ruinous dick. His words, not Hermione’s.
The dick, in turn, derived great amusement from the whole situation, unerringly spouting lines like,
“there is such a thing as personal responsibility, you know.”

“He’s filling Luna’s ears with such poison!” Theo whined as they wended their way towards the
greenhouses.

“He’ll calm–”

“He won’t! He thinks I’m some sort of a degenerate! What if he convinces Luna she’s better off
without me?”

“You know that won’t happen–”

“He called me a miscreant!”

All the while, Draco walked on a few metres away with his hands in his pockets and a swing in his
step like he was Gene Kelly on the cusp of a dance.

With the NEWTs just thirty-three days away, Hermione’s classmates finally achieved the level of
fanaticism that she had acquired two months ago.

But that didn’t mean they were all now equally frazzled.
Oh no.
Hermione was still miles ahead. She was out of–

(“Control!” Ginny upbraided, “You’re out of control, Hermione!”)

–patience. She was out of patience.

She’d had to “regretfully” step away from their study group. She couldn’t adjust her velocity to
match theirs, and nor could she afford to take on the onus of their shortcomings. Neville was still
mucking up water charms. Dean still couldn’t manage human transfiguration. Nearly everybody
found theory too boring to focus on for too long.

Unlike the week before, there was something gratuitously comforting about sitting on her own,
steeped in schoolwork and revision. The nature of the quietness was insulating, not isolating. She
didn’t know how the other camp was faring: The primarily Ravenclaw, Terry-Anthony-Ernie -Now-
With-Mandy-And-Etcetera study group. When she spoke to Padma she was pleasant and cordial,
but bizarrely cagey, so Hermione decided to give herself the benefit of the doubt. She was head and
shoulders ahead of them.

She was on top of it all.

Ah, sod it; she was drowning.

Spells were jammed between her teeth. Laws were pouring out of her ears. Runes were hiding in
her hair. Equations swam in her bloodstream. She could barely keep up.

One night, a week after the anniversary dinner as she lay in bed trying to switch off, she wondered
when she’d begin whistling like an overheated pressure cooker. Going from intense emotional
strain to all that work-related stress was utterly maddening.
She closed her eyes and pictured Mentone beach in the early afternoon – warm from the sun, cool
from the sea breeze. Scenic and calm.

She only ran on the weekends now – for no more than twenty minutes. It was all she could afford if
she woke up at five-thirty sharp.

On one particular Saturday, thirty-one days before the NEWTs, she took five laps in front of the
lake, and then, unexpectedly, had to dash halfway across the grounds because she spotted Hagrid
stepping out of his cabin and was afraid he’d offer her a cup of tea. Just as she slowed to a stroll it
began to rain. The cool spray felt lovely against her heated skin, so she didn’t scurry towards
shelter. She pushed back the hair that had escaped from her plait and tilted her face upwards.
She was proper soaked by the time she got back indoors.

The dark corridors were draughty, and Hermione shivered. Still she didn’t dry herself off, didn’t
cast a warming charm. The chill was vivifying; she trembled and smiled absently to herself. She
moved like sodden driftwood in a brook – gliding and gliding, caught on a wave and trembling,
upstream and up staircases, down narrow channels and hallways –

The door to the music room was open just a crack, just enough for light from within to beckon, and
she floated right in without a thought or care – like driftwood – sodden, trembling –
A short, sweet melody swirled around her before stopping abruptly. Draco looked up at her with
frank surprise, brows furrowed with confusion. He blinked a few times.

“What are you doing here?”

“I–”

Seeing as she was, in essence, driftwood, Hermione found words to be particularly challenging just
then. He turned away from her, like he had grown tired of looking at soggy lumber.

“What is it?” he pressed, stroking his fingers along the fallboard as he frowned.

She eyed the action for a second, while full sentences took shape in her mind.

“What were you playing? It was really lovely.”

“It was,” he agreed.

“Why did you stop?”

“Because you fucking burst in, didn’t you?”

“Right.” She scuffed her muddy trainer against the floor. “Sorry about that.”

He sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “Oh, it’s fine, Granger.”

There was such intense frustration and sarcasm in his tone. Well then. Driftwood was flammable
too.

“So, continue then,” she demanded haughtily.

He shot her a brief, irritated glance.

“Is that an order?”

“No. Please continue, Malfoy, please.”

There you go. She could produce that perfect sarcastic tone, too.

But he played. And it truly was lovely. Hermione moved a bit to the right so she could lean against
the wall by the door, but she didn’t dare go any closer, lest she break his concentration again.
She didn’t know the piece. It was overwhelmingly sweet – sentimental, even, and it brought to
mind pure romanticism; blooming gardens, soft gold, a summer breeze...
It ended far too soon, on a gentle note that bloomed into an iridescent bubble of tranquillity.

Hermione was scared to speak, to breathe. She didn’t want it to burst.

Morning had staked its claim properly by then. It had stopped raining. The room was sundrenched
and Draco was swathed in its light, dappled in refracted hues from the stained-glass windows. His
eyes were downcast, and he slowly pulled in his lower lip, sinking his teeth into the soft, pink
flesh.
Hermione decided she ought to leave. She really ought to. Right now. Draco’s lip slid out from
under his teeth, even pinker than before. She should push away from the wall and leave. He began
randomly pressing down on keys.

“My mother composed that,” he said suddenly, in between two high notes.

“She composed what?” Hermione asked.

He closed his eyes and huffed. “The Hawkshead Attacking Formation, of course.”

“Huh? Wha– Oh. You meant that piece.”

“You dazzling genius.”

It was her turn to huff, though she wanted to smile – actually she didn’t want to smile, but her
blasted mouth had decided to anyway.

“It’s really quite lovely.”

He resumed his random tinkering. “So you’ve said.”

His sleeves were rolled up again, all the way up to his elbows. Hermione averted her eyes,
choosing instead to focus on his unbuttoned collar–

On the way his fringe fell–

On the scene outside the window.

Trees, sky. Cut into facets. Pretty.

“Do you compose as well?”

“Nah.”

“Did she – your mother, I mean – teach you how to play?”

“No,” he replied with a mellifluous chuckle, “She tried, but apparently I was a bit difficult as a
child, and required a stricter hand than she was capable of presenting.”

Hermione laughed as well, but she didn’t dare look at him.

She looked at him, and he was still watching his fingers hit random keys.

“She called in this disagreeable vulture from Austria to teach me. He hated me, I hated him, but he
loved the piano we had, so he stuck around for six years.”

“Had to have been a really impressive instrument,” she smiled.

He peered up at her, a sharp smirk set in place.

“It really was.”

He looked back down; she looked back out the window.

“Is it the one that’s in your room now?”

The absolute silence that followed made her want to physically pull back her words and jam them
down her throat. She gingerly turned her head and found him gazing at her with his eyebrows
raised high.

“I haven’t been in your room,” she blurted hastily, “I promise.”

His chin lowered. His brows rose higher still.

“It was Theo’s fault. He called me over. And – I didn’t step in. Stood by the door, really, I–”

“What the hell was Theo doing in my room?”

His manner was inexplicably nonchalant. He resumed his piano key plucking. It worried her.

“He was – well, the butterflies.”

“Ah.”

“Which I had no hand in, whatsoever. I didn’t help him, I didn’t give him the idea, I didn’t do
anything. In fact, I told him he was being daft, repeatedly.”

Draco sniggered. (-dum-da-da-dum-)

“Relax, Granger. If you were involved, I suspect I’d be suffering a great deal more than I am.”

She let out a breathy laugh, taking stock of the relaxed slope of his shoulders and the tiny brackets
at the upturned corners of his mouth.
She remembered the existence of an evil green alarm clock, and her blood ran cold. And for
goodness sake, she was still in damp clothes; falling ill was the last thing she needed right now.

“So, um,” she stood up straight and cleared her throat, “I’ll be off.”

“Finally,” he drawled, eyes fixed on the piano keys. But the ghost of his grin still lingered.

She left him with a sardonic, “Ha ha.”

Jogging up to the common room, she wondered if it would be bad form to demand Theo give the
clock back... give his birthday gift back...
Bugger.
Serendipitously, the end of that thought coincided with her meeting Theo just outside the common
room door.

“Hello,” she grinned.

He took in her appearance and came across fairly taken aback.

“What happened to you?”

“I got caught in the rain.”

“No shit, Hermione. But you have heard of drying charms, haven’t you?”

“I couldn’t be bothered,” she shrugged, “Have to shower anyway. But where are you off to?”

“Where I’m always off to. It’s either you or him disappearing all the time and I’m the poor twat
who has to go hunting.”

She pursed her lips and gave him a look. “He’s in the music room.”

His expression took on a curious tilt as he searched her face for god knows what.

“That’s generally the first place I look. Is he moping?”

“No.” She clasped her hands and stared at his shoulder. “He was playing his mother’s composition.
I stopped to listen.”

“Ah yes. Pretty piece. But you should listen to Draco’s stuff. He’s better – Narcissa will be the first
to say it.”

Hermione frowned, and what felt like a ball of solid lead dropped into her stomach.

“He composes as well?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She took a breath and smiled at him. “See you after breakfast?”

“Sure, just tell me one thing first...”

“Hm?”

“You went in – in front of Draco – like that?”

She bristled. “Looking like a drowned rat? Yes, I bloody well did. What of it?”

“Er, Hermione.”

He paused and twisted his mouth to the side, looking both hesitant and wildly amused.

“Hermione. Your top is quite, quite see-through.”

“What?!” she squawked in horror.

She looked down and sure enough, saw the distinct outline of her bra. With a squeak she crossed
her arms over her chest and ran. The door slammed shut behind her, before she could hear Theo
burst into laughter – which he undoubtedly would.

Her mind was screaming every expletive it knew as she ducked her head and rushed into her room.
Why. Why did this stuff happen to her?

She fell back against her door and squeezed her eyes shut, wishing the wood would absorb her and
keep her trapped forever. She could be a door, honestly, she wouldn’t mind. A step up from
driftwood, wasn’t it?
Ah, shit.
Why why why.

She went and stood in front of her mirror. Her face was red and glowing, and her plait looked like a
thick, frayed rope. She forced herself to examine her torso. Through the thin, white material, her
powder blue bra stood out markedly. But it wasn’t so bad. It was modest... and speaking of which,
she was only modestly endowed.
Even when her t-shirt was wetter and more transparent, she must have looked modest. In any case,
Draco hadn’t reacted at all. He’d barely even looked at her.
She peeled off the treacherous item of clothing, followed by her joggers and, standing in her
modest, pastel underthings, she scowled. Nearly all her bras and knickers were modest and pastel.
Perhaps she ought to invest in something more exciting. Something black and lacy, or bright red
and skimpy...

Would Draco look at her then?

What the fuck?

She jumped away from the mirror and stumbled into the bathroom. She stood under a stream of hot
water and did the quickest, most methodical job of washing herself. A moment’s pause and she’d
have ended up hitting her head against the tiles. Repeatedly. Was this really what her life had come
to?
She dressed very quickly too, not going anywhere near the mirror, while reciting the runic alphabet
out loud, over and over again.

Fuck the world, fuck her life.

“...raido, kenaz, gebo...”

Malfoy. She had to make such a fool of herself in front of him. Of all people, him.

“...wunjo, halagaz, nauthiz...”

But he had looked at her. Sparingly. Was that propriety or disinterest?

“......Isa... Jera......”

Had he really not noticed?

“EIHWAZ-PERTH-ALGIZ-SOWULO–”
 *

She stayed sat crossed-legged on her bed, nibbling on biscuits her parents had sent her, veering
wildly between intense revision and suppressing a strong impulse to leap out of her window.

She wondered what must have transpired between Theo and Malfoy.

Theo might have said, “So I hear you saw Hermione earlier?”

“Yeah,” Draco would reply.

“You saw her, huh?”

She moaned and planted her face in her mattress. What would he say to that? What? What?
But then again... she slowly lifted her head and stared blankly ahead... Theo wouldn’t bring it up at
all, would he?
He wouldn’t.
Would he?

She’d never survive a fall from such a height. How absolutely perfect.

So alright, she’d jump. After this chapter here...

And the morning passed in this manner.

At noon, her stomach launched a violent rebellion that shut down her entire system. The higher ups
in her cerebral cortex were forced to freeze all function, which in turn completely immobilised the
manual labour department.
Her hands lay folded uselessly on her lap, and she nibbled on her lip.
The demand for food was not to be suppressed, not even by a battalion of reason and impending
mortification. And then reason turned against her. It joined rank with voracious hunger and
pounded impending mortification into dust.

To hell with it.

He had acted like nothing was awry, and so could she. That’s all – nothing happened. She would eat
quickly, and go to the library; thirty one days till D-day. Ob la di, ob-la-da, life goes on...
Bra.
She hated herself. She put on her shoes and left the room.

No sooner did she step into the common room, than Theo was on her, brimming with umbrage.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for you?”

“Um, sorry–”
“You said we’d meet up after breakfast–”

“Yes, but I got a bit caught up in–”

“Where’s your fucking galleon?”

“My galleon?”

“Yes! I must have sent you two dozen messages!”

“Oh,” she blinked, “I don’t keep it on me anymore.”

“But you must!” he demanded indignantly, “You absolutely must!”

“Well, alright. Now shh, calm down.”

She took his elbow and led him down to the Great Hall. Obviously, calm down he didn’t, so she
listened to him rant at length about unreliable, constantly disappearing friends and the utter parody
that was his life.
They parted ways to get to their respective tables. Malfoy didn’t make an appearance, and it was
only after she’d eaten and found her way back to her secluded table in the library that she realised
she hadn’t been breathing easy at all.

Much, much later, she emerged from the world of magical weaponisation with the suddenness of
being snapped out of a hypnotic state. All the lamps around her were blazing, and the shadows had
lengthened and thickened. Nine o’clock. She wasn’t in the mood to race down to the kitchens. She
would just make do with biscuits again.
To her weary and abstracted mind, the corridors of Hogwarts looked like a secret underground
complex – a railroad where Nazis might have hidden precious art, or a catacomb under the streets
of Rome...

And she spotted him at the end of the passageway. It seemed she was always spotting him at the
ends of passageways.

Her first instinct was to flee.

But he was not alone. There were six fourth year students there too, and they were all crouched on
the ground, amid a pile of books and parchment and stationary. Hermione made a beeline towards
him and as she got closer, realised that they were also standing in a shallow puddle.

“What happened?” she exclaimed.

“Peeves,” said Draco and a few of the others.

She dropped into a squat next to him and picked up the book nearest to her. It was thoroughly
soaked, so she went about the business of casting a drying spell. She kept her eyes lowered when
she held it out to him, choosing to watch his fingers as they clasped the book.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

Draco kept a lot more in his bag than the kids, who quickly sorted their stuff out and went on their
way. It was just him and her and the flickering lamps, flaring and ebbing almost in tandem with her
pulse.

Silence while involved in a task was all right, but silence while walking side by side was
unendurable; especially if she wanted to avoid a resurrection of the mortification squadron.

The moment she handed him the final bit of parchment she said, “You never answered my
question.”

He arched a brow at her as he repaired the strap of his bag.

“What question?”

“About your piano. The one you have with you in your room. In your flat. Is it the same one that
was in the manor?”

There had to have been a more coherent way of phrasing that.

“Why do you care?” he groused absent-mindedly. His shoes squelched as he walked. “Fucking
nasty berk of a poltergeist...”

“I’m just curious,” she muttered.

“Huh?”

He aimed a drying charm at his feet.

“...About your piano.”

“What are you–” He look at her, exasperated, as he tucked his wand into his pocket. “No, Granger.
It isn’t the same bloody piano.”

They’d started walking again – in search of the Wałbrzych gold train – lamps to the right of them,
lamps to the left of them, sanity behind them.

“I see,” stated Hermione.

He let out a heavy expulsion of air. She peeked up at him, and realised that he looked rather tired
himself. Bedraggled, too.

“I didn’t take a damned thing from the Manor,” he said in a low voice, “But for a few personal
belongings.”

She sensed that she wasn’t to say anything yet. There was a faint variation at the end of his
sentence that suggested there was more –
“I don’t want a damned thing from the Manor.”

At this point, his mouth clamped shut with finality.

“Are you planning to sell it off, like Theo?”

“Can’t,” he retorted shortly, “Isn’t mine to sell.”

“So, it’s just going to...”

“Waste away?” He laughed bitterly, “Probably. At least until father gets out and reclaims it. I doubt
mother’s ever coming back.”

Even in profile, she could tell his eyes were flinty and cold. Clearly, he wasn’t going to say
anything more.

“My parents’ sold off our house,” she offered, “I know what it’s like, not having a home–”

“I have a home,” he snapped, “You know, where the manor piano isn’t.”

“Um, yes, but–”

“I like my flat,” he added roughly, “It’s home.”

“Yes, yes, it’s very nice. Comes with the world’s most trying flatmate and all. But what I meant
was–”

She heard a little sigh of a laugh. She looked up, he looked down and it was a meeting of ironic
half-smiles.

“He’s an odious little shit, yes. At least the Dark Lord didn’t traumatise me with songs about
pyjamas and bananas.”

Hermione’s hand jumped up to her mouth and she chuckled. “I don’t suppose he brought tacky,
glittery ornaments for your living room?”

“No, just the occasional round of people to torture... a snake the size of a river... the general stench
of death–”

“But at least there weren’t any butterflies.”

“There weren’t, bless him. And nor did he spend entire nights shagging his extremely vociferous
girlfriend–”

She had to stop walking for her laughter, tickled to death and simultaneously horrified at the picture
her brain presented her with: Voldemort in the throes of passion... Ugh. Draco stopped too, a little
ahead, and turned around with a smirk that was stained with a sort of triumphant overlay, like he
was celebrating the fact that he’d managed to completely overturn her attempt at having a serious
discussion.
...Or something. Hermione didn’t care.

“Oh dear,” she wheezed.

“Deer. Merlin. Don’t even get me started on how much worse it was when Theo had those antlers.
Luna is fucking strange.”

She laughed harder. They were at the foot of the staircase leading up to their tower, and by the time
she sobered some, Dean, Neville, and Hannah were standing around her, asking what was so funny.
She shook her head and began climbing up the stairs.

Halfway up, a crabby bellow chased after them – “Why weren’t you at supper?!” – And they all
about-turned.

Theo marched up and stopped in front of her.

She ran a hand through her hair with tired uneasiness and sighed, “I was in the library and lost track
of–”

“Of course you did. Again. Fucking hell, Hermione. You’re going to wither out of exis–”

“I’m fine–”

“Even Ginny says so!”

“Well, tell her I’m fi–”

“And you!” He spun around, pointing an accusing finger at Draco. “Where were you?”

Draco looked down his nose at his simmering petitioner.

“I was the victim of an ambush.”

“Huh?”

“Peeves attacked me with water balloons and sliced my bag open.”

Theo stared impassively, even as Dean began to snigger under his breath.

“Well,” he said by and by, “I commend him.”

“I hope he gets you tomorrow then,” Draco scowled.

They moved in a slow huddle, like a lone summer cloud, and drifted into the common room. Theo
slung one arm around Hermione and Draco each.

“Daddy worries about you, my pets,” he professed.

She pushed him away, chuckling at the interminable revulsion on Draco’s face. Muttering a vague
farewell, she slinked back into her room for another three to four hours of quiet revision.
At five in the morning, her eyes opened and she was at once wide awake. Sweat ran down the
length of her spine. She kicked away her duvet; the motion caused an intense pang to rip through
her. She twisted one leg over the other so very tightly and splayed her hands over her pelvic bones.
Then slowly, she let one squeeze into the space between her legs.

Her core was throbbing like mad – she could feel it, she could feel it – her legs untangled and she
slipped inside her knickers. Just one light stroke elicited a full body shudder. She closed her eyes
and pictured a handsome torso... and a hand, two hands... hands that slid down her body, and up
again to squeeze her breasts...
That’s it. That’s all it took. Her body twisted and her mouth fell open.
She felt like she’d been struck by lightning.

Sunday progressed like a drive over rough terrain in her grandfather’s old, decrepit Morris Minor.
By the time the sun set, Hermione felt rattled, exhausted, and a little sickly.

After a warm shower to recuperate and banish sleep, she left her room in a rush. Her satchel
bounced against her leg as she skipped down the stairs and across the common room, and then
twined around her when she stopped suddenly and spun, as her name was called out.

“Yes?” she asked Theo, performing a quick and hopefully discrete examination of her shirt.

He shuffled over to her with a bit of trepidation, pulling at his scarf’s hold around his neck.

“You’re going to the library, aren't you?” he asked, “To meet Draco?”

“To study arithmancy,” she amended.

“With Draco?”

“...Yes.”

He nodded, biting the inside of his cheek.

“What’s the matter?”

“Go easy on him,” he muttered.

“What – what do you mean?”

Theo huffed, and ran a hand through his hair. “He just got back from Azkaban a short while ago.
He’ll be a bit... probably very... edgy. Maybe even prattish. Let it slide, all right? Please.”

She swallowed and pulled up her sleeves. “Okay.”

“Seriously,” he pressed, “You have a way of phrasing things in a way that – I mean – just – go easy
on him.”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” She pulled down her sleeves.

“Yeah, all right. Good.”

“Theo?” She pulled up one sleeve.

“Hm?”

“Why don’t you ever go with him? You’ve always said Lucius was something of a father to you.”

He half-smiled, but it was utterly cheerless.

“He blames me for Draco’s defection, his supposed betrayal. Which is fine, honestly. At least that
means he’s borderline cordial around him.” He clicked his tongue before Hermione could say
anything more, and gently pushed her towards the door. “Go on. Off with you.”

Off she went.

Of course Theo was the impetus behind Draco’s apostasy. One moment he was pulling her into an
alcove, commanding her to ensure Theo’s safety... and the next he was taking down his own
comrade-in-arms at Bill and Fleur’s wedding, shoving information into Lupin’s hands...
Hermione stopped just short of the library and pulled in a deep breath.

Stuttering again, Granger? Shit, you’re a dreadful conversationalist.

The moment came back to her in a Technicolour flashback: His scornful, vexing smirk and his
duplicity.

Except it wasn’t – he wasn’t –

Another deep breath, and she entered the library.

He was sitting at their usual table. Looking up as soon as she emerged into his line of sight, he gave
her a curt nod and rifled through his stack of parchment while she got settled. He continued to rifle
long after she was ready, her books out, her quill in the inkpot, her arms daintily crossed. He was
frowning, not deeply, but in a preoccupied way. His sleeves were down and buttoned.
She had to clear her throat twice to get him to look at her.

“Hello. Shall we get started?” she smiled.

What was she doing? This kind of fluttery pleasantness was bound to aggravate him as much as
open antagonism. Tone it down, you twit.

There it was: He scowled. “Sure.”

“You know,” she said, smoothening her perfectly smooth parchment, “I remembered another
delightfully hilarious book that you simply must read.”

“Is that so,” he droned tonelessly.

“Oh yes,” she blabbered on, “Three Men in a Boat. I’ll warn you against reading it in public; you
might end up making an absolute fool of yourself.”

...Much like I am at this moment.

He oozed disinterest. Yet she blathered away –

“Indeed. You should read it.”

“Okay.”

“You really should–” Oh god Hermione, shut up– “Right away.”

“Right away,” he repeated dully, lackadaisically, frown still in place.

“Yes, because, you know... it’s all a part of my plan.”

“Plan.”

How had his expression not changed at all?

“Yes, my clever, diabolical plan to sabotage you!”

The longer he kept looking at her like that, the shorter her life expectancy got.

“Like you’d claimed before. That I – that I was sabotaging your future using literature. Trying to
get you to fail.”

He didn’t even blink as he said, “Right.”

She picked up her quill and printed ARITHMANCY across the top of her page.

“I asked Vector for some equations for practice, since we’ve gone through the entire text book and
past papers,” Malfoy divulged, and dropped a long scroll between them. “They’re supposedly
extremely challenging – here’s the answer sheet.”

And he put down another scroll.

“All right,” Hermione mumbled.

He hadn’t been wrong – the equations were extremely challenging. Hermione had to vanish away
her work three times before arriving at a plausible answer, which when tallied against the answer
sheet, turned out to be completely off beam.

“How?!” she hissed.

She combed over her calculations, redid them, and tried a different method; nothing worked.

“What the hell?”

“Shut up, Granger,” Malfoy ticked her off.

“This doesn’t make sense!” she fumed.

“What doesn’t make sense?”

That’s when she noticed he’d managed to cover a good foot and a half of parchment. She tried to
lean over and have a proper look, but with a flick of his wand he turned the sheet over.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, “I was just trying to–”

“Copy my work?”

“No! Just trying to see if you’ve got the right answer.”

“Of course I’ve got the right answer,” he chided with a curl of his lip.

“But how?”

“What do you mean how? They’re quite straightforward, not challenging at all.”

Hermione’s airways were closing.

“Not challenging?” she squeaked.

“No.” He was regarding her like she’d vomited all over the table.

“How many have you done?”

“Four.”

“Four?!?!?”

She peered at her calculations closely, with her nose nearly touching the parchment. Yet, she
couldn’t fathom what she’d done wrong, what she’d missed. She skipped over to the next one – off
by four integers – ugh, fine, once more – off by four integers – fuck this – again – OFF BY FOUR –

She skipped to the third.

She got it completely wrong.

“What is this absolute rubbish?!” she snarled, throwing her quill down.

“Granger, are you quite all right?”

He was just sitting there with his stone cold icy frowny nonchalance like a smug equation solving
supercilious patronising knobhead........... She was supposed to go easy on him. Bletch.

“How,” she ground out, “Are you managing to solve any of these?”

He didn’t answer. Hermione watched incredulously as he thrust his belongings into his bag and
stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Dinner. Theo might have a stroke if we don’t show up.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I’ve figured these out!”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Malfoy, wait,” she beseeched, “Please.”

Sighing, he placed his palms on the table and leaned forward, presenting her with the mien of a
persecuted man.

“Could I please have a look at your work?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Not a chance,” he quipped.

“Why not?!” she wailed, “I haven’t solved a single equation!”

“You probably have.”

“No, I haven’t! The answer sheet–”

“Is bogus,” he cut in, “Bullshit. I wrote down random numbers under the table while you were
rambling on about that book.”

Hermione’s heart stopped beating and sank to her stomach. Her lungs deflated.

“What,” she quavered. Finally, her expression felt as blank as his. “What?”

“Do you need me to repeat what I said?” he enquired lightly.

Her temples where pounding.

“Why would you... Why?”

He watched her closely, eyes roaming across her face. He tapped his right index finger against the
table twice, before pushing himself into an upright position.

“Don’t you see?” he said, “It’s all a part of my diabolical plan to sabotage you.”

Then he grinned. Suddenly. Blindingly. And he left.

Unfortunately, not a single bookcase suffered a bizarre lapse of basic physics, and he was able to
escape without getting lethally crushed. She watched his dapper frame and foul hair till they
disappeared from her sight, and she was seething.

She wanted to throw things (at him,) set things on fire (and throw them at him,) curse very loudly
(at him)...

She blistered under the influence of that dangerous cocktail of fury until all she could do was put a
hand over her eyes and dissolve into hysterical laughter.

Anthony was the first one to botch his Repleo Draught. Rather than stirring in octopus powder
slowly, he dumped in the entire amount at once. His potion curdled, and Slughorn tut-tutted
bumptiously.

“Impatience never pays, Mr Goldstein.”

Not even two days later, Susan messed up, through no fault of her own. She was only being an
upstanding head girl, comforting a young boy who’d had a total breakdown; his mother had been
killed during the war.
So as it was, by the time Susan got to the dungeons to add dew to her potion and lower the heat, it
was already burnt. Slughorn was duly sympathetic, but said that there wasn’t enough time for her to
start over.
Twenty-seven days to go. Permanent agitation and pins-and-needles.

That afternoon, in Transfiguration, McGonagall placed her hand on Hermione’s desk and said,
“Transfigure my hand into a paw.”

“Beg your p–pardon, Professor?” she stuttered with wide eyes.

“Are you not confident in your grasp of human transfiguration, Ms Granger?”

She was. She absolutely was – she could perform it wandlessly. But this was Minerva
McGonagall’s hand. How could she possibly be blasé about it?

“What kind of paw?” she whispered, “Cat, dog... lion, tiger, bear...”

McGonagall’s mouth thinned. “Surprise me.”

She went with lion because she hoped, thoughtlessly, that it would flatter the stern woman.
However, she didn’t seem remotely gratified when Hermione was successful. All she said was,
“Very well done,” and turned her paw back into a hand.

She went from person to person, demanding they transfigure her hand, and witnessed various
degrees of success. Her students’ reactions ranged from consternation to sheer terror. And for
whatever reason, everybody decided that a lion’s paw was the way to go; with the exception of
Padma, (who went with tiger), Ginny (wolf), Ernie (bear), and Draco (rabbit).

“Mind if I cut it off and keep it for good luck?” Theo, who was sitting next to him piped up.

McGonagall shot him a withering glare.

There were paws with missing claws, paws that were too large or too small, too hand-like, too
amorphous blob-like. These instances were followed by a dry, “Do practice, please.”

Finally, she stopped before Dean who’d been cowering at the very back of the classroom.

“Professor,” he whimpered, “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

She disagreed, he insisted, and the dispute carried on for a few minutes, before McGonagall barked
an order in her most unyielding tone. Dean’s wand was raised in a flash.

Another flash later, McGonagall’s skin had peeled off her hand like a banana. A chorus of screams
ripped across the room.

“SHIT! HOLY SHIT!” Dean yawped, “I’m sorry! Professor, I’m so sorry!”

She pulled back her skin with a mere flex of her fingers.
“Calm yourself, Mr Thomas. I will not give you detention for failing at this task, but I certainly will
if you swear in my presence.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

She looked down her nose at him, then strode back to the front of the classroom.

“I suggest,” she added over her shoulder, “A little more practice.”

The whole week was a whirlwind, having to sit for mock tests in all her lessons. There wasn’t much
to feel discouraged about: Her runes essay was well received, her shield charms were impenetrable,
and all her arithmantic equations were spot on. That final accomplishment won her a wink from
Draco, which was one of the most baffling things she’d ever had to recover from.

On Friday evening, she reluctantly agreed to help Dean practice human transfiguration.

“I have to get to my potion in exactly an hour,” she warned him.

He set about trying to transfigure a very unwilling Neville’s hair red. After about half an hour, his
apprehensive, half-arsed attempts had bequeathed nothing more than a vague copper tone to the
locks.

“Stop faffing, Dean!” she urged, “Put some force behind it!”

“Yeah,” seconded someone from the small audience they’d amassed, “Stop being such a wet little
wimp!”

Dean jabbed his wand right into Neville’s hair; it turned a lurid shade of magenta.

“Close enough,” Hermione sighed, “I’m sorry Dean, I have to go.”

She ignored his groan and Neville’s cry of, “Hey! At least fix my hair before you–”

Blessed peace enveloped her once outside. She entered the potions’ classroom with ten minutes to
spare, and found Draco seated behind his cauldron, with a clicking timer and a pile of minced
anjelica at hand.

“Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?” he greeted.

“No,” she carped and dashed into the supply cupboard.

It didn’t take her long to crush the required number of stalks, and as she waited for the timer to go
off, she wondered, “Where the hell is Padma?”

“She isn’t coming.”

“Why ever not?”

Ding! – The timer sounded.

She measured out twenty-eight grams of minced anjelica and tipped it into her potion. It instantly
turned a milky green colour. Draco set the timer again, and then sat back even more at ease than
before, propping his legs up on the stool next to his. Hermione got comfortable too; they had thirty-
two minutes to kill, after all.

“Why isn’t Padma here?” she asked again.

He didn’t reply at once, taking time to conjure a cushioned backrest for his functional, standard-
issue stool.

“She is,” he eventually disclosed, “Under the impression that we are to add the anjelica tomorrow.”

“Oh no!” Hermione lamented, “But hold on. If you knew she had it wrong, why didn’t you correct
her?”

“Why would I?” he challenged.

“Because it’s the decent, sporting thing to do!”

“Pff.”

“She wants to be a healer, Draco. Successfully brewing this potion would have helped her prospects
immensely!”

“Would you want a healer who can’t even follow basic instructions?”

Hermione crossed her arms and glared. “She isn’t a healer yet! She’s going to learn–”

“Yeah, and now she knows the importance of reading instructions closely. I’ve taught her a
valuable lesson. You should be commending me.”

“You’re an absolute bastard.”

He sniggered, tipping his head and causing his hair to sweep forward.

“Now,” he remarked, “I just have to wait for you to mess up.”

“I never mess up.”

“We’ll see.”

She had to be losing her mind, because whenever he was like this – teasing, full of humour – she
felt squeamish and something akin to shy. She picked up her measuring spoon and began carving
runes in the anjelica that remained on her chopping board.

“I considered becoming a healer for three days,” said Draco offhandedly.

She smiled at her rune art.

“Just three days?”

“Yeah. Then I remembered I hate blood and dis–”

“Only certain kind of blood, right?”

He stopped talking. Her squeamishness took on a different quality. Well, crap. She peeked up and
met his slightly stunned glower with a sinking heart. She didn’t want to fight; hadn’t the inclination
nor the patience for it. Fights meant investing time in disdain, meant dealing with sneery, caustic,
irascible Draco.

So she bit her lip over a smile, puckered her brow, and shrugged wryly. Like, aha, just kidding!

His brows shot up over wide eyes. He shook his head, dispelling a short disbelieving laugh.

“So you hate blood?” she rejoined with a controlled smirk.

He took another moment to speculate, biting the corner of his lip.

“Yeah. All blood. Every kind. Can’t stomach it.”

“That might come in the way of healing, I suppose.”

She rested her folded arms on the table and leaned forward.

“Diseased skin makes me ill,” he said.

“You are such a delicate little flower.”

That amused him for some reason, and he chuckled. He then leaned forward too.

“They’re called refined sensibilities, Granger. Why do you think I abhorred Weasley from the day I
first beheld him?”

“Ron’s skin isn’t diseased!” she remonstrated.

He’d stolen her smirk and he wore it with pride. “Are you sure, though?”

“Yes.”
“Really sure?”

“You’re an id–”

He leaned in further. “It’s a good thing you two never got together. What if you’d caught his
dreadful affliction? Such a terrible shame it would have been if he’d marred your–”

There was a thunderous crash from outside the room, followed by a stream of howled oaths.
Hermione and Draco exchanged a startled glance.
Theo came hobbling in, bent awkwardly as he clutched his leg and dragged his bag behind him.

“What happened?” Hermione cried, jumping off her stool.

“Fucking tripped, didn’t I?” he grumbled, “Here’s a lesson, don’t leave your shoelaces untied.”

“Thank you,” she drawled tartly, “But I’ve known that since I was about five.”

He stuck his tongue out at her. She struggled to not reciprocate.

Now that she knew he was all right, she felt a hot spike of irritation. He always had impeccable
timing, didn’t he? Could he not have delayed his fall by three seconds? She glanced at Draco, and
he was smiling slyly at Theo, his previous sentence clearly forgotten.

...If he’d marred your...? Marred your?????

“What brings you here, Theodore?” he probed.

“Boredom, Dracodore.”

“Where’s Luna gone off to?” Hermione huffed.

Theo looked at her a tad quizzically. “Magical Creatures. And Thomas and Longbottom are
creating an awful ruckus in the common room. I couldn’t stand it.”

The timer went off then, and Hermione and Draco tipped the remaining anjelica into their
respective cauldrons. The potions glowed a perfect mint green, and they quickly covered them with
a lid.

“Is it done?” Theo asked.

“Nearly,” said Draco, “Needs to simmer for ninety-eight hours.”

“Then we can go eat?”

Theo made them walk very slowly, so it took an immoderately long time for them to get to the
Great Hall. They parted at the door, and Hermione walked stiffly to her table. She felt dissatisfied
and it was annoying. As annoying as Neville’s reproachful look, blaming her for whatever silliness
he’d had to endure earlier. She flopped down on the bench and helped herself to some chicken.
After two bites, she rubbed her unfreckled cheek and sighed.
As another Saturday morning rolled in, Hermione vowed to only wear thick black t-shirts
(reinforced with a water-repelling charm) while running.

The rising sun, the glossy lake, the trees in summer bloom were all mere blips in her disconnected
reverie. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the runes she’d examined the night before.
Delphi’s prophesies rang in her ears in Bellatrix’s low rasp.

But also, the thing was, surely he thought her skin was at least somewhat nice, if it was liable to get
marred.

If the previous week had zipped by, the one that followed was a veritable blur. She barely
remembered anything that had happened. Did she even remember the things she’d read, the things
she’d purportedly mugged up?

She stopped dead on her way to the library to go over the characteristics of motile plants.

Ginny detained her, and stood persistently in her path, imploring her to come outside.

“Look! Just look at how lovely the weather is!”

“I don’t care–”

“I’m not asking you to get on a broom, you ninny. Come soak up some sun, get some fresh air.”

No no no no. Hermione put both her feet down. Ginny stomped off sulkily, and Hermione went on
her way with no regret. She needed to concentrate fully, and wasn’t going to allow anyone or
anything to mar her concentration.

The NEWTs were seventeen days away.

 Sixty-Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Ginny visited Hermione’s room the next evening. She had on a peculiar, abstracted expression
when Hermione opened the door.

“Look, Ginny—” Hermione began with a sigh.

“I’m not here to drag you out,” Ginny cut in, “Don’t worry. I just want to talk to you for a bit. May
I?”

Hermione stepped aside to let her in.

“Is everything okay?” she broached.

“Huh? Er... yes...”

Ginny’s took in the state of Hermione’s room - the notes tacked onto the walls, the books spread
across her bed and desk, and the piles of parchment stacked on the floor.

“Merlin!”

"No need to tell me how insane I am,” Hermione grumbled, as she cleared one corner of her bed so
Ginny could sit.

Ginny didn’t sit. She leant against a bedpost and half smiled.

“You are insane,” she said (Hermione huffed,) “But I never mean it in a bad way, Hermione. You
have no idea how much I admire you for it.”

Hermione blinked. “Um... Oh?”

Ginny shook her head and laughed softly. She looked at the disarray on Hermione’s bed.

“You’ve always been so focused. So driven. And so unbothered by what people think.”

Now Hermione laughed. “That isn’t really true. I am very aware of what people think–”

“Yes, but it doesn’t derail you, does it?”

“It did. You weren’t here for my first year. I think I spent half my time crying in the bathroom.”

“I cried a lot my first year too.”

“Yes, well, in your first year you... I mean...”

“Were under the spell of a devious, murderous fragment of Voldemort? Yeah. That was shit.”

Hermione pressed her lips together, considering what to say next. She just couldn’t gauge Ginny’s
state of mind at all.

“But all that aside,” Ginny continued, “You’ve just always known what you want, right? And
you’ve been on top of it. And you work your arse off for it. We’ve been through every damned
level of hell, and here you are on the other side... still on top of it –” Ginny stopped to sigh. “– It’s
bloody amazing.”

“Er...”

Hermione’s ears were blazing. Such high, effusive praise was unexpected in any given situation...
but Ginny commending her academic vigour out of the blue was just...

“I’m really so thankful we became friends,” Ginny smiled, “When Bill got married, people kept
telling me, Oh, you’ll finally have a sister, and I realised you’d filled that space ages ago.”

“Ginny–”

“Hermione. I did something.”

Finally, she perched at the edge of the bed. Hermione took a step closer, and nervously looked
down at her.

“What did you do?”

“It’s a little bit your fault,” Ginny went on, “Watching you strive on and on even after everything,
made me think I could do it, too. And then... there was the way you looked suddenly lighter after
you came back from Australia.”

She fell quiet. Hermione waited – perchance Ginny was gathering her thoughts – but when the
silence persisted, she asked, “Ginny, what has hap–”

“It wasn’t just you, though.” Ginny, still smiling, suddenly continued, “Harry and Ron too. They’re
committed to the auror biz, went off to China – And George, he went back to the shop, and then
decided that he’s also going away for a while...”

Ginny stood up and drifted slowly towards the window. Hermione followed and stood next to her.
Her profile remained abstracted, but serene.

“I applied for the Chaser’s position with the Holyhead Harpies. Last month, I found out that
Kippler – the coach – had come to watch our match against Ravenclaw. And today...”

She dipped a hand into her robes’ pocket and pulled out a letter.

“Today I got this. An acceptance letter.”

“Oh, Ginny!” Hermione gasped. “Ginny, that’s fantastic!” She reached out and squeezed her around
the shoulders. “Congratulations!”

Ginny tittered in a short, slightly dazed manner.

“I still can’t believe it.”

“I can.” Hermione beamed.

“Hermione. I’ll have to move to fucking Wales. There’s a strict, yearlong training program to get
through before I can actually play for the team. Really gruelling and tough and all that.”

Her voice was quivering. Hermione squeezed her once more and said, “You’ll do brilliantly! You
are no less focused and driven than I am.”

She shrugged. “But can I leave?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mum. Can I leave mum? Charlie’s moved out, Bill’s moved out, Ron’s moved out, George has
moved out. Dad and Percy work all day. She's nearly always alone. I’m sure she thought after
Hogwarts I’d be... there.”

Hermione frowned. She had to take a second to quell the indignant tirade that such a statement was
bound to spark.

Instead, with all the gentleness she could muster, she said, “Surely she knows you’d get some kind
of job, and wouldn’t be there all the time.”

Ginny shrugged again, limply. “She doesn’t have a job.”

“Yes,” Hermione pressed... gently, “But she knows who you are. What sort of person you are.”

“How can I leave her, Hermione?”

Ginny’s voice was thick. Oh god. Her chin was tremulous.

“Don’t you remember Fr– George’s birthday? You saw her. How can I leave?”

“She wants you to move on with your life, Ginny! Didn’t she say so herself? When Ron and Harry
left?”

“Yeah,” Ginny mumbled.

“So?”

“I can move on with my life right here. I don’t have to go to fucking Wales.”

“You deserve to go to fucking Wales,” Hermione insisted, “You’ve earned this, you owe it to
yourself!”
Ginny pressed her palms against her eyes. “Fred is dead, Hermione.”

Neither of them had it in them to say anything more for a while. Hermione kept her arm around
Ginny, and Ginny stood with her eyes hidden, still and silent. Maybe she was crying, maybe she
wasn’t.
By and by, she pulled her hands away. Perhaps she had wiped her eyes in the process, because they
weren’t wet at all.

“I dreamt about this. For years. And I pictured them all being so proud of me.”

“Of course, they’ll be proud of you. Terribly proud. I’m so proud of you.”

She smiled thinly. “Thanks, Herms.”

“Cow.”

“Will you lose all respect for me if I let this go?”

Hermione grasped both her shoulders and turned her so they were face to face.

“Of course not. But how would you feel if you let this go?” She looked her straight in the eye.
“Talk to your mother. I don’t think you’re giving her enough credit.”

“She’ll tell me to go.”

“Alright, then?”

“Then she’ll be miserable.”

“And how do you think she’ll feel once she finds out what you sacrificed?”

“She won’t find out.”

“Ginny.”

“Argh!”

Bouncing on the balls of her feet, Ginny came alive with a sudden urgency.

“Hermione, I’ll die if I don’t go.”

“I know.”

“I can’t remember wanting anything this badly before. Flying, competing, getting that ball through
the ruddy hoop... it’s helped give my life meaning again. I have to do this.”

“Yes,” Hermione nodded, “You do.”

“I’ll talk to mum.”

“Let's leave the martyrdom to Harry, okay?”

Ginny laughed, and playfully shoved her. “No, please. I’ve told him he isn’t allowed anymore.”

“You know something, though?” Ginny asked, “I’m not worried about leaving Harry at all. My first
thought when I got this letter was, I have to tell Harry, he’ll be so fucking chuffed.”

“But he was so anxious about you being here, at Hogwarts. With Dean.”

“Oh, that.” she rolled her eyes. “He was deliberately being a prat about it, but really it was about
being apart so soon after... everything. This is different.”

“Yes, it is different.”

“Hermione,” Ginny smiled, “We’re good. We’re solid. I’m not worried at all.”

Hermione smiled back, and even to her, it seemed rueful.

“Must be nice.”

“It really is,” Ginny replied, and gave her arm a squeeze.

“I will miss you awfully, you know.”

“Merlin, don’t start with that now! Do not make me cry. I’m leaving. I want to get McGonagall’s
permission to see mum for lunch tomorrow.”

“Yes. Okay. Good.”

“I’ll let you get back to all that.” She gestured vaguely around the room. “I suppose I can stop
bothering now. NEWTs don’t matter anymore.”

“Try saying that to your mum,” Hermione sniffed.

Ginny smiled and left.

Hermione slowly made her way back to the spot on the floor where she’d been sitting and
translating spells from Old Futhark. Right back to work she got, blinking away the odd tear that
showed up to blur her vision.
Green was the silence, wet was the light,
The month of June trembled like a butterfly.

Everything was trembling, everything felt stretched and thin. Sprawling verdure, the dense forest,
and the endless lake shimmered like a mirage, moments away from dematerialising. Life felt long
and transient.

June morning, June day, soaked in the soggy sun, sunk in jejunity. A melancholy sweeter than
common joy.

A march full of intent was unwittingly stalled.

How did thoughts fragment in such a jagged manner sometimes? Especially when the world around
was so contrarily fluid? It felt like the long-drawn vacuum between two consecutive seconds. She
stood with her face lifted towards the sky. A soft, hot breeze skimmed along the line of her brow.

NEWTs in fifteen days.

That Saturday was Draco’s birthday.

Theo had informed her a few days back, and she’d spent a deranged twenty minutes that could have
been devoted to study, wondering what she ought to get for him. Of course, once that madness
lifted, she realised she didn’t have to get him anything. They weren’t friends by any means, and
Theo’s please get along appeal did not in any way stipulate that she had to get him presents. She
would simply wish him. Sincerely and emphatically, well within earshot of Theo. Dandy.

Menacing confusion returned on the actual day of. She imagined for a few minutes (yet more time
that was meant for study) handing him something; something impressive like those glossy, sturdy
flying boots that Theo had got him. How might he react?

Wow, thanks, Granger!

How might he look? Would he lean forward like he sometimes did, when he was building up to say
something very interesting?

Even in her imagination, Theo interrupted the scene. (“Oh, this pleases me so! ” He’d say.)

She went downstairs after carefully selecting notes to go over while eating breakfast. But it was
earlier than she’d realised; the common room was completely deserted. She plopped down on an
armchair and began to read.

Sometime later, a pair of fingers snapped right in front of her face. She yelped and reared back. Her
notebook fell to the floor with a thud.

Her shock and pulse rose in conjunction with Theo’s guffaws.

“Arsehole!”

“Aw, don’t be like that!” Theo coaxed, picking up her notebook and handing it to her.

She snatched it from him with a glare. He was twinkling down at her.

Draco was on the other side of the centre table, hands in his pockets, smirking. Hermione turned to
him and pronounced, emphatically and crisply, “Happy Birthday.”

Smirk turned into grin turned into chuckle.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she snapped, spun on her heel and departed. She expected they were both
sniggering in her wake.

Theo caught up with her soon enough.

“All right, I’m sorry."

She grumbled, he grinned, and she knew that he knew that she wasn’t really angry.

“Want to play Quidditch after breakfast?”

Hermione’s little noise of derision harmonised with Draco’s.

“Then come watch us play,” he revised, “Get some fresh air–”

“I ran today morning.”

“Some sun...?”

“I need to study.”

“Come anyway.”

“The NEWTs are in ten days.”

He gave her his signature sanguine look... and she knew that he knew that she would most likely
show up. Maybe.
 *

She did show up, albeit lugging a rather imposing pile of books. It was a warm morning. The sun
was clearly gearing up towards a dazzling afternoon. She sat at the shadiest end of the quidditch
stands, a good distance away from where Neville and Hannah were cuddling.

She spread out her work, picked up her quill, only to be taunted by a caustic call.

“But of course.”

“Yes,” Hermione replied shortly, turning her nose up at Ginny. When Ginny only beamed, she
went on, “I take it your conversation with your mother went well?”

“Brilliantly,” she gushed, “More than I imagined! They were all there... and jolly well giddy, they
were!”

Her ecstasy was contagious. Hermione grinned as she watched her race off onto the quidditch pitch
to announce her news to the rest of the group. A loud, resounding hoot went around.

The game kicked off soon after, and it ended up being a Gryffindor versus Slytherin-and-
Ravenclaw affair. As always, the team that had been cursed with Theo suffered. He was even more
distracted and uninterested than ever. Draco was circling high above; first fast, then slow...

Hermione turned to her books. Her twelfth round of revision was almost halfway through. At that
point, she was more reciting from memory than reading. It was the point at which her dad would
have warned her of the dangers of over-saturating herself, (which, in fact, he had done in his last
letter.)
But Hermione was of the firm opinion that you could never be over-prepared. Especially when the
theory of charms was concerned.

She got through from Charms to Transfiguration sans any interruption. But shortly after, Luna
appeared by her side, sporting a distinctly grey complexion.

“Are you ill, Luna?” Hermione asked.

“Not quite yet,” she replied in a starkly listless manner, “But I shall be, by the evening. Around
twenty past five, I think.”

“You’re certain about that?”

“Yes,” Luna croaked, and then weakly cleared her throat, “I dreamt about Perfidious Jongler
Shrews last night, and woke up with a splitting headache. By twenty past five I will have a fever.”

“I – um – shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Not yet,” she sighed, “But yes. Eventually, I will have to rest.”

“Right,” Hermione said, “I’m sorry you shall be ill, Luna.”

The game ended not too long after, much to Hermione’s relief. While she did not in any way
believe in the existence of Perfidious Jingle-whatsits and their supposedly ominous implications,
she didn’t at all fancy being near someone so obviously unwell. She didn’t know what Luna was
coming down with, and she wanted no part of it.

She began gathering her things as Theo landed nearby and approached Luna with worry etched on
his face, utterly indifferent to the sour expression his team mates wore.

Not quite in the mood to converse, Hermione hesitated by the stands as Ginny danced past with her
team around her, still in awe. The Ravenclaws followed, and Michael was limping.

Finally, when Draco walked by with his broom slung over his shoulder, Hermione moved.

“Nice boots,” she called.

He slowed as he looked at her over his broom-free shoulder.

“Did Theo tell you to say that?”

She caught up with him and smiled. “No.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Luna says she is going to be ill by twenty past five today.”

“I heard,” he said, with absolutely no inflection.

He was disarmingly windswept. His eyes were bright, his face was flushed, his hair was in a
disarray.

“That would explain why Theo was so distracted today,” she offered, knowing full well he’d scoff.

“Theo always plays like shit,” he scoffed.

“I will never understand the way you lot get so touchy over losing a silly, friendly, no-stakes
match.”

“How about when you lose your mind over getting anything less than a sodding O on an essay?”

“That isn’t no-stakes!” she exclaimed.

“One little essay doesn’t–”

“It absolutely does!”

He sighed and looked down at her, and whatever he saw made him unexpectedly grin.

“So touchy,” he lamented.

“You’re touched,” she retorted poorly.

She couldn’t really think beyond the miniscule brackets at the corners of his mouth.

“I wonder how you’ll react tomorrow, when Slughorn says my Repleo draught is perfect and yours
is rubbish.”

“That will never happen and you know it.”

He shrugged. “Don’t be so sure.”

“Well, I am,” she said, “And I know that you aren’t so low and insecure that you’d tamper with my
potion–”

“Aren’t I...?”

“Yes!”– he cocked a brow – “No?!” she cried, “What the hell have you done?”

He sniggered. His eyes were fixed on her and they were fucking dancing .

“You have the most – ah – owlish expression of affront I have ever seen.”

She scowled and looked away. That certainly hit a nerve. Stupid Malfoy, and stupid Ginny, and
stupid Harry, and his stupid owl.

They were just two corridors away from the common room; corridors that were reasonably busy
with kids going about their Saturday business. Hermione wondered what they – Draco and her –
must look like to the others. Everything about him at that moment was so fresh and aglow. He was
walking tall, cool, with his broom and his hair... while she, apparently, was owlish.

What if he’d just casually drape his arm around her shoulders?

A current of some sort went down her entire body at that thought. She nearly lost her footing.

“Maybe learn to walk first,” he chaffed.

She huffed half-heartedly, but couldn’t say anything in return. They got to the common room and
parted in silence. Back in her room, with her frame still racked with residual electricity, Hermione
returned to the theory of transfiguration.
 *

The usual birthday soiree took place in the common room that evening, after supper. There was a
cake, rich with chocolate and rum, along with a fair share of alcohol.

Ginny was, justifiably, in full celebration mode, and quite heartily pissed. She was embroiled in
some card game with an equally intoxicated group and there was definitely some money and a lot
of swearing involved.

Another group had turned gobstones into a drinking game. Draco was absent from both.

It was loud and chaotic: Hermione gripped her lone drink of the night, firmly shaking her head
whenever someone came by threatening to top it up. She fully intended to get a couple of hours of
revision in before bed. She looked around the room in a lackadaisical manner, and finally found
Theo lying semi-recumbent on a sofa in the corner of the room, with Luna fast asleep on his chest.

“Hi,” she murmured, taking the next seat, “How is she feeling?”

“Pretty terrible,” Theo replied dolefully.

“There’s such an awful racket here,” Hermione said, “Why don’t you take her up to your room?”

Theo shrugged gently. “She wanted to be here. Or... she wanted me to be here, and she knew I
wouldn’t leave her alone. I didn’t want to argue. She took some Lovegood concoction to knock
herself out.”

He was in an extremely broody mood, and wore an expression that warned her against engaging.
So, she sat quietly, taking slow and measured sips of her drink, while he tenderly stroked Luna’s
hair. By and by, Padma and Tracey stopped over for a chat, mostly about NEWTs. Then they drifted
off elsewhere. Hermione and Theo once again, sat in stodgy silence.

“Where the fuck has he gone?”

Hermione didn’t have to ask who he was talking about.

“Must be in his room,” she ventured.

“Thomas!” he somehow both whispered and called out, “Thomas!”

The boy in question lumbered over.

“Wotcher, mate!”

“Go check if the bloody guest of honour is in his room, will you?”

“Oh yeah!” Dean declared, “He’s missing, isn’t he – I’ll have a look!”
Dean staggered off and took entirely too long to come back. But he did come back, alone and
swaying.

“Looked e’rywhere, mate. Isn’t there. Sorry.”

Theo scowled at Dean’s back as he returned to his game. “Where the hell has he gone?”

“Oh, he’ll be around somewhere!” Hermione said reassuringly.

“But–”

“Look at how completely plastered Dean is. He probably didn’t even knock on the right door.”

“Okay,” Theo replied with a pinched expression, “Would you go look?”

“Theo.”

“Please.”

“Oh my god, fine!” she hissed.

She stomped irritably all the way up the stairs to the boys’ dorms. Draco’s door was ajar, ever so
slightly. Not sufficient to look inside, just enough to see that it wasn’t locked. She knocked once,
and waited. She knocked again.

A wave of déjà vu swept over her, and she suddenly expected him to burst out the door, all ruffled
and angry.

But he didn’t.

“Draco?” she called, and knocked again. Louder.

Slowly she pushed the door open just enough to peep in. At once, she smelled him. Or... his
cologne or whatever, as if he’d sprayed it in there not too long ago. Sharp, woody, citrusy. She
closed her eyes for a mere millisecond and breathed in deeply, imagining it emanate from a crisp
white shirt, close enough for her to...
She opened her eyes. The room, lit by a single bedside lamp, was empty. The bed was made. The
bathroom door was off the latch. The bookshelf was intriguing. She backed away from the door
with a sigh.

“Not there,” she announced, once back downstairs with Theo.

“Damn it. Where is he??”

“I don’t know! Somewhere in the castle obviously! Would you please relax?”

“I can’t,” he ground out.

“Good grief, Theo, this is getting quite tiresome! Why are you so obsessed with knowing where he
is at all times?”
He fell silent. When Hermione looked at him, he was frowning down at Luna’s hair and chewing
his tongue.

“Um... Theo?” she broached, immediately ill-at-ease.

“It’s not just him,” he muttered through his teeth, “You as well. I don’t know. I can’t seem to help
it.”

There was dejection, too, in his demeanour now. Kind of an awful, haunted look that she hadn’t
seen on him for quite some time.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’ll go look for him.”

“Nah, s’alright,” he said gruffly, “Like you said, he could be anywhere. Don’t waste your time.”

Hermione stood up and gave him a gentle smile.

“He’ll probably be in the music room, Theo. And...” she plunged a hand into her pocket, “I have
my galleon on me. I’ll find him.”

“Okay,” he mumbled, eyes still downcast.

Draco was not in the music room.

Wasn’t that just fantastic?

Hermione wheeled around and climbed up to the east wing, where she peered out the large glass
windows at the ground below. It was too dark to tell if he was skulking around in the grounds. She
walked all the way across the sixth floor, to glance out a window that opened out to the Quidditch
pitch. There didn’t seem to be anyone flying about.
Bugger. She wished she had the marauder’s map. Why hadn’t it occurred to Harry to let her have it
for the year?
She thought she’d swing by the erstwhile Room of Requirement, take a round of the seventh floor,
and go back to Theo and tell him she tried her best. She was not going to wander up and down the
whole blooming castle chasing after Draco Malfoy at ten at night, when she had a hundred other
things to do.

Sixth floor all but covered, Hermione went round a corner and..... ground to a halt. Having just
stopped short of colliding into someone, she was once again struck by déjà vu. She looked up from
the black-cloaked chest in front of her, expecting to see a haunted, rattled, bellicose Draco Malfoy–

“Granger?” he asked, slightly confused, slightly flushed; not friendly, but not hostile either.

It was so jarring to compare him now to that blurry memory. It was almost a wonder to behold. And
she could smell him again.
“Hullo?” he asked, slightly more confused, slightly less impassive.

“Oh,” Hermione gasped, “There you are!”

“Excuse me?”

“What are you doing here?”

He frowned. “What’s it to you?”

“Theo’s worried sick about you!”

“For Salazar’s sake–”

“–just disappeared from your own party!”

“I’m a grown up. I can do as I want. You go tell that bloody, intrusive–”

“Draco, no,” she snapped, “Listen. He... spent a lot of time not knowing where we are, wondering
how we are. And he’s obviously having a hard time getting out of that.”

He clenched his jaw and breathed out heavily.

“Fine,” he muttered, “Let’s go. I could do with more cake.”

“Wait.”

She unfurled her fist and tapped her finger on the galleon within.

Found him. Coming back.

And almost at once, it flashed hot. Okay. Thank you.

There wasn’t a long way to go, and they went in silence, but for one instance:

Draco, hands clasped behind his back, asked, “Can you do just about anything wandlessly?”

The question made her oddly nervous.

“No. Not everything,” she hedged.

“That’s why I asked if it was just about everything.”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “I... um... haven’t tried everything. And there is the question of
potency.”

“Dear me, Granger,” Draco drawled, “Are you being modest?”

“No,” she asserted, “I’m being honest.”

“And what–”

“I can do a leg-locker curse wandlessly,” she warned.

“So can I.”

“By the way, there isn’t any cake left.”

“I have two more in my room.”

“Right. Of course you do.”

For an era and a half, she just sat twiddling her thumbs. Draco had been pulled into a card game, so
she was left to sit with Theo, idle and impatient. Theo, though calmer, was no less stubbornly
reticent, and focused solely on stroking Luna’s hair.

Hermione arranged Arithmancy tables in her head.

Over time, the crowd and the fracas thinned. When, at last, the clock struck eleven, Theo stirred.

“I think we should head up now,” he said quietly.

He tenderly scooped Luna up in his arms and stood up, keeping her head steady against his
shoulder. Hermione picked up both Luna’s bag and shoes and followed. Draco met them on the
staircase.
He pushed open the door to Theo’s room, but stayed outside while Hermione followed them in.

The room was messy as it always was, clothes and parchment strewn everywhere. Theo laid Luna
down on his bed, and Hermione set down the bag and shoes on a small square of uncluttered area
on the floor.

“Thanks, Hermione,” Theo said hoarsely. Tiredly. He swept a hand across his eyes.

“Get some sleep,” Hermione murmured.

Then she went up to him and hugged him with all the warmth and care that she could muster. He
returned her hug tightly, and stooped down to rest his cheek on the top of her head.

“Sorry I’ve been such a mardy little shit.”

“Don’t be silly,” she chided.

He pulled away with a tight, weary smile. Hermione bid him goodnight and slipped out of his
room.

Draco was still standing in the hallway, leaning against a wall with his cloak draped over one arm.

“He's really very tired,” Hermione told him, “I think sleep will do him good.”

“Yeah, hopefully,” he responded.

He pushed away from the wall and took a few steps forward.

Hermione’s pulse kicked up.

He looked tired too, though in a different way: Like the comfortable exhaustion at the end of a long
day. His stance was loose, his collar was undone. A light, barely visible stubble lined his jaw and
crept up his cheeks that were pink from drink. His hair fell over his brow, and his eyes, his eyes,
they were hazy and crepuscular like the evening fog over a wintry lake.

They... they... shimmered like a mirage...

Her throat was parched.

“Would you like some cake?” he asked.

She nearly gasped. Or swayed on her feet. Her cheeks felt so hot.

“That’d be nice,” she croaked.

She followed him to his room.

“Lumos,” he muttered upon entering. He discarded his cloak on his bed, went up to a large brown
box sat on his desk and busied himself with it.
Hermione stood awkwardly in the centre of his room, suffering from some sort of sensory overload.
She was surrounded by his scent. The room was neat and tidy. There were two notebooks and a
transfiguration textbook on his bedside table. The bookshelf, too, had textbooks, some books on
history, Music Theory, an anthology of poetry, a few quidditch magazines, Dostoevsky, an
impressive compilation of maps–

“Done snooping?”

She started.

“I wasn’t.”

He approached her with a slice of cake on a plate – it was covered in cream and raspberries. He
walked far too slowly; she was aware of each passing second. But then he stopped at an
unnecessary distance, extending his arm to offer her the plate.
“You can sit, you know,” he added.

Her whole face felt so hot. She perched lightly on the edge of the desk chair. He cut himself a slice
and settled comfortably on his bed, legs stretched out and back against the headboard.

The cake smelled sweet, raspberry and vanilla, and wrapped agreeably around the pre-existing
scent of the room.

“This is really delicious,” said Hermione after her first taste.

He hummed in agreement.

With each bite of rich, tasty cake, she felt the mounting surrealness of the situation. She kept
stealing looks his way, but he seemed utterly at ease and entirely focused on eating. And every time
a spot of cream landed on his lips, he’d–
God.
Was she dying? She had to be dying.

“So, what were you doing,” she asked in a too-high voice, “When I found you?”

He rolled his eyes, “I went for a walk. It was so fucking chaotic down there. I just wanted to take a
peaceful, solitary stroll.”

“Oh. All right.”

He vanished his plate after he’d finished, so she did the same. And then she didn’t know what to
do. She clasped her hands on her lap. So many ink spots on her fingers. Her nails dearly needed to
be tended to. For a few moments, she just focused on steadying her mind and her breath. The
ground beneath her feet felt unreal, because the ground beneath her feet was the carpet of Draco
Malfoy’s room.

How had this happened? She needed to know.

Finally, she looked up at him. He was watching her with arms crossed and a slightly raised brow.

“May I ask you something?” she asked.

A long inhale and jaws clenched.

“If you must,” he breathed out.

But he didn’t look closed off, either. There was something frank and curious about the way he was
regarding her.
She swallowed. Perhaps that wouldn’t last long.

“When did you decide that I am worthy of magic? Worthy of living... worthy of a slice of your
birthday cake?”

She couldn’t tell if he had been taken by surprise or if this was exactly what he’d been holding his
breath for.

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” she erupted, “You don’t know when things changed for
you? Have they even changed at all?”

“Of course they’ve fucking changed,” he snapped, “Everything has changed.”

“Then–”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Granger. There wasn’t some great moment of clarity, I didn’t have
some big epiphany. How do I tell you when?”

“So,” she blinked, “it... took time?”

“Not at all.”

“You are not making sense, Draco.”

“I don’t think you’ll like what I have to say.”

“Anything will be better than I don’t know.”

“It’s like I said... there wasn’t an epiphany, and I didn’t spend my days agonising over it. It just...
was."

“What does that even mean?!”

She nearly shot off her seat with exasperation. He was being deliberately ambiguous. It was some
sort of game to him: Let's make Granger dance on her chair.

“Sixth year," word rolled slowly off his tongue, "I had far more pressing and lethal things dogging
my footsteps to spend much time musing over the politics of half-bloods and muggleborns.”

“So, it barely mattered to you?”

“It wasn’t a priority! The Dark Lord had his wand to my mother’s throat!”
“Which is why I ask: Have your thoughts about it really changed at all?!”

“Would we be having this conversation if they hadn’t?”

“I’m asking you to explain–”

“This is the only way I can explain it!” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “The whole premise of
blood purity is so fucking thin, so daft and ignorant, that... with all that I had going on that year, it
was the easiest thing to drop.”

He paused to take another deep breath. Hermione physically bit her tongue to keep from
interrupting.

“It was one of the first things I was taught. Draco, fire is hot and it burns you. Draco, see the sky,
that colour is blue. Draco, muggles and mud–” He stopped at once and looked her dead in the eye,
“Muggleborns are scum and should die. Everyone I knew, loved, and respected told me that. And
I’m not an idiot. I saw the muggle part of town... they were making giant flying ships, and sending
light and sound through wires, somehow. I came to Hogwarts... all variety of people with all variety
of skills... But still. Ingenuity and cleverness didn’t necessitate worth. I suppose that was the luxury
of being born a Malfoy,” he let out a short, bitterly ironic chuckle, “Getting to bask in whatever
fucked up delusions I wanted.”

“But then your pedestal crumbled.”

“Yes, it did. I know you’ll loathe the fact that this thing that basically fuelled the whole damn war
just... fell by the wayside for me, like... like... collateral... but that’s what happened.”

“You’re saying it simply stopped mattering to you – that it didn’t fit in your general scheme of
things – not that you realised how awful and ugly the notion of blood purity is!”

Hermione’s hackles had risen; her volume increased by the end.

“Of course, I realised that!” he replied with equal fervour, “Granger, I'm not merely glibly saying I
hate all blood, har-de-har, let’s move on. I’m telling you that I saw it for what it was so
straightforwardly that it was like realising something I already understood–”

“Oh, please,” she sputtered, “Don’t act like you never truly believed in it!”

“I just told you I did! I just said it was one of the first truths I was ever taught and I bought it, all of
it.”

“So then–”

“Do you think that I would have joined up with you lot and stuck my bloody neck out for a cause I
didn’t actually support? I had the option of lying low, waiting it out–”

“You did that for Theo and your parents–”

“Theo would have been fine! Plenty of people were looking out for him... I had the honourable
Granger’s word. And for my parents... Ha! I tried to murder Dumbledore for my parents. After
botching that up, lying low would have been the best way to help them.”
He’d sat up straight at some point, and his legs had fallen off the side of the bed. She was at the
very, very edge of her seat.
He looked brittle, the colour was high on his cheeks, and he reciprocated her intense scrutiny.

“Did you ever think Voldemort would win?” she asked baldly.

“I was sure of it. It was impossible to live under the same roof as him, see what he was capable of
day after day, and not think that.”

“But you still...”

She trailed off. It didn’t need to be said.

There was another, longer period of adjournment. She couldn’t tell whose breathing mellowed out
first; it appeared to happen in tandem.

“Blood purity is an abhorrent concept. I was utterly wrong for ever having supported it.”

“Yes.”

She wanted to say prove it . But what would he say – Haven’t I already?
His shoulders had caved slightly. His body had sagged. This tiredness wasn’t of the comfortable
sort anymore. Again, she found herself reacting to his posture. Her spine curved and she fell back
into her chair.

“It's fucking late, Granger,” he said.

Hermione pursed her lips.

She couldn’t leave. It felt too abrupt. Nothing felt sorted – she didn’t even know if he’d made any
sense at all.

“Yes, of course. I’ll leave.”

She looked down at the ground for a moment, at the carpet in Draco Malfoy’s room.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”
After she’d stood up, she didn’t once look back at him. There was the floor, the door, and then the
other side of the door. It closed behind her with a soft click. Then she looked at her watch. Indeed,
it was fucking late. The hallway outside and the common room downstairs were dead silent.

Once in her room, she regarded her book covered bed with scorn. Everything had been laid out in
anticipation of a productive night.

She shoved it all to one side, peeled off her jeans, and dived under the covers.

Sleep did not come.

For a long time, her brain was simply recuperating; attempting to come to terms with all that had
transpired.

Just fell by the wayside he said. Bloody hell. And by his own admission, his realisation came about
due to extraordinary circumstances. Had none of that occurred, he’d probably still be spitting
venom at her. Saying mudblood instead of would you like some cake, or telling her she was filthy,
rather than saying her skin wasn’t marred.
All credit went to Voldemort, in that case.

She was thusly vituperative for about an hour or so. But soon, she grew tired of hypotheticals.

What had happened had happened, and he was who he was now. Neville called him 'mate'.

Her thoughts deviated. They broke away from the war and engaged with Draco solely within the
context in which she knew him now.

Her anger abated. Entirely. Because there was no point in denying that she liked his company – He
made good conversation, and bad puns, and worse bevvies.

She flipped over to lie on her stomach and pressed her face into her pillow, straining to switch her
brain off.

Sleep came, sometime after that.

The next morning, sleep left with a jerk. The whole night before felt like a part of the bleary
mishmash of disconnected dreams that she’d endured.
Sunday morning, five-thirty. She ran along the lake with bluebell flames dancing around her,
lighting up her path. She showered, she studied, she went down for breakfast with Theo and Luna,
both of whom looked much better.

(When she informed them of that fact, Theo grinned and said, “Yeah, a morning shag has that
effect,” while Luna nodded in solemn agreement.)

She had marmalade toast for breakfast, half listening to Ginny and Dean trying to calculate how
much money they’d lost to Ernie.

As required, at eleven she went down to the dungeons. Draco was already there, standing next to
his potion. He nodded in greeting as she took her place at their table. She glanced away quickly.

Moments later, Slughorn barrelled in.

“Good morning, good morning, my star potioneers,” he twittered, “Here it is, the day of reckoning!
Lets see now. Get those lids off those cauldrons!”

A subtle but distinctly medicinal aroma filled the room when Draco and Hermione complied.
Slughorn peered into both their concoctions and let out a satisfied hum.

“Very good,” he exclaimed, “Excellent colour and consistency on both. Now to test...”

He placed two moths with wilted wings on the table. They stirred feebly.

“No more than a drop needed. Go on,” he urged.

Moments later, two thoroughly revived moths fluttered around the low flame of a nearby sconce.

Slughorn went absolutely bonkers. Words like ‘outstanding’, ‘marvellous’, and ‘delighted’ flitted
around the room like freshly replenished moths.

“Now how about you two bottle all that up! Keep one sample for your NEWTs examiner to
consider, and then put the rest in that crate there. Straight to Mungo’s it’ll go!”

He left once they’d begun to ladle.

Hermione filled up three bottles in silence, and it looked like there’d be at least three more. She
both wanted and didn’t want to speak to him. The part of her that wanted to speak had no idea what
to say. And while she was not on the fence about wanting to look at him, she wasn’t able to allow
herself to do so.
Just from the corner of her eye, she had a view of his hands as they worked. Hypnotically deft.

“You didn’t outdo me,” he piped up suddenly.

That was all the permission she needed. She peeked up to watch him put a stopper on his fourth
bottle. One of the moths cut across her line of vision, and she returned to the job at hand.

“You didn’t outdo me, either.”

“What an annoying conclusion,” he drawled.

She suppressed a smile. “Indeed.”

She was right: Six bottles each it was, and two small vials which they tucked into their bags. Once
the crate was loaded, Hermione swiftly cleaned up her work station. She approached the door all
set to leave, but then halted, and turned around. She waited for Draco to finish up.

They ambled down the dingy corridor together. Dim and quiet.

She wished she could think of something to say.

“What the hell is Chipper Choppers?” he asked.

Hermione blinked. “Where did you hear that?”

“It’s written on a folder that Theo’s been flapping around lately. He told me to ask you about it.”

“Ah.” Hermione mumbled, “It’s the name of my parents’ practice.”

“I see,” he intoned slowly, “What do your parents do?”

This was so strange.

“They’re dentists,” she replied, “Healers, specifically for teeth.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes.”

“And you never felt compelled to follow along and join the healing line?”

“No.” She paused, staring down at her feet. A slow smile spread across her face. “I hate blood.”

He laughed in surprise, damn near uproariously. It was a sight and sound so remarkable to behold
that she stopped in her tracks to watch. Her eyes felt wide, and her grin wider still as his laughter
abated and he shook his head.

What a topsy-turvy world it was. They stood in the middle of the bloody dungeons grinning at each
other.

“You,” he proclaimed with a breathless chuckle, “Are just...”

 He trailed off with another shake of his head. Hermione giggled, and bit her lip. They walked on.

Chapter End Notes

1. "Green was the silence, wet was the light...": Sonnet XL, by Pablo Neruda
2. "A melancholy sweeter than common joy": Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
 Sixty-Three
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Seven days. Exactly one week. Then the NEWTs.

The examination schedule was handed out. They were spread over two weeks, with a two-hour
written exam in the morning, and the practice in the afternoon. For Hermione, the first week would
be rather full – Charms, Arithmancy, Herbology, Potions, and Ancient Runes all featured – while
the second considerably lighter – Transfiguration and Defence Against the Dark Arts – with days
off in between.

Six days. Lessons had been scrapped; instead, all teachers had instated an open-door policy,
allowing the final year students to come as they please with doubts and queries. Hermione
attempted to make use of that system, only to be told –

“This is not the forum for you to come and simply reel off all that you already know, Ms Granger.”

“Sorry, Professor McGonagall,” she muttered and left a hapless looking Dean to his final ditch
attempt at mastering human transfiguration.”

She asked Hestia to help her navigate the Defence Against the Dark Arts practical. Thoughts of the
lone E on her OWLs wouldn’t stop haunting her.
Hestia was amused. Wry. A look that said, haven’t you had enough practice? But she obliged. She
set up a few mannequins for Hermione to practice her spells on, and then aimed some spells at her
to test the strength of her shield charms, after which she told her not to worry, and sent her on her
way.

*
Five days. Hermione stood in a corner, back against the wall, arms wrapped around her waist. Her
room fanned out in front of her like an arena, and all her stuff – the notes, the books, the notebooks
– lay scattered around at various heights like the broken turrets of a ruin.
She sauntered casually to her desk and leant against it for a moment. She hopped up on the desk
and sat; hands clasped on her lap, legs urgently swinging, eyes roving over and across the room.
She didn’t know what to do. Go over the entire curriculum again from the beginning? Review the
complex areas of each subject? Do a couple of more charms on her sock-bundle-makeshift-
guineapig?

On the desk, to her left, was the most recent bit of post from mum and dad. She blindly reached
towards it to pull out a packet of something called Ovalteenies and ate far too many as she
continued to perplexedly survey her room. The generic, predictable display, the methodology of her
routine, the god forsaken evil of banality... it all sickened her.
Five days. Five.
She picked up the latest edition of the New Scientist, and left.

There were some people in the common room, gathered around tables and sprawled on the rug,
either actively engaged in study, or simply posing, ostensibly pinning their hopes on Dali’s
attestation: ‘If you act the genius, you will be one!’

She sat at the table by the window and flipped open the magazine. There was a very highly strung,
tightly wound, positively panic-stricken voice inside her head asking her what the hell she was
doing.

I am reading a magazine, she told it.

The word MAGIC was printed on the cover (probably why her parents had thought to send it to
her), with a butterfly net. Speeding the world up means catching the light.

Five days.

She skimmed over the article about the increase in the sun’s output energy and its implications. The
voice in her head berated her for subduing her own output energy.

Five days.

However, she did eventually get absorbed into an article about fossils and the mysteries of the
ocean bed. It became quite evident as she read that the scientists had stumbled upon a Grindylow.
As she fell deeper in to the pages, her brain quietened, rather enamoured by such a dose of fresh
information. She read an alarming piece about the dangerous consequences of Global Warming,
and a marvellous one about a breakthrough in tissue engineering technology. She got utterly
engrossed.

Quite some time later, she was intruded upon.

“Why are you reading about livestock?”

She blinked up at Draco disconcertedly. He was kitted out to go flying, broom in hand, boots on,
black joggers, and a fitted pullover. It was something between deep blue and Payne’s grey, a colour
she reckoned was absolutely perfect for him. And it was really rather snug, the way it tapered down
from the width of his shoulders to his lean torso.

“Good lord, crawl out of your head faster,” he barked.

Her eyes snapped up to his, but he wasn’t looking mean at all; rather, he appeared imperiously
expectant.

“Uh,” she breathed, “Dolly the sheep has given birth to twins.”

He sighed. “Okay, never mind. You are obviously barmy–”

“She was cloned using a cell from another fully grown sheep.”

He considered her sentence for a long moment.

“What do you mean cloned?”

“It might take some time to explain...” Hermione’s eyes darted towards his broom.

He looked down at his broom as well. Then he carefully set it to lean against the table, and sat on
the chair across from hers.

“Explain.”

She could not explain the freakish thrill that ran through her at that moment. Her mouth was
tremoring with the desire to smile so she bit down on the insides of her cheeks. Placing the
magazine on the table, she looked down at it under the pretext of searching for... something or the
other.

She did her best to elucidate. He was rather charmingly fixated on the idea that a microscopic cell
could actually be isolated at all, so by the time she got around to talking about nuclear transfers and
DNA, he was frowning intensely and listening closely.

“Do you reckon if we could somehow focus magic on something that small, we might be able to
get the Geminio charm to work on living things?” he asked.

Hermione’s brows shot up. “Er, I don’t know. How could you possibly zero in on something so
miniscule?”

“That’s a job for an Unspeakable, I suppose,” he shrugged, “Perhaps some sort of device like that...
micro...?”

“Scope,” she supplied.

“Yeah, like that, but to channel the spell through.”

“Even so,” Hermione contended, “All you’ll have is a duplicate of DNA. You’ll still have to create
an embryo and then... grow that embryo into a complex organism. Magic can’t do that.”

“Right.” His frown deepened.

He was quiet, looking pensively down at Dolly the sheep’s photograph.

“Wouldn’t it have been useful, though, a while back?” Hermione asked.

“Huh?”

“When things were so explosive, and, you know. We could have cloned Theo and had one each and
there’d have been no fighting.”

“Hm.”

“Although,” she carried on, “And here’s the second catch – People are so much more than their
physiology. Theo-two would only be Theo if he’d have shared every single one of the original
Theo’s experiences and memories.”

He didn’t even spare her a fleeting glance.

She continued, “Without those, he’d be an empty Theo-shaped shell. Of course, we do know how
to extract memories, but watching them isn’t remotely the same as living through them.”

“You realise you’ve just been talking to yourself?”

“Well, I would talk to you, but you’re too engrossed in admiring how cute Dolly is.”

“Sheep aren’t cute.”

“Excuse me,” she baulked, “They absolutely are! Look at her!”

He already was. Yet, Hermione unnecessarily jabbed a finger at Dolly’s photograph.

“So fluffy. Such a sweet face.”

“Lambs, Granger,” Draco pressed, “Lambs are cute. Sheep are not. Trust me, I have been likened to
both.”

She hesitated a moment.

“Who – who has called you a lamb?”

“My mother,” he replied plainly.

Laughter burbled at the back of her throat. She regarded his fine, fair hair. “Mary had a little lamb,
whose fleece was white as snow.”

At last, he looked back up at her, fully.

“Who the fuck is Mary now?”

“It’s a line from a children’s nursery rhyme.”

“I’ll bet there aren’t any rhymes about sheep,” he proffered.

“There is, in fact, one about a black sheep–”

“Ah,” he smirked, “I’ve been called that too.”

She grinned in earnest, finally. Just then, the common room door opened, and a troop of very
disgruntled young men fell in. They crowed in righteous fury the moment they spotted Draco, and
thronged around him. Many oaths and accusations were thrown – apparently the worst possible
thing is losing a quidditch match against a “bunch of runty fifth years”.

Much castigation was thrown Theo’s way, who as always, had made no attempt to participate. Theo
– who had thus far been standing a bit to the side simply eyeing Draco’s discarded broom – was
spurred into action at the mention of his name. He dove into the kerfuffle with an indignant,
“Who’re you calling a useless prick?!”

And Hermione left to have some lunch.

After eating, her sense of purpose and optimism had been renewed. As a matter of fact, she actually
felt rather jolly and thought she’d return to her room to sit a while with Delphi’s diary.

However, just as she made to go up the grand staircase, a voice called out her name.

“Yes, Theo,” she turned around with a smile.

“Hullo,” he returned cheerfully, “Let’s go.”

He took a firm grip of her elbow and began dragging her in the opposite direction.

“Where are we going?” She tried to come free of his grasp, but she couldn’t.

“Lake,” he answered, “It’s a beautiful day.”

“But Theo, I really would like to study,” she whinged, “NEWTs are in–”

“A week, I know, but–”

“Five days!”

“BUT we also have less than a month here at Hogwarts. And we haven’t had an afternoon of ‘Theo
and Hermione sitting by the lake’ in ages! Please, just half an hour. Will that be so bad?”

No. Of course it wouldn’t be bad. Hermione stopped protesting after that.

“Lead the way.”

Warm, bright, unadulterated early summer greeted them once outside. Hermione shed her robes the
moment they reached the lake, and rolled up her sleeves. The grass was a lush green, but also warm
and dry. It tickled her legs as she sat. Theo settled beside her with a contented sigh. He stretched
out, resting back on his elbows.
There was gentle but persistent breeze and it kept catching her hair. Hermione twisted it up into a
bun. She looked up at the canopy of green; the fresh leaves rustled softly, like crepe might rustle
under the touch of frail fingers.

“Theo, my friend,” she sang, “Why do you insist on playing quidditch when you don’t intend to
actually play quidditch?”

He grinned up at her. “Do you see how worked up those tossers get? Winding them up is such fun!”

“But why don’t they refuse to play with you?”

“No clue!” he cackled.

“How hasn’t Draco put his foot down?”

“He has no business telling me anything, after all the times he’s forced me to go flying with him.
He’s resigned himself to it, I think. For the rest of his life, he shall have his game ruined by good
old Theo. Unless, of course he cleverly avoids the whole situation entirely, by cosying up to a wild-
haired vixen–”

“Oh, shut it,” she hissed, her face at once aflame.

She looked out at the lake.

“What do you think of the NEWTs schedule?”

“Splendid,” he declared, “Marvellous. I've never liked anything more.”

“Hmph. Do you feel prepared?”

“For what?”

“For the exams!”

“Oh. Eh!” he scoffed, “I’m alright. Doesn’t really matter how I do.”

She pursed her lips. They’d had this conversation thrice before and he always managed to
prevaricate.

“Honestly, what do you plan to do after this?”

“No idea!” he said happily, “Not a damn thing, hopefully!”

“Theodore!”

“Oh, don’t you -odore me!”

She huffed loudly to disguise her laugh.

Shaking her head she said, “You are far too clever and capable to be a wastrel.”

“You are far too young and pretty to be talking like McGonagall.”

He lay down fully, and drew his forearm across his eyes.

“Come now, you swot. Relax. Fifteen more minutes and I will send you packing.”

He kept her there for another twenty-five minutes, though to be fair, she lost track of time too.
When she finally said it was time to go, he seemed inclined to stay back, but she pulled and pulled
and pulled him up, insisting he needed to come up and study runes with her.

“I’ve invested a lot of time ensuring that you have a grasp on this subject,” she chided, “I will
accept nothing less than an Exceeds Expectations.”

“Hermione, listen, seriously. You are McGonagallising at an alarming rate.”

Warmth dissipated as soon as they entered the castle. She draped her robes over her shoulders and
they smelled of sun and grass.

They went to the library, to their favoured table, where she kept him for forty minutes, going over
the six main runic alphabets in painstaking details. He participated as required... barely. There she
sat, bent over the table, scribbling on parchment, while there he was, lounging on his chair, tipped
back on its two hind legs, calling out answers in a dispassionate sort of way.

She remained focused on her parchment as they walked and he was forced to guide her along, all
way to the common room.

“Thank you,” she muttered as he pushed her down on an armchair.

“Good look on you, Hermione!” Someone – Dean? – called out. She ignored him, too busy
considering the subtle difference between the Anglo-Saxon Eoh and the Macromannin Eho .

People around her tittered. She scrutinised the Bryggen inscriptions.

She translated the Norse Poetic Edda in her head - Ok rað runaʀ þaʀ rægi[n]kundu …. And
interpret the runes of divine origin –

“ Ha! Impeccable! Could I try?!"

– The great epic Havamal, from the perspective of Odin... I know that I hung... um... vindga meiði...
on a windy tree...

“...Hermione.”

“Huh?”

Luna perhaps? She didn’t look up.

“I think it looks terrific.”

“Wha - okay. Thanks.”

The Ljóðatal... lyrical charms... sva ec rist oc i rv́nom fác.. So do I write...? No, inscribe? No, no...
definitely write.

She shook her head. A proper deluge of quills rained down around her.

“Oh shite, down she goes!”

“What the hell?!!” she shrieked.

She whipped her head around, and Theo and Dean stared back at her with wide guilty eyes and
their wands raised.

Four days.
Hermione, Draco, and Padma spent a large portion of the day in the library solving past
Arithmancy Papers. They corrected each other's work; Hermione got Padma’s, Padma got Draco’s,
and Draco got Hermione’s.

“We’re definitely all getting O’s,” Padma announced with great surety.

“Hopefully,” Hermione mumbled.

There was a doodle of an owl at the bottom of her parchment. Small, angry-looking, with steam
coming out of its overly fluffy ears.

When she glowered at Draco, he said, “Yes. Exactly.”

Three days. She only left her room for meals. Everyone, everywhere was too loud.

Two days. Leave her alone.

One day. Fuck.

For the past two months, right up to the night before, people had accused Hermione of frightening
single-mindedness, of an obsession of histrionic proportions. Yet, she woke up on that Monday
with a sense of calm.

It was starkly different to how she had felt on the morning before her first OWL. It could’ve been
the war, she thought as she showered, that had given her this new laissez-faire approach. She’d put
in the work, she’d done all she could... and now, fretting was pointless. Only thing in her control
was what she’d write.
She pulled on her robes over her uniform and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was white as
a sheet.

Yeah, fine, fuck it. She was apprehensive as hell. She was a bundle of nerves. Nothing had
changed.

Of course, they’ve fucking changed. Everything has changed.

Draco’s voice in her head. What a wonderful start to the day.

Eating breakfast was hard. Ginny sat between her and Neville, offering bracing words of
encouragement. Now, Neville actually looked reasonably composed. It seemed like Hermione’s
‘hardened by the war’ theory was applicable to him.

She didn’t know what it was about tests that did this to her. She had nothing left to prove.

After breakfast, they waited in the courtyard, while the Great Hall was being rearranged for the
exam. Theo patted her back comfortingly telling her to stop being silly and that she had to know
she would do brilliantly.

“You really aren’t even a little worried?” she asked feebly.

“No, you goose. Charms are easy-peasy. Besides, I have my lucky Hermione scarf, and my lucky
Luna-Bracelet – Ah, look! We are being summoned.”

She exchanged good lucks with him and Luna at the door and walked a shaky course to her seat.
The faint, ominous melody in her head belonged in the hall of the mountain king.

(“Good luck, Draco,” she mumbled, on the way. “Hm?” he replied absently.)

McGonagall stood in the front, watching everyone settle; behind her was an enormous hourglass,
much like the ones that kept track of house points.
Hermione sat. She crossed her legs at the ankles and, keeping an immense white-knuckled grip on
her quill, stared at the parchment on her table, lying face down.

McGonagall flipped the hourglass over with a wave of her wand and announced, “You may
begin.”
“By Godric, Neville,” Dean cackled, “That was your finest moment till date!”

“I beheaded a giant snake!”

“He asked you to make it rain! How did you manage to singe his clothes right off? Poor old
todger!”

Just back from dinner, Hermione was making her way to her room, immersed in Early
Numerology.

“Hold your hippogriffs, Hermione!” Ginny called.

She stopped.

“What is it?”

“Come. Sit with us. Take a break.”

She was perched on a table, and Theo, Luna, Neville, Hannah, Dean, and Susan were sitting around
her. Draco was sitting on a settee. Lisa Turpin was sitting next to him.
They were all looking at her anticipatorily. Hermione swallowed with some difficulty.

“Nah,” she muttered, “Much to do.”

“Oh, try not to be a bore sometimes,” Ginny chided good-naturedly.

“Why aren’t you in your own common room,” Hermione asked, peeved.

Ginny shrugged. “Why aren’t you making us all go through the Charms exam, question by
question, to see if we all got the same answer? Harry warned me that you’d do that.”

“That was not well received,” she replied primly, “So I stopped.”

That’s when Draco decided to run his mouth.

“Isn’t it bad enough doing the exam once?”

“Exactly what Ron had said,” she bit back.

And she zipped away before he could react.

Arithmancy went well. There was no skirting around that fact. Time, her hand, her mind had
maintained a steady, unflinching flow from the moment she’d dived into the paper, till she finally
put down her quill.

She felt better about it than she’d ever imagined.

As students spilled out of the hall, Hermione made a beeline for Draco and Padma, standing on one
side of the courtyard.

“Well, what did you think?” Padma asked at once.

“It was okay, I suppose, right?” Hermione ventured.

Draco gave her a look of mild exasperation.

“Come of it!” Padma jostled her shoulder amicably. “It was good!”

After Herbology (from which Hermione’s main takeaway was that she would never ever have to be
around those foul walking plants again,) and Potions (her Repleo draught had the examiner openly
impressed), was Ancient Runes.

Once again, Hermione was taken aback by the anti-climactic ease with which the exam went. The
comparative aspect that she’d tied herself up in knots over didn’t even figure; it was as
straightforward as it could possibly be. Frankly, she was a bit annoyed by how unimaginative it
was.

Since Runes had no practical aspect, the afternoon was to be devoted to the Astronomy written
exam, after a short break for lunch. Instead of waiting for the Great Hall to once again be turned
into a space for eating, Hermione and Theo went out to the lake, where Ginny, Luna, and Dean
were waiting with a basket full of meat pies and fruit, courtesy of Mrs Weasley.

Draco was there too, but sitting apart, with star charts spread all around him.
“So, you aren’t going to be all shirty and elusive today?” Ginny asked.

“No,” Hermione answered abashedly, “I have a three-day gap now.”

“How were the runes?” Luna asked as she pushed an orange slice into Theo’s mouth.

“Splendid!” he maffled around the fruit, “Good stuff!”

“Yes, it was okay, I suppose,” Hermione seconded.

It was only when Draco looked up at her that she realised she had been looking at him. She quickly
averted her gaze.

The group indulged in idle chatter, that Hermione had a hard time following. She’d eaten just one
small apple, but her stomach was rolling. Sleep deprivation, she imagined; it had been an
impossibly long week.

About half an hour before the exam was to begin, Lisa came bounding across the grounds and
dropped down next to Draco. She shook out a chart of her own and splayed it out in front of him,
pointing urgently at something. He frowned and looked down at it – they both looked down at it,
heads bent close together–

“Poor Draco,” Theo’s voice murmured softly right into her ear, “I’m sure he wishes Lisa was even
half as proficient a study partner as you are.”

She turned her head to gape at him and he was looking determinedly not at her. But there was a
fucking smile playing about his lips. She wanted the ground to swallow her up.

The astronomy practical was that night. The moon was a dim little wafer, and all the stars were out,
glimmering brightly. It was being held in another tower, as the original Astronomy Tower had been
retired from use due to the... events... that had transpired there.

There was, in the corridor linking that tower to the “eighth year” tower, a particular window that
was framed by a small but very deep arched alcove. Two narrow ledges on either end of the
window served as makeshift benches.
Hermione sat herself down on one of those. Only a morsel of candlelight made its way into that
nook, but still, she sat on the bench that put her back to the new Astronomy tower, lest anyone
coming from that direction saw her sitting and gawking their way like a ghoul. She placed her
beaded bag just at the seam of the corridor; only someone keenly observant might notice it.
It was nearing midnight. The exam was probably over.

Hermione felt a bizarre surge of agitation. Her pulse was pounding at the base of her neck. In some
sort of frenzy, she pulled up the edge of her skirt so it rose halfway up her thigh... and she stretched
her leg out to lie delicately by her bag.
Shit, no.
It was far too high up.
She pushed her skirt down a tad. Just an inch above her knee. Skin hidden. The view marred...
She pulled it back up again.

She didn’t know what the matter with her was, had no idea what had possessed her at that moment,
but it was some sort of a clamorous compulsion that had every inch of her thrumming.

Footsteps.
She tensed.

Justin, and a girl and a boy from Ginny’s year, went past.

Footsteps.
Pins and needles down her legs.

Some chap walked by. She didn’t know who; whoever, whatever.

Footsteps.
The pins and needles were everywhere.

It was Draco, Lisa, Tracy, and Anthony.

She completely, completely stopped breathing. They walked by her; a low hum of conversation
followed. She peeped out into the passageway to watch them go, to watch as they turned the corner
and disappeared. The breath caught in her throat remained there, and hardened into something solid
and sour.

Footsteps.
She pulled her leg out of its awkward slanted position and–

The footsteps were decidedly not coming from behind her. The hard mass in her throat began
pulsing, fluttering, and before she could so much as digest this information, he was there, standing
by the opposite column.

Her body flashed hot. Or cold. She wasn’t sure.

He looked faintly narked as he asked, “Now what are you doing here?”

She had been prepared for this question, and had made her mind to reply vaguely, flippantly about
having set out for a solitary walk because it was so fucking chaotic in the common room. She’d
imagined he would laugh – he seemed to like it when she repeated his own words back to him.
But looking at him obliterated all traces of flippancy. He looked as tall as he ever had. One hand
gripping the strap of his bag, the other straight down his side. His mind-boggling, composure-
wrecking focus was wholly on her.

All she could bring herself to say was, “How did the practical go?”

He frowned. His mouth twisted to the side for a moment, as he continued to wear down her sanity.

“Not bad,” he replied at last.

“Not the most confident of assessments,” she said with a forced, weak laugh.

“It’s better than okay, I suppose.”

“Huh?”

“It’s what you’ve had to say after every fucking exam.”

“Oh,” she squeaked, “I didn’t realise...”

He shifted his weight onto one leg and leant a shoulder against the pilaster.

“Everyone else has.”

“We have three days off now.”

“I know.”

Without any permission what so ever, her hand spasmed. His eyes dropped to catch the
movement... and they stayed there, on her lap, where she’d daftly hitched up her skirt. At once she
was mortified beyond comprehension.

“So many history books on your shelf!” she blurted, a bit shrilly, “Why didn’t you opt for History
of Magic?”

He didn’t look back up, but his eyes shifted across the alcove. He moved then, smoothly. Like her,
he deposited his bag on the floor, and took a seat on the opposite bench.

“I can read about history on my own. No need to subject myself to Binns.”

His knees were inches away from hers, and the deep black of his trousers contrasted starkly with
her unclad legs. His stature lent him a lap that was so much more spacious than hers. His legs were
parted at about thirty degrees, reminding her of his door on the night of his birthday. Open just a
tad, just a touch... before she’d pushed it open with her hand...

She peeked up at him. He was sitting back, an elbow was resting on the window ledge, and he was
looking outside. Hermione reached over and pushed the window open. The night air felt like ice
water on her heated skin.
“Beautiful night,” she remarked raspingly.

“It’s okay, I suppose,” he drawled, “Same as any other night in these confounded highlands. Lake,
forest, moon, stars, etcetera, etcetera.”

She took a shallow breath and smiled out at the lake, forest, moon, and stars.

“Are the wonders of nature too hackneyed for Draco Malfoy?”

“Seen it to death. There’s a fucking lake and thicket around the manor too. I’ve had my fill.”

“Seeking new horizons, are you?”

He didn’t reply. She abandoned the scenery to observe him once again. He seemed to have had the
same idea. It startled her to find that rare hint of openness back on his features; she truly couldn’t
figure out what it was about him that alerted her to the change. There was just something...
something...

She didn’t know. His eyes were lucent.

“You must enjoy visiting your mother then. Brittany, right?”

“Yeah, but I’ve been going there for as long as I can remember.”

“I see. The glorious Scottish mountains, the robust English countryside, and the quaint French
peninsula are too boring for you.”

He smirked, and he shrugged.

“Have you been anywhere else?” she asked.

“Been around to other parts of France. Went to Venice once, when I was ten. That’s about it.”

All that money and he had barely travelled at all.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, he added, “My parents didn’t care to travel.”

“Would you like to?”

“I plan to.”

“Oh,” she whispered, and bit the corner of her lip, “Is that your plan for after...” she trailed off.

He shrugged again, “Not sure I have a solid plan for that yet–”

“Oh no,” she groaned, “Not you as well!”

He grinned at that, sitting up a tad straighter. “Theo getting on your nerves?”

“You have no idea!”

“I have no idea what it’s like to have Theo on my nerves?” he scoffed.

“Alright, maybe you have some idea,” she allowed.

She put her elbow on the window ledge, (a bit further down, so she had to lean ahead towards him),
and rested her chin on her hand. She smiled at him. He eyed her wrist for a passing moment.

“What do you want to do?”

“Law, apparently.”

“You say okay, I suppose with more conviction,” he noted.

“Heh,” she chuckled abashedly, “Can’t be helped. The whole system is too outlandish to inspire
much confidence.”

“How so?”

“Fresh out of school and I’m supposed to just join the DMLE? No need to actually learn about the
Law or pass some sort of exam–”

“And what, pray, are the NEWTs?”

“Just testing my magical skills!” she said, flustered, waving her hands about. “But not if I know
anything about the law!”

“Well, they will train you first.”

“You know, to become a muggle lawyer, I’d have to study for at least another three years – five if I
wanted to become a full-fledged barrister – do a legal practice course, and then attach myself as an
underling in a firm.”

“Seems a bit excessive,” he muttered dryly.

“It’s the bare minimum required to ensure basic competence. Law isn’t a joke, Draco.”

“No, good heavens, of course not.”

“This is why the Ministry is crammed with idiots, and why so many of the higher-ups are bloody
inept. Nothing works, does it?”

“No,” he clicked his tongue, “Nothing.”

Blinkingly, she took in the wry turn of his mouth. “Are you mocking me?”

He grinned. “You’re all ruffled like an angry little owl again.”

She sucked in a quavering breath. Prat.

“I see where you’re going with this, Granger,” he went on.

She slid a bit closer to the edge of her bench and returned her chin to its perch on her hand. I'm
listening, she hoped to convey.

“It’s all leading to the grim eventuality of you taking on the mantle of Minister for Magic.”

She lightly turned up her nose. “I can’t see myself doing a worse job than any of the fools who’ve
been utterly unworthy of the post. Kingsley not included... for now.”

“Will that be your campaign slogan?” he asked, bending forward slightly, “Can’t muck up more
than they have: Vote for Granger!”

She glared. "I know I wouldn’t stand a chance. Nobody is interested in merit – it's all just one big
popularity contest, and I am well aware that I am not very imposing or charismatic.”

“That’s right,” he agreed, “You aren’t.”

“Well, you aren’t either,” she sniffed.

“Oh, please.” He leaned in close, decidedly close, with a blistering half grin on his face. “I am very
imposing and charismatic.”

She swallowed. “Draco Malfoy as Minister for Magic?”

He laughed softly, almost under his breath. “That’ll be the day, eh?”

“No,” she whispered, “That’ll be the apocalypse.”

“I thought we’d just been through that.”

“No. That was just a teaser.” She lowered her head marginally and looked up at him through her
eyelashes. “The real end of the world will come about under your leadership. No death or
destruction, no violence... just devastating mediocrity.”

He was so goddamned close that, when he grinned, fully and broadly, she was able to absorb every
detail: The depth of the little creases flanking his mouth, the way his eyes gently narrowed, the
profoundly subtle dip along his cheekbones. In the umbra all around, just his eyes, his hair, and one
side of his face were luminescent. The light ran along the line of his jaw.

So very close.

She slid her leg forward and the cuff of his trousers brushed against her ankle. A perceptible
shudder racked through her body. She glanced down and saw her leg right next to his. With the
most meagre of movements, she would be able to feel the material of his trousers along the entire
length –

When she met his gaze again, he wasn’t grinning anymore. His face was blanched of all expression,
but at that proximity she beheld a certain sharpness in his aspect; a blazing hard directness that
seared through her skull, went down her throat, and secured a death grip on her windpipe. Crazy,
thrashing orbs of some sort formed in her chest and her stomach.

“Would you like to head back?” he asked.

That same searing hardness had infiltrated his voice as well. Hermione felt its resonance in the air
around her, smarting against her skin.

“Yes,” she gasped, “Uh... yes.”

She carefully extracted her leg and stood up, even as he slowly straightened and leaned away from
her. As she got to her feet, her shadow passed over his face like a caress. For a moment, she
lingered, peering down at him. He didn’t return her stare for very long.

He bent to collect his bag, and she moved out from the alcove, into the corridor. Forthwith, the
world around her was better lit, less overwrought.

He stepped out, slinging his bag on his shoulder. Their eyes met as he walked closer; he was
moving far too slowly again. Her hands were clasped in front of her stomach, and the orb within
was dense and churning. He swept past her, down the passageway – and after an uncomfortable
gulp of air, she moved along as well.

The silence as they trekked back to their tower, was almost painful. The tingling effervescence of
the hour converged around her and nothing felt real anymore. She didn’t dare look at him, and kept
her head down. Even his shadow looked stoic.

In due time, they arrived, and took pause in the empty common room. It felt almost like a face-off –
a hint of that familiar challenging air that he elicited. But it wasn’t the same as before, oh no. She
didn’t feel up to this at all, she didn’t know how it was to be combatted. The stifling, crushing,
churning, rolling uncertainty coursing through her body had got too much to bear. His face was too
much to bear. She needed to be able to breathe again.

“Well, goodnight,” she soughed.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “Goodnight.”

She spun around on one foot almost like she meant to apparate, and set off marching towards the
staircase leading to her room. Three – four – five steps later, she heard a rustle, and heard him, his
footsteps, as he went towards his own room.

Once inside, she sort of just... stood... for an interval. Very little about the state of her insides
changed. She felt rattled to the core.

God, fuck, what had happened?

She dumped her bag and, in a tizzy, tore off her shirt and her accursed skirt. How, she thought,
HOW, as she yanked out a t-shirt from her wardrobe and pulled it on, how had he been so close?!

It was the hour, the exams; both their brains were fried. Hers certainly was and it had cooked her
from the inside. She sat up in bed, propped up by plenty of pillows. Legs crossed, she picked up A
Guide to Advanced Transfiguration from her bedside table and set it on her lap.
Mad. Everything was.

In that moment when she’d stood up and lingered, peering down at him and he, still sitting,
looked up at her... what if... suppose she had reached out and pushed back the hair hanging down
his forehead, what if she’d raked her fingers through his locks, and what if he’d put those hands of
his on her waist and pulled her into the gap between his legs –

She squeezed her eyes shut. The orb in her stomach went ballistic. Had she known indulging her
inexplicable compulsion would lead to this –

She had anticipated a conversation. Some badinage to lighten the strain of the past week –

What the hell had just happened?

She opened her eyes. The book remained closed. It was a very long night.

All weekend, she kept mostly to herself. It was generally understood that Transfiguration was very
important to Hermione Granger, so she was left to swot in peace.
Her focus had, in fact, been resuscitated by constantly thinking about how dreadfully disappointed
McGonagall would be if Hermione didn’t ace her exam. She had an image of the old Professor’s
crestfallen visage in the forefront of her mind, firmly imposed over any other visage her brain
might try to conjure. When reading the same text over and over again got too wearisome, she went
about her room, transfigurating anything into anything. She was little Nell Trent, wandering
through a shop full of odds and ends.

Monday had been divvied up between History of Magic and Divination. The turnabout for both
those subjects wasn’t very high, and most people were busy with their Transfiguration books.

Neville and Dean cornered Hermione during breakfast and begged her to help them practice.
Consequently, she ended up sitting in the common room for a solid two hours, quizzing them. She
was pleased to note that Dean had improved his human transfiguration skills, and while the end
result was still a tad wonky, the general gist of his intentions was realised.

At the end of those two hours, she returned to her room for one final careful and thorough revision
of the curriculum.

*
Hermione was certain that McGonagall was going to have no reason to look crestfallen. While she
may have been palaverous in the written test, she was sure there were no inaccuracies, and, as she
walked out of the Great Hall after a satisfactory display of her wandwork, she allowed herself a
great big sigh of relief.

She sat on the steps of the central courtyard, waiting for her friends to get done. So often she’d sat
there, on days sunny and cold, wet and windy, bleak and buoyant. The time Harry was stiff with
panic at the prospect of facing a dragon. The innumerable times he and her and Ron had simply
been, right on that spot, talking, laughing, pondering, bickering. The time she’d been pretending to
read, fully aware that across the courtyard, Victor Krum was staring at her. The time she listened to
Ginny whinge about Harry’s lack of interest. The time they’d stood there watching Fred and
George fly off after a glorious display of rebellion. The Christmas evening with Theo, when he’d
shown her his S.P.E.W. badge.

How easily the most mundane of places became distinguished: little shrines of precious memories.

Luna was the first to join her.

“Lost in thought?” she asked brightly as she sat beside her.

“Reminiscing,” Hermione replied with a smile.

She waited for Luna to attribute that to some imaginary beastie, but the other girl remained quiet.

They both sat in companiable silence until Draco made an appearance. He didn’t sit, opting instead
to lean against the balustrade by the steps. He contemplated the bright blue sky with squinted eyes
and asked, “How’d it go, Granger?”

She flushed. Her eyes fluttered to the ground and she grinned.

“Rather well.”

She didn’t let herself investigate his reaction.

Theo arrived very soon after. He sat between Luna and Hermione, and as always, was perfectly
cognisant of the atmosphere. He didn’t say a word.

They left once Dean and Ginny had finished. Their journey up the castle was also largely silent.
Ginny diverged from the group to head to the Gryffindor tower, mumbling about needing a good
long nap.
 *

When she re-entered the common room that evening after supper and a quick jaunt to the library to
pick up a copy of Defensive Magical Theory, Hermione found Theo, Dean, and a few others circled
around a table. They had a number of paper cut-outs of magical creatures that (a few nifty
piertotem locomotors later) they were making fight against each other.

“Studying,” they told her, when she asked.

Their silly sport had amassed an audience; nearly everyone was sat around, watching. Hermione
dithered for a bit. There were another two days before the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam,
and it felt silly to go hole herself up in her room just yet. She caught Neville’s eye and he waved
her over. She joined him and Hannah on the sofa, and immediately Ernie was on her, asking how
much she was willing to wager on Dean’s Occamy defeating Anthony’s Chimaera.
She shooed him away. A great big roar erupted when the lion’s maw tore off the serpent's wings.

Draco was sitting not too far off. He had a drink in his hand and his legs were parted at thirty
degrees.

On Friday, the twenty-fifth of June, the day began with a spell of light rain. No longer than an hour
at best, and no more than a bit of pitter-patter.
The Great Hall was buzzing during breakfast. The fifth, seventh, and “eighth” year students were
collectively aching for the afternoon to come and free them from their prison of anxiety and
drudgery. Hermione kept her attention on her book. She was not going to let the air of impatience
around her ruin the final paper.

If the ease of the previous exams had amazed her, Defence Against the Dark Arts left her stumped.
The written bit was all well and good, but when it was time for her practical, the examiner – a tall,
middle-aged woman with short black hair – exclaimed: “But surely, we don’t need a test to see if
Hermione Granger can defend herself against the dark arts!”

What followed was a discomfiting discussion about the system and procedure, and Hermione was
perfunctorily made to perform a few spells that were barely paid attention to.

She went straight to the lake. Now that the rain had abated, it was like it hadn’t happened at all. The
earth was scarcely damp, the sky was cloudless and clear. She breathed in deeply. In the acute
stillness of the moment, the lake was nearly crystalline.

“Hermione!” roared a faraway voice.

She turned around and saw Theo and Luna flat out sprinting towards her, and even from a distance
she could tell they were jubilant. She laughed and waved, and when they reached her, they
collapsed on the grass, panting and beaming.

“Blimey, we’re done!” Theo gasped. He reached out to tickle Luna’s side and she broke out into
wild giggles.

Everyone came out that afternoon: Everyone .

Fifth years, some sixth years, seventh and eighth years. They spilled across the grounds, a heady
mass. Some were lounging and lolling; chatting and sharing food, some were tossing a quaffle
around, some splashed about in the shallow end of the lake. Even the professors made an
appearance, nodding around and offering felicitations.

Hermione sought out her friends after a long, sentimental chat with Hagrid and found them sitting
in a circle by the edge of the forest. Neville and Hannah, hand in hand, were walking... weaving in
and out of the forest. Ginny lay on her stomach, legs in the air. Dean was drawing. Draco was
perched on a fallen branch, with his elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced, as he listened to Theo
talk. Both Theo and Luna had remained as they were, tangled up on the turf.
She saw more people setting out to join them – Susan, Justin, Ernie Michael, and Lisa. Hermione
moved quickly, as quickly as she could go without breaking into a jog.

“Hi,” she breathed when she got to them, and deftly sank down on the branch next to Draco. He
might have observed her as she sat, or he might not have. She didn’t look.

“Ginny,” she went on, “You must go speak to Hagrid, he will be most terribly hurt if you don’t.”

Ginny groaned, “Yes, I’ll go. I will. Don’t make me move just yet!”

Susan et al also arrived then. Turns out, they weren’t there to stay, but were seeking players for a
Hangman Tournament.
 “C’mon,” said Michael, dangling a reusable hangman before them like bait, “Six teams, fifteen
rounds, and then a final–”

“Two galleons, per win!” Ernie trumpeted, “Lose once, lose it all; winner takes it all!”

Hermione blinked. He might have a problem.

Dean and Luna left with them.

Watching them leave, Theo grinned.

“Luna’s got this in the bag. She always wins at word games.”

(Ginny unenthusiastically dragged herself off to meet Hagrid.)

“How many of Luna’s words can be found in a dictionary?” Hermione asked.

“Very few,” Theo admitted, “But they can be found in the Quibbler. And nobody rubbishes the
Quibbler anymore.”

She shook her head with mock solemnity. “Such are the state of affairs – The Quibbler remains our
most esteemed publication.”

“My word, Granger,” Draco piped up, “Does that mean you will have to start your own
publication? Not only will you singlehandedly save the bureaucracy, you'll restore journalistic
ethics as well?”

She shot him a glare without heat.

“Seems like.”

She turned away to find Theo grinning at her – at them both – and she was thrown back to the night
on which he’d begged her to allow him a life of peace with his two best friends. She felt an absurd
sort of smile spill across her face in return.

Chapter End Notes

1. In the Hall of the Mountain King from "Peer Gynt", composed by Edvard Grieg
2. Little Nell Trent: From The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens
 Sixty-Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The bathroom mirror had misted over completely – an opaque, slatey slab – and she drew dozens of
concentric circles on it with her finger. She drew springs, tight and loose and erratic, and twisting,
wiggly lines. Hermione Granger’s addition to Hilma af Klint’s Primordial Chaos series.
She stepped back to survey her work, and saw her own reflection in the disorderly shapes. The
abstraction of Hermione Granger. Her left eye was caught in a spiral. Her mouth was shattered
across circle within circle within circle within circle –

One broad swipe of her hand, and chaos was erased. She cleared the mirror and a pictorial case-
study emerged: The Impact of a Hot Shower following a Strenuous Run on a Newly Liberated
Young Woman.
(Conclusion: It was good.)
She had finally allowed herself the luxury to really take her time doing her laps by the lake, even
veering into the shallow edges of the forest. She’d returned to her room energetic and ebullient,
albeit with slightly shaky legs.

As she got dressed, she wished she had the means to play music in her room. If the common room
below hadn’t been so full, she might even have attempted to summon Seamus’ gramophone. She
wanted something to dance around to, something as exuberant and vital as she felt. In reality, chaos
cannot simply be wiped away. She did up her buttons all wonky and growled as she undid and re-
did them.

She met Ginny just outside the Great Hall, but they didn’t go in for breakfast. Instead, they traipsed
out to Hogsmeade. It was a beautiful time in the little village; nearly all establishments had flowers
outside their windows. Zonko’s looked even more colourful than usual, the baker’s shop emitted a
heavenly aroma as they passed, and the bookshop had a big SALE sign on the door, which
Hermione was forced to forgo by a very bullish Ginny.
They arrived at the Three Broomsticks and found it to be quite packed. After craning her neck to
have a looksee for some time, she finally spotted Harry and Ron sitting cloistered in a corner booth.

Happy as she was to see them, her post-exertion appetite had made itself known. It galled her to be
more Ron-like than the actual Ron was being, but it couldn’t be helped. She partook in her eggy
bread and berries more than she did in the chitchat. The wireless at the bar was playing some
generic, jovial accordion music, that hung over the constant drone of multiple conversations.

After eating, Harry made up his mind to go see Hagrid. No matter how much Hermione and Ginny
tried to explain that they had both already said their goodbyes, they were made to come along.
For Hermione, the run, the shower, the meal, and the subsequent stroll to Hagrid’s hut, added up to
an overwhelming desire to have a little kip. At her usual spot by the lake, she thought. She could
conjure a nice soft blanket, lie on her back, and with the smell of grass all around her, she would
just sleep. Involuntarily, she moved towards the site, but Ginny caught hold of her elbow and pulled
her back in line.

“Harry! Ron!” Hagrid roared with glee after he pulled open his door.

His delight was so pure and complete that Hermione felt bad for her previous reluctance. She
grinned when he bequeathed a similarly convivial greeting to her.

They sat in his enormous chairs, with enormous mugs of tea. Thankfully, they were able to avoid
sampling his cooking as they’d only just eaten. Fang, who was fast asleep by the fireplace, was
snoring intermittently.

“Well, young chaps,” he beamed, “Tell us all about yer firs’ year being aurors!”

These were stories that Hermione had already heard.

Hagrid’s hut was very poorly lit. Fang’s snores were deep and somniferous. Her eyelids kept
fluttering threateningly, so she kept taking frequent, tiny sips of her tea. She really, really wanted to
sleep.

Her eyes were watering by the time the assembly dispersed. She smiled at Hagrid as he walked
them out and even to her, it felt vacant and gormless. She stifled a yawn as they trudged through the
grounds... not back towards the castle.
Harry was leading the way with such command and purpose that the other three simply followed.

He brought them to Dumbledore’s tomb. Pristine, gleaming, glossy white, with its moons and stars,
it seemed untouched by the years of unfettered destruction. Hermione hadn’t been this close to it
since the morning after Voldemort fell, when Harry had deposited the Elder Wand inside.
She stood back – as did Ginny and Ron – while Harry approached it. The sun was glinting right
onto his glasses, shrouding his eyes from view. He placed two fingers on the edge of the tomb as
though feeling for a pulse. With his head lowered, he stood that way for fifteen ticks of a clock.

Then, abruptly, he wheeled around and began walking away. Hermione glanced at Ron, who simply
shrugged and followed.

Harry decided to take a loose circuit around the Whomping Willow. Hands in his pockets, he
observed it like one might observe a sculpture.
Next, he headed towards the Quidditch pitch. Once there, he stood right in the middle and looked
up at the hoops. Hermione and Ron stood to his right, and Ginny stood to his left and took his hand.
The sun and his glasses continued to lend him an enigmatic air.

Here was another abstraction. An oval enclosure. Six tall posts and six rings in the sky. Four
nebulous blobs in the centre of it all.

“Mate,” Ron cut into the silence, “Remember when Lockhart vanished all the bones from your
arm?”

Harry’s laugh was more of a groan. “How could I forget?”

“That was a bad year for all of us, wasn’t it? Hermione turned into a monstrous cat, I spent ages
vomiting slugs–”

“Oh, please,” Ginny interjected, “As far as awful things go, I have you all beat that year.”

They all stared at her uncomfortably, but she just grinned and began dragging Harry towards the
castle.

“Hermione,” said Ron, “You fancied Lockhart like mad. It was ghastly.”

“My god, Ron. Do shut up.” She shoved him playfully in the arm.

“You memorised his biography!”

“I memorise most things I read.”

“You slept with his card under your pillow–”

“You git! If you want to talk about mortifying infatuations, we were just at the Three
Broomsticks–”

“You both are pathetic!” Ginny sniggered.

“You sent Harry a singing dwarf on Valentine’s Day!” Ron huffed.

“And it all worked out for me!”

“Five years later!”

Once in the castle, Ginny left them momentarily to head to the Gryffindor tower, and Hermione,
Harry, and Ron continued to wander around.

“I should head to my room too,” Hermione said by and by, around a yawn, “I’m afraid I’ll collapse
soon.”

“Are you unwell?” Harry asked.

“No. Just extremely sleepy.”

They did an about-turn in the middle of the corridor, and began moving towards the eighth-year
tower.
Just as they stepped off a particular flight of stairs, they came face to face with McGonagall, and
Hermione almost barrelled right into her. It was like she’d materialised out of nowhere.

“Sorry, Professor,” Hermione mumbled as she blinked the alarm out of her eyes, “Didn’t see you
there.”

McGonagall regarded them closely one by one, and a slow, nearly indulgent smile spread across
her face.

“Well, this is a sight for sore eyes,” she said, “I am overcome by an urgent need to dish out a
detention or two.”

Ron chuckled nervously, and once McGonagall had left said, “Fuck me, if she told me to write lines
or polish trophies, I’d still bloody well do it. That’s power, innit?”

Just a short distance more, and then, at long last, Hermione was back in the common room. She bid
a firm farewell to Harry and Ron, and crawled into her room to sleep.

It was ten past four when she woke up. She opened her eyes and sighed, pulling her arms over her
head to stretch. Sunlight sliced into her room through a gap in the curtains. She turned over, and her
slumberous stare stayed fixated on the handle of her wardrobe, where the beam of sunlight met its
end.
How it shone.

She rolled out of bed and stretched again with her fingers interlocked, pulling her spine straight.
Then, with her hands on her lower back, she bent backwards as far as she could go... till a sudden
rush of blood to her head made her stumble, and brought her back into an upright position. For a
moment, she considered pulling open the curtains, but found herself scowling at the prospect, and
so, with a wave of her hand, she lit the lamps in her room instead.
She summoned a book from her desk: One that she’d taken from the library quite some time ago
but hadn’t allowed herself to read. Hopping back in bed, she spent the next two hours reading.

*
“Merlin, bless us all! The resident recluse has emerged from her cave!”

Hermione rolled her eyes at Theo and stood behind the armchair he was sat on.

“It’s only been a couple of hours. Did you really miss me so much?”

“Hermione,” he said, very seriously, looking back at her, “I miss you every tortuous second that we
are apart. Well, anyhow. I’m off. Toodles.”

She laughed. “Where are you going?”

“Off to collect Luna-love for dinner. Oh, and by the way, if you are thinking of skipping the party
tonight–”

“I am not thinking that.”

“– well aware that to you the end of the NEWTs is an occasion for mourning rather than
celebration, but–”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“– here knows how much you love to get abysmally trollied–”

“Theo, shut up and go away.”

He grinned, ruffled her hair, and left. With a matching grin, she watched him walk jauntily out of
the door, before turning to the remaining two – Draco and Dean.

“Would you both like to head down for dinner as well?” she asked, looking between Dean’s face
and Draco’s sleeve.

“Not yet, I’m going to wait till Seamus shows up. Anytime now.” Dean’s pleasant bearing melted
away as he grimaced. “And I have to go wake Ron. Damn chuff’s been asleep, slobbering, on my
bed for hours.”

“And any idea where Harry and Ginny are?”

“Dunno. Don’t want to know.”

Hermione watched him leave too, but this time most decidedly without a grin. She watched him go
even after he’d gone, as what was to come next required some fortification. She pressed her nails
into the armchair cushion.

Draco met her eyes with his idiomatic nonchalance, with his deftly lifted brow, with an implicit
‘yes, I know you’re going to speak to me now’. He had claimed his chair like it was a throne, sitting
back with his ankle crossed over his knee. She could not, simply could not bring herself to ask him
if he wanted to go down for dinner with her. Just him, just her – the thought made her feel all too
diffident, even though they’d be going down to eat with the entire bloody school.
As an alternative, she said, “I found out why those centaurs toppled over. That night, in the forest
when–”

“Yes, I remember.”

“The mallowsweet was ripe... and when burned with sage and oak, it’s said to produce fumes that
apparently refine their powers of divination, help sharpen their inner-eye and what not. They were
in a deep, deep trance. The whole ritual had been timed so that at midnight, the smoke from the
bonfire will have shrouded them. But then we made a noise–”

“You.”

“Er – huh?”

“You made the noise.”

“Fine. Then I made a noise that abruptly snapped them out of it, and they just...”

“Thud.”

“Yes. It is a good thing we didn’t linger, though–”

“You wanted to.”

“It wouldn’t have taken more than five minutes for them to recover.”

He tilted his head a bit to the side. “I burnt sage once, at midnight. Read some tripe about it in an
ancient astronomy book.”

“When was this?” Hermione asked, loosely crossing her arms.

“Christmas hols, third year.”

“And? Were you able to observe the veiled mysteries of the future?”

“It was fucking January, Granger. The wind was brutal. The fire spread.”

“Oh!” she gasped.

“Took down a quarter of the lawn and old Armand Malfoy’s statue.”

“Oh no.”

“Didn’t need divination to figure out that my parents would not be happy.”

“Were you punished?”

“No pudding after dinner that night.”

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s it?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”
Shaking her head, she shot him a look of incredulity, and what she got in return was perhaps the
most prepossessing look of boyish amusement she’d ever seen.

“Speaking of which,” she blurted, “Shall we go have dinner?”

He looked surprised, but so momentarily that his grin scarcely wavered.

“May I have pudding after?”

“As much as you’d like.”

“Then let’s go.”

While he stood up, Hermione pretended to be rooting around for something in her bag, so that she
could shake her hair forward to hide her face... for her face had been taken hostage by the most
embarrassingly broad smile. She brought it somewhat under control and lifted her head; found him
standing, waiting, on the other side of the armchair.

As they climbed down the stairs, Hermione skimmed her fingers along the cool smooth metal of the
handrail. Draco was a mere half-step ahead of her – just enough for her to be able to see him from
the corner of her eye, but not enough for her to properly watch him. One side of her mouth kept
twitching upwards. She was having a stroke.

“I didn’t know Seamus would be making an appearance tonight,” she said, “So it’s going to be that
sort of party, then.”

“What sort of party is that?”

“A Seamus sort of party.”

He snickered. “The sort of party where you get... what was it...? Abysmally trollied?”

“Not just me,” she replied loftily, “Everyone does.”

He glanced down at her, over his shoulder. “I hope to see you flat on your arse once again.”

“I have vowed to never again imbibe anything that you have prepared.”

They reached the great hall and he, with an airy “later, Granger,” made a beeline for the Slytherin
table. Hermione made her way to her own house table, where Harry and Ginny were already seated.
She helped herself to some cottage pie.

“Did you sleep well?” Ginny asked.

“Yes. But evidently not as well as Ron, who has usurped Dean’s bed.”

“By the way, Hermione,” Harry remarked, “Please eat properly. No drinking on an empty stomach,
alright? I don’t want to have to carry you again.”
Hermione growled. The third joke at her expense within the scope of half an hour.

“The party is in the common room, Harry. You won't have to carry me anywhere.”

“Still–”

“Zip it. Finish your peas.”

They could all get bent. Hermione decided she wouldn’t drink a drop of alcohol that night.

The mirror by her dresser was full length and crystal clear. Running her finger across it achieved
nothing besides nearly imperceptible smudges. It wasn’t going to be a terribly large party, just a
laidback knees-up with her friends and classmates. No big deal.

But she wanted to look nice.

She pulled on a pair of slim black trousers, a tad seemlier than her well-worn jeans, along with a
satin cranberry-coloured singlet. Her hair was doing what it usually did at the end of a day spent
sprawled in bed. It was frizzy, unruly, and out of shape. She eyed the bottle of Sleekeazy on her
dresser, a little vexed. There wasn’t a chance of her spending an eternity combing it through her
locks. Taking a dollop of the potion in her hand, she rubbed her palms together and gently glided
them over her hair. It didn’t do a whole lot, but it had some impact, for sure – hopefully it was the
difference between bushy and, er, voluminous. Finally, after a little dab of lipstick, she left her
room.

Mandy had just stepped out of her room at that moment as well, and Hermione furtively looked her
over. She was wearing a flowy black blouse and a skirt of a perfectly respectable length. There was
no need to make any sort of special effort to draw attention to legs like hers.

She glanced over at Hermione and smiled. “I simply love your top.”

“Thank you,” Hermione muttered, “You look very nice.”

They walked down the stairs together.

Faint thumping of percussion instruments and a low roar like a distant ocean hit her when she was
no more than halfway down.

“Sounds like it's in full swing,” Hermione said, before pushing open the door to the common
room.
She gasped.

The place was packed, and it wasn’t just her friends and classmates – there were also over twenty
kids from Ginny’s year. The room had never looked so small. She spotted Seamus immediately,
emptying a bottle down Dean’s throat. For some reason, Roger Davies had shown up, and Mandy
marched straight towards him.
The music wasn’t loud, but it was pervasive, persistent. It weaved through and around the many,
many bodies scattered throughout, charging the very air. It wasn’t a song she was familiar with.

Hmm, can you party with me?

Can you show me a good time?
Do you even know what one looks like?

A frantically waving hand rising up between a small gap in the crowd caught her eye. She peered
and saw a flash of red hair, so she sucked in a breath and pushed forward in that direction.
Fuck. There were so many people.

“Hermione!” Ginny trilled, obviously a few drinks down, “What took you so long?”

But Hermione was too distracted by the sight of George, Angelina, and Lee to answer.

“Hi,” they chorused, grinning.

She perched on the arm of a sofa, and Ron thrust a huge goblet of wine into her hand. Hermione
examined the lovely vinaceous liquid within, pretending to be on the horns of a dilemma... but
honestly. One drink. It was fine. There were so many people. She wouldn’t make a fool of herself.

“So how has the illustrious Hermione Granger been?” George enquired.

She took a nice long sip and grinned. “Good. And you? How was your trip? Are you finally going
to divulge where you’d gone?”

Angelina laughed. “Nowhere exotic, I’m afraid. We were in Ireland.”

“Cork, to be precise,” George added, “Which now, as it so happens, has its own Weasleys' Wizard
Wheezes outlet.”

A general rumble of laudation went around.

“You’ve gone international!” Hermione cheered, “Congratulations!”

George gave her a sardonically doubtful look. “You aren’t going to reprimand me for attempting to
corrupt the Irish?”

(Seamus’ voice boomed out of nowhere: “Old fella, we’re born that way!”)

Angelina laid a hand on George’s and said, “Hopefully, Paris is next.”

“Wow, really?”
For the following half hour or so they bantered amongst themselves, and Hermione, under the
dastardly influence of Seamus and Ron, was on her third goblet of wine.

Suddenly, Neville burst through the crowd into their circle.

“Come on, guys,” he said, waving a fancy looking camera, “Smile.”

Hermione downed the last sip of her drink and grinned widely as the blinding flash went off. And
in the dazed moment after, somehow, a fresh drink was in her hand.

(“Sláinte!” cried Seamus’ disembodied voice. He was anywhere and everywhere, both Dionysus
and Pan. Source of and conduit for merriment.)

Neville went on clicking clicking clicking, until finally he announced, “How about one of the
Golden Trio?”

The phrase made Hermione roll her eyes, and Harry groan. Still, she stood, and –

Some blundering halfwit knocked into her and her drink spilled onto the carpet.

“Shit,” she moaned, forlornly.

But then Harry had pulled her to him and slung his arm around her shoulders and Ron appeared,
slinging his arm over Harry’s arm.

“Alright,” Ron said, “Say, bad dog, Fluffyyyyy.”

Harry and Hermione burst into laughter. The flash went off.

Unfortunately, that was seen by most as an invitation to get a photograph with Harry Potter. The
next thing Hermione knew, some strange bloke had put his hands on her hips. She wrenched away,
ducking under Ron’s arm to escape. Being slight had its benefits; it wasn’t long before she was
away from the over-eager mob surrounding Harry.

Her head swam after that sally. She needed a moment to regain her balance.

So many fucking people, crawling around like mites –

She needed many moments. So many people. All pervasive music. Drums and piano swelled
around her.

We’ve come a long, long way together,

Through the hard times and the good.

Another arm around her shoulders. Seamus.

“What?”

“Hermione,” he lamented, “Your hands are empty. Here.”

He pressed a tall glass of orange liquid into her palm.

“What is this?” she asked distrustfully.

“Gin and pumpkin fizz. You’ll love it.”

“I really shouldn’t–”

“You’ll love it!” His voice echoed as he disappeared somewhere into the horde.

So many people – she took a sip – she did love it. The music was electronic and melodious, just
like what she’d needed this morning.
Surrounded by people, standing alone, drink in hand (– another sip! –) she felt herself swaying to
the beat.

I have to praise you –

No. So many people. This is how falls from grace began. She decided she ought to find some
corner to secrete herself in. She pushed forward once more.

I have to praise you like I should .

She squeezed out from between two hufflepuff girls, right into a low coffee table. She staggered,
protecting her bevy with her life, until she was set right by one of the girls.

“Thanks,” she gasped, help me she thought, and her eyes darted around wildly for shelter.

Just beyond that table was a sofa, and on that sofa was a Draco. Miraculously, nobody was sitting
next to him, perhaps put off by the pungent scowl he was sporting. Hermione was not put off.
Previous quest forgotten, she bounded over to him and collapsed on the sofa. He didn’t
acknowledge her, just kept scowling the other way.

“You look incredibly cross,” she said.

His scowl deepened.

“I’m not. But nothing kills a buzz like having to watch Potter swaggering around making his
devotees kiss his ring.”

Hermione baulked. He sounded so terribly like his younger self.

“Harry doesn’t wear rings,” she informed him, numbly. He ignored her, so she went on, “And he
doesn’t enjoy a second of scenes like these.”

He made a sound of disbelief.

“Truly, he doesn’t. He still refuses to go to Diagon without his invisibility cloak. He hates being
badgered.”

“Oh, poor fucking bloke. Being fawned over is such a bother.”

“It gets very invasive and tiresome.”

“Well imagine being called a rat six different ways during a simple run for errands.”

Hermione looked at his profile closely – his complexion was far more florid than usual.

“You’re quite drunk, aren’t you?” she broached.

“Not drunk enough.”

He reached under the sofa and pulled out a bottle of firewhisky and topped up his glass.

“Your personal stash?” she asked.

“Hm.”

He turned to her then, and his scowl receded. His eyes travelled down the length of her and up
again, coming to a steady rest on her exposed clavicle. Hermione’s throat was bone-dry. She took a
hefty gulp of her drink, and his eyes followed that motion too.

“What are you drinking?”

“Um, gin and pumpkin fizz. Seamus foisted it onto me.”

He pursed his lips to the side, and twisted in his seat so he was facing her fully.

“Well on your way to getting wasted?”

“Not nearly so much as you. Perhaps I’ll get to see you fall on your arse this time.”

“You won't.”

One sip, and he’d cleared half his glass.

Screech!

Some other hapless sod collided with the same coffee table. Hermione watched him hobble away.
So many people. She turned and pulled her legs up onto the sofa.
“Do people really call you a rat?” She tried to make her eyes as wide and earnest as possible.

He shrugged one shoulder. “It wasn’t uncommon, immediately after the hurly-burly.”

“But... still?”

“Who knows?” he said with a caustic turn of his mouth, “Been in a bubble this past year.”

Hermione, once again, looked around the room. So many people.

“Yes, I suppose we have.”

He refilled his drink. She took a sip of her own. Fizzy. Nice.

“Mighty useful thing, that invisibility cloak,” he muttered sourly.

“Must you work yourself into such a maudlin funk?” she exclaimed, exasperated, “I have half a
mind to push you onto your arse.”

“I will murder you,” he assured her. His eyes were glossed over with inebriation.

“Disillusion yourself when you’re out and about then!”

“Pfff. Tedious.”

“You’re tedious.”

She gathered her hair over one shoulder. His glassy gaze fell on the freckle on the side of her now
exposed neck. Her heartbeat picked up and sputtered and whirred.

“You could try disguising yourself,” she said in a voice gruffer than a lifelong chain smoker.

She downed the entirety of her drink and moved to set the empty glass on the floor. Her hair swung
forward and momentarily blocked him from view. When she turned back, his hazy, foggy,
unswerving stare made her want to hide again. Gin and fizz were in her head.

“Can I interest you in some...?” he shook his glass of whisky.

“Not just yet,” she whispered, and looked down at the space between them, at the deep rift between
the two sofa seat cushions.

“How shall I disguise myself?”

She couldn’t fathom how he did that. How he sometimes said things with such a lack of inflection.
She couldn’t tell if she’d annoyed him or if he was playing along.

“Well,” she pointed to his bright, elegantly dishevelled hair, “You could start there.”
“My hair?”

“Yes. It’s very tinselly.”

“Tinselly?”

He was aghast. Ah, real emotion at last.

“Yes. Tinselly.”

He glared pointedly at her hair.

“So, if I transfigure my hair colour to a boring, mousy brown, people will stop harassing me on the
streets?”

She ignored the jibe. Her eyes skittered across his face.

“Well... the thing is...”

“Oh, what is the thing, Granger?” he droned, punctuating his question with a big gulp of whisky.

“The thing is... your face.”

She took in the lines of his jaw and the curve of his eyebrows.

“And what am I supposed to do ab–”

“It’s very symmetrical,” she declared – his very symmetrical brow furrowed – “It’s very eye-
catching.”

At that, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. Hermione, evidently, had slipped on a bit of metaphorical
ice... at the top of a very steep hill. And now she was doomed to tumble, down and down and
down. There would be no stopping her.

“Yes,” she mumbled gin-and-fizzily, “You know. Like... striking.”

“My face is striking.”

He swallowed. His throat undulated. His mouth was trembling with amusement.

“And also.” She needed to stop. At once. People. “Your eyes are very... I mean to say... they are
rather... Distinct."

A slow, flabbergasted grin spread across his face.

“My eyes, Granger?”

Oh, what the fuck. She absolutely HAD fallen on her arse. This was very, very bad. She needed to
tap the hell out of this conversation.
“Salazar save me,” he drawled, “You’re flirting with me!”

Her mind was screaming like a baby mandrake.

“I am not!” she yelped.

“You are!” he said with a disbelieving snigger, “You’re flirting with me!”

Panic. Blind panic. Seamus was Pan and he had done this.

“I am certainly not flirting with you!” she hissed.

So many people. Were they watching? She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him . The whistling in
her ears drowned out the music.

“I most definitely feel flirted with,” he said, eying her over the rim of his glass.

“I... That was not my intention,” she bewailed.

“Intention or not, it’s what I feel–”

“Well, I am sorry!”

“It’s out there. You flirted. What are we to do?”

“I take it back!”

“You can’t take it back. I think I ought to inform the Prophet. People should know what a disgrace
you are.”

People . She bristled. Her heart hammered still.

“That’ll make Skeeter’s day. The boy who fed her tales about my conquests in fourth year, claiming
that I inflicted unwanted flirtation on him. I’ll be the most disreputable slag in the country!”

He chuckled and stole the last sip from his glass.

“I’ll be sure to write to her immediately.”

Hermione gently laid her head against the back of the sofa. His eyes seemed to trace the line from
her ear to her shoulder and she found herself unable to breathe. Those orbs of chaos had returned.

“Go on then,” she rasped.

“Huh?”

His eyes climbed back to her face.

“Go write to her.”

“In a bit.”

He tilted his head to match the angle of hers, a soft smirk on his lips.

Her stomach had dropped to her knees.

“You - you said immediately.”

“Well... yeah. But I think I’ll stay here a little while longer.”

“...Okay?” she breathed. Barely.

“You know, your face is fairly symmetrical, too.”

Oh god.

She lifted her head off the sofa and stared at him, most likely beet-red.

“Draco,” she warbled, “are you flirting with me?”

He grinned. “Yes.”

The blood gushing in her veins turned to lava. She’d never felt such a burning surge inside her in
all her life. Her lips parted as she gawked at him; his grin so full and unabashed. She would erupt
into flames right there on the sofa, burnt from inside out, in front of all those naffing people.

So many people. She cleared her throat, hard.

"Very clever, but I can tell you’re trying to set me up so I will implicate myself further. It’s not
going to work.”

She smiled in (what she hoped was) a winsome way.

“Over here! Hermione, Draco!”

Her head whipped around and she was promptly dazzled by a flash of light. When she’d blinked
the room back into existence, Neville’s jocund face filled her vision.
“And one with me,” he said cheerfully, “Hannah, if you will...?”

He handed her the camera and plonked down between the two of them. Hermione uncurled her legs
and set her feet back on the ground.

Following that, she shot up and said, “Neville could you come with me, please?”
“Sure...”

She exchanged one parting glance with Draco – he appeared quizzically amused – and she led
Neville away.

She kept her eyes peeled and she meandered through the masses, pausing to wordlessly accept
Seamus’ proffered glass of gin and fizz. Her pulse simply would not relax. It matched its beat to the
music.

The flowers in the garden

The wine
The "Waiting for Godot"
And so much modern time?

She spotted Theo by the fireplace.

He stood with a drink in one hand and Luna’s hand in the other, chatting with George and Lee.
When Hermione approached, he beamed from ear to ear.

“Where have you been, little girl?”

“Around,” she hedged.

“And that is drink number...?”

“Shut up. Take a picture with me.”

He set his glass on the mantel, and stood behind her and hugged her around her shoulders. Off went
the flash. She felt him rest his chin on the top of her head.

Once again, it was a flash that launched a thousand photographs. She was being gripped this way
and that, Luna and Dean and Theo, George, Seamus, Padma – she lost track. Her perception was
reduced to flashes of light and sips of drink.
Soon, her head was swimming so appallingly, she felt close to collapsing. Theo caught her by the
elbow and found her a chair.

“You are a godsend,” she told him.

“This chair is a Theosend,” he rebuked.

He returned to his conversation with George and Lee. Hermione pulled her legs up for a second
time, and rested her glass against her knee. The condensation left a damp circle on her trousers. She
had acquired a drunken detachment from the world around her, like she’d been cut out and placed
there by accident.
Peeking around the back of her chair, she saw people – people and people and people – forming a
paling around her. She visualised them parting like the red sea, providing her with a direct view of
Draco, still alone on that sofa... and he gestured for her to come back.

With a sigh, she turned away and cast an unceremonious evanesco on her unfinished glass. She was
cutting herself off. What was she to do now?

That state of disoriented inertia didn’t last very long. Ginny found her and forced her off the chair.

“Let's dance, please!” she beseeched

“Ginny, there’s no room to dance!”

“Fuck it. We’ll make room.”

How often do such things happen? Her day began with a strong desire to dance, and ended with her
dancing well past midnight.

She slept till ten-thirty. Her eyes opened to an unfamiliar view, and she realised she’d crashed
perpendicularly across the bed, on top of the covers, still in her party clothes, with her legs hanging
off the edge and her shoes still on. She kicked them off and turned to her side, drawing her knees
up into a foetal position... and she grimaced. Her legs were aching and her mouth was so dry and
sour. Gin and pumpkin fizz did not taste good at all, the morning after.

But at least she’d brought herself to her own room, all by herself.

She remembered the night in its entirety, and that, she realised with a feeling of abject dismay, was
actually no better than blacking out. She flopped onto her stomach and buried her face into the
mattress with a groan. Evidently, controlling her speech around Draco Malfoy was outside the
purview of her abilities. And, in a truly lamentable turn of events, she’d gone from constantly,
inadvertently pissing him off, to...

Symmetrical. She groaned in agony.

Her only hope, she thought as she sat up, was that he had blacked out and forgotten the whole
thing. It was a fair thing to expect, since he truly was soused to the eyeballs... To his very distinct
eyeballs.

For fuck’s sake.

When she finally stood up, she couldn’t tell if the rolling in her stomach was from all the alcohol,
or –
He grinned. “Yes.”

Oh god.

That. It was definitely that.

Drowning herself in the shower seemed like a wonderfully tempting prospect while she stood under
it, drenched in the scent of orange blossoms. Draco was right – they had been in a bubble this past
year. From a life that was inexorably cruel and raw, they’d moved into this sheltered castle in the
air. All sorts of strange fancies were bound to develop.
In a few days she’d be out in the world and her head will be set right.

She felt marginally better once she’d got dressed and tied her hair back, but no less chagrined. Her
gut continued to experience sickening surges of heat. She needed a distraction, so she set out to get
one.

The common room was strewn with the detritus of their impropriety. She picked up empty bottles
on her way to where Ron, Dean, and Seamus were sprawled.
Setting the bottles on a table, she took in the state of them: Seamus was out cold, with his mouth
wide open, and Dean was slumped forward with his head on his lap. Ron was slumped back, and
moodily eating pumpkin pasties. They were the only ones in the room. Such a change from the
night before.

“Going somewhere?” Ron asked, around a mouthful of pasty.

“Library.”

He gave her a fond look. “Getting your fill before you have to leave?”

“Exactly,” she smiled. “By the way, you look like you’ve been dragged through hell.”

“Bleh. Bollocking drinking competition.” he grumbled, “And that rotter Macmillan fucking fleeced
me. Eight galleons!”

Dean cackled. Then he moaned pitifully.

*
All the flat surfaces in the library were aureate from sunlight, and despite the fact that Hermione
had spent so much time there these past few months, she felt like she was looking at some place
entirely new. Her vision had been tempered by sentiment, her heart felt delicate and tremulous.

Buoyantly, she floated up and down the aisles, running her finger along leather-bound spines. She
wanted something diverting... something, dare she say, magical.
She ended up settling on Tales from the Deep: Mermish Folklore and More, and quickly bustled
over to her favourite corner, her favourite armchair.

In about an hour and a half, her stomach rumbled. Her watch confirmed that it was time for lunch.
She stood up, stretched, and sent the book floating back to its place among the shelves.

She was in the Great Hall with a plate full of Sunday roast in front of her, eating in companiable
silence with Neville, till Dean joined them and muttered, “Brace yourselves.”

“What do you mean?” Neville asked.

“Quidditch turned sour,” Dean replied enigmatically.

Then Ron arrived, practically skittering over to sit next to her, looking painfully discomfited.
Before she could so much as ask what had happened, Harry and Ginny charged in.

“I don’t know what the matter with you is, but you’re being ridiculous and a right beast, Harry!”

"I’m being a beast?”

Everyone else at the table fell silent. Slowly, quietly, uncomfortably spooning food into their
mouths.

“Everybody runs off at the mouth during quidditch! You were saying shit to him too–”

“He started it! I thought you’d said he isn’t a fucking toerag anymore!”

“He’s still Malfoy, Harry. You – you were seeking against each other! He was just trying to rile you
up!”

“Well, it didn’t work. I caught the sodding snitch–”

“Of course, it worked! You won’t shut up about him!”

“Because he made a pass at you!”

Hermione’s stomach twisted in an awful manner. She put her fork down.

“Merlin, Harry! It was just a stupid joke!”

“It wasn’t fucking funny–”

“–Completely harmless–”

“Harmless? Does he make jokes like that often?”

“Harry. Stop.”

“No – tell me –”

“Ask anyone here! It’s not like that!”

Dean and Neville jumped off the bench and left. Hermione continued to stare down at her
unfinished plate, listening closely.

“...telling me you’re out here getting so chummy with Malfoy.”

“Everyone is chummy with him! Even Neville – even Hermione!”

“But you–”

“He’s a decent bloke!”

“Hey,” Ron whispered in her ear, “Can we get out of here?”

She nodded mutely.

She and Ron went to their old courtyard haunt and stood in the summer breeze.

“So, what on earth did Draco say?” she asked. Her lunch had congealed into a rock in her stomach.

“No clue,” Ron replied evenly, “I was by the hoops.” He sighed. “Something’s wrong. Harry’s been
tetchy all week.”

“Did anything happen at work?”

“Not that I know of.”

Hermione looked at him and couldn’t help but smile slightly. It was so odd to see him being the
even-keeled one while Harry threw a wobbler; she hadn’t seen it happen since fifth year.

“Draco didn’t have a go at you?”

“He said some bullshit. I gave him a–” he held up two fingers.

“My, how surprisingly restrained.”

Ron grinned and kicked a small pebble by his foot.

“Taoism, Hermione. I told you, it’s brilliant. Besides, I just don’t care about Malfoy anymore.”

“And... about Harry...” she ventured.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think it has to do with Dumbledore?”

“Dumbledore’s dead.”

“Yes, Ron,” Hermione sighed, “That’s the problem. Going to be two years in a few days.”

“Oh, right.” Ron chuckled humourlessly and shook his head at himself, “Could be.”

They circulated the courtyard a few times, till Ron suddenly stopped and pointed towards the Great
Hall: Harry and Ginny had just stepped out. They both looked positively thunderous.

“Ready to go, Ron?” Harry asked stiffly.

“Er... yeah...” Ron mumbled.

“Good.”

Harry nodded at Hermione and stalked off. Ron – looking petrified – offered her and Ginny a one-
armed hug each, and went after him.

After that, Hermione had to endure another ten minutes of torture, as she accompanied Ginny
upstairs.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

So much for being solid, huh? (She obviously didn’t say that.)

They separated on the seventh floor. Hermione kept her head down as she walked back to her
tower, making sure to not even glance at the shaded areas of the castle, lest she found Draco there
with some girl, making eyes and standing too close.
However, she learned shortly that he was in the common room, along with Theo, Luna, and Dean,
who were playing some card game. Dean frantically waved her over as soon as she entered,
thwarting her plan to go brood in her room. Still, she refused to look at him.

“Are the lovebirds still rowing?” Dean asked.

“No,” Hermione replied coldly, “Harry and Ron have left. It was not a happy parting.”
“Harry never took the Wrackspurts seriously,” Luna muttered under her breath. She was very
focused on the game.

Then Hermione heard him chuckle. She heard the rustle of the quidditch magazine on his lap. She
glared down at the cards in Theo’s hands.

“Mate,” Dean addressed Draco, “Was laying into him really necessary?”

“It was.”

Hermione glared down at the cards. “Harry’s still the one who caught the snitch.”

“With a face like a slapped arse.”

“You know,” Hermione ground out slowly, “It’s one thing to feel nostalgic and think back fondly
over the earlier years at Hogwarts, but regressing into your dreadful, blustering juvenile self is an
absolutely unnecessary extreme.”

Theo let out a snort of laughter.

“You saw the way Potter was strutting around.” His drawl was so smug. “Every word I said was
necessary.”

“Tell you what,” she snapped, “Let’s call Harry back. Then we’ll ask McGonagall to set up the
Great Hall for another duel, and you both can face off in combative poses and hurl inane insults at
each other. I’m sure all the other twelve-year-olds will be very impressed.”

Theo broke into a fit of sniggers. He looked up at her with bright eyes and wrapped his hand
around her forearm. As badly as Hermione wanted to keep her cold, hard façade, he infected her.
Laughing in spite of herself, she decided to finally glance at Draco.

He was certainly nettled, looking at her and then at Theo. Then he wordlessly returned to his
magazine and flipped a page.

He caught up with her after supper.

Having eaten quickly, she was on her way up to get a much-needed early night. Just as she’d
cleared the sixth-floor staircase, he called out – “Granger!”

She was adequately stunned, and waited till he’d scaled the stairs and joined her.
“Are you sulking on Potter’s behalf?”

“I’m not sulking,” she snapped and resumed walking.

He kept pace.

“And this isn’t just about Harry,” she continued, “It’s about Ginny, too.”

“What about her?”

“You caused their quarrel. Now she’s terribly upset.”

He scoffed. “It’s not my fault he took out his temper on her.”

“Harry said you...” Hermione sucked in a breath, “made a pass at her.”

“Hah! What?”

“And Ginny defended you, by the way. Called you a decent bloke.”

She snuck a peek at him. He looked tickled.

“All I said to her was that clearly Potter had no expertise on how to handle a snitch and–”

“At least he can get his hands on one.”

He exhaled sharply. Or laughed softly. Or both.

“See, Potter simply needed to comeback with something like that.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Yeah, instead he lambasted his poor girlfriend, because some clever chap heckled him.”

“Don’t sound so high and mighty. You just said you heckled him. With no provocation, like a bratty
little–”

“I can’t help my striking wit, Granger.”

She lost her breath. Her train of thought was derailed and her mouth snapped shut as heat flashed
across her face. She was struck dumb.

It was yet another painful, awkward, silent trek up to the eighth-year tower, while every single
braincell she possessed sizzled under the strain of coming up with something to say. Her eyes
remained resolutely downcast, watching her left foot, then right... left then right, left and right, left
right left... Oh, doomed march!

She was so agonisingly aware of his presence next to her, radiating some sort of pulverising beams
that were scrambling her insides. She felt torn between wanting to cry and bursting into manic
giggles.
And he – why wasn’t he saying anything either? Walking along, straight-backed and insouciant...

When at last they reached the common room, he put his hand on the door and paused. Looking at
her over his shoulder with a very self-satisfied smirk, he said, “That was fun.” And he went in.

She stood outside, catching her breath.

It was near impossible to believe that in two short days she’d be on a train back to London, for the
last time. That, at that moment, she had just concluded her second-to-last dash along the lake. She
stood at the edge of the rocky shore, watching the morning bloom out of the horizon. Light
oozed into the dark sky like a tiny drop of liquid gold bleeding into a puddle of ink.
The early hours were so unbelievably quiet. Just the birds stirring, emitting tentative little chirrups.

Silence and stealth of days.

For once, she let herself feel the pangs of fear that had been roiling in her bloodstream for so long.
How was she supposed to go out in the world, get a job, earn a living, find a place to stay, feed
herself? The mundanities of adult life seemed disproportionately terrifying. She knew how to
survive in the wilderness, how to escape mortal peril by the skin of her teeth. She had learnt to
accept death, to close her mind to pernicious trauma... but she hadn’t learnt enough. She hadn’t
learnt a thing.

All she wanted was some more time to dash around with a bag full of books... wear a uniform...
learn. She wanted to spend hours on absurdly dangerous rooftop ledges with Theo. She wanted to
have long and candid conversations with Ginny, academic conversations with Padma,
conversations about music and art with Dean.
She wanted to see Draco bathed in such dawning light, surrounded by such silence. There was no
stopping that thought. She didn’t even try.

*
That afternoon, she walked down the narrow viaduct bridge with her arms stretched out, pretending
it was a tightrope.
And she did have a conversation with Dean about art, leading to the discovery that, much like
King’s Cross, Slade College of Fine Art had a secret wall and a magical division; and that’s where
he was headed. In the evening, she told Theo they ought to watch the sunset from Theo’s peak. And
he, thrilled, decided to make an event out of it.
He invited Draco and Luna, and hastened to his room to grab bags and bags of Honeydukes
sweets.

Packets rustled and birds emitted brazen, parting chirrups as they flew back to their nests. There
wasn’t much conversation. Luna lay back against Theo’s chest, and began humming a haunting,
archaic tune.

Hermione looked at Draco bathed in dusky light. The sun set on their penultimate day.

She arrived at breakfast the next day, solemn and on edge. Her last run hadn’t felt like her last. She
had been expecting some sentiment of finality. But on top of everything, it was the death
anniversary of Albus Dumbledore. The hall was draped in black.
Ginny received an enormous bouquet of flowers and a note that read – Meet me at Three
Broomsticks at noon. Please. I’m sorry. Her nostrils flared, her face displaying an odd combination
of outrage and relief.

“Will you go?” Hermione asked.

“Of course, I’ll go,” she grumbled.

Hermione spent the next two hours in the library.

Then, while Ginny went to sort out the hitch in her love life, (and Theo and Luna dashed off to
“visit” the classroom where they’d first kissed,) the remaining lot ventured out into the grounds.
Invariably, the majority voted to play quidditch, so Hermione sat to the side with Neville and
Hannah. They told her that they were going to Switzerland together, as Hannah had applied for a
course on remedial herbs. They both looked incredibly excited.

By and by, Theo and Luna returned, (yes, they were very ruffled, thank you,) and Hermione had the
distinct pleasure of sitting alongside two sets of very happy couples.

As the day cooled, the group wandered around the ground aimlessly like grazing cattle.
Dumbledore’s grave sat soundly in the background, covered in fresh flowers. Hermione
surreptitiously peered at Draco, and saw him walking a bit separate from everyone, hands in his
pockets, hair in a disarray. His posture was stiff... tense... and he kept his back to the gleaming
tomb.

Ultimately, the purposelessness of their meandering drove them back in.

Theo put one arm around her and one around Luna, and lugged them towards Draco.

“How about one final concert, Draco dearest?”

He agreed with an infinitesimal grunt and shrug of his shoulders.

The four of them entered the music room and none of them thought to light any lamps. The fading
evening light was ripe for vespers – a little ochre, a little blue – casting deep and long shadows in
the room.
Theo and Luna sat on the chaise lounge, and Hermione leant against the shelf she’d once hidden
behind. She watched Draco roll back his sleeves, (the dark mark out in the open after so long), and
sit on the stool with lingering rigidness. From where she stood, she could observe his profile. His
brow was scrunched low over the straight line of his nose.

He started with one note, soft and lingering... then another... and more... till he climbed to a strain
that was so cautious, so fragile. If quietude had a melody, this was it. Draco played every
soft, measured note with such gentleness and delicacy, as though even the slightest pressure could
cause an avalanche.
It was such a slow tune and achingly profound.
There was a lump in Hermione’s throat. She wanted to cry. In fact...

She gulped painfully and blinked away the moisture in her eyes.

Not once did the tempo pick up. Not once did Draco’s posture or frown waver. But while his
control was absolute, the music lent him such an air of wretchedness.

Slow. Haunting. Deliberate. Notes. All the way through.

It finished like it began, gorgeous and sedated. Hermione covertly twisted her neck to wipe the
corner of her eye against her shoulder.

He was a phantasm when he stood to leave, leached of all body and matter. As he glided by her, all
she wanted to do was reach out and touch him, just to reassure herself of his solidity. She just
wanted to feel the bare skin of his arm, the warmth of it, the texture of his skin, the undulatory
veins within. Just one touch... she was so undone.

But Draco had left the room. Theo put his arm back around her, and she was grateful at least, for
some sort of tether.

*
She didn’t care at all for the ominosity of the phrase The Last Supper, but nonetheless, the feeling
was there. The joy and merriment surrounding the final day feast was lost forever. It was now a
deathday dinner.

McGonagall did make the customary speech, generic and a little spoony. She spoke of growth, the
miracle of the past year, of Albus Dumbledore’s ever-enduring vision. Ravenclaw won the house
cup, but the hangings in the hall remained black. The food, as usual, was exemplary. When she
looked askance at Ginny, the girl just sighed and said, “He was gutted and very apologetic. Pretty
obvious what it was really about.”

Supper ended with a pitiful murmur. As the rest of the school shuffled to their respective dorms, a
small group seemed to tacitly come together in the courtyard. Hermione looked at them one by one:
Theo, Luna, Ginny, Dean, Neville, Hannah, and Draco. What a strange, confounding, eclectic
bunch. She smiled softly to herself and linked her arm with Ginny’s. They moved forward as one,
once again tacitly aware that they would be traversing the length and breadth of the entire castle.

Their pilgrimage ended at the ill-fated corridor outside the astronomy tower. It was technically out
of bounds, but Filch was nowhere to be seen. The door to the astronomy tower was locked. The
corridor was deserted. The walls were bare and the sconces were few and far between.

They walked through the passageway ploddingly, looking from side to side, as though expecting a
curse to go singing by at any second.
Hermione paused to look out a window, at the clear dark sky and the cluster of tiny roofs that was
Hogsmeade. She turned away and saw Theo and Luna had stopped at the point where the ceiling
had once caved in. They were staring up at the repaired, perfectly sound roof. Dean, Neville,
Hannah, and Ginny had bypassed them, almost at the stairs that would lead them away from awful
memories.

Hermione waited, and when Draco failed to pass by, she looked back just in time to watch him
noiselessly open the door to the tower with his wand, and go in. Eyes wide, Hermione wheeled
around to see if anyone else had noticed, and... Theo had.

He stared at the door for a second or two. Then heaved a sigh, took Luna’s hand, and walked the
other way, calling out a “Yeah,” to Dean’s “Coming?”

She bit her lip as she watched them leave. The part of her that wanted to follow Draco was too
persistent and overwhelming. It didn’t seem like she had a choice. Thereupon, she swiftly double-
backed, and stepped through the door.

She climbed up the spiral staircase, her heart climbed up to her throat. The notion that she was
doing something very wrong and invasive was very much extant, but the image of him behind the
piano, of the music he played, was in the forefront of everything.

If he bit her head off, she would bite her tongue and dutifully back away.

The cool night engulfed her once she stepped out, and she took a moment to look around.
Everything looked as it always had. The telescopes, the equipment, the model of the solar system –
it was all there. And Draco was there, at the far end of the parapet, hands on the railing as he
looked at the sky. Hermione curled her hands into fists, breathed in deeply, and approached him.
Her insides were pure chaos - the primordial kind.

She went to the railing and kept a good many metres between them. From the corner of her eye, she
saw him look at her.

“For someone who hates the scenery, you certainly spend a lot of time gazing at it,” she mumbled.

He sighed and looked back out into the night. It appeared that he had nothing to say to that.

“Are you–” she began, but then abruptly stopped.

“What is it, Granger?” he asked in a surprisingly even tone.

“I was going to ask if you were okay,” she maundered in a strange high-pitched voice, “but I know
you’d just reply with an Oh what a stupid question, Granger, and thought better of it.”

She couldn’t understand why she was trying so hard to make light of his obvious melancholy.

But again, to her surprise, he chuckled. “I’m fine, Granger.”

It didn’t sound like an ironic laugh. It was just... quiet. Like the tinkling notes of the piano.

“I'm thinking,” he murmured, softer still, “About that night and... now. A lot’s happened since
then.”

“Yes,” she agreed cautiously, “A whole lot.”

He pushed away from the railing and turned around to lean against it. Arms crossed, he looked
down at her with a pensive, slightly stern expression.

“I still remember the exact look on his face, right before he died. It was pure relief. And fuck, did I
hate him for it. For... everything he did and didn’t do.”

He sighed then, and his head stooped to look at the ground. Suddenly he began speaking
alarmingly fast -
“You know how it gets perceptively colder when a killing curse is cast? I actually felt my skin ice
over for a second. And everything fucking paused as he flew over that railing. There was madness
before, and madness after... but that one, cold, clear moment was... was... I can’t believe that was
actually me. Then, over here. I can’t believe I was that person... that boy... Standing right here,
forcing myself to take a life... I feel like I’ve been eviscerated, or turned inside-out. And I can’t
decide if it’s sickening or completely fucking liberating.”

His eyes closed for a long moment.

Hermione was at a loss for words. She gaped at him, shaken to the bones by such an unexpected,
raw confession. Her heart was thrumming loud enough to wake the castle, she thought. His eyes
reopened, and while he continued to stare at the ground, her urge to touch him returned with a
vengeance. Not just touch... if she could just take his hand in hers – God, just the thought of it. She
gripped the railing tightly.

“Two years ago... threatened and coerced... I was here to become a murderer. And here I am now,
willingly baring my soul to Hermione bloody Granger. The world never makes sense, does it?”

He laughed again, and this time it was definitely sardonic.

Hermione looked away. The sight of him had become too much. The chaos in her recognised the
chaos in him. She remembered sitting on that hillock by The Burrow, thinking about the cruel,
ironic circles that life was all about – so many concentric circles – and Draco was experiencing a
pivotal one of his own.

“Life has been kind to you. Not everyone gets the privilege of my ear.”

What was wrong with her? But he laughed again; the soft, airy laugh.

There were two minutes of silence.

Then he said, “Granger, Theo will get all het up if both of us are missing.”

“Yes, er, yes. You’re right,” Hermione stuttered, “I’ll go back.”

“Yeah.”

She turned around and left. Theo had been right not to follow him; she shouldn’t have followed
him. This was his circle, his and his moment alone.

Although... two years ago, he’d pulled her roughly behind a tapestry and they’d absolutely
abhorred each other.

No, Draco, the world didn't make sense, ever.

She walked back to the common room quickly, and she only looked back thrice.

With the exception of Ginny, they were all waiting for her.

Neville greeted her with puzzlement. “Where did you vanish off to? You were right behind us.”

“Oh, I just stopped to admire a few paintings on the way,” she replied breezily, and she accepted a
glass of firewhisky from him with a thanks.

“Really, Hermione?” Theo asked in a tone that was simply fascinated, “Paintings?”

“Yes,” she pressed, setting her jaw.

“That’s lovely, Hermione,” Luna interjected, “I also said goodbye to some of my favourite painted
friends today morning.”

Hermione looked back at Theo with a challenging expression, daring him to say something more.
He didn’t so she turned to Dean.

“I even passed that French toff on the fifth floor–”

“Ah, good old Philippe,” Dean grinned, “Still a bastard?”

“Absolutely.”

Hermione mentally patted herself on the back for that touch.

But she fell quiet after that, as badinage swelled around her. She had to consciously stop herself
from staring at the door. The whisky did nothing to settle her and everything to agitate.

Draco came back half an hour later. There was a more explosive reaction when he entered, owing
to the hour and the amount of alcohol that had been consumed. He smirked at everyone, but refused
to partake, choosing instead to head straight to his room.
 Here it was. The final morning. Her trunk was packed and sat at the foot of her bed. Her room was
cleared of all her personal touches.

She looked out of her window at the lovely warm day. Then she drew the curtains closed and left
without a final glance, or any kind of ceremony. It was done, she was out.

It had everything to do with Draco’s words, and with circles. With being turned inside out... she had
said her goodbyes to this castle already, once before, in a bleaker lifetime. There was no charm in
doing it again. She had seen these stone walls endure all the elements and brutal destructive
forces... and come out the other side. But what was so impressive about the durability of stone?
It was the flesh that survived assault that ought to be admired; the souls that sustained torture, the
consciousness that weathered evisceration.

By the lake, a cacophonic swarm had gathered, waiting for the arrival of the boats.

Hermione teared up when McGonagall hugged her. And it only got worse when, one by one, all her
professors hugged her, and told her what an honour and delight it had been, teaching someone as
exceptionally brilliant as her.
They were Hogwarts, not some ancient castle. And her friends – the firm, resilient ones – they were
Hogwarts.

She took Dean’s hand as he helped her into a boat, and she resolved to sit with her back to the
castle, looking only ahead and at the people around her. It was a little boat of Gryffindors, with
Dean, Neville, Ginny, and her, and it looked like most people were indulging in one final nod to
their house-kinship. Theo waved at her from a boat with Draco and Tracey... and of course Luna
tucked into his side. Draco was, once again, looking up at the sky, light and blue and reflecting in
his eyes.

And with Hagrid’s cry of “FORWARD,” the boats floated deftly across the wide lake of endless
possibilities.

Chapter End Notes

1. Primordial Chaos series by Hilma af Klint
2. Party Hard by Pulp
3. Praise You by Fatboy Slim
4. A Red Letter Day by Pet Shop Boys
5. Silence and Stealth of Days, by Henry Vaughan
6. Draco plays Gaspard de la Nuit, No. 2, "Le Gibet" by Ravel

ARTWORK:
The Infliction of Unwanted Flirtation:
This one is by Ivmaruva
This one is by unknownarchetype
 Sixty-Five
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

PART IV
Suppers at the Burrow had a very literary feel to them. It had something to do with the size of the
spread, the varied range of characters, and the flow of the conversation. Most of all, it was the stuff
that was left unsaid – the in-between spaces – and Hermione, (who was so often a spectator during
these meals, drowned out by the blearing Weasleyness of the affair,) rather enjoyed taking note of
things, like a student of literature analysing a pivotal passage.
It was certainly very nice to see the hubbub resurface after the crushing silence that had the family
in a chokehold for a year.

Over the cluttering of forks and knives, George’s eyes twinkled with hidden mischief. His mind
was clearly elsewhere, as he eyed Ron with worrying intent. His gold ear glittered, and Percy eyed
that with mild disdain. And speaking of mild disdain: There it was again, flashing over Ginny’s
face when Fleur asked her to pass “ze rolls” without the obligatory please. When, from across the
table, Angelina asked her something about the Harpies, Ginny’s face immediately broke into a grin.
Bill was cutting into his specially prepared steak with a prosaic calmness that almost jarred. Harry,
Ron, and Mr Weasley were deep in a conversation. Harry’s eyes drifted, briefly, to Ginny as her
laughter bubbled over the general din, but returned to Mr Weasley when he asked a question in a
very eager manner. Harry responded, and Ron made to add something – but was spoken over by
Percy who’d unnecessarily decided to interject. Ron scowled deeply... then took a deep breath and
helped himself to a large bite of food.
Presiding over all of this was Mrs Weasley. She was like Mrs Ramsey, beaming behind a tureen of
exemplary (perfect!) Boeuf en Daube; her manner practically screamed ‘Life, stand still here’.

“I ate too much,” Ron groaned, barely out of the fireplace.

Hermione, Harry, and Ron returned to 12 Grimmauld place after that hefty meal. The drawing room
looked cosy, warmly lit by firelight and lamplight that pulsed in from the street outside. The Black
family tapestry, intricate and ornate, had been repaired; all the burnt-out names had been, (thanks to
Bill,) restored. The once murky, olive-green walls were now a comely shade of sage green.

Sage. The word made Hermione’s stomach flutter.

“You always eat too much,” Harry said. He went to one of the large glass cabinets that flanked the
fireplace, and looked in thoughtfully. “Nightcap?”

“Sure,” said Ron, flopping heavily onto the sofa.

“Okay,” agreed Hermione, curling up on a brocade armchair.

Harry approached with a crystal decanter full of brandy. Almost at once, Kreacher sidled into the
room with a tray full of glasses, as though he’d been standing in the side-lines, listening in.
Hermione offered him her thanks, which he grudgingly accepted with a jerk of his head.

She settled even deeper into her chair, and looked at the fire through the little snifter in her warmed
glass – dazzling, flaring, bronze. Snakeskins and vials of blood no longer sat on the mantelpiece;
there was a porcelain pot full of floo powder, a decorative snitch, and plenty of framed
photographs.

A sharp clang sounded at her left: Ron had thrown a fat, brown pellet on the coffee table.

“What’s that?” Hermione asked.

“George thought he was being so slick, dropping that into my stew.”

“What does it do?”

“Dunno. But tomorrow, Slattery is going to find out,” Ron promised, and Harry laughed.

“And who is Slattery?” Hermione asked.

“A cunt.”

Harry and Ron treated her to tales of the shambling linkman between the auror office and the
admin, and, eventually, talking about work led them to the inevitable realisation that they actually
had to go to work the next day. So, it was decided that it was time to retire.

Harry and Ron trudged up to the second floor, while Hermione went across the hall to the bedroom
she had once shared with Ginny.
Full and drowsy, she looked around at her surroundings indulgently. Even though it was going to be
her fifth night there, she was still slightly in awe of how different and beautiful it looked. It was
redolent of a quaint boutique hotel room. The twin beds were gone, and in their place was a soft
and large bed, upon which were beautiful chinoiserie cushions and bedspread. There was a
loveseat, an ornate carpet, a huge gilded mirror – and everything was sparkling clean. Harry was
surprisingly, (or unsurprisingly,) very houseproud.

However, it was probably very easy to be that way when you had a House-Elf working tirelessly to
keep your home spick and span.

She went into the charmingly antique bathroom to splash some water on her face and brush her
teeth. Then she slipped out of her clothes and into sleepwear, and plunged into the cushy bed.

Ginny had been rather miffed when Hermione had decided against staying at the Burrow, but the
last few days had been very nice. Light and cheerful, she had written over her previous memories
of being in that house, with those two boys.

Men. They were men now. And she was a woman.

No – And she yawned widely – She would delay that assertion for a little while longer.
(Just a few hours ago at the Burrow, she had asked Mr Weasley how she might go about securing a
portkey to Melbourne. He had smiled and said, “Well, you could submit an application to the
Department of Magical Transportation. Or, you could just tell me to get it for you and I will
happily do so.”)

She would hold on to being a girl for now. Her final thoughts, before she fell asleep, were of mum
and dad.

The next morning, she woke up at seven, and spent half an hour just lolling in bed. Then, still in her
pyjamas, she went downstairs for coffee and toast.

In the kitchen, a cauldron was bubbling away in the fireplace. The pots and pans hanging from the
ceiling were thoroughly polished. She looked up and had multiple warped reflections look back
down at her.
Kreacher was standing at the counter, preparing breakfast for Harry and Ron. As always, he
ignored her and left her to her own devices, but deigned to push the butter dish towards her, once
her toast was ready. She sat at one end of the long wooden table at the centre of the room, and she
thanked him. He grunted. Around her coffee mug, she smiled to herself at that; Kreacher was
impressively obdurate. It had been easier to get Draco to –

“Morning,” Harry groused, dragging himself unenthusiastically into the kitchen.

“Hello,” Hermione grinned, “Didn’t sleep well?”

“Not particularly. Fix me one of your obscenely sweet cuppas, will you? I need it.”

“On the double!”

He got lost in his breakfast. Hermione dived into the Prophet.

Minutes after Harry left, Ron tore into the kitchen, shoelaces untied, wrestling an arm into his
rumpled robes. He snatched a bacon butty off the table and ran right back out.

“Later, ‘mione!” his voice trailed after him.

Hermione helped Kreacher clear up the table. His desire to insist she let him do it all by himself
warred with his aversion to speak a word to her. She magically rounded up the dirty dishes and
floated them into the sink, and Kreacher mutinously lifted and put them back down, inches away
from where she’d set them. It was a jolly good game, and once it had been concluded, Hermione
shot him a broad smile and wished him a very good day.

People passed her by in clusters of two, four, five, seven... and nobody gave her a second look. The
slightly tweaked glamour that she had cast on her face to render it as non-specific as possible, was
working. She was especially grateful for it when Ernie trundled past her as she was leaving
Gringotts with a nicely replenished moneybag.

It was a beautifully warm day, and Diagon was full of life. Bright summer light was glancing off
the walls and shop windows, so vivid and white that it enhanced the colourfulness of the alley.
Hermione strolled along the line of shops with her hair high up in a bun and her beaded bag
swinging jauntily by her side. Her next stop was at the Apothecary, from where she picked up a set
of basic, essential potions and ingredients. She got helplessly detained at a seedy, ramshackle
second-hand bookshop, wedged in the alley next to the Menagerie. She left with a battered third
edition volume of Argo Pyrite’s treatise on Alchemy. Not more than twenty steps later, an ancient
witch in a crochet shawl lured Hermione over to a tiny kiosk where she sold pretty little amulets
and charmed trinkets.

“'Ave a look 'ere, me luvly. This wee bauble promises wellness. An this one 'ere, right... imbued
wiv a shield charm. An this one's got an anti-cheatin' charm, if you've got a lover ter keep an eye
on. And 'ere, beauty spell pendants! 'Ow about bracelets wiv cheerin' charms, then?”

She kept a vice-like grip on Hermione’s wrist, only letting go once she’d purchased two wellness
bracelets. They were pretty enough, with small rainbow-coloured glass beads that seemed to glow.
Hermione reckoned the magic would be good for a week, if that. She’d give one to Ginny and one
to her mum.
Her final stop was at Fortescue’s. It was absolutely bursting with people and Hermione stood in the
long queue for a full fifteen minutes. The man behind the counter looked a lot like the late Florean,
though younger and stouter; a brother or son, perhaps. She bought two big tubs of ice-cream,
(buttered pecan and caramel apple,) and shoved her way out of the little shop.

Once Hermione had left the main shopping area, her stride slowed. She leisurely ambulated down a
narrow strip, watching burly men wearing thin white vests and a layer of sweat, move in and out of
workshops. She cut through the park rather than around, admiring the summer splendour. It was
full of laburnum trees, laden with their vibrant, pendulous flowers. Neatly trimmed shrubs lined the
criss-crossing pathways, intermittently interrupted by elegant green benches. There was a small
pond in the centre, all but covered in pink water lilies. Theo and Draco’s building loomed above it
all like a giant monolith.
The door to their flat once again greeted Hermione cordially, and told her that Theo was expecting
her in the kitchen.
And there indeed he was, setting a plate of sausage rolls and bottles of butterbeer on the table.

“Hermione!” he beamed, “Just in time!”

“I brought ice cream,” she replied with an answering smile, “Is Luna coming?”

“No,” Theo said peevishly, “Xeno has carted her off to visit some distant cousins. I wasn’t invited.”

They talked about Hermione’s upcoming trip as they began to eat and drink, and Theo promised to
visit for a couple of days, with Luna. Barely fifteen minutes after, Draco walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, you’re back!” Theo said pleasantly, “I thought you’d be gone all afternoon.”

Draco was very dapper in navy-coloured robes, (which he took off and draped over the back of a
chair,) with a light blue shirt and dark trousers underneath. He had a brass pitcher in his hand, that
he set down on the kitchen counter, before taking a seat and seizing a bottle of butterbeer.

“Wasn’t much of a crowd at the Ministry today,” he shrugged, “And father wasn’t feeling very
conversational.”

It was the first time Hermione was hearing his voice since the night on the astronomy tower. Gone
was the delicate, deceptive softness, and lost was the rushed, helpless candour. He sounded steady,
affectless, and composed.

He took a long swig of his drink. His hair was tidier than usual, loosely pushed back and – oh, but
she spoke too soon. He ran his hand through it; pale fingers carded through fair locks that gave way
like he was combing through a viscous fluid. His fringe broke free and fell over his forehead.

“When’s that for?” Theo asked, and Hermione turned to see him gesture towards the brass pitcher.

“Six in the evening,” Draco replied.

“Today?”

“Yes.”

The pitcher was dented and scuffed, and completely unadorned. It looked extremely out of place in
the swanky kitchen.

“Is that a portkey?” Hermione asked.

“It is,” Draco replied, sparing her a fleeting glance.

She took a moment to properly formulate her question, and then:

“May I ask you both something? As two capable, relatively intelligent young men who were born
and brough up within the magical community?”

Theo shifted in his seat and he grinned with absolute anticipatory delight.

“Go on,” he urged.

“What on earth is the deal with portkeys? A lumpy old pitcher? Last time, I got a spatula and a silly
little hat. It's so absurd!”

“It’s to keep muggles from acciden–” Draco began.

“Oh, shush,” Hermione intruded with a wave of her hand. He looked offended and it was adorable.
“I understand if you have to hide one outside, in a public area. Then, of course, it ought to be
fittingly disguised. But for private and personal use? Why does it have to be sodding kitchenware,
or suchlike objects? Portkeys could very easily be small and convenient, like coins... or... or
specially designed tokens, or even pieces of parchment, like tickets.”

“You make a good point,” Theo said with contrived gravity, even as his mouth twitched.

“It’s barmy,” Hermione scoffed and shook her head.

“Will this be the first great evil that you’ll irradicate as Minister?” Draco enquired with acrid
sarcasm, “No more cumbersome portkeys – the world will, once again, be a better place thanks to
Granger.”

She gave him a congruously scornful look in response, though it wasn’t in the least heartfelt. She
held his gaze as she took a sip of butterbeer, wondering if he’d fixed the lighting in the kitchen
specifically to flatter his face.

“I just might,” she said tartly, “And it will be a widely appreciated move.”

“Right.”

“But, I shall make one exception.”

“Will you now?”

“Yes. You.”

“I feel so special.”

“See, you will receive frilly bonnets – floral ones – every single time. And they will have to be put
on to be activated.”

“That’s a tricky bit of magic.”

“And I – um, I – I am a very capable witch.”

She had stuttered because his dour visage had given way to an arch, playful smirk. It tricked her
mouth into quirking upwards too.
“I will travel a lot. A lot. Do you intend to spend the majority of your term fixing portkeys for me?”

“I will hire and train someone to do the job.”

“I see.” He grinned. His eyes darted around her face and she felt it grow warm. “Great use of the
public’s money, that.”

“Don’t worry,” Theo interposed, and she turned to him with a slight jump, “Hermione, I will fully
fund the ‘Put Draco in a Bonnet’ initiative for as long as necessary.”

“Thank you!” Hermione beamed, and gave Draco a look of triumph.

He divided a sneer between the two of them.

With the food and drinks put away, Theo doled out some ice-cream, in crystal bowls. Hermione
favoured the caramel apple flavour; the generous swirls of caramel in particular. As the boys went
in for seconds, she broached the primary cause she’d wanted to raise.

“Theo, does the man who found you this flat deal exclusively with toffed-up, spendthrift sort of
people?”

“No,” Theo replied, “I believe he’ll be all right with the prudent, middle-class variety, too.”

“Well, that’s brilliant. Could he find me a place then?”

“I’m sure he could.”

“I’ll be back by the end of the month,” Hermione said, “If you’d let him know...?”

“Will do, darling.” Then he chuckled. “Living with Potter and Weasley driving you spare?”

“I reckon she’s used to it,” Draco quipped, “And all three of them are intolerable in their own way.”

“Get stuffed, Draco,” she snapped, “And no. Living with Harry and Ron has been lovely. Harry has
a beautiful, comfortable home. I just really want a place of my own now–”

“Ah, so they kicked you out!”

He jabbed his spoon in her direction. She glared.

“They did not. Harry said the room is mine for as long as I want, and–”

He licked a bit of caramel along the curve of his spoon and her stomach twisted into a knot.

She turned to Theo quickly and basically squeaked – “What would it cost to rent a place around
Diagon?”

“Steep.” Theo was smirking.

“Okay. Then... elsewhere, I suppose...”

Hermione looked into her empty bowl. That seemed safest.

But the grating sound of a chair being pulled back had her looking up again.

“Going to pack?” Theo asked Draco as the latter collected his robes and pitcher.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t forget to pack the blackcurrent conserve for Narcissa”

“I won't,” he rolled his eyes.

“Have a good trip,” Hermione murmured.

He accepted, with a nod. “You too.”

Then he left.

Hermione watched as Theo collected their dishes and deposited them in the sink, which
immediately filled up with soapy water all on its own.

“An automated sink?”

“Posh, huh?”

“Obscenely so. Theo... weren’t you supposed to go visit Mrs Malfoy too?”

“I’m going next week, before coming to you.”

“Oh.”

He crossed his arms over the table and gave her a very pointed look. He continued to give her a
very pointed look for some time, as she awkwardly moved her bag from her lap to the table.

“What?” she flared when it got too much to bear.

“You managed to cheer him up.”

“Pfff.”

Her fingers reflexively clenched around her bag.

“You did,” he sang blithely.

“Didn’t look like he needed cheering up,” she muttered.

“He did.”
Theo’s grin was stupidly wide. It was bad enough that Hermione’s cheeks were undoubtedly scarlet
at that moment... she didn’t need to match Theo’s stupid grin. But god, she so wanted to. Her jaw
was quivering with the outright need to fucking beam. Somehow, she fostered remarkable control
over her facial muscles; she bit the insides of her cheeks and kept the grin at bay.

Although... it was Theo, after all. He probably saw right through her.

“You charming, funny little thing,” he said with much affection.

She huffed a laugh, expelling some of her pent-up-need-to-grin energy.

“What do you have planned for the rest of the day?”

“Fuck all.”

“Would you like to see the other side of London? We could go to the cinema... walk around... make
a trip to my favourite bakery...”

“Yes,” he shot up at once, “That sounds fantastic.”

A delightfully hilarious French film, a slow and dilatory walk from Soho to the National Gallery, a
bus through Strand and down Waterloo bridge, a stroll along the Thames to watch the city light
up...

It had been lovely.

Finally, they took the underground to Camden, and walked over to the tiny, homely bakery that
looked and smelt exactly like Hermione remembered. She picked an assortment of confectionary to
take for her parents, and some for Harry and Ron, after which she stepped back and grinned as
Theo engaged with old Mabel behind the counter, ordering a laughably vast selection of cakes and
pastries.
She moved to look at the display rack, to admired the decorous birthday and wedding cakes. A
distressed, spotty young shop assistant was attempting to reason with a very frenzied woman while
she shoved a magazine in his face.

“You see this? David and Posh’s wedding cake – this is what I want! Exactly this!”

“You can’t be serious!”

Then, with multiple paper bags in hand, they wandered into Regent’s Park, encountering a few late
evening stragglers... till, ultimately, they took cover behind a thicket of trees, and disapparated.

She almost hurtled right into Ron as she stepped out the fireplace.

“Gah!” she gasped and stumbled sideways.

He was zipping up a new jacket over a surprisingly un-faded Chudley Cannon’s t-shirt.

“Sorry.”

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he muttered. He looked at her then looked away. “Out.”

“Okay, what–”

“It’s a date.”

“Oh.”

Furtively, from the corner of his eye, he gave her a piercing stare.

“With... er, Verity?” she ventured.

“No.”

“Well...” she held up the two paper bags she was holding, “I’ve brought tons of goodies, in case
propriety prevents you from eating your fill.”

He didn’t respond to her grin... not really. It was a half-smile-semi-grimace sort of thing. “I should
go.”

“Yes, of course. Have a wonderful time.”

He whooshed out of existence, and Hermione watched as the flames turned from orange, to green,
to orange.

“I reckon he still wishes it was you.”

Hermione spun around. Harry was leaning against the wall by the drawing room door, watching her
ruefully, with a tumbler of whisky in hand.
“A bit,” he added with a shrug.

That was an awful thought and she had no idea what to do with it. There wasn’t really anything she
could say. So, instead, she moved towards the centre table and set the bags down.

“Harry, do you drink every single evening?”

He shrugged again.

“Harry.”

He pulled an impish, teasing face at her.

“D’you want some?”

“No, thank you,” she replied, wondering if there was any point in chastising him when he was
already well into it.

“Is there any treacle tart in there?”

Well, all right. If that’s how he wanted to play it. She’d bring it up some other time. Maybe
tomorrow.

He was grinning... and she’d had such a wonderful day...

“You’d throw me out of the house if there wasn’t.”

“You bet.”

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day...

“I can’t believe it’s my last month in England and you’re going off on a holiday.”

The Weasley orchard smelt cloyingly sweet, like fruit and heat. Bees flitted and darted around,
leaving a low, continuous buzz in the air. In the dappled sunlight, the trumpery wellness bracelet on
Ginny’s wrist looked dazzling... iridescent. She raised her arm into the air, scattering colours across
her face, and plucked a cluster of cherries from a tree.

“I’m going to see my parents. And I’ll be back well before you leave,” Hermione told her.
( Oh, and by the way... do you think Harry’s grown a bit too fond of tippling? )

“When?”

“End of the month. And you leave on the...”

“Fifteenth of August.”

( Listen, Ginny... I’m a bit worried about Harry... )

“Plenty of time. We’ll be able to celebrate your eighteenth birthday,” Hermione smiled weakly.

“Ho hum,” Ginny carped.

Hermione stopped walking and leant against a tree. A bee buzzed right by her ear.

“You aren’t excited anymore?”

“I am.” Ginny also stopped. She popped a cherry in her mouth and wrinkled her nose. “Bletch.
Sour.”

“You don’t sound excited,” Hermione pointed out.

“I’m... slightly... scared shitless.”

“Ah.”

“You aren’t going to try and buck me up?”

“No,” Hermione replied plainly, “You already know you’re bloody good at quidditch. Feeling a bit
nervy before a big move is normal... no point in telling you not to be.”

Ginny smiled. They resumed their walk, leaving a trail of cherry stones in their wake. Hermione
just couldn’t seem to talk about Harry.

Hours later, the two girls returned to the Burrow, with a little basket full of fruit, much to the
delight of Mrs Weasley. She put the kettle on and laid the table for tea, chattering loudly about the
robust yield they’d been blessed with that year.
Amid a tuck-in of cherries, blueberry lemon pound cake, and scones, Mr Weasley leapt out of the
fireplace.

“Percy will be a bit late today,” he announced as he kissed his wife on the cheek, “Kingsley is stuck
in a meeting with the MMD. Oh, Hermione. This is for you.”

He handed her a slightly frayed jute sack.

Her portkey to Melbourne was a long-handled shoehorn. Her portkey back was a ceramic pepper
mill.

She wanted to be able to hold them out to Draco and cry, “Behold!”
There were two possibilities as far as his reaction was concerned: She could picture him grudgingly
amused, with an involuntary smirk, involuntarily saucy. But she could also picture him rolling his
eyes, telling her to get over silly fixations. In that case, she would tell him she had a bee in her
bonnet and would he like one in his? He would sneer at her, lean forward, wet his lips and say –

“More milk, Hermione?”

What?

“In your tea, dear. More milk?”

Mrs Weasley’s kindly face loomed in front of her.

“Oh, no. This much is enough. Thank you.”

It was nine-thirty p.m., according to her watch. She was ready an hour before the shoehorn was set
to carry her off. She had foregone dinner, anticipating the sumptuous breakfast spread dad would
have waiting for her.

The stairs outside creaked, and she stealthily looked through the crack in her door. It was Harry,
going into the drawing room. She gave him a few minutes to get settled, then slipped quietly out of
her room and, after casting a weightless charm on her feet, dashed up the stairs.

Light and muffled sounds oozed out the gap under the door to Ron’s room. She gently rapped on
it and waited. It opened a crack and Ron’s head emerged. He blinked in mild confusion.

“Is it time for you to leave already?”

“Not yet, Ron. I just wanted to talk.”

“To me?” His confusion deepened.

“Yes. Harry’s downstairs. It’s... it’s actually about him.”

Ron moved aside and let her in. His room was as anarchic as she’d expected - quidditch posters
clashed horribly with the ornate wallpaper. There was a leaning tower of clothes on his armchair,
and on his dresser was a tank with a very large, very old frog.

“What about Harry?” Ron asked.

Hermione clasped her hands and bounced on the balls of her feet.

“I’m worried about him.”

“Right,” Ron grunted, as he sat on the corner of his bed, “You noticed the drinking.”

Any amount of perceptiveness from Ron surprised her, no matter what. She sat on the edge of the
bed, too, keeping a befitting distance between them.

“How long has it been going on?”

“Erm... I’d say about three, four months. It wasn’t daily at first, but...” Ron dragged a hand down
his face. “He wasn’t sleeping. At all. I’d hear him thumping about the house at all hours. Drinking
helps him go to bed.”

Hermione stared down at her knees.

“What about sleeping draughts?”

“I think he tried those, too, but... I dunno. He seems to prefer whisky.”

“We can’t let him carry on like this, Ron.”

Ron sighed and hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What can we do, though?”

“Have you tried talking to him about it?”

Ron nodded. “A couple of times. He just takes the piss out of me. Tells me not to be a wet blanket,
like...” he trailed off.

“Like me,” Hermione completed for him.

Ron twitched shamefacedly. “He doesn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“Sure.”

“He says a lot of shit when he’s drunk. But he’s never, like, miserable...”

“Still...”

“Yeah. I know. I’ve been thinking of asking Bill to talk to him.”

“Why Bill?”
“He had a bad spell, after Greyback; Scotch, straight up. Didn’t last long, or anything, but for a
while there, he was pretty wonky.”

“I had no idea,” Hermione breathed.

“Yeah, like I said, it was short-lived. But,” Ron gave her a bemused half-smile, “Bill’s on top of it
all, in’e? People listen to him. Maybe he’ll get through to Harry.”

“Maybe.”

Ron stood up and stretched, pulling his arms behind his back.

“Let's go down,” he said, “He drinks more when he’s alone.”

Hermione nodded and got to her feet.

“Got all your stuff? The portkey?”

She showed him her beaded pouch, and it made him chuckle.

“Hullo!” Harry greeted gaily, when she and Ron entered the drawing room. “Firewhisky?”

Hermione declined at once.

“Harry, in less than an hour, it’ll be seven-thirty in the morning for me.”

“You’re no fun,” he chided, “Ron?”

Ron flashed a quick look at Hermione, then shook his head.

“Nah, mate. I’m good.”

“Oh, bother,” Harry huffed with a satirical grin.

“I was thinking,” Ron ventured, “While we still have Hermione here, we should get her help with
the Tinworth burglary spree.”

“Why not?” Harry agreed with zeal, “Like the good old days – the three of us uncovering
something sinister.”

A piddling, petty thief was hardly sinister, nor remotely interesting, considering their track record.
In addition to that, the fact that most of the good residents Tinworth didn’t think to fortify their
windows with intruder charms, really took the fun out of the ‘uncovering’ aspect.

By the time Hermione pulled the shoehorn out of her bag, Harry was polishing off his second drink.
Chapter End Notes

1. Mrs Ramsey and "Life, stand still here.": To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
2. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...": from Act V, Scene 5; Macbeth, by William
Shakespeare
 Sixty-Six

Hermione’s shoes sank into the sand with each step she took. The damp, muffled crunches
maintained a steady beat with her panting breath. Soft breeze swept against her back and coaxed
her forward. A little group of cormorants had gathered close to the shore, singing their strange,
harsh, gurgling song. From a distance, it looked like they were wearing dark hooded cloaks, giving
them an almost sinister air. The loud but cadenced gushing of the bay kept sporadically drowning
out all these sounds.
The day broke over Mentone beach and Hermione ran till her lungs swelled... till she felt they
might break out of her ribcage. She fell to her knees, and they, too, sank an inch or two into the
ground. Her tracksuit bottoms were fawn – or rather, a smoky dusty perse in the early morning
dimness – and they blended perfectly into the sand. It was like she’d crumbled and disintegrated.

She felt like she was in a dream.

The sea and the sky were a smoky dusty perse, too. But the horizon was a thick band of vivid burnt
orange. Hermione pulled her hair loose and let the wind carry it. The waves of the bay and the
twisted locks of her hair danced in tumultuous tandem.

At the door, Hermione cast a thorough cleaning spell on her clothes, so that she wouldn’t end up
drizzling sand all over her parents’ house. The moment she entered, she was struck by a most
enticing aroma, and the sound of a pan sizzling. She poked her head into the kitchen.

“What’s for breakfast?”

“Plain old fry-up,” dad replied, “Shower quickly, will you? Your mother and I have to leave–”

“Dad!” Hermione cried, aghast, “Your apron!”

“Far too jetlagged and done-in to notice it yesterday, eh? Although...” he paused thoughtfully, “you
weren’t actually on a jet. Still counts, I think.”

“Where did you get that, dad?” Hermione was appalled.

“Your mother gifted it to me.” He grinned. “Now go shower. Shoo.”

She tore her eyes away from the big bold lettering sprawling down his black apron, (This Chef Puts
Out... Great Meat! ) and, with her nose wrinkled, she trudged up the stairs.

The morning light filtered into her room through diaphanous lace curtains, melting over the thistle-
coloured walls, and illuminating the enormous sofa sitting in front of the bookshelves. It was her
transfigured belongings, just as she’d left them two years ago in the house that was no longer home.
She winced and looked away, unable to fathom how much it must’ve cost for her parents to have it
shipped... though they did assure her that selling all their old furniture had more than made up for
it.

She went into the bathroom and had, as instructed, a quick shower. Her mother had set out brand
new toiletry for her, and she revelled in the scent of jasmine and white musk.

Fresh and squeaky clean, she descended back into the kitchen, absolutely ravenous. They shared a
hasty breakfast together, mum, dad, and her, during which they mostly talked about the ongoing
student protests in Tehran. Mum and dad left for work on a sombre note, and Hermione took care of
the washing up with her helpful little magic skills.

Then she stood blankly in the kitchen.

She lumbered into the sitting room and put on the telly. With a shameful fump she fell into the sette,
with one leg kicked up high on the back of it, and all the tiny cushions stacked under her head. For
a solid hour, she watched a guileless, charming blond man in khaki shorts wrestle crocodiles and
play with sea turtles.

When the show ended, she was subjected to an onslaught of imbecilic advertisements, so she
switched the telly off.

Peeled herself off the settee and up to her room she went.

She regarded the sofa with slight trepidation. The moment she undid the spell, she would be faced
with boxes of things, cans of worms, all her specially chosen junk. She would have to deal with it
all; whereas the sofa was functional.

Functional.

That’s what Hermione was supposed to be.

But she dallied a little bit more. She summoned her beaded bag and began emptying it.
Clothes came out first. They flew to her bed with a sharp flick of her finger, getting neatly folded
mid-air, till the entire mattress was covered in towers of cloth. A sartorial city. The last thing to
come out was Pat’s suitcase of hand-me-down dresses.
Then out flew a bag of cosmetics, one with toiletries, a little jewellery box, and they found their
place amid the stacks of clothes.
She pulled open the doors of her white-painted wardrobe and all the stuff from her bed went sailing
in.

She delved back into her bag. Out came her cauldron, her newly acquired potions and supplies, a
box full of tools and implements, a geometry kit, a sneakoscope, a case full of quills and pens,
bottles of ink and blank sheets of parchments. She conjured a box and shoved them all in it.

Next came scrolls and scrolls and scrolls of old essays, half a dozen folders full of notes, one folder
full of letters, over a dozen notebooks also full of notes...

She casually leafed through them and found a few rolls of parchment littered with half-formed
ideas about ketamine and pain potions, about beta blockers and Dragon-Pox related arrhythmias.
She set them aside, and made a mental note to owl them to Padma once she got back to England.

She found a parchment filled with Theo’s messy scrawl - it was his ludicrous story about a
despairing plimpy. Hermione chuckled to herself as she read it, and then set it aside as well.

Finally, she held an arithmancy paper, and stared down at a risibly caricaturised doodle of an owl in
the corner. A smile tugged at her lips. She ripped that corner off and set the silly drawing on top of
Theo’s parchment.

She set aside the thick sheaf of parchment that was full of her notes on the Wizarding legal system,
from the list of reference books that McGonagall had given her.
She also put aside all her letters.

She bound the rest her schoolwork in brown paper. Maybe mum will have room for it in her
carefully organised attic.

Now all that was left was her books. She laughed out loud. Yes, that’s all. Oh, and the massive,
stonking sofa.

After a fortifying sigh, she raised her wand and let the sofa take its true form.

Eight cartons, neatly stacked in four piles of two.

She began with the left because putting her faith in the Left is what her astute, upstanding parents
had taught her. Both cartons were filled with clothes: Great news if you’re a house-elf, not so much
if you’re Hermione, who’d thought she’d already dealt with that matter.
She huffed and peered at the contents, wondering if she could just vanish the whole lot and be done
with it. Afterall, she hadn’t missed them all year, why should she miss them now?

But she caught a glimpse of the slim, checked skirt that her grandmother had worn back in the
forties, and the piles of tops and dresses mum had bought for her over the years...

Another huff and she, one by one, piled and hung them in her wardrobe.

The next carton was full of cassettes and CDs. She left that one as it was.

And at last. Five cartons of books. In addition to –

(She took out all the books from her beaded pouch.)

– Another bloody boatload.

She magically lifted entire stacks out of the cartons and had them join said boatload, making a
fairly wide circle. Sitting on the floor in the middle of her book-colosseum, she looked about wryly.
When she was younger, she’d desperately wanted to live in a house where the walls were books.

Well, there you go little one. Is this everything you’d dreamt of?

That thought triggered a memory, and she quickly summoned Hogwarts, A History . She flicked
through the pages till she found it; the creased old bit of parchment. Her “comprehensive” to-do
list.

1. Introduce the magical community to muggle music.

Her classmates were familiar with muggle music now. But, quite honestly, that was all thanks
to Dean.

2. Find a way to successfully integrate muggle technology with magic (first cause- electricity).

Her poor, unfortunate, forsaken music collection.

3. Encourage the incorporation of muggle medicinal practices in magical healing.

Padma had that in hand. She was going to blaze a trail through St. Mungo’s.

4. Demolish the appalling and deep-rooted social evil of pureblood ideology by enforcing strict
legislation–

Hermione closed her eyes. What about now, little one? Are you as disenchanted as I am?

She floated the parchment over the fortress of tomes and had it land softly on top of her ‘set aside’
pile.
She stood up then. Filled with a little frustration, a little bathos, she began demolishing her citadel.

Among the books already on her bookshelf, fiction came first, so Hermione started there. One by
one, she sent novels soaring into the shelf, neatly organised according to author. As the titles
floated in front of her, it was rather tortuous to not flip them open, and she often did give into
temptation.

She dipped into Brave New World, David Copperfield, Middlemarch, Slaughterhouse-Five, Heart
of Darkness, The Bell Jar...

The Razor’s Edge.

She’d always loved the cover of this book; she’d admired it every time she picked it up. It featured
a painting by Glyn Philpot; a portrait of a young man staring ruminatively into the distance.

This young man looked nothing like Draco.

His hair was too dark, his jaw was too squared. His features weren’t sharp, and his brow was too
low. But there was something about the cheekbones... the paleness of skin... the slim waist and the
strong, beautiful hands. She’d seen that same faraway look in Draco’s eyes, that night on the
astronomy tower. She’d seen his lips gently parted, just so.
There was something in the young man’s pocket. A handkerchief? A letter? He wouldn’t tell her.

Hermione opened the book and picked out the post-it.

Away, you three-inch fool!

Just like she had when she’d first read it, she laughed.

So damn stupid. So inexplicably ridiculous. Surely, he knew what the phrase meant.
She sent the post-it to join her ‘set-away’ pile, and she sent the book to her bookshelf.

After novels, it was time for poetry. That took even longer, and it was not her fault. When it was
time for plays, she obviously had to revisit Taming of the Shrew. She set aside her instinctive
distaste for the subject matter, reading till she got to the line – Away, you three-inch fool! I am no
beast.

She stared at those words for a very, very long time.

Books on natural history and science went next. Books on art followed. Her much-loved collection
of Asterix comics. History. Politics. Civics. Philosophy.

(A skim through The Second Sex to equipoise the treatment of Katherina Minola.)

And she ended up with The Rebel in her hands.

She found the exact page, the exact line, and the folded piece of parchment under it. On opening it,
once again, a little spiral of ash danced above a Shakespearean tercet. Just as bewildering as before.
This parchment, she left in the book – it was where it belonged.

When, at last, the floor was cleared and the bookshelf was packed, she looked at her watch. Gosh, it
was late; nearly time for her parents to be back from the clinic.

Hermione stretched her slightly tired arms, switched off the lights in the room, and went
downstairs.

*
Later, after dinner had been eaten and mum got mired in a telephone call with her sister, Hermione
asked dad what he wanted to do with her music collection.

“I could try using magic to run a stereo,” she said dully, “but a gramophone is much easier and
accessible–”

“Archaic.” Dad cut in.

“Vintage and charming?” Hermione tried with a smile.

He snorted.

She brought down the carton to his study and he went through it, letting out frequent murmurs of
appreciation. Not surprising, that, considering he was the one who’d shaped her taste.

While he was occupied, Hermione took stock of the room. Save for the over-crowded bookshelf, it
looked so different from what she remembered, even since a year ago. She moved towards a brand-
new CD rack and peered at the titles, pulling out one that caught her eye.

Dad appeared over her shoulder.

“It’s Bowie, live in Manchester, '72. The whole concert.”

Hermione turned to smile at him, while he gazed lovingly at the sleek CD rack like it was
something he’d build with his bare hands over decades.

“And this... ah. This is a relatively newer band, Pavement, they’re decent, you should have a listen.
Oh, and! You’re going to love this one. It’s an entire encyclopaedia!”

Hermione looked at the slim case with a blue cover, depicting a clear cube with fish, a steam
engine, a violin, Notre Dame...

“Encarta?”

“’99. I have 98, too, but why go backwards, eh?”

Next to the rack was a large desk with a gleaming white computer – the brand-new Compaq that
Hermione was supposed to consider her adopted sibling.

“Now if only your mother would get off the damn telephone, we could go online,” Dad chaffed, as
he peered at the spines on his rack, “Even encyclopaedias are old hat now. You can ask Jeeves
whatever you want, and he’ll help you out.”

“Jeeves?”

“Yes,” dad muttered absently, “Good old Reggie. Britannica is fully online, too. Go see if the line’s
free, will you, sweetheart?”

Utterly overwhelmed, Hermione left the study and walked across the hallway to the living room.
Mum was sitting on an armchair, very much still on the telephone. Hermione wheeled around and
shuffled back.

“She’s still talking to Aunt Malorie.”

“Your aunt’s a bitch.”

“Dad!”

“I’m sure she’s called me worse. But anyway - I saved the best for last. Look at this!” he exclaimed
with a flourish.

The cover had an ancient Roman soldier, a Pharoah, and a Mesopotamian scribe, against a rather
complex backdrop and above a bold red font that read Age of Empires .

“Just you wait,” Dad cooed, sinking into his (also new) chair.

Hermione stood behind him for as long as she could, watching him do... something or the other.
She wasn’t sure what was going on, really. Buildings seemed to keep springing up (“As you can
see, I’ve decided to go the East Asian way,”) and there were tiny ant-like ‘people’ moving about. It
galled her that she couldn’t understand, and that technology had run so far beyond her. Her idea of
computer games was still duck hunt and inane car racing on dad’s chunky grey computer, that she
hadn't touched after first year.

She could feel herself turning into Arthur Weasley.

“Argh!” dad cried, “That’s the enemy tribe. Looks like we’re going to war.”

After a while, he stopped giving his running commentary and got utterly consumed by the game.
She continued to watch for a bit, dazed and grouchy, but ultimately sidled out of the room and,
once again, wandered over to where mum was.

Mum was no longer on the phone. Instead, she was sitting with her head back, eyes closed.
Hermione had only half-turned to leave when she called out to her.

“I thought you’d dosed off,” Hermione said, leaning against the door jamb.

“No,” mum sighed, “Just recuperating after a very long, very taxing conversation. I can’t figure out
if Mal wants me to tell her to get a divorce, or to talk her out of it.”

“Tough.”

“Indeed. Where’s your father?”

“He’s building an empire.”

Mum rolled her eyes.

“Are you sleepy? It’ll be–” she looked at the clock on the side table, “–three at night, back in
England.”

“I’m not sleepy in the least,” Hermione answered, “You were right to keep me up all day,
yesterday.”

“Well, that’s excellent,” mum smiled and stood up, “I’ll brew us some tea, and you can show me
how you translated Delphi’s diary.”

With her hand on the wall for support, Hermione was shoving her foot rather forcefully into her
trainer, while simultaneously charming her hair into a high ponytail.

“Oh good. You’re ready.”

Dad came up beside her in joggers and a windcheater, and began pulling on a pair of walking
shoes.

“Um?” Hermione asked quizzically.

“It's Saturday morning, sweetheart,” he said jovially, “We’re going for a walk.”

He took her down the same route as last time, down a neck of greenery, to the beach. They ended
up, once again, on the same old jetty.

Standing side by side, with the sea all but wrapped around them, it felt like they had arrived at a
sacred spot; like remnants of their last conversation lay entombed in the chalky wood of the railing,
and they had returned to sanctify another post.

The corners of dad’s eyes crinkled as he looked down at her with a gentle smile.

“How different you look, my love.”

Hermione self-consciously pushed away tendrils of hair that had escaped her ponytail. “What do
you mean?”

“Last time we were here...” he shook his head, “Haunted, wretched... Starved. God, I’m so bloody,
awfully, sorry for what you’ve had to go through.”

“Dad...”
“But look at you now,” he whispered, “You look just like my Hermione. Just like you ought to.
Beautiful, vivacious, full of that compelling, clear-eyed sparkle.”

“Dad,” she repeated, but in a completely different tone, fighting a smile.

He laughed and playfully tugged her ponytail.

“You remember the itinerary I’d drawn up for our trip here? When it was still just a trip, I mean.
For the three of us?”

“Um,” Hermione hedged, “Vaguely...”

“We never got around to it, you know, your mum and I.”

He looked out at the port thoughtfully. Hermione moved closer and leant against his arm.

“We’ve barely seen a quarter of Melbourne, actually,” he went on, “Just got completely caught up
in the business of setting up a life here. We thought... well, there’ll be time to go about later. We
kept putting it off over and over again. I think I know why now. Can you guess?”

She shook her head. His windcheater was soft and fluffy like a pillow.

“We were waiting for you,” he replied simply.

Hermione pulled away, swallowing thickly. Her eyes felt misty as she took in his smiling face.

“Well, I’m here now,” she murmured wishfully.

“You are.”

“We could...”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

They both turned their backs to the water, alerted by a disturbance behind them. Two young boys
and a golden retriever were splashing around in the shallows.

Dad continued, “Your mum and I still have to work next week, but after that–” He raised his hand
and mimed an aeroplane, “– we’ll go to Sydney. From there, we’ll hire a car and drive down the
coastal highway to Brisbane. I’ve been told its beaut . We can fly back home well in time for you to
pack up for your return.”

Her eyes had gradually widened as he spoke.

“Well,” dad urged when she didn’t immediately react, “What do you say?”

“Yes,” she burst out with an enthusiastic laugh, “Please!”

Of the many universal physical constants – the speed of light in a vacuum, the Newtonian constant
of gravitation, vacuum magnetic permeability, electron proton neutron mass, blah bloody blah –
nothing matched the steadfastness of dad’s devotion to a good Sunday roast.

He began his day by heading to the shops, where he spent at least an hour, and returned with
multiple bags. From then on, he’d be in the kitchen, chopping that, dicing this, stirring that, boiling
this. All sorts of intriguing smells spilled out, and if you were to peep in, you’d find him in a very
merry state, singing along to whatever his Walkman was playing.

That particular Sunday, he was listening to Thin Lizzy. Hermione was forced to cast a charm to
keep his voice contained within the kitchen.

She was sitting with mum in the living room, watching news on the Beeb, when a loud rapping
against the window made them jump a foot in the air.

“Oh my god ,” mum gasped clutching her heart.

Hermione got to her feet, wand raised... And her blood turned to ice and she stopped dead.

There was a pretty little barn owl at the window, with pitch black eyes and a letter clutched in its
talons.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” mum urged, “It’s probably your NEWTs results.”

Hermione whimpered. Oh no.

Mum huffed impatiently and brushed passed her, opening the window to collect the letter herself.
Oh no. She gave the owl a treat from the jar she kept on the sill and it went on its way with a
grateful hoot. Oh no. Mum pressed the envelope into her hand, but still, (Oh no) Hermione stood
frozen. It was only after she’d been implored multiple times to stop being a twit, did she finally
move, looking down at the letter and –

The air left her lungs in a great big gush.

“What?” mum demanded.

“It's from Neville,” Hermione replied blankly.

Mum let out a great big laugh and said, “How terribly anticlimactic.”
His letter was short and buoyant: He hoped she was well, he was all set to leave as soon as the
NEWTs results were declared, and his grandmother had bought him a beautiful set of spanking new
gardening tools.

Along with his letter was a slim stack of photographs, tied together with a bit of string.

The one on top was of the entire group: Hermione perched on the arm of a sofa, on which George,
Angelina, and Ron were sitting. Lee was on one armchair, Harry on another, with Ginny on his lap.
They were all beaming widely, raising their glasses in a toast. Hannah kept popping in and out of
the frame. Seamus streaked across the middleground, with a swarm of glasses hovering around
him. And the background was just a solid wall of people.

“Ooh!” mum called excitedly, “May I please see?”

How was she supposed to refuse? They sat together on the sofa as Hermione pulled loose the
string, and one by one, they looked over each photograph.

Second photograph: Hermione was blinking dazedly while Seamus refreshed her drink. George was
kissing Angelina. Ron pointed at the camera and said something that made Harry, Ginny, and Lee
laugh.

Third photograph: The same group, this time watching George as he took a shot... put down the
glass... and breathed a tiny lick of fire. Seamus was next to him, grinning proudly.

Fourth photograph: Ginny and Hermione were standing with arms around each other’s waists,
heads and goblets tilted towards one another. They smiled fetchingly at the camera while, to their
left, Harry’s glass was getting refilled by Seamus.

Fifth photograph: Hermione, Harry, and Ron, arm in arm. Ron’s face was red and he was grinning.
Hermione and Harry had their heads thrown back in laughter. A few seconds later, a bottle and
Seamus’ hand entered the frame, and nudged Ron’s shoulder.

“This one’s delightful,” mum said.

“Yes,” Hermione agreed.

Her heart was warm. She was definitely getting the last two pictures enlarged and framed.

Sixth photograph: Similar to the one before, except Ron was holding out his glass to Seamus.
Hermione and Harry looked slightly dazed. Some unknown chap lumbered over and put his hands
on her, and she flinched.
Seventh photograph: Tons of people were flocking around Harry. Hermione wound around Ron and
ducked under his arm. Seamus watched her go.

Eighth photograph: Hermione’s stomach lurched.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s Draco,” she mumbled, staring down at him, “He’s... um, Theo’s friend. And flatmate.”

“The one responsible for the antlers?”

“Heh. Yes.”

In the photograph, she was sitting facing him, with her legs pulled up and folded to one side. He
had twisted his torso to face her. His empty glass was in his hand, resting on his knee. They were
both looking at each other, him with a wide grin, and her with a fragile smile and blazing red
cheeks.
There were many people standing around, but only the two of them, and the sofa they were sitting
on, stood out starkly.
Then, suddenly, they turned towards the camera, smiles slowly fading away. His brow puckered as
he glanced up with lush, intoxicated eyes. She looked completely disoriented, like she’d been
woken up from a trance.
From the corner, Seamus walked into the frame, holding a tall bottle of wine.

“He’s handsome,” mum remarked.

Hermione couldn’t look at her.

“He’s very aware of it,” she muttered.

“Ah. That sort.”

“Hm.”

If she didn’t move onto the next photograph now ... she probably never would.

Ninth photograph: Draco and Hermione, but with Neville in between them, fervently grinning.
Draco had adopted his signature smirk, with all the conviction of one who knew exactly how it
looked. Hermione’s legs fell back to the ground as she aimed a slightly manic smile at the camera.
Her cheeks were still scarlet. Behind them, Seamus was pretending to perform a very lewd act on
the wine bottle.

Tenth photograph: Hermione with a full glass of gin and pumpkin fizz in her hand, once again
beaming with joy. Theo stood behind her, over a head taller – floppy hair, white shirt, bluegreen
scarf – with his arms wrapped around her. He bent his head to rest his chin on top of her head and
smiled with profound affection. George, Lee, Luna, and Seamus were standing a bit to the side,
doing a round of fire-breathing shots.

“Lovely,” said mum.

She would be framing this one, too.

Eleventh photograph: Theo pulled a slightly startled Luna towards them, next to Hermione.
Hermione turned to grin at her. Theo draped one arm on each of their shoulders, and laughed as
Luna blinked to reorient herself. Behind them, George, Lee, and Seamus threw back another round
of shots.

Twelfth photograph: Theo turned back towards George and Lee, who were waving scattily at the
camera. Hermione and Luna were looking at each other, exchanging a few words. Dean and
Seamus leapt in from opposite sides and stood on either side of them. Dean took hold of
Hermione’s wrist and directed her drink towards her mouth.

Thirteenth photograph: Luna returned to Theo’s side. Dean had Seamus in a headlock. Hermione
looked on in astonishment, taking quick sips from her glass.

Fourteenth photograph: Padma slipped an arm around Hermione’s waist and they both grinned.
Susan and Tracey appeared to want to join in, but were waylaid by Seamus and a bottle.

Fifteenth photograph: Hermione and Ginny (and fucking Seamus) were dancing. The picture was
out of focus; the background was nothing more than blobs of random colours. Even the dancers
were reduced to their basics: The gleam of Ginny’s jewelled sandals and Hermione’s glossy top.
Red hair and brown hair and sandy hair being tossed about. The rhythmic sway of limbs. The
medley of movement.

Sixteenth photograph: This one was much more in focus. Hermione and Ginny were still dancing,
but this time with Angelina and George and Hannah and Dean. In the background, Ron, Michael,
and Justin – all scowling – were handing something to a very smug Ernie. Seamus stood in between
them, holding a tray full of empty glasses.

Seventeenth photograph: The final picture was of a crowd of dancing people. Hermione spotted
herself, briefly, making a piss-poor attempt at swing dancing with Dean. But it was dizzying trying
to keep up with who was where. And then, suddenly, Seamus’ harlequin face filled the frame. He
cackled and his hand reached out and covered the lens.

Mum whistled lowly and observed, “Some party.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed, with a tense and timid laugh.

It was one thing to have her mother be aware of the fact that she consumed alcohol, but having her
actually witness it was a whole other kettle of fish. When she finally mustered the courage to meet
mum’s eyes, she found her looking terribly amused.

“This is the furthest thing from exams.”

Yes, mum, well noted. Hermione thrust the photographs back in the envelope and stood up,
mumbling something about checking on dad’s progress. Mum continued to watch her in a tender
and entertained way. There wasn’t an ounce of disapproval in her manner.

“When’s Theo coming by?”

“Friday evening,” Hermione replied, bouncing on the balls of her feet, “At six. Luna is coming as
well.”

“Wonderful,” mum twinkled, “I’ll prepare the guest room. They’ll be here for the weekend, yes?”

“Mhmm.”

“And will that other chap also come? Er... what’s his name? The handsome one?”

“Draco,” Hermione croaked.

A ripple of prickling heat swept up her legs. Oh, mum looked wicked.

“He will not.”

“I see.”

Hermione scampered out of the room then. In the kitchen, dad, in his horrid apron, was putting a
slab of beef in the oven. He gave a cheery nod when he saw her, and pulled off his headphones.

“Need any help?” she begged.

“Peel those carrots, please?”

She did, happily.

The gentle chill of the night was very pleasant. Hermione stood by the open window in her room,
peering out at a moon that was only a day or two away from disappearing. Above her head, the
tinkling chime produced a seraphic melody. She blew into her cup of passionflower tea.
She looked out till all but the last sip of tea remained, muddled with dregs. She set the cup down on
her desk and closed the window. The chimes came to a gradual halt.

Neville’s letter and photographs were sat on the bedside table. She glanced at them on her way to
the loo.

When she came back out, in shorts and an old t-shirt, she glanced at them again.

She got into bed with her notes on pivotal trials of the last century, and spent a good amount of time
combing through them. The sheer number of cock-ups and miscarriages of justice were obscene;
sentences delivered on the backs of thin evidence, the lack of proper investigation...
The basic apparatus of the legal system allowed for it. The Wizengamot had too much power.
And since all the books that she’d read came from within the system, they wrote away gross
injustices as mere quirks.
The lone exception was a compilation of papers by one Madam Elena Barros, an untouchable
bigwig in the DMLE, recently welcomed into the Wizengamot, at just forty-four.
Hermione remembered hearing about her from Mr Weasley ages back, as the one who’d really
helped pull his Muggle Protection Bill through the ranks.

It was half past midnight. She put the notes away and switched off the bedside lamp.

She switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the photographs.

There was, inevitably, a bit of a show put on, just in case some omnipresent force was indeed
watching over her (not Theo) – She looked at all the photographs again, one by one.

Ultimately, surely and as expected, she sat back with the photograph of her and Draco.

It was very easy to see what mum saw, as someone who had no inkling of how fraught their
association had been. Strip all that away, and it was simply a photograph of a charming young man
and a categorically charmed young woman.

But Hermione knew. Hermione was gallingly aware of every aggravating, hateful, offensive
moment they’d shared. In the quiet of her room, the photograph mortified her.

And to think, Neville must have sent a copy to Draco, as well. He would have solid evidence of her
simpering over him. It was maddening to the highest extreme, made worse by the fact that even
now, thinking about him, made her...

She found him attractive because he was . It was an inconvenient, bothersome fact... but a fact
nonetheless. No big deal. He was attractive, she had eyes.
With a tap of her wand, she froze the photograph at the moment before Neville’s interruption, when
they were just looking at one-another. Flirting, apparently.

He was so droll, yet so polished. And she, madwoman that she was, smiled.

“...but why go backwards, eh?”

The more she looked at the picture the more her embarrassment-and-panic-fuelled-viciousness
dispersed... the broader her smile got. Funny boy, and not a beast. Quick-witted. So very
challenging.
Striking.
Her eyes closed from abashment.

She sighed.

She looked once again at his grinning profile. The impact of his cheeky “yes” , was still there in the
tilt of his head, in the stains on her cheeks. Setting the photograph back in motion, she watched the
whole scene play out again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

She could not stop looking at it.

She’d sought him out, hadn’t she? On more than one occasion.

It was obvious that she’d already decided she wanted to be his friend.

The next owl that arrived – a horned owl with a rigid disposition – did indeed bring her NEWTs
results.

It was eleven-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday. She was alone at home.

The owl did not look like one that would suffer her anxious dithering, so she quickly divested it of
its load. She placed the envelope on the coffee table and sat on a nearby armchair, with her arms
crossed. It was a deadlock between girl and envelope; an inordinately long one.
Then she leapt up, picked up the envelope, rammed on her shoes, and left the house.

The walk to Chipper Choppers Dental Clinic usually took about twenty-five minutes. Hermione
completed it in ten. She didn’t flat out run, but she might as well have. For the next five minutes,
she stood outside the door catching her breath and fanning her face with the parlous envelope.
The door opened and a little boy and his grandmother stepped out onto the pavement. His mouth
was swollen and his eyes were red, and she was cajoling him with the promise of ice cream.
Hermione darted in before the door could close again.

“Well look who it is!” Olivia exclaimed from behind her desk, “How are ya?”

Hermione shuffled over to her with a tight smile and half-hearted wave.

“Hi. I’m well, thanks. And you?”

They made friendly small talk, (with one brief interval during which Olivia reluctantly engaged
with a patient that showed up with a bloody mouth,) while waiting for Hermione’s parents to
emerge for lunch. Olivia did most of the talking, of course. Hermione contributed a word, once in a
while. Her tone was dense with apprehension.

“Argh, I need a ciggy so bad,” Olivia whinged, “How long are you here for?”

“I’m leaving on the thirtieth. So, pretty much the whole month.”

“Ah, no wonder the docs are taking some time off. They never do, otherwise. Bless you, babe.
Thanks so much.”

“Oh. Well. Ha ha. You’re welcome.”

It was twelve-thirty. Her parents should have come out by now. Why hadn’t they come out? Mister
bloody-mouth had been dealt with.

“Got any plans for the weekend?” Olivia asked, “Savage Garden are playing at Melbourne Park.”

“What? Oh. I have some friends from England coming over–”

“Bring them too!”

“Um.”

“Blokes?”

“One is. The other one is his girlfriend.”

“Ah, fuck me dead.”

Hermione tore her eyes away from the frosted door leading to her parents’ offices. Olivia looked a
bit devastated.
“What happened to...” she racked her brain for a moment, “Er... Matty?”

“I don’t know what happened to him. Lost his sick little mind, the dick...”

Mum and Dad came out then. Hermione bid Olivia farewell and dashed towards them, while they
looked on, pleasantly surprised.

“Sweetheart!” dad exclaimed, “What are you–”

She held up the envelope.

“Oh!”

They ushered her into one of the offices, (the vase of primroses and the big Ukiyo-e print would
suggest it was mum’s,) and sat her down on a chair.

“Go on!” mum urged.

All three looked at the envelope in Hermione’s hands.

“I – I –” her heart was thundering, “I don’t think I can do it. Would you... please?”

“Okay,” mum agreed.

She took the envelope and began slicing it open –

“No, wait!” Hermione cried, standing up, “I’ll – please – give it to me.”

Mum and dad exchanged a smirk.

Okay. Deep breath. Stabbing a horcrux was scary. Tearing open an envelope was not.

Moments later, she unfolded the parchment inside.

Seven subjects. Seven glistening black O’s.

She pulled in a deep, quivering breath, and wordlessly handed the parchment to mum. Dad actually
whooped , and then Hermione found herself being lifted up and spun around. Finally, laughter,
relieved and ecstatic, came tumbling out of her throat and melded with mum and dad’s.

*
That night they got dressed up and drove to Southbank, to an upscale restaurant with a fantastic
view of the Yarra River. Mum and dad insisted on calling for champaign to toast to her success,
which was followed by exemplary Thai food.

Truly, there was nothing like seeing her parents take joy in her accomplishments. They were talking
animatedly, hyperbolically... speculating about the various ways in which Hermione was going to
change the face of the wizarding world.
Hermione didn’t say much, mostly just flushed and laughed, bubbly like her flute of bubbly; light
and chilled like it, too.

A waiter cleared away their empty plates, replacing them with bowls of mango tapioca pudding.

Hermione’s face almost hurt from beaming. She leaned back in her chair and looked up and found
that she was sitting right under a chandelier.

Over the next three days, Hermione’s life divaricated in the most intriguing way. In a sense, it was
like she was trying to touch base with every aspect of her life.

In the mornings she ran. In the afternoons, she read poetry and she read A Legal Compendium. In
the early evenings, while dad cooked, mum insisted on getting Hermione behind the wheel again:
“It’s an essential life skill.”
She was awful at first and damn near ruined her relationship with her mother forever. By the end of
the second day, she was no longer murdering the clutch, but the car still periodically screeched and
roared.
Over dinner, she talked about what she’d read in the afternoon. At night, dad and her would be
hunched in front of the computer. She learned how to ask Jeeves all sorts of things, and how to read
the news, and book flights, and buy books.

On Friday evening, apart from one close shave involving a road sign and a very traumatised old
man (whom she profusely apologised to), Hermione thought she had done rather well. Mum was
frustratingly reluctant to endorse that assertion, but Hermione didn’t push her.

Upon entering the garden, they found Theo reclining comfortably on a deck chair.

“Hullo,” he grinned broadly, “Tried knocking, ringing the doorbell... but I think Robert doesn’t
want to let me in.”
“He must have his headphones on,” mum said.

He stood up then, and walked to her.

“Ah, Evelyn, you are lovelier every time I see you.”

He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. Mum looked absolutely torn between laughing and
cuffing him. She took back her hand, gave his hair an exasperated ruffle, and went up to open the
door.

Hermione and Theo grinned at her back.

“Buddy,” Theo said, reclaiming Hermione’s attention. And he wrapped her up in a hug.

“Where’s Luna?” Hermione asked as they moved towards the house.

“Couldn’t make it, unfortunately” Theo replied a bit dolefully, “She’s scrambling to meet a
deadline.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Theo, you are going to have to explain further.”

He chuckled, walking inside and closing the door behind him.

“The Scamander Institute of Magizoological Studies has offered a grant for a research project.
Luna is working on a proposal. I told her I’d be more than happy to fund her research, but she said
she wants the backing of an esteemed institute...”

“Good call.”

“Hmph.”

“What’s her paper about?”

“You know her,” Theo grinned, “She has a plethora of mysterious crea–”

Theo blenched. He’d spotted dad’s apron. And then he laughed and laughed and doubled over
laughing.
Though the air was nippy, the sun was out and bright. Hermione put on her sunglasses and, with
Theo by her side, meandered through the weekend crowd till she found the beachside bar where
Olivia had celebrated her birthday last year.

They settled down to a plate of grilled cod, a basket of chunky chips, and tall glasses of Victoria
Bitter.

“I know you’re dying to,” Theo said with aplomb, “Just ask.”

Hermione first took a nice big gulp of beer. They were sitting in the outdoor area, on a terrace of
sorts. The view from there was very nice.

“Theo,” she pronounced with formality, “How did you do?”

“First you tell me,” he said, lounging back in his chair like a lord, “Did you get an ‘outstanding’
across the board?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations. As I’d predicted.”

“Yes.”

“I was right.”

“Yes.”

“Nice.”

“Theooooo!”

He laughed and gobbled up a forkful of fish. “Not bad. Have it while it’s still hot.”

“I’ve put a warming charm on it.”

“Outstanding.”

“I hate you.”

“You adore me. Okay, I’m sorry. How about we start with good old Runes. I got an ‘Exceeds
Expectations’. Please don’t be angry.”

“Why would I be angry?” she exclaimed, “That’s very good!”

“An E in charms and transfiguration and defence too.”

“Well done, Theo!”

“Thank you. Potions was ‘acceptable’. Failed herbology and care of magical creatures. But who the
fuck cares about those?”

Hermione took a bite of fish. Yup, not bad.

“How did Luna fair?”

Theo shrugged. “An ‘outstanding’ in magical creatures. That’s all she told me.”

“You didn’t ask her about the others?”

“Hermione, I don’t care.”

He had drained his glass, and gestured for a refill.

While he was looking away, Hermione quickly asked, “AndwhataboutDraco?”

Theo smiled and ate some fish.

“Ask him yourself.”

Grateful for her sunglasses, Hermione grumbled and stared at the otherwise blinding refraction
over water.

“Aw, don’t get all cheese off now,” he cajoled, “Fine, I’ll tell you.”

Hermione had to wait, as that was when Theo’s fresh glass of beer arrived. He spent much too long
thanking the waiter.

“Well?” she said.

“Butterbeer is shit compared to what muggles call beer.”

She turned back to the sea.

“Outstanding in everything but herbology.”

“Did he fail?”

“No,” he replied mirthfully, “He exceeded expectations.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t look so disappointed.”

“I’m not,” she pressed, “I outdid him.”

Theo sniggered. “Of course, you did.”

How she wished Draco was here. She’d tell him that this was not an annoying conclusion.
Imagining the way he’d scowl made her smile.

“Oh wow. You look dead smug.”

Hermione’s glass was empty. She turned to request another.

Another Sunday, another fatherly frenzy.

However, that particular Sunday, dad wasn’t listening to music. Theo had insisted upon taking on
the post of sous-chef. Hermione and mum stood at the kitchen door, drinking lemonade and
watching the chaos unfold.
Theo had never cooked a day in his life. It was a travesty. Dad’s usually delectable Sunday spread
was very sub-par.

Spirits were so high that nobody seemed to mind.

That night found Hermione and Theo lying side-by-side on the shore, on a thick woollen blanket,
staring up at a waxing crescent moon.

“I don’t think I mentioned,” Theo drawled, “I have a job now.”

Hermione sat up like she’d been electrocuted.

“Pardon me?”

He grasped the back of her jumper and pulled her back down.

“Are you proud?” he asked, “I won't be sitting around, gathering dust...”

“You haven’t told me what this job is,” Hermione replied, resettling on the blanket.

“Creative Director at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.”

“What?” she gaped at him. “How did that happen?”

“George heard about the fountain. You remember...?”

“The Bananas in Pyjamas singing fountain.”

“Exactly, well...”

He sat up then, stifling a yawn.

“Sorry, darling, if I keep lying down, I’ll fall asleep.”

“Yes, it’s fine,” she said impatiently, sitting up as well, “Tell me about George and the fountain.”

Theo chortled and pulled her to his side. “There’s nothing more to it, really. He heard about the
fountain and loved it. He offered to buy it off me, but I don’t need money. In fact, I offered him
money. He’s doing my work... you know. God’s work. And I also rather like the idea of making an
actual career out of coming up with batty whatsits. I’m good at coming up with batty whatsits,
aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Hermione mumbled, “I – erm, I’m scared.”

“Huh?”

“You and George joining forces, that’s... downright dangerous. The world is not prepared.”

“It’d better be,” Theo said with a rakish grin, “Because it’s happening. George had also heard about
the antlers and wanted to rope Draco in, as well. Could you imagine that?”

Hermione feigned a shudder. “Calamity. Devastation.”

“Quite. But Draco didn’t want any part of it. He sold George the antler potion formula. You know
what’s going to happen now?”

“Bad things.”

“I have so many ideas, Hermione.”

You could be an inventor,” Hermione told him, “An Unspeakable–”

“I will invent unspeakable things,” Theo vowed.

Some time later, they sauntered back home, to the back garden, where mum and dad were sitting,
around a bonfire with mugs of hot toddy.

With the heady smell of whisky, cinnamon, and smouldering wood in the air, they talked and joked
around for another hour, till Theo stood up and pulled a portkey, (look, Draco, a fucking trolley
wheel,) out of his pocket.

“Goodbye, kind Grangers,” he said with a sweet, contented smile.

The trolley wheel glowed a faint blue, and he disappeared into the ether.
White curtains rippled like sea foam as breeze swept into the room. The chime was tingling, adding
an uncanny depth to Dreams by The Cranberries.

Hermione was packing some clothes into a small black suitcase, in a rather lax, oneiric way, sort of
floating and swaying between lazy flicks of her wand. God, but the lightness that she was feeling
was incredible; the serenity, the joy... Amplified by the awareness of how, not all that long back,
she was sure she would never again feel this way.

The flight to Sydney was in six hours.

Between picking out beach-friendly footwear and wondering if the cold meant she wouldn’t get a
chance to swim at all, Hermione felt a sudden pang of hunger.

She hopped down to the kitchen and fished out a packet of bourbon biscuits from the cupboard.

Three tickets were stuck on the fridge door.

 Sixty-Seven

Intermezzo:

19th July, 1999

TULLAMARINE AIRPORT, MELBOURNE, VIC

With their luggage checked in, they waited by the gates, each immersed in their own diversions.
There was quite some time to kill.
Hermione was reading a John Grisham novel that she had picked off the airport bookshop bestseller
rack. Mum was reading the latest edition of the Australian Dental Journal, and dad had his
headphones on.

Then it was time for them to board.

The last time Hermione had been on a plane was the summer before third year.

This flight was a mere hour and a half, and Hermione looked out of the window the whole time,
watching the world turn into a relief map. Clouds, large and sheer, floated past like ghost ships.

20th July, 1999

SYDNEY, NSW

After breakfast, they took a slow walk from their hotel to the harbour bridge, which looked like an
enormous steel rainbow stretching across the sky. They climbed up and stared out at the view.

Here was a city in the day time: Bright blue cloudless sky above, bright blue rippling water below,
and building after building after building in the middle. The colour of each façade was crisp and
clear. Cars rushed by behind her. The land was dotted with green, the water was dotted with boats,
ships, yachts... orbiting the gleaming white, shark-fin shells of the opera house.
Hermione felt a surge of optimism, like a solid shot in the arm. Excitement for the week ahead
mingled with the joy that had been simmering inside her for days.

They took a guided tour of the opera house, and then ran to hop into a boat to watch whales leap
out of water.

They spent considerable time in the recently opened Museum of Sydney. In the evening, spruced
up, they returned to the opera house to watch The Australian Ballet perform an energetic, comedic
rendition of The Three Musketeers.

They dined on glazed lamb at a rooftop restaurant.

21st JULY, 1999

SYDNEY, NSW

They went up Sydney Tower to observe the panoramic view.

At The Central Plaza, they had lunch and a small argument when mum spotted a beautiful
(expensive!) black dress that she simply had to buy for Hermione.

Dad then decided he wanted to go surfing, which was apparently something he actually enjoyed.
Hermione and mum, (friends again, and new black dress in tow,) went to see an aboriginal art
exhibition.

For dinner, they took a cruise: A splendid six course meal, while slowly meandering across the
harbour as the city lit up.

22nd July, 1999

SYDNEY, NSW

That morning, they collected the car dad had rented. He took the first driving shift, after
unnecessarily terrifying Hermione by jangling the keys in front of her face, as though he expected
her to competently drive through a busy, bustling city.

Traffic slowed them initially. Mum took a nap and Hermione read her Grisham novel – The
Testament. The radio spat out cricket commentary, as England and New Zealand met for a test
match at Lord’s.
Then they broke out into the countryside, and the terrain turned beautiful. Hermione put her book
away, and mum woke up. Greenery abounded, with the Pacific popping in and out of view.
Suddenly they were in a forest, suddenly a town, suddenly on a road bang on the coast, driving on
till they reached –

NELSON BAY, PORT STEPHENS, NSW

They had a bite to eat at a restaurant that was once a lighthouse-keeper's cottage, followed by a
quick boat ride to watch dolphins skim gracefully over the bay.

For the next stretch of driving, mum took over. The sea accompanied them all through, winking and
twinkling and blue. The urge for tea had just about peaked when they rolled into –

PORT MACQUARIE, NSW

They took tea in a club at Nobbys beach, watching families with children frolic around the rocky
beach. The water was astonishingly blue, until it threw out a streak of astonishing green, and then
both colours blended, beautifully.

They walked for a long time along the shore, past bouldering, moss-covered rocks, till they got to
the largest of all rocks: The thirty-metre-tall headland called Nobby Head.
So many of her friends would have much to say about that. Not only had the colonists taken over
aboriginal land... they had decided to give it that name.

They passed a small monument to a man who had tragically drowned while attempting to save the
life of his friend... And they remained there, as the sun performed the most vibrant part of its
setting process. Before the last bit of light disappeared, they walked back to the car, stopped briefly
at a petrol station, and then drove to a nearby holiday park at the bank of the Hastings River, where
they’d booked a cabin for the night.

23rd July, 1999

PORT MACQUARIE, NSW

At the crack of dawn, in sturdy walking shoes and warm jackets, they hiked along the Googik
heritage walk in Lake Innes Nature reserve.

They arrived at an area replete with brick-and-mortar ruins, where they met a guide who told them
about the history of the once-elaborate estate, built by unpaid convicts and indigenous folk.
...Maybe Abel Magwitch had been one of them...
Quick as a flash, Hermione had a pen and notebook out, and she barraged (dad’s word, not hers,)
the somewhat staggered guide with questions about the Slave Trade Act of 1807, and the Slave
Abolition Act of 1833.

They had breakfast at the reserve café.

Dad insisted on going kayaking, and Hermione cast a secret stabilising charm on the canoe.

Next, they went to Cassegrain Wines, a sprawling compound with a winery, cellar, fields, and rose
gardens. Hermione walked slowly behind mum and dad as they traversed down a path cutting
through laden grapevines.

She had looped her arm through his and set her chin on his shoulder as she listened to him talk. He
said something funny, so she laughed and turned to face ahead. He kissed her temple. Hermione
smiled at the back of their heads; his loose, bountiful curls and her soft, elegant pixie-cut.

They saw the wine-making machinery, and went into the cellar to sample the collection.
Mum and Dad bought a case of assorted wine. Hermione bought one bottle of Pinot Noir and one
of Riesling, feeling very grown up and self-conscious.

They ate French food at the restaurant, and drank some more wine. Finally, they took an
ambulatory walk through the gorgeous gardens. Once again, Hermione hung back and let her
parents be with each other for a bit.

How could she, the child of such a healthy, loving, supportive marriage, be so unequivocally shit at
relationships?

24th July, 1999

Back in the car, dad took the wheel, put on Jethro Tull... and they were off again. Hermione fell
asleep to Mother Goose.

As I did walk by Hampstead Fair

I came upon Mother Goose
So, I turned her loose
She was screaming
And a foreign student said to me –

“Is it really true, there are elephants and lions too, in Picadilly Circus?”

“It isn’t actually a circus, Draco,” she said, rolling her eyes.
He looked unconvinced and unimpressed and licked ice cream off his spoon.

“Then why is it called a circus?”

“It’s Latin. Circus means circle.”

“How very stupid and pretentious,” he drawled.

“Your name is Latin, too,” she reminded him haughtily.

“Ah, but Granger,” he leaned closer and grinned, “I actually am a dragon.”

He actually was a dragon, and she was sitting atop of him, soaring over astonishing bluegreen
water like Theo’s scarf, and Theo screamed into her ear about Helsinki. Harry grinned and Ron’s
bright hair turned into the rising sun.

She woke up and picked up her The Testament once again. Cricket was back on the radio. She read
until mum called out her name, as dad was parking under the shade of a large gum tree.

COFF’S HARBOUR, NSW

They had coffee at a shack/cafeteria in the middle of a banana plantation. At the next table was a
very, very old woman with sharp eyes and leathery skin, and she spend much too long giving
Hermione knowing looks. Eventually, she came and sat at their table, and told them stories and
legends from the area that led back to the Gumbaynggirr nation.

They drove to Coff’s Harbour marina, and then disembarked to walk up the steep track to
Muttonbird Island.
There were, unfortunately, no actual muttonbirds – that is, wedge-tailed shearwaters – to be seen, as
they had migrated to the tropics seeking warmer weather. But their empty nests – delicate open
burrows in the earth surrounding the path – remained.

At the edge of the walkway was a platform, perched atop rocks that had weathered centuries of
lashings from thunderous waves. They stood at this look out and the panorama engulfed them,
breathlessly wide and endlessly deep. The world stretched on forever, acre after acre of lush hills
and jagged rocks and blue water. Cities expanded over boundless terrain. The sky had no limit.

It was once again time to hit the road. They picked up some packets of crisps from a shop.

An amusement park to the left of them, and virescent waves to the right. She fell asleep once more,
and woke up after another half hour, feeling amazingly refreshed. The car was entering a sparkling
emerald forested area. Dad called it Bundjalung National Park and let Hermione drive for a bit.
With the road fairly straight and empty, she did just fine. They rolled all the windows down and let
the icy and vivifying air in.
Once they’d cleared the park, mum took over. She listened to Hermione’s half-baked ideas about
slave abolition laws and House-Elves and where the twain could meet. Dad was stretched out on
the back seat.

Moments away from dusk, they arrived at –

BYRON BAY, NSW

From Clarke’s Beach, they sat on the sand and watched the sun set over the hinterland rainforest.
The world flared with tawny hues; roaring waves of honey and syrup, huge rocky crags of
solidified amber.
Mum grasped a handful of Hermione’s hair and said that it looked like polished bronze.
The sand, the ground, the land that was named after the grandfather of Lord Byron... was golden.

They shared a seafood platter for dinner, with another spectacular night-time seascape in front of
them. Hermione wondered how she’d ever be able to eat again without the roar of waves, and the
smell of sea breeze.

For the night, they’d booked rooms at a motel, once again by the sea. Her room was small; white
walls, beige curtains, and coastal furniture. She sat by her window and looked into the inky night,
at the way moonlight laced the edge of slow-moving waves with a silver trim.
And in the near-distance, high on a bald, lithic headland, was Cape Byron Lighthouse. Its flare was
blindingly fulgent, and it arced round and around, over murky waters.

Searching... and wanting to be found. Over and over again. Please, see my beacon.

25th July, 1999

MINYON FALLS, NORTHERN RIVERS, NSW

After once again, setting out in the early hours of the morning, they took a detour to see water -
from a creek called ‘Repentance’ - plunge down from a height of a hundred metres.

They walked for an hour through a rainforest of enormous eucalyptus trees with sickle shaped
leaves and pallid trunks. They spotted a kookaburra, a family of possums, and a vibrant tree frog.
They sipped tea from flasks, watching shimmering froth race down rocks that looked like chunks of
charcoal, streaked with moss green, and sun-bleached yellow. Shivering slightly, they sat close
enough for a gentle spray to drizzle around them.

It was one of those moments in which Hermione felt inexorably connected to the macrocosm – to
the earth and water and verdure.
It was all matter, and so was she. She dipped her finger into the sticky, clayey soil by her shoe and
carved her name into it. She had no doubt that the swelling plunge pool would wash it away in no
time.

The walk back to the car was furiously fast, urged by dad’s frenzied need to catch the final innings.
Mum drove, and he sat on the edge of his seat, sporadically yelling at the stereo.

Over a lovely breakfast at a Farmer’s Market in Mullumbimby, England lost to New Zealand by
nine wickets. Mum was salivating over the cheeses available at the market.
It was a moment thick with the absurd, contrary nature of life: Her parents were Thalia and
Melpomene masks.

Mum took over driving for the rest of the day, and soon enough, they were all but grazing the coast.
It was the most beautiful course, and windows rolled down, they played and sang along with the
fab four, till even dad could no longer remain in a huff.

Finally, a few patches of thick traffic later, they stopped the car in the vivacious –

GOLD COAST, QLD

Their hotel was quite close to Surfer’s Paradise Beach, and no sooner did they put down their bags,
than dad bolted, eager to, well... surf.

Hermione and mum watched him for a bit, but then wandered over to the massive shopping centre
opposite the beach. Hermione bought a few formal blouses, skirts and well fitted trousers, because
she would have need for them shortly, as well as birthday gifts for Harry and Ginny.

They deposited their loot at the hotel and met up with dad, who dragged them to Sea World. Two
rides and one show later, they convinced him to leave. Mum led them to The Gold Coast Arts
Centre, where they first stopped at the café for a cuppa, and then they wandered through an
exhibition.

Finally, dad advertised his desperate need for sustenance, and ushered them into a pub that had
been highly recommended by a patient of his.

The pub turned out to be more of a nightclub.

It was dark. Lasers and strobe lights arced around the room – not searching like a lighthouse, but
luring you in. The music, with a distinct Spanish flavour, was thunderous, and a large flashing
dancefloor was packed with people caught in a haze of rapture, living ‘La Vida Loca’, apparently.
Mum was not happy at all, and Hermione knew that dad, once he stopped inhaling his mediocre
(because honestly, that was not what that place was about) food, wouldn't be happy either.

It reminded her of Seamus’ New Year Party, and, for the first time, she wished she was here with
her friends, rather than her parents.
There was a couple at the next table. The woman was wearing a very low-cut top, and she nestled a
shot glass in her cleavage. The man dived right in. Hermione took a deep breath and looked away...
looked at the slow horror dawning on dad’s face as he finally noticed where they were.

They escaped to their hotel and Hermione was tucked in her bed at a very reasonable hour. She lay
on her stomach and tried very hard to stop thinking about how badly she wanted to get shagged.

26th July, 1999

GOLD COAST, QLD

It rained that morning, so they had a very lazy start to the day, wherein dad took full advantage of
the hotel’s breakfast buffet, and Hermione took full advantage of the hotel’s indoor pool. Her four-
year-old swimsuit was a conservative blue one-piece, nothing like what the other young women
had on.

At noon, it was raining still. Hermione and her parents sat in the hotel lobby, surrounded by their
luggage, waiting for it to abate... which it did, in time, though the sky remained overcast.

Their destination drew them away from the coast. Hermione pressed her nose against the window,
to catch a glimpse of the Coral Sea receding into the distance. It was pearly and steel blue and
greygreen, looking completely flat and opaque under a thick canopy of tufty black clouds.

Once they’d cleared the main metropolitan, Hermione drove again for a bit.

They stopped at Yatala to fill petrol, and to sample the fare from a very famous pie shop. They ate
outside, as there was no room inside the small parlour. Mum and dad claimed a bench, looking,
once again, at each other in a certain way that propelled Hermione to leave them be. She hopped
onto the bonnet of the car, tucking into a steaming steak and kidney pie.
All the heavier, sooty clouds had absconded, save for one line across the middle of the sky. Pale
sunlight was bursting out from behind them, through whatever little gap it could find. This thin and
sallow light diffused across the welkin, brightening up the grey so it glowed. It was a luminous
grey, a margaric grey. Grey like moonstones, grey like backlit smoke, grey like a pair of eyes that
could decimate all semblance of equanimity.

After that, they drove on for about an hour more, and building and traffic density kept rapidly
increasing. It wasn’t long before they were bang in the central area of the busy capital city of –
BRISBANE, QLD

It was nearing four in the evening, and mum insisted they go straight to the Botanic Gardens, that
would close at five. They raced through the beautiful serene Japanese garden, the lagoon and
bamboo grove, and the fragrant herb garden. They caught their breath under the massive tropical
dome.

Their hotel was close to the Brisbane River and Kangaroo Point Cliffs, so they took a stroll after
checking-in. As the day waned, they saw rock climbing enthusiasts put away their equipment. The
park was full of joggers and skaters and young children reluctant to stop their play and return
home.

They walked down a long road, till they reached the massive steel structure of Story Bridge and
climbed on top.

Here was a city in the evening: The bridge was lit up with purple lights and the end of dawn was
deep violet, giving the whole scene an electric, cyberpunk feel. Buildings all along the riverside
were basically just patchworks of light, and the still, glassy river reflected it all. The effect was
dazzling.

Hermione felt hollow. It was sudden and inexplicable and overwhelming. And along with that
feeling of existential displacement, came the awareness that it was the second to last night of their
trip. In four days, she’d be back in England. A lump appeared in her throat as she kept staring and
staring in front of her.

She was jarred out of her reverie when dad called out to her – he and mum had moved on ahead.
They argued playfully about what they ought to have for dinner. Hermione stuffed her hands in her
pockets and walked along silently.

27th July, 1999

BRISBANE, QLD

Dad woke her up while it was still dark outside. He told her that it didn't matter that it wasn’t
Saturday; they were going for a walk.
It was 5 AM. Hermione let out a series of tormented groans as she got dressed to leave.

A ten minute drive brought them to a picnic ground. It was dark, but Hermione could hear running
water somewhere in the distance. Dad took out a torch and Hermione made do with lumos. They set
off on a steep uphill path. At some point, they crossed a quiet lagoon.
For forty minutes they hiked on and on, up the thin trail flanked by forested land. The sky became
one shade lighter, and one or two birds stirred to greet the day.
Their journey’s end was Mount Coot-tha summit. Hermione put out her wand and walked with dad
to a concrete platform and from there they watched a most incredible sunrise.
Going downhill was much easier.

After a shower, she reunited with her parents over breakfast. At eight-thirty, dad bundled them back
into the car, and he commenced the four hour drive to Bundaberg Rum distillery with such
enthusiasm that Hermione suspected it may have been the reason behind the whole trip. But since
they were, once again, driving along the coast, she didn’t mind too much.

On arriving, they went through a museum, (of rum; yes, really,) and got a tour of the distillery,
which led to the most fun bit: Tasting. Mum abstained as she would be driving back.
At the end of the excursion, dad bought something close to a dozen varieties of rum and liqueur.
When Hermione gave him a look, he said he was curating a collection. Hermione bought six
bottles, as gifts for her friends.

Another five hours later – owing to traffic – with a boot full of booze, they were back in Brisbane.
Dad fell asleep halfway through, and on reaching the hotel, bid Hermione and mum farewell, and
went to bed.
The remaining two sat by the river bank with tiny paper cups of coffee. Mum took hold of
Hermione’s hand.

[“I won’t ever understand how you could do it. I can’t fathom how it was the only possible
way to – Hmph. But anyway. I do understand you well enough to know how excruciating it
must have been to do it, and how excruciating it must have been to undo it. But you did it,
both times. And Hermione... if I can’t forgive you, who can I forgive?”]

28th July, 1999

BRISBANE, QLD

They went to Australia Zoo, which, Hermione learnt, was run by the convivial, khaki-wearing
blond man she’d seen on the telly. Steve Irwin, his name was.
The man himself stood by a clear pool full of crocodiles, talking into a microphone. Dad had to
drag Hermione away.
It was a rather good time. Mum and Hermione had raptures cooing at and petting koalas. They fed
kangaroos and giraffes. They saw scores of incredible, colourful birds and snakes, and animals
from across the globe.

They ate at the café and then returned to the city to make a quick trip to Queensland Art Gallery. It
was much too big and time was much too short, but they made the best of it.

By six, they were back in the hotel and packing up. By quarter to eight they were at –
BRISBANE AIRPORT, QLD

They’d had a very frantic hour, barely making it past the gates before they closed.

It took two and a half hours to get back to Melbourne, and Hermione was, again, glued to the
window. She stared at circuit board cities and, eventually, at her own reflection in the pitch-black
pane. She had to look at herself to remind herself that she was still herself; the past eight days had
felt like a slice of someone else’s life.

It was quarter past one at night –

29th July, 1999

When mum put a key through the padlock on the front door of their home in –

MENTONE, VICTORIA

Hermione went to her room, stripped, and had a long, hot shower.
 Sixty-Eight

Theo was outside the Ministry lifts, standing right by the golden gates.

“Welcome back!” he said with an enormous grin.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, surprised but delighted.

“Receiving you, obviously,” he quipped, putting an arm around her and leading her down the
atrium.

The deep blue, spangled ceiling looked a lot like the night sky in Melbourne had, just minutes
ago.

“I’m assuming Robert fed you a magnificent dinner before you left?”

“Of course.”

Theo nodded. “Well, I need to pick up some lunch for Draco and myself – have a cuppa with me
while the food’s being prepared. I want to hear all about your trip.”

They flooed to Diagon, and immediately, the reality of being on another hemisphere hit her. The
brightness of noon and the warmth of end-July left her squinting and shrugging off her warm
jacket.

Theo led them to a small corner deli, right on the intersection between Diagon and Horizont. It had
a blue and white shopfront, with Neil’s Noshery written across the top in stylised lettering. Save for
a well-built, bearded man behind the counter, and an old couple sitting at a corner table, the shop
was blissfully empty.

“Swatch who's back then!” the bearded man bellowed, “What did you lads eat before you found
me?”

“We starved,” Theo said to him, then turned to Hermione, “This here is the titular Neil, by the way.
Maker of the best sandwiches in Diagon. Neil, this is my friend–”

“Hermione Granger! Well, it’s an honour to have you in my wee shop. What can I get for you?”

Hermione requested a strong cup of coffee, which Theo seconded, before adding “And the usual, to
take away, please.”

They sat at a table in the corner opposite the old couple. The coffee turned out to be virulently
strong, which would definitely help Hermione stay up through the day. She took a few small sips
while Theo poured a heap of sugar into his cup.

“Ack,” he grimaced, “Excellent sandwiches, horse piss for coffee. But anyway, Hermione, the floor
is yours. Tell me everything.”

So, she did. In her experience, it wasn’t much fun to listen to every excruciating detail of someone
else’s holiday, but Theo appeared so sincerely rivetted, that she didn’t once feel awkward. Maybe
spending all that time around Luna had lent him the patience to deal with a lot of waffle.

Theo smiled when she got to the part about the accidental nightclub jaunt, and she felt such a rush
of affection towards him that she stopped, smiled back, and reached out to squeeze his hand.

After she was through, she fished out the bottle of toffee rum liqueur that she had brought for him,
and asked how his new job was going.

“Oh, this is very nice ,” he declared, admiring the bottle, then he looked up at her and chuckled,
“Um, my job is going well. George and I are working on a new design for the fountain; the one I’d
made wasn’t jazzy enough for him. We’re also trying to tweak the Woe-Be-Horn – er, patent
pending – formula to have more variety. George reckons just antlers will be boring. But we’re
having a hard time with it. Neither George nor I are very good at potions; apparently Fred was the
one who handled that. So anyway, we’re a bit stuck. I’ve tried... nay, I’ve begged Draco to help, but
he’s pretty much mental with rage right now and refusing to talk to me. Which brings us to... Ah!”

Neil had called out to him. Hermione took a few valiant sips of her coffee while he went to collect
his food.

“I’ve been plying him with his favourite sandwich all week,” Theo continued once he’d returned.
He peeped inside the bag to make sure everything was in order. “But he isn’t budging.”

“What’s his favourite sandwich?” Hermione asked.

He looked up at her, surprised. “He favours prosciutto and spinach. Cheese. Lightly toasted
ciabatta.”

“And what’s yours?” she asked quickly.

Theo smirked in a very scampish manner. “Ham and cheddar in a bap.”

“I see,” she said, sustaining the last sip of her coffee.

“Don’t you want to know why he’s angry?” Theo asked merrily.

“Do you want to tell me?” she rejoined, as she looked for the future in the coffee scum left at the
bottom of her cup.

“I gave him a present, for doing so well in his exams.”

“And that made him angry?”

“He didn’t like the present.”

“What was it?”

Theo did not answer her. When she looked up, she found him contemplating her with a conflation
of expressions.

“I gave him an alarm clock.”

“Really? An alarm clo–”

Her eyes fell shut in horror. How could she have forgotten?

“Oh, blast,” she groaned.

“He’s livid, Hermione. Hopping mad. You meant business, didn’t you? If George found out about
this–”

“You can’t tell him!” she protested hotly.

“Of course, I won’t, darling, don’t worry. You have my word.”

She gnawed at her lip for a moment, then warily, weakly asked, “How bad is it?”

Now, Theo’s expression was easy to read. He was chuffed.

“Very,” he grinned, “When he was away, I changed the alarm time, see. Three AM.”

Hermione groaned again, as her head fell into her hand.

“For the first couple of days, he tried to fight it. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to the sound
of loud cursing, the sizzle of angry hexes, the scuttle of tiny feet... he rained down on my door, of
course, but I have it nicely fortified. Hermione, you goddess, you told me that the clock runs from
you, but you didn’t mention that if you run from it, it chases you. I came out for a drink of water
one night and Draco had locked himself out on the terrace, while the clock tried to break through
the glass to get to him. I don’t even want to know what it sounds like, because the poor bastard
looked agonised.”

Hermione’s gut twisted with guilt, and she rued her awful impetuosity.

But Theo wasn’t done with his account.

“He went to sleep at Andromeda’s, but the clock followed him. He went thundering after it in her
house too... woke the little nipper up. Andromeda asked him to kindly go away. Then he booked a
room at the Ivory Grotto, but Merlin, Hermione... it appeared there, too!”
“Well, you wrote his name on it,” she mumbled remorsefully.

“I did!” Theo trumpeted with glee, “So anyway, he came back home. Tried to set it on fire one
deranged night. Burned down the table in our hall, instead. He tried the incarcerous charm–”

“Shit.”

“Exactly” he cackled, “The spell bounced off the clock and Draco got all bound up!”

“Theo,” Hermione said plaintively, “I’ll undo it. Let me know when he’s out, and I’ll–”

“Absolutely not!” he baulked, “It’s my birthday gift! How dare you?”

“Ugh.”

“Don’t feel bad. He’s clever. After about two weeks of torment, he got himself an owl. The alarm
still rings at three, but now Rodion does the chasing. Less amusing, but he’s still unbelievably testy
about having to wake up at all.”

“He’s named his owl Rodion?”

“Yes, why? Who is that?”

“Rodion Raskolnikov.”

“Righto. I’m sure he’s a lovely fellow. Now, come on. I have to get back. Will you come with...?

They both stood up, waving to Neil as they exited the shop.

“No,” Hermione mumbled. She could not stomach being anywhere near Draco at that moment. “I’d
like to freshen up, and um...”

“Sure thing,” Theo accepted with a grin.

He hugged her and kissed the top of her head and left. She watched him walk away, bottle of rum in
one hand, bag of food in the other, his long – halfway down his neck, now – hair moving in the
gentle breeze.

When he had been swallowed up by the crowd, Hermione stepped to the side and disapparated.

*
After a shower, Hermione tasked Herms to deliver the koala bear jumper that she had bought for
Luna, and bottles of spiced rum for Seamus, Dean, and George.

She then sat on the loveseat in her room at Grimmauld Place, with a decent cup of coffee and the
day’s edition of the Daily Prophet.

On the front page was the picture of a self-important man, with hard features and a revolting leer.

DEATH EATER CORBAN YAXLEY FOUND DEAD IN HIS CELL – Investigation underway;
early reports indicate suicide by starvation.

With a casual flip, Hermione turned the page.

Her interest was caught by an astute and lengthy editorial about the arbitrary nature of the
Ministry’s Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects. Then she read a piece about the Tonks’
Children’s Home, and the progress it had made in the two months since it had opened. On the
gossip page, there was a giant picture of Harry and Ginny walking into Finnigan’s. The cameraman
attempted to follow them inside, but his path was impeded by a very brawny doorman.

Hermione put the paper away and galumphed down to the kitchen with her empty cup. She was
absolutely knackered. All that coffee had just made her feel jittery, like there was an... alarm clock
scuttling around under her skin.
She stood glumly while she washed, dried, and banished the cup into a cupboard. The racket lured
Kreacher out, and he gave her a sour look and an irritable bow. She walked past him with a forced,
thin smile.

It was still only two in the afternoon; Harry and Ron wouldn’t be back for ages. Hermione went
back into her room.

She felt like an utter bitch. There was no hidden, vindictive part of her deriving any pleasure from
Draco Malfoy’s suffering. Sitting down next to her bag, she felt a ragged impulse to look at their
photograph... but she pulled out a notebook instead. She refined her hurried jottings about the Slave
Abolition Act at a snail’s pace.

It was six-thirty when Ron’s voice called out, “Hermione!” from across the hall. She jumped,
awoken from a reverie that wasn’t sleep, nor was it wakefulness. Her room was far too dim, and
she realised she’d just been essentially catatonic for hours.

She entered the drawing room to be greeted by two warm hugs and friendly hullo’s.

That entire evening, Hermione, Harry, and Ron talked like they were back in the Gryffindor
common room. Even supper felt evocative, as Ron talked with a full mouth and Harry gave a satiric
recountal of his day.
They returned to the drawing room after eating, continuing to exchange stories. Harry went straight
to the glass cabinet and took out a bottle of firewhisky, claiming a dire need to toast to Hermione’s
NEWTs score.

By five-to-midnight, Hermione was slumped low in her chair, Ron was on the floor, long legs
stretching out under the centre table, and Harry was sloshed.

At midnight, Hermione and Ron raised their glasses to Harry and said, “Happy birthday.”

He smiled broadly, spaced out and whisky-warmed; but there was a tightness around his eyes, some
strain... a glimmer of sadness. He turned away and stared into the fireplace.

The next day being a Saturday, meant that Harry and Ron could heartily sleep in. Hermione sat by
the large drawing room window with a glass of pumpkin juice and a book, only half-reading.
Mostly, she was fretting about Harry, and how things hadn’t appeared to have improved at all.

And she was thinking a little bit about Draco, and wondering how she could somehow get close
enough to the clock to undo all its enchantments.

Her musings were interrupted by the whoosh of the floo going off, and Ginny stumbled into the
room.

“You're back!” she cheered happily, “Had a nice time?”

“Yes,” Hermione grinned, “All well at the Burrow?”

“Same old. You look really fit. The sea and sand did you good.”

“Thank you. And you look, er...”

Hermione gestured towards Ginny’s long, tightly bound cloak and alarmingly high heels with an
arch and questioning look. Ginny put one hand on her hip and smirked.

“Thought I’d give the birthday boy something pleasant to wake up to. You know, something fun to
unwrap.”

“Very thoughtful,” Hermione laughed, “Please don’t let me keep you from such a noble
endeavour.”

Once Ginny had gone up, Hermione went into her room and took out her own gift for Harry. It
was a handsome, sable leather briefcase-cum-messenger bag, to replace his old, ragged one. With a
few rolls of her wand, she secured it with protective spells and a feather-light charm.

Harry and Ginny remained... occupied... in his room for a very long time. In that while, Ron woke
up. Hermione quietly pressed a bottle of spiced rum into his hand and told him to hide it well, and
they both got ready to leave for the Burrow.

Preparations for the evening’s party were well underway. Hermione and Ron were met with a
brusque, “Oh, good, you’re here, go out and help,” the moment they were spat out into the kitchen.
Mrs Weasley scarcely looked up from the cake batter she was mixing. Mr Weasley smiled haplessly
from the table, where he was peeling potatoes.

“Yes, mother dearest, it’s good to see you, too,” Ron grumbled as he trudged out through the door.

Hermione waited till he had left.

“Mr Weasley... Mrs Weasley. Could I have a moment?”

One was impatient and other curious as Hermione once again dived into her magic bag, feeling like
some sort of fairy godmother.

She brought out a Japanese silk scarf and a box of chocolate truffles for her, and a bottle of single
malt, a crystal decanter, and her old, long forgotten Etch-A-Sketch for him. Dad had insisted on that
last one.

The Weasleys’ eyes were wide, and Hermione rushed to speak before they could protest.

“My parents sent these for you. And...” she placed an envelope on the table, “This letter. They want
to thank you for looking out for me while they were... while they couldn’t.”

Mrs Weasley immediately pulled her into a hug, teary as expected. She had become so quick to cry.
Then, after she’d collected the loot and bustled upstairs, Hermione sat next to Mr Weasley and
explained the mechanics behind the Etch-A-Sketch. He was absolutely enthralled, turning the knobs
rather deliriously, until Mrs Weasley returned and demanded that he return to his potato-peeling
task at once.

Hermione wandered outside.

The table, slightly longer than usual, was set across the middle of the garden, decked with flowers
and candles waiting to be lit. A canopy of colourful balloons and twinkling lights hung above, and
Hermione, with Hagrid in mind, charmed them to float a bit higher. Various kinds of chairs – from
garden to wingback – were scattered around the lawn. At one end, Ron was making a go of
decorating, by conjuring clumps of streamers over the hedges. At the other, Dean and Seamus were
setting up a makeshift bar on a very wonkily conjured wooden table.
She felt a wave of nausea as she approached them.

“Here to wreak havoc as usual, Finnigan?”

“Damn right, Granger,” he preened, as he arranged bottles on the table, “Thanks for the rum by the
way.”

“You’re welcome. You know McGonagall’s coming, right?”

“I’ll bet she’s a cracking wild one when she’s pissed.”

Hermione sighed, and addressed Dean, “Could you do me a favour? I’ve got Harry a leather
briefcase and wanted to emboss his name on it, but... well. I’m artistically challenged.”

“Say no more,” Dean grinned.

He took the briefcase from her and went to the long dining table so he could sit and work. While he
was away, she quickly turned back to Seamus.

“Could you make sure Harry doesn’t overdo it tonight? Cut him off after a point, I mean?”

Seamus gave her a look over the pyramid of glasses he was constructing; a look that was strangely
knowing.

“You want me to deprive the poor fella on his birthday?” he asked with a viscid smile.

“I...” Hermione bit her lip and wavered, “Like I said, McGonagall will be here. I don’t want him to
make a fool of himself.”

“That’s his choice to make, Hermione,” Seamus’ mouth tightened, even as he continued to smile,
“Running a boozer has taught me that. A bloke that wants to get wasted, is going to get wasted.
You can do sweet fuck all.”

Hermione gave up and went to Ron. Some of the larger bunches of streamers had the appearance of
multicoloured seaweed, and she tried to separate them. Ron watched her with dismay.

“Do they look terrible?”

“I’m sure they’ll look charming once it gets dark,” Hermione smiled.

“It’s July,” he said, glumly.

“They look like piles of shiny, colourful worms,” was Dean's contribution, as he approached with
the briefcase.

Harry’s name was printed below the handle in a lightly ornamental font.

“It’s perfect, Dean. Thank you.”

George, Angelina, and Lee came out just then, carrying crates of what had to be fireworks. And it
was lucky they’d arrived – a battalion of garden gnomes leapt out of the bushes and began hurling
streamers at Ron. It took the combined effort of all six – and Seamus – to drive the pests away.

The garden was full, nearly every mismatched chair was occupied. Mrs Weasley, draped in the
Japanese silk scarf, was playing the part of the cheerful hostess, flitting from one person to the
other. The wireless churned out the Wizarding equivalent of pop. The man of the hour sat in a
bergère, surrounded by people.

Collecting a spritzer from the bar, Hermione made a beeline for that group, after spending over half
an hour with Mr Weasley and the Etch-A-Sketch.

She was beckoned over by McGonagall, and she found herself receiving, perhaps, the most
meaningful plaudit for her seven ‘outstanding’s. They got embroiled in a conversation about
Ministry interviews after that, and Hermione forgot all about her earlier destination. It was only
once Mrs Weasley stopped by on one of her rounds, and displayed some concern over
McGonagall’s lack of refreshment, that Hermione excused herself.

Harry caught her eye as she walked around the cluster surrounding him and she reciprocated his
grin. She found Luna, sitting a bit to the side, and perched on the chair next to hers.

“Hello,” Luna began, “I’m sorry I couldn’t come with Theo to see you. I loved the jumper, by the
way. Thank you.”

“Please don’t worry about it,” Hermione smiled, “Theo told me you were working on a proposal.
Did you manage to turn it in on time?”

“I did,” Luna replied happily, “Should be hearing from the Scamander Institute any day now.”

Hermione took a sip of her drink to steel herself and then asked, “What’s your proposal about
then?”

Her eyes were all starry and thrilled, and Hermione felt a twinge realising that besides Theo, she
might have been the only one to ask her about it.

“I want to set up an organisation that will locate and uncover all the fantastic creatures that the
Ministry wants to keep hidden. There is a treasure-trove waiting to be discovered. I intend to start
with the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, of course, and them move onto Humdingers, Umgubular
Slashkilter – oh, the Ministry must admit to breeding them – and Atar Pixies–”
“Erm, Luna,” Hermione broke in urgently, “What if the Scamander Institute toes the Ministry
line?”

Luna smiled placidly. “It doesn’t. It contributes a monthly column to The Quibbler, you know.”

“I see.”

Cacophonous laughter broke out from all around. Hermione blessed George for possessing the
perspicacity to slip Hagrid a canary cream - There was a very startled, gargantuan canary amidst
them. Moments later, Hagrid re-emerged, and began roaring with laughter.

It felt like the table might collapse under the weight of its dinner spread. The party ate, continued to
drink, and talked in voices loud and soft. Hermione kept sneaking glances at Harry, and he looked
all right. Steady. But there was always a drink within his reach.

Once the food had been taken care of, Mrs Weasley slipped back into the kitchen and came out
with a tiered cake decorated with marzipan snitches and nineteen candles. Just as Harry blew them
out, the sky exploded with dazzling lights and colours, which converged to form a huge pheonix.

Post-cake, the departures began. Ultimately, with only the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione left, they
decided to move inside.

Harry still had a bevy in hand, as he calmly sat with Ginny on the sofa.

“Thank you, Mrs Weasley,” he said emotionally, “For such a wonderful evening.”

While she showered him with affection, her husband once again caught hold of Hermione and
exclaimed, “Look! A crup!”

His crup looked like a jersey cow with a tuning fork in its mouth.

“That’s very good, Mr Weasley!”

After even Bill, Fleur, and George had left, and Mrs Weasley yawned for the ninth time, Hermione
looked at Harry, then Ron and said, “We should head home.”

“Yeah,” Ron agreed, and stood up.

“All right,” Harry shrugged.

He drained his glass and put it on the seat next to him, and once he’d got on his feet, he pulled
Ginny up as well. It took her a while to realise that Harry was intending to take her with him.

“Harry,” she said with an uncomfortable laugh and pulled free of his grasp.

“What?” He put his arm right back around her waist. “Lets end the day the way we started it.”
Mrs Weasley was staring down at her hands with her mouth pressed in a thin line. Mr Weasley was
looking right at them with beady eyes. Percy looked affronted.

Ginny twisted in his grasp, hissing something under her breath.

But Harry just laughed guilelessly and said, “Oh come now. Your parents won’t mind.”

That was when Mrs Weasley looked up at him sharply, and he winked at her. Filled with dread,
Hermione rushed forward and pried Harry’s arm off Ginny. Before he could reach out again, Ron
firmly grasped his wrist.

“Mate,” Ron’s complexion was feverish, “Let’s go, yeah?”

“But–”

Hermione, after depositing a slightly staggered Ginny onto the sofa, took hold of Harry’s other arm.

“Come on.”

They dragged him into the kitchen, while he continued to protest. Ron snatched a fistful of floo
powder, called out their destination, and all three of them barged into the fireplace together.

For several moments, there was dead silence in the drawing room at Grimmauld place. It sounded
like nausea felt.

Then Ron muttered firmly, “Time for bed, Harry.”

Hermione took hold of Harry’s elbow; he shook her hand off.

“I think we could all do with one more drink,” he said, turning towards his cabinet.

“No,” Ron snapped and moved to block his path.

“Come off it!”

Harry made to walk around him; Ron got in his way again.

“Go to sleep.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Harry barked, and he shoved Ron aside; not too hard, but hard enough. “It’s my
birthday. I can drink on my birthday.”

“You drink every day!” Ron thundered.

“Take it up with my mum. Oh, you can’t. She’s dead.”

Stricken, Hermione watched him reach for a bottle in the cabinet. Ron marched towards the
hallway, but stopped next to her. He looked at her with wounded eyes and spoke in a low voice that
was more like a growl.

“I just... I can’t. I’ve had fucking enough .”

And he stormed out of the room. Harry had found himself a bottle and glass, and was sprawled out
on the sofa. Hermione gingerly settled on a chair, and sat there, quietly, for an hour, till Harry
passed out. There was a spiny creeper slowly wrapping around her head.

The next morning was much like the last – Harry and Ron were sleeping in. Hermione was alone in
the drawing room, sitting by a window and making a poor attempt at reading, when Ginny
stumbled in through the fireplace.

That was where the similarities ended.

Ginny was wearing a worn shirt and a worn expression, and carrying a huge sack that contained all
of Harry’s presents. She dumped them on the floor with little regard.

“Morning,” she said tiredly, leaning against the window pane, and staring into the room.

“Are you alright?” Hermione asked, putting her book aside.

“Mortified,” Ginny huffed, “Mum’s being so... ugh. So awkward. And dad.” She shuddered.

Hermione struggled to come up with something to say, but Ginny wasn’t done –

“It’s not like they don’t know that we... that Harry and I... But, Merlin, it’s not the sort of thing you
want to have out in front of your parents. My parents.”

“Harry was rather pissed,” she muttered.

“He’s rather pissed quite a lot these days.”

There were children playing on the street outside, with a dog. Just like there might be children
playing on Mentone beach, with a dog.

“If I think too much about how pissed he’s been lately,” Ginny said shakily, “I won’t leave.”

“Have you spoken to him about it?”

“No,” Ginny whispered, “I don’t know how to.”

Hermione shifted in her chair so she could look Ginny in the eyes. She was just as wrapped up in
thorns.

“You should try.”

“Don’t be daft. He’ll just give that old line about not wanting to make my life difficult, and then
he’ll break up with me. Again.”

“Ginny–”

“How?” she sputtered wretchedly, “How did my boyfriend become a drunk without me catching
on?”

“You were at school-”

“And how,” she went on as if Hermione hadn’t spoken, “How am I supposed to leave now? He’s
spiralling downwards and I just abandon him?”

“You aren’t abandoning him-”

“At least, when we’re together... he seems... happy? I think? I can stay and help him. Keep him
happy and ease him off the liquor.”

Hermione sighed sadly. “I don’t think it’ll happen that way.”

“Then what do I do?”

Ginny rested her head against the glass and closed her eyes.

“Why won’t it just stop?” she whispered. Broken.

Hermione shifted further, and reached out to tug Ginny’s sleeve.

“You go to Wales,” she said firmly, “And you are not abandoning Harry. He just... needs help.”

“Exactly!” she cried.

“I still think you should try and talk to him before you leave.”

“But–”

“Ron had said it might be a good idea to get Bill to speak with him. I could even talk to Padma –
she'll be starting at Mungo’s soon. Ron said it began with his inability to sleep, so I’ve been
thinking... A mild sleeping draught, more magnolia and less valerian. Maybe some lemon balm,
honey, one shot of firewhisky – only to begin with, of course–”

“Hermione!” Ginny half-shouted.

“What?”

“Just... How can I help by being so far away!”

“Make time for him. Love him. Keep making him happy.”

“Hermione.”

“It isn’t just on you, to help him, you know. You called me your sister. Ron’s your brother. He’s our
best friend. We’ll figure this out, all of us.”

She didn’t look remotely convinced, which was fair because Hermione didn’t sound particularly
convincing. She muttered something about needing to go shopping with her mother, and left,
abruptly, looking very much like she wanted to cry.

Hermione stared after her, at the empty hearth.

“Bill spoke to him.”

Hermione jumped.

Ron walked towards her, in pyjamas, mug full of tea in hand. He sat on the back of a sofa and
looked at the children and dog outside.

“And what happened?” Hermione asked.

“Harry swore it’s no big deal. Just him unwinding after work. Bill didn’t push because he felt it’s
not his place. The end. Oh, and Harry’s been cold towards me since.”

That evening at the Burrow was execrable.

Conversation was stilted. Everyone, except George and Fleur, was stone-faced and withdrawn. The
strained air spurred George to new heights. He was loud and disorderly, but it made no difference to
anybody.

Harry looked like he wanted to die. Hermione could tell that under the table, Ginny was holding his
hand.
Harry’s eyes and smile were tired when he left for work the next morning, carrying his new
briefcase. Ron kept his gaze on the floor as he followed behind him. Hermione spent some time the
writing a letter to Padma, and she tied it, along with their sixth-year notes, to Herms’ leg.

She spent the rest of the morning brewing a modified sleeping potion over the fireplace in her
room.

She received a letter from Theo, via an adorable spotted owl. She managed half an apple for lunch.

Exhaustion settled in her bones, even as she shouldered her bag and apparated to the lobby of Theo
and Draco’s building, even as the glass lift carried her up. She missed mum and dad fiercely. It felt
unbelievable that her stint in Australia had actually happened; the last three days had zapped away
all her tranquillity. And, for all the optimism she had forced around Ginny, she had no idea how to
help Harry. She couldn’t stop thinking about how strained he looked. How careworn Ginny looked.
How deflated Ron looked. She couldn’t help anybody.

And in addition to that, Theo’s letter had informed her that Draco had run off to Brittany to escape
the alarm clock... not that that would make a difference. Hermione could actually help him, but she
wasn’t allowed to.

She stepped on the floormat outside the flat, and the door informed her that Theo was in the study.

The study was right at the end of the hall, between both their bedrooms. Hermione peeped in and
said, “Hello.”

It was an enviably large room, with four floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and two large desks at opposite
ends of the room.

There was an elongated chaise lounge, bang in the centre of the space from which Theo replied,
“Hiya.”

He had a pillow behind his back, a blanket over his legs, and papers strewn all around him.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Fountain designs,” he replied dully, holding up pages and pages full of drawings, “We asked Dean
to help, and he got carried away.”

“Are you feeling poorly?”

“No, I’m lazy, and working in bed. This is where I sleep now.”

Hermione’s exhaustion imploded. She exhaled heavily at Theo’s hangdog expression.

“What did Draco do?”

“Go into my room.”

Hermione spun around and well... she tried to go into Theo’s room, but the moment she opened the
door, she was assaulted by the most grating, galling, persistent, high-pitched screech. It sounded
like nails on a chalkboard, going on and on –

She slammed the door shut and marched back into the study.

“That’s it,” she declared in her most authoritative, take-no-bullshit tone, “Enough is enough. I’m
putting my foot down. I’m going into his room right now and destroying that blasted clock.”

Theo stared at her for a long, long moment.

“Thank you.”

She hesitated at Draco’s door, wondering hysterically if he had installed security cameras inside.
Shaking off that ludicrous thought, she pushed her way in.
It looked much better without the butterflies, that was for sure. Still a bit staid for her tastes, but the
piano and a hand-knotted Persian rug added a beautiful touch. The spotted owl – Rodion, she
assumed – that had delivered Theo’s letter, was in a huge golden cage by a mahogany desk. The
bookshelf –

For god’s sake she was not here to sightsee.

Using a tracking spell, she sought out traces of her magic, and it led her to the drapes around the
window. A general counter-spell brought the wicked green alarm clock back into visibility. She
erased Draco’s name from the back... and then she bloody well destroyed it.

She dumped the mess of cogs and springs on Theo’s lap. “Send this to him. Call a truce. And start
behaving like adults.”

“May I remind you who exactly devised this demon clock?” Theo asked wryly.

“You may not,” she told him firmly, “Now up you get. We have things to do.”

They went to the Leaky Cauldron, where a man in crisp pinstripe robes was waiting for them. He
was a tad funny looking – tall and stringy, but with an incongruously large gut, wispy blond hair,
and a receding chin.

“Malcolm Dankworth,” he announced, rushing forward to shake her hand, “It’s such a pleasure to
meet your acquaintance, Ms Granger.”

“Likewise,” she replied, pulling her hand away from his unfortunately damp grip.

“Mr Nott,” he nodded, “You look well.”

Over cups of tepid tea, they discussed what Hermione was looking for in terms of accommodation,
the limits of her budget, and of course, Dankworth’s not insubstantial fees.

“Well,” said Dankworth at the end of it, “There is one flat available around here, not too far into
Knockturn–”

“No,” both Hermione and Theo said at once.

“All right, fair enough,” he said, standing up, “I will be in touch, Ms Granger, and I will find you
the flat of your dreams.”

He had an unctuous sort of smile. Very gummy. He handed her a bunch of pamphlets and scuttled
away.

Hermione had intended to return to Harry’s after the meeting, but Theo wasn’t having it. She ended
up spending the rest of the day at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, conjuring the most outrageous
amongst Dean’s designs for the singing fountain.

She got back to Grimmauld place only minutes before Harry and Ron. When she saw them, it was
like a plug had been yanked out, and the world seemed to switch off. There was silence and no
colour. They both smiled at her and she smiled back.

A total of five sentences were spoken over dinner. Hermione said four of them.

She scarfed down her food before they could, and left the table in a rush.

When Harry and Ron came into the drawing room, she was waiting for them with a mug full of the
drink she had brewed. In front of Harry, she added a shot of firewhisky in it.

“What is this, Hermione?” he asked warily.

“A nightcap,” she replied shortly, “A hot cocktail of sorts. I made it specially for you.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “You still like me too much to poison me, right?”

“It’s a cocktail worthy of Seamus,” she replied, “Go on. Bottom’s up.”

Harry took a sip and his mouth thinned.

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s alright.”

Hermione laid out her pamphlets on the table and prattled on and on about square feet and fixtures.
Neither Harry nor Ron displayed the slightest interest.

“Hermione,” Harry piped up in the middle of her ode to a pretty flat near St. Alban’s, “What was in
it?”

“What, Harry?” she blinked up at him.

He was bleary-eyed, dopey, and lightly swaying. “Was this a sodding sleeping draught?”

“Not exactly. I just added a spoonful of–”

“What - what the hell, Hermione?! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it isn’t–”

“You actually did poison me!” he charged furiously, “You drugged me!”

“No, Harry, it’s not a proper potion, really–”

“Fuck off!”

Harry staggered out of the room.

Ron pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and said, “He’s going to stop talking to you, too,
now. Brilliant.”
The next evening, Ron came back from work without Harry. “Somewhere with Ginny,” he was
apparently.

Harry got home at half past eleven, offered Hermione and Ron no more than a passing wave, and
then went into his room.

The evening after that, neither Harry nor Ron returned on time. Hermione paced up and down the
house, frantically. She had sent Herms with a note at around seven-thirty and received a safe, don’t
worry scrawled in Ron’s handwriting.

They returned at midnight; Ron half-carrying a stumbling, incoherent Harry.

And the evening after that one, they were both back on time. Harry had got ice cream from
Fortescue’s. He was funny and cheerful through dinner, even asking to see Hermione’s pamphlets
again.

When, after dinner, he went unwaveringly to his liquor cabinet, Hermione couldn’t bring herself to
say a word.

Dankworth wrote to her on a warm Friday morning, telling her he had a few flats lined up for her
consideration.

Hermione saw Harry and Ron off, and went to have a shower.

As she wiped herself down with a towel, she properly took in, for the first time, the sun-tanned
glow on her face. It was the only remnant of her glorious holiday, and even that would be leached
away soon by the London gloom.

For that reason, she drew out a coral-pink summer frock, fluttery and light.

She wanted to forget... just for half a day. She wanted to have a nice time, to feel good. She hoped
oily Dankworth had struck gold, and she got the chance to look at empty rooms and imagine filling
them up with bits and pieces of herself. She wanted to envision a life; books, armchairs, and china,
that she’d return to after a long day of industry. She imagined pale blue walls and white curtains.
Art and photographs on the few walls that weren’t lined with books.
Her soul ached at the thought.

Once she was ready, she looked at the bottle of aged black rum lying on her bed; the last of the lot,
and second of the more pricey ones. She tucked it into her bag.

The door informed her that Theo was in the shower, and she should please wait for him in the
sitting room.

The hall was dark, but, as she walked further in, she saw light pouring out of the sitting room and
puddling on the floor. Hermione’s pulse was going off for no reason.

She came to an abrupt stop at the threshold.

The room was brighter than she had ever seen it, and that made it look larger. The curtains had been
pulled back completely, revealing an entire wall of glass.

Draco was sitting near said glass wall, behind a gorgeous bureau plat. He was bent over the desk,
writing something with an eagle feather quill.

In a simple white t-shirt and grey trousers... he was drenched in sunlight. Every part of him was
bright and refulgent: From flaxen head to boot-encased toe, from alabaster skin to white-and-grey
clothes.

Something ineffable passed through her as she took in the sight; it felt a little like a disillusionment
charm trickling down her body... a little like being electrocuted in slow motion... a bit like a light
spray of icy water emitted by a streaming cascade.

Cautiously, she took three steps into the room, not wanting to startle him; but he was evidently very
absorbed in his writing, and didn’t notice. So, she gently cleared her throat.

He was startled. Damn it.

He frowned as he regarded her, the enormous space between them suddenly not enormous enough.
At that angle, sunlight settled around his hair like a radiant crown, and she could imagine him as
Helios, driving a chariot across the sky. He looked good... as in, well rested. Like he’d fully
recovered from weeks of restless nights.
“Hello,” she said, bag clutched in both hands, held in front of her like a buffer.

He blinked for a moment, bringing back the old imperturbability into his expression. He rolled his
shoulders as though suddenly realising they were very stiff, and gave her a proper look, up and
down.

“Hi.”

Hermione took another few steps, veering towards a velvet armchair.

“Your door told me to wait here,” she mumbled, positively forcing herself to meet his eyes in spite
of how badly she wanted to avert her gaze, “Theo’s having a shower.”

“All right,” he shrugged indifferently.

He turned back to his parchment and quill. Hermione stood next to the velvet armchair, leaning
against the back. She was not ready to sit yet. Fiddling with the beading of her bag, she attempted
to quash down her secret guilt and ridiculous skittishness.

“What are you writing?”

He didn’t bother looking up as he bit back, “Is that any of your business?”

He was annoyed. Not bad: It only took two minutes.

“No,” she sighed, “I suppose not.”

He sighed as well, and shot her a resigned look that spoke of ill-suppressed exasperation. And,
suddenly, she found she wasn’t skittish at all anymore. Suddenly, she was annoyed, too.

“How was your holiday?” he... well, he scolded.

“It was lovely,” she snapped, “And how was yours?”

“Good.”

“Well, good.”

She fixed him with a straight and unrelenting stare. She would give him his bottle of rum now, and
surely, he was human enough to feel like a sod after that, for being so short with her. She would
even smile. She would –

“I’m writing to Goyle.”

He stopped writing then, putting his quill in its carved, silver holder. He sat back, crossed his arms,
and looked at her with eyes like the coastal sky after rain. She had his full attention and she felt
pinned to the spot. She twisted one bead so hard, it popped off her bag.

“How is he?” She rolled the bead between her fingers.

“No idea. He never writes back.”

“He’s in Azkaban, right?”

“Right. Seven years.”

“Have you visited him?”

“Tried to. He refuses to see me.”

She didn’t think she would ever get used to how inscrutable his expression remained. Completely
unyielding, unfathomable. Unable to handle it anymore, she looked down at the fringe of the carpet
that lay across the centre of the room.
When she finally gathered the fortitude to look back up, she found a hint of levity in his
expression.

Huh?

...What was there to wonder? Of course, he had realised that he could use unexpected admissions as
weapons against her. She dithered for a moment, and then fleetly stuck her hand into her bag and
began walking towards him.

“I got something for you,” she - unfortunately - warbled, “From Australia.”

She had startled him again, but this time it was glorious. True surprise - the head reared back,
eyebrows raised, eyes just a fraction wider sort of surprise – and it was so satisfying to see. She
pulled out the bottle and, keeping the label faced towards herself, held it out for him to accept.
Accept he did, while sitting up and uncrossing his arms. His fingers closed around the base as his
eyebrows settled back into their rightful place. The rich, dark liquid within caught the sun and
glowed almost like copper.

Hermione took a few steps back even as she kept a close, keen eye on his reaction.

Her bravado ebbed as tension swelled. Her pulse was thudding with anticipation.

He turned the bottle over and –

His brow jumped up again; another moment of veracious surprise – but my, what a different
flavour! He appeared gobsmacked for a second, slack jawed and everything, then a laugh like a big
gush of air sailed out of his mouth. His lips pulled up into an uneven grin as he set the bottle on the
desk and pulled off the post-it that was covering the label. He kept looking at it as he once again
settled back in his chair – much longer than it would take for anyone to read a simple, five-word
quote.

Finally, his eyes snapped back to her, but he didn’t say anything. The crooked grin remained,
incredulity persisted in the glint of his eyes, and he looked so, so, so arresting that it made her
breath catch.

For five full seconds, neither of them spoke, and it seemed that Draco had no intention to. He just
looked askance and waited for her to explain herself.

“Surely you know those three-inches do not refer to height,” she said. She sounded asthmatic.

He let out a single-syllabic chuckle. “I know.”

“So,” she shrugged one shoulder and tried very hard to appear nonchalant, “It holds true for you,
not me.”

“No, Granger,” he said. His grin turned profane. “Just as untrue.”

“Just as?”

“In the opposite way, of course.”

“...Of... of course...”

Her face was flaming. And she was... there was... a flutter...

“Mine is triple that.”

“What?! That – that is highly unlikely!”

“I’d go as far as to say–”

“Shut it!” she flared, feeling the flames spread everywhere.

She simply had to turn away from him. His laughter spooled all around her as she walked back to
the armchair.

He was ruthless, stupid, and having her on, but worse than that, there was absolutely no part of her
brain gallant enough to stop her from picturing Draco and his supposed triple that. It was truly hell
and she sat down heavily. There was a chance her flush would never fade; the notion was
reinforced when she looked at him grinning just as he had in the photograph. Thank Merlin he was
sitting behind that bureau plat, so her foolish, treacherous eyes wouldn’t force her to peer at his
crotch.

And that thought set another fire.

“It was for Theo.”

“Uh?” Barely any sound came out.

He was looking much too happy with what he had done; all victorious, like talking about his penis
to gain the upper hand wasn’t the wiliest thing in the world. Willy-est thing.

Hermione set her chin, desperate to look steady and in control.

“This note,” he clarified, flashing the post-it in her direction, “It was for Theo.”

“Then why would you leave it my book?” she spat.

He was loving her little temper flair. Her world got reduced to Draco-smirk, and Draco-words, and
Draco-pomposity. Did he really have to be so gloriously sunlit?

“Because when he gave me that book, he wouldn’t shut up about the note on the inside cover.
Draco, do read the note. Draco it’s such an important note. Oh, Draco, the note–”

(Hermione bit her lip at the laughable accuracy of his impression of Theo’s voice.)

“So, I left him an important note. Didn’t realise he would pass it on to you.”

It took her a moment to compute that, while quickly discarding her previously held, rather twee
hypothesis regarding the note and its purpose. He was a monster, simple as that.

“I didn’t know Theo read the books too,” she muttered.

He lowered his chin and crinkled his brow; a look that asked, are you stupid?

“He didn’t read them. But he thumbed through them. You know Theo can’t stand feeling like he’s
out of the loop.”

Hermione kept her eyes downcast, watching her fingers toy with the hem of her frock. She wasn’t
sure how to proceed, and a lull set between them.
The most egregious part, without a doubt, was that it was her fault Draco’s bits had become a part
of the discourse. Her idea behind sticking that post-it on the bottle had not been realised... she
should have known he’d have found a way to make it all go awry.

She peeked up and found him reading the back of the rum bottle, face set in its usual smooth pose.

“Did you like The Razor’s Edge?”

“Yes,” he replied, not looking up from the bottle, “I think it might have been one of my
favourites.”

That made her smile. She waited till he’d completed his study of the back label, and had troubled
himself to look back at her. He was still holding the bottle on the desk, and his arm, stretched out,
was right in the way of a beam of sunlight. It shone goldly on his smattering of fine, pale hair.
And fuck, if that wasn’t a fortuitous parallel.
She remembered the scene from that same book so vividly, when the narrator caught Isabel staring
at the Larry's sunlit arm, consumed by unbridled lust –

So, not a parallel at all.

Hermione forced her mouth to twist into a wry grin and asked, “Is that why you want to travel? Are
you searching for some transcendent meaning in your life? Some spiritual fulfilment?”

“Look around you, Granger,” he smirked and swept an arm to gesture about his flat, “I’m
materialistic as fuck.”

“True,” she laughed.

He re-crossed his arms, and watched her thoughtfully for a moment.

“Thank you for the rum.”

“You’re welcome.”

That made her smile, too. But she also felt very unbalanced by the way he was still watching her.
She tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Did you find spiritual fulfilment during your travels? Did some holy man take you under his
wing? Are you ready to live a simple life with calmness and compassion?”

“I’ve always been calm and compassionate,” she countered, and he scoffed, “I don’t think spiritual
fulfilment has to be that overt, does it? I went to many beautiful places, experienced many
moments of peace and serenity, and now I have returned to my life. It doesn’t have to be all or
nothing.”

“But do you think you can experience true, deep spiritual... stuff... by simply dallying?”

He bent forward to rest his elbow on the desk. Since his sleeves were short, she caught a glimpse of
his dark mark. The sun was in his eyelashes.

“Why not?” she retorted, “Unless you’re blindly allegiant to any particular doctrine, spiritual stuff
can mean anything. Work can be spiritually fulfilling. Being with people you care about can be, and
helping those in need. Who says I have to sit under a tree or stay alone on a mountain top or... or...
lock myself in a monastery to be spiritually fulfilled?”

“Professional and personal fulfilment isn’t spiritual, is it?” he asked.

“Why can’t it be? I think it is? And in any case, going off by yourself to bask in enlightenment
seems awfully selfish to me.”
Hermione’s bag fell to the floor with a shocking whump. It was only then that she realised that she
was sitting on the (razor’s) edge of the chair. Draco smiled a bit thinly.

“Selfish because it means looking inward and withdrawing from the world?”

“Precisely.”

“Because your inner peace is far less important than everything else in the world.”

“I just said it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

“I do believe the deeply spiritual sort are quite philanthropic.”

She rolled her eyes. “No, Draco. They’re only dallying.”

His smile widened. “Maybe you’ve never been spiritually fulfilled, that's why you’re so bitterly
dismissive.”

“I’m not bitter or dismissive. I’m accepting the merit of occasionally – Oh, bugger that. What do
you know about it anyway? Have you ever felt spiritual fulfilment?”

He made a face. “I’m not seeking it. The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over, isn’t it? I’ve
had enough difficulty, for now.”

What would he say if she told him that at that moment, she was feeling a bizarre spiritual
compulsion to run her fingers up his forearms?

“It’s a balancing act, Draco–”

“What isn’t?” he muttered.

“Make time for inner peace, but being present in the real world is more important. Actually, you
know who’s managed to meld his spirituality with day-to-day life? It’s surprising really...”

“Who is this paragon?” he asked dryly.

“Ron.”

“Ron... Weasley?”

“Yes! It’s quite amazing! He came back from China with this whole new ethos–”

(This was the exact reason Hermione refused to put the burden of her peace on metaphysical shite.
She existed in a universe that had put her in a situation where she was praising Ron to Draco
Malfoy .)

“–And it’s impressive, really. He’s so much more self-possessed and insightful... but he’s still Ron,
you know? He’s got his family, and his job, and–”
“The razor’s edge really is murderously sharp,” Draco interjected loudly, "This is why I’ll never
believe in a fucking higher power. Sitting in my own bloody home, having to listen to Granger
prattle on about the virtues of Weasley –”

Hermione burst into laughter. She bowed her head as it poured out of her, humour laced with
disbelief and a bona fide thrill. Light, stuttery titters continued to spill past her lips when she slowly
levelled her gaze on him.

He looked perplexed by the intensity of her reaction, eyeing her with some degree of worry. Like
maybe she’d stab him in the next moment.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, forcing a degree of composure, “I’d just... had the same thought. Seconds
before.”

“I see,” he said, “You were aware, but still subjecting me to it?”

“I thought you could use some inspiration.”

“Perish the thought.”

“But what about Theo?”

“What about him?”

“Haven’t you heard him go on about being God?”

“Oh fuck,” Draco groaned and slumped back in his chair as though in genuine pain, “Have I heard
him? Bah. It’s your doing, isn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“I refuse to believe Theo came across the word Theology on his own.”

“Oh right.” Hermione offered him a self-deprecatory, apologetic half-smile. “I just happened to
mention it in passing. I honestly didn’t expect him to run with it like that.”

“Really,” he deadpanned.

“I didn’t know back then, all right?”

“You have to watch every single word you say around that headcase.”

“I am well aware of that now.”

As if on cue, there was the sound of a door slamming shut, followed by the rhythmic rap of lively
footsteps. Then, from the door, a jovial cry of an infernal word –

“Buddy! You’re here. Sorry to keep you waiting... but if you have to blame anyone, blame Luna.”
Theo swaggered into the room with his hair slightly damp. Hermione stood up and he came to a
stop next to her, beaming.

“I wanted to hurry, but she gave me very good reasons to remain on my back,” he elaborated.

“Thank you for always providing me with such details,” she retorted.

Theo turned to look at Draco... at the bottle before him... and his grin got even wider, if possible.
But all he said was, “Lunch is in the kitchen, alright? Be a good boy while I’m gone.”

He took Hermione’s arm and began leading her out.

From behind them, Draco drawled, “Away, you three-inch fool.”

And Hermione, worn to a frazzle, laughed helplessly.

 Sixty-Nine

The magical block at Knightsbridge was too expensive. The two room accommodations at
Puddlemere were too small. The charming St. Alban’s flat that she had been eyeing, was on a street
that looked every bit as seedy as Knockturn alley.

A string of days full of disappointment.

But she had put them aside for the moment. It was Ginny’s birthday.

Hermione was sitting alone by the scummy pond at the Burrow, with a package wrapped in shiny
paper on her lap, containing Adidas athletic wear. The wizarding world had yet to come up with
something that matched the comfort of lycra.
The sky was threatening rain. It was just as well that the celebrations would be limited and indoors.
Indoors was where she was supposed to be, too.

She heard the grass rustling behind her, and Ron’s shadow, followed by Ron himself, appeared next
to her. He loosened his tie as he sat down with a tired grunt.

“Everyone’s arrived?” she asked.

“Everyone ‘xept Charlie, but he should be here soon.” he replied, “And Percy’s running a bit late.
An army of firecrabs ran amok on level four. They needed Aurors to help as well, but Harry and I
legged it out of there.”

Ron leaned back on his arms and closed his eyes.

“Long day?” she ventured. He looked shattered.

“Same old. Oh, by the way, I have to go to Bath next week, for a couple of days.”

“What for?”

“A sting, of sorts. Some manky, fraudster metamorphagus is going about selling vials of bicorn
piss, claiming it’s Felix Felicis.”

“Good grief.”

“Yeah.”

“A sting sounds like fun, though,” she said smilingly, “Will you wear a disguise? Could it be the
return of Dragomir Despard?”

“No, sadly,” Ron chuckled, “I’m going as back up. Just have to hang around nearby, in case the
wanker tries to make a run for it.”
“EVERYBODY IN THE KITCHEN, PLEASE!”

Mrs Weasley’s voice, amplified by a sonorous charm, ripped across the landscape’s delicate peace.
Ron offered her his hand to help her up, and they walked to the Burrow slowly, both allusively
recognising that there was, potentially, an evening full of awfulness ahead.

When they reached the kitchen, Harry and Ginny were just coming down the stairs. They were
holding hands and both their eyes were red. While Harry stiffly went to take his seat, Ginny gave
Hermione a sharp, forlorn, but meaningful nod.

He didn’t drink that evening – not a drop. He refused when Charlie offered him a goblet of the
Romanian red that he had brought, raising a glass of water at the toast.

When they returned to Grimmauld place, he asked Hermione for a bit of her (“Harry, it isn’t a –”)
sleeping draught. He carried the mug to his room and closed the door.

Dankworth that the gall to show her an old Georgian mansion at Fitzrovia, that had been split up
into separate quarters. It had once belonged to a Welsh warlock, who’d departed without an heir,
leaving his home to be seized by the Ministry and palmed off to some property developer.
Subsequently, it had been given the appearance of a plain plastered wall with a padlocked wooden
door for muggles... but the interiors were fabulous.
He took her to the top most suite on the fourth floor, showing her the incredible view from her
would-be living room. She looked down at the district in all its glory; streets where Shaw,
Rimbaud, and Woolf would have walked, the pubs that Dylan Thomas and Orwell would have
frequented, the square abound which Sickert and Whistler might have wandered –

“This is a bit over your budget, Ms Granger.”

“By a lot?” she sighed.

“A little over a hundred galleon.”

“Mr Dankworth!”

“That isn’t acceptable?”

“Of course, it isn’t! Why would you even bring me here?”

“I thought you might like it.”

He smiled his unctuous smile. Hermione stalked out of her would- never- be living room.

The Barnton magical settlement was quaint and bucolic; very green and full of old buildings.
Dankworth guided her down a row of shops, to a lane flanked with dainty stone cottages.

“Here it is, number eight,” he said

A small old woman, stooped and wrinkly, stood by the cottage door with a bunch of keys in her
hand.

“Mrs Geary,” Dankworth greeted with a bow.

With an inexplicably downturned mouth, Mrs Geary unlocked the door.

The cottage was dingy and smelt musty: That was Hermione’s first impression. Then Dreary Geary
lit the gas lamps and the interior came into view. The main area had a large stone fireplace and six
chintz armchairs. The windows were covered with chequered curtains. Everything was coated with
dust.
The kitchen was a smaller version of the kitchen at Grimmauld place. A tiny loo was tucked under
the narrow staircase.
Upstairs, there was a huge damp spot on the ceiling above the landing. On one side there was a
storage room, and on the other, a bedroom. The bedroom had a massive four poster bed that ate up
eighty percent of the space, and had an attached bathroom that was full of cobwebs. Hermione
pulled back the curtains and saw that the bedroom faced the neighbouring cottage.

The place was far from ideal, but... it was fixable, with a good measure of magic.

Suddenly, a sort of muffled scuttling noise from the ceiling startled her, and she looked up in
puzzlement.

“There’s rats,” Mrs Geary stated.

“In the ceiling?!” Hermione sputtered.

“Aye. Rats.”

“Can’t you get rid of them?”

Mrs Geary snickered. “You try it.”

The tour ended in the large back garden. It was unkempt and overrun with scraggly shrubs, and
bound by a low stone wall. Beyond it was an endless stretch of verdancy, with a hint of the River
Weaver in the distance. Nothing remotely stimulating for miles; maybe she could get chickens, like
Mrs Weasley.

“Well, Ms Granger?” Dankworth came up next to her with his hands behind his back, “It’s sizeable,
fully furnished, and well within your budget.”

“It won’t do, Mr Dankworth.”

“No?” he smiled smarmily.

“It won’t do at all.”

There was another party at the Burrow, on the afternoon of the fourteenth of August – a proper
farewell party. There were even more people than there had been at Harry’s birthday.

Earlier that morning, when Seamus had shown up with his loaded coffer, Ginny had announced that
it was to be an alcohol-free affair.
A ripple of outrage was set off, while Harry rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously.

“Why?” Seamus demanded.

“Because I don’t want to drink.”

“Since when–” George began.

“I have to fly for hours tomorrow.”

“Then you don’t drink!” Seamus said.

“If I don’t drink, nobody drinks.”

There was such a quintessentially brazen, Ginny-like flair to that final statement, that all arguments
were quelled. No further questions, m’lud. Grumbling, Seamus had disapparated with his bounty.

The lack of alcohol, ultimately, didn’t dampen the volume of the gathering in the least. The
moment the likes of Dean, Angelina, and Demelza arrived, a game of quidditch was kicked off.
Hermione ended up sitting and watching with Percy, who droned on about the wonders of working
at the Ministry under Kingsley, and how sure he was that Hermione was going to love it.
She nodded along and thought about Neville; about how she wouldn’t be seeing him at get-
togethers anymore, keeping her company while everyone flew. She imagined him standing in a
greenhouse the size of a Georgian mansion, breathless with wonder.

The game ended, and Mrs Weasley came out with floating trays full of pumpkin juice, orange
squash, and lemonade. That was when more people began arriving.

A very grumpy Seamus slouched over to sit by Hermione.

“I’d concocted a drink specially for you, y’know?”

“Oh?” she smiled.

“Yeah. Inspired by the flavours of that spiced rum.”

“Sounds good.”

“It was bleeding grand.”

“I’ll come by your pub, all right?”

“You better,” he grumbled.

Dean joined them, and he socked Seamus on the shoulder, good naturedly. Then he told Hermione
he was getting ready to begin his term at Slade, and that he’d found a fantastic shared
accommodation on Blandford Street.
Hermione pictured him standing in a studio the size of a Georgian mansion. She made an excuse
about wanting lemonade, and walked away from there.

She did actually get a glass of lemonade, a weak, lacklustre beverage when compared to what dad
made, and she went off to the far wall at the darker edge of the garden. She hopped up on it and had
herself a wonderful vantage point from which to observe the party.
She sought out Harry first, and he looked radiant, post-flying. His usually untidy hair was
catastrophic. He drank orange squash, and kept one hand firmly on Ginny’s knee. She was well-
near cuddling his arm as she laughed at George and Lee putting on a skit about Filch and Pince. A
little behind them, Ron was red in the face, looking like he didn’t know what to do with himself,
while a girl from Ginny’s year batted her eyelashes at him, clearly on the pull.

The kitchen door opened again, and trays bearing a full spread for afternoon tea floated out and
settled on the table. Finally, Mr and Mrs Weasley came out to join in the merriment, with the
former carrying the Etch-A-Sketch. Hermione shifted deeper into the shadows.

Her stomach was rumbling with the need to eat, but she didn’t move – she just didn’t want to. If
they wanted her there, they would have to seek her out.

She turned to look at her favourite hillock looming in the distance, and considered moving to sit up
there. Maybe she could construct a tin shack on it and call that her home. She could feed the
chickens every morning, with Mrs Weasley. She could get married to Percy, and die of boredom
and ague at the age of twenty-five.

“Are you skulking or sulking or both?”

A grin broke out across her face before she had even turned. Of course, he’d be the one to come to
her. She felt considerably better.

“Neither,” she replied.

Theo and Luna settled on the wall as well. They’d brought her a cup of tea and a plate of jam
biscuits and cucumber finger sandwiches for them to share. Hermione’s eyes flickered towards the
crowd, wondering if –
She spotted his bright hair at once. Draco was eyeing the feast on the table, while Seamus clapped
him on the back in a friendly greeting.

“You’re late,” Hermione informed Theo and Luna, and then she sighed at the taste of her perfectly
prepared tea.

“We were celebrating,” Theo said happily, “Guess who won the Scamander grant!”

“Oh my gosh!” Hermione reached out and squeezed Luna around the shoulders, “That’s brilliant.
Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” she smiled widely, “I’m so very excited. I have my first meeting with the board on
Monday.”

Hermione beamed at her, even as a prickle of something toxic threatened to taint her sincerity.

And speaking of toxic, prickly things... Draco broke away from the party and began to walk
towards them. Hermione couldn’t do a single thing besides watching him approach in his thin, V-
necked jumper. Serpentine steam from his teacup curled and swayed like the giant python, Kaa,
performing a hypnotising dance.

Trussst in me...

“Why are you lurking in the shadows?” he asked coolly, the moment he was close enough.

“Hermione’s feeling a bit sullen,” Theo responded.

“I am not,” was said at the same time as, “When is she not?”

She glowered as he snatched up a biscuit and bit into it obnoxiously. He ate far too often in her
presence, and it was another form of derision, she was sure of it. It was all about drawing attention
to his over-smart mouth; like he was saying, see, Granger, I will chew on sweet things and spew
bitter things . And also, occasionally, funny and clever things. And sometimes, a tiny crumb will
catch on my lower lip and I will, quick as a flash, lick if off.

“Our friend Dankworth isn’t rising to the occasion,” Theo explained.

Hermione glanced back at her hillock. Her future home, and place of death. A gravestone on top of
it would look very solemn and dramatic.

“Is that so? Or is it that she's simply far too pernickety?”

Here lies Hermione Granger. This little piggy cried, “Ennui”.

“Yesterday he showed me a place that had rats in the ceiling,” she said, giving him a sore stare.

Draco shrugged. “He thinks that’s the sort of place you’d live.”

“Or he’s a louse.”

“Not at all. He’s canny and agreeable.”

“Of course, you’d think that,” she said somewhat uppishly, “He’s basically you, thirty years from
now.”

“Come again?”

He’d finished his biscuit. Did he have crumbs on his fingers? Would he lick them?

“That’s how you’ll be, at fifty. Balding. Paunchy. A swindler.”

His lips twitched. “But with distinct eyes, surely.”

Here lies Hermione Granger. Draco did it. Arrest him.

“And he’s not a swindler,” Draco added, “You only have to pay him if he finds you a place.”

“He’s swindling me of my time and peace of mind,” she sniffed, “He’s a rapacious middleman
who–”

“You asked for his services.”

Draco waved his wand behind him and conjured a high back leather armchair, and sat. So
needlessly over the top. He drained his teacup and set it down.

“I didn’t expect him to be this useless!” she exclaimed, “And how difficult of a job could it
possibly be? Find me a decent, liveable flat somewhere in England, Mr Dankworth. That’s all. I’m
not asking him to bring me a Nundu’s pelt.”
“Go find your own flat then, if it’s so simple,” he smirked.

“I think I’ll do exactly that,” she said, “It’ll serve him right for being part of a scummy,
indefensible industry–”

“Doesn't he deserve to earn a living?”

...Draco was tracing the edge of his chair’s armrest with his index finger. Slow... mindless...
soothing... strokes...

“Um. Ahem. He does, of course. But nobody made him pick an occupation that requires no talent,
save for an exceptional drive to avoid doing any actual work.”

“You don’t' know that. You don’t know what his circumstances are. Maybe he was forced into it.
And here you are, begrudging him an honest livelihood.”

“Right. Circumstances drove him to become an upmarket estate agent.”

“Yes.”

“And seriously... an honest livelihood?”

“Absolutely.”

“Balderdash.”

“Granger, you’re so classist.”

Hermione’s mouth fell open and she nearly tumbled off the wall. She gaped at him like she’d never
gaped before.
And he grinned.

“What?!?” she quavered.

He shrugged one shoulder, still grinning.

“You. Just called me. Classist.”

He raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“While attempting to defend an ardent purveyor of private property ownership.”

“A helpless cog in a detestable machine, you mean,” he amended.

“Classist. I’m classist.”

“Eminently.”

“You. You – born in an ancestral mansion – You... old money, luxury flat owning, house-elf
exploiting, silver spoon licking arse.”

He was shaking with mellow laughter.

“You know,” she ground out, forcibly collecting herself, “You even smile exactly like Dankworth.
Very smug and oily.”

“Come on now, Granger,” he drawled with one final chuckle. Then he looked up at her with his
head tilted downwards. “That’s blatantly untrue.”

It was untrue. Obviously, it was. Even with a hint of smugness in his smile, it was not oily in the
least. It was provocative. It was mischievous. It was heady. It fit his face perfectly, it adorned his
features wonderfully. It was...

She couldn’t stop staring.

“What in Merlin’s fucking name is going on, Hermione?”

She jumped out of her skin, and looked over the back of Draco’s chair to see Ron advancing
towards them. He stopped next to the chair and eyed Draco balefully.

Hermione looked to her right: There was a full plate and a cold cup of tea next to her. Theo and
Luna were gone. The air was thick with the sound of conversation and laughter.

“Yes, Ron?” she mumbled, feeling her ears heat up.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, looking indignantly between her and Draco.

“Just chatting.”

Draco couldn’t even be bothered to look at Ron. He summoned the plate and helped himself to
another biscuit.

“Right.” Ron’s complexion was puce. “Ginny’s wondering where you are.”

Hermione slid off the wall and walked, with slightly wobbly legs, back towards the party. She
could hear Ron following her.

“There you are!” Ginny cheered and bounded over with a grin. “I thought you’d left and I was
going to send a howler!”

“I wouldn't just leave.”

“We’re going for another round of quidditch,” Ginny said, “What can I do to convince you to join
in?”

“Absolutely nothing. I will sit in the sidelines and admire you”

Ginny peered over Hermione’s shoulder and then stepped to the side, raising her hand. “Malfoy!
Want to play?”
Hermione didn’t turn around, not even after Ginny nodded in farewell and raced towards her
broom. But when Draco walked by her, she murmured under her breath, “Please don’t antagonise
Harry.”

He stopped briefly, rolled his eyes, handed her the plate of finger sandwiches, (the biscuits were all
missing,) and carried on. She followed.

“I’m serious, Draco. Please–”

“I have no interest in ruining Ginny’s farewell party, all right? Put a sock in it.”

He was the most unbelievable, maddening person she’d ever known. There was no concept of an
even keel when he was involved. She watched him walk to where the brooms were stacked,
bypassing Harry without a look or comment. He raked his hair back and stuck his hand out,
commanding his broom to rise.

Hermione’s stomach vibrated with pangs of hunger. She bit into a sandwich and meandered
towards the table, looking for someone she’d like to sit with.

Nestled at one end, in one chair, were Theo and Luna, feeding each other scones and clotted cream.
Hermione fell into the seat in front of them and nabbed a second sandwich.

Theo grinned and said, “Try the egg and cress ones. They’re delish.”

“Mrs Weasley makes excellent food,” Luna seconded, spooning some rhubarb compote onto their
plate.

“It’s bloody six in the evening, yet tea time is carrying on and on. How are we expected to have
supper after this?”

An endless outdoor tea party, served at six o’clock - but time’s throwing a wobbler and won’t
move, so it’s always six o’clock. Sat together on one chair, Theo and Luna would, collectively,
make a fine Mad Hatter.

She skimmed her gaze down the partially-occupied table, catching a few eyes and smiling.

“Where did you both run off to?” she asked the Mad Hatter, pouring herself a fresh, hot cup of tea.

Theo turned into the Cheshire cat.

“We didn’t want to get in the way,” he said

“I have often seen a Theo without a grin, but never a grin without a Theo,” she muttered under her
breath, feeling her ears turn hot once more.

He laughed incredulously. “What?”

“Nothing.”
He could fade out of existence now. Him and his grin.

“How long before you noticed we’d gone?”

“I’ve been looking for you for quite some time.”

“Suuuuuure,” he drawled, “Must’ve been really hard to spot us in such a wide, open space.”

“Hermione,” Luna sang, “I think if I speak candidly, you’ll get angry. So, I won't say anything.”

“Much obliged,” she gritted out through her teeth.

“But you should know...” she gave her a serene, beatific smile, “I’ve something important to say.”

Hermione blinked in astonishment. They had to be doing this deliberately. She waited for Luna to
start smoking a hookah, and to ask what size Hermione would like to be. And Hermione would
answer –

Three inches is such a wretched height to be.

She took a giant gulp of tea two wash down a bout of hysterical laughter. This was turning out to be
every bit as unhinged as a party with alcohol.

The evening ended with another fireworks display. In the finale, an entirely female quidditch team
made up of dark green and gold lights, danced a strange, airborne version of the cancan, across the
sky.

People amassed around Ginny to say goodbye, and Hermione, Harry, and Ron helped Mrs Weasley
clear the table. A long series of cracks from people disapparating made it seem like they’d been hit
by a sudden, violent thunderstorm.
Hermione paused her undertaking every so often to wave, or call out a bye, cheerio. She told
Seamus that yes, she definitely will be stopping by his pub soon. She squeezed Theo’s arm, and
congratulated Luna once again. She gave Draco a small smile, to which he responded with a nod
and a chary sort of look that said, that isn’t nearly as amiable as you think it is.

When all had been done and dusted, and everyone was back inside, there was a general agreement
that another meal wasn’t necessary, (though Ron did sneak into the kitchen and return with some
leftovers for himself.) Mrs Weasley made cocoa, and they passed the hours nattering.
Hermione, Harry, and Ron decided to stay the night. Once the spare bed had been set up in Ginny’s
room, Hermione lay down and felt a surge of downheartedness. So much time she’d spent in that
room; so much time at Hogwarts, seeing Ginny every day.

“You’ll visit often, won’t you?” she asked.

Ginny dimmed the lamps, and under the cover of gloom replied, “I’ll try.”

“Okay.”

“There’s always the floo. Hopefully we can have a chat at least once a week.”

They talked in the dark for some time, till it was late enough and they were sure that her parents
were fast asleep. Then Ginny slipped out, and, a few minutes later, Ron came in.

It was very unsettling to have him there. Even with the substantial space between the two beds,
even though it was too dim to really see his face.

“Harry seemed well today,” she said, just for the sake of saying something. To fill the space with
something other than discomfiture.

“Yeah,” Ron grunted. He lay on his back and looking up at the ceiling.

“Ginny got through to him.”

“Let’s see.”

“...Okay. Er, goodnight, Ron.”

She closed her eyes and began to recite You are old, Father William, in her head.

“The last time we were alone in this room, you rejected me.”

He said it plainly, in passing. Like pointing out an interestingly shaped shadow. Hermione opened
her eyes and stared at the silhouette of his profile.

“It’s alright. I’m alright now. What were you chatting about, with Malfoy?”

She swallowed thickly. “About the estate agent, and how I’m having no luck finding a place to
stay.”

“You could just stay with us, like you already are.”

“I told you already, Ron. I need my own space.”

“Yeah,” he said bitterly, “Too bad it’s such a small house, eh?”

“Um...”
“Tell me one more thing,” he asked, once again in a plain tone.

“Yes?”

“Why did you have to chat in that dim little corner?”

“It wasn’t – I didn’t mean to – Ron, I was just there, thinking... and then Theo and Luna came by
and –”

“Fine,” he cut in, “G’night Hermione. Sleep well.”

He turned his back to her.

After breakfast that morning, Mrs Weasley wouldn’t let go of Ginny’s hand.

“My friend Owena will be expecting you at Swansea,” she said tearfully, “Please stop by and eat
something.”

“I will, mum. I’ve told you I will.”

“I’m going to miss you so very much,” she wailed operatically.

“Won’t really get a chance to if you don’t let go of her hand, mum,” said George.

Determination oozed from every inch of her, as she shouldered her rucksack and mounted her
broom. With one final, sparkling grin, Ginny kicked off.

They watched her till she was just a speck in the sky... and then not even that.

One by one, they went back inside, till only Hermione, Mrs Weasley, and Harry remained. One
hadn’t stopped snivelling and the other stood phlegmatically, with his hands in his pockets.
Hermione vacillated for a moment, before finally turning towards the house.

*
She had no way of foretelling that a simple question – “I’m sure Ginny has left her room in an
awful mess; could you please help me sort through it, dear?” – would end up eating away her entire
day.
Because Ginny’s room wasn’t messy. Mrs Weasley was just looking for an excuse to be there and
look at Ginny’s things and reminisce. For a woman whose identity rested so heavily on her
maternity, sitting in an empty nest was brutal.

“We kept adding room after room to this house... but it was scarcely enough. All those maddening
children living on top of each other, creating a ruckus. And now just Arthur, Percy, and I remain...
and so many empty rooms,” she’d said at one point.

They finally left the room late in the afternoon, after which Mrs Weasley said that since Hermione
would be returning later for dinner anyway , she might as well hang around.

When at last, it was evening and they were all settled around the table eating, Hermione felt
Ginny’s absence keenly. She obviously wasn’t the only one.

Three of them returned to Grimmauld Place drained and douce. Ron went up to his room to pack
for his trip, and Hermione shot into hers to indulge in the long shower she’d been craving all day.

After she had finished, she filled a mug with her sleeping brew and went to find Harry.

He was in the drawing room, on the sofa, gulping down firewhisky. She gasped rather loudly, in
anguish, and he loured at her with displeasure.

“Not going to let you dope me tonight.”

She was frozen at the doorway, unable to move or say anything... Panicked, wondering why the hell
she’d thought things would end tidily, grasping for the right way to react. His face crumpled.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry, alright? But Hermione... please go away.”

She didn’t move.

“Go, please,” he begged, “Can’t stand you looking at me like that. Please .”

So, she left, stiffly. In the hallway, she found Ron sitting on the stairs. He shook his head and made
a gesture of hopelessness, looking tired beyond measure.
Had the last thirty-six hours not happened, Hermione would have sat right next to him and put her
head on his shoulder. But, as it was, she sat on the opposite end of the step, and vanished the
blasted mug from her hands.
There was nothing for her to do the next day: No tasks, no appointments, nothing. Ron had left for
Bath, Harry was at work, Theo was at the shop, Luna was at her meeting.

She read and re-read her law folder, and stood in front of the mirror, interviewing herself. She read
and re-read Padma’s letter, trying and failing to formulise ways in which to bring it up with Harry,
without bolloxing it up.

It could have been a day ripe for a vexing, utterly consuming dialogue with Draco. She slumped on
the loveseat and couldn’t come up with anything else she really wanted to do.

At night, Harry let her sit with him. He drank just two glasses, while they carried on a wooden
conversation about his day and her day, and speculated about Ron’s day and Ginny’s day.

People were gawking at her as she stomped down Diagon Alley, and she couldn’t give a flying
fuck. She was simmering with outrage and irritation and if anyone dared to speak to her, she’d
snap.

Cutting through the scant, mid-week population, she spotted Theo standing outside the menagerie
window, watching a baby niffler play with silver foil. She didn’t bother with pleasantries; she
simply caught his arm, (ignoring his muffled and alarmed oi,) and dragged him into Finnigan’s.

Even the pub was agreeably uncrowded, with a little over a dozen patrons spread around. From a
stool at the bar, Seamus’ beckoned to them, beaming.

“Chuffing good to finally see you here, Hermione. Ay, Vassilios,” he addressed the dark, reed thin
man behind the bar, “Fix the lady a sunset grog. And for our man...?”

He looked questioningly at Theo.

“Ale”

“You heard him. On with it.” He stood up and winked at Hermione, “Don’t be scared, it’s not very
strong. Won’t get you locked. Now, I have some business to attend to–”

He walked around the bar, the shelves behind slid open, and he disappeared inside.
Once they’d paid for and collected their drinks, Theo led Hermione to a table in front of Dean’s
mural, where Draco was already seated. He looked surprised to see her, but nodded austerely,
regardless. He had a glass of some clear spirit in front of him.

“Where’s Luna?” she asked, taking a seat next to a leprechaun’s boot.

“Berlin,” Theo replied, “For five days. Scamander sent her for a seminar on Research Methodology
and Magizoology and... something else. But tell me, how was the Bankside flat?”

“No good,” she grumbled acidly.

“Oh no! What was the matter?”

She sipped the grog before she answered. It tasted like ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, and molasses, and
it was divine.

“It comes with a dear House-Elf named Tisley, and I’m not allowed to set her free.”

Theo pulled a face of commiseration. Draco was amused.

“He’s doing this deliberately,” she groused, “Riling me up–”

“No, he isn’t,” Draco piped up.

“Why are you so far up that man’s arse?” she spat. His brow jumped in surprise. “It’s definitely
deliberate.”

“He’s just existing and doing his job. It takes close to nothing to rile you up.”

“Oh, hark who’s talking. One just has to breathe the wrong way to set you off.”

“You both are stupidly easy to aggravate,” Theo cut in.

He was smirking cattily with foam on his upper lip. Not the right way to be while Hermione was
feeling belligerent.

“Being around you has frayed our nerves,” she said waspishly.

His smirk dropped. “Excuse me?”

“Yes. That’s why Draco’s so much worse, he’s been around you longer–”

“Granger’s worse because she had a short temper to begin with,” Draco revised, “But it’s true. Your
company has left us constantly on edge.”

“Look what you’ve done, Theo.”

He was looking between the two of them, slack jawed.

“You ate every morsel my mother sent me, at Hogwarts,” Draco drawled.
“Same,” Hermione nodded.

“You rant endlessly. You rain down a torrent of rubbish and there’s nowhere to run.”

“You drag on tired jokes so far beyond the point they stop being funny, that it could be considered
torture.”

Draco asked her, “How often has he derailed you from an important task?”

“Hard to keep count,” she told him.

“What the fuck is happening here?” Theo spluttered.

Before things could go any further, Seamus was at their table. Something about his posture and the
way he swung his arm registered as more Dankworth-like than anything Draco had ever done.

“What’s the verdict?” he asked, tilting his head towards her glass.

“I love it.”

“Bang on.”

“A perfect blend of sweet and spice.”

Seamus put one hand on their table and leaned, wagging his eyebrows at her. “Just like you, fine
thing.”

That drew an actual laugh out of her, so she decided to play along. She looked up at him from
under her eyelashes and gave him a one-sided smile.

“You have an impeccable palate.”

He laughed, and, as there was a cry of “Boss!” from the bar, left. Hermione turned back to her
companions and found them staring at her with raised brows. She shrugged and put her focus on
the grog.

Predictably, Theo launched into a tremendous oration in defence of his character. Hands flailing
and woebegone expression, he was in prime form with melodrama and righteousness rolling off his
tongue. Hermione and Draco exchanged smirks and sat back with their respective drinks, letting
him have his moment.
His twelve and a half minutes, it turned out.

His strong, punchy closing line was, “I’m hungry, let’s go to Neil’s,” so they all dragged their
chairs back and stood to leave.

As they were moving towards the door, Theo barked, “What are you looking at?” to a group of men
leering at him.

“You have foam all around your mouth,” Draco said offhandedly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Hermione, laughing, looked at them over her shoulder when a loud bang reverberated through the
pub.

A well camouflaged door on the far wall had slammed open, and Harry tumbled out, in a worse
state than she’d ever seen him. He teetered as he made his way across the floor, crashing into the
back of an empty chair.

“By Godric, that’s Harry Potter!” someone exclaimed.

Hermione rushed forward, and grabbed his forearms to help steady him.

“He’mione,” he slurred, peering at her through his glasses, “Gone ‘n done it today, haven’t I?"

“Let’s get you home, Harry,” she whispered as her eyes stung with tears.

“Kay,” he mumbled.

Her hands slid into his, and she was all set to pull him towards the exit, when he suddenly stiffened.

“You,” he growled.

He was looking daggers at Draco, who met his glare with acute indifference.

“Just fucking everywhere, aren’t you?”

Draco said nothing.

“Couldn’t snatch away my girlfriend, so now you’re after my best friend?”

Draco’s face twisted with disgust.

That’s when Harry lunged. Hermione was barely able to hold her ground, barely able to push him
back, as he reached out with his hands as though meaning to strangle Draco. Draco’s wand was out
and levelled at Harry.

“Stay back ,” he snarled, menacingly.

“Stupefy !” Theo cried, and at once, Harry went limp, tumbling downwards and dragging Hermione
with him. Luckily, Theo – and Seamus, who had reappeared – grabbed them before they could hit
the ground.

“Fuck!” Seamus squawked, “Fuck, fuck. I must have forgotten to lock the door. Fuck!”

He and Theo pulled Harry’s arms over their shoulders and carried him towards the opening behind
the bar. She stood for a moment, catching her breath. Draco pocketed his wand and, without a
backward glance, stalked out into Diagon.
There was dead dead dead dead silence. Silence.

Hermione squared her shoulders and went behind the bar. At the opening, she turned.

There were, in total, fifteen people in the pub. She could see a restless whisper begin to take hold of
them. With no hesitation whatsoever, she slipped into the shadows and raised her wand.

Once she was through, she stepped into the passageway. There was a narrow staircase on one side,
and a few doors on the other, one of which was wide open, and emitting a stream of frantic oaths.

It was Seamus’ office, with a desk, cabinet, quidditch posters, and a long sofa, on which they’d put
Harry. Theo was standing quietly by a fireplace, while Seamus was pacing up and down the room,
swearing.

“I’m so sorry,” he bewailed when he saw Hermione, “I can’t believe I left the door unlocked.”

“What on earth do you mean?” she demanded, incensed, “You just lock him in a room and leave
him to drink?”

“When Ron isn’t there, yeah!”

“Are you insane?”

“What the hell else can I do?” he rumbled.

“Not enable him, maybe?!”

“Oh sure. So that he can go get fluthered at the Leaky? The Prophet would love that!”

“Hermione,” Theo called gently, before she could respond, “I think we should get Potter to bed. Let
him sleep this off.”

“Fine,” she muttered testily.

Once again, Theo and Seamus hauled him up, and they all stepped through the fireplace.

Grimmauld Place was lit up, as it would be on any given evening. Hermione directed the boys to
Harry’s room, passing by Kreacher who looked on with complete lack of surprise.
They put him in bed, and she carefully removed his glasses and pulled the covers over him. He
mumbled indistinctly and sighed.

“Thank you,” she maffled stiffly, when they were back by the fireplace.

Seamus left first, keeping his eyes glued to the floor. Theo hugged her tightly, and then he left.

Alone, she stodgily sat herself on an armchair, and stared into space. Scenes from the past half hour
flashed before her mind... quite at once, she burst into tears. She put her face in her hands and
sobbed for what felt like an eternity. When she thought she might stop, mopping her cheeks with
her sleeve, another fresh round of tears would erupt.

At the fourth refluence, from just outside the door, Kreacher said, “Miss.”

“Yes?” she rasped thickly.

“Kreacher has prepared dinner. Please eat.”

She wasn’t even a little hungry, but it was the first instance of consideration he’d ever shown her.
She followed him into the kitchen and had a bowl of fish soup and bread.

For once, she let Kreacher clean up on his own. She went to her room and got ready for bed. Then
she picked out her warmest cloak and trudged upstairs, back into Harry’s room.

He was fast asleep. His eyelids were twitching mildly, and his snores were intermittently
interrupted by incoherent mutterings; a bit like how he used to behave when suffering a Voldemort-
related vision. She felt the need to cry all over again.
And she did, once she had settled on the large bench at the foot of his bed and wrapped her cloak
tightly around her body. Not the shattering sobs that had racked her before, but quiet, tormented
tears. Was this rock bottom or was it going to get worse? How had Ron kept it together for so long?

She pressed her fists against her eyes until she saw stars.

He would have to talk to her tomorrow. She would make him. She would body-bind him if
necessary.

She turned to her side, pulled her knees up, and curled up into a ball.

Draco’s face, when Harry had accused him of pursuing her, had been the epitome of pure revulsion.

She woke up feeling warm; very warm.

It took some time to reorient herself after she’d opened her eyes, taking in the unfamiliar sight of
Harry’s empty, rumpled bed. She was still curled into a ball on the bench, but Harry’s quilt was
spread on top of her.
Uncurling her legs was hellaciously painful. They were so stiff. Her neck was stiff. Her vision
swam when she stood up and pulled her spine straight. She wrapped her cloak around her shoulders
and went downstairs.

Harry was gazing out the drawing room window, both hands cupped around a steaming cup of tea.
It was scarcely past five in the morning. The world was tinted blue, and very quiet.
She padded across the room, to the armchair she usually favoured, and perched on its arm. For a
while they both just looked outside at the empty street, and the still twinkling lamp posts.

“I’m glad it was you, last night,” Harry croaked, “And not Ron.”

She turned to him, but he didn’t move.

“I’ve pushed him to the absolute limit. If he had been there... I think it might’ve been the last
straw.” He finally looked at her. “Thank you, Hermione. Thank you, and... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
So fucking sorry.”

“Oh, Harry,” she sighed.

“I know I have to stop. I know it every morning.”

His eyes closed as he sucked in a long sip of tea.

“The paper’s going to be brutal today, eh?” he said with a horribly empty, forced chuckle.

“I took care of that,” she told him.

He frowned. “Threatened Rita again?”

“No,” she said with a meaningful inflection, but he continued to look puzzled. “I’m very good at
memory charms, remember?”

He recoiled, aghast.

“Hermione,” he breathed, “There were so many people–”

“Only fifteen.”

“Only?!”

She shrugged. He looked very bothered.

“I’m an auror,” he groaned.

“Are you going to turn me in?”

“Of course, not. But you broke the law!”

“Not for the first time.”

“For me.”

“Also not for the first time.”

“Oh god,” he groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.

A dustcart sped down the road. Birds woke up.

“Harry,” she said earnestly, “I’m your four brothers and a sister, remember?”

His eyes snapped to her with a look of such utter devastation that she almost whimpered. He looked
completely at sea, struggling with himself.

“You need to hold on to this feeling. This... knowing that you need to stop. Hold on to it, Harry, and
I will help you.”

“How?” he implored with a humourless laugh, “By shoving sleeping draughts down my throat?”

“I–”

“Because I tried that route, all right? Don’t you think I did? Dreamless sleep messes me up. I’m
groggy all day and it feels like death. Regular sleeping potions – yes, yours included – give me
nightmares. Nightmares that I can’t even wake up from.”

“And what does alcohol do?” she asked in a small voice.

Harry scowled... but it felt like he was scowling not at her, but at himself. “I feel light. Weightless.
And when I sleep I...”

His mouth snapped shut and his face flushed. As much as she wanted to urge him to continue, she
bit her tongue.

“I dream of my parents. And Sirius and Remus. The way they were brought back by the
resurrection stone. They talk to me and it feels so real.”

Hermione pinched her lips between her teeth, feeling her eyes well up.

“You can’t imagine how hard I’ve been kicking myself for dropping it. Sometimes I want to crawl
on my hands and knees through the entire Forbidden Forest till I find it.”

“That stone drove Cadmus mad,” she whispered.

“What, and I’m sane?”

She wanted to reach for him, hug him, but he was too agitated to risk that.

“I can’t understand... anything,” he rasped, “What am I doing, day after day? I’m the boy who lived
for what?"

This was far beyond anything she knew how to handle.

He dived back into his mug for a few solid sips; they both ignored that fact that the mug, and his
hands, were trembling. Once it was empty, he put it down on a side table and tightly crossed his
arms.

A Royal Mail van sped down the road.

“But then I think about Ginny,” Harry sighed.

“On her birthday...”

“I tried, Hermione.”

“I know you did.”

Hermione ground her teeth together; she could not cry and have him feel guilty for it.

Harry reached for humour again, with another forced chuckle.

“I’m sure you have a hundred books and peer reviewed articles at the ready? Drawn out a full plan
to get my life back on track?”

“No,” she whispered.

“You don’t have any ideas?”

“I have one.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Only if you ask.”

“Wow,” he said with a heartbreakingly laboured grin, “What happened to you?”

She tried to smile back. She really did. “I suppose I... grew up?”

The stiff, maniacal grin slowly melted off his face. He blinked rapidly and turned back to the
window.

“And I suppose,” he murmured, “I should, too.”

Oh, he had been forced to grow up since the day he was born.
That was when she finally reached out and hugged him. She wrapped her arms around his waist
and squeezed, and a tear managed to leak out of the corner of her eye. He put one arm around her
back.

“Hermione?”

“Yes?”

“Tell me how you plan to help me.”

“Not me, Harry. There’s a healer at Mungo’s. He got Parvati off calming draughts, and he’s helping
quite a lot of people, including Dennis Creevey. He’s supposed to be very good, and very discreet. I
can fix an appointment for you.”

He pulled away and looked down at her, frowning deeply. Conflicted and uncomfortable.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.”
Milky yellow sunlight lit up the street.

Harry left for the Ministry and Hermione took the underground to Hampstead Heath. She ran on
winding trails, cut through the grass, along the edge of ponds, and finally sat on Parliament hill.
She strolled along the boundary walls of the Pergola, like she used to with mum and dad.

She hopped back on the tube and went to Charing Cross, entering Diagon through The Leaky
Cauldron.

Fresh air and exercise: She had desperately been in need of them.

During her journey to Theo and Draco’s flat, she had to tell herself that she, too, would find it very
distasteful if someone accused her of going after a man she wasn’t interested in. Harry, Ron, Theo...
Dean, Neville, Seamus... Terry. She would, possibly, instinctively pull a face. It had nothing to do
with them. It was just the idea of being with them in that way.
That was all. That’s what had happened with Draco. It wasn’t about her and it wasn’t about her
blood.

It couldn’t be.

God, it fucking couldn’t be.

Theo opened the door with wide eyes, mere seconds after she had knocked. She didn’t know what
her expression told him, but it compelled him to pull her into one of his most comforting embraces.
She started to cry again. They stood in the hallway, like that, till she settled down.

He ushered her into the kitchen and made her a cup of tea.

“Can I interest you in a jacket potato? Another thing that old Neil does really well.”

“All right,” she agreed.

He sat next to her and put a steaming plate and utensils in front of her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

He smiled sadly and wiped the corner of her eye with his thumb.
“And Theo... Thank you. For yesterday. I don’t know how I would have handled it without–”

“Shush,” he said, pushing the plate closer towards her. “Eat.”

She ate. And after she had eaten, Theo put the kettle on for another round of tea.

He had just barely opened his mouth to speak when Draco came into the kitchen, the morning’s
Prophet rolled in his hand. He looked like he expected her to be there. Hermione averted her gaze.

“Granger,” he said in terse greeting, and then turning to Theo asked, “Got the kettle on?”

“A cup for you as well?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He sat down and disappeared behind the paper, which Hermione was glad for.

The kettle whistled. Theo got up.

“How is Potter?” he asked as he prepared their tea.

Hermione just shook her head. He stopped to peer at her eyes, and he understood.

“Nothing about it in here,” Draco said from behind the paper, “Funny, isn’t it? There were a decent
number of witnesses and not one blabbed.”

He pulled the paper down and stared right at her. Hermione couldn’t look at him for more than a
second, but that was enough to tell her that he knew. Three cups of tea floated onto the table and
Theo sat back down.

“Really,” he asked, “No mention.”

“No,” Draco replied tightly.

Hermione stared down at her tea but she could feel him looking at her.

“You obliviated them all, didn’t you?” Draco barked.

“Mother of Merlin, you didn’t!” Theo gasped.

She simply shrugged.

Theo breathed out heavily. Hermione thought Draco might be sneering, but she couldn’t look at
him. She sipped her tea.

“He can do no wrong, can he?” Draco said scornfully, “Drunk off his arse, threatening assault...
zero repercussions. But I suppose that makes sense. After all, nearly killing me got him nothing but
a handful of detentions.”
She sipped her tea and didn’t look at him.

They all sipped their tea.

Hermione fixed her eyes on the edge of Draco’s saucer and said, “Remember when you said we
were in a bubble for a year, at Hogwarts?”

He took some time considering, before slowly enunciating the word, “Yes.”

“You were right. We – all of us – got time to heal. Together. We got a chance to reconnect with who
we were before everything went to shit. Harry didn’t get that. Harry’s never had that chance.
Things kept getting worse year by year... till he died, and was forced to kill. And after that...” she
huffed. “He’s thrown himself into the life of a functioning adult that he doesn't know how to be yet.
It’s not fair to judge him for that. It’s not fair that he had the weight of the world on his shoulders as
a child. It’s bloody amazing that he’s even–”

Oh god, she was about to cry again. In front of Draco Malfoy. Fuck no .

She stared down at her lap. No. Don’t cry. Do NOT cry.

Frenetically, she reached out for her tea and downed it in one gulp. It went blistering down her
oesophagus.

“I’ll go now,” she soughed.

She nodded vaguely at Draco’s shoulder, kissed Theo on the cheek, and got the hell out of there.

Two days went by and Harry didn’t touch upon their conversation again. But he did limit himself to
two drinks a night.

When Saturday rolled around, he spent hours in the afternoon with his head stuck in the fireplace,
talking to Ginny. He was still at it when Hermione left to see a terrifying hole in Luton.

She was spitting curses and imagining chucking Dankworth in Fiendfyre when she got back to
Grimmauld place, early in the evening.

There was a bag carelessly discarded on the landing, which indicated that Ron was back. She burst
into the drawing room, calling hullo , only to realise that she had definitely interrupted a very
serious and loaded exchange between Harry and Ron.

“Oh, sorry!” she squeaked and took hasty steps back, but Harry quickly called out to her to wait.

“C’mere,” he said patting the space next to him on the sofa.

She settled and smiled at Ron. “How was Bath?”

“Good,” he replied, a strange gravity lingering in his tone, “We caught the piss-peddler.”

“Well done.”

An awkward silence descended for a bit, while Ron bounced his legs, Harry rubbed the back of his
neck, and Hermione wrung her hands.

Finally, Harry spoke:

“Hermione... I’ve decided. Will you fix an appointment for me?”

Something exploded in her chest and air rushed out of her lungs. She was tearing up again but for a
good reason, and her mouth pulled up into a broad smile.

“Yes. Of course. For when?”

“You know my schedule,” he shrugged, “Any day will do, after five-thirty.”

“Okay,” she agreed breathlessly, “I'll do that.”

“And one more thing...”

“Hm?”

“Will you – both of you – come with me to Godric’s Hollow tomorrow? I want to visit my parents’
graves.”
 Seventy
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Since the late 1700’s, many instances of mysterious disappearances had been reported from a
particular spot in Blackheath. They spoke of people “stumbling over air” and “falling into
nothingness,” only to reappear the next day, dazed and disoriented.
It got to the point that, in 1904, the Blackheath Cricket Club grew so exasperated with losing balls
which had gone for sixes, that they cleared off the heath for good.
Animals were known to instinctively stay away.

But if you knew better, as Hermione did, you’d realise that the innocuous looking patch of
shrubbery and small trees was really a gateway to a Wizarding area.

Starthistle Hill was thus called because it lay at the foot of a hill covered in, yes indeed, starthistle
shrubs. The spindly, thorny plant teemed thickly, making the hill near impossible to climb, but,
from a distance, it looked pretty enough, dotted with tiny yellow flowers.
The neighbourhood was small, with one road between rows of shops and trees, leading to three
identical, grey stone buildings.

Hermione and Dankworth marched down that road on a hot morning.

“Owlery,” said Dankworth, pointing to the left. “Baker’s, Greengrocer’s,” he added pointing to the
right. “Down that alley, there’s a potioneer’s shop. And down there, you have a couple of
restaurants.”

It lacked the bustle and vibrancy of Diagon, but, between the stone buildings, starthistle, and gorse,
it had an appeal of its own.

Dankworth took her to the middle block, (Tower 2,) and ‘after you’ d her into a creaky old lift.
They disembarked on the sixth floor, onto a landing with three doors on each side. Flat number
thirty-three was at the end of the landing, and that’s the door Dankworth unlocked.

It opened to a narrow hall, with a coatrack and hooks by the door.

“This way to the living room, Ms Granger.”

It was about a quarter the size of Harry’s drawing room, with an arched fireplace and two windows
that overlooked the path between tower one and two. There was a lengthy side board, a round
coffee table and cream sofa, and a door on the far wall (“To the kitchen,” he said.)
Just beside the door, there was a little nook with a table and four chairs, which made sense when
she saw the size of the kitchen. It was square and tiny, with a stove, a cupboard, and a sink packed
in it.

There were two bedrooms, equal in size; one had a chest of drawers, the other a wardrobe and large
mirror. Both had a double bed each, made of white painted iron, with a curling pattern on the high
head and foot boards. The first one also had a little balcony with a green, criss-crossed railing like
the one in Manet’s painting. Beyond it was the yellow-spotted hill.
The bathroom was at the end of the hall: Beige tiles, white bathtub, basin, and commode, brass
fixtures.

Hermione took two rounds, peering into corners, running the taps and shower, poking the walls,
listening for rodents, revelio -ing the hell out of the place.

Then she joined Dankworth in the living room, and they stood, on opposite sides of the coffee
table, and looked at one another.

Hermione had suppressed wretched hope some time ago, but seeing that flat had awoken it again.
Now, she feared, it was time for Dankworth to say –

“It’s a bit outside your budget.”

Precisely. She had to close her hands into fists because they were itching to delve into her hair and
fucking yank .

“By a hundred galleon? Four hundred galleon?” she blustered.

“No,” he smiled, “By twenty-five galleons.”

She exhaled, her hands uncurled, and she felt such profound hatred towards that slimy man.

“Mr Dankworth,” she asked as evenly as she could, “Were you in Slytherin?”

“Surely you, Ms Granger, won’t hold that against me,” he replied with a fulsome titter.

She turned her back to him and went to stand by a window, running her finger along the frame.

“May I cast a colour changing charm on the walls?”

“Yes, of course. As long as you undo it before you leave.”

She turned and looked down her nose at him.

“When can I move in?”

Over the following few days, Dankworth earned his keep.

The owner of the flat was a sickly old witch who had moved to Lisbon for the climate, so signing
of the agreement and attestation of documents required travel and portkeys, all of which he took
care of. He accompanied Hermione to Gringotts, and got her to pay the deposit and first month’s
rent. He wrote an application to the Ministry to reopen the flat’s floo connection. He had every inch
of the flat thoroughly scoured.

And while that was going on, Hermione began making preparations of her own.

She met Theo at Diagon for lunch, after which they went to the lane full of workshops, stopping at
the framer’s. Hermione left a pile of photographs and art prints with them.
Just adjacent to the workshops, there was a fairly enormous furniture depot. Theo left her there, and
she stood unsurely by a bronze torchiere that she imagined would look lovely in her study. The
price tag said, “Not happening.”

“Good afternoon,” called a pleasant voice.

She spun around to face a man scarcely an inch taller than her, with a thick black moustache, gold-
framed glasses, and a warm, wholesome smile.

“Hello,” she began, “I’m looking for–”

“You are Hermione Granger, aren’t you?” The man erupted with ardour, “Oh welcome, most
welcome! How can Enrico help you?”

Enrico, Hermione decided, was the anti-Dankworth.

When she explained that she had much to buy and limited funds, he took her straight to the second-
hand section of the depot, that was also, currently, going at a discount.
Meandering through the stock, she picked out a set of four cream tufted armchairs, a footstool, a
desk chair, a bureau with an inbuilt burner for potion brewing, a narrow cabinet, a nightstand, two
table lamps, and finally, a standard lamp with a stained-glass shade... a nod to the Hogwarts library.

A floating quill and parchment followed them around, making note of all her selections.
Upon seeing the final list, she felt sheer panic that almost sent her running out of the shop
screaming. How could she possibly justify spending so much of her parents’ money? She muttered,
“Excuse me,” to Enrico and walked, sort of blindly, across the shop.
It would be very easy to make do with the furniture already in the flat. It was mad, all of it. She
didn’t even have a job, and if the Ministry didn’t want her, she’d be buggered.

She had only just stepped into the alley when Theo appeared, grabbed her around the elbow, and
dragged her back in.

“Who gets cold feet over buying bits of wood, Hermione, for Salazar’s sake.”

“Wha–”

“Robert was right to warn me.”

“My dad? When–”

“Last week. In his letter.”

“My dad writes to you?”

“Yes, and I write back. Oh hullo. Sorry about my friend here, she’s an odd one.”

And that was how Hermione ended up giving her new address to Enrico, asking for the stuff to be
delivered on Saturday, and making the scary payment.

“Ms Granger,” Enrico said afterwards, “Un momento, per favore.”

He led her behind a behemoth of a wardrobe to a space where curtains, drapes, and blinds were
hanging from the ceiling, stopping before a set of pretty, sheer curtains.

“You see these?” he said, gently running them through his hand, “Light as gauze, so delicate. But
while you can see right through them and they let beautiful sunlight in... come this side, if you
will... see?”

From the back they appeared to be made of thick cardstock.

“Nobody will be able to look in through your windows. And, of course, a simple opaco will block
out the light, for when you require a little siesta”

He waited, obviously expecting her to say she’d take them.

“Thank you, but I really can’t spend anymore.”

“You misunderstand. I want you to have these. From me. How many would you need?”

“Oh!” she gasped, stunned, “No, thank you... but no. I couldn’t.”

“I insist!”
“I really can’t accept that.”

He took her hand in both of his and squeezed.

“I am muggleborn. I, my wife, and my ten-year-old daughter think the world of you. Please,
signorina. Let me.”

She breathed out slowly and asked, “Is there actually a discount on all that stuff?”

He smiled with twinkling eyes.

That evening, Harry returned from his first appointment with Healer Asher. There was an unsteady
quality to the way he walked, a faraway look in his eyes. It was like he had dived into a pensive and
was moving through a memory.
He’d brought two boxes full of vials which he set on the table before falling into the sofa with a
deep sigh. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

Hermione and Ron shared a trepidatious look. He appeared as unsure as she felt.

Many minutes passed.

Harry cracked open one tired eye.

“Stop staring at me.”

“Sorry,” they both mumbled.

He lifted his head with another sigh, and stared down at the boxes of vials.

“Those are supposed to help with cravings and withdrawal. Have to take one every night for a
month. He said I should mix in a finger of whisky for the first week, one every alternate day the
second week, and then just the potion for the final two weeks. And that second lot is,” he grimaced,
“Dreamless sleep.”

“Did you tell him what it does to you?” Hermione asked.

“Yeah,” he replied glumly, “But he says it’s a very precise dose. Effects shouldn’t linger beyond
seven hours.”

“Oh... that’s good?” Hermione ventured.

Harry shrugged. “I have to see him every Wednesday, at six, and Saturday, at four. He says I should
be around people in the evening. Recommended that I have dinner at the Burrow. Is that okay?” he
asked Ron, “Will your mum mind?”
Ron snorted, “Of course, it isn’t okay. Having people over and feeding them? Mum hates that,
doesn’t she?”

That finally coerced a smile out of Harry.

“Although,” Ron continued in a whisper and leaned forward conspiratorially, “Kreacher will be
right furious, won’t he?”

He was, when Harry informed him over a heap of roasted chicken. His nose wrinkled and his ears
wilted... but what could he do but accept? What else could he ever do?

Harry and Ron played chess after dinner, as Harry gingerly sipped his spiked potion. A frown
remained fixed on his face.
Hermione couldn’t imagine how difficult every minute of his existence was going to be for the
next... oh who could say how long.

When they got up for bed, she hugged him tightly. She held on for quite some time, but he didn’t
try to pull away.

Hermione was featured in the papers the next day. The picture captured her terrified escape from
the depot, seconds before Theo dragged her back in. Her eyes had the look of a frightened animal.

“...rumoured to be house-hunting. Is all not golden with the trio?”

During the Medieval period, the city of Exeter was an important religious centre. At that time, an
elaborate system of vaulted underground tunnels had been constructed, to bring fresh spring water
into the walled city. They were put completely out of use in 1901, left forgotten for nearly a
century, and had been reopened only a few years ago, as a tourist attraction.
But that wasn’t to say the entire network was accessible. There was one secreted tunnel in
particular, that had been magically expanded and turned into a popular shopping area for witches
and wizards.

Mrs Weasley took Hermione to Cavern Lane Market on Wednesday afternoon, and she stood rooted
at the entrance, awestruck.

In terms of variety, it was like the entire Camden market had been crammed into one long passage.
In terms of ambience, it had the intriguing allure of a souk.

“Come along, dear,” Mrs Weasley urged, quite unaware of Hermione’s amazement.

Sadly, it didn’t take long for the mundanity of shopping to supersede everything. The prices were
mind-blowing; less than what she’d have ended up paying in Diagon, or Tesco's.

She bought linen sets in white, blue, pink, and lilac for her bed. She bought a thick woollen blanket.
She bought bath mats, table mats and a table cloth, hand towels and kitchen rags. She bought some
very basic kitchenware, utensils, and cutlery.
Her favourite find was a porcelain tea set designed to look like blue China. For a few seconds, if
felt like a dream had come true.
She bought six plain glasses and four wine glasses.
She bought a large round wall clock, and an urn full of floo powder. She bought a tin box full of
assorted tea bags.

When they returned to the burrow, Mrs Weasley sped into the kitchen to make Shepherd’s pie and
treacle tart especially for Harry, while Hermione contended with the surprise of seeing Bill, Fleur,
Andromeda, and little blue-haired Teddy in the sitting room.

Bill and Fleur were on the sofa, and the latter, with Teddy on her lap, was cooing and singing to
him in French. Andromeda's eyes were trained on her grandson. She was as composed as ever; a
serene, gentler imprint of Bellatrix... but she looked like she had never slept a day in her life.

“Hello,” Hermione said, perching on an armchair.

They greeted her back in one voice, and then lapsed into the silence that befalls those who have
absolutely nothing to say to each other. Hermione actually hadn’t ever exchanged two words with
Andromeda.
The only way out was to bring up the weather... but that proved to be unnecessary, when they had a
giggling, gurgling child to look at.

By and by, Mrs Weasley joined them, bringing a box of old stuffed animals, and time flew as they
watched Teddy hurl them across the room.

Finally, Harry, Ron, Mr Weasley, and Percy returned, and they all settled around the table. One seat
was transfigured into a highchair for Teddy, but he was most adamant about sitting on Harry’s lap.
He wouldn’t let him eat in peace, reaching out to grab his fork, his nose, his glasses - and Harry
seemed to enjoy every minute of it.

“How are things at the orphanage, Andromeda?” Mr Weasley asked.

“Well,” she replied with a half-smile, “We have sixty-three children under our care now, and
twenty-six are headed to Hogwarts.”

“That’s wonderful,” Mrs Weasley said.

“Your Ministry’s being awfully slow about getting sufficient Wolfsbane to Hogwarts, though,” she
added with a sharp look between Mr Weasley and Percy, “I’m not fond of rapping at Kingsley’s
door for everything that lags, but as it as, nearly everything lags.”

“It’s going to take time and money,” Percy bristled officiously, “The Creature Department has
already allocated–”

Andromeda scoffed. “We’ve had more and more donations coming in this past month. We have
enough to pay a private potion manufacturer to get the job done–”

Teddy babbled and smashed his tiny hand into Harry’s plate, and they all laughed as he proceeded
to smear food all over his own face.

“I’m glad more people are donating,” Harry said to Andromeda, while attempting to convince
Teddy that napkins should not be feared, “You’d sounded worried, before...”

She nodded. “Things were bleak in June. I was afraid I would bleed Draco dry, and my dear sister
would think it was an act of vengeance.”

Hermione froze... Then she slowly continued to eat.

Mrs Weasley asked Andromeda if she’d like to go through some of the old toys in their attic, for
Teddy, and the topic of conversation shifted completely.

Hermione lost interest. The treacle tart was nice.

At ten, on a glorious Saturday morning, she met Dankworth outside 33, Tower 2, Starthistle Hill.
He handed her the keys to the flat, she gave him a bag of money, and the happy moment of their
parting finally came about.
Hermione had brought Harry with her, and together they went from room to room changing the
walls to the light duck-egg blue that had been stuck in her head for weeks.

Well, she did the charm work. He followed behind, munching on a chocolate frog.

An hour later, Ron arrived, carrying a potted, shimmering flutterby bush.

“From mum,” he said as she beamed with delight and went to put it on the bedroom balcony.

Back in the living room, she got out the stuff she’d bought at Exeter; a box labelled ‘kitchen’, and
one labelled ‘linen’, as well as all the boxes she’d brought from her parents’ place.

“Okay,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Clothes and linen go to the bedroom, books and
potions supplies go in the study. And – Oh my god, Ron, be careful! There’s a shelf full of books in
there! Keep it straight!”

She ignored the way they grinned at each other as they levitated the cartons and left the room. She
picked up the carton full of folders and scrolls and followed.

There was no question about which room she wanted to attended to first. It was to be the study –
the balcony-less bedroom.

Her parents had let her take the entire bookshelf off the wall in her room in Melbourne, but owing
to the difference in area, she had to cast a neat severing charm and split the shelf into four, putting
them along two walls.

Just when she had moved the chest of drawers into the bedroom, there was a knock at the door: The
furniture had arrived.

More cartons full of shrunken goods piled up in the living room.

Gradually, the study came together. While Ron put potions-related paraphernalia into the bureau,
and Harry put her scrolls and folders in the cabinet, Hermione transfigured the bed into a functional
desk. One of the armchairs, the footstool, one table lamp, and the standard lamp were brought in.
She hung curtains on the window behind the desk.

“Nice,” Ron remarked when they stood back and looked at the finished product. “Very you.”

It was, and she loved it. She couldn’t reign in an insanely happy grin. Standing around the desk,
they ate mince pies that Mrs Weasley had sent.

Back to the cartons —

Ron was peering into one, when a long, thick, battering ram like object came flying out of the
fireplace, and landed with a wham on the floor.

“Holy shit!” Ron roared and stumbled back with his arms windmilling and his eyes wide with
terror.

A few seconds later, Theo and Draco popped out of the fire.

“Hello,” Theo said jovially. He was carrying a big bag of takeaway. “Ayup, Hermione. I’ve brought
your dinner.”

She smiled, “Thank you, I –”

“What the buggering, bloody fuck, Nott?!” Ron thundered.

“What’s your problem?” Theo sneered.

“What is that?” Ron pointed at the cylinder.

“Oh, that. It’s a gift for Hermione.”

“Really?” Hermione beamed.

She started towards it, but Theo blocked her way.

“No, no,” he chided, “In the end.”

Ron was choleric.

“You can’t just hurl things through the floo like that!” he raged, “You almost brained me.”

“What brain?”

“You ruddy dick.”

“Did it hit you?”

“No. But it came damn close–”

“Oh, Merlin.”

Theo left the room. Ron charged after him, leaving Hermione alone with Harry and Draco. The
atmosphere was immediately a hundred times more tense.

She looked between Draco, (standing by a window, peering at the lane below,) and Harry
(apparently attempting to muster the pluck to speak.)

“I regret my behaviour from the other evening.”

Draco gave him a fleeting, even glance. “I’m sure you do.”

“I wasn’t myself.”
“Well, it’s too late to call off the hitwizard now.”

“Huh?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Let it go, Potter.”

Then he turned back to the window and Harry turned to her. She pulled in a deep breath and forced
herself back into business mode.

“Let’s sort out the bedroom, Harry?” He nodded and left. “Draco, could you put that carton in the
kitchen, please? It’s the door right behind you.”

She ran before he could tell her to fuck off.

It had gone well. Very smoothly, as far as she was concerned. After all, she had experienced true
agony while trying (and failing) to apologise to Draco, last year.

Theo and Ron were in the bedroom, still bickering.

“...if anything, Weasley, you owe me. I saved you from the temper of your ex-girlfriend the other
day–”

“You locked me in the cellar!”

“Do you have any idea how angry Verity is? What did you do?”

“That’s none of your fucking business.”

Hermione went and stood between them, shoving bedsheets and the blanket into Theo’s hands and
curtains into Ron’s.

She put the chest of drawers next to the mirror, thinking it could serve as storage and a dressing
table. With practiced ease, she went about filling the drawers and wardrobe, while Harry engorged
and arranged the second armchair, the nightstand, and table lamp.

She hung photographs on the wall.

With the bedroom all done, Harry and Ron took their leave. One had his standing appointment with
Healer Asher, and the other just looked painfully irate, so she thanked and hugged them both.

She returned to the living room, after carefully laying out toiletries in the bathroom, and saw that –
unsurprisingly – the kitchen carton was at the same spot on the floor.
But it was open. And Draco was still by the window, holding one of her new teacups, with the tag
of one of her new tea bags trailing over the side.

She made a noise of indignation and disbelief, and he looked over at her with an arched brow. Then
he took a delicate sip of tea.

“I brought you here to help!” Theo rebuked from the door.

Draco curled his lip, and with a casual, uncaring air, wandered out the room and into the hallway.

Thereupon, Theo and Hermione tackled the kitchen. It was so small and the items so few, that it
took only little over half an hour to arrange everything in the cupboard.

All that remained was the living room.

Armchairs were given their place in the middle. She put the two bottles of wine and four wine
glasses in the sideboard: she had decided that it would be her cellarette. The tablecloth went on the
dining table, curtains on the windows, the clock was hung over the fireplace, and framed art prints
were hung on the only free wall.
Finally, Theo permitted her to open his present, which was, quite obviously, going to be a rug.
Once unfurled, she found it to be made of deep ultramarine wool, and covered with an intricate
diamond pattern in white thread.

“Dug this out of the Nott vaults,” he said, “It’s a Moroccan Kilim, I believe. Hand woven. And
before you start stammering and blushing, let me tell you, I’d much rather it be with someone who
appreciates it, than having it sit rolled up in a dark vault. Will you appreciate it?”

“Yes. Everyday. It’s gorgeous.”

“Good.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Pff.”

Hermione levitated the furniture and Theo spread the rug across the middle of the room.

And that was it. The final stroke. Her home was ready. She swayed on her feet, for a moment
completely overwhelmed, and Theo put his arm around her.

“Let's celebrate,” Hermione beamed, “Would you care for some wine?”

“Sounds splendid. Can’t stay long, though... I have a dinner date with ma belle. And excuse me, I
must go inaugurate your facilities.”

She continued to admire the room a marvellous, dreamy reverie that was interrupted by an irritating
remembrance: There was a stray Draco somewhere in her flat.
She found him in the study.

He was sitting on her armchair, with his feet on her footstool, reading one of her books under the
light of her lamp. The empty teacup was on the corner of her desk.

“You know,” she called out loudly, “You may just be the worst person I know.”

He looked up slowly. His forehead furrowed as he returned to reality. Then his gaze locked on her.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

He closed the book and held it up. Goethe’s Faust .

“The dark side of the Razor’s Edge, isn’t it?”

He shrugged indolently. “It’s like Greek Mythology all over again.”

“I’ve read what Faustus wrote about alchemy, potion-brewing, and astronomy, but there wasn’t any
book about him in the Hogwarts library.”

She shifted, crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame, while Draco nodded.

“Probably because Hogwarts – Dumbledore – had decided that ambition is a dirty word.” He
looked at the cover of the book and ran a finger along the edge, “Although, in this case...”

“Yes?”

“Well, Mephistopheles was human, obviously. An astronomer and alchemist much like Faustus.
They decided that Manticores sing profound, universal truths while devouring their prey. They
attempted to make a deal with one – said they’d bring it a fat, juicy man to eat, if it’ll let them listen
to its song. That did not end well for Faustus. Mephisto survived... but ran off somewhere and was
never heard from again.”

“That,” Hermione pointed at the book, “Is packed with much more complexity and philosophy than
such an anecdote deserves.”

“Yes.”

He smirked then, as though he hadn’t been reading about the torment of being and doing. He was
stretched out, ankles crossed, like he hadn’t a single care in the world.

His grimace from the awful evening at the pub was back in her mind’s eye.

“Why are you here,” she asked edgily, “If you had no intention of helping?”

Her tone didn’t faze him at all. “Have you ever successfully said ‘ no’ to Theo when he’s flapping
around, yapping incessantly, and physically dragging you someplace?”

Theo arrived next to her at that moment and tartly declared, “You’re a useless pain in the arse.”

“No, that’s you, actually.”

Theo sniffed. “Well, go away now.”

“Gladly.”

Draco stood, picked up the teacup and the book, and stalked past the two of them.

“Excuse me,” Hermione hissed and chased after him, “Where are you taking that?”

“To the kitchen, obviously” he replied.

“I mean the book, obviously.” she growled.

“I’m borrowing it.”

“Who said you could?!”

He grinned over his shoulder. “Oh, now you don’t want to lend me your books?”

She stopped short, glaring at his back as he entered the kitchen. She made a sharp turn towards the
sideboard and took out the bottle of riesling and two glasses.

“I thought you were leaving,” Theo barked.

She looked back and saw Draco settled comfortably in an armchair again .

“I’ll stay for a glass of wine.”

“No,” Theo retorted, “Wine is only for those who contributed.”

“I contribute just by existing,” Draco said haughtily, “By being striking and eye-catching.”

She was going to kill him with a corkscrew.

But she did end up pouring out three glasses of wine.

“This place is cute and charming just like you are.”

Hermione smiled, and it widened at the light, fruity taste of the wine.

“Pity you don’t have an automated sink,” Theo added.

“Don’t need it,” Hermione replied, “But I wish I had a talking door. I would call it Theo-door.”
Theo groaned, not at all impressed. Draco chuckled... and shook his head like he wished he
hadn’t.

That laugh was Draco’s lone attempt at participation. While Hermione and Theo sat on the sofa and
talked leisurely, he went back to reading, completely unbothered, occasionally sipping from the
glass that floated in the air next to him.

After one serving, Theo got up and stretched.

“Have a lovely first night,” he said to Hermione. To Draco, he said, “Twat. Stay at Andromeda’s
tonight.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

She must have looked puzzled, because after Theo had leapt into the fireplace, Draco deemed it
necessary to explain.

“He’s meeting Luna after a week. It’s going to be... obscene.”

“Ah. Bletch.”

“Truly.”

She swallowed the last sip from her glass. His was already empty. Should she... offer a refill? He
would definitely prefer to leave.

“It’s all your fault,” he accused.

She sighed. “What now?”

The resignation in her tone made him grin. “Your fault I’ve seen and heard things that have scarred
me for life. You brought those two together.”

Hermione squared her shoulders, very eager to set him straight. “They met outside the music room.
Luna was crouched by the door with an extendable ear, listening to you play. Theo came around
looking for you. You brought them together.”

He was quiet for a bit, digesting that information.

“Well, fuck,” he muttered, “And now I’m being punished for it. Granger, could we stage this
conversation in front of Theo? Remind him that I’m the reason he isn’t a lonely old bastard,
wanking into his hand.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose. “He isn’t going to give you credit for it.” Before he could speak, she
jumped up. “More wine?”

He took another moment of consideration, and the tip of his tongue darted out to wet his lips.

“Sure.”
She could hear him moving... doing things... as she emptied the last of the bottle into the two
glasses. When she turned, he was standing in front of her salon wall, with her book tucked
possessively under his arm.

“Would you like a tour?” she asked as she approached, and handed him his glass.

He smirked in a way that suggested he had an impertinent quip at the ready. But ultimately, all he
said was, “Go on.”

She didn’t care that it was Draco Malfoy. She had been itching to do this since she’d first
envisioned this wall.

“This one’s by Edgar Degas. I saw it during my first trip to the National Gallery. I was learning
ballet at the time, and just... fell in love with this painting.”

She shot him a look, and, as she had suspected, the mention of little Hermione as a ballerina had
given rise to the most uncomplimentary smile.

“Well, I wasn’t very good, so I quit.” she muttered quickly, “This one’s also from the National
Gallery. I got it after our first year. It reminded me of the Hogwarts Express.”

“I can see why.”

He moved closer and peered at Turner’s Rain, Steam, and Speed for no little time, and she hung
back quietly. When he leaned back, she continued.

“This one’s a woodblock print depicting Mount Fuji, by Hiroshi Yoshida. My mum gave it to me.
She went to Japan one summer for a conference, and came back absolutely obsessed with Japanese
art.”

Again, he looked closer for some time.

“What on earth is going on here?” he asked, when they’d moved to the next frame.

“Ah, Leonora Carrington. It’s like you’ve been dropped in the middle of a fantastical story, isn’t it?
Like you’re interrupting something amazing. Look at how the one with the cow’s head stares. Even
the title has the same feel... it’s called And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur.”

“Is that a crystal ball reading going on?”

“Looks like.”

“What is that strange petal-faced creature? And the dogs? Is that you dancing the ballet at the
back?”

She snorted delicately. “Very funny. It’s surrealism. You’re meant to immerse yourself in it, not
intellectualise it.”
“And you like that?” he asked doubtfully, “You like not intellectualising something?”

“It’s a bit like how I felt when I suddenly found myself in the world of magic.”

“You intellectualise the fuck out of magic.”

She laughed. “Yes, well. After a point, I can’t help myself.”

They moved to the next one; a dark, dramatic etching.

“It’s a scene from Dante’s Divine Comedy ; an epic poem about the afterlife,” she said, “You really
should read it. The first part, Inferno , is about a journey through hell. This is an illustration from
there, by Gustave Doré, of Dante and Virgil leaving the dark wood. It’s so... evocative. I saw it in a
volume at the library, and got it photocopied at once. Er, that’s a machine that works like a doubling
charm.”

She was just throwing words at him, likely boring him. As always, it was impossible to actually
gauge his expression.

“The illustrations in that book are also nice,” she said smiling forcefully up at him, “The one
you’ve nobbled.”

He raised his brow and held the book out to her.

“Granger, I’m not actually going to take it if you expressly forbid it.”

“Shut up,” she said, and pushed it back towards him.

The final picture was an abstract: The dark background was barely visible, covered in streaks of
red, pink, white, and orange.

“I got this one last month, from Sydney. It’s by an aboriginal artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about the Dreaming... about their ancestors and cosmology. I – I'm sorry.” She looked up at
him and shrugged ruefully. “I don’t think I can explain it all that well.”

“What’s it called?”

“Yam Story.”

“Why?”

“The bush yam holds a very significant place in their lives. And, you know, even if I can’t fully
understand this painting, I really like it. It's so compelling and–”

Eye-catching.

She walked back to the sofa, plopping down and savouring her wine, while he stayed there,
continuing to look at the pictures. The scene could’ve been a work of art, too – a tall, straight-
backed young man with dark clothes and light hair, clutching a book and gazing at a cluster of
eclectic art. Then he turned around, and it got even better.

He returned to his chair, after placing the book on the coffee table, and sat back... catalysing
another image just waiting to be painted: Beige upholstery, charcoal clothing. Pale colouring on a
dark horse. Light yellow wine and light grey eyes.

“I met a woman during my travels,” Hermione said, “From the First Nation, and... she looked at me
like she could tell I was a witch.”

She was talking, so of course, he would look at her. It was difficult to look at him while he was
looking at her.

“She told me all these stories – ‘Dreamtime’ stories – about the powers their ancestors had... about
nature and animals...”

“Magic has been around for a very long time.”

“I know,” she said, swilling the wine around in her glass as she deliberated, “But it got me thinking
about the language of magic–”

“Are you going to intellectualise magic now?”

She bit back a smile. “Yes.”

“Go on,” he said again.

She didn’t care that it was Draco Malfoy. She needed to have this conversation with someone other
than herself.

“Incantations are so arbitrary, aren't they? We've chosen Latin for our spells but they aren't what
magic reacts to, right? Magic responds to intent. So, when I say accio, an object will come flying
towards me because I have summoned it, not because I said that particular word.”

“You summoned it using that word. It's a device, like your wand.”

“I can do wandless and non-verbal magic. The appellation of the spell is basically an
accoutrement.”

“What do you think when you’re summoning something non-verbally? What do you say in your
head?”

She had a sip of wine and sighed. “Accio.”

“Summon the book.”

“What?”

Suddenly, she was pulled completely out of the moment....... A tent surrounded by snow. Harry. The
History of Magic .......

“Summon it,” he said, gesturing towards Faust with his chin, “And don’t say... er, think accio . Let
the power of your intent work its magic.”

Scowling at his smirk, she set her glass on the table and sat up straight, crossed her legs, and
clasped her hands around her knees. She fixed her gaze on the book and took in a deep, centring
breath, sharpening her focus just like she had when she’d first attempted wandless magic in her
dorm. She’d felt like Matilda Wormwood back then; and Matilda never had any fancy hocus-pocus
invocations. It was just... tip over... Tip over...

Come, she urged the book, come.

Nothing happened.

Come here, she pleaded, picturing her magic as a glowing tendril, reaching out and grabbing the
book.

Come here come here come come comecomecomecomecome

She tried for-fucking-ever. He stayed patiently quiet.

“Sod it,” she hissed and slumped back into the sofa. She looked at her wine glass and thought accio
, and it zoomed into her hand.

Draco was unnecessarily self-satisfied.

“Why does your broom spring up when you say up?”

“It’s never as easy as that.”

“Yes, it is, you – Oh.”

She flushed wildly and looked away from his ludic grin. She couldn’t believe he’d brought... it... up
again and good god, Hermione. Phrasing.

Spates of warmth rushed through her as she wondered what exactly it would take to make it
happen, then. What if she went to him and trailed a hand up his thigh...

“Immature prat,” she muttered.

He chuckled softly.
She could sit on his lap and drag her fingers down his torso, and up again... along the sides of his
neck...

It took the rest of her wine to alleviate her parched mouth.

“It’s something like a pheonix-or-the-flame question,” Draco said.

“Hm?”

Her heartrate was all over the place. He was looking at her expectantly, and she had no idea what
he was talking about.

“Surely I don’t need to give you a history lesson,” he went on, “You can trace magic in this region
back to Polada and Stonehenge and all that... and you can trace the etymology of our current roster
of spells back to the druids, the ancient Celts, and the Romans. We were only able to properly wield
magic once we had incantations. The language of magic is much stronger, but similar to the
language of speech. It has been established that accio will summon things... so it does. Just like
we’ve decided that bumptious means bumptious, and bint means bint .”

She was back to herself, after that.

“It's not like the phoenix-or-the-flame, because obviously magic came first. It’s like – Oh.” In her
excitement she slid forward, nearly falling off the sofa. “It’s like in Faust, when he changed the
Gospel of Saint John. In the beginning was the Act. The act of performing magic far precedes
verbally invoking it. That’s how children have uncontrolled bouts of magic, isn’t it? Intent and
emotion. And,” she pressed, raising her hand as he made to interject, “Talking about words and
their meanings; I can offer you a variety of words to convey a single intent. Prat, arse, berk, prick,
etcetera.”

He leaned forward, resting an elbow on his thigh, and took a firm sip of wine like some sort of film
star.

“There’s a big difference between saying or doing something, and performing magic. Magic isn’t
just any old action... it’s a force inside you. It’s physiological. You learn to harness it, but, at the
same time, your body regulates and keeps it in control, as it does with your blood, organs,
hormones, what have you. It keeps a fucking tight hold on it. Yes, children are susceptible to
uncontrolled magic, but children also piss and shit themselves.”

“So, an adult with a weak or volatile constitution could also fall victim to uncontrolled magic?” she
asked.

“Happens all the time,” he quipped, “Spells give your magic purpose and a direction. The strength
of your intent is just a... what was it... an accoutrement. And incidentally, the incantation matters
very much. Haven’t you ever tried an unknown spell? It’ll do what it’s meant to do, even without
the aid of your glorious intent.”

He looked well pleased, but... did he still have scars from that awful unknown curse?

“It’s hard to get my head around that, you know. That a word or phrase dictates the magic. There
are thousands of cultures across the world; some 7000 different languages and dialects. Each must
have their own version for all spells. If I were to learn the, umm, Mandarin, or the Tagalog version
of accio, I’ll be able to use them to summon things?”

“You should. It’s the same with potion-making, as well.”

“What do you–”

“It’s magic, Granger. You’ve been around it long enough. You’re meant to immerse yourself in it,
not intellectualise it.”

She huffed a laugh, feeling her shoulders drop. He downed the last of his wine and looked towards
the fireplace, shifting as though he was standing up...

“Would you like something to eat?” she blurted out.

He looked at her blankly.

“Well, Theo brought a lot of food,” she mammered, “It's not like you can eat at home, what with all
the obscenity... and... and it’s already way past dinnertime.”

He was scathingly entertained. “First night in your flat and you’re already panicking at the thought
of being alone?”

“No,” she rushed, “I want to know what you meant about potion-making.”

“I see.”

“I have another bottle of wine.”

He pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, considering. Then...

“All right.” He stood up. “I’m going to pop into the lav.”

“Okay.”

The second he left the room, she jumped and bolted into the kitchen. She wasn’t bothered by the
idea of finishing both her bottles of wine in one night; she didn’t care the she was now setting a
table for her and Draco... Malfoy...

Pressing her lips together as delirious laughter threaten to burst forth –-- She didn’t care as long as
it meant that the evening wouldn’t end yet.

She put two plates and the six sandwiches that Theo had thought she’d need on the table and then
went back to the sideboard. He re-entered the room while she was uncorking the bottle of Pinot
Noir, and even though she stayed fixed on her task, it felt like she was watching his every move.
She saw him pause at the door. She could hear him breathe. She could hear him blink.
He came and stood by her, and she could smell him; that mild, refined scent that made her want to
breathe in so deeply. And she could sense him as well. She could feel individual air molecules as
they brushed against him before reaching her, crackling and sizzling over her skin like bubbles
bursting on the surface of a fizzy drink.

She pushed his glass across the sideboard and towards him, keeping her eyes trained down. His
fingers closed delicately around the stem.

“Thanks,” he said, and moved away.

She closed her eyes and pulled in a stabilising gulp of air... followed by a stabilising gulp of rich,
dry wine.

He sat on the chair she would have chosen, facing the room with his back to the wall. She sat
opposite him, and... well, saw another potential painting. A portrait of a young man against a
smooth, pale blue background that brought out the blue undertones in his astonishing eyes.

They picked up a sandwich each.

“So,” she rasped, cleared her throat, and continued, “What did you mean it’s the same with potion
making?”

There he was... eating. Again. She had to just sit, watching him elegantly chew.

Once his mouth had cleared, he said, “Different cultures have their own recipes for potions, too.”

“Right,” Hermione nodded, “Like Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Nvwoti...”

“No. I'm not talking about esoteric systems. I’m talking about there being about ten different ways
to brew a shrinking solution. At least fourteen for Veritaserum. It can range from substituting a few
ingredients... to all; to following an entirely different method.”

“Depending on what ingredients are readily available?”

He was chewing again. She took a distracted bite of her own sandwich and waited.

“Yeah. And... the... well, context, you could say? Necessity is the mother of invention. It’s
interesting when you compare the properties of every chosen ingredient across cultures. So even if
it seems implausible, completely different combinations can give you two near-identical potions.
Everyone needs a cure for the common cold. Use what you can, fix it how you know. Call it
Pepper-up or Baridi Iondoke. ”

She looked at him inquisitively. He had a sip of wine.

“Swahili,” he clarified with a shrug, “I have a book on this; it’s fucking massive.”

“So, Snape was hard and exacting just to be unpleasant? He never even hinted at–”

Draco waved that aside. “Do you really think it would have been wise to encourage
experimentation in a class with Longbottom? Weasley? Finnigan?”

“Oh, like your friends were all competent.”

“Snape was the one who gave me that book.”

Draco reached out for another sandwich. Hermione sat back in her chair. They stayed quiet for
some time, and she slowly sipped her wine, watching it shimmer like a garnet under lamplight.

“Draco?” she ventured with some caution, as he picked up the second half of his sandwich.

“Yeah?”

“What is the pureblood stance towards other cultures, especially the more idiosyncratic ones?”

His mouth turned down before he asked, “What do you mean?”

Hermione pursed her lips to the side, dithering for perhaps a bit too long. She wanted to fully put
together the question in her head before speaking.

“What?” he pressed.

“You... already know that there are parallels between pureblood supremacy and muggle elitism.
Racism, sexism,” she gave him a sharp look, “Classism. Do they also share a parochial outlook? I
mean... rigid, narrow-minded disdain towards other cultures, deeming them inferior, uncivilised, or
savage...?”

He wiped his fingers on a napkin and, like her, sat back. He didn’t look as nettled as before, but he
had a strange sort of frown on his face. She imagined this must've been something he’d never given
any thought to before, and it was like he, too, was carefully constructing his sentences before
verbalising them.

“I'm sure you aren’t asking about basic patriotism that requires you to say England will kick
everybody’s arse in Quidditch?"

“Obviously not.”

He bit his lip and looked off into the distance.

"The supposed root of pureblood ideology is upholding strong and, well, pure magic. There are so
many cultures far older than our own... with roots and practices that have shaped magic as we know
it. The Sacred Twenty-Eight are fucking obsessed with collecting totems and artefacts. They’ll put
them on pedestals, parade them around..." He wet his lips and draw his gaze a bit closer to the
foreground, "Having someone even remotely different for dinner, however, is... unpalatable.”

There was an awful, bitter taste in Hermione’s throat. She downed the last of her wine. The way he
had said unpalatable made her skin crawl.

“I thought as much,” she said shortly. “Are you done?” She gestured towards the food.

“Yes.”
She took their plates and the remaining sandwiches into the kitchen. There, she rinsed them by
hand, to lengthen the time. She dried and stacked them in the cupboard, and put a preserving charm
on the leftovers.

When she returned to the other room, he was once again sitting in the armchair, reading. She
carried their empty glasses to the sideboard, and on turning back, found him looking at her.

“I’ll be back in a second,” she mumbled.

Strange sink, strange taps, in a strange bathroom, in a strange flat. She splashed strange cold water
on her face. Strange supper with a... knock-me-out-with-a-feather... strange companion. Did he find
dining with her unpalatable?
It was too much strangeness for one night, for one girl.
She wiped her face using her strange new towel.

Unpalatable.

She poured them both fresh glasses, and floated them – and the bottle – onto the coffee table. She
decided to sit on the new - strange - lovely rug... running her hands over the elaborate pattern,
leaning back against the sofa seat, trying to calm down...

She needed to hear something good from him. Something to make his voice palatable again.

Draco closed the book and regarded her warily.

“Would you ever sign away your soul for a moment of absolute, perfect fulfilment?” she asked,
watching as his knuckles tightened around the book.

Wariness gave way to spite.

“Would you?” he snapped.

She shook her head. “Not after reading that cautionary tale.”

“Well, my life is a cautionary tale.”

“Man errs as long as he will strive, right?” she added.

He turned his face away, glaring into the fireplace. She thought he might spontaneously dive .

“I’ll amend my question,” she said placidly, “Would you willingly make a pact like that?”

“Not after reading that cautionary tale,” he parroted in a mocking, nasal voice.

Hermione took a sip and stared down at the diamond pattern by her leg. Then she heard him heave
a sigh, deep and heavy. When they looked at one-another again, his aspect was, somehow,
simultaneously resigned and resolved. His eyebrows were pulled down and straight as arrows, his
jaw was clenched. He ran his fingers through his hair.

“All right, Granger,” he spat, “I’ll submit to your shitty attempt at subtle obtrusion. But let me warn
you again – it's not my problem if you don’t like what you hear. I’m not going to make excuses,
entertain your presumptuous questions, or let you fucking analyse me like I’m a character from a
book. I’ll tell you what happened and you’ll bloody well have to sit with it.”

He'd taken things in an unexpectedly direction. She felt a greedy, almost perverse delight, as she
fell in with that trajectory.

“Quite a pile of caveats.”

“When you’re involved, they’re necessary.”

“Fine.”

Draco drank deeply. He was as pale as he had been during the final battle. There was a part of her
that felt awful for pushing him into that position... but it was much smaller than the part that wanted
him to say whatever he had assumed she wanted to hear.

He fixed his eyes on one of the legs of the coffee table, and began talking at a slow, carefully
measured pace.

“I got marked on the twenty-eighth of July, ten at night. My mother sat on a chair in the sodding
wreckage of the drawing room she’d spent so long decorating... The Dark Lord and I stood in front
of the fireplace. He told me I’ll be restoring the honour of my family name, that he’ll be freeing my
father from prison as soon as I complete my task.
“Aren’t you proud, Draco? He asked. Isn’t it a privilege? While his foul snake coiled around my
mother’s chair, hissing. That damn hissing. I think I’ll hear it forever. And Merlin, getting branded
hurt. I didn’t know it then, but it was almost as bad as the cruciatus curse, or whatever the fuck
Potter did to slice me open.”

His right arm jerked towards his left, involuntarily. Then he remembered he was holding a glass
and drank from it instead.

“Initially, I thought I could do it. Kill that sanctimonious old man, curry favour, and when nobody
was looking, get the hell out of the country with my parents. I had a plan. Just had to put blinkers
on and get it done, but... Fuck.” He spat, “Nothing went right. I couldn’t fix the cabinet.”

He sucked in a breath and began talking very fast –

“I hated everyone. I was... drowning in misanthropy. I hated The Dark Lord. I hated Snape for
being everywhere all the bloody time. I positively abhorred Dumbledore. I hated Borgin, I hated all
those contemptible Professors who thought detention mattered to me. I hated my evil aunt, I hated
Dolohov and Rastaban and Yaxley and Greyback. I hated my father and sometimes my mother; I
hated Pansy, I hated Blaise. Crabbe and Goyle were detestable. I hated Potter. And you... oh, I
hated you. The way you’d wrapped Theo around your finger... I hated... hated it.
“But I didn’t hate Theo. I didn’t hate mother even when I did hate her... if that makes any sense. I
didn’t hate Bach, or Chopin, or Ravel, or Schumann. I didn’t hate Herr Dietrich, my miserable old
piano instructor, for secretly corrupting me with Muggle music. Over the course of the year, I
learned that I didn’t hate Dostoevsky, or Wodehouse, or–”

He stopped and looked at her with hollow resentment.

“Why did you send me those books?”

“It made Theo happy,” she whispered hoarsely, “Why did you accept them?”

“Because I knew I was going to die.”

She wished she hadn’t asked that. He sneered, and turned back to the table leg. Once again, his tone
was slow and measured.

“Over the Christmas holidays, the Dark Lord made sure I knew how displeased he was by my lack
of progress. He made mother watch. After that, I...”

He stopped for a couple of breaths.

“The first time I went to Dumbledore, he didn’t let me past his door. He summoned Snape... and I
was convinced he was trying to get me killed, hoping Snape would report back to the Dark Lord.
So, I went back to the cabinet. Made a fucking mess of things with the poisoned mead.
“Then I got a letter telling me mother had been tortured for hours. A little while later, I was
bleeding on a bathroom floor. After the initial period of blistering agony... it ended up being the
first moment of relief in such a long time. I was out for three whole days.
“That was the second time I went to Dumbledore. Say nothing, Draco. It’s for your own good. And
he just stalked off. Felt like he was goading me into doing him in on the spot.
“So,” he shrugged, “I poured my soul into fixing the cabinet. It worked. I did it. We’ve already had
a lovely chat about the night on the tower, haven’t we? No need to reprise that.” He pointed at the
wine bottle. “Is there any more in there?”

“Er... Some,” Hermione mumbled, “Go ahead.”

He emptied the bottle into his glass.

“Snape and I hid in his cellar for a week. When I got back ho – to the Manor, The Dark Lord was
waiting for me. Since I had managed to get the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, he didn’t kill me... but
I’d still failed. Grand old night that was. Two days later, father broke out of Azkaban, and came and
told me everything was going to be fine. He promised. That was when I realised, I trusted your
word – that you’d keep Theo safe – more than I had trusted father in years. Fucking piece of shit,
isn’t he?”

Draco’s laugh was like broken glass. The scorn on his face was jagged.
“We had plenty of guests that summer. Some ministry workers who were tortured and turned, or
Imperiused and sent back out. But mostly, they were muggleborns who’d dared to step out of line.
They were brought in, slapped into the cellar for a bit, beaten, tortured, fed to the snake. Over and
over again. They all ended up in the snake.”

His eyes closed. His hand shook as he brought the glass to his lips. If she had thought he looked
pale before...

“Ollivander got snatched, tortured... interrogated... tortured, again. One day, they captured Charity
Burbage, for writing a damned article. Into the snake she went, too. Over the next week, I tracked
down and read everything she’d ever written. Three days later, they brought in Madeline Hext. She
was... she looked like someone’s barmy grandmother. She had fucking daisies on her robes.
Apparently, they’d found out she had been hiding muggleborns in her attic and helping them jump
the border. And she was half-blood herself.
“After about a dozen rounds of crucio, they threw her in the cellar. Hah. She made fast friends with
Ollivander. They larked about like they were on holiday... interrupted by a bit of torture. She told
me she really loved ginger biscuits; lived for them. So, I brought her some. And... Wormtail... he...
caught her... with them.”

He slapped a palm over his eyes and kept it there as he spoke.

“They... tore that old woman open. They... cut her up. That’s what a thief deserves.”

He dragged his hand down his face, revealing eyes that were made of pure devastation. They were
brimming over with guilt and regret and horribleness.

“That evening, I apparated to Aunt Andromeda’s. Didn’t expect to burst upon a wedding, but–” He
shrugged and threw down his wine, “Do you need to hear more, Granger?”

“No,” she gasped at once, “No, I... No.”

It was quiet. Hermione’s insides were smarting and twisting in the most awful way... like television
static and snakes. He hadn’t stopped glaring at the table leg, but his pallor had turned into a dull
flush. He looked embarrassed and ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

He glanced up and laughed mirthlessly.

“An apology from you and Potter? Is it my birthday?”

She still had wine in her glass, and she downed it.

“I wasn’t apologising. Would you like some water?” she asked.

He was taken aback. “Yes. Er, please.”

She shuffled into the kitchen and, as she filled two glasses, she did a few breathing exercises. She
stood by the sink and counted till four hundred. He’d probably appreciate a few minutes to collect
himself, as well. She fully expected him to take his leave now.

Gah, there was always such a dichotomy of feelings when he was concerned. The agony in his face
left her aching to touch him... but something told her that touching him would be catastrophic... for
her. For the buzzing in her nerves.

When she returned with water, he was standing in front of the paintings again; in front of the
daughter of the minotaur.

“There’s a crushed rose in here, too,” he murmured, “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes,” she said, “And clouds and stars on top. They look like they’re sweeping across the
painting.”

If she could take his hand and jump into any one of those pictures, she would. Would he dance with
her, like Mary Poppins and Bert did? He shuffled to the side and stared blankly at Mount Fuji. She
held her tongue for a solid chunk of time... until she couldn’t anymore.

“Can I ask you something?”

“For Merlin's sake,” he grumbled.

He marched back to the armchair and drained the entire glass of water.

“You can say no,” Hermione told him, settling back on the carpet.

“That’s the slimiest part about asking if you can ask a question. You know I’ll bloody well wonder
about it. Specially after...” he threw up a hand and scowled.

“So, I may ask?”

“Fuck you, Granger. Ask.”

“Why were you so... adamant... on getting me to thank you?”

He definitely flushed at that. He most certainly looked embarrassed.

“Ugh,” he groaned, “I was... panicking. There is really no need to discuss this. But isn’t it just
polite to thank someone when they save your life?”

Hermione was having none of that. “Panicking? What are you on about?”
He huffed and stared at the ceiling – his eyes were most beautifully round when he looked up. “I
needed you to remember that I had saved your life, in case you decided to tell Theo he can’t have
anything more to do with me.”

“What??!” she spluttered, “Are you mad?”

“He listens to you, all right? You could have easily poisoned him against–”

“You are mad! Raving. Theo?? You thought Theo Nott would just... chuck you?! He calls you his
brother!”

“Yeah, well...”

God, he was so red, she wanted to laugh. It was absolutely darling .

“Draco,” she floundered, “You – I mean – what?”

“Just shut the fuck up, will you? I wasn’t sure about anything at that point. And you and your weird
hold over him made it all worse. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve wanted to shove you
off the highest cliff I could find... but restrained myself because Theo wouldn’t like that...? I’ve had
to recite that to myself so many times over the past year. And not too long ago, it used to be the
Dark Lord wouldn’t like that. Can you see how tragic that is?”

Mr Ranger isn’t gonna like this, Yogi.

“My version of that was For Theo’s sake,” she said. Then she bit her lip because she was so close to
laughter.

One of his slow grins unfurled across his face, finally giving her permission to chuckle.

“He’d like yours much more.”

“It’s telling isn’t it, that you turned him into a monster and I deified him. Obviously, I’m more
deserving of his friendship.”

“Or it’s just habit. I’m used to fearing monsters and you’re used to serving the right cause.”

“I fear monsters, too, Draco.”

“Good for you.”

“And you did serve the right cause.”

“I know.”

“Penitents, behold elated... The redeeming face.”

He cocked his brow questioningly. (Questioning-her-sanity-ingly.)

“I’m afraid I may have spoilt the end of Faust for you,” she shrugged.

“What does the face of redemption look like?” he asked.

Well, wasn’t that just about the most involuted question anyone had ever asked her? How was she
supposed to answer that? She could more easily stare into his eyes, pick out their exact shade of
grey, and change the colour of her walls.

“I think it’s different for everyone,” she hedged, “For me... it’s my mother’s face at sunset, on a
riverbank... while she tells me she’s forgiven me.”

He appeared thoughtful for a few minutes, tapping his long fingers against his knee.

“I wish I’d had the chance to do what you did.”

Her smile twisted. “Easier said than done.”

“Most things are, Granger.”

“Oh, apologies for being trite.”

“Second apology of the day. My, my.”

She scowled at him, before returning to her original point – “Easier said than done, but I don’t
regret doing it. Lupin told me there was an attack planned on their neighbourhood.”

“Yeah.”

“How did Theo tell you about him and Luna?”

Draco reared back, blinking; a look that said, where the hell did that come from?

“I wondered about it,” she told him breezily, “But Theo wasn’t very forthcoming.”

That earned her another slow grin. She followed its motion closely and carefully.

“When I woke up healed from Potter’s curse, I did not see my weeping mother, nor a prim hag of a
matron.”

“Madam Pomfrey is not a hag!”

“There was a girl with vegetable earrings staring at me, and the first thing I hear is that I ought to
carry gnome saliva around for my safety. Would I like some of hers?”

“Luna just does not ease you into her quirks, does she?”

“Not at all. So, I asked, pardon me, but who the fuck are you? Before she could reply, Theo came
in, very flustered, called Pomfrey, there was a whole load of diagnostic shit to be done... but
anyway. After all that, Luna tells me my aura is beautiful like an egg yolk, and kind of just...
wanders off like a ghost. So, I ask Theo... why the buggering hell was that nutter at my bedside?
And he turns purple and says, she’s my girlfriend. I thought he’s having me on at first, but then...”

“You laughed,” Hermione grinned, “A lot. I heard that bit.”

Just then, in that moment, she felt awash with gentle contentment. It hit her like a soft, early
morning ocean breeze. He was still immersed in his memory, smirking slightly, looking perfectly
comfortable in the beige armchair. She smiled at him, at the armchair, at their empty glasses on the
table... at the beautiful rug... at her walls... at the wispy curtains adorning her window, assuming
just a hint of a grey-sepia gradient, as —

“Draco, ” she breathed with wide eyes, “It’s morning.”

Shock rippled across his face, and he froze, flummoxed... then he whipped around to stare at the
window, and stayed frozen like that. She pressed her lips together, waiting for him to turn back.

He turned with a soft, unsettled frown, blinking in slow motion. His lips were slightly parted and
his eyes were unfocused. He was the enigma of dawn.

And when he stood up, he bestowed a sedate nod of his head and a pawky, softly muttered, “Well,
goodbye,” upon her.

She rose to her feet as well, and watched his back move towards the fireplace; his backlit silhouette
against the arch.

The clock above read twenty past five.

“Have a nice day,” she called.

He glanced back, over his shoulder, to shoot her a wry look... like the sun peeking over the horizon.
Then he was gone, and she stood alone in silence.

She wafted into her bedroom, where the curtains skimming over the glass balcony door were
drenched in the same grey-sepia gradient. The edge of every surface in the room was lined with
diffused mauve light. She stepped out onto the balcony, shivering at the sudden chill of early
morning air. The starthistle at the very top of the hill was golden.
Leaving the door open, she re-entered her bedroom and stopped in front of the mirror. Her
complexion was roseate and her eyes were bright; she did not look at all like she had suffered a
sleepless night.

She sat on her new bed, watching her new curtains flutter as the new day broke.

Arranging the flat had felt like preparing a set for a play.
 Hermione Granger’s Adult Life: Traversing Through Imponderable Realms.

Act 1. Scene 1:

A protracted evening with Draco.

So completely bizarre. So, so exhilarating.

Chapter End Notes

1. The Balcony, Édouard Manet

2. Ballet Dancers, Edgar Degas
3. Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway, J. M. W. Turner
4. Mt. Fuji from Okitsu, Hiroshi Yoshida
5. And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, Leonora Carrington
6. Dante and Virgil leaving the Dark Wood, Gustave Doré
7. Yam Story ’96, Emily Kame Kngwarreye

ARTWORK:
Hermione's insanely happy grin by Bookloverdream
 Seventy-One
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Hermione’s black suede block-heeled pumps made a much deeper click-clack than Hermafalda’s
pointy kitten-heels had. Under plain black robes, she wore, from head to toe, brand new clothes.
Her hair was pulled back and secured with multiple pins. A faded satchel was slung on her
shoulder; her charmed beaded bag had been left behind at home, far, far away from the scrutiny of
the DMLE.
Her steps were small, but her pace was quick. She skittered down the Ministry atrium, her eyes
darting from side to side, one hand gripping the strap of her bag. Her mind was very unhelpfully
supplying her with plenty of examples to illustrate her historical inability to make a good first
impression. Add to that the usual pre-assessment jitters and the hormonal flux that preceded her
period... It could be said that Hermione was a bit... off.

Just don’t say it to her face.

It was eleven in the morning: Peak working hours. There was no reason for there to be so many
people loitering around in the atrium. Far too many of them gave her second – and third – looks.
The memorial obelisk was overtly phallic.

She got caught in a swarm of people at the lifts, all of whom were, quite possibly, here for
interviews as well. She cloistered herself into one corner, and her vision was half-obstructed by the
lanky bloke in front of her. Still, she was able to spot Draco when he slipped through the golden
grille right before it closed.
Her first impulse was to tunnel her way, headfirst, through the mass to get to him. Which,
obviously, she vetoed, owing to the general indignity of such a move. She had no idea what he was
doing there and felt a desperate, irrepressible need to find out. As the lift moved upwards, she
considered her options...

The lift came to a rattling halt, ( “Level Five – Department of International Magical Co-operation"
) and Draco, along with about five other people, disembarked.

Hermione firmly shouldered her way towards the front, but it was too late for anything. The grille
slammed shut and they were once again rising, before she could so much as catch a glimpse of
platinum blond hair.

A few more people got off on level four and then at level three. At level two, she and four others,
including the lanky bloke, stepped out.

They walked together across the foyer; a little gaggle of strangers united by apprehension. Had she
made an effort, she might have recognised some of them from the year below at Hogwarts, but she
was not remotely inclined to do that.
Charmed windows showed a post-shower gloom which was completely contrary to the actual
weather outside.
They must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, because after crossing the Improper Use of Magic
office and a series of closed doors, they landed up outside a women’s bathroom. They stopped
there, looking hither and thither cluelessly.

“We’re a bit lost, I reckon,” observed a rotund chap, wielding an overlarge briefcase.

Then they all looked straight at her as if she was supposed to have all the answers.

She simply shrugged and turned a corner, into yet another corridor full of closed doors. But at the
end of the corridor were a set of large oak doors, very much open. And by these doors stood a very
tall young man whom she knew fairly well.

Ron grinned and waved when he saw her approaching.

“Well, fancy seeing you here,” he said.

“Hi,” she rushed, “Where on earth is the Wizengamot Admin office? Feels like we’ve been going
around in circles.”

“Oh. Right this way...”

Ron turned them to the left and down a long corridor, to another set of wide-open doors.

“There you are!”

“Thank you,” she told him earnestly.

He reached out and squeezed her arm. “Best of luck. Not that you need it.”

That statement earned them a lot of scowls and stiff looks from the group. Ron left, and Hermione
took in a huge gulp of air and stepped through the doors.

The insides were brightly lit and utterly chaotic. Her first and only impression of the place was: A
maze of cubicles, wonky towers of parchment, the smell of musty old paper, people shuffling
around looking terribly busy, and pale violet paper planes streaking through the air.

The group stood at the threshold, blinking dumbly at the scene. At one point, a man baring a
million files walked by them, and the rotund chap attempted to ask him for assistance –

A brusque, “Out of the way, please,” was all he got.

They shifted uncertainly into the room, being fully ignored by people in their cubicles, bent over
parchment, deep in discussion, or indolently sipping from flasks.
It was only when they were halfway across the room that they were finally attended to.

“Here for the interviews?” asked a square-jawed woman carrying a clipboard, “This way, please.”

She took them to the back of the area, where there was another door that read:

GEMMA MANDRAKE
HEAD OF THE WIZENGAMOT ADMINISTRATION SERVICES
The woman with the clipboard ushered them inside, into a very sterile waiting room where four
other people were already seated, among whom were Justin and Susan. Hermione moved very
quickly to sit next to them.

“Hello,” she murmured, placing her satchel on her lap.

“Hello,” they whispered back.

The woman with the clipboard sat at a desk in the corner of the room, right next to another, rather
ornate door.

“Mr Adkin!” she called.

The lanky bloke from the lift stood and went through the door.

“I didn’t know either of you were interested in law,” Hermione remarked to her classmates in a
hushed tone.

“I’m not,” Justin shrugged, “This is plan B for me. I’m hoping to get onto the Muggle-Worthy
Excuse Committee. Sounds like a hoot.”

“My auntie and I always talked about it,” Susan said with a half-hearted smile, “But it looks like
there are only three openings available in this department, now that you’re here.”

“Oh, please,” Hermione huffed, looking away. She wanted to wring her hands, but that wouldn’t be
very professional.

“Did you see Cho Chang on your way in?”

“No.”

But that was brilliant, wasn’t it? She already, potentially, had a co-worker who hated her.

About fifteen minutes later Adkin came out. He didn’t look traumatised.

“Ms Andrews!”

A young woman in silver stilettos rose gracefully and went in.

“Did you get through the enormous list that McGonagall had recommended?” Susan asked, “I
managed about half...”

“Heh,” Justin snickered, “I skimmed through some of it.”

Hermione kept quiet. It was for the best.

Andrews breezed out of the room.

“Ms Bones!”

With a tiny squeak, Susan scuttled through the door, leaving Hermione and Justin even tenser than
before.

But when she came out, fifteen minutes later, she had a small smile on her face. She offered a short
nod on her way out, just as “Mr Chappel!” was called upon.

Hermione slipped open her satchel and, keeping her hands inside her bag, flipped through her
notebook.

“Mr Finch-Fletchley!”

She read at record speed, spurred on by the old, unpleasant amalgamation of impatience and dread.
After about twenty pages, Justin came out. He looked benign, gave her a pleasant smile and a wave,
and she watched him walk out of the waiting room.

“Ms Granger!”

She whipped her hands out of her bag and stood up. Everybody watched as she smoothed down her
robes and click-clacked her way towards the ornate door.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She went in.

Madam Mandrake’s office was mid-sized and full of plants. The eponymous woman, who looked
about the same age as McGonagall, had brown hair streaked with grey, and a round, rather splodgy
face. She was wearing deep blue robes and a pair of grey pince-nez with a beaded chain. She
smiled kindly and gestured towards the chair in front of the desk.

“Ms Granger.” She had a soft, lilting voice. “Please sit.”

Her desk was cluttered with parchments, files, family photographs, and tiny glowing succulents.

She peered at Hermione closely for a few moments, making her wonder if she was expecting her to
say something. However, as it was, Hermione had nothing to offer. She had come with the intention
of answering questions, not breaking any ice.

Um... hello? She could say hello. Er, no. Actually –

“Good afternoon, Madam Mandrake.”

She was rewarded with a wide smile.

“Minerva has told me so much about you, Ms Granger. In fact, I wonder if this interview is
necessary at all, after having heard from her. She’s made it quite clear that not hiring you would be
prime foolishness. I’m sure you are familiar with the desire to not have Minerva McGonagall call
you foolish.”

Hermione’s shoulders relaxed as she smiled.

“That desire is what drove me through Hogwarts,” she replied.

Madam Mandrake laughed. “Well, she is extremely proud of you. I’ve been friends with her for
over sixty years now, and never before have I known her to vouch for a student so strongly.
Besides, even without her endorsement... your role in the war has proven how capable you are...”

Hermione’s smile became tight and she fought the urge to cringe.

“Now,” Madam Mandrake continued, “Let's get the formalities done with, shall we? NEWTs
results, please.”

With some relief, Hermione fished out the parchment from her satchel and handed it over.

“Hmm. Yes. Excellent.” She cast a doubling charm on the parchment and kept one for herself. “I’m
aware that Minerva gave you a sizable list of resources. Have you managed to look through some
of those?”

“I have.”

“How many?”

“Um... all?”

“All?”

“Yes?” Hermione squirmed under the woman’s narrow-eyed scrutiny, “I’ve also done some reading
of my own.”

Madam Mandrake clasped her hands together and set her chin on them. “Such as?”

“I’ve gone through the Legal Compedium a few times–”

“A few times.”

“Er, yes. I’ve read up on the most prominent trials of the century, and a few papers published by
key members of the Wizengamot – Barros, Marchbanks, Ogden, Ewart, Cecil, the late Amelia
Bones–”

“Ms Granger,” Madam Mandrake cut in, “Would you complete this quick test, please?”
She accepted the parchment, on which were ten multiple-choice questions. They were achingly
simple, covering the most basic components of magical law, from the Statute of Secrecy to the
Code of Wand Use. Hermione had it done in two minutes.

“I see,” Madam Mandrake nodded, looking down at the test, before filing it away with the copy of
Hermione’s NEWTs results sheet, “That you have already covered what you are required to tackle
over the course of your first year here.”

She sat back and once again gazed at Hermione in a very incisive manner.

“What we do here, Ms Granger, is maintain court documents and case notes. We ratify legal
proceedings, appoint dates for hearings, and manage the Wizengamot schedule. For the first two
years, your duties will involve filing and transcribing, while simultaneously solidifying your legal
knowledge. After those two years, you have the option of continuing on as a mid-level
administrator, or you may move into the Improper Use of Magic Office, or – and this is not an easy
position to secure – there is a chance you may be able to attach yourself to a practitioner in the
Department of Domestic Law.”

Hermione nodded along as she spoke, trying her best to appear sincere and enthused. She knew her
job wouldn’t entail nerve-wracking training sessions, sting operations, trips to China...

“Had I not been the head of the department,” Madam Mandrake said with a smile, “I might’ve been
reprimanded for being premature... but I'd be very happy to welcome you into the Wizengamot
Administrative Services.”

“Oh, thank you, I–”

“But the question is... are you willing to go out on a limb?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You mentioned Madam Barros earlier. You are familiar with her work, then?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You see, Ms Granger,” she went on, “Madam Barros currently has an opening in her team. Would
that be something you’d be interested in?”

At a loss for words, Hermione simply nodded ardently.

“Elena is tough and exacting. Extremely exacting. She’ll find the notion of taking on a newcomer
laughable. I can’t promise you anything, short of one interview. One chance to impress her.”

“But then,” Hermione breathed, “Why would she even agree to see me?”

“Your reputation precedes you.”

Hermione smiled uncomfortably. Right.

Madam Mandrake sensed her distaste, and she laughed. “You won over Minerva. I have a good
feeling about this. Wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t. And if it doesn’t work out, as I’ve said, I’d be
thrilled to have you in my department.”
“Okay,” Hermione mumbled.

“Well. That’s all for now. I will have my assistant send you an owl when I’ve fixed things up.”

“Thank you, Madam Mandrake,” Hermione said warmly.

Hermione’s journey back to the lifts was quite obviously longer than necessary, for she retraced the
steps she’d taken earlier. There had to be a shorter path between the two points, but Hermione was
in no mood to explore. It felt like her brain was actually, physically pulsating every time she
thought about the words one chance to impress her. Which she happened to be doing over and over
again.

While shooting down to the atrium, she was once again shoved into the corner of the lift by a
throng of people escaping for their lunch break. She wrapped her arms around her ribs and pressed
herself into the walls to avoid rubbing up against the very elderly gentleman in front of her.

It was a great relief when she was thrown out into Diagon Alley; bright, warm, and familiar. As she
cut through the thin crowd and inched closer and closer to Finnigan’s, the need for a sunset grog
and a plate full of greasy chips escalated. She pushed through the door, ready to storm towards the
bar and –

Stopped.

Draco was at the bar, (leaning against it in that casual, debonair way that tall, attractive men often
adopted,) talking to a young woman. She had fair hair, was wearing satiny pink robes, and she was
twinkling at him.

Hermione redirected. She located Theo and Luna sitting at a corner table behind a wooden pillar.

“Hi,” she muttered, hanging her satchel on the back of a chair and pulling off her robes.

Luna returned her greeting cheerily, but Theo’s disposition was closer to Hermione’s.

“How’d it go?” he asked her sullenly.

“Fine,” Hermione shrugged, “Job’s mine, if I want.”

One chance to impress her . Hermione was so hungry. She eyed Theo’s ale and Luna’s bright pink
drink with envy. Who the hell was that bint at the bar?

“That’s wonderful!” Luna smiled.

“No big surprise,” Theo added, with some attempt at warmth.

“What’s happened to you?” Hermione asked.

Theo scowled and crossed his arms petulantly. “Ask her,” he grumbled, looking sideways at Luna.
“He’s being silly,” Luna chided, forcibly unlocking his arms and taking his hand in hers.

“She’s leaving again,” Theo snapped, “Four days after coming back.”

“Back to Berlin?” Hermione asked, finally feeling genuinely interested.

“No, Sweden,” Luna beamed, “We’re setting up camp–”

(“For two weeks !” Theo thundered.)

“–begin looking for Crumple-Horned Snorkacks! Mr Scamander has called for the most amazing
equipment from America.”

“How – er.” Hermione glance nervously at Theo who was glaring off into the distance and chewing
his tongue, “How exciting, Luna.”

“Isn’t it? When daddy and I went, we only found footprints and a horn – but with so many creature
detection devices, I'm sure we’ll find an entire herd in no time.”

“Um. Splendid.”

Theo huffed.

There was actual money being put into this. Resources. Seemingly legitimate, institutional backing.
Fucking bonkers.
She was hungry. She smiled broadly and unnaturally at Luna.

That was when Draco came to the table, carrying a tall drink and a plate full of pork scratchings.
Hermione’s stomach protested bitterly.

“Didn’t ask your friend to join us?” Theo asked tartly.

“No.”

Draco sat and Hermione stood.

“Getting a drink,” she muttered and stomped off.

Draco’s friend wasn’t anywhere around. Hermione sat at the bar, while Vassilios prepared the grog
and chunky chips she had requested. She returned to the table in better spirits, with full hands and
the prospect of a full stomach... and fully capable of dealing with the eerie silence amid her
companions.

She wished Luna would stop assiduously petting Theo’s hand, though. It did not appear like he was
very open to it, at that point.

She took one big, reviving sip of grog and scarfed down four chips.

Finally, she looked up at Draco. His hair was tidier than usual and his shirt was navy blue.
“What were you doing at the Ministry?” She sounded cross. Because she was.

“Same as you,” he replied shortly.

He wouldn’t look back at her. He seemed stiff... Uncomfortable... Evasive. And some visceral part
of her recognised that comportment at once. It had all the characteristics of the morning after a
night of mortifying drunkenness.

He regretted and was embarrassed of his candour from two nights ago.

“You got off at level five.”

“I know.”

Theo nicked two chips off her plate.

“I thought you had grand, globetrotting plans.”

Draco stole a chip off her plate. And he still wouldn’t look up.

“The Ministry requires a whole new set of dogsbodies for the Senior Delegates. That means
multiple all expenses paid trips–”

“Yes, it’s such a pity you have no money of your own.”

He smirked and stole another chip. Hermione helped herself to a pork scratching.

“So,” Theo piped up grumpily, “In two days, you’ll both be good little Ministry bums.”

“Not exactly,” Hermione said.

She broke off to quickly eat because Draco, Theo, and Luna had just taken a chip each.

“And you kept that quiet?” Theo sputtered after Hermione had explained.

“I’m not even sure she’ll agree to see me,” she shrugged, “And even if she does, it’s very unlikely
that she’ll take on someone with no experience.”

“You aren’t just someone. You’re Hermione Granger.”

Theo looked less peeved, which stole some of the sting from her scowl.

“That’s not going to matter, Theo. Madam Barros is very uncompromising, and I’ve been told I
have just one chance to impress her.”

“As if you need more than that.”

“I do not make good first impressions,” she huffed.

“Or second, or third, or fourth, or...”

She aimed her scowl towards Draco, and he finally looked back at her, grinning.

“Rubbish,” Theo scoffed, “I adored you from the moment we met.”

“You,” Hermione pointed at him, “Had an agenda. It didn’t matter how I was. All you cared about
was getting me to befriend you.”

“That’s not–”

“Luna, did you like me when we first met?”

“Not at all,” she said with an easy smile, “And you didn’t like me. We’re acquired tastes,
Hermione, and that’s alright. Look at Theo... now that he’s had a taste, he can’t bear to be parted
from me.”

Majorly put out, Theo glared at her. “Oh, I’ll taste you, alright, I’ll–”

“Yes, please,” Luna nodded eagerly, “At least once a day, before I leave.”

Hermione groan-laughed into her hand, and she peeked at Draco who was watching the two of
them like they were actually going at it right there on the table.

Theo stood up, and pulled Luna along.

“No time like the present,” he declared, and they left.

Just like that.

Hermione shook her head at their abandoned drinks.

“I can’t imagine what living under the same roof as those two must be like.”

“Worse than anything you can come up with,” Draco avowed.

She only noticed the sleek black attaché case on the empty chair between them when he flicked it
open. He brough out Faust and pushed it across the table towards her.

“Could I borrow that potion’s book you had mentioned?”

“Sure.”

With Theo and Luna gone, his discomfort was even more apparent. The scene around them re-
enforced it; for what was less like her small, homely flat on a quiet night, than a cavernous pub in
the afternoon?

Hermione irritably bit into a chip and stared upwards. A grid of hazy sunlight, a network of wooden
rafters.
“I bought The Divine Comedy ,” Draco said.

She glanced at him in passing, on the way to peering into the glowing amber liquid in her glass.

“Do you like it?”

“Just bought it today morning,” he said, “From that bookshop near the visitor’s entrance.”

“You didn’t encounter any raving old women this time?”

“Not in the shop.”

She sniffed. “I’m not old.”

“If you say so.”

They were down to four chips and six scratchings, and about one-sixth of their drinks remained.
She didn’t have much time to shake the bloody disquiet out of him.

“How did you talk yourself into becoming a dogsbody? Isn’t that woefully beneath you?”

“It is. But it’ll allow me to go places and–”

“Are you seriously pretending you don’t have the means to travel on your–”

“Let me finish, you gobby termagant–”

(She sputtered with offence.)

“–It’ll allow me to go places with a sense of purpose. Idleness doesn’t suit me.”

“I agree,” she snapped petulantly.

“Yeah?”

“You’re devious enough when you aren’t idle. Can’t imagine what your twisted little brain will
cook up when it has nothing to do.”

“Doesn’t deviousness suit me, Granger?”

He grinned, arching one brow... deviously.

“No.”

He leaned forward with a dangerous tilt to his head. It set off a dormant quivering inside her
ribcage.

“Then what does suit me?”

“A – uh... bonnet.”

Her delivery was pathetic and breathless, but the bemused, reluctant chuckle it brought out of him
was perfect.
They didn’t speak as the last of the food was divvied up and their glasses were drained. Then, she
collected her satchel, draped her robes over an arm, and followed Draco out of the pub.
There was a stilted pause just outside the door, after they’d recovered from the initial assault of
brightness. Draco squinted at her – the sun was in his eyes – and hesitated, like he hoped she would
save him from being the one to spit out a stiff, perfunctory farewell.

She didn’t because she couldn’t.

So, he said, “Well, see you later,” and turned sharply.

She watched him pace down the alley for a few seconds, before setting off behind him. She kept
her distance, but there was nothing to be done about the sound of her block heels on cobblestones.
Nothing at all. Nothing.
Her shadow stretched out in front of her like it was straining to reach him.

It took about eight clip-clomps before he wheeled around and presented her with an irate frown.

“Why are you following me?”

“I’m not,” she swore immediately, “I fancied some ice cream and Fortesque’s happens to be in that
direction.”

His face smoothened slowly, and once again, she found herself inept and blundering. It was right
there at the tip of her tongue – Would you like some too? Would you care to join me? ...Come with?

But she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

Later, she could blame her cowardice on the harsh light, the smattering of people milling around,
the general atmosphere that had none of the shelter or comfort of her home. At that moment, all
she could do was tilt her head to the side, hoping that would be enough.

A tilt. Come with ?

Draco said, “All right,” turned around and resumed walking. Hermione, did too, behind him.

Clip-clomp, clip-clomp.

She cast a silencing charm on her feet.

Once they reached Fortescue’s he walked on without a backward glance. Hermione went in and
ordered two scoops of chocolate raspberry.
There was a park next to Tower 3, really just a round, fenced patch of heath. It was full of downy
birch trees, wild grass, and a few rickety swings and benches. A path wound through and around
them: Henceforth, Hermione's running track.

She returned home flushed and panting, with sweat trickling down her spine.

The brass valve creaked as she turned it, and warm water blasted out of the showerhead. She took
her time washing her hair that had grown longer than it had ever been before.
Wrapped in a towel, she drifted into her bedroom to dress.
Next, she went into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of tea and toast slathered in rainforest plum
jam sent by mum and dad. She sat in her dining nook, sipped her tea and flicked open the
morning’s Prophet. There was a little vase (a transfigured biscuit tin) on the table, full of chicory
flowers that she’d picked at the park.

The routine was familiar, but also so enchantingly new.

There was nothing very interesting in the paper, besides a story about a wizard from Ilkley who
claimed to have been visited by the ghost of Voldemort, and a giant advertisement on the back page
announcing the launch of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes’ brand new Symphonic Spout ( This
singing sensation will get you wet! )

After breakfast, she moved into her study to spend a few hours mugging up every word Madam
Elena Barros had ever written. She went through all her published papers, and doubled down on
every little mention of the woman in recent trials.
Eventually, it got to that horrid point at which even she began to realise the futility of pouring over
words she already knew. More than anything, her mind was preoccupied with the muffled ticking
of her watch. She decided it was time for a break, and abandoned Barros’ dry, matter-of-fact
observations for the zippy humour of Henry Cecil. Curling up in her arm chair, she was lost to the
world.

When she resurfaced, she felt ill.

She shuffled back to her desk with nausea swirling in her stomach. It was the feeling one got after
sitting down with an enormous slice of chocolate cake – one that you shouldn’t have and don’t
particularly want – but still force down your throat anyway.
She’d gone and read the entire book. It was nearing three in the afternoon. It would've been better
to have popped over to the self-improvement section at Foyles. Maybe she would have found a
book called How to Impress Someone When You Only Have One Chance to Do It.

She needed to hatch up a fool-proof plan. So, she pulled out a crisp, fresh sheet of parchment and
wrote ‘Project: Impress Barros and Skive off Administrative Drudgery (IBSAD).’
“I-B-Sad,” she muttered out loud.
Lovely.
‘Project: Impress Barros and Open Possibilities That Instigate Mighty Improvements in Society and
Thoroughly Irradicate Corruption.’

Ridiculous.
La Nausée –

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Hermione stood up and stomped to her front door. She picked her bag off the hook, slipped into her
shoes, and went outside.

She hadn’t had much time to explore her new neighbourhood, save for one trip to the greengrocer’s
and the owlery each. It was time to investigate the two inner alleys.

In the first one, she passed a butcher’s and a repair shop, and came to a halt in front of the
potioneer’s. It had a purple-painted shopfront, with a large window that displayed sacks full of
ingredients like in a spice market. As she was about to move on, a rough gasp of “Ms. Granger,”
lent her pause. A man sprung out of the shop, sputtering the same old lines about honour and
pleasure, and she found herself admiring all manner of roots, powders, and liquids, in a dimly lit,
kitschy room.
The man had a pointy nose, a pointier beard, and such effervescent, genuine love for his ware, that
Hermione ended up leaving the shop, sometime later, with a vial full of premium lavender oil from
Yemen, and a bottle full of specially stabilised Ashwinder eggs.

In the second alley she discovered a Scrivenshaft’s outlet. She promised herself that, if she
convinced Madam Barros to hire her, she would purchase a fancy carved silver quill holder like
Draco had.
There was a pub next, a tailor’s shop, a florist, and a Bistro that had a padlock on the door. At the
end of the lane was a Chinese restaurant called The Hungry Zouwu. An animated drawing of the
aforementioned beast leapt and bounded around the lettering. Maybe the unrelenting churning in
her stomach was hunger?

Inside, Hermione was accosted by a very short woman with short black hair. (“I am Yi Lau! Oh,
when we heard a celebrity had moved into our neighbourhood!!”)

The restaurant was cramped, full of small square tables with red and gold tablecloths. Beautiful
lanterns hung from the ceiling. Hermione sat in a corner, ordered a half-portion of fried rice and Ma
Po tofu, (“My great, great grandmother’s recipe! You will love it!”) and scarfed down absolutely
fantastic food while the garrulous Yi Lau talked at her.

When she was back in the lift, climbing up to the sixth floor, she felt ill again.

She had met two new people who had completely absolved her of the responsibility of impressing
them. Having people feel honoured around her was completely unhelpful.

Stepping inside her flat, she spent a moment just leaning limply against the wall and sighing
pathetically. She sighed like a frail Victorian heroine.

An incessant tapping from the living room brought her back to the twentieth century.
There were two owls pecking at her window, one non-descript brown owl and one – her heart
lurched – was Rodion. The first owl had brought a plain white envelope, and Rodion had brought
her a giant package, the size of two bricks.

It was the potion’s book. It had to be.

The owls fluttered away and she tore apart the brown paper packaging with care.

An Exhaustive and Comparative Study of Potioneering, by Artem Kovalenko.

Leather bound and sturdy, with gilded edges, it really was, as he had said, fucking massive. Yet, it
was incongruously light to hold; Draco must have put a weightless charm on it, for the sake of his
owl. She set it on the table before opening it, and there, right in the middle of the title page, was a
piece of parchment baring Draco’s tidy handwriting.

Montmorency’s Granger’s ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at.

She read it thrice, with wide eyes, before she was able to react. Outwardly she huffed, (don’t ask
for whose benefit,) and rued the fact that she hadn’t made Rodion stay. She wanted to send him
Kafka’s Metamorphosis. With a note inside, of course, but there would be no need for a clever
quote. She would simply write: As a cockroach yourself, I’m sure you will sympathise.

Once the idea had formed, there was nothing else she wanted to do. Damn it. There was no option,
was there? She would be going back downstairs, to the owlery.

And, as she carried the potion’s book into the study and moved to the bookshelf to pull out
Metamorphosis, she smiled mindlessly. All through the process of taking out a post-it from her
drawer, scribbling down the note, wrapping up the book... she kept smiling.

His note had been paraphrased from Three Men in a Boat. She had mentioned it to him once, and
he had read it. He’d bought The Divine Comedy.

Nothing – nothing – beat the unbidden delight of knowing that he took her book suggestions
seriously.

She pressed her lips together to reign it in, as she left her flat, as she got into the lift, as she walked
down the street...

It was only after she had returned home again and was leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting
for her kettle to whistle, that she remembered the letter she’d left on the sideboard. She wandered
over, steaming cup of lemon tea in hand, and slit the envelope open.

Dear Ms Granger,

It is my pleasure to inform you that Madam Elena Barros has agreed to meet with you regarding
the opening in her research team. You are requested to appear at the Department of Domestic Law
on Wednesday, the first of September, at 9 a.m.
Hoping you are well.

Sincerely,
Gemma Mandrake
Head,
Wizengamot Administrative Services
Ministry of Magic

Wednesday.

Tomorrow.

She raced into the study and didn’t move from her desk till midnight.

The moment Hermione stepped into the Ministry atrium, her eardrums ruptured.

The area was swarming with people; more tightly packed than it had ever been, in her experience.
Bodies everywhere ... and in the distance, shooting over everyone’s heads, were three giant jets of
water. The booming, thundering tune of the Irish Quidditch team anthem drowned out every other
sound.

Hermione screwed up her face and pushed through the crowd, inching towards the golden gates. Or
at least, that was the direction she hoped she was heading. It was so fortunate she had decided to
arrive an hour early.

At one point, someone grabbed her arm, and she let out a scream that not even she could hear. But
it was only Harry. Ron appeared at her other side, and so, with the aid of his height, (and Harry’s
Potterness,) they were able to burst out of the crowd and reach the lifts in one piece.

“Bloody hell,” Ron remarked when they were safely ensconced in a lift.

One of their co-passengers – a man wearing a singularly menacing scowl – muttered, “Blatant act
of terrorism, it is.”

Harry and Ron showed her the direct route to the admin and the DDL. She didn’t say a word during
the journey, and they knew her too well to attempt engagement.

At the door, they wished her luck, and told her to come to the Burrow for dinner. She nodded
vacantly. Her ears were still ringing.
After they had left her, she found the nearest window to stare out of till it was time for her
interview.

The window showed a partially cloudy sky, much like it actually was, above the ground. A steady
stream of workers marched by behind her and she paid them no heed. It was technically the first
day for new hires; she wondered if Susan and Justin had got their desired jobs. No doubt, Draco
was three levels below, behaving like Percy.

At ten to nine, she went through the door.

She walked into yet another staid waiting area. It was much larger than the previous one, with
twelve doors spread across three walls. The reception was right by the entrance, and after a brief
interlude with the woman behind the desk, Hermione was asked to take a seat and wait.

She watched as a lilac paper-plane-memo flew from the reception to a door labelled ELENA
BARROS, and slipped into the gap beneath it.

For ten minutes, nothing happened. The receptionist was busy with something. There was nobody
in the waiting area but her. It was deathly quiet.

A man in starched robes, sporting a grey ponytail strode into the room. He accepted the
receptionist’s greeting, gave Hermione a passing look... flinched and gave her another look – and
then disappeared behind the door labelled ALAN HOGGARD.

Then, two men and one woman entered, and claimed their own chairs in the waiting area.

It became deathly quiet again.

Ten past nine.

The nervous tension in her veins was almost unbearable. The urge to fidget was immense. She dug
her nails into her palms.

Quarter past nine.

A memo flew out from under the door and landed in front of the receptionist. She read it, stood up,
and beckoned to Hermione to follow.

They went through Madam Barros’ door, into a small foyer, with three more doors. The receptionist
knocked on the one in the middle, and a clear, orotund voice called out, “Enter.”

Hermione entered.

In her head, Elena Barros looked like Professor McGonagall; a notion that had been reinforced
after her conversation with Madam Mandrake. She had forgotten that she was only forty-five.
When she saw her, sitting behind an imposing desk against a backdrop of mighty bookshelves, she
had to hold back a gasp – the woman was beautiful.

Warm brown skin, long black hair, and perfectly arched eyebrows. She wore embroidered robes of
magenta and black, her lips were painted bold and bright.

“Hermione Granger,” she said in that precise, commanding voice, “Sit.”

She gestured to a chair with a graceful hand. Her nails were long and painted, and rings glittered on
three of her fingers.

Hermione, in her plain, pressed, office-friendly clothes and pinned back hair, sat.

For many overwrought moments, she smiled inelegantly while Madam Barros observed her. There
was an open folder between them, with Hermione’s NEWT results and test.

“You are aware that this is highly irregular.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“I am,” Hermione agreed, “And I really appreciate–”

Madam Barros held up a hand.

“I can spot a liar from miles away, Hermione Granger. Tell me, did you use your pull and
connexions to wrangle this interview?”

“Of course not!” Hermione exclaimed, stunned, “I had gone to interview for a position in the
administrative services! I had no idea there was an opening on your team till Madam Mandrake
told me about it. And she told me not to get my hopes up, that you might not even agree to see me.”

“Very well.”

Hermione thought her face might be steaming. Madam Barros looked down at the folder.

“You are clearly skilled. But this job is far more cerebral than magical. Are you quite sure you’re
suited for it?”

Hermione had to grit her teeth, mashing down the desire to ask, isn’t it your job to assess that ?

Instead, she muttered, “I believe I am capable.”

That earned her a raised brow. It was a cold-blooded look. Surely there had to have been some
middleground between the overwhelming flattery of Yi Lau and... this.

“Have you any knowledge of the law?”

“I have read–”

“What have you read?”

Snapping her mouth shut, Hermione reached into her satchel and took out a scroll. Madam Barros
accepted it after a pause and spent no more than two seconds scanning it.

“Not even close to enough,” she declared, tossing the list back at Hermione.

“If I may,” Hermione ground out, “What exactly am I doing here, if you are so convinced that I am
unworthy of this job?”

Something curious passed over her face. She tapped a pointy plum nail against the surface of her
desk, considering.

“Gemma insisted that you are exceptionally bright, and would have no issue catching up. Is that
correct?”

The corrosive, cynical quality of her voice and expression drove up Hermione’s temper. All her
anxiety and awe flew off somewhere and she was just plainly miffed.

“I have successfully coped with plenty of challenges, most of which were much more arduous than
a bit of reading. I don’t believe I have ever considered reading to be an issue. ”

Madam Barros was amused, in a mocking, deprecating way.

“Your reading list will be more than double of what you’ve accomplished, ” she said with derision,
“So far. In addition to that, I will expect you to spend ten hours a week in the archival chambers.”

Hermione shrugged. This wasn't a legitimate interview at all, and she had no desire to be a part of
such a sham. Her face still felt steaming hot. She wanted to leave.

“You are muggleborn.”

Another statement.

“I am.”

“Do you feel that will be a handicap in this particular field?”

Hermione’s impure blood boiled. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You have not grown up under our laws.”

“Oh, are children under the age of eleven usually made to understand the ins and outs of your laws?
Do their parents read to them from the Legal Compendium in leu of bedtime stories?”

“You are angry.” Madam Barros smiled icily. “Will you lose your temper like this during trials?”

“If I am faced with blatant, offensive prejudice, then yes!”

“Very well.”
There was something new in her expression now. It glittered across her face and her smile widened.

“So, you don’t believe your heritage will be a handicap.”

“Of course not,” Hermione rejoined sharply, “I cannot believe such a discriminatory line of
questioning is allowed at the Ministry.”

“I haven’t played by the Ministry’s rules for years, Hermione Granger, and I am very particular
about who I allow on my team. You are not qualified, you are painfully young, impetuous, and you
wear your outsider status like a badge of honour.”

“Well,” Hermione growled, over the roaring in her ears, “I’ll just leave then.”

She had half-stood up when Madam Barros spoke again.

“Exactly what do you have to offer, besides unfledged cleverness? What made you think
interviewing for this position was a good idea... was remotely feasible? Tell me, Hermione
Granger... Why should I hire you?”

Hermione stood up as tall as she could. Looking down at that woman helped.

“Because I’m muggleborn.”

Barros smiled deviously. Hermione eyes burnt with unshed tears or built-up rage that she wished
would shoot out like lasers. Burn the fucking witch.

“Because I’m muggleborn,” she repeated fiercely, “Because muggleborns make up less than twenty
percent of the total workforce in the Ministry. Because there was a movement aimed
towards irradicating muggleborns entirely. Because the wizarding world keeps circling back to the
same ghastly, discriminatory mindset... the wizarding world that is decades behind the muggles in
terms of social and political progress. I am not an outsider. I am a witch with better perspective.”

Barros took in her rant with disdain and schadenfreude. Hermione was being played with.

“Do elaborate,” she drawled sardonically, “Tell me all your radical ideas.”

“They only seem radical because everything is so backwards,” Hermione spat, “I’m talking about
basic equity and equality. There are barely any laws instated to protect the vulnerable. And
the wording of existing laws is so poor and flimsy that it takes nothing to find loopholes... or they
are easily, openly flouted by those with power. It’s absolutely fuc – ridiculous that all sentencing is
done by a body of old, entitled, purebloods. I respect Kingsley Shacklebolt immensely, and I
admire the changes he’s made, but he – the Ministry – will only get so far if they don’t welcome
systemwide change, and... a better perspective.”

“Such whimsical idealism.”

Hermione hated, hated this woman.

“Idealism helps win wars, Madam,” she seethed, “And idealism makes you brave enough to
attempt to change the world.”

“Unfledged cleverness indeed.”

Hermione turned to leave.

“You are aware that I’m the reason the Muggle Protection Act and Lupin’s Law exist.”

A statement.

“And you think it’s acceptable to needle me about my blood status during a job interview.”

Another statement.

Hermione walked towards the door.

“When was the latest amendment to the Wizengamot Charter of rights?”

Hermione turned around slowly, with a scowl, and Barros looked back at her penetratingly.

“1864.”

“Regarding what?”

“Outlawing the conjuring of commercial structures and-oblique-or the materials used to build said
structures.”

“Which was the most ground-breaking trial of the early twentieth century?”

“The Trial of Frederick Bristlegash, 1903. The first instance of a reduced sentence in exchange for
incriminating information.”

“Why was there considerable backlash against the International Ban on Duelling?”

“Old values, and a lack of clarity in the initial literature around what constitutes a duel. A revised
version was passed in 1994.”

Madam Barros didn’t look anything close to impressed. Hermione turned up her nose and waited
for more. Instead, she got a dismissive wave of a jewelled hand.

“You may go.”

Hermione went.

She went straight down to the admin office, marched past the packed cubicles as her face got hotter
and hotter and she felt herself losing control of her tear ducts. But she could not cry just yet.

She stepped into the head’s waiting room, up to the assistant who blinked quizzically.
“Is Madam Mandrake in?” she asked, her voice a low rasp.

“Yes. Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Well... I’ll, erm, just check if she’s unoccupied...”

Within minutes Hermione was ushered in and stood facing the kind, smiling face of Madam
Mandrake... The smile that quickly morphed into grief when she noticed Hermione’s expression.

“Goodness gracious, Ms Granger! Are you all right?”

“I am coming straight from Madam Barros’ office.”

“Oh dear...”

“Is your offer still open?”

“Are you ill? You look awfully flushed.”

“I’m fine.”

Madam Mandrake took off her pince-nez and cleaned the lenses with the edge of her robes. Her
face was pinched with pure pity and it became so much harder for Hermione to hold back her
furious tears.

“Of course, my offer is still open. As I said before... we’ll be thrilled to have you.”

Hermione nodded heavily. “May I start now?”

“Monday.”

“But,” Hermione frowned, “I thought–”

“You really do look unwell,” Madam Mandrake said gently, “Take a few days to recover.”

“I’m honestly fine,” Hermione insisted, only to be presented with another kind smile.

“Monday.”

With a jerk-like nod, she swept out of the room. All the way across the floor and down to the
atrium, she bit down on the insides of her cheeks to stave off her impending breakdown.

The atrium had mostly cleared up, but the fountain remained. She didn’t look at it for too long,
vaguely registering trumpet-shaped spouts and purple polka-dots. It wasn’t blaring music anymore,
but emitting sporadic, brassy notes. A very sweaty group of officials stood beside it, aiming spell
after spell...

Hermione fell into a fireplace.

Home. Sofa. Tears.

 *

At six in the evening, she dragged herself off the sofa and into the bathroom. She left her stupid
professional clothes on the floor and stepped into the shower. She got dressed and cast a glamour
on her face. It was necessary, for she looked very much like someone who had spent the entire day
sobbing and sleeping.

At the Burrow, she forced herself to be cheerful. She helped Mrs Weasley set the table and
congratulated George on wreaking havoc at the ministry.

“Wasn’t me!” he declared with his hands up.

“Your fountain,” she said with a smile that hurt.

Once Percy and Mr Weasley arrived, Hermione made an escape. She went to her favoured spot by
the pond and sat glumly, missing Ginny. So much for weekly floo-calls.

She leaned back on her hands as the day died, like sunny ambitions did.

Evening is like a curtain of cloud,

a blurr above ripples; and through it
sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,
a cold tune amid reeds.

When Harry and Ron joined her, she pushed aside her sorrows once more.

Harry had the same, tired look about him that he’d worn after his last session with Healer Asher.
For a while, they sat quietly, watching the sun dip behind distant hills.

“Apparently,” Harry said suddenly, “Being forced to live under the stairs isn’t as funny as I’d
thought it was.”

Hermione and Ron turned to him, equally startled.

“Apparently,” he went on, “My problem isn’t alcohol. It’s nineteen years of repressed trauma.” He
paused, shrugged, and looked at Hermione. “How was your interview?”

She reached for him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, Harry, I’m–”

“No. Please,” he implored, “Tell me about your interview.”

“Um, okay.” She wet her lips and stared into the pond’s scummy depths. “It was awful.”
Both Harry and Ron made noises of disbelief.

“No, really. It was horrible. She goaded me and I lost my temper. I yelled at her and almost said
fuck.”

“Hermione?!” Ron sputtered, flabbergasted.

After a moment of silence, Harry snorted. And the three of them chuckled, soft as evening light.

Her routine had lost its charm.

On Thursday, after the usual, she spent the entire day sat at her bureau with Draco’s potions book,
brewing draughts from across the world. It was completely engrossing and fascinating, and she
didn’t think of the Barros-debacle once.

She thought about it several times when she took breaks to eat or use the loo.

On Friday, she hopped over to the liquor shop near Blackheath station and bought a six pack of
Stella Artois, and a bottle of gin. She stopped by The Hungry Zouwu and picked up a half portion
of fried rice, fending off Yi Lau’s friendliness with noncommittal hums and nods.
(“We do home delivery too! Just put your order and flat number through the floo!”)

One chilled beer and a satisfying lunch later, she lay on the sofa, wishing she had a telly. Or even a
gramophone.

She was about to drift off to find some diverting fiction, but was waylaid by an owl at her window.
It was from the Ministry; a pile of documents for her to sign, forms to fill, etcetera. She carried the
lot to the study and splayed them out on her desk, reaching for a quill.

Then she saw the letter of acceptance – From the office of Madam Elena Barros, Barrister-at-law,
Member of the Honourable Wizengamot – and she froze like she had been struck by a petrifying
spell.

*
“Er, what are you doing?” Hermione asked

“Moping,” Theo replied.

He was draped gracelessly on an armchair with a half-empty box of Honeydukes chocolate on his
stomach. The curtains were drawn and all the lamps were doused. Only source of light was the low
fire from whence Hermione had just emerged. The room was stifling and musty.

“Why?” she asked, moving closer to him and helping herself to a heart-shaped chocolate.

“Luna just left,” he shrugged, “So I thought I ought to mope, you know? Felt like the done thing.
She gave me these chocolates as a consolation prize.”

“She’s gone for two weeks, right?”

“Yeah,” he huffed, “Not that I’m not chuffed to see you, darling,” he said in an anything-but-
chuffed way, “But what brings you to my humble abode?”

She lifted the chocolates off his stomach and made a valiant attempt to pull him up.

“I think we should celebrate the launch of your Symphonic Spout.”

“Already done,” he grumbled disinterestedly, “George rolled a jolly good spliff. Gillyweed and
cannabis. You should try it sometime.”

He tried to free his hand; she grabbed the other one.

“Alright. Then how about we celebrate the fact that for some unearthly, inexplicable reason,
Madam Barros has accepted me as a part of her team?”

He froze just like she had.

He shot up and wrapped her up in a tight hug.

“What did I tell you?” he grinned, “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she beamed, “Now may we go to Finnigan’s?”

“Yes, alright. You’re just a little cheering-up fairy, aren’t you? Go on ahead, I’ll join you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Will you really?”

“Of course, I will. But buddy, I smell. I know it, you know it. May I have a shower?”

He picked up one last chocolate and shot her a calculating grin.

“Would you object to Draco joining us?”

She rolled her eyes because she felt it was... what had he called it... the done thing, and replied,
“No.”

“Brilliant. He’s in his room. Let him know.”

“You let him know.”

“I’m going for a shower.”

“His room is right next to yours!”

He’d already left, and his sing-song voice – “shooooweeerrr”– lingered.

Hermione didn't dither for too long. She was too emotionally drained, tired, and sick of anxiety
clawing at her chest to indulge in prolonged dithering.

The sound of piano keys become clearer the closer she got to Draco’s door, till finally, she stood
with her ear pressed against the wood and listened. Now that she didn't immediately fall into the
fissure that once lay between him and the beauty of his playing, she was able to really soak it in. He
was playing something operatic and dramatic, the notes quickly tripping over one another. Her eyes
closed and she pictured his fingers, hands, arms, and shoulders moving with smooth effortlessness.

She only knocked after silence had fully settled.

His face flashed with shock when he opened the door, and he was – fuck.

His shirt was fully unbuttoned.

A smothered gasp sat heavy in her throat, and she kept her eyes firmly fixed on his face. The pale
column of his exposed torso danced tauntingly just under the line of her vision.

“We’re going to Finnigan’s for a drink,” she breathed, silently cursing the break in her voice,
“Would you like to come?”

He thought it over for a moment then shrugged one shoulder. His shirt tails might have shifted, but
she didn’t dare look.

“All right. Give me a minute.”

He disappeared behind his door again, and she finally choked out the air caught in her chest. She
felt warm all over, filled with a sort of dazed urgency that propelled her away from his door and
back into the sitting room.
She absently waved her wand about, freshening the air in the room, and aiming a lumos at the
horrid tacky lamp that still, somehow, held a place of honour on a shelf full or ornaments.

When Draco reappeared, his shirt was fully buttoned and he was wearing a black jacket over it. He
scanned the room with a frown.

“Theo already left?”

“He’s having a shower. Would you like to wait for him?”

He scoffed. “No.”
His eyes had settled on the chocolates. He picked one up, and Hermione watched as his lips closed
around it, brushing against the tips of his thumb and index finger. He strode past her – smacking
her with a wave of his cologne – and stepped into the fireplace.

Walking alongside Draco on a busy evening at Diagon felt surreal. She tried to stop peering at him
from the corner of her eye, but it was proving to be difficult. The crowd didn’t allow for a safe
distance between them, and her sleeve kept brushing against his.

Finnigan’s was filled to capacity. There wasn’t a single empty table as she and Draco approached
the bar.

They stood quietly, waiting to be served as both Seamus and Vassilios were busy at the other end,
and Dean popped up next to her with a happy greeting. His glass of beer was nearly the size of his
forearm.

“Bit much, don’t you think?” Draco asked him.

Dean shook his head. “The model for today’s anatomy drawing lesson was a hag. I need this.”

At last, Seamus stopped in front of them.

“What will it be?” he asked.

“Same old,” Draco drawled.

“Ogden’s it is. And Hermione?”

“Surprise me. Make is strong.”

He presented her with something pale pink and topped with a layer of crushed ice. She took a
judicious sip, detecting, under a prominent bitter tang of alcohol, a lovely fruity flavour.

“Do I taste peaches?” she asked.

Seamus grinned and winked at her. “Peaches for a peach.”

She shook her head with faux-disapproval, quashing down a smile, as he turned away to attend to
some other punters.

She looked to her left and saw Draco watching her with an ill-suppressed smirk, and humour
shimmering in his eyes.

“What?” she asked.

“Are you shagging Finnigan?”

To her right, Dean sprayed his shoes with beer and erupted into maniacal cackles.

“No!” Hermione spluttered, after peeling her jaw off the ground, “No. Oh my god.”
Draco grinned, looking from her to Dean.

She took a giant gulp of her drink and reiterated – “No.”

Dean gasped, “I promise he’ll be up for it, Hermione, if you’re interested,” and promptly resumed
cackling.

She shoved him, hard. Draco had on his well-practiced look of supreme self-satisfaction.

Here she was, still pondering about that fleeting glimpse of his torso, and he wanted to know if she
was shagging Seamus. For shit’s sake.

It was the perfect time for Theo to show up, while Dean was wiping his eyes and Hermione was
impersonating a baboon's backside.

“What did I miss?” he asked.

The evening progressed. The group found space to stand next to a pillar, and Hermione went from
drink one to two. Theo made her tell him about the entire interview in great detail, quaking with
righteous fury on her behalf. Then Dean launched into stories about all the various types of naked
bodies he’d seen of late.
Hermione had sensed when Draco drifted away, but hadn’t let herself look immediately. When she
did sneak a peek, (taking a necessary reprieve from Dean’s much-too-graphic description of a hag’s
posterior,) she saw that he was with his friend from before – the fair-haired woman, today in an off-
white dress – and they were deep in conversation. An anvil fell on her stomach, and for a moment,
she was sure her lunch was going to make a reappearance.

She looked away quickly, but not quick enough.

Her dear, observant friend noticed her distraction and turned to look behind him. That was fairly
humiliating all on its own, but then he went and raised his arm, calling them over. Hermione
wished the pillar behind her would collapse and bring the whole building down.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your new friend, Draco?” Theo asked

Draco eyed Theo disparagingly, while his pretty companion smiled.

“This is Fiona Berne,” he said haughtily, “Receptionist at the ICW main office.” He turned to Fiona
Burne and added, “Theo, Granger, Thomas,” like an irrelevant afterthought.

From that moment, awkwardness steadily escalated. Nobody was able to think of a thing to say
after the cursory nice to meet you’s.
Dean was the first to make a retreat, claiming to spot some of his mates. Theo, after making a
doltish comment about wrackspurts, absconded to the loo. When Fiona asked what wrackspurts
were and Draco chuckled, Hermione knew she had to leave. The risk of vomiting was too high. She
shook her empty glass, smiled thinly, and fled back to the bar.
Dean hadn’t lied; he was surrounded by people she hadn’t seen before, and Seamus was busy
performing while mixing drinks for them. Hermione returned her empty glass and switched to
butterbeer. New bevy in hand, she looked around sullenly, wondering where to go. She was
unceremoniously shoved to the side by a gaggle of matronly witches, so she moved haplessly,
closer to where the bathrooms were, in the hopes of catching Theo.

She noticed two things near-simultaneously:

First – a feverishly noisy table where George, Lee, Angelina, Alicia, Theo, Oliver Wood, and a
woman Hermione didn’t know were sitting.
Second – a group rising from their table by a window, leaving it sublimely empty.

From that empty table, she observed the chaos of the pub with detachment, until the volume faded
and her thoughts became louder. With a surface under her bum and alcohol in her blood, the full
gravity of the day’s events hit her like a speeding lorry.

She was going to be the youngest member of the Department of Domestic Law. — How?
She had no doubt that she had been provoked and instigated during the interview as some sort of a
test, but she couldn’t imagine why she had passed. When had enraged rants ever won her anything?
She was also fairly certain that that treatment was not going to be isolated to just one instance. She
was going to be wrung out and bullied by the most terrifying woman on Level two.
She took a sip of butterbeer and pulled a face at the unwelcome sweetness.
But an unforgiving boss was a small price to pay for the prestige of the position she had been
granted, for the chance to have her name attached to future legislation that carried the same weight
as Lupin’s law. What did it matter if Barros mocked her youth and brashness... she obviously saw
some merit in it. Bizarrely enough, Project I-B-OPTIMISTIC had been actualised.

Tomorrow, she would go buy herself a quill holder just like Draco’s.

Draco.

At once, her rose-coloured musings, her eggs in moonshine, disappeared. She took two more
grudging sips and sighed. She couldn’t believe how sick, how wretched she felt, seeing him with
that woman. It was horrible, untenable, and bad. So bad. So much worse than she had been afraid
of.

Fuck. What the fuck.

His shirt had been unbuttoned and she had wanted to do so much more than just look.

Was there ever going to be a time in her life when she’d stop feeling like she was on the brink of
insanity?

The pub’s clamour re-infiltrated her senses. She slid a bit lower in her chair and played with the zip
on her jacket. Diffused speckles of colour from the stained-glass window fell on her clothes and
skin. It had a standard fleur-de-lis motif in green and yellow, and it glowed gently under the
influence of Diagon’s lampposts. Little drops of water fell upon it with increasing vigour: It was
raining.

Hermione decided to abandon the butterbeer and go home. She could sit on her balcony with a cup
of tea and watch the rain fall on starthistle hill.
A nearby chair dragged loudly. She jumped and whipped her head around.

It was Draco, he was alone, and she could not hold back her gasp this time.

The usual, endearing, alcohol induced flush bloomed across his cheekbones. He settled on the chair
across from her, turning his body to face the pub. He didn’t say a word. She stared at his profile as
he partook from his glass of firewhisky.

Where’s Fiona , she wanted to ask. Perhaps it would be funnier to ask, are you shagging Fiona?
But the answer to that could be yes, and she was not interested in throwing up in front of him. Just
thinking about it was making her stomach roll.

“Any progress on The Divine Comedy?” she asked instead.

He puckered his brow without looking at her and said, “You can’t send me a book with the words
found himself transformed into a gigantic insect in the very first sentence, and expect me to read
anything else.”

Heady warmth spread across her body and she grinned.

“Did you sympathise?”

His mouth twitched. “I haven’t felt so uneasy after reading a book in quite some time.”

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

“Absurdly dark. I didn’t miss anything, right? There is absolutely no explanation given about why
it happened.”

“None.”

“Is it some sort of... muggle political allegory that I am incapable of understanding?”

“Not really,” Hermione hedged, “Maybe a broad social commentary, if you want to look at it that
way, about cruelty and alienation. Some say it has religious undertones, some say it’s psychological
– about the mind and body. But I prefer to take it as it is; the monstrosity, absurdity, everything. It’s
powerful enough on its own.”

He drank and gave her a short, slightly perturbed look before turning away again.

“Like that bloody Daughter of the Minotaur painting.”

“Somewhat,” she smiled, “If you’re up for something even darker, I’ll lend you The Trial. It's also
by Kafka.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about–” she broke off to laugh softly, “I hope it isn’t what my future looks like. But it’s about
a man who, out of the blue, is arrested on a mystery charge. No matter what he does, where he
goes, all the twisted, bureaucratic tangles he gets caught in... he can’t find out what it is. And he’s
expected to defend himself.”
His profile scrunched into a frown and she could tell he was interested. She was sure of it.

“But,” she went on, “I will only give it to you after you finish The Divine Comedy .”

The frown unfurled into a surprised smirk. He looked at her over his shoulder.

“I’ll go buy a copy of my own,” he said pompously.

“No, you won’t.”

“I believe I will.”

“You won’t,” she sniffed, “Because I’m telling you not to.”

“Ha!” He barked and turned away dismissively.

“You read Three Men in a Boat.”

“Yes.”

“Because I told you to.”

He turned to her again, with narrowed eyes. She looked back earnestly, from under her eyelashes.

“Have I ever led you astray, Draco?”

He seemed to grin in spite of himself, if the preceding purse of his lips and clench of his jaw was
anything to go by. Ultimately, his eyes were dancing and it felt like a victory as momentous as her
new job.

“I spent all of yesterday brewing potions, by the way,” she told him.

“Which ones?” he asked.

“Shrinking solutions, mostly; so I could test them. It’s amazing... the number of variations...”

“Yeah."

His eyes stayed fixed on her as he took a sip of whisky. Her next question came out all a-stutter.

“What - What I don’t um understand is the version from Mongolia. Why does it work? The
ingredients make no sense whatsoever.”

He nodded. “I asked Snape about that. It's got to do with the way Longhorn Beetle legs react to
yarrow...”

He turned in his chair to face her fully and leaned forward with his forearms resting on the table.

It was like a veil had dropped around them, shutting out the rest of the pub.
Chapter End Notes

1. "Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.": La Nausée, by
Jean-Paul Sartre
2. "Montmorency’s ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at.": Three Men in a
Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome
3. "Evening is like a curtain of cloud...": Canto XLIX (Seven Lakes), by Ezra Pound

ARTWORK:
Draco at the pub by Bookloverdream
 Seventy-Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Of the three doors in the foyer of Elena Barros’ office, the one on the right belonged to the research
team. Behind it was a narrow, rectangular room, and even Hermione, thin and diminutive as she
was, felt too large standing in such a cramped space. Three small desks were set in a line on one
side, and filing cabinets and bookcases of all sizes covered every single wall.

“There is absolutely no reason for you to come into my office, and you must certainly never
venture into Madam Barros’, unless summoned. That desk on the right is yours, make sure to keep
it tidy at all times. Madam Barros does not permit clutter. Of course, I don’t expect you to be here
for very long... the wonderkid appeal gets stale fairly quickly.”

Julien Errol Stamp BL, Junior Counsel, was Madam Barros’ second string. A pallid-skinned man in
his mid-thirties, with short brown hair, close-set eyes, a goatee, and a very shifty look about him.

And, as Hermione had surmised in the past half hour, he was a raging arsehole.

“Go ahead, settle down,” he gestured towards the desk and gave Hermione a disgruntled look,
“Your colleagues will be arriving soon, they’ll tell you what’s what. I have more important things
to do.”

He slammed the door behind him, and Hermione scowled to herself as she settled behind her
designated desk. The cushioned chair squeaked with every tiny move she made. She put her satchel
on the table, took out a notebook, parchment, a bottle of ink, and a quill. Then she blinked down at
the stuff, blankly, for a bit.

Nothing seemed real. It felt like her morning run had happened a decade ago... and it was still only
quarter to nine. So far, she had learned that two out of the four people she’d be working with were
nasty, unkind, and insultingly dismissive. Happy tidings, indeed.

She sat back – squeak – and looked around. There was a dull grey filing cabinet right next to her, a
mere arm’s length away, labelled 1984.
It was exactly the kind of suspiciously fluky omen that tested the limits of her rationality. This was
the Ministry of Love. She had already committed many a thoughtcrimes.
Cabinets went on in that manner along the wall, (1985, 86, 87, 88, and so on,) till the corner where
there was a bookcase full of slim, leather-bound tomes. Then it was back to cabinets, another
corner bookcase, and then more cabinets. There was a window directly across from her, half
covered by cabinets. There were cabinets behind her as well, and a noticeboard covered in scraps.
She crossed her arms – squeak – and wondered if these many cabinets could be considered a
committee, and if she could petition to have them replace the one in parliament.

She stood up – SQUEAK – and walked to one of the bookcases, peering at the spines. Each volume
appeared to be dedicated to one law, by-law, or order: It was the compendium, expanded and
elaborated upon.

There was a noise by the door and Hermione turned, holding her breath.

A woman entered; tall, shoulder-length hair, with her nose buried in the Prophet. She went,
robotically to the desk on the left and dumped her three bulging bags on top of it. She leaned
against the desk, still engrossed, while Hermione watched her nervously.

After some time had passed, it became evident that the write-up holding this woman’s attention was
long and very captivating.

“Um, excuse–”

“Gorblimey!” the woman exclaimed, dropping the paper in shock.

“Sorry!” Hermione squeaked, “I didn’t mean to alarm you!”

She stared at Hermione for a beat, eyes wide, then said, “Well alarm me you did! Oof, it’s all
right...”

She strode forward and stuck her hand out.

“Lovely to meet you, Hermione Granger.”

Hermione took her hand and tentatively shook it. “You too, um...”

“Kathleen Edwards. Kathy.”

“You were in Ravenclaw!” Hermione exclaimed, suddenly remembering, “Head girl during my
first year!”

“That’s right,” Kathy grinned.

It was a guileless, welcoming sort of grin. Hermione slowly felt a sense of ease leak into her
bloodstream.

“How long have you worked here?” she asked.

“Three years,” Kathy replied, “Not counting the one I spent hiding in a cave in Castleton.” She
pointed to herself and added, “Muggleborn.”

“Ah.”

Before Hermione could ask if Kathy had been subjected to the same line of questioning as she had
been, the door reopened, and a man walked in.
He was built like Theo, very slender and unnecessarily tall, and had thinning hair that was neatly
parted. He looked considerably older.

“Here’s Takumi Morita, the third member of our esteemed team. Takumi, Hermione Granger.”

He shook her hand firmly before going on to deposit his things on the middle desk.

“Nice to meet you Ms Granger,” he said in an accented voice, “I have heard so much about you.”

“Call me Hermione, please,” she said at once, wanting desperately to be a part of such a friendly
rapport as soon as possible.

He nodded politely.

“Takumi joined last year,” Kathy said to Hermione, “He’s a bit of a legal savant. Practiced law in
three different countries before coming here–”

“Four,” he corrected bashfully.

“Disgusting, isn’t it?” Kathy remarked with a fond smile.

Takumi approached her once more, holding out a small pink parcel.

“Red bean mochi,” he said with a bow of his head, “My wife made them, to welcome you into the
team.”

“Gosh,” Hermione gasped, accepting the parcel with much surprise, “Thank you so much.”

The office of Elena Barros was a sample box, displaying the extremities of human nature.

The two then gave Hermione a tour of their shared space, and it was basically just as she had
already surmised during her earlier investigation. She was made privy to the case they were
working on at that moment: Cadfan Burke, grandnephew of Caractacus Burke, was attempting to
reclaim precious artefacts allegedly belonging to his family, that the Ministry had nabbed after the
war. The Ministry wasn’t having it.

“Not the dark, cursed stuff that comes under the Decree of Justifiable Confiscation, of course, but
the rest...” Kathy muttered, “We’ve been at this for a year now. The Wizengamot has once again
decided that Madam Barros is simply trying to undermine them. There's a solid chance they’ll
refuse permission to appeal.”

“But she’s a part of the Wizengamot.”

“They put her there hoping she’d fall in line.”

Both Kathy and Takumi laughed at that.

“Hermione, this is the transcript of the hearing, and here’s a catalogue of artefacts that Mr Burke
demands be released. Make yourself familiar with the case.”
She returned to her desk – squeak – and she did that.

When the time for their lunch break rolled around, Hermione had finished “catching up” as it were,
and was digesting the fact that her very first venture into the legal field would involve helping a
rich man get hold of things that his rich and famously rapacious uncle had nabbed through dubious
means. What would Gareth Peirce say to that?

“Need me to show you where the canteen is?” Kathy asked, “Or would you like to join me for a
smoke outside?”

“No, thank you,” Hermione replied, “I’m meeting some friends for lunch.”

“Would these friends happen to be a couple of rather well-known aurors?”

“Um. Yes.”

“All right,” she grinned, “Be back in an hour, or Barros will have your head.”

All three of them walked out together, and parted ways just outside the main office. Hermione
wandered back to the window that she’d stood at, before her interview.

It had been cloudy then; it was storming now. There was such depth in storm clouds, especially
when lit by a flash of cold blue lightening.

Where was she? What was she doing?

“Hi there!” Ron called from behind her.

Seeing him was stabilising. They walked together towards the lifts, and he asked her how her
morning had been.

“Okay?” she said with a non-committal shrug, “My superiors are awful, but my colleagues are very
nice.”

“That’s standard around here,” Ron replied, “I think you’re contractually bound to turn into a git
the moment you get to a higher position.”

“Where’s Harry?”
“Got held up by our head-git. Robards found some minor filing error and apparently the world is
ending.”

They went down in a crowded lift, after which Ron led her across the atrium to an arched opening
under a signboard that read Staff Canteen.
It was a large space full of small round tables. There was a long counter along one wall with a stack
of trays and a board baring the day’s specials. The queue in front of it was not short, but very
quick-moving.

Hermione took a gander around the room as she stood behind Ron, blindly moving ahead towards
the counter. There were only a few empty tables left. She observed the vast variety of faces, (and
was very often observed right back,) till she found the table where Draco was sitting.
Even though she expected it, the awful swoop in her stomach was unnerving. There were two other
blokes and one Fiona at his table. He was wearing black robes and a thyme-green shirt, charily
appraising a slice of pie, while Fiona kept incessantly speaking to him.
Only to him.
Surely, she could spare a look towards one of the other blokes? Surely, she could stop ogling him
for one bloody second?

Ron waved a flimsy purple tray in front of her, and she mentally shook herself.

“What do you recommend?” she asked peering up at him unequivocally.

“The sandwiches are alright,” Ron answered without enthusiasm, “Fish is not bad. But whatever
you do, do not go for the potted meat. Worse than poison, that.”

Hermione opted for a simple chicken sandwich, while Ron piled his tray with an unseemly amount
of food. She then waited for two minutes while he collected pumpkin juice from a vending
machine, with her eyes fixed on an empty table diagonally across from where Draco was.

“Oh, we aren’t eating here,” Ron told her, “C’mon.”

She peaked back over her shoulder just before leaving the canteen, and Draco was looking right
back at her. She nearly tumbled into Ron.

They weren’t the only ones taking their food back with them. The lift was full of employees
clutching trays or packets.

Hermione’s already unsteady bearing, further battered by Draco’s puissant gaze, suffered complete
derailment as she shuffled through the Auror Headquarters, behind Ron. People stopped mid-
conversation to gawk at her, like she was a clabbert in a tutu. They peered over the busy, colourful
walls of their cubicles.

Ron took her to the end of the enclosure into a tearoom where Harry was scowling down at a long
roll of parchment that trailed down to the floor. His scowl morphed into a strained smile when he
saw them. Ron set his mountainous tray of food on the table, and before Hermione say a word, an
army of aurors burst into the room and piled on.
It made sense now: Ron had been out gathering for the entire squad of hunters.

Hermione was introduced to more people than she ever cared to know – Wayne Hopkins, Roger
Davies, and (of all people) Miles Bletchley – among them. All manner of salutations boomed
around her; one over-enthusiastic woman kissed the air by her cheek and one man reminded her of
McLaggen.
Eventually, she just sat next to Harry, quietly nibbling at her sandwich while the aurors indulged in
raucous bantering and good-natured badinage. Harry didn’t speak much either, but Ron was in his
element. He was drawing out the loudest laughs and had an odd propensity to seek out the over-
enthusiastic woman, to make sure she was laughing, too.

When her watch told her it was time to leave, Hermione was glad. She waved at Harry and Ron and
dashed out, arriving back at her office right at the heels of her colleagues.

Back at her desk (squeak!), Hermione was handed an enormous sheaf of loosely bound
parchment.

“Make note of all property disputes from this inventory, please,” said Takumi, “We need to look
into precedents.”

It took her over an hour to do that. Between a case of commercial negligence and a business
partnership gone sour, Madam Barros swept into their tiny room like a gale. Her robes were
peacock blue and she wore matching teardrop earrings.

“I better have all pertinent precedents on my table first thing tomorrow morning,” she commanded,
without preamble.

“Yes, Madam Barros, of course,” Kathy mumbled rapidly.

“It will be done,” said Takumi, not even slightly intimidated.

Hermione simply stared. Sensing her gaze, Barros looked at her with a touch of odium.

“Edwards, take care of this one’s reading list, will you? If she’s still lagging by the end of this
month, I will fire her.”

She left before anything else could be said.

Kathy took Hermione to the archival chamber, at the far end of the floor. They entered a reception
room first, where a man behind a semi-circular desk made them write their names in a register
before letting them into the chamber.

“Jesus,” Hermione gasped the moment she stepped in.

It had to be considerably larger than the Great Hall; a high-ceilinged, windowless, and severely
dingy vault. There were seven columns of storage shelves and god knows how many rows. From
the door, it looked to be a hundred. A thousand.

“Let’s get going,” Kathy said, handing Hermione a copy of the list she had compiled, “You start
from the bottom, I’ll start from the top. Be sure to make a copy of every page.”

There was a table by the entrance full of small lanterns. They picked one each and began their
quest.

When they were finally through, it was just past four o’clock. They scurried back to their office
with towering stacks in hand. The load was divided into three, and they set off scouring the records
for any and all relevant information.

Hermione repeatedly vanishing bits of her work, in the hopes of having her handwriting appear as
neat as she was capable of presenting. She did not want Barros objecting to her penmanship, on top
of everything else.

Five-thirty came and went. Nobody moved or said anything. At a quarter past six, Hermione’s chair
squeaked as she pushed away from the desk. Flexing her tired fingers, she said, “I think I’m
through?”

She looked up and had a bit of a shock. Takumi’s chair was empty, and his desk was clear. Kathy
was leaning back in her chair, reading the paper.

“Oh, finally,” she said, “I’m having severe nicotine withdrawals here.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hermione cried, horrible humiliation burning across her cheeks, “I hadn’t realised–”

“Relax!” she grinned, “Not shabby at all for your first day. I’d like to go over what you’ve done
once, before giving it to Madam Barros. No offence, but you know how she is.”

“Yes, of course,” Hermione mumbled.

She stood up, (squeak,) and began tidying her desk while Kathy flipped through her pages. When
she heard the scratching of a quill, she almost didn't want to know what was being revised. But she
went to look anyway.
Kathy modified her formatting in some parts, made small notes referencing orders she wasn’t
familiar with, and eliminated entire paragraphs where she had transcribed courtroom exchanges,
(“That’s a tad more thorough than necessary, Hermione.”)

Finally, one softly muttered “nox,” later, they left.

The Ministry was so quiet at that hour. Save for a couple of aurors loitering around the corridors,
the floor was deserted. Hermione and Kathy got in a lift, and it rattled with unnatural volume due to
the lack of atmospheric noise.
A security person stood by the memorial monument, in an otherwise empty atrium. It reminded
Hermione of the evening when she, along with Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna, had run
through it after an insane flight on an invisible thestral. The evening Sirius had died.

Tiredness bloomed over her limbs quite suddenly, when she was a mere step away from a gilded
fireplace.

“I’ll owl you a list of books and reading material tonight, alright?” Kathy said, “See you tomorrow,
Hermione.”

“See you,” Hermione mumbled, and reached out for some flu powder.

All the air left her lungs when she stepped into her flat. It felt so dizzyingly good to be home. She
waited to feel solidified, less hollowed out; but that didn’t happen.
She went straight to the bedroom – tossing her bag on the chair, kicking off her shoes, yanking off
her robes – and flopped onto her bed... then promptly sat up with a growl, to undo the bun at the
back of her head. Her hair tumbled down and so did she, back on the bed. She reached down to
undo the button on her trousers and kicked them off in the most violent and ungraceful manner.
Better.
She sighed and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. Hot flashes of red and white light
exploded across her eyelids, and from behind them, emerged images of the cramped office, of the
Ministry’s corridors, of the dingy archival chamber, of cackling aurors, of Kathy, Takumi, Stamp
and Barros. Of the canteen. Of Draco – and Fiona – in the canteen.

The day had ended and still, nothing seemed real. She had woken up in this bed, she was back in
this bed, and all that had happened in the interim was illusory. Hermione half sat up and summoned
the parcel Takumi had given her. Inside, there were half a dozen small, sugar dusted dumplings in a
beautiful paper box. Hermione ate one – it was soft, chewy, and mildly sweet – and then she ate
another. She lay back down, chewing and staring at the ceiling.

She couldn’t be arsed about dinner.

Springing out of bed, she ditched her shirt for a dressing gown, picked up her bag, wandered into
the study and thumbed through the section on litigation in the Legal Compendium till Kathy’s owl
arrived, baring a two-feet long scroll. She would have to make a trip to Flourish and Blotts very
soon.

No matter how much she read, how much she went over her day, how often she combed through
the copied records she’d brought back home... the hollowness did not abate.

She went to the kitchen to brew a cuppa before once more, returning to bed. Burrowing under the
blanket, she sipped tea, ate two more sweet dumplings, and read till ten... and then she only slept
like the dead.
She barely ran the next morning. Lost in foggy, unformed thoughts, she sauntered around the park
like she had the whole morning at her disposal. On her way back, she grasped a fistful of chicory
flowers and took a detour to the baker and picked up some freshly baked muffins.

It was still, somehow, too early by the time she was dressed, packed up, fed, and ready to leave.
She stood in front of her wall of art for ten minutes, then thought fuck it, and landed up at the
Ministry at eight in the morning. Again.

She had a run-in with Ernie in the lift, learning that he’d earned himself a position in the
International Trading Standard’s Body, which sounded terribly dry no matter how hard he tried to
give it a highfalutin spin. He got off on level five, and once the lift was set in motion again,
Hermione sighed. If she had to have encountered someone who worked on level five...

Could it not have been...

Someone else?

The receptionist was still setting up her station when Hermione strode into the DDL, and she
mumbled a taut good morning before carrying on. The moment she stepped into her office, the
feeling of displacement – the same one that had gripped her the day before – reappeared.

Her chair squeaked when she pulled it back.

She discarded her satchel and crouched on the floor, peering at the bottom of the chair. She gave it
an experimental nudge, and – hmm. Seemed like an issue with the back leg, on the right.

Silencio.
Nudge.
Squeak.

Maybe the one on the left.

Silencio.
Nudge.
Squeak.

The one in the front then, on the right.

Silencio.
Nudge.
Squeak.

The left one.

Silencio.
Nudge.
Squeak.

What the god damn buggering fuck?!

Silencio.
Nudge.
Squeak.

Silencio.
Nudge.
Squeak.

Silencio.
Nudge.
Squeak.

Silencio. Silencio. Silencio. Silencio. Silencio. Silencio.

After every square inch of that ungodly chair had been silenced, it stopped squeaking.

Hermione plucked a tome on the Statute of Distribution off the bookcase and settled down behind
her desk to read.

Takumi arrived first that morning, and just after Hermione had finished asking him to convey her
compliments to his wife, Kathy came in, bringing a faint smell of cigarettes.

The two had scarcely settled when Madam Barros and Stamp burst into the room and Hermione
was immediately claustrophobic. Stamp was levitating a veritable mountain of parchment in front
of him, and he dumped the lot on the floor, turning the office into some sort of paper landfill.

“Edwards, Morita,” Barros barked, “I need you in my office in ten minutes. That scab from Todd
and Bullard has agreed to consult on the case. Edwards, go to the admin now and get a copy of the
notes from the hearing.”

“Yes, Madam Barros,” Kathy muttered and dashed out of the room.

“Morita, send a memo to Ogden’s office and fix a meeting for later today. I don’t care how, just
make it happen.”

“Okay.” Takumi was unflappable.

Barros left the room without so much as glancing in Hermione’s direction. But Stamp was looking
at her.

Well, he was sneering at her.

“These are old affidavits that need to be filed away,” he said brusquely, pointing at the heap on the
floor, “They need to be sorted by year. Get on with it, Granger.”
She stood up very fast, hoping the sudden, boiling, seething rage in her gut might fall behind in her
chair if she did so. Law of Inertia and all that.

“Will do,” she gritted out with forced politeness.

“Manually,” Stamp added, “No magic. We can’t afford even the slightest error.”

Then he stalked out too, in a way that suggested that he had been carefully studying Madam
Barros’ mannerisms.

Anger dissipated and dismay took over as Hermione stared down at the mound of parchment in
front of her. She snatched up one at random – Sworn by Glen Perkins on the ninth day of February,
1991 – and damn neared whined out loud.

Takumi gave her a look of genuine sympathy before he left.

It took her minutes to come up with a system, after she realised that, thankfully, most of the Alfred
Davids, (as that rogue Roger Riderhood would call them,) were from the last twenty years. She
made floating piles, hovering under pretty, glowing numbers made of tiny bluebell flames.

When Kathy and Takumi returned, announcing it was time for lunch, Hermione had got through
perhaps one-fifth of the pile. Stepping outside was a glorious, welcome reprieve.

Or so she thought, for a very short while.

Harry and Ron met her outside the office, and they told her the story of how they apprehended a
band of nefarious nifflers. The bite-sized mushroom and spinach quiches in the canteen improved
her mood even more. While Harry and Ron piled their trays, she scanned the room for a flash of
distinguished pale hair. There was none.
And that was when the downward slide recommenced.
She felt true-blue dread, walking into the Auror Headquarters. Lunch in their tearoom was as
unpleasant and headache inducing as the day before.

At least it made her glad to be back in the quiet of her office. She decided to give her tedious task a
meditative air; sort of like a quasi-Buddhist ritual. “94... 92... 81... 85... 89...” became her sacred
chant.

Kathy and Takumi returned, informed her that the meeting with Odgen was happening in twenty
minutes, gathered some files, and left.

“87... 93... 97.... 80...”

They came back and informed her that Ogden was on board, but it was Edwina Lumbard who
needed to be persuaded. Hermione remembered her from Draco’s trial. Vicious woman.

“94... 92... 89... 91...”

A few minutes following the sacred moment in which she'd finally set the last parchment in place,
Kathy and Takumi shuffled in looking spent.

“How did it go?” Hermione asked, a bit flat.

“How it always goes. Madam Barros browbeat poor Edwina into submission,” Kathy said around a
yawn, “We’ve got a date.”

“When?”

“Friday.”

Stamp burst in, pinning Hermione with a look of disdainful expectancy.

“Done,” she said plainly, gesturing around her.

“What’ve you got them hovering around for?” he snarled, “Put them in the cabinets, bottom
drawer. Can you manage that?”

Sucking in a deep breath, Hermione turned around and got to it.

The three harrowed ‘researchers’ left together that evening. Kathy made trivial conversation,
Takumi laughed much, and Hermione stood quietly with a thin smile.

On getting home, she flung off her robes and shoes, and fished out the galleon that was a staple in
her pocket. She sent a pathetic, plaintive plea to Theo, before taking out two cans of beer from her
sideboard and casting a light glacius on them.

She had just plopped down on the sofa and set her feet on the coffee table when he staggered out of
the fireplace.

“Are you okay?” he demanded, staring at her.

“Fine,” she shrugged, “Sorry if I sounded too wretched.”

“You did.”

“Just wanted some company.” She half-smiled. “Your company.”

He full-smiled and flopped down next to her, also putting his feet on the table, after snatching up a
beer.

“What did you do today?”

“I sorted a pile of parchment. An enormous pile of old affidavits.”

“How ghastly.”
“What did you do?”

“I helped fashion a toffee that turns into a spider the moment you put it in your mouth.”

“That’s actually ghastly.”

“Thank you.”

“Fancy some fried rice and sweet and sour pork?”

“Sounds good.”

Her chair squeaked the next morning. She cast silencing charms with the fury and potency she
usually reserved for magical shields and disillusionment charms, cast on a tent in the middle of a
forest.

Kathy and Takumi were gone most of the day, running around for Madam Barros and
accompanying her to meetings. On returning from lunch, (with a dull throbbing in her temples,)
Hermione got a fleeting glimpse of Cadfan Burke as he entered Barros’ office. Kathy, who walked
in behind him, gave Hermione a significant, wide-eyed look before closing the door.

She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t even allowed to sit for the meetings.

Instead of wasting away in the office, Hermione went to the archival chambers to pour over old
records. She charmed a lantern to float above her head and went straight for the file on Sirius’ trial;
the gross injustice of his case had been lingering in the back of her mind for days.

When she returned to the office not long after five, it was still empty. For half an hour she waited,
and nothing changed. She peeped through the door, the foyer was empty, so she slowly ventured
out, staring at Barros’ closed door.

Stamp stepped out of his office, stopped short, and scowled.

“Why are you still here?”

Fine.

She left.

She met Ron at the Atrium, and they floo’ed to Diagon. He had time to kill before he was expected
at the burrow, and Harry was at Mungo’s.
The smell of fresh parchment, the bookshelf labyrinth, the rustic chandelier of Flourish and Blotts
were like an extravagant meal after weeks of starvation.

“How is he now, in the evenings?” Hermione asked, unfurling Kathy’s list.

“Uh... Better?” Ron mused, “He gets a bit quiet, but at least he isn’t twitchy and shirty like he used
to be.”

“And has he been sleeping?”

“I think so. Dunno. Maybe he’s silenced his room, but I don’t hear him shouting or talking
anymore.”

She frowned, and followed the signs to the Law, History, and Politics section of the shop.
Conversation was stalled as she climbed up a ladder and pulled out all the necessary books, floating
them down to Ron below. She ended up leaving with a huge sack, and she cast a feather-light
charm on it before slinging it across her shoulders.

Ron tugged at her sleeve as they stepped onto the pavement.

“Want to come to the shop with me? George and Theo have been working on some exciting new
stuff.”

“I really need to get cracking on these,” Hermione replied, jostling her books, “But listen, Ron, do
not, under any circumstances, accept any kind of toffee from them. Please... else you’ll be
traumatised for life.”

He chuckled. “You’re talking about those spider things, yeah? Don’t' worry – I know. Saw Theo
give one to Lee yesterday and I ran out of the shop screaming bloody murder.”

“My god,” Hermione laughed and shook her head, “Those two together are – hold on. Did you just
call him Theo?”

In one of his more endearing moments, Ron averted his eyes and shrugged with a rueful smile.

“Yeah? You can’t get caned with a bloke, devise an elaborate battle-formation to take down an
army of garden gnomes, and not be on first name basis, you know?”

She gaped at him. “You flew on a blind dragon together, and he was still Nott.”

Ron went on, a trite abashed, “He got Verity off my back. She isn’t angry anymore, she’s downright
cheerful. I don’t fucking know how he did it.”

“Theo has his ways,” she replied, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Heh. S’pose so.” He looked down at her with a strange twist to his mouth. “Are you sure you
won't come along?”

“I’m sure.”
She stepped a bit to the side and, with a smile and a wave, apparated to the lobby of her building.

Squeak.

Hermione pressed a fist against her mouth to muffle a scream.

She pretended the chair was Dolohov in the Department of Mysteries and silenced it.

For the entire morning, Kathy and Takumi were involved in preparing for the next day’s appeal,
leaving Hermione largely ignored. So, she sat quietly at her desk with The Evolution of The Council
of Magical Law and stayed out of the way.

Five minutes before lunch, Stamp came into the room and gave her a task.

“Do you have a copy of the catalogue of Burke’s artefacts?”

“Yes,” she replied, pulling it out of her drawer.

“Go down to the depository and make sure everything’s there. Take inventory, get Stringer to ratify
it, and bring it straight back to me. And,” he slapped a bit of parchment onto her table, “Give him
this application. Tell him to have everything sent to courtroom four tomorrow morning at ten,
sharp.”

“Okay,” she mumbled to his back as he left.

“You know where the courtrooms are, Hermione?” Takumi asked.

“Level ten,” she replied robotically, “The lift doesn’t go all the way down, so I’ll get off on level
nine and take the stairs.”

“Yes, very good. Take the stairs next to courtroom twelve. The depository is right next to the
detention area. Mr Stringer is the keeper.”

“Thanks,” she nodded and stood up to leave.

She shook her head at Harry and Ron outside, muttering her predicament. They told her not to
worry, and to come straight to the tearoom when she was done.

Hermione walked down between the courtrooms, some merely closed, some bolted, till she found a
small opening and an uncomfortably narrow staircase. They lead to a long tunnel with rows of
holding cells on either side. There were a couple of auror’s pacing around. She kept her gaze
locked straight ahead.

From the outside, the depository looked like a broom cupboard, and the inside matched. There was
a table and a chair crammed in the titchy space, with a ceiling lamp hanging so low it nearly
touched the head of the man sitting behind the table. He was skeletal, beardy, and eating a
sandwich. There was also a guard leaning against a wall, sipping from a paper cup.

“Mr Stringer?” Hermione broached.

“Yeah?” the beardy man grunted.

“I’ve come from Madam Barros’ office,” (Both men straightened at that,) “I have this application,
regarding a hearing tomorrow.”

Stringer perused the parchment and nodded sullenly. “All right.”

“I have to check that–”

“You want to make sure all’s in order?” He opened the fat register sitting on his table, “Sign here.”

“Cor,” said the guard, peering over the table, “Hermione Granger, are you? Jolly good, ain’t it?
Wossit like, bein’ Hermione Granger?”

Hermione grimaced.

“Shut your mug, Paul,” Stringer snapped, “This way, Ms Granger.”

He tapped his wand against the back wall seven times, and it opened to reveal a huge vault that was
brimming with every object imaginable, set on metal racks. It took Hermione ages to get through
Burke’s belongings, (there were many.) Once the checklist was complete, Stringer stamped and
signed it and sent Hermione on her way.

By the time she had reached back on level two and handed the inventory to Stamp, lunch was out
of the question, but it was hard to regret missing another meal among the aurors. She returned to
her desk and book, and was, once again, ignored for the next couple of hours –

– Until ten past five, when Stamp sent her to the admin to collect “form A701.” The ensuing thirty
minutes saw her standing mutely by a cubical while one Ms Westley argued with a court scribe,
only to be told that... oh dear, did she say form A701? She needed to go to Darnell for form A701...
but Darnell wasn’t at his cubical, Darnell had only just left; so she sprinted towards the lifts, and
shouted “Darnell” at the crowd gathered outside, and then a very narky man pushed through and
grumbled all the way back to his cubical and handed her the form.
She ran into Stamp in the corridor. He had his cloak on, briefcase in hand, ready to leave.

“I got the form,” she gasped, holding it out.

“Took you long enough,” he sneered and didn’t accept it, “So now it’s your responsibility to owl it
to Burke.”

And then he just fucked right off.

In the empty corridor, Hermione wilted.

She went back into the office, empty once again, gathered her belongings and dragged her feet to
the lift. Leaning against the side wall, she thanked providence for making sure it was empty. It
allowed her to groan out loud and momentarily close her eyes. More than anything anything
anything in the world, she wanted a hug from mum.

The lift came to a halt a bit too soon, and when she opened her eyes, Draco was stepping in. The
immediate spark of joy she felt, fizzled and turned cold when Fiona entered behind him.

“Hi,” she muttered, glaring at the grille as it slammed shut, “Long day?”

“Oh yes,” Fiona sighed, “You could say that.”

She had said exactly that, so what of it? She set her jaw and turned her head towards Draco, and felt
a profound kinship with his sullen expression. A second later, he returned her stare and scowled.

“I am having a very painful, horrendous realisation.”

God, she had missed his voice.

The lift jolted. They had arrived at the atrium. Draco stalked out.

“What are you realising?” she asked, quickly falling in step with him.

“Kenny,” he paused to shoot her a tortured glance, “Is a berk.”

“Who’s Kenny?”

“Kenneth Pendleton. My boss.”

She laughed. “If it’s taken you this long to realise, it’s a very good thing. Some of us have been in
hell from day one.”

Draco huffed and shook his head. Their footsteps echoed rhythmically.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh really?”

“We had a few delegates from Russia visiting today. It was a bloody fiasco.”

“England and Russia have never had strong diplomatic ties.”

“Diplomatic,” he scoffed, “Even if they did, they don’t anymore.”

“Well, what happened then?”

“One of the delegates was called Ieronim Konstantinov. Kenny asked him if his name was so long
and hard because other parts of him weren’t.”

They had arrived at the fireplaces. Hermione spun around to gape at him with her mouth hanging
open.

“He did not!”

“He did,” Draco ground out, pained. “Russia’s been in a huff since the ban on duelling. This was
the first time they’d agreed to a sit down in years, to talk about expired trade agreements, replenish
our stock of pogrebin saliva...”

“I’m guessing none of that happened?”

“Seemed like it might’ve,” Draco grumbled, “The other delegates mediated the fucking thing. The
Russians brought Vodka, we gave them some of Ogden’s finest, the dialogue began... and then...”

He stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose. Hanging on tenterhooks, Hermione shifted her
weight onto the balls of her feet.

“Kenny decided to take a swig of the vodka.”

“In the middle of the meeting?”

“In the middle of the meeting. Then he spluttered and said, right, that’s unadulterated piss.”

“Goodness.”

“He retched, Granger. Right at the table.” Draco took a step forward and bore down on her like he
was afraid she wasn’t comprehending the gravity of what he was telling her. “He retched, openly
and loudly.”

“Loudly.”

(Oh, his eyes.)

“Three times.”

“Wow.”

“Mr Pendleton has always had some trouble with tact,” Fiona interjected.

Hermione gawked at her, a bit dazed. From the distant golden gates, a few other stragglers were
making their way towards the fireplaces.

“Well, I’ll...” Fiona went on, smiling indulgently at Draco, “I’ll head home now.”

“All right,” Draco replied, “Thanks for sticking around.”

“Anytime,” she promised, “See you tomorrow, Draco.”

When she had disappeared in a green blaze, Draco turned back to Hermione. For three seconds that
sounded like um, uh, and ahem, in her head, he just studied her. And though he wasn’t sullen or
scowling any longer, his smooth-faced consideration was no less daunting.

Finally, a slow blink severed his stare, and he asked, “May I borrow The Trial now?”

“Have you fulfilled my condition?”

She didn’t know why she was whispering. He smirked.

“A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.”

“Well done,” she grinned, “I’ll send it over.”

“You better,” he decreed, and grabbed a fistful of floo-powder.

Hermione reached in after him, and she could almost imagine that the powder in her hand was still
warm from his fleeting touch.

“Later, Granger,” he muttered and floo’d away.

She emerged into her flat still wearing the grin he had given her... but then she remembered the
form in her hand. Sighing, she headed down to the owlery, after collecting The Trial from her
study.

Maybe it was time she got herself her own owl.

And man alive, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

Squeak.

There were actual tears in her eyes.

According to her watch, it was five past eight. Stamp usually got in around eight-thirty, to make
sure that everything was shipshape and Bristol fashion, before Madam Barros arrived.

Hermione had time.

She shrunk her chair to fit in the palm of her hand, and, after casting a series of stealth-related
charms on her person, slipped into his office. His chair was identical to hers. Exchanging them was
a very simple endeavour.
When her colleagues arrived, she was sitting very comfortably at her desk, reading Precedents of
Pleading.

Once more, she was persona non grata, even after gathering the nerve to ask if she might be
allowed to sit in a corner of the courtroom. She was told, “No, keep reading,” by Barros who barely
glanced at her.

She read. She leant back and balanced on the back legs of her chair just because she could. She had
brought her own lunch – leftover spring rolls – because she did not want to deal with Aurors and
she very much wanted to be around when her colleagues returned.

They came back around two, with inscrutable expressions.

“Well?” Hermione breathed.

Kathy sighed, “Sorry, Hermione I have to dash out,” she mimed smoking, “Fill her in, Takumi. But
I’d stay out of Madam Barros’ way today.”

Takumi pulled out a flask from his bag and poured himself – and Hermione – some green tea in
conjured cups.

“It did not go as we had planned,” he said, “Mr Burke was only able to take away forty percent of
what he had demanded. It very much seemed like the Wizengamot had ganged up against Madam
Barros. She is understandably very angry.”

Hermione quietly sipped tea for a few moments, taking in the information. As far as she was
concerned, this wasn’t a big loss. Burke didn’t deserve those artefacts. She would be celebrating,
had she believed the Ministry would return the stuff to their rightful owners.

“Where all have you practiced?” she asked, by and by.

“Japan, of course,” he replied, “Then I moved to Germany, because my wife was studying
Alchemy. Italy next, because we’ve always wanted to live there. After two years, I was invited by
the MACUSA to consult on a case... which ended up becoming six cases.”

“Then you came here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I followed your war very carefully. There had been some upheaval in Japan twenty years ago,
when I was just starting out as a solicitor. I know how hard it is to rebuild. I wanted to help.”

She remembered ignoring the papers in the months following the fall of Voldemort. Ignoring the
rebuilding, the reparations, the fast-track trials...

“You are a very brave young woman, Hermione.”

She smiled emptily.

“Tell me, Takumi... in your experience, does any other country have a legal system so ridiculously
inept; so susceptible to corruption? You’re telling me the WIzengamot openly ganged up against
Madam Barros...?”

“No country is perfect.”

“But this bad?”

“Yes,” he shrugged, “And no. Little better, little worse.”

Hermione inhaled aromatic fumes of tea and fell quiet.

On the final day of her first week, she finally arrived at a sane hour.

Stamp the sore-headed shrake sent her back down to the depository to get a consent form that’d
allow a curse-breaker to analyse some of the artefacts. Seemed pointless, but Hermione complied.

Besides that, it was an empty morning. Kathy and Takumi worked on a case that was apparently
beyond the scope of her understanding. She spent the day in the archival chamber, reading
Precedents of Pleading while simultaneously examining records that matched.

After another unnecessarily rowdy lunch, she had an empty afternoon, sitting at her desk and
reading Magical Contracts and Bindings .

She even left on time.

After a supper of instant soup and a warm buttered roll, Hermione sat on her balcony with her feet
resting up on the railing. The night sky was cloudy, and the breeze was cool. Starthisle hill was
navy and dark cerulean. She closed her eyes and pictured the sea under moonlight, frothing and
rushing and roaring. Without opening her eyes, she raised her wand and carefully, in great detail,
envisioned a wind chime hanging from the awning.
A melodic tinkling filled the air. Soothing, gentle tintinnabulation.

Picture the crazy, sped-up threesome in A Clockwork Orange. Now replace the characters with
Hermione and books.

That was roughly how her entire weekend had looked.

Not that she fancied comparing herself to a sadist, but it was the first analogy her over-cooked brain
came up with.

It was Sunday evening now, and she rolled onto her stomach, pulling her blanket over her head.
Magical injury litigation services had done her head in. There was very little enjoyment to be
derived from the collection of books strewn around the bedroom. It had driven her to resurrect a
long-discarded attitude towards Magical Law... that it just wasn’t for her.

But that was ridiculous. It had been a mere week. She had to start somewhere. And heaven forbid
that even a smidgen of Barros’ derogatory remarks about her impetuousness and idealism proved to
be true.

She propped herself up on her elbows and dived into a treatise on Negligence.

Post the Burke-washout, Hermione learned that Barros only involved herself in important, high-
profile cases, or cases that would irk her rivals. On most days, she stayed in her office, doing god
knows what, coming out to fulfil her duties as a member of the Wizengamot, and some days, acting
as an advisor to the International Magical Office of Law.

There were a couple of long-standing case files rotting away in cabinets, pertaining to poor
forgotten souls who weren’t getting their day in court. Kathy told Hermione that Barros would,
from time to time, badger her colleagues to attend to them, but was always outnumbered.

“Why doesn’t she go to Kings – Minister Shacklebolt?” Hermione asked, “He’s a fair man.”

“He’s a busy man,” Kathy replied, “He doesn't have the time to bother about poor Clementia
Shelbey and her wrongful termination... Or about Ian Joyce, whose wartime reparations have been
held up because of a sodding spelling error.”

It was enough to make Hermione breathe fire.

Anyhow, the things that Barros considered beneath her station, fell neatly into Stamp’s hands. And
Stamp, Hermione quickly realised, was an expert at pretending to be an overachiever. All his efforts
went into maintaining the illusion of work.
He took on a case, piled in onto the research team, then stepped up to collect the spoils.

It was up to Hermione, Kathy, and Takumi to put together what could be only called a script to
help him prosecute a man who’d been selling cursed ties to muggle men, leading to many
spontaneous “accidental strangulations” (but thankfully no casualties.)

Casual ties.

Hermione laughed to herself, and Takumi shot her a worried glance.

There was a new addition to Hermione’s morning regimen. After her run and before getting ready
for work, she would pop over to a nearby newsagent to pick up the day’s Guardian and a couple of
Fox’s Glacier Mints to keep in a bowl in the office. Her colleagues seemed to appreciate them as
well.

On Wednesday, she was reading an article about grassroots farming organisations launching a
multi-billion-dollar antitrust lawsuit against companies selling genetically modified seeds, as she
entered the foyer and – BOOM .

A resounding explosion ripped out of Stamp’s room.

Kathy came tearing out of their office and Takumi burst in from the waiting area, colliding into
Hermione’s back.

“What on earth was that?” Kathy squawked.

A few seconds later, Stamp came out with singed robes and a blackened face.
“Granger,” he growled, “Tell the receptionist to call someone from the maintenance staff.”

“What hap–”

“Now.”

Watching a bent, badly charred chair being carried out of Stamp’s office while he wore a brilliant
expression of mortified bewilderment was definitely the most rewarding moment of Hermione’s
career thus far.

Barros had arrived in time to watch the procession, and she glared at Stamp with much distaste.

“Julien, why are you destroying office property?”

“Damned thing wouldn’t stop squeaking,” he muttered stonily.

“Do you think Mrs Weasley will mind if you, Ron, and George skip dinner on Sunday?” Hermione
asked Harry while they stood in a lift.

“What for?”

It was just the two of them going down to the canteen on Thursday afternoon. Ron had been
despatched to Banchory to investigate a case of 'grave maleficium'.

“I’m having a little get-together at my place.”

“What’s the occasion?” Harry asked smilingly, “A birthday or something?”

“Maybe,” she laughed.

“Who in their right mind turns twenty?”

The lift stopped and they were carried out by a ravenous throng, all the way to the canteen.

“I’ll ask you that next year.”

“But then you’ll be primed to turn twenty-one. That’s even worse.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said snootily, “You’ll understand once you’re older.”

Hermione helped herself to a cheese toastie and pumpkin juice and waited for Harry to finish
building a leaning tower of grub on his tray.
But he didn’t do that.
He stepped out of the line with a single sandwich and packet of crisps and led her to an empty table
near the back wall. On seeing her confusion, he said, “Thought I’d spare you today.”

He had noticed her compounding discomfort, after all.

“You're a very loud bunch, Harry. It’s like being back in the Gryffindor common room, after a
quidditch match.”

He sniggered. “You don’t have to eat with us, Hermione. I won’t be offended.”

“That’s a relief.”

She bit into the toastie and looked around for a minute, soaking in the new experience of eating
where she was meant to be eating.

“You aren’t having a big birthday beano at Finnigan's?” Harry enquired, aiming for light but not
quite achieving it.

“No,” she said, keeping her eyes on her food, “Not in the mood, plus there’s work the next
morning. I just want a quiet evening with close friends.” She paused and glanced up at him. “No
alcohol.”

“Hermione,” he sighed and winced.

“Yes?”

“Don’t let me ruin your birthday.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Listen–”

“No, you listen. No booze is not a sacrifice. No Harry is a huge sacrifice. I’m fond of you.”

“But–”

“My birthday, my rules.”

He peered at her for a moment, then shook his head with a laugh. For the following few minutes,
they ate in companionable silence. But then...

It was remarkable, really, that she knew exactly when to look up. Draco walked into the canteen,
along with Fiona and the two other blokes, and made a beeline for the counter. She could tell, just
by looking at the back of his head and the set of his shoulders, that he was not enamoured by the
spread before him.

“Is he invited?”

“Who?”
Harry raised his eyebrows and refused to elaborate. She really, really wanted to keep the clueless
act going, but he had on his straight no-nonsense, please expression, and it undid the idea very
quickly.

“Yes,” she said softly, and returned to stare at her food.

“So he’s a close friend now?”

“Um. Not. Really?”

This was her punishment for not wanting to eat with the aurors. Harry had lied. He actually was
offended and was hellbent on torturing her.

“I thought you wanted a quiet evening with close friends.”

“He’s Theo’s close friend.”

“Are you inviting Lee? He’s George’s close friend.”

“I’m much closer to Theo than to George.”

“Right.”

She risked a peek and found him looking at her in an iffy manner.

“I’d much rather be around five thousand bottles of firewhisky than be around that bastard.”

It was her turn to wince, and she took a slow sip of juice. There was nothing to be done, then. She
would wait a day and send a word around, calling the whole thing off. Having Harry feel
uncomfortable was the last thing she wanted, but not inviting Draco was unthinkable.

“Next, you’ll tell me you’re serving fish à la tent.”

She wasn’t expecting the tinge of humour in his voice; it took her a few seconds to respond.

“I won’t be cooking. Yi Lau will be cooking. She’s a fantastic chef.”

“Then I guess I’ll survive the evening, in spite of the unsavoury company.”

“Are you sure?” she asked in a low voice.

He made a c'est la vie sort of gesture. “Your birthday, your rules.”

“Harry,” she said, with a slight grimace, “Do you really think I’d invite him for my birthday if I
wasn’t completely sure that he has... changed.”

“I don’t doubt that he has,” Harry rolled his eyes, “I was ready to vouch for him in front of the
Wizengamot, remember? But he’s definitely a bastard, too. You read a lot, Hermione; aren’t you
familiar with a thing called nuance?”

“Very funny.”

They stood up in unison and weaved their way out to the atrium. As badly as she wanted to look
 back... she didn’t.

Once they were on their floor, she said, “There’s a small park near my place. Will it help if you get
to play quidditch before dinner? Get hopped up on testosterone and wipe the floor with him...”

“It’ll help,” Harry agreed.

The second week of work wrapped up on a limp note.

Hermione, Kathy, and Takumi continued to slave over Stamp’s case. Five-thirty arrived when
Hermione was in the middle of writing a sentence, and she just left it like that, hanging unfinished.

For that’s how she felt, too. Like an unfinished sentence.

The theme carried on through the rest of the evening.

She made herself some pasta, but it turned out undercooked. She read A Detailed History of The
Code of Wand Use, but put it away just three paragraphs before the end of a chapter.
She lay back in bed and tried to bring herself off, but it wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t it wouldn’t it
wouldn’t it wouldn’t it wouldn’t it wouldn’t it wouldn’t it wouldn’t it wouldn’t –

Barely anything happened.

She snatched her hand out of her knickers, stared up at the ceiling, and waited for her head to
explode.

Chapter End Notes

1. "A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.": Canto XXIV; Inferno, by Dante
Alighieri
 Seventy-Three
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

He returned Metamorphosis with the post-it still inside, but her words had been scratched out.
Under it, he had written, Aunt Agatha Granger eats broken bottles and wears barbed wire next to
the skin.

He returned The Trial with a slip of parchment that read, My Aunt Dahlia Granger has a carrying
voice... If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home
across the Sands of Dee.

She returned his potions book with nine post-its plastered across the title page –
Thou
sodden-witted
lord!
Thou hast
no more
brain
than
I have in mine
elbows.

Hermione woke up at dawn, and she was twenty years old.

Twenty, for heaven’s sake.

She sat up in bed and hugged her knees. With a flowing wave of her arm, she moved the curtains
aside and looked out at the gold-tipped hill. The flutterby bush on the balcony was dark and subtly
shimmering like an oil spill.
Leaping out of bed, she stood before her mirror looking exactly as she had the night before, as a
nineteen-year-old. It wasn’t that she actually expected to see any visible difference; she just hoped
to see something that would’ve made the idea that she was twenty a bit less unfathomable.
But she looked like a child in the too-large tshirt and the shorts that barely peaked out from under
it.

She moved on quickly – stretching her arms behind her back – to prepare for a morning run.
Who could say that her appreciation of the early morning air wasn’t more refined, or that she didn’t
spot more than the usual number of metaphors in the sky and the winding path of the park?

She ran for long. She ran fast and unforgivably. She ran till her muscles were awash with the sweet
pain of exertion, till sweat coated the back of her neck, till she was forced to lie back on the grass,
panting.
Pink clouds in an azure sky: An expanse of jewel tones. Candyfloss in the ocean. Pink sheep in a
blue meadow. As far as childish idioms and big girl metaphors went, she could only find
suspiciously positive ones. On a more literal note, the sky presented all indications of culminating
into a warm day for mid-September.

Twenty deep breaths. She stood up and ambled home.

She showered for long, too. Washed her hair and smothered it with conditioner. Scrubbed, buffed,
and shaved. Sloughed away the dead skin of a nineteen-year-old.

She emerged amid a cloud of steam, with skin as pink as the clouds outside had been.

As she pulled on (what else but) dad’s Genesis tshirt, she had a realisation that brought a lump to
her throat – she hadn’t had a birthday with her parents since she’d turned eleven. That was nine
years since she had last been woken up by mum plopping down on her bed with a present. Nine
years since dad last served her strawberries and eggy bread for breakfast. Nine years since she’d
gone on a meticulously planned Granger birthday expedition.

On her eighth birthday, they had taken her to the Science Museum. On her nineth birthday, to
Warwick Castle. Her tenth birthday was spent at the V&A. On her eleventh birthday they had taken
her to Canterbury, because she’d been reading Chaucer (helpfully annotated by mum). There was a
photograph in their attic, of her standing in front of St. Augustine’s Abbey, all thick pigtails and
enormous front teeth, grinning like the world was hers to take.

1990 was so long ago. Years and years and castles and wars and devastating agony ago.

Such thoughts leant a plodding heaviness to the steps that carried her to the living room.

There were far too many owls sat on her window sill. They glared at her reproachfully as she
lurched forward to attend to them, receiving first the enormous package from mum and dad, the
burden of which had to be shared by two owls. There were also parcels from Mr and Mrs Weasley,
and Neville.

Her gloom conceded that presents were certainly welcome, and even hinted at decampment.

Dear Neville had sent her six freshly-sprouted saplings in colourful pots – her own little magical
herb garden. She carried them out to her balcony and arranged them in a line along the railing.
There was a book of recipes from Mrs Weasley, (One Minute Meals – Its Magic!) and an umbrella
from Mr Weasley, (lime green and imbued with an impervious charm.)
Before she unwrapped her parents’ gifts, she read their letter; another lovely, rambling
conversational missive, with both writing over each other, both uncharacteristically mawkish. She
settled into an armchair and sniffled as she read, wishing so badly that she was with them.

Twenty, sweetheart, so definitely grown up... Your father is sobbing, Hermione... Your mother has
covered all the walls and surfaces of the house with photographs of you, what else can I do...

She wiped her eyes as she stared, for many minutes, at the Love forever, mum and dad at the bottom
of the letter. Without blinking. The letters began to vibrate.

Within their bundle was a hamper filled with a variety of biscuits and a tin of flapjacks, a biography
of Sir Edward Coke, and a pair of small dangling amethyst earrings. Finally – puzzlingly – they had
sent her entire tape collection, along with a small cassette player. There was a note with it, from
dad, that said – I’ve disconnected the mechanism, and removed the batteries. If you can make a
gramophone work, you can make this work.

He was right. All it took was a locomotion charm and a sonorous charm. She put the player on the
coffee table and dug through her collection till she found the Pink Floyd tape gifted by dad on her
eleventh birthday. It was fitting because Wish You Were Here was all she was thinking.
As the slow, enchanting overture to Shine on you Crazy Diamond filled the room, she went to the
kitchen and returned with a bowl of strawberries. She sat on the rug, right in front of the speakers,
and the music changed to potent, chasmal electric guitars and drums.

You were caught in the cross fire of childhood and stardom,

Blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter.
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

By half past noon, she had successfully completed a number of tasks.

She had whisked over to Mabel’s bakery and picked up the chocolate cake that would make Theo’s
day. She'd bought cheese straws, a few packets of crisps, and some bottles of Ribena.
After a quick stop at a phone box at Tranquil Vale to hear mum and dad’s voices, she returned to
Starthistle hill and bought pumpkin juice. She stopped by the Hungry Zowou and placed a sizable
order that was to be delivered in the evening. While passing by the florist, she couldn’t resist
buying bunches of white lilies and stalks of indigo, purple, and pink larkspurs.

With all that stuff, she barrelled into her home and sighed once she’d deposited the load on the
dining table.

She conjured a few serviceable vases, and arranged the flowers while thinking about mum’s book
about Ikebana. Upon achieving things of no artistic significance whatsoever, she put one vase on
the mantel, one on the sideboard, and one on the coffee table.

She moved back to the packets and –

Pop!

“Happy birthday!”

She swivelled around to the fireplace with a giant grin.

“Ginny!”

The head floating amid embers grinned back at her.

“So, this is the new place, eh?” she noted, casting an eye around the room.

“This is it,” Hermione affirmed, moving quickly to crouch in front of the fire, “My god, it’s good to
see you.”

Her nose was a bit sunburnt, her freckles were abundant, and she was downright glowing.

“Been ages, hasn’t it?” she sighed.

“You cut your hair again.”

“Yeah.” She tossed the locks that fell just under her chin. “So much easier to manage this way.”

“How are you?” Hermione urged, “You got my owl? Will you come in the evening then? There’ll
be a game of quidditch before, but I don’t think you’ll mind missing that, will you, considering
that’s all you do now. How is your training going? And–”

“Herms, dearest, can you ask your questions one at a time?”

She snapped her mouth shut and huffed, and gestured for Ginny to speak.

“How am I? That was the first one, wasn’t it?”

Hermione rolled her eyes.

“I’m alright,” she chuckled, “Really good, actually. But as for this evening... I’m sorry, Hermione.
Kippler has me flying well into the night these days, making me chase in the dark and all. She’s got
someone from Magical Maintenance to come make it rain and storm. I barely have time to breathe,
honestly. Even now... lunch break will be over in half an hour and I’ll have to go practice
formations.”

“But it’s Sunday,” Hermione moaned, “Surely you get one day off?”

Ginny sucked in her cheeks and her eyes gleamed. Hermione would have to be blind to not notice
the blatant excitement her question triggered.

“Normally, yes. But... Well. After Griffiths ran off to Puddlemere, things have been very unstable.
They’ve not used the same chaser twice since; nobody’s been the right fit. Until now. Both Kippler
and Gwenog seem to think I’ll be ready by the next season...”

“That’s amazing!”

“I know!” she squealed, “I was so sure I’d be stuck in the reserves for at least a year or two, and...
Merlin.”

“Gosh, Ginny, what absolutely brilliant news! I’m so thrilled for you!”

“It certainly makes waking up at the crack of dawn and spending nearly nine hours a day on a
broom worth it. Not to mention all the physical training. Why didn’t you tell me running in the
morning was so bloody awful? And you do it for fun?”

Hermione laughed and shrugged. “It’s a vital part of my day now. I love it. But anyway, nine hours
on a broom? What’s the average week like?”

She listened raptly as Ginny elaborated on her schedule. It was inflexible and gruelling, but it was
also clear to see that Ginny found it irrefutably rewarding. She was blossoming under the pressure;
she was being encouraged, honed, and prepped to fulfil her highest potential.

“And what about you?” Ginny asked, “Taking the Ministry by storm?”

It was very hard to keep her face from falling.

“Oh, no,” she laughed forcefully, “Just an underling, at the moment. Mostly shuffling parchment
around and doing bits of token research that my colleagues indulge me with.”

“Come now, I’m sure that’s not true,” Ginny refuted kindly, “Harry told me you skipped three steps
and landed a position that’s meant for someone far more–”

“It’s painfully true,” Hermione interjected, “Sure, I got the job, but I’m also being reminded that
I’m not good enough every bloody second of the day.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“What’s your boss like?”

“Snape,” she lamented, pulling a face.

Ginny continued with a bracing smile, “I’m sure they’re just testing you. Can’t let Hermione
Granger, war heroine, with her armful of NEWTs know exactly how brilliant she is, right?”

“Right,” the heroine muttered sulkily.

“Its’ your birthday,” Ginny pressed, “Cheer up. Here. Wear that today.”

She tossed a present at her, wrapped in shiny paper.

“Thanks,” Hermione said with a slightly grudging, slightly abashed smile, “Will you ever visit?”

“End October! I’ll be back for ten days. It’ll be a mad time at the Burrow... Charlie’s finally going
to introduce us to his boyfriend, mum will be turning fifty, Fleur’s pregnancy hormones will
probably be through the roof, and Percy–”

“Fleur’s pregnant?!” Hermione sputtered.

“Yep.”

“Since when?”

“Over a month, or so. Of course, she didn’t break the news till two weeks ago. Harry and Ron
didn’t tell you?”

“No!”

“Cheese for brains, those two. But yes. There’s going to be another venerated Weasley in our midst,
next year. Let's just hope it gets Bill’s personality – Ah, shit. Hermione...” She bit her lip
regretfully.

“You have to go.”

“It was damn good to see you again –”

“Seriously, I've missed talking to you so –”

“–try and catch up again soon. Fuck... yes, I’ll be right there! …Happy birthday... Have a wonderful
day...”

Ginny’s disembodied head disappeared.

Hermione stood up. She flipped the tape in the player and opened Ginny’s present to Have A
Cigar.

*
Ginny’s present was a corduroy skirt, short and fitted, with buttons down the front, and Hermione
complied with her request, pairing it with a thin, fine-knit jumper, and just enough Sleekeazy to
tame her fly-aways.
The living room had come to life with all the flowers. Armchairs from the study and bedroom had
been placed around the coffee table. The music paraphernalia sat on the sideboard.

At quarter past three, she filled a coolbox with juice and squash and went down to the park. Her
guests were only going to arrive at four, but she liked the idea of sitting outside and diving into her
new book.

It really was a pleasant day. The sky was bright; pink clouds replaced by white. Beyond trees that
were slowly turning yellow and a rickety fence, Hermione could see the heath stretch on for miles
and miles. She found a bench at the edge of the lawn, under a drooping tree, and after shooing
away a flock of foul pigeons, she sat down serenely.

Alas, as it happened, she only got to read for ten minutes.

There was a startling noise. Theo stood before her, beaming.

“You’re early.” she said, putting her book aside.

He didn’t respond. Only raised his arms expectantly. She hopped off the bench and let him squeeze
her into a rib-crushing hug.

“Happy birthday.”

“Ow.”

First, he handed her a tragically wrapped present which she slipped into her bag, and then he pulled
a hipflask out from his pocket.

“Conjure two glasses, will you? We’re going to have a toast before the hooligans arrive.”

During the course of that toast and the subsequent conversation, Hermione found herself quite
taken aback by the frequency with which Theo and dad were corresponding. “You said I’m a
Granger now, didn’t you?” was Theo’s only exposition, after which he begged her to tell him if
Renovo Mouth-Washing PotionTM contained fluoride, and who Arsène Wenger was and why he
must be hated.

Then, the first of the hooligans arrived.

Harry and Ron, brooms and presents in hand, materialised into the park and clamoured over to wish
her.
“Aren’t you too old to be hanging around with teenagers?” Ron asked.

His question, most happily, aligned with twenty-one-year-old George’s arrival. He flew over with
two beater’s bats tucked under his arm, and promptly offered one to her with a pointed look at Ron.

Dean and Seamus, next. Padma and Tracey, (a packaged deal, apparently.) Draco was the last to
reach and he had two brooms with him. He scowled, hurling one at Theo.

As he approached her, the air felt irrationally warmer. Brain thoughts and action things commence,
please. He held out a present while she fought to overcome sudden memory loss involving her
hands and their function.

“Thank you,” she said, managing to accepting it.

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you,” she said, again.

He turned away to watch the other broom-carriers discuss the rules of four-a-side quidditch.

After two weeks of sporadic sightings and one fleeting exchange, to see him up close, casually
dressed and hair uncoiffed, was–

She was staring.

She spun around and returned to the safety of her bench, where Padma, too, had made herself
comfortable. The rest split up into teams, (Harry-Ron-Dean-Seamus versus Theo-Draco-George-
Tracey) and kicked off into the sky.

The game carried on overhead and Hermione fell into a conversation with Padma, though she
listened more than she spoke. And with every passing moment she felt a stab of regret for forgoing
a career as a healer.

Which essentially meant that it fell into the growing list of things she wished she had gone for, over
her current line of employment.

She used to be so patient and sedate. What the hell had happened?

Padma had, most tortuo - fortuitously, come under the wing of a visionary. She was horribly
overworked, barely sleeping, completely desensitised to blood and infirmity, (whatever little
sensitivity remained after the war, that is,) and was learning more and quicker than ever before. Her
diagnostic spells were a tad sub-par, but her potion brewing and healing charms put her well above
her peers.
Most importantly, her paper (their paper; Hermione had helped, damn it,) had made quite an
impact on her supervisor. There were trials being carried out at that moment, to perfect the modern-
medicine-traditional-potion hybrid.
All this information was delivered in a sort of rambling, vainglorious dramatic monologue that
would’ve won the approval of Robert Browning.

Hermione was so unbelievably bitter. Happy birthday, you resentful bitch.

She pulled her lips back in a hard smile and said, “I knew this would happen. That paper’s too
brilliant to ignore.”

“Thanks, Hermione,” Padma beamed, “And, honestly... thanks. I couldn’t have done it without
you–”
(Well, no shit.)
“–But what about you? Must be so fantastic, working under Madam Barros.”

Hermione opened her mouth and...

...She had never been gladder about half-time.

The commotion of eight pairs of feet hitting the ground with a thump, accompanied by a babel of
old-fashioned, derisive slagging off, completely derailed their conversation.
Hermione opened the coolbox, offering beverages to the spent and sweaty mass. Save for Dean,
everyone was very intrigued by Ribena, resulting in the pumpkin juice remaining untouched.
Jackets and jumpers were shed, and the grass was soon littered with discarded clothing and
reclining bodies.

Perched on the edge of the bench, Hermione got utterly rivetted by the scene playing out in the
periphery of her vision. She didn’t dare look straight on, but...

Draco’s drink floated next to him while he gripped the lapels of his black jacket. It was well-fitted,
so he shrugged it off by rolling back those broad shoulders. The front of his tshirt lifted just a
smidgen, revealing the teeniest, tiniest, barest hint of skin; just a shiny flash, like a willow-the-
whisp. He reached out and grabbed his bottle, long fingers wrapping utterly around the neck, while
the line of his neck came into full display as he tipped his head back to drink. He was obviously
parched, chugging the drink, his throat was undulating –

Some ruinous physiological force was urging her to find out what that motion might feel like, to
touch. Under her fingers or lips.

She had absolutely nothing going for her. Not a damn thing. That’s why she was so disastrously
addled.

She skedaddled over to Theo and sat beside him, carefully curling her legs under her bum.

“What’s the score?”

“You weren’t watching?”

“Of course not.”

“I wasn’t watching either,” he smiled blissfully, “And I’m the keeper. Do you think that’s why my
team is losing?”

“Perhaps,” Hermione mused, “Also explains why Draco, George, and Tracey look like they want to
skin you.”

“Oh, right.” Theo gave them a silly, poncy wave.

Not long after, there was another loud sound of apparition.

Everyone turned to watch Luna hurry across the lawn towards Hermione, the end of her long, floral
frock fluttering wildly.

“I’m so sorry for being late!” she said, “I had to take daddy to Mungo’s.”

“Is everything alright?” Hermione asked.

“Oh, yes, he’s fine,” she smiled, “Just a routine check-up on his legs. Happy birthday, Hermione.”

Hermione got up and left Theo and Luna to greet each other properly. The rest of his team was
huddled together, scheming, while the opposing team was passing a quaffle around. She found
herself, once again, on the bench next to Padma, and was quick to ensure she wouldn’t pick up the
thread of their previous conversation.

“What’s Parvati up to these days?”

Padma launched into an account of her sister’s misadventures as a junior marketing editor for the
Prophet.

The game recommenced, Luna joined the two of them, and then, naturally, it was her turn. She
spoke at length about the beauty of Swedish forests, the lovely group she had travelled with, the
amazing efficacy of American equipment, but somehow, the main issue was not addressed.

And so, Hermione broached, “Did you find the elusive snorkack?”

“The Crumple-Horned Snorkack.”

“Yes, that one.”

“Unfortunately, no. They’re in hibernation.”

“Already?”

“Yes. Crumple-Horned Snorkacks prefer the cold. They’ll come out in November.”

“Oh.”

“But look,” she cried excitedly, pulling a bunch of photographs out of her purse, “We found so
many tracks.”
Hermione and Padma avoided eye-contact.

“I’m writing an article about our expedition for next week’s Quibbler.”

“That’s lovely,” Padma said, “Will you go back in winter to continue your search?”

“Of course! Thanks to all these footprints, we know exactly where to look!”

The game finally ended at a quarter past six. The swarm once again descended, desperate for
hydration and sustenance. For some more time, they all lay around in the park, (basking in their
victory or nursing bruised egos, as applicable,) passing around crisps and cheese straws.

Luna flounced off to show Dean her photographs in the hope of getting him to make an artist’s
impression of her crumpled beastie, and Theo came up to Hermione, with a quiet question.

“What are they, actually? Deer tracks?”

“Probably elk,” she told him, regretfully.

“Hm.”

He crossed his arms and leant back on the bench, staring grumpily at the sky. All his good cheer
from earlier had disappeared.

“What’s wrong, Theo?” she asked tentatively.

He looked back at her and shrugged. After a second or so, he shook himself and presented her with
a mischievous, albeit forced grin.

“Probably just extreme sexual frustration,” he leered, “Luna only got back yesterday morning, and
she’s been busy with Xeno since.”

“I see.” She fell into place next to him and jostled him with her shoulder. “You poor thing.”

“Two weeks of celibacy is torture. Blimey... you must be in hell.”

“Pff.”

“You poor thing.”

“Please shut up.” She fixed her sight on a distant tree.

“You gave the boot to Boot ages ago. And I know that he wasn’t good, anyway–”

“Oh, did you sleep with him, too?”

“No, I have taste–”

“You know, it’s my birthday and–”

“You want me to find you a strapping lad for a birthday shag? I do have someone in mind–”
“No, you mastodonic troll! I want to not have to listen to you whinge about being randy on my
birthday.”

Well, that had been unfortunately loud. Everyone stopped what they were doing to gawk at her. In
the midst of that oppressive silence, Luna’s voice piped up: “I’ll take care of you tonight, Theo.
Don’t you worry.”

Cackles exploded. Hermione fought against the swell in vain. Eventually, her shoulders caved, and
she joined in.

Her flat had never looked tinier. It simply was not made for eleven people.

The small dining table was laden with a variety of comestibles. Every single seat was occupied and
chatter prevailed over low music. Dean, as usual, was the self-proclaimed DJ, and had decided to
treat the party to Sonic Youth. He had also beckoned Hermione over to her salon wall, and treated
her to a lecture on her own collection, which wasn’t as intolerable as it should have been,
considering he had respectable insight on the general subject matter.

It was just that she would have much preferred to re-enact the perusal with Draco a hundred times
over.

Seamus plucked lilies out of her coffee table arrangement and handed one to all the women in the
room. George and Theo made Tracy (and Ron) shriek in an unearthly manner when a big hairy
spider came crawling out of her mouth.

Hermione’s prediction had happily come true – there was no place for uncomfortable silence in a
room where George, Theo, and Seamus existed together. Between tales of pranks gone awry and
outlandish patrons, there wasn’t a dull moment for the remainder of the evening. Occasionally, Ron
interjected with insane anecdotes involving the stupidest of petty criminals. Padma divulged some
of the more gruesome maladies she had encountered. Dean was still moaning about naked hags.
It was so much like being back in their “eighth year” common room.

Hermione barely spoke a word or two, sitting on one of the dining chairs that she had dragged to
the other side of the room. She ate steamed dumplings, laughed a lot, and looked everywhere but at
Draco.

Mostly.

He really seemed to like the sweet date wantons, and he stayed quiet, too.
And Harry. Harry was also taciturn.

Still; the world hadn’t ended.

When the time came, Theo insisted on twenty candles on her cake. She rolled her eyes and, with a
snap of her fingers, conjured twenty little flames to hover an inch over the frosting.

“Show off,” he grinned.

The cake was supposed to be sufficient for up to twenty-five people, but by the time her friends
were done with it, less than one-fourth was left. Theo’s expected enthusiasm, mirrored by Ron,
made the biggest dent.

While the vultures circled, Hermione stole a quiet couple of seconds with Harry.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he replied with a faint smile, “Cake’s good.”

“Isn’t it?”

They both ate a bite to sample the proof in their pudding.

“I had a chat with Ginny this afternoon. She’ll be visiting in October.”

Harry nodded, “Fucking finally.”

“I know. Feels like forever. And incidentally, thanks for telling me about Fleur.”

“Oh, right,” Harry nodded again, “She’s pregnant.”

“Yes, Harry.”

He grinned properly at that, and Ron dropped b y in time to catch the end of what was said. That
led to him and George giving a detailed recountal of Mrs Weasley’s reaction to the (delayed)
revelation.

Eventually, a silent collective sigh was heaved, signalling the beginning of the postlude.

Padma had a five AM shift the next morning, so she and Tracey were the first to leave.

A while later, George took a wooden top out of his pocket and spun it on the coffee table. It
bounced on the surface, took off, and gyred and hovered mid-air... innocuously for a bit... then it
squirted a huge jet of bright purple ink, which splashed across the entire room – and its occupants –
like a blood spatter.

“GEORGE!” Hermione bellowed, glaring aghast at the mess on her jumper.

Similar wails of horror echoed around her.

“Now hold on, hold on,” George placated, raising an ink smeared hand, “Five... four... three... two...
one... et voilà!”

The ink disappeared; every last drop of it.

“All right, good people. Don’t be shy. Please applaud.”

A series of departures commenced. Within the next half hour, only Theo, Luna, and Draco
remained.

Hermione stood on the tips of her toes and stretched, then aimed a finite at the stereo. She moved to
the table to clear it up and Draco followed her, not to help or any such infraction against nature, but
to cut himself another slice of cake.

“One for the road,” he smirked. It seemed like it took him some effort to do so.

“Go ahead,” she smiled, and quickly blinked away.

“Good idea. Cut us a slice as well,” Theo called.

“No. Wanker.”

“Excuse me?”

“You asked to be keeper. No, you insisted!”

“Are you seriously still on about that?!”

Hermione levitated the dishes into the kitchen, and busied herself in the business of putting away
leftovers and cleaning up. Peeved voices carried in from the next room.

When she returned, the two blokes were sitting at the table, glaring and murdering their respective
slices of cake. She took a seat across from them, exchanging an amused look with Luna, who was
watching from the sofa.

“I’m going to Berne on Tuesday,” Draco grumbled suddenly.

“How come?” Hermione asked at the same time that Theo said, “’the fuck for?”

“Some business about acquiring Time-turners from the Swiss Ministry,” Draco replied, addressing
his mauled cake, “Kenny and I and a bunch of sodding Unspeakables.”

She truly had never seen anyone eat chocolate cake with such petulance, but there they both were,
sitting side by side, shovelling it into their mouths like it was dirt.

“You could say hello to Neville and Hannah,” Hermione said.

“No time,” he replied, with not a jot of regret, “Only going to be there for two days.”

Hermione looked down and traced the woodgrain with her fingernail.

They left after that. Both Theo and Luna hugged and plied her with final birthday wishes. Draco
bequeathed a curt wave from the fireplace.

She was alone. On her sofa. Listening to the same song on repeat.

I've come to wish you an unhappy birthday

'Cause you're evil

It was past midnight, and no longer her birthday. Shut the fuck up, Morrissey.

Twenty and alone: A sliver of cake to mark the glory of such a thing.

With the lamps in the living room doused, she carried the plate to the bedroom and set it on the
nightstand. She shimmied out of her skirt, pulled off her jumper, and once back in worn, loose
clothes, she sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed with her beaded bag.

It was time to open her presents.

She sought out Theo’s gift first, smiling at the way he’d swaddled it in crumpled paper. So
appallingly shabby. It fell apart to reveal a small box, inside which was a beautiful iridescent
porcelain ornament. He had finally got her a unicorn.

Hermione placed the figurine on the palm of her hand. It shook its shimmering mane, clopped a
front hoof against her hand, and closed its eyes appreciatively when she gently stroked its smooth
neck with her index finger. It allowed her to pet him thus for a while, before gracefully leaping off
her palm and trotting across the bed to a corner, whereupon it curled up and promptly went to sleep.
All the while, its colours shifted hypnotically.

Harry got her an impressive set of swan feather quills and colourful inks. Ron got her a pair of tall,
vanilla and magnolia scented candles. She lit on and levitated it onto the dressing table.

George’s present was one of his own creations. A Patented Daydream Charm. Fred had been so
chuffed when she had complimented them. A pang of sorrow turned into a choked laugh when she
saw the cover. Love in the Library – A sweltering, swotty romance. Exclusively designed for
Hermione Granger ONLY.

From Seamus, she got booze. She hadn’t been expecting anything else, but it was nice to see
elderflower wine instead of firewhisky.

Vanilla and magnolia had spread softly through the room.

Dean’s gift, wrapped in thick brown paper, was intriguing. It was the shape and the size of a small
tea tray. She realised after the first tear that it was a painting, and after the final tear saw that it was
a painting of her.
Specifically, Hermione rendered in pastels, reading by a window on the Hogwarts Express. Her hair
was loose and tumbling all over the place and her focus was held obdurately by her book. There
was very little motion in the painting – just a continuing shift in the verdant blur whizzing across
the window, and Hermione turning a page every few minutes. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was
scenic and captivating.

She slipped out of bed and returned to the living room to hang it under Degas’ ballet dancers.

The mattress jostled with she hopped back into bed with a leap. The motion woke up the unicorn.

“Sorry,” Hermione whispered.

It shook its mane disapprovingly and went right back to sleep.

Padma and Tracey even bought gifts together. Hermione eyed the envelope they’d given
suspiciously, but was extremely mollified to find that it contained a subscription to the Journal of
Advances in Modern Arithmancy. She sent an apologetic current towards the two... wherever they
were.

Luna got her a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. Except, they weren’t really bunnies, were they?
Bunnies did not have tusks. But besides those abominations, the slippers were sinfully soft and
warm and would do perfectly for winter.

She sat back with Draco’s present, leaning into pillows propped up against the headboard. It felt
incredibly, unbelievably momentous to be opening a birthday gift from Draco Malfoy. It was a
‘down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, op art, magical land in the wardrobe, Prisoners of
the Lost Universe’ kind of momentous mindfuck that was making her despicably happy.

It was wrapped in the same paper as Theo’s gift, but done up in a much neater way. Definitely a
book; a heavy, thick, hard-bound book.

She opened it slowly while calamitous things carried on inside her chest.

The book was leather bound and ornately gilded, with a light green tassel hanging out of the spine.
 The Complete Memoirs of Fedelm Bedelia Beetlerot,
Leader of the Dæg Guild of Druidesses.
A Meticulous Account of Insular Celtic Magic, Healing, and Divination

There had been a passing mention of this guild in one of the more advanced books on ancient runes
at the Hogwarts library. Due to the lack of elaboration and further references, she had assumed that
it’d offered nothing of great significance to the course of medieval magic.
But this was a fat bloody tome and she felt like an absolute twit for not digging deeper back then.
Afterall, it certainly would not be the first time history had dismissed and forgotten the contribution
of women.

With the utmost, reverential care and anticipation bubbling through her body, she lifted the cover.

Would she even be capable of fully appreciating a book now, if it didn’t come with an insulting jibe
on the very first page?

The bubbles of anticipation burst and emitted asinine giggles.

She hath more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs.

Happy birthday.

Confound it. She really, really liked him.

She could allow herself one final indulgence, couldn’t she? Just to end the day on a canty, giddy
note? From the drawer of her nightstand, she shuffled through a stack of photographs till she found
the one she was looking for.

She tried to picture that glorious grin blossoming in front of her eyes again, following the most
unconventional of compliments, paired with a happy birthday...

...If she could somehow isolate the feeling of clinging onto him away from the overwhelming terror
of the Fiendfyre experience...

Bah. She’d mucked up her own high.

The little unicorn trotted back up the bed to settle on the pillow next to her. She ran a finger down
its mane and back.

Looking at its prismatic surface, it should have been easy to come up with flowery lines about
phantasms and the chimeric nature of happiness that would befit the imagination of a twenty-year-
old bookworm. But she suddenly found herself intractably sleepy.
Chapter End Notes

1. "Aunt Agatha eats broken bottles...": The Code of the Woosters, by P. G. Wodehouse
2. "My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice... ": Very Good, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
3. "Thou sodden-witted lord...": Act II, Scene I; Troilus AND Cressida, by William
Shakespeare
4. Shine on you Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd
5. Have A Cigar by Pink Floyd
6. Unhappy Birthday by The Smiths
7. "She hath more hair than wit...": Act III, Scene 1; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, by
William Shakespeare
 Seventy-Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

For the first time since she had begun working, Hermione was running late. Several factors had
played into that unfortunate turn of events, starting with her carelessly sleeping in (on an armchair,
for that’s where she had fallen asleep,) followed by an encounter with a loquacious neighbour in the
lift after her morning run. An unforeseen accident caused by her new pseudo-pet was the last straw,
leading to her bursting into the atrium with just a minute ‘til nine o’clock.
She clutched freshly cleaned parchment rolls, that she had spent all day and night working on, close
to her chest and raced towards the lifts.

“Cutting it a bit fine today?”

Hermione tottered as Draco fell into step next to her. Her brisk was his leisurely.

“Yes,” she huffed, amping up her pace to just a rung below a jog, “Stella tipped a bottle of ink all
over my work.”

“Stella?”

“My unicorn.”

“Ah.”

They’d moved past the golden gates and stood alongside eight other people, waiting for a lift to
arrive.

“Theo called it Ducky.”

“Ducky the unicorn?”

“Yeah.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Absolutely not.”

He snickered.

Blasted lifts were taking forever. Her white rabbit mania was augmented by the agitation that his
presence always inspired. She was hyper-aware of his scent and solidness beside her. She bounced
on the balls of her feet, like she was on her mark at a starting line.

“Definitely keep hopping like a lunatic. That’ll make the lifts come faster.”

It so happened that a lift did indeed open up exactly at that moment.

“See?” she said loftily, “It worked.”

“Exactly like I’d said it would,” he replied, aping her tone.

Once the lift was moving, she took a chance to look at him properly. He was wearing a travelling
cloak, and, in addition to his attaché case, had a holdall slung on his shoulder.

“What time’s your portkey?” she asked.

“Ten. But first, I must get through a briefing. When Kenny’s involved, it’s never brief.”

At level five, she said, “Bon Voyage.”

“Unlikely,” he muttered mulishly, before stepping out of the lift.

When she finally burst into the office, Kathy and Takumi were already well settled.

“Hi!” Hermione gasped, slamming the sheaf in her arms down on the table, “I’ve gone through a
dozen secret ledgers with ten years of financial records... I think we can nab them on tax evasion
and fraud.”

Her colleagues nodded.

“I have a testimony from a disgruntled ex-shop manager,” Kathy said, waving a parchment with the
official auror seal, “He swore under Veritaserum that their dragon scales are supplied by poachers
from New Zealand.”

“Not a single piece of theirs is truly goblin-made,” Takumi added, “They have over seventy house-
elves in a dungeon, working round the clock.”

It finally felt like they were doing something. Insignis Co. had been allowed to sell its (dodgy)
exclusive jewellery to pureblood patrons for decades, with the Ministry turning a blind eye to its
malefactions. But tax evasion was a step too far, now that Kingsley was in charge. There was no
way out for them.
It was a big case, with multiple barristers in the department collaborating. The family behind the
company, the upper management, and the independent accountants affiliated with the company
were all under scrutiny. In exactly two weeks, there was to be a full criminal trial in courtroom
three.

Hermione hoped and prayed that Barros would let her sit in a corner and watch.
For the next few days, Hermione was incessantly reminded of how small of a cog she was. While
Kathy no longer inspected her work before passing it to Stamp or Barros, she continued to be
handed the least daunting tasks.

What had seemed so exciting on Monday, was just a little tiresome by Thursday. She was stuck
with the ledgers and the ledgers alone. She had asked Takumi to please let her look into the
certification forgery and elf-exploitation aspect, but he had merely smiled and said it was important
to abide by Madam Barros’ assignments.
Kathy kept flitting between the auror headquarters and the admin, often muttering profanities
against Slattery, the inefficient linkman whom Harry and Ron so despised.

At least Stamp and Barros were too busy to dish out unnecessary scorn – and for that Hermione
was grateful.

Sometimes, after lunch, she would stand in the waiting area for a few moments, watching the
straight-backed upholders of the law march between each other’s offices. It was like a cartoon door
chase.

On Friday, Hermione entered the canteen with an ache at the base of her neck, and hours of peering
down at dates and transactions were to blame. Gringotts had finally sent over their own records of
Insignis’ dealings, and she had been making note of the innumerable inconsistencies.

After collecting a salad and some crisps, she looked around the space, hoping to find an empty
table, or even one with Percy, who finally, as she’d discovered the day before, had insights she was
genuinely interested in.

Instead, she found something so much better – Draco, alone at a table; no Fiona in sight.

As she neared, she noticed he was utterly neglecting his tray of food, choosing instead, to scowl at
some parchment.

“You're back,” she said and smiled, settling across from him.

“No,” he loured, “Still in Berne.”

“Hilarious.” Her smile fell. “What are you scowling at?”

“Kenny’s impressions of our meeting with the Swiss delegates.”

“But the parchment’s blank.”

He stared at her like she was the biggest moron in the world. She bit into a cherry tomato.

“You make the most searing observations,” he droned, “It’s blank because he had no discernible
impressions. Told me to cook something up and slap his name on it.”
“And you agreed?”

“Obviously. He’s my boss.”

She needed him to stop looking at her like she was the village idiot. “And you’re you.”

“I’m not bloody stupid,” he sneered, “I know when to truckle and be agreeable.”

For a moment she gave him a doubtful frown, but then she remembered –

“Oh, yes. The consummate sycophancy of the Inquisitorial Squad.”

“That’s right,” he replied plainly and unabashedly.

Why the hell did she like this man? Boy. Brat. She dug into her crisps and looked away from him.

He continued to gripe under his breath. "I don't understand why they stuck me with Kenny. Of all
the senior delegates, I get the incompetent, brain-dead cretin who has no sense of what–”

“You took away their chance to send you to Azkaban, so they found another way to punish you,”
she spat crossly.

When he didn’t immediately bite back, she was compelled to face him once more. He was looking
at her with eyes slightly wide... a shocked laugh tumbled out of his throat.

“I really don't know why people think you're so sweet and compassionate. You're jolly well mean.”

"I am not,” she snapped, “Not usually. But it's like I said to Theo, some time back. You bring out
the worst in me.”

The change in him was so unexpected that she nearly dropped her lettuce-laden fork. Suddenly, he
was amused. The scowl had completely vanished.

“I should put that in my CV.”

What?

Oh right. He brought out the worst in her.

“Please do,” she mumbled, “Just having my name there will do wonders.”

“I’m not so sure,” his brow puckered, “Thankfully it’s something that negatively impacts you,
otherwise the association would destroy my social standing.”

“Your social standing?” she sputtered, “Excuse me?”

“Yes, you see–”

“I,” she pointed towards herself with her fork, “Am a well-loved celebrity.”
“So am I.”

“Oh, please!”

“You,” he pointed towards her with his quill, “are known to be a tedious and boring nag. An
officious busybody.”

“Then why are you having lunch with me? Go away.”

“You plopped yourself down at my table.”

She glowered and pushed the packet of crisps towards him. He accepted and forced her to watch
him eat one.

“You can stay,” he dipped his head like he was telling her a secret, “Because you look annoyed. If
people notice I'm annoying you, I will be lauded. I will be considered a bigger hero than Potter.”

“Harry annoys me too,” she quipped.

“As much as I do?”

“That isn't possible. There isn't a single person – or thing – in the world as annoying as you.”

“That's some high praise,” he grinned, “Granger, maybe you bring out the best in me.”

Fine, yes, she knew why she liked him. Enough. She could feel her cheeks getting so warm.

“The best you can be is outstandingly annoying? That's very sad, Draco.”

“No. Annoying you is heroic. The best I can be is heroic.”

What hope did she have when he shot her roguish, alluring, crooked grins like that?

“Are there no limits to your swaggering delusions?” she asked, mostly because if she didn’t speak,
she’d just be sat there, mutely blushing, “Who on earth believes that being naturally irritating is
some sort of accomplishment?”

“Who indeed?” he smirked, boring holes into her eyes.

“You can’t just turn it around on me, after all that drivel!” she scoffed.

“Why not?”

“It’s lazy. I expect better from you. I’m scarcely irked.”

“You say that, but you’re rather red with rage,” he pointed out.

“It’s the lycopene,” she muttered, quickly gobbling up another cherry tomato.

The chairs besides them were pulled back - a scraping reminder that they were in the Ministry
canteen. Two blokes settled on one side, and Fiona on the other.
“Hello, Hermione,” said Fiona pleasantly, “And Draco, I can’t wait to hear all about your trip.”

Draco’s enticing crooked grin had slipped away, making room for an expression of bland
affability.

“A disaster, as expected,” he said dramatically, “In the middle of the dialogue, Kenny asked if he
could use a time-turner to go back in time and never come to such an overlarge pasture.”

“Um?” Fiona blinked.

“He called Berne an overlarge pasture,” Draco explained, “And then he went on to imply that the
Swiss delegates were cattle.”

“Why hasn’t that man been sacked?” one of the men asked.

“Oh,” said Draco abruptly, catching Hermione’s eye, “This is Arnold Begbie, and this is Irvin
Masters. Gentlemen...”

He paused, and some wickedness slipped back into his appearance. He gestured towards her like
she was a specimen in a museum.

“Gentlemen, this is a well-loved celebrity.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes, and turned to the two men. “Hermione Granger. Nice to meet you.
Malfoy is a prat.”

The sentiment was returned, with much nervous, respectful amusement. Hermione began to make
quick work of her salad.

“It’s really so wonderful that you joined us today,” Fiona piped up.

She looked far too genial. Aggressively genial.

Hermione made really quick work of her salad. The crisps were still in Draco’s possession and he
could keep them.
She banished her tray, stood up to leave, and mumbled some generic words of departure.

“Don’t forget to look annoyed,” Draco told her, “I have a reputation to maintain.”

So, of course she shot him with the sweetest, broadest smile in her arsenal, while he looked on
challengingly.

“Have the loveliest of days, Draco,” she cooed.

As she walked away, his low chuckle slammed into her back, but she didn’t peak over her shoulder.
He was free to tell Fiona about his trip now; free to focus all that playful, vexing energy on her.
Hermione had a stack of ledgers to attend to.
 *

At the end of the day, after she was back at home, eating dinner and going over and over the
interaction --– Not once, while he harped on about the demerits of associating with her, had she
presumed he was alluding to her blood. It hadn’t even crossed her mind.

Staying up until four in the morning to finish her work had been worth it. She slept for five hours
after that, then went downstairs for a stroll and came back with The Guardian and a blackcurrant
queen of puddings that had been sitting temptingly at the baker’s window.

For the rest of the day, till darkness descended, she sat on her balcony, drowning in Fedelm’s
memoir.

Thanks to Mrs Weasley’s prezzie, she was able to fix herself dinner in a minute.

After eating, she went straight to the study and dive back into reading. Stella cantered on the
bookshelves for a bit, then made an impressive leap onto the footstool, where, by Hermione’s
ankle, she fell asleep.

A little later, Hermione migrated to bed, placing Stella on the second pillow. She read for as long as
her eyes stayed open.

Fedelm Bedelia Beetlerot was born to a poor, unwed witch in a secluded hamlet in Dartmoor.
Neither she, nor her mother, were looked upon with kind eyes.
However, as she grew older, it became patently evident that she was an extraordinarily powerful
witch. For that reason, the Warlock who taught the local children took a special interest in her. Her
prowess with a wand was unmatched, leading to the rumour that her father was one of the druids
from the elusive sect of High Wyll. Her mother never admitted to anything, and died with her
secrets when Fedelm was just sixteen years old.

Left to her own devices, Fedelm threw herself in study, spending nearly all her time at the
phrontistery. Unfortunately, her skills weren’t the only thing that interested the old Warlock. One
evening, he made to act on his depraved desires.
To the rest of the vill, it just seemed like the misbegotten girl had callously burnt down their
hallowed place of learning, and murdered the instructor in cold blood. In no time at all, she was
driven out by an enraged, self-righteous mob.

Angry, bitter, alone, and fearful, Fedelm took sanctuary in a nearby woodland, where most people
were afraid to tread, owing to the rumoured presence of werewolves and hostile centaurs. For eight
days and seven nights, she wandered haplessly, cold, starved and alone, till she did stumble upon a
herd.

Anyone else would have been mauled on sight – but not Fedelm Beetlerot.

The centaurs’ percipience was quick to recognise her virtuosity. They took her in, and they fed her.
From them, she learned of the most abstruse keys to divination.

The galleon in Hermione’s pocket burned and she very reluctantly put the book away. She would
have very happily spent the rest of her day reading, but Theo had sent an owl early in the morning
with a rhapsodic, devastating lament.

In essence, she had to join him for lunch or he’d die.

Maybe it was because she had been reading nothing but lustreless law books, law documents, law
records, and crumbly ledgers full of numbers, or maybe it was because historically, druids and
druidesses were forbidden from recording their knowledge. Perhaps it was both...
But it felt like Fedelm’s Memoir was among the most exciting things she’d ever read, and she was
still only a quarter of the way in.
The prose was fantastic – the translator had done a brilliant job preserving medieval magniloquence
– and it read like gorgeous, immersive historical fiction.
And those words stemmed out of a prodigious mind. Fedelm wrote about magic in the most
cerebral way. She broke down spells, deconstructed and revamped potions, and tested the limits of
charms. She played around with runes and ciphers. Hermione had only just finished a segment in
which she had theorised a proto-regenerating draught, which, centuries later, would evolve into the
potion that gave Voldemort his body back.

Magic was incredible. In all the recent drudgery, she had forgotten.

The galleon burnt again. And again, and again, and again.
REMINDER: LUNCH WITH THEO.
REMINDER: LUNCH WITH THEO.
REMINDER: LUNCH WITH THEO.
REMINDER: LUNCH WITH THEO.

He was relentless.

ON MY WAY U MANIAC.

She dragged herself into the bedroom to get ready.

She stepped into a deserted sitting room, which left her feeling incensed. What was the need to put
on a show of such desperation if he couldn’t even be there to greet her? Persecution and tetchiness
were her companions during her journey to the kitchen. She hoped he had got her a caprese
sandwich. If he hadn’t, she would turn right back and return to her book.

He wasn’t in the kitchen, either.

Draco was. Leaning against the counter, sipping from a bottle of ginger ale, and using his wand to
lay plates and cutlery on the table.

If it had been anyone else who had given her the memoir, by now Hermione would have barrelled
into them, emitting squeals of gratitude. But this was Draco; and in any case, she couldn’t imagine
any of her friends picking out that book.

The last fork had been placed, and he eyed her expectantly, in a not-in-the-mood-to-bother-with-
polite-greetings way.

“Do you remember when you accused me of sabotaging your NEWTs by giving you diverting
literature?”

She loved catching him off guard. It was so empowering to be the reason behind his slightly
confused frown.

“Yes?”

“Are you trying to sabotage my career by giving me diverting literature?”

His expression unclouded. With eyes bright, he smirked.

“That would be too obvious and transparent to be considered sweet revenge.”

“Perhaps,” she grinned, “But effective.”

“Have I sabotaged your career?”

“Irreparably.”

“Excellent.”

She laughed softly and stared at her feet. It still didn’t feel like enough, though. Too far from the
realm of thankful embraces. She shuffled to the table and sat demurely on the edge of a chair,
clasping her hands to keep from fidgeting. A bottle of ginger ale appeared in front of her, and she
looked up to watch him lower into a chair.

“It really is an amazing book, Draco,” she murmured, circling the rim of the bottle with her thumb,
“Utterly fascinating. Thank you.”

She peered at him through her eyelashes, and he regarded her scrupulously in return.

“I’m glad you like it.”

He took a long pull of his drink, still watching her.

Silently watching her. It was oppressive.

She shifted focus onto her bottle, dragging her thumb down to the label and picking at it.

Pick, pick, pick. One corner successfully peeled off.

How strange was it, that sometimes, with him, conversation could be so easy and immersive and
bloody good that she would forget where she was. And sometimes, she was so bereft of things to
say that it felt like she was stuck in a deep dark verbal void that was moments away from
physically crushing her.

Neither of them spoke. It had been five overlong minutes; she had counted each second as her
watch ticked them off, and she couldn’t do anything besides peeling off the label.

Another minute later, salvation came in the form of a distant door opening. Hermione turned in her
chair, gawking at the kitchen entrance. It took thirty-six seconds for Theo to parade in, with a big
paper bag in hand.

“Surprising crowd at Neil’s today,” he said, quickly laying food on the table, “Have you been
waiting long?”

Too long . She only smiled.

“Sorry.”

“You know you’re permanently forgiven. No matter what. Unless you didn’t get me my caprese
sandwich.”
“Of course, I did.”

“Tons of tomatoes in a caprese,” Draco noted, “Will you once again suffer the consequence of too
much lycopene?”

She probably already was... pre-emptively.

“What if ginger ale imparts some of its pigment onto your hair?”

“I’ll still be dashing.”

Theo scoffed. He bit into his sandwich with an eagerness that suggested months of starvation.

“Aren’t we waiting for Luna?” Hermione asked.

“Luna’s plodding around in the Isle of Wight. Someone spotted dabberblimps at the Alverstone
Marshes.”

He took a second massive bite of his sandwich. Hermione had no blooming clue what
dabberblimps looked like, but she suspected they might be strikingly similar to water voles. She
sighed and turned to Draco.

“What were, um, Kenny’s impressions of Switzerland, finally?”

She patted herself on the back for successfully coming up with something to say to him when there
was no longer a pressing need to.

He put on an expression of great smugness and recited, “Kenny was overwhelmed by the verdure
and natural beauty of the city of Berne. While the fine Swiss delegates could not be cowed into
giving us twenty time-turners as we had requested, they possessed sufficient milk of human
kindness to hand over twelve.”

“You’re very proud of yourself, aren’t you?” Hermione asked, doing her best to maintain a bored
look.

“Deservedly.”

“Did you know that Swiss cowbells are one of the most popular souvenirs among tourists?”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. My dad has one hanging in his office. A gift from a grateful patient.”

“I would’ve got one, I think, if I’d had the time to look around.” He smirked at Theo, “To hang
around your neck.”

“I’m not your cow, you bellend.”

“I could give you a very fitting pair of horns, if necessary.”

Quite suddenly, Theo perked up. “Ooh, speaking of horns–”

For the time that followed, Hermione focused on eating. Theo went on and on badgering Draco to
divulge the formula for his horn-sprouting potion. She knew now that he had adapted an elixir
drunk during Shamanic rituals in Lesotho, but she was happy to stay out of it.

They moved to the terrace after eating. It was small by their standards, but at least six times the size
of her wee balcony. Theo stretched out on a deck chair, while Hermione and Draco occupied two of
the four Windsor chairs scattered around the terrace. Below them was the view of one corner of the
park.

Autumn had most assuredly crept in, cooling the air and staining the trees. Still, it was partly sunny
through broken clouds. Light and shadow speckled across the tiles like Signac’s brushwork. Well-
fed and drowsy, she basked in the silent indolence that they settled into.

Departing summer hath assumed

An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.

Somewhen, Theo, with his eyes closed and hands behind his head, asked, “How’s the Insignis case
going, Hermione?”

“Well,” she softly replied, “They’re done for. I don’t think the DMLE has ever before made such a
collective, concerted effort towards anything.”

Theo snorted. “Pansy will be crushed. I’d lost count of the number of pieces she had on hold.”

Draco, who had been staring unfocusedly at the trees below, let out a laugh. He smiled fondly, and
his eyes misted over even more, as he remembered.

“Pansy’s fucking festoon necklace,” he drawled.

“Ha!” Theo exclaimed, “Divine Greek ornamentation, darling...”

“Pink opals and diamonds like you’ve never seen...” Draco continued.

“Platinum filigree so fine, it looks like lace...”

“Only goblins with the tiniest, daintiest fingers must have worked on it...”

Such toffee-nosed twaddle. Was Draco still involved with Pansy Parkinson then? Where even was
she? He looked so tenderly nostalgic that it was disturbing.

“But not actually goblins; isn’t that right, Hermione?” Theo asked.
“Right,” she concurred after swallowing thickly, “Just the usual, battered, brutally exploited house-
elves.”

Draco turned to her with an absolutely not-tender smirk. “Did you know the Norwegian Council of
Magic has a charter in the works that could grant house-elves the right to a weekly day off?” He
waited for her to blink at him in surprise. “Bunch of zealous crusaders are on it, but it looks
promising. Norway is particularly keen on creature rights.”

“That’s... something,” she shrugged, “A start.”

Just a short while later, she took her leave. There was a flustering tangle of sensations muddled up
inside her, catapulting a need to be alone. It was the sort of discomfiture that sat like thick and bitter
sludge in the back of her throat.

She felt... weird. Volatile, but empty.

Besides, Mrs Weasley had all but demanded that she dine at the Burrow on Sundays. A few hours
of solitude were a requisite before an evening with the Weasley clan. Ever since her birthday, she
had been feeling Ginny's absence twice as much.

Fedelm left the centaurs’ lair after two years. She had learned to hunt and feed herself, and
mastered the art of gleaning potency in runes. No spell, no incantation could evade her. On a low
branch of a sprawling oak tree, she built herself a shelter, and carved protective runes into the
mossy rocks that surrounded it.

At the dead of the night, cloaked in magic, she stole back into the old hamlet and cleaned out their
shoppe.

Thenceforth, plumes of colourful steam would be seen escaping out of the woodlands. Sounds of
sizzling spellcraft melded with the baying of werewolves. Often, magical energy like a palpable
tremor would cut through the moorland.
Hermione was a bit late for work again, that Monday. She had stayed up till three, lost in Fedelm’s
in-depth exploration of runes and the derivation of spells.

She was sure that it was one of the reasons Draco had thought to give her this book. She understood
the significance of incantations better than ever, and found herself accepting the enigmatic power of
ancient scripts and tongues.

I has't cast many a spell. For sooth – If mettle and locution are potente, Magick is bound to the
invokation whence it is first summoned.

From the laws of magic to magical law.

She handed Takumi a folder detailing every financial indiscretion Insignis had committed, and sat
at her desk to commence her new task – preparing an overview for that worthless maggot, Stamp.

Bleak were the times, and it was getting increasingly difficult to find a table to sit at. If only her co-
workers would deign to eat in the canteen once in a while... But no. Kathy couldn’t do without a
side of tar and nicotine, and Takumi just had to be the sort of darling who enjoyed having lunch
with his wife.
She was seriously beginning to consider going back to eating with the obstreperous aurors.

Hermione Granger was a well-loved celebrity who had nobody to share a quick meal with.

She sat with Percy a few more times, but he was too important to make it to the canteen every day.
She had never seen Mr Weasley around either.

She ate with Susan once. The next day, Susan was with Cho. She wasn’t standoffish per say, but the
undercurrent of ‘you vindictive bitch, you disfigured by best friend’ was not easy to suppress.

One meal was shared with Justin and Ernie, and she was not remotely keen on repeating that. It was
hard to say which one of them was more bored.

Of course, Draco was always with the same trio – a pleasant replacement for Crabbe, Goyle, and
Parkinson, perhaps.

Finally, she just decided to play it by the ear. On the days that she found an empty table, she stayed
in the canteen. If some unwelcome entity decided to join her, she would eat at breakneck speed. If
there was no space available, she would carry her food back to the office and eat at her bloody
desk.
As Fedelm’s power increased, so did her fearlessness. While she had no desire to move out of her
arboreal sanctuary, she no longer hid. She boldly foraged for herbs along the river. She walked
through the hamlet to purchase rations and supplies, and not a soul was brave enough to come in
her way. On full moon nights, with a deferential werewolf by her side, she performed the most
incredible spells in the open moors, while village folk stood in the shadows and watched, terrified.

The potency of her magic piqued the druids of High Wyll, and they descended from their spiring
abode to meet with her. They offered her a place among them – the one and only woman, they said
as though it was praise. Fedelm’s hatred for old men with power had not diminished in any
capacity. She spurned their offer with scorn and derision.

She was a guild on her own. And written among the stars, on a moonless night, she saw certain
companionship coming her way.

The Re: Insignis Luxury Baubles Co. case became the Prophet’s – and hence the whole magical
community’s – obsession for an entire week.

Because money matters more than anything, the issue of tax fraud, tax avoidance, laundering,
illegal trade, and bribery were the first to be tackled. Much to Hermione’s delight, Madam Barros
acknowledged her part in putting the case together by telling her to sit silently at the back benches
and observe.

Which ended up being at the end of a row full of journalists, who all looked on with great interest
as she settled. She averted her eyes, looking instead at the high bench that was slowly filling up
with purple-robed luminaries, and kept a grip on her quill so tight, she was sure it would snap.

Suddenly, a blinding flash went off, turning her vision white. She whipped her head to the side,
meeting twin sickly grins. Bozo and Skeeter.
Their names belonged to sleezy two-bit mobsters from a noir-comedy.

She spared them a disinterested glower before turning back to the Wizengamot.

In the following ten minutes, the whole courtroom filled up. People from across departments had
come to be spectators.
Kinglsey, Ogden, and Percy were the last to arrive. The lamps around the room were dimmed,
while the spotlight on the chain-draped chair in the middle of the room was sharpened.

The doors opened and two Aurors marched in, with a very wide, bald man between them.

“Edric Isidore Hogarth Walterson, owner of Insignis Luxury Baubles. Please take your seat.”

Off the top of her head, if Hermione had to name three lawyers who absolutely blew her mind,
she’d go with Sydney Carton, Atticus Finch, and Perry Mason.
Julien Stamp was so beyond disappointing that she wished for a few cartons of eggs to hurl at him.
It was lucky for him that the trial was such a piece of piss, and that she had basically hand fed him.
It was wrapped up and Walterson was found guilty in less than two hours.

Which was both good and baffling – Hermione could only imagine how long a case of this
magnitude would drag on in the UKSC.

While she hadn’t been expressly permitted to sit for the remaining trials pertaining to the case, she
hadn’t been forbidden from observing either. Truth was, nobody was bothered about her
whereabouts.

She sat for the subsidiary financial shite, later that same day, and for the illegal trade and smuggling
charges the next day. The latter was a bit more exciting, because Stamp wasn’t presenting, and a
very impassioned representative from the beast division provided reams of evidence.
The day after that, she watched with sickening shame as two emaciated and dishevelled house-
elves were dragged into the court as evidence and continuously pointed at, as if they were objects,
rather than terrified and abused living beings. Harry attended that trial too, and he kept shooting her
worried glances, as though waiting for her to stand up and set everyone’s robes on fire. (From the
other end of the bench, Bozo and Skeeter lost their shit, seeing the two of them together.)

On the final day, there was a goblin present during the proceedings, confirming that not one of
Insignis’ baubles boasted of their handiwork. Two men from the Ludicrous Patents Office were
also implicated.
By Friday, hours before the Ministry closed for the weekend, Insignis Co. was no more. All their
products were vanished, all their assets went straight into the Ministry's coffers.

Hermione, Kathy, and Takumi went to the Leaky Cauldron for a drink. Takumi left at a very early
hour, and Hermione suggested moving over to Finnigan’s. They celebrated with Gin and pumpkin
fizz till the pub filled up with the usual Friday evening crowd. They each spotted their friends and
parted with a hug.

And so, the week ended with Theo’s arm slung around her shoulders, while Dean told the
horrifying, Dorian Gray-like, story of his first attempt at imbuing a personality into a portrait.
George had a single goat horn growing out of the top of his head. Angelina put her bracelet around
it. Draco was a no-show.

-With Fiona? - At home? -Alone? -Where was he?

Notoriety seldom came without its share of admiration. While close-minded poltroons feared her,
and the envious called her names, a number of mistreated and unheeded women were galvanised by
Fedelm’s valour.
One by one, they abandoned their stations and marched into the woodland to become her cohorts,
her companions, her peers.

Her Guild.

First to arrive was Sabia Gristlesmoke. She was an elderly mediwitch at the sanatorium with
remarkable healing skills that were never acknowledged by the healers she assisted.

Next, came Brigit Dunne. She left the hamlet without a seer.

After that, Sophia and Hersilia – the Hazelbone sisters – arrived at Fedelm’s abode. One was
capable of conjuring an entire castle; the other could cast a shield that covered the entire
woodland.

Tiny Irene Silvervisp arrived one morning, hovering three inches above the ground.

And finally, there was Catrìona Jewelle. Born Angus Truggatt, she was tormented for being
different. At the tender age of fifteen, she walked into the woodlands with a new name, a new
identity, and a prodigious mastery over potioneering.

Seven women in all – the most powerful magical number made up by the most powerful magical
women. Thus, the Dæg Guild of Druidesses was born; the name derived from the Dagaz rune to
symbolise dawn. Intuition. A blazing inner light.

What goes up must come down. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The week after the trials was winding down to be a crashing bore. There were no active cases and
the Wizengamot had continued refusing to entertain pending ones. Hermione spent Monday in the
Archival Chambers.

She spent Tuesday in the Archival Chambers.

On Wednesday, when she was all set to head to the Archival Chambers, she spotted a tear in her
tights, running up her calf. She quickly mended it, but couldn’t hold back a grimace. There were
three previous occasions in her life when she had suffered laddered tights. Each of those days had
turned out to be utter nightmares: The first day of primary school, the Yule Ball, and her cousin
Charlotte’s fifteenth birthday party.
Just as she stood up, Barros came into the office.

Hermione froze behind her desk with her arm awkwardly bent, caught in the process of hanging her
satchel on her shoulder.

“Edwards,” Barros called brusquely, “Take out the file containing contracts from the Goblin
Liaison Office. It’s that time of the year again.”

Stamp slunk in, bearing two binders and a look of loathsome self-importance.

“I trust you can handle this on your own, Julien?” Barros asked.

“Of course,” he avowed solemnly.

“Good.”

She watched Kathy hand a file to Stamp and then her eyes traversed to Hermione’s hunched form,
and narrowed thoughtfully.

“Take Granger with you,” she commanded.

“But Madam Barros!” Stamp protested, “She has no experience whatsoever.”

“Yes,” she replied coolly, “And that needs to change.”

“Not a word out of you,” Stamp growled as she trailed behind him towards the lifts, “I’m warning
you. I will not let you ruin this for me.”

“What exactly is happening?” she huffed, and then gasped as Stamp shoved the two binders into
her ribs.

“Read up.” he barked impatiently, “The goblins are coming in to renew their contract with the
Ministry.”

She did her best to look over everything during their short journey down to level four, but not even
Hermione was that quick a reader. She kept her eyes fixed on the contracts as they walked through
the various division offices of the Creature Department, though she was dying to have a gander.

At one point, she was fairly certain she brushed arms with a vampire. She stuttered an apology and
he flashed his incisors and said, “It’s all right, hun.”

Finally, Stamp marched into a meeting room with a large square table, currently occupied by three
goblins on tall stools, and two men on chairs.

“Mr Foss, Mr Sutton,” Stamp greeted. He didn’t acknowledge the goblins.

He took a seat between the two parties, and Hermione sat next to him. She smiled tremulously at
the Goblins; they scowled back murderously.

“Mr Stamp,” Mr Foss said, appearing spuriously pleasant, “And Ms Granger. What a wonderful
surprise. Good to have you here.”

She knew of this man, this unremarkable Foss, who had replaced poor, brutally slain Dirk
Cresswell as the head of the Goblin Liaison Office. She didn’t know the other chap, but he looked
young and just as vital to the proceedings as she was.

“All right then. Liaison, present. Goblin representatives, present. Solicitor, present. Let us begin.”

The goblins, she soon learnt, were called Freld, Nadgurg, and Odbert.

It was a straightforward affair; a whole lot of “sign here,” “sign here,” and “sign here.” Extreme
loathing from all sides was poorly masked by a veneer of politeness. There were no discussions
nor negotiations; just the deft maintenance of status quo. Hermione flipped through the previous
few contracts, and –

“We need more funds,” Nadgurg asserted.

It was an assertion that cast a pall over the proceedings.

Hermione wasn’t surprised at all. From what she had gathered from the contracts, Gringotts was
allotted extremely controlled sums. The Goblins’ stipends were comparable to the salaries of
trainees and assistants.

“Oh, must we go over this every time? Whatever for?” asked Foss with a forced, clearly
peeved laugh.

Nadgurg glowered. “To maintain your precious bank, of course.”

“You have more than sufficient funds for that, my dear friend,” Foss continued with his stupid,
outraged laugh, “In fact, according to this statement from the accounting department, there is a
surplus of funds at your disposal.”

“That’s an old statement,” Nadgurg growled, “Do you have any idea how much it cost to rebuild
Gringotts?”

All three of the goblins looked to Hermione with the filthiest of scowls. She hid her face behind a
sheet.

“Those costs were footed by the Ministry!” Foss tittered, “You still have adequate funds to manage
day to day functions and–”

“Expenses have shot up since the war.”

“The accounting department made all the necessary adjustments.”

“Not enough,” Nadgurg insisted bitterly, “You cannot keep the money we mint from us! Goblins
don’t survive on air!”

“We have an agreement, dear Nadgurg,” Foss tee-hee’d, “And you know... the Ministry never says
a word when some of the money that you mint goes missing–”

“Every single coin, every serial number is accounted for,” Odbert thundered.

“You dare?!” Freld bellowed.

“What about pay rises?” Hermione blurted.

Everyone stared at her. She could feel Stamp’s blistering gaze on the side of her face.

“All Ministerial employees are eligible to receive an annual two percent pay rise,” she went on
even as her ears burned, “From what I can see here, that hasn’t been implemented in any of your
arrangements for the past decade. It’s incredibly unfair. I imagine even before–”

“Enough!” Stamp thundered.

Hermione’s jaw snapped shut.

Foss’ smile had turned manic. He looked at the goblins and said, “Please excuse her. She’s new.
Doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“No...” said Nadgurg slowly, “She is correct.”

“Dearest Nadgurg, you aren’t technically Ministerial employees.”

“That’s a slippery slope, don’t you think?” Freld asked.

“Dear, dear Freld–”

“We are working under your guidelines. Holding up your economy.”

“I have more figures here!” Foss cried, shuffling through a stack of parchment, “The revenue you
earn by selling metalwork and artefacts is astronomical.”

“It’s irrelevant,” Nadgurg hissed, “Or would you like to talk about how much of our revenue was
stolen by Insignis? If you expect us to toe your line, you must pay us like you’d pay your human
personnel. Or else... wouldn’t it be a shame if something went wrong at the bank and all your
salaries got stuck?”

“Is that a threat?” Floss’ face had finally gone slack.

“Yes.”

“Look, I suppose I could have a word with Minister Shacklebolt and the accounting department,
and instate a two percent increase...”

“Not two percent.” Nadgurg shook his head. “We are looking at decades of neglect. Perhaps a
twenty percent increase will be more apt.”

“But that’s unthinkable! Unfeasible! You said yourself that you run the economy! Surely you
realise the impossibility of a twenty percent rise!”

“I do. It is up to the Ministry to move things around and come up with a good offer. We look
forward to hearing from you,” he rejoined sardonically.

With that, all three Goblins hopped off their stools. Freld and Nadgurg walked towards the door,
but Odbert glared at Hermione.

“You and your friends stole from a vault, used unforgivable curses on my peers, and kidnapped our
dragon.”

“Sorry about that,” she squeaked.

As if the sneers she got when she visited Gringotts weren’t enough, she received three more as the
Goblins exited. For two seconds there was stunned silence.

Then Stamp exploded.

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?! ARE YOU COMPLETELY MAD? WHO DO YOU
THINK YOU ARE? I TOLD YOU TO KEEP YOUR FLAMING MOUTH SHUT!”

“Calm yourself, man!” Foss exclaimed.

Hermione stared down at her hands while her eyes, ears, throat, and heart burned.
“I WILL NOT CALM – ARGH!” He stood up and began gathering the half-signed parchments.
“You’re finished. You’re done. Madam Barros will have your head.”

“I’m sure it was an honest mistake,” Foss said smiling dimly, “Ms Granger didn’t know better.”

“Get up,” Stamp growled at her, and marched out of the room.

Hermione’s legs shook as she stood. Her hands were terribly clumsy as she gathered the folders.
She knew the other two men were watching her, and she kept her eyes downcast.

Fuck. Holy fuck. What had she done.

Stamp was far ahead of her. She didn’t try to catch up. Looking straight ahead, her footfalls
matched the thudding of her heart. She felt nauseous and so, so afraid. Her ears were ringing.

She couldn’t believe what had happened.

She couldn’t believe she had been yelled at like she was a miscreant child on a playground.

Suddenly, waiting alone in the passageway for the lift, she was enraged.

She hadn’t done anything besides pointing out the hypocrisy and unfairness of the Ministry. She
had sworn to herself that she would never again participate in underhand tactics involving goblins.
What right did he have to scream at her like that?

Her entire body burned as she stood in the lift, all the way up to level two. Dread and outrage
tussled in a truly destructive way. Unsurprisingly, her vision had begun to fog as tears built up. She
blinked quick and hard as the grille slid open.

Every step towards the DDL office exacerbated her desire to turn around and flee. Stamp’s fury
would be nothing compared to Barros’.

In the waiting room, she closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. She pulled open the door and
the moment she entered the foyer, she saw Madam Barros’ furious stare. The door to her office was
wide open. Seeing that drained away all her fire.

“Get in here.”

Hermione’s pulse was an out-of-control machine gun. There was bile in her throat. She shuffled
into the office.

“Shut the door.”

Stamp was standing at one side of the room, with a gargoyle-like glower. Barros was dressed in
vivid purple. A dozen beads were strung around her neck.

Hermione grit her teeth and waited.

“What possessed you to interfere in a transaction that you were just meant to silently observe?”

She wasn’t yelling, but the low, dangerously slow inflection gave Hermione goose pimples.

“Why would you say something so monumentally idiotic? Why would you say anything at all?”

“I am sorry,” she whispered.

“You’re sorry?! Sorry?!?” Barros snarled. Her nostrils flared, “Do you think saying sorry will take
back the repercussions of your utterly asinine behaviour? Did you think at all? Are you actually
even capable of thinking? I want an answer, Granger.”

Hermione had long given up meeting Barros’ eye. She stared at the edge of her desk.

“I knew your rashness would sink you, but to take the whole Ministry down... in just one month...
Speak up , Hermione Granger. Why on earth aren’t you running your mouth now? What in Merlin’s
name were you thinking?”

There was a teeny tiny dent on the edge of the desk. Only visible because of the way the light was
falling on it.

“Answer me!”

Hermione jumped. She wet her lips and tried to speak without a quiver – “I didn’t think it was fair...
how little the Goblins were receiving in terms of compensation.”

“You fool,” Barros spat, “Have you even seen the Ministry’s annual budget? Do you know what
percentage goes into maintaining Gringotts?”

“I know–”

“Do you have any idea what giving an opening like that to goblins can lead to?”

Hermione bit down hard on her lip. When would this dressing down end?

“They’re goblins. They up to their pointy ears in gold. They don’t lack money. They literally make
money.”

“Perhaps,” she mumbled, “But - but – it's the principle–”

“Leave.”

She said it so quick and fast and brutally that it felt like a blow to the solar plexus. Hermione
actually gasped.

“Leave, Granger. And don’t come back till Monday.”

“Wha – Monday – that's–”

“Next week, yes. Get out.”

“But–”
“Take this time to learn how to bite your tongue. If you find you cannot manage it, don’t come back
at all.”

“Madam Barros, please, I–”

“Leave before I issue an official suspension that will go on your record.”

Hermione discarded the binders and files on Barros’ desk, turned, and fled. She didn’t go back to
her office, even though she had some things to collect. She couldn’t bear facing Kathy and Takumi.
Numbing, dumbing shock claimed her as she walked away with slow steps and a white-knuckled
grip on the strap of her satchel. Her body didn’t feel like her own. Walls were closing in on her.
Once she had reached the atrium, she stood frozen in front of the fireplaces. The mere thought of
going home to stew in isolation made her want to cry. So, with a sudden spur, she moved towards
the visitor’s lift. She transfigured her robes into a blazer as it rattled upwards, and moments later,
she was standing in a run-down phone box, surrounded by murky daylight. She stepped out into the
squalor of London, casting her eyes around the graffiti, the dumpster, the grimy, broken windows of
old buildings, and then up at the sky. It would rain sometime in the day; she was sure of it.

She began to walk, using those vague occlumency tricks that Harry had taught her. She wanted to
block her mind from herself... for if she let herself think...

Around the corner, she passed a dingy bookshop. It was most likely the one Draco dropped into. On
any other day, she would have gone in.

She found herself walking down Great George Street, surrounded by important, imposing
buildings. The Supreme Court wasn’t too far off. Traffic whizzed past – a comforting hum and
buzz. Big Ben loomed in the near distance. This could’ve been her life. Instead, she got skewered
by... gobbledygook.

At Parliament Square, she encountered Churchill’s statue, stooped and glaring. She glared right
back.

Sure, you saw us through a war. But you remained a staunch racist and imperialist, didn’t you?

She went past parliament garden, past Westminster Abbey, taking in the sights like she was a
bloody tourist. For half an hour she ambled down streets, alternating between staring at her shoes
and peering at the buildings. Neither were proving to be particularly diverting.

Suspended, she was.

Strike her pink. Truss her and gag her and throw her into the Thames.

She kept walking and she kept walking, now seeking solace in strangers’ faces. Before she knew it,
she was on Millbank, approaching the Tate Gallery.
There had been an uproar in the papers of late, over a Tracey Emin exhibit that had been shortlisted
for the Turner Prize. Hermione, as a suspended individual, finally had time to look at new art.

The exhibit was called ‘My Bed’, and it was the most perfect image of misery and self-destruction.
A small number of visitors came and went, but Hermione stood for ages looking at the unmeant
assemblage – the dirty, rumpled sheets, the balls of tissue, the bloody knickers, pregnancy test,
cigarette butts, empty vodka bottles, and used condoms. It was a grim ode to bad decisions and
pain.

At around the time when Ministry workers would be returning to their offices after lunch,
Hermione snuck into a toilet cubicle and disapparated.

Seamus looked pleasantly surprised when Hermione stomped into his pub.

“What are you doing here?”

“I need a drink,” Hermione muttered, placing both her palms on the bar, “Drinks.”

“What would you like?”

She shrugged. “I need to get completely plastered.”

“Say no more. Go sit down.” He waved a hand and winked. “I’ll take care of you.”

Hermione returned to the partially obscured table where she had sat with Theo, Luna, and Draco
after her first interview with Madam Mandrake. Before anything, she fished out her special galleon
and sent a word to Theo.

Seamus was taking his sweet time. On crossing one leg over the other, she saw that the ladder in
her tights was threatening to return - there was a pale line running up her calf.

Finally, Seamus came up to the table, carrying a tray laden with six shots and two tall glasses.
Hermione didn’t wait for him to launch into his usual grandstanding; she didn’t care what they
were. She reached, at once, for a shot, and downed it.
Bleh. She shuddered as the pungency coursed down her throat. Then she downed another.

“Er, this’ll take the edge off,” Seamus said dumbfoundedly, pushing one of the taller glasses
towards her.

It was a mild ale. Not what she required.

Seamus quickly took a shot himself. Hermione frowned and claimed another for herself.

“Hermione?”

A very alarmed Theo came around the pillar that hid their table from view.
“What? I’m... um... what?”

“Hello,” she trilled, “Come, get sloshed with me.”

He looked very worried as he sat next to her, ignoring the shot glass she set before him.

“What on earth happened?” he demanded.

“I’ve had a bad day. Barros suspended me from work. I want to obliterate my brain.”

She knew Theo and Seamus were exchanging looks. She exchanged looks with her own
consciousness, feeling a burgeoning level of glorious disassociation, brought on by quickly
imbibed liquor.

“You got suspended?” Seamus sputtered, “Hermione?”

“The one and only,” she sang and chugged down more than half of the ale.

“Why?” Theo droned, appalled.

“I messed up... with the goblins...” she sneered, “It isn’t official, but I’m banned from the office
until Monday. Don’t make me talk about it now, Theo.”

“O... kay,” he replied most unwillingly, and finally tended to the shot.

Hermione polished off the ale. There was one last shot on the table and if anyone else dared to
touch it, she’d growl.

“Well, well. What is happening here?”

She gaped a little, trying to come to terms with Draco’s sudden appearance. Alcohol was moving
much more quickly through her blood stream now... or maybe it was just her blood that was
gushing around faster.

“What are you doing here?” she yawped.

He crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the pillar. “I asked first.”

“It’s in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday!”

“Indeed.”

“Why aren’t you at work?”

“Why aren't you at work?"

Bloody twerp. Fine. Hermione widened her eyes and stared up at him with a look of highly farcical
innocence.
“Teacher threw me out,” she whispered earnestly, “I was a bad girl.”

His eyebrows disappeared behind his fringe. Seamus made a choking sound. Theo started to laugh.

“What?” she turned to him and snapped.

He looked desperately amused.

“What?!”

“Oh, Hermione.” He grinned broadly and shook his head.

“Whatever,” she grumbled and downed the final shot, “I’m getting more drinks.”

But standing up was not a good idea. She was immediately lightheaded and stumbled. Theo jumped
up, caught her by the shoulders, and forced her back down on the chair.

“I’ll get them,” Seamus muttered.

Hermione closed her eyes to steady herself. Her optic nerves must’ve been pulsating, because she
could see vibrations. When she gently peeled back her eyelids, she was treated to the vision of
Draco sitting across from her, all mockingly smirky.

“Have you eaten anything?” Theo asked her.

She stuck her tongue out at him. He sighed and looked at Draco.

“Why are you here, Draco? Don’t tell me you also got suspended.”

“Granger got suspended!?”

He gaped at her with an odd mix of disbelief and glee. She stuck her tongue out at him too, and he
laughed bemusedly.

“What the hell did you do?” he breathed.

“I might have triggered complete economic collapse,” she huffed, “Maybe. I have a feeling Barros
was being melodramatic.”

“What–”

“I refuse to relive the experience right now,” she ground out, “I’m trying to forget. Now. Why. Are.
You. Here.”

Blessed Seamus returned with another loaded tray. Hermione’s next shot went straight up into her
head rather than down her throat.

“I was sent home to pack,” Draco said with beautiful shimmering lucid eyes, “I’m leaving for Bali
tonight.”
“Of course, you’re going to Bali,” Hermione groused, “Why wouldn’t you be?”

Even the ale wasn’t going the right way anymore. Her cerebrospinal fluid was one hundred percent
alcohol. The three chappies hesitated almost in tandem, before grasping a shot glass each. But...

Hermione frowned.

Were they moving in jerks or was her vision lagging?

Maybe one more shot would clear that up.

“Merlin love a Dugbog. Hermione... stop.”

Too late, Theo.

Gah. Oh. Um.

“Whatsin Bali?” she asked handsome irreverent, god that smile, Draco.

“Meeting a group of Pawang to sign an MoU on controlled usage of weather modification charms.”

She nodded. “Bad for the environment. Ecosystems could... collapse.”

“Yeah,” he grinned.

His mouth looked delicious.

Her mouth was dry.

She shook her head and took a few gulps of ale.

Which did fuck all.

“Ugh.”

The room was spinning. Her head weighed a billion tonnes. Her shoulders seemed to be folding
inwards of their own accord.

“Um. Ugh. I – I need to –”

“Yes. Come on.”

Someone – Theo – gathered her up from the chair and wrapped a steadying arm around her.

“Seamus, let us use your floo?”

“Yeah, course. I can take her home, if you want... I don’t mind.”

“Don’t be a creep, Finnigan.” Draco’s voice floated in from somewhere. Everywhere. From inside
her.
“Oi, gobshite! I was just being considerate!”

“That’s it, darling. Easy.”

Her legs were barely working. She was being dragged. The world around her went whoosh and she
wanted to vomit. She went crashing, face first, but firmgentle hands caught her again.

“You’re home. Just a few steps more.”

She was falling again... but oh. Soft. Mild lavender detergent. Her shoes were being pulled off.
Cosy blanket all the way up to her chin.

“My bed,” she garbled, curling into a foetal position.

A chuckle. “Yes, your bed.”

“My bed. Clean sheets. No blood, no condoms, but ugh. Vodka. Laddered tights, omen of doom.”

“Shh. Sleep now.”

He stroked her hair soothingly. Just like he had after Bellatrix tortured her.

Hermione awoke at eventide with a pounding head and dehydrated body. It was gloomy outside;
raining. She rolled onto her back and stretched. A sudden spell of giddiness made her groan. She
rubbed her eyes and sat up, only to experience another reeling bout.
It was quite dark in the room as Theo had darkened her curtains. The only source of light was the
thin gap under the door. She stood up, dying with each little movement, and ventured out of the
bedroom.

Theo hadn’t left. He was stretched across her sofa, reading an old catalogue from the Natural
History Museum.

“Hi,” she croaked from the door, squinting against the harsh light.

“Hi,” he gasped, promptly sitting up, “How are you feeling?”

“Parched,” she rasped and went into the kitchen.

She guzzled two full glasses of water, then refilled it for the third time and carried it back to the
living room. She pointed towards the sconces and dimmed them to a bearable intensity. Theo patted
the sofa next to him and she settled there, propping her feet up on the coffee table. There they were
again: Sodding tattered tights. This time, with the giddiness, came a nauseating flashback from the
morning.

Theo was staring at the tyrannosaurus on the catalogue cover.

“If muggles ever find out that dragons are real, they’ll have a meltdown.”

“That’d be true for all magic-related stuff.”

“Right.”

“Theo,” she murmured, “You didn’t have to stay.”

He scoffed that notion away at once. “Will you tell me what happened now?”

She did. He listened carefully with his mouth set in a tight line.

When she finished, she knew that if she had been anyone else, Theo would have had a lot to say.
But for her sake, he kept quiet, and just reached out to squeeze her arm. They sat in melancholy but
companiable silence for a while, while Hermione sipped her water and tried not to feel so dead
inside.

“Why don’t you get a telly?” Theo broke in.

“Hah,” she huffed, “And then? Figure out how to make it work, surrounded by so much magic?
Ring up Sky and tell them I need a connection in an invisible neighbourhood in the middle of
Blackheath?”

“If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”

“Hmm.”

“You should eat something.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, “I will.”

“Join us for dinner? We’re having... pesto something or the other.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going to gatecrash your date.”

“Not a date,” he said with a slight laugh, “Just Draco and I. His portkey will whisk him away in...
bugger. One hour.”

“Well, you should go,” she smiled.

“You come, too?”

She shook her head. “I’d like to be alone.”

He looked stricken. She reached over and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“I’m okay,” she promised, “Just need some time to...” She struggled to find the word, “...Process
everything.”

He nodded, though still painfully unsure.

Once he had left, she got herself another glass of water and floo’d out an order for some comforting
beef noodle soup. Back on the sofa, she stared vacantly at her precious salon wall. First at Dean’s
charming, idealised version of herself, then at Mount Fuji, then at the emotive colours of Yam
Story.

Maybe she could figure out how to get a telly to work. She could buy a vcd player and get that
going as well. She could buy a boxed set of Fry and Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster, and invite Draco
over to watch. They could sit together on the sofa, share a bottle of wine, and maybe she could shift
a little closer with each episode.

Leave, Granger. And don’t come back till Monday.

Her face crumpled. She fell sideways onto the sofa and went back to staring at the painting.

Word about the accomplishments of the Dæg Guild soon flooded across settlements in Dartmoor
and beyond. The druids of High Wyll made numerous attempts to strengthen their association, and
while the Druidesses were willing to engage in dialogue, all overtures of friendship were rebuffed.

Little by little, people began making perilous journeys into the woodland to seek the Guild’s
guidance, to acquire cures for their woes or ailments, or to attain some insight into their futures.
Possessing a potion, an amulet, or a prophesy with the Dagaz rune was a matter of unparalleled
prestige and fortune. On the rarest of occasions, Fedelm herself would raise her wand for a
particularly hopeless petitioner; and that petitioner would return home with stars in their eyes.

For close to a century, the Dæg Guild remained the most formidable force in the land. In their
verdant sanctuary, many secret spells and potions were uncovered, and the deepest depths of Magic
were explored.
Alas, it all came undone with the arrival of the Romans. Vulgar Latin rubbed away the runes, and
druids and druidesses vanished into the ether.

The glory of Fedelm Bedelia Beetlerot and her magnificent cohorts was reduced to mere whispers
in forgotten shadows.
Chapter End Notes

1. "Departing summer hath assumed...": September, 1819, by William Wordsworth

2. My Bed by Tracey Emin
 Seventy-Five
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The funny thing was that after a good night’s sleep, she was just fine.

Not fine in the sense of FINE, like she was drilling the word into her own skull and desperately
willing for it to be true – she was legitimately all right. Obviously, a level of anger remained,
bubbling up when she pictured Stamp’s malevolent face as he screamed at her, but she didn’t think
about him much.

She thought about science lessons in primary school; about the properties of water and solubility,
and the experiments they were made to conduct. Clear as day, she remembered holding up a glass
beaker against the sun, to watch suspended sand particles float around in water.

She was an idly floating grain of sand.

On day one, she stayed in bed. While Stella capered around, she finished Fedelm’s memoir, ate a
lot of flapjacks smeared with jam, and painted her toenails teal. The small, ancient bottle of polish
had required multiple liquifying charms to finally attain some level of spreadibility.

On day two, after completing her usual morning regimen, she apparated to Sussex. She had been
barred from the Ministry; not from the Ministry-maintained Magical Library, stowed away under
Monk’s House.
She spent some time looking around Virginia Woolf’s former abode, before going out into the
garden and requesting the bust of Leonard Woolf to allow her access to the library. A tiny
passageway opened on the brick wall beside the sculpture.
Hermione had been keen to visit ever since Percy had told her about its existence... though she had
wondered when she would get the time, considering the library also abided by the Ministry’s
timings. What a stroke of luck getting suspended had been. She felt a thrill as she climbed down a
stone staircase, to an arched red door.

The thrill died when she opened the door and stepped inside. To say that this library was being
maintained was horrifically misleading. It was dingy. It was dirty. It was small. Alexandria, it was
not. It looked like Hermione’s bloody office, struck by a violent dust storm.

A very round man in grey robes, with fluffy white hair, (like he too was made of dust,) was sitting
at a tiny counter by the entrance.

“Employee or visitor?” he droned like the wings of a fly too close to the ear.

“Employee,” she replied, “I work at the D–”

“Sign in, please.”

She wrote her name in a massive, tatty register. The entry above hers was B. Hubert, 17th May,
1997 . Above that, P. Weasley, 4th November, 1994 .

“I’m looking for some books on history, or perhaps Ancient Magical theory–”

“Fourth shelf for History, seventh shelf for Theory and Methodology.”

“Okay, thank you. I’m looking for a something about a particular Celtic guild–”

“Fourth shelf for history.”

“Yes, but it seems books about the Dæg Guild are very rare, and I was wondering if–”

“Fourth shelf.”

He stared at her with tiny, blank eyes. Hermione turned away.

The shelves were all tightly packed together, eleven in total, with books haphazardly piled upon
them. There was a thick layer of dust on everything. Hermione cast a bubble-head charm and got
looking.

An hour later, she found just one single mention of Fedelm and the Dæg Guild, in A History Buff’s
Guide to the Magical Sites of Great Britain. She made a quick copy of the pertinent segment and,
with a great deal of relief, climbed out of the library.

[Please do note: There actually is a first time for everything. On the fifteenth of October, in the year
of our Lord, nineteen ninety-nine, Hermione Granger was happy about leaving a library.]

Since she was in the vicinity anyway, and to recover from the disappointment of her venture,
Hermione suffered through almost three hours of public transportation to get to Bateman’s. It
would give a nice theme to her day – exploring the homes of famous writers.
Kipling’s large Jacobean house was so different from Woolf’s cottage. Unfortunately, it was a tad
too late in the year to see the glory of the garden, but she got the gist of it.

Just a few days ago, she had wondered what her life would have been like if she had stayed a
muggle, vying for a position in central London. Now, as she wandered from room to room, she
imagined having such a life: Living in an idyllic estate with hundreds of flowers, oak furniture,
Persian rugs, beautiful artefacts, all for her to extract inspiration from.
She decided, as she had a cuppa in the Mulberry Tea Room, that such an existence would be
stultifying.

Later that evening, when she was back at home reading Magical Institutions and Legal Theory over
tinned parsnip soup, she received an owl.

Hermione,

I just wanted to update you re: the goblin issue. It wasn’t quick, or easy, but the Ministry agreed to
a five percent overall increase in Gringotts' annual maintenance budget, as well as a five percent
increase in their individual monthly stipends. The goblins agreed to the former, and refused the
latter. It got rather grim, I’m afraid. They are adamant on twenty percent.

I hope you’re doing okay. Takumi and I can’t wait to have you back at work.

Kathy.

P.S. - Stamp is witless and mean. Don’t take what he says to heart.

On day three – well, it was Saturday. She would’ve been at home anyway. Did it count as a part of
her suspension?

Anyhow, on day three, she had a particularly good time running. It was cool enough to minimise
sweat, and a charmed mower was humming across the lawns, filling the air with a glorious smell.

But the morning’s Prophet had a rather agitational headline:

GRINGOTTS GOES ON STRIKE!

 Gringotts Wizarding Bank faces the first strike at its Diagon Alley Headquarters since the Goblin
Rebellion of 1612, after the Ministry refused to meet the Goblin’s Association’s demands for a
twenty percent rise in their monthly stipend. The existing stipend, which in itself should be
considered largesse, had been introduced by former Minister for Magic and known pushover,
Milicent Bagnold, at the end of the first Wizarding War.

Tellers, security, and the staff that look after the vaults – the central core of the bank – will be
striking indefinitely from tomorrow, the 17th of October, which would make the institution
“effectively inoperable”, according to a source from the Goblin Liaison Office.

However, Cyprian Foss, head of the GLO has made assurances that there are plans to ensure that
the bank will continue to operate effectively. Ministry personal have been despatched to temporally
take charge of security and telling. A single goblin will be available on site to ensure that people
still have access to their vaults.

Nadgurg, head of the Goblin’s Association, and a profoundly bitter being, said: “The goblins have
made their anger clear by voting for strike action due to the Ministry of Magic’s outright refusal to
negotiate a fair pay deal for our workforce.”

He warned that if the Bank failed to resolve the row, the dispute would most certainly be escalated.

This is the goblins’ most daring bid for extortion in centuries. It remains to be seen whether
Minister Shacklebolt will capitulate, during a tenure which is building up to be defined by his
inability to take a hard stand on any matter. In the meanwhile, terrified sources in the Ministry’s
accounting department are preparing for a potential financial crisis.

Oh bollocks, then.

It evidently was as bad as Barros had feared.

...Oops?

Honestly, good for them. It served the Ministry right. For centuries they had got away with treating
goblins with disdain and contumely, while happily sitting back and letting them handle the
economy and keep their vaults nice and cushy. It wasn’t as blatantly exploitative as the treatment
meted out to house-elves, but it was bad nonetheless.
She was, however, very surprised that her name had been left out of the article, especially
considering the fact that it was written by none other than Rita Skeeter. The Ministry must’ve been
actively trying to keep that bit under the rug, and she wasn't to protect her. It simply wouldn’t do
well for their image if word got out that one slip of a girl, with just a month of work experience,
had inadvertently shut down the financial machinery.

She repeated that thought to herself for the second time, staring vacantly at nothing.

...inadvertently shut down the financial machinery.

She spent the day at Grimmauld Place and there was only one thing they talked about over lunch.

Harry was cautious and restrained; the way he usually was when there was danger of Hermione
having emotions, or Hermione feeling rage and acting on it. Ron, on the other hand, found the
whole thing extremely funny. While he still could not for a moment come to terms with Hermione’s
compassion for goblins, he was tickled pink by the idea of her recklessness having such
monumental consequences.

“It’ll be all right, though,” he shrugged carelessly, “The Ministry will sort it out. I don’t see them
letting things go to pot so soon after the war.”

“You think they’ll give in?” Hermione asked.

“Absolutely,” he nodded, “It’ll be daft not to. Only goblins know the layout and the enchantments
on Gringotts... it’ll take a bloody army of curse breakers to get past them. And without goblin gold
and access to the vaults, how the hell will they pay that army of curse breakers? Nah. This won’t
last long.”

It was a fairly astute assessment, truth be told. After making it, Ron yawned and waved and
plodded upstairs for a siesta.

Hermione and Harry settled in the drawing room. She decided to spare him from further discomfort
and changed the topic. For some time, they talked about Ginny, and then the reappearance of
tension between Fleur and Mrs Weasley. She asked if there was something going on between Ron
and the over-enthusiastic auror – Edith – and Harry nodded mirthfully.

“He clearly fancies her but he’s shy. It’s hilarious. I’ve never seen someone fall flat on their face...
metaphorically... so often.”

“You think she fancies him back?”

“Hard to tell, with her.”

“Hmm. She does seem over-enthusiastic about everything.”

“Speaking of enthusiasm,” Harry said with a grin, “Dez keeps asking about you.”

“Who is Dez?”

“Desmond Wilcox. Big bloke. Blond. A bit loud”

“Ugh,” she grimaced, “He reminds me of Cormac.”

Harry narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “They are quite similar. And they’re both interested in you.”

“Yuck.”

“So is Kemp, by the way.”

“Who’s Kemp now?”

“Known lecher. Hairy ears. Definitely over forty.”

“Just my type.”

“Both of them find you too intimidating to approach.”

She rolled her eyes.

Maybe she had been intimidating, once upon a time, in the Hogwarts bubble where she was among
the oldest and cleverest of her peers. Where she was a torture survivor, an evil witch slayer, and she
led study groups in the library. Where sometimes, Draco drunkenly, accidentally, flirted with her.

But now...?

Eventually, it was time for Harry’s appointment with Healer Asher. She went with him to Mungo’s
and he left her at the disorderly, crowded reception. Hermione only had to wait for five minutes
before Padma bounded over, with a strange purple stain on her lime green robes.

She led Hermione through the reception to a small open courtyard, and bought two cups of coffee
from a cart in the corner.

“My fifth cup of the day,” Padma croaked, as they sat on one of the benches that lined the sides of
the courtyard, “I’m knackered.”

“When does your shift end?” Hermione asked.

“Not for hours.” She was taking huge gulps of coffee like a woman possessed. “There was a
potions-related accident earlier this morning and we have twenty people here with limbs blown off.
Plus, the whole Gringotts business is worrying.”

“Right,” Hermione mumbled staring at her toes, “It’ll affect healthcare, too.”

“Damn right, it will. The finance department has pulled out sacks of galleons from the official vault
to make sure we won't run out potions and supplies. And we’re going to let patients pay by cheque.
I just hope the Ministry nips this thing in the bud. Bloody goblins...”

Padma left quickly after her cup was empty, leaping and jogging back into the building. Hermione
sat back, sipping slowly, people watching. Healer watching.
The younger ones never seemed to walk. They all jogged, leapt, and bounded like Padma had. The
older ones looked gravely serious all the time, nearly always frowning down at their clipboards.
Patients and invalids on crutches, or being led by healers or loved ones, showed up for a bit of fresh
air. St. Mungo’s was its own little plexus.

When the hour was almost up, she bought an iced fairy cake from the cart and met Harry back at
the reception. He looked jangled and she knew he wasn’t going to speak. She handed him the fairy
cake and they both floo’d back to his house.

On day four, the Prophet was full off analyses, opinion pieces, and editorials about all the terrible
things in store. They had pictures from the evening before, showing a line of goblins marching out
of Gringotts, while guards with Probity Probes puttered around.

At two in the afternoon, she floo’d to Theo and Draco’s flat.

Theo, during his enduring correspondence with dad, had professed great admiration for dad’s
collection of polo shirts, which led to him discovering the existence of Marks and Spencer. Now,
Hermione was being forced to take him there.

She stepped into their sitting room, and carefully syphoned soot off her white jumper. On looking
around, she saw Draco standing with his back to her, in front of an open liquor cabinet. An ardent
spike of excitement shot through her. His shirt was off-white. His tapered trousers ran down his
legs with nary a crease. A black holdall floated next to him.

“Back from Bali, then?” she called, walking towards him.

“No, I’m still there,” he monotoned.

If it hadn’t felt so good to hear his voice, she would have been annoyed by what he was using that
voice to say. When she reached his side, she didn’t immediately look at him. Rather, she eyed the
bottle he was putting inside the cabinet: Eagle Brand – The original Balinese Rice Wine.

“It’s called Brem,” he told her.

The selection in the cabinet was sizable, amongst which she spotted an unopened bottle of Swiss
brandy and the two bottles of Bundaberg rum that had been considerably diminished.

“You’re just interested in travelling because you want to collect alcohol.”

“Why else would anyone go anywhere?”

She finally peered up at him but he turned away, plunging a hand into the holdall. There was just a
little over a foot between them.

“Have you heard of Balinese shadow puppetry?” he asked, too busy in his bag to look at her while
talking.

“Yes.”
“It’s called Wayang Kulit. They took us to see a show on our last evening there. Kenny snored
loudly through the whole thing.”

“He’s a menace.”

“He is.”

Finally, he turned to her, and she smiled at the sight of his face before she could help herself.

“This one’s called Garuda,” he said, looking down at his hands, “King of the birds, mount of god.
Half man, half eagle.”

She looked down and gasped softly. The puppet was flat, made of stained leather, and sandwiched
between two sheets of glass encased in a gold frame. She bent to have a better look, almost
unconsciously reaching out, and he let her take hold of it.
It was unbelievably intricate. She could tell that every perforation was carefully considered to
ensure that the puppet cast the best possible shadow. The figure was both frightening and beautiful,
demonic and ethereal. Its wings were like blue flames, it’s neck, arms and head were adorned with
ornaments.

“Hold it against the light,” Draco urged.

When she did, she gasped again. The leather glowed like colourful embers. The ornaments
twinkled. Its eyes were ablaze.

“Wow.”

The sound of cabinet doors closing forced her gaze away from the puppet. She smiled and offered it
back to him. He turned back to the holdall.

“It’s for you,” he muttered, “For your wall.”

“Oh.”

Hermione was floored.

She was just......... oh god?!!

“Thank you,” she breathed, “It’s beautiful.”

“Hm.”

He zipped up his bag and hauled it over his shoulder, while his other hand carded through his hair.
Such a fluid, effortless, downright sexy move.

He turned to her and she turned to him and somehow, they were closer than before.
She knew her eyes were wide with wonder and gratitude. He had to see it. He had to feel it.
“So,” he murmured, looking down at her as a build-up-to-a-smirk hinted around his mouth, “You
did indeed trigger complete economic collapse.”

She let out a shaky laugh. Blinking once, twice, and three times to kickstart her brain. She hugged
the puppet to her chest and actively held back from swaying into him.

“It appears I did.”

“Bureaucratic collapse, too.”

“Yes, they often go hand in hand.”

He tilted his head and a gentle smirk settled over his slim, pink lips. They were both speaking so
softly. Her stomach had clenched into an iron ball.

“The ICW is very worried. There’s an emergency meeting first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Understandable.”

“Good lord, Granger,” he grinned, “You were supposed to save the world, not raze it to the
ground.”

“Sometimes, when things are too far gone, you have to burn everything down and start over.”

His eyes skated around her face musingly, as though there was more to glean than what she had just
said.

“What’s next on the agenda?”

His hand slid down the holdall’s strap like a gentle caress.

“Next is...” She stared up at him conspiratorially, and lowered her voice to a mere whisper. He had
to dip his head closer to listen. “Next is surviving a shopping spree with Theo.”

He chuckled huskily and she felt his breath against the side of her forehead. A current raced down
her spine.

“It just gets more and more dismal, doesn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He was wholly, achingly alluring and magnetic, like this, (in a shrouded alcove at midnight, on a
sofa in the midst of pure chaos,) when his grin was wide and raffish. When his eyes were
enigmatic, but still gleaming and focused.

“Well, I’ll go unpack now,” he murmured.

“Alright.”
He didn’t turn right away. He met her stare for a few moments, as though he was trying to doom
her for life. He took a few steps backwards, still not looking away and she stared back, clutching
his gift to her chest.

Then, he said, “Don’t murder Theo, no matter how painful he gets,” and turned around.

She watched him leave with his usual, effortless saunter while her heart produced high-energy
shock waves that threatened to shatter her ribs. Once he had gone past the door, she closed her eyes
and breathed in the air he left behind.

Calm down. Fuck. Calm down.

She looked at the exquisitely crafted puppet once more; it would be a lovely visual foil for the other
artwork on her wall.
Had he considered that? Had he stood in some charming, colourful market in Bali, spotted a row of
puppets hanging from a string, and spent time picking out the one that would best suit her wall?
The fact that he had thought of her at all was...

She grinned broadly, muzzily. Her stomach was gamboling.

Or was it something he had been presented by the Indonesian delegates and had in turn palmed off
to her?

This was the point at which she had to switch off. She gently slid the frame into her beaded bag,
and moved into the hall to knock on Theo’s door.

Hours and hours later, she understood why Draco had warned her not to kill Theo. She had been
shopping with him before, but it had definitely not been like this.

They stepped inside the giant M&S outlet at Marble Arch, and Theo’s first impulse was to wander.
He walked and looked around like he was sight-seeing at the Acropolis, and she trailed behind him
partly-exasperated and partly-thinking about Draco. It was a twenty-eighty split.
When they finally got down to the business of polo shirt shopping, that ratio changed to fifty-fifty
at first, and then rapidly hit eighty-twenty.

“I like the blue. Do you like the blue, Hermione? Of course, you like it – it's blue... What about this
black? It’s blacker than that black. Is the blacker black better than the less black black? ... Fuck, I
look fit in maroon. Can’t believe I’ve had to spend the majority of my life parading around in green
when I look this good in maroon... Not that I look bad in green either. Should probably pick up a
green one too... Where are the nice stripy ones like Robert has? I want one that’s stripy and
maroon.”

...And so on.

She ended up paying for him, (more than she’d ever spend on herself,) since it had become near
impossible to exchange galleons for pounds.
It was dark by the time they returned with five large bags and settled for a nice meal of steak
sandwiches. Draco had stories to tell and was in high spirits. Theo opened out the evening’s
Prophet, which bore news of brawls breaking out in and around Gringotts, and showed pictures of a
queue that stretched halfway down Diagon Alley. The bank had attempted to close at five, but
people had rioted.

Hermione’s mood promptly soured. Who knew what kind of desperate situations were driving
those poor people...

Theo decided they must go see it in person. And so, down they went, walking past the park and
through the inner alleys till they came face to face with the serpentine queue. Hermione looked
both left and right and she could see no end to it. It reminded her of pictures she’d seen of the
Terracotta Army in Xi’an.
And it was loud. The people were incensed. They were baying mindlessly at the towering marble
structure of Gringotts in the distance. Some people had conjured chairs, some had gathered under
lamp posts to read, many were eating and drinking.

“Oh, look,” Theo yelled over the noise, “Isn’t that Higgs?”

“Yeah,” Draco sneered, “Fucking knob.”

Theo pushed off momentarily to get ice cream, and Draco had the presence of mind to cast a
silencing charm around them. Hermione, who thus far had been rooted to the ground and
gobsmacked, came back to herself at the sudden onset of peace.

“Holy hell,” she rasped in despair.

What if Mungo’s had run out of funds? What if some poor family had no capital to purchase food
for their children? What if some convalescent couldn’t pay for the potions they desperately needed?
She was terrified of looking too closely and spotting someone she knew. Imagine if she hadn’t had
a conveniently full moneybag at that time? She would’ve been right there, in that queue.

“This isn’t actually your fault,” Draco snapped.

She started and turned to him. “What?”

“You look like you’re about to cry,” he gurned with great distaste, “The Ministry did this. And
there's been a spate of goblin mutinies across the world in the past few years. This cauldron was
bound to bubble over some day.”

“Feels like I tipped it over,” she said in a small voice.

“Maybe you did,” he shrugged–

He broke off as a man bound in ropes was dragged away by three aurors, screaming things that
Draco’s charm kept them from hearing.
“That’s Timothy Morcott. He’s extremely well-to-do. His screaming isn’t desperation, it’s
entitlement.”

Draco would recognise entitlement, wouldn’t he?

Objectively, she knew he was right. She had already decided that the strike had been necessary. But
how was she supposed remain objective in the face of such bedlam?

She turned to Draco with desperation and asked, “Why did you choose the king of birds?”

He looked shaken by the segue and – oh, yes – wore that endearing expression of bewilderment.

Please, please, keep looking at me.

He didn’t. He looked straight at the thrumming queue and frowned.

“I almost chose one of the princesses. But the bird was a strange humanoid creature and I thought it
would complement those characters in that Daughter of the Minotaur paining.”

She could have... she could have kissed him.

“You’re right. It’s perfect.”

His frown didn’t recede.

Theo came back and, after handing them a cone each, pointed meaningfully at his ears. Draco
undid the charm in time for them to catch the end of a booming announcement emitting out of
Gringotts.

“...DOORS ARE CLOSING. ANYONE WHO PROTESTS OR CAUSES A DISRUPTION WILL

BE ARRESTED. PLEASE DISPERSE AND DISAPPARATE IN AN ORDERLY MANNER. THE
BANK WILL REOPEN AT NINE A.M. TOMORROW MORNING. THANK YOU FOR YOUR
COOPERATION.”

Hermione, Draco, and Theo leaned back against the wall of the shop behind them, ate ice cream,
and watched the throng of outraged, unhappy people scatter.

Hermione woke up while it was still dark. She wrapped her blanket around herself like a cocoon
and stepped out onto the balcony. She sprinkled some water in her plants and fortified warming
charms over the ones that required it. The herbs were doing well; she would have to get Neville
something really nice for Christmas.
She went back inside, feeling a sudden swell in her heart. In such a short time, her flat had
accumulated so many little tokens from other people – there was something in every room.

She picked up Stella from the dressing table (she had been sleeping next to the half-burnt scented
candle,) and carried her to the living room, to roll around on the rug while Hermione lay on the sofa
and leafed through the latest issue of the Journal of Advances in Modern Arithmancy. She could
scarcely focus.
Eventually, she put the journal down and stared at the new addition to her wall. She had hung the
puppet so the light from the lamp above hit it just so. It glowed and shimmered, floating above the
cloudy, starry sky of ‘that daughter of the Minotaur painting.’ She only ever heard those words in
his voice now.

When dawn said a shy little hello, she went out to run.

Black trousers, black blouse, black robes, black shoes, black headband. Very funereal. Hermione
walked straight and cold to the DDL, with her jaw set and her arms stiff by her side. She had been
savagely chanting affirmations in her head, to the tune of a dirge.
A tad dramatic, admittedly, but she was so full of nerves and emotions that she needed to ground
herself.

She was reasonably early, hoping to be the first to arrive, but alas, before she could rush into her
office, she heard someone enter the foyer.

“Look who’s decided to show her uppity face again,” Stamp taunted from behind, “Does that mean
you’ve learned to hold your tongue?”

He came closer and stood in the periphery of her vision, looking daggers.

“Do you see how completely messed up things are? Are you happy with what you’ve done?”

She didn’t respond, she didn’t look at him. She just pushed through the door and pressed it shut
behind her. Breathing deeply, she went to her desk, pristine like either Kathy or Takumi had tidied
up for her. She set out her things as usual, crossed her arms, and just... sat. Waited.

Kathy arrived and immediately put an arm around her and squeezed. A bit ‘there, there, my child,’
but Hermione appreciated the kindness. Takumi brought her another box of homemade sweets. She
appreciated sweets even more.

It turned out to be a big, fat, nothing day for her. She didn’t see Barros at all, and Kathy and
Takumi were too busy running around. They went from accounting to the GLO, all the way up to
the top offices on level one. The Ministry was in shambles, and she, after striking the first blow,
was sat in the middle of it all, doing nothing.
It lasted for four awful days.

When Hermione went home on Monday, the evening’s paper carried news of another strike; this
time it was the Diagon Union of Shop and Allied Workers.

On Tuesday morning, there was a demonstration at Diagon Alley, and with there already being a
huge mass of people in queue outside Gringotts, the result was pure madness. A whole platoon of
aurors had to be despatched to reign it in. The mayhem reached its pinnacle when some fervid,
inspired soul let loose a ton of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, leading to a stampede. The
Ministry’s holding cells were packed. At least sixty people had to be rushed to Mungos.
That very evening, The Healer’s and Medipeople’s Association published an open letter threatening
a strike of their own. Preserving resources was challenging enough without unusually large influxes
of patients.

By Wednesday, rich, pureblood families who had, after the war, donated particularly generously to
the Ministry, were threatening to withhold all future contributions. Phaedrus Greengrass came out
to openly denounce Kingsley Shacklebolt. Heads of all major manufacturing companies “strongly
urged” the Ministry to quickly resolve the matter.

Protests reached the Ministry of Magic’s Atrium on Thursday afternoon. The Golden Gates were
locked, barred and reenforced with multiple shield charms. Kingsley stood behind them, with his
wand amplifying his calming voice, and attempted to placate the crowd.
They were not amenable to being placated.
People had also gathered outside the visitor’s entrance. Muggles living in and around that area were
watching agog as an enraged mob hurled expletives at a shitty little telephone box. Aurors,
Obliviators, and the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee were despatched.

At four o’clock on Friday, an emergency meeting was convened in Kingsley’s office. At five, the
Goblin’s Association was invited to the Ministery.

The negotiations ran long. At six-thirty, a new contract was signed, granting a ten percent rise in the
stipend allotted to all of Gringotts’ goblin employees, with an added clause that stipulated said rise
to be an annual occurrence for next seven years, after which the rate would undergo revision and
reconsideration.

The evening’s Prophet was delayed, but when it did make rounds, Diagon exploded with cheers.

There was a pretence of business as usual on Saturday. Even though large numbers, once again,
flocked to Diagon, (most of them to withdraw large sums of money for potential future
emergencies,) they were dealt with quickly and efficiently. And even though the Goblins got their
gold, and the witches and wizards regained access to theirs, the animosity between them was
stronger than ever...
...And even though Hermione felt a little less like there were ulcers developing in her stomach the
following week, she ended up sharing a lift with Sutton from the GLO, and he shot her the filthiest
of scowls.

In her office, she knew a few moments of peace before Stamp was back in her face.

“Ten percent!” he growled, bearing his wonky teeth, “Are you proud of yourself?”

She was, a bit. By the end of seven years, the goblins would be making the kind of money bankers
in London ought to make.

“If I had my way, you would be fired.”

If she had her way, he would be eating his own shoe.

“I don’t trust you at all, Granger.” He dropped a huge pile of parchment on her table. “Go through
these, make note of any mention of Puculum Limited’s deal with the Kazaks. If you miss even one,
I will inform Madam Barros.”

“Witless,” Kathy hissed after he had left, “And mean.”

“It’s different in Japan,” Takumi mused, “We have never had any quarrel with goblins. Now
werewolves and squibs...” he pulled a face, “Are not treated well.”

“We barely treat anyone well,” Hermione groused under her breath.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter that Stamp didn’t trust her. He needed work to be done and he would
not – could not – do it on his own. She had been biding her time and, finally, exactly thirteen days
after he had yelled at her, Hermione had the opportunity to put her thoughts into action.
She had been given the responsibility to pen down detailed points for his case proving that
Puculum Ltd's import of porphyry powder was neither lawful nor legitimate. He came in the office
half an hour before the hearing and held out an expectant hand. Hermione stood up and went
straight to Kathy.

“Would you have a look at it?” she asked, peering at Stamp, “Better to make sure, isn’t it?”

He grunted and looked away.

“It’s perfect,” Kathy said kindly.

The moment the parchment was back in Hermione’s hand, a tremor of magic spread across the
ink.

“Here you go,” she smiled, “Best of luck.”

“Bleurgh.”

An hour and a half later, Stamp blew into the office like a typhoon.

“GRANGER!” he roared.

“What?!” she gasped.

(Finite, she thought.)

“YOU ARE OUT OF HERE!” he raged, “FOR GOOD. FOR EVER.”

“E – Excuse me?” she stuttered.

“Please be calm, Mr Stamp!” Takumi interjected, “Why are you–”

“QUIET!” Stamp glowered at him for a second before snapping back to Hermione, “YOU – YOU
LITTLE B–”

“What is the matter with you?”

Stamp forcefully pulled himself together at once, turning completely white. He was clearly still
apoplectic and out of his mind, and he spoke through his teeth to Madam Barros who had come in
looking utterly stunned and plenty angry herself.

“Granger... messed up... my case. Again.”

“She did what?” Barros glared at Hermione with disbelief, “What was it this time?”

“Her notes were riddled with incorrect references. She – she alluded to provisions that don’t even
exist...”

Both Barros and Stamp seemed to be swelling with rage. Maybe they’d take off like Harry’s aunt.
“Madam Barros,” Kathy cut in, “None of that is true, I looked through her work myself, there
wasn’t a single error.”

Barros looked between the various people in the room like she couldn’t believe what her life had
come to.

“Let me see those,” she barked with a revolted scowl. She flicked rapidly through the stack, eyes
flitting from side to side like she was suffering a seizure. “Julien. The only thing wrong with these
notes is that they are sickeningly overeager and pedantic.”

“No!” He somehow turned whiter than white. “Madam Barros, that cannot be. I – I–"

“What is the matter with you? Are you ill?”

“I’m fine. I – ugh.”

“What happened at the hearing, Julien?” Her voice had that dangerous, quiet quality.

“Um – well, Puculum’s defence said that – I – er,”

“In my office. Now.”

She stalked out. He stumblingly followed.

Hermione turned to Kathy and Takumi with startled eyes. They shook their heads in disbelief.

That evening she cracked open a can of beer, put on some Blondie, and was contemplating dinner
when Theo leaped out of the fireplace with five anoa horns sprouting out of his head.

“Marvellous,” she remarked.

He laughed delightedly. “We’re nearly there, Hermione. So close.”

“Clearly.”

He flumped onto the sofa and happily accepted the beer she handed him.

“What brings you here?” she asked.

“Huh?” he baulked, “I can’t visit my best friend?”

“Of course, you can.”

“We haven’t seen each other since last Sunday. And maybe you didn’t, but I missed you.”

“Of course, I missed you.”

“And I owe you a fucking load of money. By the way, you haven’t said a word about how dashing I
look in my new polo shirt.”

“The horns are very distracting.”

“Hermioneeeee!”

“You look very dashing in your new polo shirt.”

“Thank you.”

Chuckling, she left the room and returned with parchment and a pen.

“What would you like for dinner?” she asked.

“Hmmm. Braised pork. And shrimp noodles and sweet wantons for Draco.”

“Oh.” She tried not to choke. “He’s coming over too?”

Theo smiled at his beer can. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”

“No.” It wasn’t a problem. She was only smarting all over. “What about Luna?”

He kept smiling. “She said she’d try. But I’d still recommend ordering for three.”

“Um...”

Theo’s eyes darted to the side and his smile widened.

“Oh hello, Ducky!” he crooned at the tiny unicorn that popped out from behind an armchair’s
cushion.

“Her name is Stella.”

“Are you happy here, Ducky? Isn’t Hermione wonderful?”

“Listen, Theo...”

He took a lug of beer and turned away from Stella. Hermione wavered, not sure how to continue.

“Get some spring rolls, too,” he said ruminatively, like that was seriously all he was thinking about,
“They’re nice.”

“Theo–”

“Get cracking. I’m starving.” His expression shifted. “Please?”

“Okay.”
She jotted down their order and tossed it into the fireplace. The two of them sat rolling the pen
around on the coffee table for Stella to chase, till Draco arrived, brimming with stories about
Kenny, an American dignitary, and a plate full of haggis.

(They unfortunately did not walk into a bar.)

There was so much tension at the Ministry. In the basement, the protesters who had caused the most
ruckus were being reprimanded. There was double security in the atrium and around the golden
gates. She had heard all about the unrest and rallying on level five from Draco. She felt the
animosity on level four. On level three, the Obliviators had been working overtime, and were
subsequently battling mountains of paperwork. Good old level two was faring no better. Harry and
Ron and their band of merry men were only just recovering from the upheaval.
And in the DDL office, a claggy air of mistrust had developed. Stamp was sullen and jumpy. Barros
was aggravated all the time. Add to that the fact that they had landed a case of sexual harassment
against the proprietor of a second-hand robes’ shop at the junction between Diagon and
Knockturn...

Hermione was revelling in the entropy. It was oddly freeing.

She was having a hard time pin-pointing what it was that had clicked in place. Technically, the
worst hadn’t happened, so it wasn’t that she had attained a ‘do your worst’ attitude that repelled
fear. And while there was a sense of adventure and unique satisfaction around the aftermath of the
goblin affair, it wasn’t something she felt she had accomplished; so, it wasn’t that sort of
invincibility either.
Nor was it the joy of witnessing Barros grudgingly concede that Hermione was an adept researcher
who was capable of retaining information. She felt a bit smug when she was used like an
encyclopaedia; but it wasn’t particularly bolstering.

The answer came on Thursday afternoon when Stamp trudged into the office with his newly
adapted, profoundly irritating, pinched expression of woe.

“Notes for the appeal, Granger,” he yawped.

She neatly stood up and handed him one roll of parchment.

“What the hell is this?” he bayed. His eyes were inflamed.

“All the necessary dates, events, as well as a list of precedents.”

“You expect me to go in there with this half-arsed–”

“I’m trying to be less overeager and pedantic,” Hermione said meaningfully, “Don’t you think
Madam Barros would prefer that? Shall we go check with her?”

He was blanched and quaking as he spun on a heel and stormed out of the room.

And that’s when she knew.

This was it. Her sense of freedom sprung from a petty and vengeful place.

Both Kathy and Takumi were staggered by the show.

Bless them. They had clever minds, and were diligent workers, but they unfortunately were
completely devoid of creativity. They would have carried on grudgingly doing Stamp’s work for
him, because they felt they were expected to do so.
...The Ministry in a nutshell.

But at that moment, the two of them looked legitimately inspired.

“I refuse to go out of my way for someone who treats me like rubbish,” she said primly, and sat
back at her desk, returning to a volume on the Employment Relations Act.

At the end of another day, she stepped into her flat and stretched hard till her shoulder blades
popped. It was six in the evening, which meant that Ginny would be arriving at the Burrow soon.
She wished she could skip tomorrow and move straight onto Saturday.

Alas, she needed to be productive, for the sake of Twila Elliot, and all the witches who may (and
honestly, would,) face harassment from their employers. She worked before, during, and after
dinner.

At ten, she stood up. There was a knot in her upper back that only a shower would resolve.

She stood under a blast of hot water, intently kneading her fingers into her back while the scent of
her bodywash tempered her nerves.
Feeling immeasurably better, she loosely wrapped herself up in a dressing gown, pushed back her
sodden hair, and went into the study for another hour of work.

She had hardly picked up her quill when the vague roar of the floo startled the hell out of her. She
leapt up and raced to the study door and –

Stopped dead.
“Gran... ger?”

“Draco??!”

Swaddled in a dressing gown with stringy, water-soaked hair was definitely not how she would
choose to have him see her. Her cheeks burned at how confounded he looked to find her in such a
state. He stood at the door to the living room and stared; up and all the way down to her bare feet.
The hall between them was simultaneously too wide and too narrow.

She wrapped her arms around her waist and his eyes snapped up to watch, and stayed there.

“What is it?” she warbled.

His eyes lifted once more and met hers; if he asked if she’d been snacking on tomatoes she would
just die. Actually, she wouldn’t really mind if he raised his wand and avada kedavra’d her out of
this predicament.

Instead, he said, “There’s something wrong with Theo.”

“What?” she gasped and she took a panicked step forward.

“No, I mean he’s fine,” his eyes darted around, “But he’s behaving strangely. Not saying a thing. I
believe you might be able to get him to... spit it out.”

“What do mean strangely?” she demanded.

“He’s... Sitting. Staring. Smoking.”

Hermione frowned, feeling a little pang in her chest. She was almost certain it had to do with
Luna.

“Would you please come talk to him?” Draco ground out.

She nodded. Took another step forward. Stopped.

“Er, just give me a minute.”

She skittered into her bedroom and closed the door, veering around in discombobulation as she
pulled on some clothes and magically dried her hair. It took everything to stave off anticipatory
sadness; she would wait to hear what Theo had to say before feeling anything.

In the living room, Draco was standing in front of the salon wall with his hands behind his back.

“Shall we?” she broached.

It was quite dark in their flat, especially in the hall, where the only source of light was the open
door of Draco’s bedroom. He led her to the terrace that was also gloomy, save for a flickering
lantern in one corner, and the glowing ember between Theo’s fingers.
He was lying back on the deck chair, staring up at the waning gibbous moon. The greenish, smoky
air smelt pungent and earthy; definitely not tobacco.

He looked up when the two of them entered and grinned at Draco.

“Of course, you dragged this poor girl over. Bloody fool. I told you I’m all right.”

“You aren’t all right,” Draco snapped.

Hermione pulled a chair and sat down close by him. Her first impulse was to blurt out a what
happened , but she suppressed it. Instead, she waited in silence for a bit. They knew each other too
well for him to not be aware of her suspicions.

Finally, after a good long drag, he announced, “Luna and I haven’t split up.” His eyes were
bloodshot and heavy-lidded. His fringe was so long now that he could tuck it behind his ears. He
gave Hermione an easy smile. “But we aren’t together either.”

A hundred questions popped up in her head, but she knew to keep quiet.

“George and I figured it out,” he said, “The Ministry’s approved our patent, and Woe-Be-Horn is
ready for its debut at Finnigan’s Halloween bash. I was so bloody chuffed.”

He paused to take a drag, and he held the smoke in his lungs for quite some time, before releasing it
into the night.

“When I told Luna about it, she said that’s nice, Theo . And... I know her. I know when she’s
disinterested, and I know the tone in her voice when she’s mindlessly obliging someone. I was
suddenly so angry . We’d barely spent any time together for months, and she was sitting there
patronising me. Then she went on to talk about her next field trip and I... I almost... I came so
fucking close to saying the worst thing I could ever say to her.”

“What?” Hermione whispered before she could stop herself.

He laughed and shook his head. “They aren’t fucking real, Luna. I wanted to grab her shoulders and
shake her and drum it into her head. That all those bloody critters she keeps leaving me for don’t
exist. I don’t know when and how I stopped believing in her. I don’t know when she stopped caring
about what I was doing and where I was. We used to be so uncannily in sync... and now...”

Another drag and release and he was half shrouded in glaucous vapour.

“So, we’ve decided to wait. To take a break until we’re back on the same page. Maybe when she
has room for other things and when I... when I stop hoping and dreading that that cockwomble
Scamander is her soulmate.” Theo flicked some ash off the spliff and asked, “She told you about
the Atar Pixies, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Hermione mumbled, “And she also told me that soulmates don't necessarily have to be
romantically matched.”

“Yep,” he sighed, and sniggered at her expression. “Oh, don’t look so gutted. It isn’t over, we’re
just taking a steadying break. I need to stop feeling like my insides are being mauled because I’m
the only one making an effort in our relationship, and she deserves to be able to focus on her
projects without feeling guilty. We’ll be okay. She’s my Luna. We’re young. There’s no rush.”

Hermione glanced at Draco, who was standing with one elbow resting on the railing, frowning hard
at Theo. She wished he would say something, but nothing about him indicated that he would. She
was internally squirming, and at an utter loss. Theo had made it clear that this was not an occasion
for an I’m sorry. What could she say?

“We stopped missing each other,” he murmured, “I suppose... with the fussing and warring... we
latched onto one another so tightly... we don’t know how to be together when life is normal. Bah,
what is normal , anyway?” He peered through billows of befuddling smoke and sighed. “She and I
are certainly not normal . You, my barmy friends, are not normal. Hermione... what is normal?”

With another, unhelpful glance at Draco, she just went with her gut and said the stupidest possible
thing.

“A normal is a line or ray that intersects a given line or surface at right angles.”

Theo laughed furiously. “I have no,” he gasped, “Fucking idea what that means.”

Without warning, he stood up. He moseyed over to where Draco was standing and shoved the spliff
into his hand.

“Enjoy,” he droned before yawning widely, “I’m going to bed.”

“Theo...” Hermione began nervously, but he walked up to her and kissed the top of her head.

“Goodnight, buddy. Please don’t worry.”

She watched as he slowly walked past the terrace doors, and then stood up to follow. She waited at
the threshold and saw him shuffle down the hall and into his room, gently closing the door behind
him. She hung around there for some time, in case he re-emerged, but he didn’t.

When she returned to her chair, Draco had comfortably settled on one of his own and was puffing
away at the spliff that was nearly a stub now.
The fumes were getting to her. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his curved fingers and the
shape of his mouth when he took a drag. He tilted up his head when he exhaled.

He was leaning back in his chair, surrounded by coils of smoke and he smirked with no real feeling.

“Well, you got him talking.”

She grimaced.

He sat up and leaned forward, holding the stub out to her.

“Want to finish it?”

Her heart was battering like Hephaestus’ hammer. She swallowed and reached towards him,
praying that he wasn’t watching the way her fingers were minutely trembling. She stole a peek
and... No. He was looking at her face.
Her fingers caught the end of the spliff, connecting with the tips of his index and middle finger. He
slipped away and sat back and she closed her lips around where his lips had been just moments
ago.

That was enough in itself to get her high.

She took in a gentle drag, afraid of the possibility of having a coughing fit in front of him. It didn’t
hit the back of her throat like weed and tobacco had. She closed her eyes as her lungs filled, and
slowly opened them as she breathed out, watching the plume of vapour shoot up to the sky. Her
heartbeat was still sounding off in her ears because she had a feeling that he was still watching her.

But when she turned to him, he was gazing out into the night.

She took in a longer breath for her next drag. It went down her throat like hot, smooth, smoky cider.
Then she dropped the empty roach and it vanished before it could hit the ground.

“Do you think he really is as fine as he’s trying to have us believe?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he replied warily.

“I think he does believe he’s fine, right now.”

She sighed and stared out at the nothingness like he was. The moon was nice. Like the dome of a
floating mosque.

“But,” she went on, “He may not be fine, later. I don’t know.”

“Nobody can know, until it’s later.”

“And when it’s later, we’ll all know.”

“Yeah. Every time I try to predict later, the universe gives me a kick up the arse.”

“Elephants and birds of beauty and a gold fish. Gold fish or a superstition.”

“.........huh?”

“They always bring bad luck.”

“What the fuck, Granger? Two drags did this to you?”

“It’s a poem, you prat. It’s called Much Later.”

“Oh. I see. Go on.”

She looked from the moon to his crescent-moon smile.

“Go on where?”
“Finish the poem.”

He winked, for some reason. She laughed and stared down at her knee.

“He had them and he was not told. Gold fish and he was not old. Gold fish and he was not to scold.
Gold fish all told. The result was that the other people never had them and he knows nothing of it.”

Her voice lingered and vanished like a curl of greenish smoke. Draco blinked in slow motion.

“Did you just make that up?”

“No,” she laughed, “Gertrude Stein’s poetry is not to be–”

“If you say not be intellectualised, I’ll... I’ll...”

She leaned over the arm of her chair and raised her eyebrows. “You’ll what?”

He stared at her for a few seconds then turned away grinning. “I refuse to relinquish the element of
surprise.”

“You’re full of it. All bluster and empty threats.”

“That’s right, Granger. Keep underestimating me.”

“It’s impossible to–”

And that was when her body decided to give her a coughing fit.

“Um... are you...”

“Dry throat,” she choked, promptly conjuring herself a glass of water.

After she had calmed and breathed normally for a bit, she glared at him. He was predictably
amused.

“Did you do that?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said... element of surprise...”

“No, you buffoon. I did not cause you to hack a lung.”

Something settled in her brain at that moment, like a leaf slowly fluttering to the ground after being
tossed around in a storm – It was late and she had to work the next day. And poor Theo. It was a
very sad night.

She steadily rose to her feet.

 Draco walked just a step behind her as they moved back towards the sitting room. She wondered...
if she pretended to stumble would he catch her? Would he grab her by the shoulders or maybe even
loop an arm around her waist? Her whole body tensed at the idea, but she simply was not shameless
or pathetic enough to try it.
He stopped at the sitting room door and let her walk to the fireplace on her own, watching like she
had watched Theo.

At the hearth, she collected a fistful of floo powder and half turned. He was poorly lit by the
world’s ugliest lamp, with one hand on the door jamb.

“Goodnight,” she called.

“Goodnight, Granger,” he called back.

She turned and lifted her arm.

“Please call me Hermione,” she said, and in the same breath murmured, “33, Starthistle Hill,” and
leapt into the fire.

Chapter End Notes

1. The Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling

2. Example of a Wayang Kulit Garuda shadow puppet.
3. Much Later by Gertrude Stein
 Seventy-Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“Excuse me, please!”

Hermione jumped aside to make way for a hollow-cheeked man carrying a giant tureen, having just
stepped into the Burrow seconds before, and not yet got her bearings. She goggled at the hurly-
burly playing out in the kitchen. An assortment of people in crisp white aprons were cooking up a
storm – there was peeling, shelling, chopping, dicing, and mincing going on all at once, and a
dizzying mix of smells saturated the air.
Keeping close to the wall, Hermione scuttled like a crab towards the door to the back garden. She
shivered slightly on stepping outside, feeling a sudden chill; the kitchen had been so hot with all the
cooking and bodies. In the near distance, she could see the pointed tip of a marquee amid the
orchard, like the ice cap over mount Fuji.

The interior, though not as large, looked a lot like Bill and Fleur’s wedding reception. There were
lights strung across the roof, interspersed with gold and white balloons. There was a bar along one
side and round tables scattered around the room. George, Angelina, Charlie, and a young man with
closed cropped dark hair were conjuring and draping flowers over everything.
Hermione placed her present on the corner table that appeared to have been put there for that
purpose, when she was, quite unceremoniously, almost tackled to the ground.

“Hi!”

Hermione gasped.

Then she laughed and turned to properly hug Ginny back.

“Hello,” she said and pulled away to look at her, “Wow, you look–”

“Yes, I know,” she said, smoothening down her satin silver frock, “I’ve overdone it. But I haven’t
had any reason to dress up in so long. I’d forgotten I have legs, Hermione. Or at least that they do
anything besides ache from over-exertion.”

Hermione chuckled, “Actually, looking at all this,” she gestured around them, “I wouldn’t say
you’ve overdone anything. I wasn’t expecting something so grand.”

Ginny looped her hand around Hermione’s and together they began circuiting the area.

“George and Bill are paying for most of it. You only turn fifty once, after all... and mum deserves
it.”

Hermione nodded, eyeing the long buffet table that was being set up. “Where is she right now?”
“Dad’s taken her shopping for new robes. She’s too clever to not suspect, but hopefully she doesn’t
suspect this.”

“I’m sure she’ll be thoroughly surprised.”

“Come,” Ginny began pulling her towards the flower-enthusiasts, “I’ll introduce you to Marius.”

“And he is?”

“Charlie’s boyfriend.”

“Ah. Happy you’ve finally met him?”

Ginny grinned. “Only been two days, but I reckon he’s interesting. Loads better than Fleur, thank
Merlin.”

It wasn’t hard to believe. ‘Handsome, well-built, square-jawed, and Dragon tamer’ would pass any
litmus test for interesting. Marius was polite, his English was a tad accented, and Hermione got to
speak to him for three whole minutes before anguished cries drew her away.

Harry and Ron had just wheeled in a gramophone with an enormous horn, but lamentably, could
not get it to stop squeaking while it played. Despite having a lot of squeak-related trauma, and as
tempted as she was to not fix it, (to save the party from Celestina Warbeck’s saccharine crooning,)
she got the music going. Then she went on to make a significant contribution to the ‘flowers,
flowers everywhere’ movement.

By the end of the hour, the buffet table was laden with food and guests had begun to trickle in.
They were all very spruced up and Hermione was a fairly annoyed that no one had informed her
that it was going to be a lavish sort of party. Seamus and Vassilios' enterence was what it took for
her to stop scowling down at her plain shift dress. She sought out Harry and tugged the sleeve of
his robe.

“Will you be okay?” she asked.

“Huh? Yeah?”

“I just mean...”

“Oh. Right. Yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. And... have you seen
Ginny? I won’t be looking at or thinking about anything else.”

He looked happier than he had in months. Like Harry before the worst had happened, or like Harry
after winning the quidditch cup, or on getting an owl from Sirius. His eyes went straight back to
Ginny as she threw roses around, so uncharacteristically tender that Hermione laughed out loud.

“She looks smashing.”

“Yeah,” he agreed with a bashful grin.

Suddenly, Bill and Fleur rushed in, and a tiny commotion broke out: A lot of shushing and “they’re
here, they’re here,” followed by absolute silence. Mr Weasley walked into the marquee leading his
blindfolded wife.

Chatter and rousing laughter. Celestina crooned at a low volume. Waiters went around baring trays
piled high with appetisers.

While the party swelled around her, full of family, friends, and acquaintances, Mrs Weasley was in
a fantastic mood and rather drunk. Her new dress robes were violet, and her hair had been done up.
From the moment the blindfold had melted off her eyes, she’d had a look of awe about her, like one
who couldn’t believe where she was. She was usually the one organising celebrations, not the one
being honoured.

At that moment, however, she was standing in front of the eternally bilious Murial, with a glass of
white wine in one hand, and Draco’s arm in the other. She was, (according to George who was
damn near weeping over Draco’s ill-suppressed expression of distaste,) extolling Draco’s bravery
for being the sole reason the Weasley family still existed. And sure enough, Draco looked like he
was regretting every single second of his life that had led him to that gaining that distinction.

Hermione sipped her red wine and smiled. He could scowl all he wanted but his robes would still
trail down the line of his spine impeccably.

She was sitting at the bar, to Theo’s right. George was on his left. They had planted themselves
there like sentries the moment Luna, Xenophilius, and his wife Jamila made their fashionably late
appearance. Theo was worryingly quiet, but still making a show of enjoying Draco’s plight.

When at last, Draco managed to free himself, he made a beeline towards her.

Well, to the bar. His first move was to get hold of firewhisky.

“What is that woman’s problem?” he spat, coming around to stand in front of George.

“It’s her birthday, Draco,” George tutted, “Be nice.”

Draco huffed irritably. “Not your mother. The other one.”

“Ah, yes. Muriel has many problems. What did she say to you?”

“Him? Brave?” Draco screwed up his face, “Looks like an anaemic shrinking violet.”

“That’s it? Bah.” George picked the olive out of his drink and grinned, “I’m family and she called
me an engorged imp.”
“To me she said the ugliest ones always grow their hair out,” said Theo.

“After she expressed general dismay over my muggleborn-ness,” Hermione added, “She said bad
posture and skinny ankles. Such a shame.”

Draco’s mouth twitched. “In that case... I dare say... she might actually like me.”

“You should set her up with Kenny,” said Hermione.

He chuckled. “Now there’s an idea.”

Draco’s arrival gave George the freedom to run off... somewhere. Mrs Weasley had moved away
from her rotten aunt and was now embracing and petting Fleur like they’d never quarrelled in their
lives. And Fleur was absolutely, unfairly radiant, even in shapeless robes, with a mouth full of
scotch eggs.

“Hello Hermione,” said a deep voice from her left and she started, sloshing wine about her glass.

“Oh,” she squeaked, “Hello, Kingsley. Lovely to see you. How are you?”

She pulled her lips back in what she hoped was a friendly grin, but from Kingsley’s unsmiling
response she felt like she had failed... or that he just was not happy to see her.

“I’ve been better,” he replied curtly, “The last two weeks have been very trying.”

“Er – Yes,” she faltered, “I imagine they must have been.”

There was a short reprieve, during which Kingsley accepted his drink and sampled it. Then he
sighed and gave Hermione the most exasperated stare.

“You know I’ll be the first one to say you’re a huge asset to the Ministry. You’re an extraordinary
witch; what on earth compelled you to ruin our contract with the goblins?”

“I did no such thing!” Hermione exclaimed at once, “They were refusing to sign the contract before
I said anything. They were demanding more money.”

“I see,” he said coldly, “So I suppose I should thank you for giving them the necessary
ammunition?”

“I – erm – well – You're welcome.”

Kingsley suddenly looked very tired. He sighed once more and forced out a reluctant smile.

“Enjoy the party, Hermione.” He nodded, “Theodore, Draco.”

He walked away and Hermione tipped back the rest of her wine. She spun around on her stool to
request another, and did not consider the reactions of the two fellows next to her.
Just as her fingers closed around the stem of her glass, Ginny popped up, grabbed her arm and
pulled her off to a table where Harry, Ron, and Seamus – among others – were sitting.

“You see Theo often enough,” Ginny spouted, “Spend time with me .”

It was alright, sitting with her oldest friends, drinking wine and mindlessly laughing. They were
scarcely left alone, even when Seamus went off to check things at the bar. People kept stopping by
because of who they were, but it seemed that Hermione was the only one who found it tiresome.
Ron accepted the attention with geniality, and Harry and Ginny were too wrapped up in each other
to care.
When Bill, Fleur, Charlie, Marius, and assorted Weasley cousins sat at their table, and Ron
launched into some of his favourite Auror-ing tales, Hermione finally let her mind and eyes
wander.

Mrs Weasley’s complexion was blazingly pink. She was clinging onto Mr Weasley’s arm and they
were walking from person to person making small talk. He kept kissing the top of her head. It was
tremendously sweet. She watched as they stopped to speak to the Lovegood gang, and Hermione
immediately looked around for Theo.
He was with George, Angelina, and Lee, talking to Perkins and a woman from the Accidental
Magic Reversal Squad.

She couldn’t see Draco anywhere.

Hermione’s mood dipped as the evening wore on. Harry and Ginny disappeared, which she was
grateful for because it was getting increasingly difficult to ignore where their hands were going.
Fleur and Bill went to the Burrow – she needed to lie down. Finally, when Percy came to their
table, shooting Hermione a look usually worn by disapproving clergymen, she said she needed to
refresh her drink and swept away.

She hopped up on the same barstool as before, idly swirling her glass.

Since getting caught up in running circles around the Ministry, she hadn’t given any thought to
life’s circles. But, right then, she was struck by another.
She’d been moping at the bar at Bill and Fleur’s wedding reception, too. Miffed with Luna, missing
Theo, feeling lost and lonely. Then Theo had surprised her. And then the Death Eaters had
surprised her. Somehow, even with all that joy and horror and calamity, Draco had been the biggest
surprise of the night.
He was the biggest surprise of her life.

Almost like she had summoned him with her thoughts, she saw him, from the corner of her eye: A
flash of pale blond settling at a nearby empty table. She waited for a few moments – two sips and
four swirls – keeping her gaze fixed on the silly flouncy bow under the chin of some fop from the
Improper Use of Magic Office. Then she casually rolled her neck and chanced a look.

Draco was staring at her legs.

She turned away at once, burning from head to toe. Dear god, dear god, was he ascertaining the
skinniness of her ankles? She could’ve turned to dust. Her soul wanted to groan. Why on earth did
she point them out to him? She’d always been aware that she had spindly limbs... but now she
knew.
(She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, praying that it would break his focus.)
The difference between being aware and knowing was the awful conviction that skinny ankles
would be all that Draco would see from here on, when he looked at her. Bad posture and skinny
ankles. She straightened her back.

It took another emboldening sip to summon the courage to look upon him again. Swirl, sip and
look....... straight into his eyes.

A jolt shot up her stomach. She blinked in surprise, while he looked back, steadily and
unabashedly. She tried for a smile, and he – one, two, three seconds later – smirked.

Okay. Breathe. Once more.

She slipped off the stool and walked towards him, and then around him, and sat on the chair beside
him. Setting her glass on the table, she waited for him to angle his body away from the bar.

“You look like you regret coming,” he said, putting his own glass down on the table.

“I don’t,” she shook her head, ignoring his look of disbelief, “I regret some of the unnecessary
invitees.”

She remembered when anger and revulsion were all she ever read on his face. What kind of life
would she have led, had she never got around to seeing him like this – mirthful, relaxed, and
captivating?

“Such as?”

“Kingsley.”

“The Minister for Magic.”

“Yes. And Percy.”

“The honouree’s son.”

“Hmm.”

“How thoughtless of them to not run the guest list by you.”

“Isn’t it?”

He reached towards his glass, and over his arm, she spotted yet another troublesome site.

“Oh shit,” she murmured.

Draco turned, and they both watched as Theo and Luna inconveniently met as he was walking
away from the buffet table, and she towards it. It looked like Theo wanted to drop his plate and
dash – either to her or far away. They exchanged a few words, nodded sharply, and parted. Theo
took a few steps before stopping; at a loss. Hermione stood up and raised her arm, beckoning to
him.

“’lo,” he said softly, as he pulled back a chair.

It didn’t seem like his appetite had survived the encounter. He courageously forced down half a
coronation chicken sandwich, but only picked up and put down the second half.

“Alright,” he huffed, “I’m spent. Going home.”

His assertion brooked no arguments. Hermione stared at his retreating form, until a heavy sigh from
Draco distracted her. He knocked back his drink and stood up.

“You’re leaving, too?” she mumbled.

“Obviously,” he replied, “He shouldn’t be alone.”

“Yes,” she sighed, “But he isn’t going to talk right now.”

“I know. I’m all for drinking in silence.”

By herself once again, and even more disheartened than before, Hermione picked at Theo’s plate. It
remained more or less as he had left it; she didn’t have much of an appetite either. After a while,
she noticed that Harry and Ginny had returned, and they were sitting with Hagrid and Teddy. Such
an extreme combination of sizes. She shifted to their table.

Ginny smiled at her so warmly, that Hermione had no choice but to abandon her plan of telling her
that she was leaving.

Slowly, the guests began to depart. Andromeda took Teddy away, and Hagrid left too, not much
later. Perkins was off his face and he lingered for much too long, till finally, Mr Weasley walked
him to the fireplace. Warming charms were fast fading. While all that carried on, a large swathe of
the area was cleared, and a spirited game of skittles broke out between the Weasley siblings.
Hermione crossed her arms and watched, sitting next to a still-smiling Harry.

A loud wail shattered the air.

Joyful, blithesome, tipsy Molly Weasley was clutching her husband’s robes and sobbing into his
chest.

“This was so beautiful, such a perfect party,” she cried, “I’d always dreamed of this day. Turning
fifty with you by my side and our children grown up.... but they’re supposed to be seven. Arthur...
Ar... Seven children. We had seven. Fred’s not here. Oh... M – My.”

George’s ball fell to the floor with a thud and he all but ran outside. Angelina went chasing behind
him. Mrs Weasley watched him go and her weeping got wilder. It took the combined effort of Bill,
Charlie, and Mr Weasley to tow her home. She kept gripping chairs and tables on the way out, at
one point grabbing a bunch of flowers. She dropped them a moment later, and they lay on a ground,
a crushed and crumpled heap of petals.

They all followed, with Ron racing forward to get the door, and Ginny chanting something about
calming draughts. Hermione stayed outside, though, when the frenzied lot had gone in. Seeing her,
Harry and Marius did too.

The jarring silence when, Hermione presumed, Mrs Weasley had been put under, was even more
potent out in the back garden. Light from the marquee and the moon got diffused by the thin fog
that had spread through the air. Hermione, shivering, drew a cloak out of her beaded bag.
Marius wandered over to the side, under a tree. She heard the click of a lighter and saw the tip of a
burning cigarette.

Not one of them said a word till, after what felt like an eon, Charlie came out.

“She’s asleep,” he muttered, before joining Marius for a smoke.

And again, they were quiet till Ginny appeared. Gone was her pretty dress and the sparkle in her
eyes. She was in pyjamas and an old jumper, and she went straight to Harry and wrapped her arms
around his waist.

“Let’s go,” she squeaked, muffled against his chest.

“Okay,” he whispered gently.

He raised an arm in farewell and they disapperated.

Hermione continued to linger, in case Ron came out. Charlie and Marius had drifted deeper into the
garden, and all she could see were their cigs and silhouettes.

Ron didn’t show, so she spun on the spot and went home.

Against all odds, Hermione woke up full of beans. The early morning drizzle and mist over the hill,
and the surrounding heath was charming. Her mind wandered as she ran, cooking up scenarios
involving ingenuity, intrigue, and magic.

She had been planning this day for two weeks, and it had finally arrived.

The neighbourhood had been done up for the occasion. She admired the carved pumpkins that sat
outside shop doors and adorned windows as she returned to her flat with a little brown bag full of
pork pies and quiches.

After a shower, she stood before the mirror, a bit fazed by her reflection. She looked as wound up
as she felt; wide-eyed and pale, with a gash of bright pink across the bridge of her nose. She plated
her hair, pulled on some clothes, (topped with a denim jacket and brick-red scarf,) and put together
the necessary stuff. Then, with her beaded bag, a basket, and a whole lot of barely suppressed
enthusiasm, she perched on the arm of her living room sofa, directly facing the fireplace.

Ginny came tumbling into the room, carrying a basket of her own.

“Mum’s sent leftovers,” she said, “A bloody load of them.”

“How is she?” Hermione asked warily.

“As she always is the morning after a meltdown,” Ginny shrugged, “All right. Everyone’s all
right,” she added before Hermione could ask, “The rest of them are hungover and having a proper
lazy Sunday morning, but I’m being dragged out for some sort of woodland expedition.”

“Ginny, it’s okay if you rather not–”

“Shut it,” she grinned, “Are you going to give me a tour of this place or not?”

Hermione took her around, which took all of five minutes. Ginny was suitably appreciative, and
concluded that the flat was very emphatically Hermione-ish, for which she was thanked.

“Are you sure you want to go?” Hermione asked.

Because she was concerned. And she really wanted to leave.

“Yes, yes,” Ginny assured her, “Let’s go.”

“But... Harry and Ron?”

“Harry said they’ll meet us there. Ron’s still asleep.”

Hermione shrugged. She had sent a very detailed map around. She was confident enough in their
apparating ability to be mostly sure that they wouldn’t end up in the river.

She led Ginny down to the apparition point in the building’s lobby and when she opened her eyes,
the world was green.

Nestled in a valley in Dartmoor, Wistman’s Wood was the mystical, other-worldly, stunted oak
forest where the Dæg guild had made its home. The oaks grew to no more than four and a half
metres; their trunks procumbent and stooped and their branches jagged and twisted and curling like
serpents or eddies, forming a canopy of yellow-green. Stained sunlight fell through the cracks. The
ground was completely covered with lumpy boulders overrun with moss that seemed to glow. The
moss clambered up the trees too. It painted the whole landscape.
It was like walking into a cave of jade, emerald, and topaz.
The woodland was at least five centuries old, replete with history. It was where Mesolithic hunters
stalked their game, and where some of the earliest packs of werewolves roamed, often mistaken for
hellhounds or the Devil’s Wisht Hounds. It was where powerful druidesses thrived, their magic
perhaps still embedded in the earth and stones. It was where the most sagacious of centaurs made
their home... now relegated to a distant copse by the Ministry.

“Wow,” Ginny exclaimed, bringing Hermione back to the present.

They walked just a short distance away, to a small clearing between boulders, next to an oak that
bent so low it made for a natural bench. Ginny opened her basket and took out a thick maroon
blanket and spread it out. Hermione conjured a heap of cushions. The two of them settled side by
side and stared at the branches above.

There was a soft breeze like a whispered secret.

The next breeze carried away Ginny's awe.

“What happened between Theo and Luna?” she asked.

Hermione told her. And while she told her, Ginny plucked tiny wild daisies and red clovers from a
tuft by the edge of the blanket and stuck them, willy-nilly, into Hermione’s hair.

“Sad,” Ginny remarked at the end of it.

“Yeah.”

“It’s a good thing Harry and I are so used to being apart. Maybe being together will be what
ultimately does us in.”

“I doubt that,” Hermione laughed.

“It must have been hard,” she mused, “They were joint at the hip.”

“Hmm. But Theo insisted it isn’t over. So, who knows...”

“All right, now onto bigger things.”

“Yes?”

“Tell me about the goblin rebellion of 1999.”

“Ugh,” Hermione groaned, “I’m sure Harry’s already told you all about it.”

“Yes, but you haven’t.”

And so, Hermione repeated the story for what felt like the millionth time. And while she did, Ginny
twined flowers around the locks that had escaped from her plait.

“Galloping gargoyles, Granger.”

“Nice.”

“I knew you’d like that. But honestly. All this time you’ve been insisting that nothing of note has
happened in your life since I left, but let's look at it properly, shall we? You got your own place,
started working under one of the biggest names in the Ministry, in a position usually reserved for
someone far more experienced, you helped take down a huge, corrupt company, and then you set
off a bloody rebellion.”

“Er... well...” Hermione hedged, “It all sounds a lot more exciting than it actually is...”

“Now you sound like Harry.”

“That isn’t remotely the same–”

“Pfff.”

Ginny placed a crown of flowers on her head.

“Well?” she went on, “Is there anything else?”

I’ve also developed an insane attraction towards Draco Malfoy.

“No. That’s about it.”

“Is he fit, by the way?”

Hermione had a heart attack.

“Uh??”

“Takumi. Is he fit?”

“God, Ginny, he’s happily married and around my father’s age.”

“Oh.” She was quiet for a minute. “But is he fit?”

“No,” Hermione laughed and pushed her shoulder. “Now your turn. How’s training?”

“Brilliant. I've moved onto really complex manoeuvres now. Kippler’s called in a specialist from
Belgium to help.”

A call of Hermione wafted in from between the trees, and she yelled “Over here!”

Dean wandered into the clearing wearing a loose white jumper, with an easel strapped to his back.
He was looking around in amazement, like a young Impressionist who had just discovered his
forest of Fontainebleau.

“Wicked place,” he breathed.

He went straight towards the baskets, and fished out a bottle of juice, an apple, and a pork pie. He
didn’t make conversation; he didn’t even bother sitting. Some creative force or the other had him in
its thrall, and he simply said, “See you later,” and ambled on, in search for the perfect view.

If nothing else, his arrival inspired them to dig into their victuals as well. Hermione sat back with a
box of blackberries and two distant cracks followed, announcing Theo and Draco’s arrival. They,
too, were looking around with interest. Hermione allowed herself the shortest, most brief appraisal
of Draco’s person, before looking up at Theo.

“Hello, little wood nymph,” he said, dropping down next to her and gently extracting the box of
blackberries from her hand.

“There are two whole baskets full of food right there.”

“I know,” he grinned, eyeing her hair. “Really getting into character, are you?”

“It’s all Ginny’s handiwork,” she muttered, reaching back into the basket to find something else to
eat.

“Dean can fuck off,” Ginny said, “I’m the real artist around here. Hullo, Malfoy. My mum’s
remembered she’s in love with you again.”

Draco snorted a laugh as he settled at a slight distance from the three of them. His head was turned
away, peering through haphazard branches. Ginny set about making a flower crown of her own.

“By the way,” Hermione said upon finding herself a peach slice, “Shall we have a quite dinner at
my flat tonight? The pub downstairs has some Halloween specials–”

“But you must come for the party!” Theo cried at the same time as Ginny barked, “You have to go
to the party.”

“You will go to Finnigan’s” Ginny averred as she haughtily placed the crown on her head (daisies
looked lovely against glossy red strands,) “Ron will go to Finnigan’s and spend the night at
George’s. Kreacher will be at the Burrow helping with the clean-up. And Harry and I will walk
around Grimmauld place, completely starkers.”

Hermione laughed. Theo groaned. Draco choked like he was dying.

“We will have it off on every conceivable surface.”

Ginny beamed through the fallout – which was loud and offended – and during which, at long last,
Harry and Ron materialised.

The variegated company did not find it’s pitch in this instance, the way it had on her birthday...
perhaps because they were less in number. Ron looked like he hadn’t recovered from the night
before. Draco’s scowl of discomfort, though almost impalpable, was enhanced by the way he was
sitting apart from everyone. It was annoying and unnecessary.
Frankly, the following howevermany minutes were unnecessary. Hermione felt once again like she
had in the morning. Urgent, eager. She had not come here to eat in silence and stare at pretty trees.

She jumped to her feet and voiced a command, “Let’s head to the settlement.”

Harry, Ginny, and Draco stood up; however, Ginny immediately grabbed Harry’s hand and began
walking in the wrong direction.

“It’s this way!” Hermione called.

“Harry and I will check if it’s over here,” she replied.

“It isn’t! I have a map–”

“We’ll let you know if we find it!”

The last few syllables of her sentence faded as she and Harry disappeared behind the trees.
Hermione rolled her eyes and stared down at the two who hadn’t bothered standing up.

“Well?” she huffed.

“Oh sure, Hermione,” Ron droned, “I’d loved to spend my day off plodding through a forest,
pretending to care about some crone named Beetlerot.”

He lay against a tower of cushions with a pile of food on his lap and stared back contumaciously.
She wanted to ask why he had bothered coming at all. Theo said nothing because Theo had dozed
off. Hermione pressed her lips together and turned to Draco, and he uncaringly swept his arm
towards the thicket, as if to say after you .

Right at that moment, when she spun around and ducked under a low branch, she felt like she’d
been struck by lightning. When she scrambled onto a big mossy boulder and heard his footsteps
behind her, the aftershocks abated and...

Garden.

There was an entire blooming garden inside her. The flowers in her hair couldn’t compare.
Versailles, Giverny, Mirabell, Keukenhof, and Kew couldn’t compare. Because she was walking
into a place of history, exquisite beauty, and wonder; and she was walking with the only person she
had really wanted to go with.
She stayed on the boulder and waited till he was beside her, and she smiled as she unfurled her
map.

“It isn’t too far from here,” she said, pointing the spot out to him, “No more than fifteen minutes,
I’ll say.”

He took the map from her, giving her, in return, the time to finally properly drink him in. Green and
golden light fell on his hair, giving it an eerie tint. It fell on his skin and eyelashes and mottled over
his black jacket.

He rolled up the map and handed it back to her.

“Lead the way, Granger.”

She didn’t move.

“Hermione,” she insisted, softer than she had intended.

One corner of his mouth quirked up.

“All right, Hermione, ” he said with mortifying emphasis, “Lead the bloody way.”

She didn’t lead as such; the times when she was ahead were rare. She kept stopping and slowing to
keep them walking side by side. Navigating the terrain wasn’t easy, so they spoke little. The further
they went, the denser the rock coverage got. The air smelt cool, clean, and lush.

Draco asked her what species the trees were. He asked her how old they were. She told him and she
told him and that was all that interrupted their silent trek.
Until he randomly reached up to a branch less than a foot above his head and plucked a leaf.
Hermione stopped to observe the branch swing up and down in search of equilibrium. Its leaves
fluttered, blocking and unblocking the sunlight in rapid succession. It was a mesmerising,
shimmering thing of beauty.

When it stilled, she looked away and saw that Draco had gone on ahead. He was standing by a
lichen covered tree with his arms crossed, watching her piercingly.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“You dawdle a lot.”

“No, I do not.”

She hopped off a particularly high boulder, and a lock of her hair, twined with three red clovers,
swung into her eyes.

She pushed it away and said, “Nearly there. Keep a lookout for a rune carved into the moss.”

They walked through branches that curved and converged, forming a woody-tunnel. Clouds floated
in front of the sun and shrouded them in shadows. The colours turned richer and darker and
suddenly sinister. It ripened the feeling of forbidding anticipation.
They stepped out of the tunnel and onto a slight upward slope, passing by a tree with a reach so
wide that it could’ve been the mainstem from which the entire forests’ network of branches
emerged.

“It’s here,” Draco said.

There it was, sharp and crisp like it had been drawn in just moments ago: The bow-shaped dagaz
rune amid a carpet of moss on a plinth-like boulder. Magic vibrated palpably against Hermione’s
skin. She raised her hand and curled her fingers around empty air.

“Can you feel that?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he replied lowly.

Together, with unexpected synchronicity, they stepped through the shield.

“Oh my,” she breathed.

They were in a clearing about the size of a tennis court, carpeted with soft, vibrant moss. There
were only two oaks in the area, and both had incongruously large structures built upon their
branches. In the middle, there was a small scorched circle, besides which sat three enormous iron
cauldrons, also overrun with moss. The very same cauldrons in which the brilliant Catrìona would
have stirred her wonderous brews. Hermione approached one and gently touched the rim.

“You know, Catrìona Jewelle had figured out a potion that could turn anything edible? Literally
anything. It... somehow reduced things to their basic elemental composition – minerals and such –
and you could happily consume them.” She moved onto the second cauldron and peered inside,
while she muttered under her breath, “Would’ve been bloody useful to have when Ron was raging
over my cooking.”

Draco appeared at the other side of the cauldron and, like her, peered down at the damp mossy
mulch within.

“What was it made of?” he asked.

“Ugh. See that’s the frustrating part. Fedelm didn’t say! She mentioned so many incredible spells
and potions, but never revealed the incantation or the recipe. She was so wary and justifiably
mistrustful–”

“Or she was a fraud.”

Hermione scowled. “You just need to read one page of her memoir to know she wasn’t. And about
this potion... the only thing I know is that it required a whole lot of hag stones. Specifically, the
ones found by the river not far from here...”

Draco turned around and loped towards the larger of the two shelters. It was actually multiple
shelters – a bunch of typical Celtic round houses made of daub, wood, and straw – connected by
wooden ramps.
Hermione tapped the base of the tree like Fedelm used to. At once, a score of flat stones jumped off
the ground and formed a floating staircase, leading up the trunk.
She turned to Draco and made the same gesture that he had earlier; that blithe after you. He rolled
his eyes and began climbing, while she waited for him to make some progress before following
suit. She didn’t fancy, (well, fine, she fancied it a bit too much,) being too close to his back. There
was a big gap between each stone, and no railing. That kind of exposure was liable to cause
injuries.

Upon pushing past the door, they found themselves in the Druidesses’ living quarters. In its prime,
it must have been splendid, going by the arrangement and finely carved logs used as furniture; but
now it was utterly wild. Everything was covered with moss. Branches had poked through windows
and cracks in the walls. Rusted charms hung from the ramparts. A broken sickle lay in the fireplace
in the middle of the room. Woven baskets were scattered around, torn to shreds.

Time and nature truly conquered all.

They explored all the huts – the arrangement being that Draco left one as soon as Hermione entered
it, until they ended up together in the largest one, Fedelm’s private chamber. The desk still had a
candle stand on it. The bed – made of metal and rope, had been mostly eaten up by flora. There was
a second door, covered with leaves that Draco cleared with a wave of his wand. It opened to a
platform that overlooked the clearing. There was no railing there either, so Hermione stayed
gingerly away from the edge.

“Fedelm used to sit here every evening,” she murmured, “And write, while looking down at the
world she’d created.”

The brewing station was right beneath her, and across the clearing, she could see the hut on the
opposite side.
She turned and an indulgent, breathy laugh burst out of her – Draco had conjured one of those high
back leather armchairs he seemed to favour, and had a bottle of juice at his mouth. He took a
second bottle out of his pocket and handed it to her. She accepted with a thanks and conjured a
chair of her own; a simple, cushioned ladderback.

A breeze. Rustling of leaves. The clouds shifted, and the sun popped out again. Draco was
practically glowing, stately and majestic like a Tolkien elf or an Arthurian knight.

Um, what? She was completely batty, soppy, and ridiculous. She put her focus back on the
dreamlike splendour before her.

“It’s so...”

“...what?”

“I was about to use an adjective that’s a bit redundant.”

“You mean magical?”

She laughed. “Yes. I suppose enchanting could work.”

“If you want.”

“Or... mystical. Ethereal.”

She felt him looking at her. She scrutinised the darkened interior of the hut across the clearing.

“You could just say beautiful, you know. In my experience, it’s well received by both landscapes
and women.”

“That’s much too trite for this landscape, and a woman like Fedelm.”

“She went around with the name Beetlerot. She has no business complaining about adjectives.”

“Okay, Ron.”

“Fuck you.”

“You just agreed with what he said earlier.”

“Yeah, well... the name is bad enough to bring about such a ghastly, aberrant occurrence.”

“Be careful, Draco.”

“Huh?”

She had to grin at him then. “Fedelm’s spirit might be listening.”

He made an unimpressed face and scoffed, deeming that statement unworthy of a response.

She continued, “Besides, you have no business making fun of anyone’s name.”
“I don't give a damn about your opinion of my name.”

“Malfoy translates to Bad Faith–”

“Bad Faith sounds dangerous and exciting.” His grin was dangerous and exciting. “Infinitely better
than putrid insect.”

“Well, if you–”

“Granger means one who lives in a barn.”

“Farm bailiff.”

“That’s much better.”

She sniffed and chose juice over continuing that line of conversation.

Another breeze. More rustling. Speckled sunlight twinkled like scattered galleons.

“There’s a comic book series called The Adventures of Asterix, about a village of Gauls – the only
village that continues to fend off Roman occupation. It’s full of humour, puns, and extravagant
caricatures. I think you’d enjoy it.”

Leaning slightly over the arm of his chair, he wore a soft frown and steady eyes. She had come to
understand that expression. She really, really liked that expression. He was engaged.

“The names of all the characters are puns. The hero, Asterix, is a very small, brave man. His best
friend is enormous and called Obelix. The Druid, who whips up a very impressive strengthening
potion by the way, is called Getafix. The chief of the village is Vitalstatistix. The bard is Cacofonix,
the old man is Geriatrix, the fishmonger is Unhygienix, and the smith is Fulliautomatix.”

By the end of her oration he was smiling, very very slightly.

“Had you been there, you would’ve been called Irksome-characteristix,” she said.

His slight-smiled pulled up into a half grin. “Is that so? Well, you’d be Foolish-heroix.”

“Underhand-tactix.”

“Wit-is-tragix.”

“Problematic-politix.”

(That earned her a look .)

“Utterly-neurotix.”

“Utterly-egocentrix.”

“Prone-to-hystrerix.”

“Needless-dramatix.”
“Unnecessarily-afraid-of-broomstix.”

She laughed, gasping and shaking her head. “No. I’m sorry. You lose.”

He shrugged; his manner conveyed that he was happy as long as he got the last word. Her laughter
abated and she polished off her juice, then tossed the bottle upwards and vanished it mid-air. She
wanted to stay in that tranquil, jewel-like forest of unearthly delights forever. It was like being in a
capsule where nothing bad had – or could – happen.

“Hermionetrix,” she mumbled.

“That better not be for me.”

“No,” she chuckled and sighed. “It’s what I called myself when I was polyjuiced as Bellatrix.”

Draco sat up again, bending till he could rest his forearms on his knees. He goggled at her like she
was out of her mind.

“Are you telling me that you were wearing the guise of the most unhinged, evil bitch to walk the
earth, out to perform a life-threatening and dangerous task... and you gave yourself a pet name?”

“It wasn’t a pet name!” she hissed, feeling her face ignite, “It was... it was a way to tell the two
apart. In my head.”

“Which two?”

“Myself and... myself as Bellatrix.”

“Bloody fucking hell. Right. Wouldn’t want to get the two confused.”

“It’s just something I do, alright?”

“I don’t think you’re stable enough to be using polyjuice.”

“Too late to worry about that,” she grumbled.

There was a sweet little redpoll on the branch running at level with the platform. It pecked at the
lichen. Draco was taking much too long to compute their latest exchange.

“How many times?” he asked eventually.

“Just five. Bellatrix, a random old muggle woman, Mafalda, Harry, and...”

“And?”

“Being Harry was the most uncomfortable. But it’s hard to tell if that was because I was in a male
body or if it was because I was flying on a thestral and Voldemort showed up.”
He fell quiet again, and they both watched the bird for a bit. It was a brave little thing that hopped
onto the platform, quite close to their chairs.

“What was the last one?”

“The last what?”

“Mafalda, Potter, and...?”

“An old woman. Muggle.”

“You already mentioned her.”

Hermione slid lower in the chair and kicked her legs out. The bird flew away.

It was happening then. She was actually going to tell him.

“Second year, Harry, Ron, and I needed confirmation that you were the heir of Slytherin.”

“Hah!” he cackled, but it was devoid of humour. “Of course, you did.”

“I brewed polyjuice in Myrtle’s bathroom, so that we could transform into Crabbe, Goyle, and
Millicent and ask you about it.”

“Funny.”

“Is it?”

He had his chin in his hand and now it was him who was gazing into the opposite hut. “It’s funny
that you thought I was responsible for a murderous spree at twelve, when at sixteen I — Priceless.”

“Yes, well... you were exceptionally gleeful and horrible about it.”

He swallowed. “I know.”

“Anyway, so Lockart gave me access to the library’s restricted section, and I nicked supplies from
Snape’s–”

“Hold on,” he frowned, “You had access to the restricted section?”

“It was necessary,” she frowned back.

“And you chose to brew a complicated potion that takes a month to get right... instead of finding a
book on old bloodlines?”

“Er...”

She felt a flash of stupidity followed closely by indignation.

“What was the point?” she snarked, “All you purebloods are related in some way or the other.”

He regarded her coolly. “I see. Go on then. You brewed polyjuice in Myrtle’s bathroom.”

“Yes,” she snapped, “And like you said, it took a month.”

“Probably why Myrtle hates you so much.”

“Myrtle hates everyone except you and Harry.”

He enjoyed that as much as she thought he would. It was only fitting that that the sun disappeared
behind clouds again, bringing back an eldritch atmosphere.

“When did you do it?” he enquired stolidly.

“Christmas evening, after dinner. Harry and Ron took care of Crabbe and Goyle using cakes laced
with sleeping draughts. And then,” she shrugged one shoulder, “They chatted you up, found out we
had the wrong idea, and the whole ghastly ordeal had been in vain.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Why would you? The whole point was to ensure that you suspect nothing.”

“You said they. Not we.”

“Yes.”

She knew his current expression too – mouth a thin line, eyebrows raised, eyes lidded. It was
curiosity that he was trying to hide. They could’ve been back in the Hogwarts library, and she
could’ve been blabbering about Camus or Dickens.

“I made a mistake,” she softly divulged, “What I thought was Millicent’s hair, was actually... She
had a cat, right?”

His spine straightened with a snap. For once, she could not take joy in his shock.

“You turned into Lady Clementia Wigglesworth?!”

“That’s what she named her cat?!”

They exchanged round-eyed, discomposed glances.

“Polyjuice isn’t meant for animal transformations.”

“I know that!”

“What happened to you?”

“I – I had fur. Cat ears and eyes. Whiskers... a tail. But I was still, you know, largely human.
Bipedal.”

Draco grinned slowly, purely, like she had warmed his heart. It was insupportable.

“Is that why Myrtle calls you pussycat?”

She glowered.

“How long?”

“Seventeen days.”

“Merlin.”

She glowered harder. He leaned over the arm of his chair again, much further than before, filling
her vision with his face.

“What did you call your cat-self?”

“No,” she replied flatly.

“Wha–”

“No.” She stood up. “I’m done talking about this.”

She banished her chair and stomped back inside, racing towards the floating staircase at a feverish
pace. His boots produced an awful lot of thuds as he came after her.

Sorely tempted as she was to simply collapse the staircase while he was still climbing down, she
somehow suppressed the urge and trotted towards the other hut. No more than halfway across the
clearing he caught up with her, overtook her, and planted himself in her way.

“Oh, come on,” he glimmered, “Tell me.”

“No.”

How could one person go through so many contrary moods in such short time? She tried to walk
around him, but he blocked her. She turned, but he glided around her. Thus, they exchanged posts,
but ended up in exactly the same position.

She looked past him and pointed angrily at Fedelm’s platform.

“You left your stupid chair there!”

He spun around and flicked his wand, giving her an opening to attempt escape. An idiotic attempt,
for she had hardly even turned before he was back in front of her.

“Listen you–”

“Hermione.”

Oh no.

“Tell me,” he urged compellingly, “Come on.”

He wasn’t holding back at all. Every mode of persuasion was being employed in full force: The
pervasive eyes, the entrancing tilt of his mouth, the enticing tone of his voice, the rakish fringe
falling down his forehead...

She was completely powerless, and she was going to tell him. She was fucking going to tell him.

“You can’t tell anyone else. Not even Theo.” She paused. “Definitely not Theo.”

“Fine.”

“And you can’t bring it up again.”

“All right.”

“I’m being dead serious, Draco. No taking the mickey out of me.”

He was fighting hard against a smile. “Fine.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She fixed her eyes on his shoulder and spoke through gritted teeth – “Her-meow-ne.”

He burst into laughter.

Like some absurd, poetic happenstance, that’s when the sun came back out. Maybe it was the
highly reactive magic of that place, or maybe he just was the sort of all-important bastard who
could shift the weather with his mood.
The sun shimmered, he tossed his head back, and she was torn between wanting to storm off in a
huff and wanting to stare and stare and stare at him.

He was dazzling.

Her insides were in a state. It was too much.

She whipped around and set off towards the other hut, even as the tendrils of his mirth formed
lassos that kept trying to drag her back.
She tapped her wand to assemble another stone-staircase and climbed.

The interior was just as ravaged as expected, and it was very dark; there wasn’t a single window, or
crack in the wall. She conjured some bluebell flames, filling the room with sapphire light. There
were multiple narrow beds, broken and fuzzy, and a central fireplace where a small oak had
sprouted. The room was filled with stone bottles, woven baskets, and bits of broken glass. At least
two dozen amulets hung from the rafters. There was a table with a weighing scale and a human
skull on it.
She was staring at that last one when she heard Draco’s footsteps.

“What’s this place then?”

“Sabia Gristlesmoke’s infirmary,” she replied. Her voice was pitchy from embarrassment.
She turned her back to him and began prodding the wall that rested against the trunk of the tree.
Right in the middle of it, her wand went straight through the moss. A vanishing charm revealed the
hollowed interior of the tree, with a wooden pole going through. There were two juts at the base,
enough to prove stable footing.

Hermione climbed onto one and gripped the pole. She looked at Draco through the blue and asked,
“Would you like to see Brigit Dunne’s observatory?”

A basic locomotion charm set them moving upwards; a slow, slightly rickety ascent up the dark
shaft.

Draco’s hand was at her eye-level. It wrapped almost entirely around the pole. Long, straight
fingers and knuckles like a snowy mountain range. Conversely, her hand went just halfway-round
the pole. It was pink with how tightly she was holding on. She wanted to slide her fingers up and
cover his hand with hers.
She looked down at their feet, at another contrast in size. Her old and scruffy trainers were covered
with moss stains. His sturdy dragonhide boots were impeccable, and probably charmed to remain
so.

The climb was agonisingly slow. The shaft was maddeningly narrow. Draco’s cologne, Hermione’s
shampoo, and the earthy smell of moss mixed to form an inexplicably agreeable medley.

Beyond his hand was the lapel of his jacket. His chest delicately rose and fell as he breathed.
Inchmeal, she lifted her eyes till she found his eyes, which were soft and lowered and looking at
her. His mouth was quivering like he was desperately holding back a laugh... like he was picturing
her with ears and whiskers and a furry face.
She lowered her brows and glared, which only deepened his amusement.

She wanted to shove him, send him plummeting down the shaft. She wanted to twist around the
pole, climb onto the tips of her toes, and kiss the point of his chin.

Suddenly, light burst into the tunnel and they were moving past branches... then through a hole in a
slab of wood. Hermione’s mouth fell open when they finally stopped.
They were standing on a square of roughly hewn wood, hovering just a breath above the forest, like
a magic carpet, or a floating raft. It was so much brighter up there, and considerably windier.

Draco leapt away from the pole and went to stand at the very edge of the slab. With his back to her,
fine hair being tossed by the wind, and single hand in his pocket, he looked like a Caspar David
Friedrich painting. Wanderer above the sea of twisty, stunted oaks.

He looked over his shoulder and raised a challenging brow. “Are you just going to stand there?”

She was planning to. But no plans ever withstood him. Still, before moving, she drew a circle
around the observatory with her wand, casting the strongest barrier she was capable of producing.
She let go of the pole, and heedfully crept near to where he was stood. (Not as close to the brim.)
The view was staggering, at par with Theo’s peak. From up there, it was easier to see autumn’s kiss
on the leaves and the way the thinnest branches spread like dendrites. The small forest looked
endless. The horizon was a crisp line.
Hermione sat, hugging her knees, ignoring how hard and unforgiving the wood felt under her bum.
She peered at the swirling clouds above – they drifted sluggishly, but the movement was dizzying
to behold.
Draco sat down as well, one knee bent and the other foot in line with the edge of the slab. A flower
from Hermione’s hair fell onto her sleeve. She blew it away – an offering to the god of wind. As the
branches danced, she imagined them to be sinuous arms or charmed snakes. She saw shapes in the
spaces in between. Animals and faces.

“This is like the complete antithesis of...” She hesitated.

“Fiendfyre,” he completed.

“Yes,” she agreed, looking at him in surprise.

If he was bothered by her stirring up that particular memory, he didn’t show it. But it seemed like
he had been thinking about it anyway.

“It was how I imagined hell,” she said timidly, “The flames of Tartarus. Fire and chaos.”

He leaned back on his hands and let out a sigh that blended with the breeze, while looking so
unnaturally unruffled and composed that she decided it was best to stop talking.

“Not according to Dante,” he said after enough time had passed that Hermione took a moment to
remember what he was referring to.

“Inferno wasn’t horrifying enough for you?” she asked.

“Horrifying, sure. Chaotic, not at all.”

She rested her cheek on her knee. “What do you mean?”

He took a few seconds to collect his thoughts, she simmered with anticipation and elation.

On the top of the world, looking down on creation, and ... she wasn’t looking for an explanation.

“It’s so tightly organised,” he began, “So sorted. Like clockwork. Right from, abandon hope, all ye
who enter here... Everyone is squarely divided by their respective sin, sent to their respective circle
to receive the standard, vetted punishment for said sin.”

“They aren’t just standing around in formation, are they?” she contended, “There’s hornets and
maggots, bloods and pus, enormous burdens, boiling rivers, angry harpies...”

“I didn’t deny it’s horrible.”

“How is that not chaotic? People lying supine on burning sand while being showered with flakes of
fire? Or people with their heads twisted around, being forced to walk backwards for eternity,
blinded by their tears–”
“Exactly,” he cut in, “Eternity. Maybe it was chaotic at first, and I don’t suspect the unpleasantness
wanes, but the punishment itself becomes routine. After a point, some poor sod will say, excuse me
Mr Malebranche, you forgot to drive your pitchfork into my arse today. That’s how habitual and
tedious it must get.”

“One of the Malebranche was called, Draghignazzo, remember? Nasty smirking dragon.”

He smirked - not nastily - but ignored her. “Like your friend Sisyphus. Up and down the hill for
eternity. Routine absurdity.”

She hummed ponderously. “He’s not the only one in Greek Mythology, either. Tantalus was
doomed to reach out for fruit and water that kept jumping out of his way, and Ixion was bound to a
solar wheel and set to spin forever and ever.”

She shifted to a cross-legged position to ease the weight on her bum. An exceptionally strong gust
of wind compelled her to tuck her nose into her scarf till it passed.

Then she said, “So, like Sisyphus, everyone in hell is unbound by hope and has accepted and made
peace with their fate.”

“One must imagine the heretics happy.”

She grinned and shook her head. “Which is worse? The awful, deadening tedium of endless, set
torture, or the terrifying uncertainty of randomness?”

“Why does one have to be worse than the other? But I believe the saying is better the devil you
know.”

This time he shifted, switching the positions of his legs.

“We have both, here on earth, don’t we?” he muttered, “Drudgery and the unknown. And sinners
aren’t allocated to their own little coves. They mix and mingle happily, causing all the upset they
want.”

He was squinting slightly, and his pupils had shrunk to mere spots. His eyes were almost pure,
limpid grey.

“There are good people here on earth too,” she said, “All sorts. And the unknown can be exciting,
thrilling. Routine can be warm and comforting.”

He shrugged tepidly.

“And,” she murmured, “There are circles here too. So many circles... of a kind. Not like the ones in
hell, of course – Oh, incidentally. Which is your favourite out of those?”

“Which is my...” he laughed incredulously, “Which is my favourite circle of hell?”

“Mmhmm,” she nodded.

He laughed some more, nonplussed, while he presumably mulled it over.

“The second circle, of course,” he said archly, “Lust. I don’t think an endless storm is all that bad,
as long as I get to be swept away by lust in life.”
“How predictable,” she huffed, turning away.

“Getting blown by strong winds after death is fine as long as I get blown by pretty women while
I’m alive.”

“Oh. So funny.”

“I’m sure Cleopatra and Helen will keep me warm.”

“I’m sure they won’t.”

“What about you then? Favourite circle of hell?”

“Mine is–”

“No – let me guess. ...Limbo.”

She flushed. “Yes.”

“How predictable,” he parroted.

“There’s nothing hellish about it,” she declared, “The only light is from their collective human
intellect? From Homer, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Euclid’s intellect? That would be a
hundred times brighter than any divine light.”

She tipped her head back and stared up at the sky, and closed her eyes when it overwhelmed her.

“And Paradiso?” she asked, “Did you like that? Did it cater to your love for astronomy?”

“I don’t particularly love astronomy.”

“Oh?”

“It’s Black family law to study it, so yeah, fine. I studied it. The most harmless tradition I’ve been
led into.”

She opened one eye to spy on his disposition, but he was still as placid as the day was beautiful.

“The fifth sphere of heaven houses the Warriors of Faith,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But every other kind of warrior or fighter, is send to the seventh circle of hell, for being violent.”

“Moralising,” she shrugged, “Every religion has its own version of heaven and hell, and most tend
to send non-believers to hell.”

“But which one is correct?”

She laughed. “Oh, Draco. That’s a question for the ages.”

“Which do you believe in?”

“None.”

“Your family then?”

Her left foot sent up a warning signal: It was close to falling asleep. She shifted again, once more
hugging her knees.

“Well, my dad’s side is somewhat religious. My grandmother was a staunch Catholic. My mother’s
side is mostly indifferent. My parents are hardy non-believers.” She grinned at him. “You had a
run-in with a zealot in that bookshop, didn’t you?”

He snorted. “Yeah. I can see why she was so keen on salvation now.”

“But see the thing is–” She stopped to gently flex her left foot. “The thing is, I thought I had it all
figured out. Life is random, you owe it to yourself to do the best you can, and then you die,
decompose, and... that’s it. Back to the nothingness that you came from. But nine years ago, I found
out that you can linger on, as an imprint of soul. That there indeed is, some sort of beyond, which
ghosts are annoyingly cryptic about. I found out that your soul can be torn up like paper and strewn
about. I don’t know what to think any more. Honestly, I haven’t had much time to sort it out... um,
Draco?”

“Yeah?”

He’d crossed his legs now. His hands, with interlocked fingers, rested on his lap.

“Have you read much about the beyond? Are there many books about it? I don’t think I spotted any
in the restricted section.”

“There weren’t many in the library at the Manor, either. My mother...”

He stopped short and turned vaguely pink.

“Yes?” she urged, shuffling just a tiny, tiny bit closer.

He averted his eyes. “My mother told me the beyond is a giant quidditch pitch with hoops made of
chocolates, and friendly dragons that you can ride.”

She smiled softly, a little resentfully, imagining a sweet exchange like that occurring in a home full
of hate and prejudice.

He pushed on: “There’s a general consensus on a flash of bright light. The image of death varies;
sometimes a cloaked figure, sometimes a shadow, sometimes just an unspeaking, unseen presence.
As for the in-between... there are as many versions as there are accounts. No two people have seen
the same thing.”

She remembered what Harry had told her about finding himself at King’s Cross, and about what
Dumbledore had said... it was happening inside his head, and it was very real.
“Isn’t it a pity,” she murmured, “That the Resurrection Stone only wound up in the hands of the
desperate? Maybe someone with pure scientific curiosity could’ve got some real answers.”

When he didn’t reply at once, she realised at she had been staring at his hands. Thankfully, he
appeared to be enraptured by some dancing branches.

“The moral of that story is that nobody can escape death, hence, nobody is immune to the stone’s
devastation,” he said, by and by.

Hermione thought she might be. It was true that she had lost many friends and people she cared
about... but she hadn’t lost her best friends. She hadn’t lost a parent, or a sibling, or a child, or a
lover. She could do it. She could use the stone, bring back someone utterly brilliant... Maybe
Fedelm herself. She would find out what lay beyond, as well as the secrets that Fedelm had left out
from her memoir.

She closed her eyes and pictured Harry’s expression of dismay.

With a sigh, she peeled her eyes open and stared at the horizon.

“We should go,” she whispered.

He followed the line of her sight and saw the thick dark clouds looming in the distance.

“Yes,” he agreed.

She looked at him when they’d taken their place on either side of the pole, and as they went down
through the hole in the slab. He looked back blandly.
She looked at the branches when they went past them. She looked up at the circle of light when
they fell into the shaft, right until it disappeared. Then she was blind.

By the time her eyes had adjusted, they were back in the hut. Hermione’s bluebell lights were still
bobbing around the space. She dispelled them and they exited.

At the edge of the clearing, just a step away from the shield, Hermione turned back and gave the
settlement one final, lingering glance. She would come back... she absolutely would. Hopefully,
with Draco.
She stepped through the shield and walked straight till all tremors of magic faded.

Back on the slope, next to the sprawling tree, Draco stopped and asked, “That river you
mentioned... how close by is it?”

“Very,” she said, unfurling the map, “Just beyond the edge of the forest. Why?”

“Hag stones are useful to have around.”

“Er... yes,” she said bemusedly, “You want to go?”

“No. I stopped to make inane small talk.”

She pulled a face at him, and pointed at the map. “We’re here, see? And the river is right there. You
think you can manage?”

“Yes,” he rolled his eyes, “I can manage simple apparition.”

And so, they apparated to the river side. It was filled with boulders and long but sparse grass, and
they bent low, hunting for tiny stones with holes in them. Hermione asked him if he hoped to riddle
out Catrìona’s potion. He said nothing but the words scientific curiosity.
Eventually, once his handkerchief was filled with pebbles, he was satisfied, and they apparated
back into the forest. Draco’s landing was unfortunate; He slipped on some moss, barely held his
footing, and his handkerchief and all the stones spattered onto the forest floor.

“Bugger!” he growled.

“Simple apparition. Very nice,” she remarked.

“Shut up,” he snapped as he fumbled in his pocket for his wand.

But before he could so much as grasp it, Hermione had, with a twirl of her finger, gathered all the
stones, tidily bundled the kerchief, and floated it up to his face.

He snatched it up, and muttered a gruff, “Show off.”

She smiled as they resumed walking. “Fedelm’s spirit is watching after all.”

“If she’s been hanging around, alone, in a forsaken forest, she’s definitely randy as hell and looking
at me, not you.”

“No,” Hermione scoffed.

“Oh?" He said with great interest, “Are you more her type?”

“I don’t think she was... sexually inclined at all.”

Some part of her was too shy to look at him after saying the word sexual . She shoved it away and
defiantly met his eye. He smirked.

“Alright, Granger. She's admiring your impressive magical skills.”

She couldn’t tell how much of that was mockery, nor where the mockery was directed. She wasn’t
going to torture herself trying to figure it out.
They re-entered the tree-tunnel.

“Hermione,” she chided weakly.

It was different when the sun wasn’t hidden behind clouds. Light seeped through the gaps and criss-
crossed across their path.

Draco said, “I much prefer Her-meow–”

“Ah! Do not!” she trilled, stumbling over an exposed root.

“It’s poetic,” he intoned, “It’s whimsical.”

“You said you wouldn’t–,” she sputtered, “You promised–”

“Not my fault you were stupid enough to believe me.”

She stopped dead and he kept going. Kept going while she glowered ineffectively at the back of
his head. Then she charged, inelegantly, back to his side.

“You are vile,” she averred, “Loathsome, treacherous, and utterly–”

“Calm down, kitten.”

........Zounds? Great balls of fire . That one word went through her like a conflagration.

She clamped her mouth shut and silently stomped the rest of the way.

She’d started out with a garden, and she was left with flames. He could make however many
arguments he wanted about the well- orderedness of Dante’s Inferno , but the one within her was
unerringly chaotic.

A light of breeze swept by and she tremored like it was an icy gale.

She climbed up on the same boulder, for the sake of tidiness, to form another circle. He gave her a
funny look, and then walked right up to her, stopping when his toes touched the edge of the
boulder. Their heights were matched. The shock of the new angle and of having him look straight
into her eyes completely paralysed her.

“I won’t tell them,” he murmured with a knavish smirk, “I promise. ”

She remained stuck even after he had turned, and it was only when he’d ducked under the low
branch and joined the group on the blanket, that she moved.

“Godric, we thought you were never coming back,” said Ginny in lieu of a greeting.

How long had it been? She had no idea.

“You really missed out,” she said to the group at large, in a thin, not-really-there voice.
Only Ginny had the decency to look slightly ashamed. Harry and Ron barely glanced up from their
game of exploding snap, and Theo with a too-sly grin, handed Hermione a box of blackberries. He
had also acquired a flower crown.

Soon enough, a more inclusive game of cards was commenced. It was completely silent but
innately competitive, with Harry, Ron, and Draco getting fiercely into it. Hermione deliberately lost
in an early round so that she could move away and sit by herself.

Because she couldn’t breathe.

Sunlight formed a halo around Draco’s head and she couldn’t breathe.

He scowled when a losing card stung his hand and she couldn’t breathe.

He openly grinned when Harry’s fingers got scalded and she couldn’t breathe.

Her lungs weren’t her own; nor her stomach nor her pounding heart. Bit by bit, her entire anatomy
was morphing into something alien and terrifying... and she was stuck inside, unable to breathe.
Images from the last... hour...? Two hours...? Three...? Kept flashing before her eyes; snippets of
their conversations, bites of his voice, visions of him lost in thought, of him laughing, grinning,
challenging, questioning, and teasing.

He lost to Ginny and threw down his cards with a disgruntled huff... and she couldn’t breathe.

A rumble of thunder brought Dean back from wherever he’d been, and the group set about packing
up.

Hermione had no idea how she managed to apparate home in one piece.

She was roused by the sound of a heavy downpour. She kept her eyes closed and listened. It was
tranquil, and tranquillity was what she needed.

She woke up in her darkened living room, on her sofa, with one leg hanging off.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
An explosive flash of lightening illuminated the room for an electrifying moment, during which the
puppet on her wall gleamed fantastically.

How fitting for a Halloween night.

She sat up and lit the lamps, and all around her – the sofa, the carpet, the floor – were strewn
crushed and wilted flowers. She checked her watch; it was a quarter past eight. She was really,
terribly late for the party, but she was, even now, too rattled to care.

She wanted to curl up and cry.

Instead, she stood up, pulled apart her plait and violently shook her hair until every last flower got
dislodged.
Stella came into the room with her usual rhythmic clip-clop. Hermione left the tiny, artificial
unicorn to frolic in a field of dead flowers, and went into the kitchen to find something to eat. Her
unease just allowed her to swallow two biscuits before objecting. Hear ye – no more.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

She had a long hot shower, washing away the moss that had found its way under her fingernails.
Lathered in soap, she took a moment to lean back against the tiles –

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

She opened her eyes and rinsed the suds off, then ventured into her bedroom to find something
suitable among Pat’s hand-me-downs. She pulled out a purple and black and Halloween-
appropriate dress, matching it with plum lipstick and the amethyst earrings from mum.

Diagon was quiet when she arrived, and dark, save for a few floating lanterns and distant lights
from the Leaky Cauldron. Cowering under her lime green umbrella, she walked carefully down the
alley. When she reached outside Finnigan’s, it was still fairly quiet. The area outside was charmed
to remain dry, and there were a few people standing around in groups, all sporting some very
interesting headgear. She waved at Charlie, Marius, and Lee, who were smoking on the pavement.

Inside the pub, it was anything but quiet. The lamps were dimmed, replaced with glowing, bubbling
cauldrons and pumpkins that floated mid-air. Purple smoke bloomed and coiled low on the floor,
and the music sounded medieval; Ars antiqua . It was utterly chock-a-block, and every single
person in the room was adorned with some variety of horn or antler. As she handed over her cloak
and umbrella, she spotted goats, antelopes, bison, rams, reindeer, ibex, wild oxen –

“You’re awfully late.”

She smiled and shrugged at George, unable to apologise for it. He was standing by the door,
between a rack that was full of tiny vials containing a pale orange potion, and a mirror.
“Here you go,” George said, handing her a vial, “This one’s especially for you.”

“Er...”

Had she even been this unenthused about anything?

“Quit looking so scared,” George grinned, “Theo chose it.”

“Well, in that case...”

It tasted like extremely salty water. A gentle tingling erupted all over her scalp and she moved to
stand before the mirror to see two tiny, pointed horns – about seven centimetres or so – emerge
straight out of the top of her head.

“Those belong to a wee, cute little critter called dik-dik. I’m almost sure Theo didn’t pick that one
for you because of the name.”

“Ha, ha,” she droned.

She left him once more people with shamefully bereft heads arrived. Making her way to the bar,
she was adamant about not looking around. She would have two drinks because she needed them,
would show her face to Theo, and then she’d go home, where she would have more drinks, all by
herself.
Maybe if she drank acid, she could dissolve the horrible agitation in her chest. She was certain that
if she so much as saw a hint of Draco she would combust. Or cry. Or cry and then combust.

A bubbling cauldron near her head suddenly spat out a burning flare. She gathered all her hair over
one shoulder, convinced that there was a sure chance the flames would actually burn. Seamus was a
lunatic.

“Juniper sling,” she muttered listlessly to Vassilios. Might as well try something new.

She moved to the side but stayed at the bar; all the tables were taken. They were also fewer in
number that evening, since half the room had been cleared up to create a slapdash dancefloor, on
which people were standing and not dancing. She caught a flashing glimpse of Theo, (his old
antlers making a spectacular reappearance,) near the door of the private room, but he was
surrounded by a ring of admirers that she had no desire to wade through.

Fingers trailed across the small of her back and she yelped in terror. Then, Anthony Goldstein was
standing in front of her with long, lyrate impala horns on his head and a very prominent drunken
glaze in his eyes.

“Hermione. It’s been too long.”

“Hello, Anthony. How are you?”

“Good, good.”
“Hmm.”

A fair, polite exchange. He could leave now.

“So, I hear you’re at the Ministry now? Ernie said he runs into you from time to time.”

“Yes, we–”

“Aces. You know, I brew now. Potions. With Medicamentum.”

“I see.”

He was half lying on the bar and drinking from an empty glass.

“Best among the new batch, they say.”

“Very impressive.”

He nattered on for ages. Hermione tuned him out completely. She sipped her drink and watched a
roe and a yak do a round of rainbow-coloured shots. Once her glass was empty, she tried to get
Vassilios' attention, but he had his back to her, catering to a herd at the other end of the bar.

“...couldn’t do that to Terry, you know?”

Her ears involuntarily perked up, and she slowly turned to look at him.

“What?”

“W–n’t be right. He’s a mate, and he was fucking gutted after you two fell out. But I reckon it’s
been long enough now... and you’re hot... so–o–o... what do you say?”

“...”

For god’s sake. And he was still talking.

“What?”

“Shall we get out of here?”

“Look, Anthony...”

“Goldstein. Macmillan’s looking for you. Something about ten galleons.”

His voice washed over her like a sudden strong gust of wind at an observatory on top of the world.

“Oh, right... ‘course. Ten nuggets, all mine. I’ll be back, lovely.”

Anthony stumbled away, and Hermione stared hard at Vassilios, now desperate – wildly desperate –
for a fresh drink. He noticed her and she pointed to her glass, while Draco came to stand in the
space that Anthony had vacated. The corner of her eye caught a little more than a hint of him – she
could make out the soft fabric of his shirt - the colour a mystery in such dimness - and his hands as
he placed an empty glass on the bar. She didn’t cry or combust, but she was flooded with shivers
that hurt. It wasn’t until they both had received drinks that she finally faced him.

“Oh, good heavens!” she gasped.

His horns were ginormous. Thick and corrugated, they emerged out of the sides of his head in
fantastic arcs, so much so that even though he was at least a foot away from her, the tip of his horn
went past the top of her head. She momentarily forgot everything as she gawked up at them in awe.

“That has to be deliberate,” she decided eventually.

“No, really?” He crinkled his sharp nose in annoyance.

“They look very heavy.”

“They are.”

Theo’s revenge was a welcome distraction and it had a grounding effect on her. She felt less rattled,
less like a berserk livewire.

“Some kind of buffalo?” she asked.

He sneered. “Asian water buffalo. Largest hornspan they could find.”

A man with anoa horns came to the bar and had to crouch under Draco’s other horn to
communicate with Vassilios. His mate – an elk – stayed back and scowled.

After they had left, Draco surveyed the top of Hermione’s head with as little movement as possible.
She assumed it had less to do with apprehensions about potentially clobbering someone in the face,
and more to with the strain on his neck.

“Yours look deliberate, too,” he carped sourly.

“Yes. See what happens when people like you? It pays to be nice.”

“Rather, those two wankers wanted to avoid murder.”

“I wouldn’t have murdered Theo,” she scoffed, “Or George.”

“No,” he said with a (failed) attempt to shake his head, “I mean anything heavier would’ve snapped
your lovely, delicate neck.”

Hermione froze with her glass halfway up to her mouth. Her eyes nearly fell out of her head. And –
Zoop! – there went her equanimity again.

He grinned like a sudden flash of lightening. Like he had one-upped her somehow.

Once more, she was entirely devoid of sense and sentence in his iniquitous presence. They both
drank quietly. Someone had taken charge of the music and switched it to the Weird Sisters.

“Oi! Move off! You’re blocking the way!”

Assorted cattle stood behind Draco, bouncing impatiently.

“No,” said Draco simply, “Go around me.”

“There’s no room!”

“Tough luck.”

Draco attempted to meet the petitioners’ eyes and one of his horns swung round, forcing them to
scatter, and the other stopped an inch away from Vassilios’ head.

“Honestly,” Hermione cried.

Before things could escalate any further, she collected her glass and Draco’s, and marched away
from the bar. If he didn’t follow, he was welcome to brawl. She would not participate or interfere.

There really was nowhere to sit, though. She looked around in desperation at the crowd that was
three-fold and the tables that were a third of the usual. She felt a presence stop close behind her,
smelt the scent emanating from it, and sighed with relief.
There was a window that didn’t have people around it, with a sill wide enough to work as a
makeshift table. She rushed forward and placed both their glasses on it, and quickly before Draco
could say anything, conjured a perfect replicas of his high back armchairs, on either side of the
window. Sitting down primly, she smoothened down the skirt of her dress, and tried to smile up at
him.

He did not look happy, impressed, or suddenly besotted with her. Instead, he looked distinctly put
out.

“Oh, what is it,” she huffed, “You are aware that duelling is illegal now, right?”

“It wouldn’t have come to that,” he grumbled.

“Right. You would have skewered them with your mighty, mighty horns.”

He glared and glunched, and they both took sips of their drinks.

Without any sort of change in his manner, he said, “I looked through Kovalenko’s book by the way.
Found twelve potions so far that can pare and condense, but not one that makes things edible. And
no mention of hag stones.”

Time flew after that, even though he was still sour; even though looking at him was tying her up
in knots. It was a bit funny actually, carrying on an intense, theoretical discussion while one was
near-growling and the other was close to simpering.
Then he made a daft claim about lobagun venom that he had no means to back up. She told him
exactly how daft it was.
He told her she had no understanding of basic, elemental reactions. She told him he was too high
on his own mad-potioneer's whimsy.

He said, “Sure, tell me more about my whimsy, Her-meow–”

She slammed her fist down on the window sill.

“Dra-cow Malfoy!”

“Hermione Grazer.”

She was just drunk enough to find that hysterically funny.

The discussion carried on after that in a much more light-hearted manner, until Draco stopped mid-
sentence to stare at something over Hermione’s head. She looked over her shoulder and saw,
through a most serendipitous gap in the crowd, Theo and Luna, (baring chamois horns,) speaking at
the edge of the dancefloor. Then they hugged, briefly, and parted ways.
Luna, in her way, seemed to sense the eyes watching her. She waved in their direction, but was
quickly cut off by a huddle. When the group passed, she was closer, and there was no mistaking her
intentions: She was coming to talk to them.

“Happy Halloween, Hermione, Draco,” she said pleasantly.

“Er, you too,” Hermione replied delicately.

There was an uncomfortable silence after that, so Hermione ended up saying the first thing that
popped up in her head.

“I’m surprised your horns aren’t crumpled.”

Draco snorted.

“Yes,” Luna sighed, “I was rather disappointed as well.”

Another silence. Draco gave no indication that he intended to contribute – he was staring into his
glass.

Suddenly, Luna smiled.

“There’s no reason to look tortured. Theo and I will be fine.”

“Erm.”

“We will. And five years from now, when we’re getting married, you both will feel very silly for
worrying so.”

“I – Very well.”

“Anyhow,” Luna went on, blithe and carefree, “I’m leaving for Guyana early tomorrow morning,
so I’ll be heading home now. Goodbye.”
“Have a lovely time,” Hermione said to her back.

She bit her lip and turned to Draco, (who looked back ironically,) and she knew she was going to
make another confession that she wouldn’t admit to anyone else.

“Sometimes I really don’t like her at all.”

Surprise rippled across his features and she quickly backtracked.

“I mean... of course, I don’t dislike her. She’s a dear friend. But, god, she irritates me in a very
distinct, maddening way.”

Hermione pushed her glass away. She’d had quite enough, clearly. The glass was empty.

Draco wet his lips, considering. Then he said, “I think I’ve said a total of eight sentences to her.”

“How is that even possible?”

He shrugged. “She talks, I politely listen. It’s for the best.”

She really couldn’t believe he was capable of that. He certainly hadn’t implemented that policy
with her.

“Does that mean you find me more tolerable than Luna?”

(Please, please, please, turn my world inside-out.)

“You’re a shrew.”

(Or not.)

“Arse.”

“That too. What about her distinctly annoys you?”

“Guess,” she huffed.

“Her far-fetched beliefs bother you that much?”

He looked superior, like he himself had not just admitted he wasn’t even able to converse with
Luna.

“Not on their own,” Hermione replied, “But the level of conviction she has... the way she looks at
me with... with... imperiousness and pity every time I dare to negate any of her ridiculous claims. It
used to make my blood boil. Took me a year to learn how to deal with it.”

He swallowed the last sip from his glass and looked off into the distance.

“In my experience,” he said slowly, “The most outrageous... the most rubbish ideas both require
and inspire the strongest, staunchest conviction. Can’t exist without it.”
A statement like that was bound to derail her with its significance. It was just like him to casually
bring up the monumental way in which he’d changed in the middle of a fatuous discussion about
Luna Lovegood. How was she supposed to just ‘well, anyway...’ herself out of that?

It occurred to her that maybe he enjoyed baffling her as much as she did him.

“Luna didn’t stand a chance with a father like hers,” he muttered, “But imaginary creatures are
nowhere near the worst things to have drilled into your head.”
He blinked like he had baffled himself and stared down at his empty glass. Then glanced at her
once, sideways, and blurted out in a desperate hurry with a cold, hard smirk, “And she has no
concrete proof against her beliefs. Can you prove the crumpled-hornies don’t exist?”

“I...” she swallowed, “I loathe that argument.”

“Of course, you do,” he said with a forced grin.

She enjoyed his bewilderment, but not his discomfort. There was such a dichotomy within her that
she almost thought to give the two parts their own whimsical names. Her deepest instinct wanted to
pin him to the spot, but the freshly blighted part of her – the transmutation that still wouldn’t let her
catch a breath – couldn't allow it.

“Luna is like one of those people who insist that the world is flat.”

“Who the hell–”

“There are people,” she waved him off, “And they’re so cocksure and ridiculous about it, looking at
sane people like they’re pathetically small-minded and blind. And don’t you dare say, oh
Hermione, at one point you didn’t think magic was real–”

“But you did at one point–”

“Shut up. I had no reason to believe it was real. And after I knew... well, I researched like hell and
did everything I could to understand it.”

“So, there is a possibility that Luna’s creatures could exist,” his lips quivered.

“Well, there is a possibility that I am a green alien wearing a human’s skin!”

“Hermalien, I’m sure.”

“There is a possibility that everything is a dream. Maybe Gamp’s Law is a lie. Maybe, maybe... Oh,
it’s so daft to think that way. Believing in things without an iota of proof is irrational and a
complete waste of time!”

She had got rather embarrassingly worked up by that point but it wasn't something that triggered
regret. Draco was faintly smiling again.

“And if some day, it turns out that the crumply things are real?”
“Then I will gracefully accept–” (He laughed.) “Gracefully accept that fact. Like I accepted the
existence of magic, the possibility of an afterlife, the conditional merit of divination and,” she
looked him dead in the eye, “the true merit of magical incantations.”

He laughed again with those charming, tiny brackets at the corners of his mouth, and the entire
structure of her thoughts collapsed. She capitulated and blatantly stared at him like she’d wanted to
for so long.

A loud string of pops set off across the pub, and they both jumped and looked around as the horns
and antlers disappeared off people’s heads. It was midnight.
She barely felt hers when they vanished, but the sigh he let out was fervent and the most erotic
thing she had heard in her life.

He ran his fingers through his hair, declaring, “I need another bloody drink,” and he stood up and
walked off. A few moments went by before she could gather enough fortitude to follow.

Howbeit, she never made it to the bar. A very blotto and merry Theo latched onto her arm with a
reproach, (“I never got to see you with your horns, that's not done,”) and dragged her away. She
ended up standing mutely by his side while he, George, Lee, and whoever engaged in bawdy
conversation. Angelina insisted on two rounds of shots. She felt sick to her stomach all the while.

At a quarter to one, Dean decided it was time to treat the party to The Safety Dance. Before she
knew what was happening, she was dancing with him and some Spanish witch named Itziar.

Forty minutes later, Hermione firmly announced her departure, paying no heed to Theo’s dolorous
pleas. She had work the next morning, and a serious case of sexual harassment to tend to. She was
tired, flurried, aching from the lack of air in her lungs, and just wanted Draco to grin at her one last
time before she left.
She shouldered through the crowd, hoping he was still at the bar.

And he was there, with his colleagues Arnold, Irvin, and Fiona. He had on his lofty, heavy-
lidded expression that preceded a particularly biting comment. She could practically hear his arctic
drawl. Whatever he said made Fiona laugh, and she put her hand on his arm.

Hermione left.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Anthony had a woman pressed up against the wall, and was snogging
the living daylights out of her.
 One of the worst things she had ever done was stopped hating Draco Malfoy. It had been a mistake
of epic proportions.

The sickening regret was almost enough to make her curse Theo and his infallible friendship.

It had been so hard to do it – to stop hating him. Their past made it near impossible. Their present
made it untenable. He made it unpalatable. She should have given up. She shouldn’t have let Theo
coerce her into trying.

The process of not hating him had been like scaling a wall with no purchase. It was an obstacle so
high and harrowing, she couldn’t see the top. All her focus was on scaling the damn thing without
causing any casualties.

How was she supposed to have known that there was no even ground on the other side either; that,
in fact, there was nowhere to land at all? How the bloody fuck could she have guessed that on the
other side, there was only an endless plunge...

A perpetual freefall.

Permanent, amplified vertigo.

She had wondered what life would have been like, had she never seen the mirthful, relaxed, and
captivating side of him.

Most likely, she would have been content.

Chapter End Notes

1. "Dagaz rune": Day, Dawn, or Awakening

2. The Adventures of Asterix, written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo
3. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich
4. Top of the World by Carpenters
5. "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead...": Mad Girl's Love Song, by Sylvia Plath
6. The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats
 Seventy-Seven
Chapter Notes

A little warning about this chapter: It has Hermione dealing with a case of sexual misconduct.
There is absolutely nothing overt, no details, no descriptions - just suggestions while
Hermione meets the victims. In case that is something you wish to avoid, I would recommend
skipping the second segment, the third segment before the asterisk, and the bit before the first
asterisk of the eighth segment.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Monday morning erupted like a fireworks display. Madam Barros’ thunderous rage made itself
evident through the thin walls of the office, and all three of its occupants scarpered out to the foyer
to enjoy the show.
The research team’s Gandhian act of non-cooperation had led to Stamp bungling yet another
hearing. It was quite evident from Barros’ manner, that her fury was compounded by the
knowledge that she'd been had. The more Stamp’s pretence of competence fell apart, the more it
made a mockery of Barros’ supposedly unerring judgement.

The funny part was that, had Stamp been working under anyone else, his ability to rise while doing
the bare minimum might just have won him some grudging respect. It was, after all, a conventional
aspect of political acuity: The best of the best snatched up power by doing fuck all.
However, Elena Barros possessed the maximum amount of integrity permissible in a generally
corrupt and dysfunctional Ministry. Stamp got a twenty-minute dressing down that ended with him
slinking into his office with his tail between his legs.

Soon after, it was time to collect an official statement from Twila Elliot. Barros made a surprising
show of sensitivity when asking Hermione to attend instead of Takumi. They convened in Barros’
office, the curtains pulled back to let crisp summery sunlight in, while out in the real world, rain
and wind held sway.

Twila was less than a year older than Hermione, and looked remarkably composed in formal robes.
She was a squib – a fact that came as a surprise to Hermione and Kathy, but not Barros – and had
the sort of face that naturally adapted a serious bearing, regardless of the situation; it was just how
her features were arranged. Given the fact that the situation was actually very grim, her expression
was that of redoubled seriousness.

Or so it was, until she saw Hermione. Then, her expression jumped up with an unexpected spark,
and introductions and polite handshakes were forsaken in favour of the usual phrases of honour and
delight. While the young woman was thus occupied, Barros thrust a heavy binder into Hermione’s
back, in a way that was somehow both subtle and harsh. One look conveyed her message –
Hermione would be conducting the affair.
Haunted by the memory of the last meeting she had spoken at, and with the scowling lineaments of
her unforgiving boss watching, Hermione began the questioning. It was more uncomfortable than
the time she had been forced to address the first ever gathering of Dumbledore’s Army. Even
Twila’s agreeable nature and strong candour couldn’t put her at ease, and once she began relaying
the details of the main incident in question... well, ease was completely out of the question.
Hermione’s skin crawled.

The story was wretchedly predictable. Twila’s mother had fallen ill, so she’d requested a few days
leave from the shop to care for her. The proprietor threatened monetary consequences, unless...

The might of the woman in front of her was miraculous. How on earth had she been able to
physically incapacitate a full-grown, wand-wielding wizard?

Hermione didn’t have much of an appetite when they broke for lunch. Barros was impassive and it
was impossible to tell if she was pleased or annoyed by Hermione’s conduct.

Which worked out well in one way – she could skip going to the canteen without having to battle
any vital urges.

She had drawn up plans, you see. Two of them, to be precise, and they complemented and upheld
each other. The first was Project Focus Only On Law (FOOL,) and the second was Project Draco
Avoidance, Full Time (DAFT). The whole idea was to get her head in place and her priorities in
order. She had not awoken in an enchanted forest after a midsummer’s night dream. She was not
Lorna Doone, primed for a dramatic romance in the moors. She had real, serious work to do.

She fished out an ancient granola bar from her bag and ate it while she made note of the most
pivotal bits from Twila’s statement.

After lunch, they pushed all three of their desks together and spread their work across them.

The Wizengamot had, in close to a century, ruled on no more than twenty-six cases of unwanted
conduct specifically of a sexual nature , exclusively filed by purebloods against muggleborns or
squibs, and on some occasions, half-bloods. The list of complaints filed was exponentially
lengthier, but those were closed long before they could be tried, as only copious amounts of
galleons could ensure. The names of the accused and accuser were expunged; magically scorched
off all documents.

Hermione trembled with rage as the day wore on.

Completely drained when she got home, she definitely should have had a full dinner, but she didn’t.
She was constantly thinking about Arabella Figg’s treatment at Harry’s trial. She just prepared for
the next day and slept.
This was where Dankworth would’ve brought her, had she not immediately vetoed the idea of
living in Knockturn Alley.

Kathy and Hermione scaled up a narrow staircase between a coffin shop and Tallow and Hemp
Toxic Tapers, to a hallway full of doors and mould. They knocked on the door marked with a rusty,
upside-down number five, which was subsequently opened by a young, tousle-haired boy of seven
or eight.
They entered an extremely cramped quarters that, though highly cluttered, wasn’t squalid like the
rest of the building. There were three other small children in the room, two playing on the floor,
and one asleep on the sofa that took up a quarter of the space. An ancient woman with sinister eyes
sat in one corner, occupied in knitting like Madame Defarge gone past her prime.

The woman they had come to see, Lindy Dalton, looked a decade older than she ought to. She
clutched a bawling infant to her breast while she did her level best to not answer a single one of
their questions. Everything she said rounded back to, “That lying squib’s going to shut down the
shop, cost me my job, how will I feed these runts then?”

Finally, after deflecting Hermione’s persistence for thirty long minutes, she all but yelled, “Well, he
never looked at me funny!”

And with that, she threw them out of her home.

Sometime later, Hermione and Kathy were standing outside a cottage in Hull. Their reception there
was completely different. They were ushered inside by a lot of very eager and welcoming hands,
pushed into comfortable chairs and plied with tea and cake before they got their interview with
Hattie Norwood.

She was also a squib.

“Being a woman and a squib is a requirement, if you want to work for Millward,” she reported
bitterly, “Not hard to guess why.”

“How long have you been working for him?” Hermione asked.

“Two years.”

“And who was there before you?”

“Petronella, or summat. And before Twila, there was Jade,” Hattie replied with a sad shake of her
head, “She left in a... state. I think she was given a bloody decent amount as severance pay to keep
shut about what happened.”
“And what had happened?”

“Dunno.”

“Do you know where she is now?”

“Sells linen at Cavern Lane.”

Maybe Hermione had bought bedsheets from her.

“What about Lindy Dalton? Is she–”

“A cow? Yeah.” Hattie spat, “She sees what goes on and doesn’t turn a hair. You know...” she
leaned forward meaningfully, “They say at least one of her kids is Millward’s.”

“How has your experience been, working for him?”

“Horrid,” she mumbled, and a shadow fell over her face, “I want to leave. Every time he puts his
ruddy filthy hands on me, I...”

She broke off with a groan and Hermione put her quill down.

“It’s alright,” she said, “You don’t have to–”

“You saw my dad,” Hattie carried on, “Dragon Pox messed him up so much, he can’t work. Mum
spends most of her time taking care of him. My younger sister’s up the duff, my brother was killed
in the war. I have no choice... there aren’t many jobs around here for Squibs. I don’t know anything
about Muggles so I can’t look for work there. I’m stuck. I don’t know–”

She broke off again, and this time Hermione waited.

She muttered, “I wish I was as brave as Twila.”

“Hattie,” Hermione said softly, “If we asked you to bear witness–”

“I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You did well,” Kathy remarked once they had apparated back to Diagon.

“I don’t think I did anything,” Hermione replied, feeling much too angry and discomposed by the
whole situation.

“You were detached but sympathetic, and you kept her talking,” Kathy said, giving her a reassuring
smile, “Madam Barros would approve.”

They met Takumi at the guarded fireplace behind The Leaky Cauldron. He shook his head with
disappointment as they flashed their Ministry badges.

He elaborated while marching down the Atrium – “The shop is locked and Millward’s
representatives didn’t allow me to see any records or papers. We need an order straight from the
Wizengamot to gain access. As for a record of past employees... there isn’t one.”

“He only employed Squibs,” Hermione said furiously, “No registration required. Personae non
gratae, as far as the Ministry is concerned.”

The next day, Hermione and Kathy stepped into Cavern Lane. It was a Wednesday afternoon, just
like it had been when she had first visited with Mrs Weasley. But the current moment was stripped
of all awe; that was just the way of the world and Hermione would never get used to it.

There were multiple stalls that sold linen, and they stopped at every one of them, muttering a
tentative “ Erm... Jade?” at any woman who looked the appropriate age.

When they found the one they were seeking, they were greeted with narrowed eyes and a
distrustfully twisted mouth.

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Kathleen Edwards, and this is Hermione–”

“Granger. Yeah.”

“We’ve come from the office of Madam Elena Barros, Barrister and Member of the Wizengamot,
on behalf of our client Twila Elliot.”

“I don’t know any Twila Elliot.”

“She was your replacement at Millward’s Second Hand Robes and Garmen–”

“I don’t give a shit about that.”

Kathy surreptitiously nudged Hermione with her elbow, impelling her to take over. Hermione had
no idea how to tackle such a situation.

“Look, Jade,” she broached, dragging out the short syllables to buy time, “Twila has filed a very
serious complaint against your previous employer, and we need to put together a case so strong that
the Wizengamot cannot ignore it. We want to ensure that Millward gets his comeuppance, and we
need your help.”

“Can’t do it.”
She turned away and begun folding pillowcases.

“We spoke to Hattie Norwood,” Hermione tried again, “And she said–”

Jade spun around with fury. “WHAT DID SHE TELL YOU?”

“Nothing!” Hermione pressed at once, as people around them turned to stare, “She just...
suggested... that you left under some unfortunate circumstances–”

Jade scoffed angrily.

Such a futile push and pull carried on for much too long, and Hermione felt herself wilt. Jade’s
temper only got worse and she ended up knocking over a tall pile of cloth.

“I’m a squib!” she warbled, “We’re all squibs! And he’s a pureblood. I know how this will end.
Everyone knows how this will end! What the hell do you think you lot can do?”

“Well,” Kathy forced a smile and gestured towards Hermione with her thumb, “This one helped
bring down You-Know-Who. She can do a whole lot.”

Jade’s eyes narrowed again as she peered at Hermione, who suddenly seemed to have gone deaf.
There was a roaring in her ears.

The push and pull continued.

Ultimately, shoppers began edging too close, and the exchange came to a bitter end.

The moment they emerged from the tunnel, Hermione rounded on Kathy.

“How could you say that?” she barked.

“What?”

“This one helped bring down You-Know-Who?!?” She wasn’t even able to properly articulate her
ire. “How dare you use that... use me... like bait? Use me as some sort of outlandish... promise... I
know the only reason I’m coming along with you is... well... but to say it like that–”

Kathy looked believably shamefaced. “Madam Barros said I should use that as a clincher, if
necessary.”

“She fed you that line,” Hermione spat, “Oh, I’m not at all surprised.”

“I’m sorry,” Kathy muttered.

They were silent the rest of the journey back to the Ministry. Kathy then headed to wherever she
went to smoke, and Hermione stomped all the way to the canteen to grab some food. She kept her
eyes fixed on her shoes, blindly snagged a sandwich, and left.
Waves of rage kept passing over her as she stood in the lift, like a physical force that wanted to
send her crashing into people. Thankfully, Takumi wasn’t around when she got to the office. Not
thankfully, the sandwich ended up being full of that horrid potted meat that Ron had warned her
against. She binned half of it.

She sat in her chair and simmered, and bit by bit she moved from being indignant for herself to
being so on behalf of Jade. They had just swept into her place of work, brought up a deeply
traumatic episode, and expected her to simply acquiesce? How had they thought that was right?
How could they believe they were doing something good if that is how they approached a victim of
assault?

Utterly sick of herself, she wanted to apparate back to Cavern Lane and say sorry, sorry, sorry,
sorry.

The half-covered window in the office showed an artificial sky full of ribbon-like clouds.

She was completely drained that evening as well. Guilt continued its ravagement, and her optimism
was at an all-time low.

The first thing she observed when she stepped into her flat was light streaming out of the kitchen.
Odd.
Then she noticed a funny burnt smell in the air. CLANG – was the sound of something metallic
falling to the ground.

More muted rustling sounds. Hermione's body moved into a state of profound stress. Wild panicked
vibrations. She whipped out her wand and began creeping across the room.

“Bugger!” rang out Theo’s voice.

She ran.

He was standing in the middle of her very tiny kitchen, surrounded by pots, spoons, knives, half-
peeled vegetables, and gaping at a pan on the hob that was engulfed in flames. Hermione yelped,
doused it, and grabbed his arm.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

They both took a step forward and peered into the pan. Four blackened, undecipherable lumps sat
within, lightly smoking.

“Well, they’re supposed to be a bit charred,” Theo declared.

“What are they?” Hermione cried in horror.

“Lamb chops.”

She moved a step back, and properly took in the scene. The kitchenware scattered around was
definitely not stuff that she had bought. There were peels all over the floor, dishes piled in the sink,
a mysterious spill on the worktop.

“I’ll clean up,” Theo offered weakly.

A sheet of paper floated above it all: A recipe in dad’s handwriting.

“What the hell,” she ground out, “Are you doing?”

“Um, I’m trying something new?” He smiled down at her apologetically.

“Whaaaaat?” she breathed, barely aloud.

“Robert said that he finds cooking soothing.”

“Are you feeling bloody soothed right now?”

“Ah, don’t be angry.”

“Why can’t you try new things in your own kitchen?”

He shrugged limply. Something awful like sadness glimmered in his expression. She sighed.

“Lamb chops are not very beginner friendly,” she muttered, “I don’t know what dad was thinking.”

“I asked for your favourites.”

Well of course he did. Her irritation shrivelled. She looked at him knowing that all her exhaustion
was evident, and he looked back, reflecting something similar.

“Why don’t you go relax? Have a drink. Dinner will be... er.... a little while longer.”

She didn’t relax, she didn’t have a drink. She just toed off her shoes and settled on the sofa, diving
right back into work and ignoring the noises and smells coming out of the kitchen.

Throughout the latter part of the day, she had obsessively studied the phraseology employed during
the twenty-six trials that the Wizengamot had deigned to ratify. She wondered what would happen
if they were to refer to those cases, use the same language, and dare the Wizengamot to rule
differently and show their prejudice? Presumably, the Wizengamot would rise to the challenge.

Not much later, the floo went off and broke her concentration.

Draco stood in her living room in a dark brown polo neck jumper and joggers. He looked mildly
perplexed, and like the perfect cherry on her fatiguing day.
“Have you seen–”

“In the kitchen.”

He frowned and she turned back to the parchment on her lap, determined to not watch him stride
across the room. She heard them speaking to each other, heard another CLANG that was a lid being
violently dropped over a pot, heard Draco’s footsteps as he returned to the room.

She simply had to witness his reaction.

His mouth was slightly open, his brow was furrowed in a way that seemed to be ordering her to
make sense of that right now . She shrugged, exactly like Theo had, earlier. Limply.

Then she looked back down at her work.

He moved and she stilled, waiting to hear the sound of the floo igniting once again.

It never came.

She glanced up in time to observe him wander into the hall.

Minutes passed, and just as she was about to leap up and demand to know why he was pottering
about her flat, he returned with Asterix the Gaul tucked under his arm. He settled on the armchair
that he’d favoured since the very first night. Legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, he flicked
open the comic and his eyes skated up and down the map on the very first page.

Hermione wanted to forgo her work in favour of cataloguing all the ways in which his expression
would subtly shift as he went from page to page–

FOOL. DAFT.

An hour went by before Theo emerged from the kitchen with three plates. His shirt was spotted and
darkened with spills and there was something questionable in his hair.

“Dig in,” he grumbled once everyone had settled at the table.

She regarded the food with a carefully blank face. It was a meal that she had sampled weekly for
years, prepared perfectly by dad’s seasoned hands, which was why she could spot all the millions
of ways that Theo’s preparation was so very wrong. Dad would have fainted.
The lamb chops were only marginally less charred than the ones that had caught fire. The roasted
carrots looked mushy. The mushy peas looked roasted.

Theo, in turn, was regarding her with a carefully blank face, but no attempt at stoicism could mask
his underlying anticipation. She cut into the chop with a great deal of force – it was dull grey on the
inside – and sensed Draco doing the same.

She popped the morsel into her mouth and chewed.

And chewed. And chewed. And chewed.
It had taken on the characteristics of chewing gum, while tasting of nothing. There was nought for
her to do besides a bit of wandless, non- verbal magic to banish the stuff from her mouth.
She smiled. “Not bad at all! Really... the... um... flavour is... really...”

Draco put his cutlery down and declared, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire
life.”

He faced Theo’s snarl and her glare with brash indifference and pushed his chair back.

“Are you leaving?!” Theo sputtered.

“Definitely.”

“You had one bite!”

“I’m going to Beijing tomorrow morning,” Draco drawled, “Can’t be down with food poisoning. In
fact, I’d venture to say that two bites might be fatal. Should have had you over to cook for the
Death Eaters.”

“Don’t listen to him, Theo,” Hermione huffed, “It’s a remarkable meal, especially since it’s the first
time you’ve–”

“Have a second bite then,” Draco interrupted, smirking wickedly.

“I shall!” she snapped.

She tried to spear a carrot, but it sort of just... melted off her fork. So, she went for the peas – a
whole mouthful – and they were simultaneously hard and slimy. She chewed mutinously while
maintaining a fixed glare on Draco.

“Not what I meant,” he sniggered.

God, why wouldn’t the day end?

He didn’t budge; stood with his arms crossed on the back of his chair till both Hermione and Theo
had taken a bite of meat and were sat there like cows chewing on cud. Then he gave a cheery wave
and left.

“ACK!” Theo choked and spat into his napkin, “Hermione, you’re a gem, but please, for the love of
Merlin, stop eating.”

“Mmm?” she asked, still chewing.

“This is ghastly. It’s inedible.” He gathered all three plates and jumped up, “Order some takeaway,
will you? I’ll clean up in there.”

Later, after they’d eaten and Theo had gone back home, Hermione wandered into the kitchen for a
cup of chamomile tea. There were still some peels on the floor, a spatter on the splashback, and all
the kitchenware that she hadn’t bought was wet and piled up outside the cupboard.
Too much was going on. Between the stream of discouraging findings at work and frequent
expeditions around the country, attempting (and failing) to track down all the squibs that had ever
worked for Millward, Hermione felt thwarted every evening when she got home.

And when she got home, Theo would be in her kitchen making an unholy mess and inevitably
having nothing to show for it.

On Thursday, he served up steamed fish fillets that had turned into rubber. Hermione ordered
takeaway.

On Friday he stood, frozen, as her oven emitted clouds of black smoke. She didn’t even know she
had an oven.

“What did you think it was?” Theo grumbled, “A little home for a family of doxies?”

She glowered and dragged him, kicking and screaming, to a pub on Royal Mint Street, and quite
happily let him pay for their dinner.

The streets were crowded that evening, for it was Bonfire Night, and they walked around amid the
throng, until they were one with it – just two faces among many faces, with no woes or burdens of
their own.
Theo stopped at a kiosk surrounded by eager tourists and bought himself a Guy Fawkes mask,
claiming that he had always felt sad about forgoing the chance to wear a Death Eater mask.
Hermione rolled her eyes and took him to stand by the riverside.

In the distance, lights and colours exploded in the sky. Friday night ended with a fireworks
display.

She won a small reprieve on Saturday, spending it at the Burrow since Ginny was returning to
Wales the next day. There was an endless quidditch match going on in the back garden, but Ginny
begged off, and took a walk in the orchard with Hermione instead.

The last time they had wondered through those trees, it had been the peak of fruit-laden, bee-buzzy
summer. Now, at the cusp of autumn and winter, leaves crunched beneath their boots, and the air
was cold and damp.
Hermione told her all about the Millward case, finally admitting out loud: “I’m completely terrified
that all this work, all our effort won’t mean a thing. Those poor women will still be turned out of
the courtroom with nothing. If they even get that far.”

Ginny hummed sadly, and made an admission of her own. “Us Weasleys are so proud to be blood-
traitors, but we’ve still got some very shitty views about squibs. Even mum, sometimes. George
and – and F–Fred were the worst. I completely understand why Filch is so bitter.”

“Yeah,” Hermione sighed.

The gooseberry trees at the edge of the orchard were ripe and full of crows. Ginny picked up a
pebble and hurled it, causing them to scatter with indignant caws.

“If we can’t track down any of the previous employees... I mean, Jade’s already refused to testify...
I don’t know what we’ll do.”

“I’ve never delt with prejudice like that, and I’ve never been attacked in that manner, but I do know
what it feels like to be violated... to have all your control taken away. I was really angry too, for a
very long time. It’s understandable that she wants nothing to do with any of this.”

“Yeah,” Hermione sighed, again. “Ginny, are you still angry sometimes?”

“Of course. But it helps that Riddle is dead, and that I watched him die. Mostly, I’m angry at
myself for being stupid, shy, and lonely enough to–”

“It wasn’t your fault!”

“I know.” She smiled. “But being angry with myself helped me get past it, you know? Helped me
realise exactly what I don’t want to be.”

Sunday.

Hermione sat in her study with her head in her hands, surrounded by files and parchment, staring
blankly at her pot of ink. One drop had spilled over the edge and formed a ring around the base,
staining her desk. Stella had made herself a nest out of a frayed quill, and was fast asleep in one
corner.

About fifteen minutes back, Theo had come into the room and asked, “Look, I know what it means,
of course, but... what exactly does ‘al dente’ mean?”
"God’s” in her kitchen –
Nothing’s right with the world!

“Are you crying?”

She pulled her head up and found Draco leaning against the doorframe, looking much too amused
and unconcerned for someone asking such a question. He was in a long, dark coat and his hair was
pushed back. Her heart raced around her chest.

“Bawling,” she rasped.

He grinned and said nothing.

“So... You’re back from China.”

“No.”

He sauntered towards the table, taking things out of his pocket that expanded in his grasp. After
depositing a shiny red paper bag right in front of her, he moved towards the bookshelves.

Hermione stared at the bag... at his back... and at the bag...

“What’s this?” she broached.

“See for yourself,” he responded without turning.

By the time she had tentatively dipped one hand in, he was in front of her again, arms crossed and
holding Asterix and the Golden Sickle against his chest.

Inside, she found a tin of green tea, covered in painted white and pink chrysanthemums and
Chinese characters embossed in gold. Wide eyes flicked up at him, and he, placidly, lifted his chin,
encouraging her to keep going. The second thing she pulled out was a small painting in a wooden
frame.
It depicted a calico cat, almost round with the way it was bristling. Its tail was brown and bushy, its
nose was pink and its eyes wide and amber; mouth open as though hissing. It stood on some sort of
rocky slope, surrounded by vegetation typically seen in Chinese ink paintings. The source of its
fury was a mystery.

“A copy of a twelfth century Sung dynasty painting, I believe,” he said.

Her pulse had gone berserk – it had to be a medical emergency.

“Is this supposed to enrage me?” she asked.

"Everything enrages you.”

It wasn’t rage that she was desperately trying to clamp down on. She felt a broad, full grin pull
across her face with no permission whatsoever, and when she spoke, it was with an embarrassing
lilt -

“It’s absolutely darling. ”

Draco snorted and turned to leave – she called out to him before he could exit.

Just short of the door, he looked back and raised a questioning brow.

She dithered, her heart pounding, caught between why are you doing this and how am I supposed to
exist around you -

“Well??”

“I just – erm – thank you.”

He took his time examining her, with a sedulous but cryptic eye. She couldn’t say if he was
gauging the sincerity of her gratitude, or basking in the fact that he had ultimately got her to thank
him over and over again. And yet, even if the entire gifting exercise was disingenuous, she could
not summon any outrage. Not when he smiled as he nodded and stepped out of the study.

She had to wait till her cardiovascular system resumed proper functioning, but she went on to
follow after him. Going straight to the salon wall, she stood for a few minutes, considering, until
finally, the cat ended up hanging next to Dean’s painting. She took a step back to admire it, and
turned to catch Draco watching from his armchair.

Theo served spaghetti aglio e olio, that was surprisingly edible. Just a little beyond al dente, light
on salt, heavy on parsley, but on the whole not terrible; especially when paired with elderflower
wine. Even Draco managed to stay put and finish a plate.
He told them about his final afternoon in Beijing, where the Chinese Ministry had charmed a
special passage all along the Great Wall, for them to try out the newest super-speed brooms in the
market.

“We get there, kitted out and everything; Kenny takes one look at the twenty-one thousand
kilometre wall and says what’s so Great about it then? It should be called the Humdrum Wall of
China. For once, the translators where on point. The Chinese delegates got terribly rankled. We did
not get to fly.”

Theo laughed, barking words of phoney sympathy. Hermione took a gentle sip of wine and
smiled.

Twila and Hattie turned out to be a powerful investigative team. They went digging around
Knockturn, chatting up the residents and charming out information in a way Hermione would never
have been able to. They even got Lindy’s grandmother drunk enough to bleat out a name.
Additionally, they had reached out to Jade themselves. They said nothing about how they were
received nor what words were exchanged; they just said that she had asked for some time.

Consequently, Hermione and Kathy spent two more days hopping around the country collecting
statements and witnesses. Of the five women they met, three were on board at once, one asked for
time, and one refused to let them past her door.

Exactly a week after their first encounter, Hermione received an owl from Jade early in the
morning, while she was munching on toast, in which she said she would be willing to testify
anonymously.
Hermione ditched her breakfast and raced to the Ministry, hoping to get to the admin office before
the queues got too long.

Alas, queues and government offices are a match made in hell, ( which circle would you say,
Draco? ) and she ended up standing in one, bouncing on the balls of her feet, for ages. Then the
usual rigmarole - she was sent from one desk to the other, chasing after some elusive wanker for his
lousy, scribbly signature.

By the time she had put in the application for a Witness Anonymity Order, lunch was just an hour
away. The entire first half of her day had gone.

She slouched into the office and filled her colleagues in while dropping the hundred or so scrolls
crammed into her satchel, onto her desk. They had updates (of a kind) for her as well – Takumi had
gathered nothing but accounts of Millward being a good, solid chap who loved his mother dearly.
The more Hermione heard, the more she reckoned that he was cut from the same cloth as Borkin,
Burke, and Mundungus Fletcher. Kathy merely muttered something about Barros wanting them to
reword the petition to the Wizengamot.

A minute before lunch, Hermione had thrown down her quill and was flexing her fingers, while
watching her colleagues leave with careworn expressions. Her stomach rumbled, chastising her for
abandoning breakfast. At least she could be sure that the poor thing wouldn't suffer the dreadful,
churn-inducing sight of Draco and Fiona together in the canteen that afternoon; he was attending a
conference in Kabul.

A little lilac paper-plane landed in front of her. Never before had she received a memo; not a
personal one, with her name written on the wings. Nonplussed, she gently unfolded and
smoothened it out.

Come to level six immediately.

If she hadn’t known his handwriting so well, the curt tone and the lack of a please would have told
her who’d written the note. And of course, there was no explanation.

Why was Draco summoning her? Level six was the Department of Magical Transportation. In her
haywire mind’s eye, she saw him taking her hand and begging her to run away with him to
Afghanistan. Admittedly, not the most ideal location for an escape, but she was far gone enough to
accept. Even as she raced to the lifts, she tried to come up with less outlandish theories, but
somehow kept ending up with visions of him whisking her away somewhere.
Squashed amid a hungry crowd, Hermione was the only one who had to struggle through it to
disembark on level six, crashing twice against people who were trying to squeeze their way in. She
found herself in a short, deserted corridor, halfway down which stood Draco, with his arms behind
his back.

The walk towards him seemed endless, so she looked around at the bare, dull, standard corridor
with great interest. He obviously did not make things any easier by looking straight at her
throughout, with an air of unsuppressed impatience.

She stopped before him, tongue swollen and pulse pounding in her ears.

“Hermione,” he pronounced, buttery smooth and tartly ironic.

She gulped. “You aren’t in Kabul.”

“Aren’t I?”

He spun around, marching down the corridor, a follow me implicit in the way his robes fluttered
around his ankles.

“What’s going on?” she demanded once she’d caught up with his strides.

“You’ll see shortly.”

At the end of the corridor, they turned left, into an ill-lit passageway that was dedicated to the
maintenance staff.

“Draco,” she huffed, her head wildly darting between his face and the path ahead, “You can’t just
send me cryptic memos and expect me to show up–”

“You did show up.”

“And then offer no explanation–”

“You shall have your explanation soon.”

“Why ca–”

“This way.”

“But–”

“Stop yapping, please.”

He pushed open a door, revealing a stairwell that disappeared into shadows both above and below,
and possessed a bit more than the usual, Ministry-approved shabbiness. Moving aside, he after
you’d her in that commanding manner of his, which nearly always seemed less like a courtesy and
more like a motion used to spur shiftless cattle. She took the step, too affronted to yap, and stood
stupidly on the landing, waiting for him to direct her.
They climbed up one level, going through a door into another dingy passageway. As unkempt as
the stairwell had been, it had not prepared her for the utter disrepair that lay ahead.
“What is this place?” she breathed, staring around at the bare floor, unfinished walls, unpolished
doors, and missing fixtures.

“It was meant to be a plush new wing; rooms for visiting ICW delegates to put their feet up in
between sessions. But the war obviously fucked with the budget, so the project’s been put on
hold.”

A clattering noise coincided with the end of his sentence as a sconce fell off the wall.

Hermione said, “Theo will never forgive you if you murder me,” just because she needed to say
something . Draco did not consider her something worthy of a response.

Finally, he led her through another door. Into a bloody bedroom.

She could’ve sworn she heard the loud bzzzzt of her brain short-circuiting.

He came around and stood in front of her wearing a wide and devilish grin.

“Welcome to Kenny’s secret siesta room,” he muttered, sotto voce.

“Um,” she said, “Uh?”

His grin turned into something flat out dazzling. For a moment, everything in the periphery blurred
and her vision tunnelled. A luminous, saturated, crystal-clear line of sight started from the depths of
her macula, swept over his straight, tall figure, and ended on the bed at the end of the room. She
was nothing but a cluster of loose particles, vibrating with each reverberating thud of her heart.

Without disturbing their eye-contact, he gestured to the side with a tilt of his head. Moving
forcefully, she looked that way.

There were two other men in the room. The shock of that reality jolted her, and as she distractedly
pulled herself together, Draco walked by. The coolness of his shadow passing over her like a not-
so-distant memory was what finally solidified her back into a whole.

She followed him with a plummeting gut and blazing hotspots on her cheeks.

“Hermione Granger,” Draco announced, “Meet Kenneth Pendleton.”

He spoke with that put-on ingratiating politeness that she’d heard him use around Slughorn and
Umbridge. She had completely forgotten to expect that from him.
But at least Kenny looked and sounded exactly like the ought to have. He wasn’t a tall man, but
fairly stocky. His hair was unnaturally black, flattened and parted down the middle, with the ends
curling outwards around his ears. His trousers were green, held up by thin black braces that criss-
crossed over a beige shirt. Brown robes lay folded over his arm. He eyed Hermione’s proffered
hand with disdain and his short, upturned nose wrinkled.

“Well, all right,” he snarked in an adenoidal tenor, quite plainly disinclined to participate in a
handshake.
Hermione’s arm fell back to her side, and she awkwardly opened and closed her mouth. Not a
second later, Kenny was marching away, (she thought he might have muttered “bah, dappy lass!”)
He threw himself on the bed, stretching out with his back to them, bringing an end to the first of the
introductions.

The second man was tall. Taller than Draco, and perhaps even taller than Ron; the white turban on
his head added to his towering height. He was thin as a rail and rather handsome, with a dark beard,
and very strong, sharp features. His eyes were deep-set and piercing.

His name was Hafizullah Safi, and he was an ICW delegate from Afghanistan. He shook
Hermione’s hand warmly.

“Lovely to meet you,” Hermione said, now completely at sea, and aware that she had an idiotic,
vacant smile on her face that made that fact very clear. However, she had given up on getting any
sort of explanation. She would just go along with whatever was happening.

She took in the rest of the room. Besides the bed, there were two armchairs covered with dusty
white cloth, and a decent sized table with four chairs. One wall was papered, the others were rough
and bare. The windows were uncharmed – nothing but frames on a blank wall. Stubby, conjured
candles floated around the room, providing less than adequate light.

“The conference at Kabul was cancelled because a bomb went off near the venue late last night,”
said Draco.

Kenny let out a loud snore.

“A bomb?” she repeated thickly.

As the snores found a canorous rhythm, the other three settled around the table. Draco raised his
wand and coaxed a few of the candles to sink a bit lower. Safi clasped his hands and, looking down
at his knuckles, began speaking.

“Your name has come up during ICW meetings a few times, Ms Granger, especially during the
aftermath of the recent war. It really is a wonderful honour to meet you.”

She could live to be a hundred and seventy and she wouldn’t know how to react to that assertion.
Luckily, Safi was not expecting a response. He carried on –

“You are muggleborn and remarkably well informed, are you not? I assume that you are aware of
the current situation in Afghanistan?”

Hermione’s vacant smile dropped as she nodded. “Civil war.”

“Indeed,” he concurred gravely, “We haven’t known peace in decades, and I cannot see any way for
it to end pleasantly. You can say it’s a war for and between muggles, but... well, you see Ms
Granger, dangerous ideologies spread like poison. Though our magical community is relatively
small, there are multiple factions taking advantage of the situation and trying to displace our
Ministry, using dark magic. One group got hold of some muggle weapons coming in from
Pakistan...” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “In the middle of it all, innocent people are
dying. Muggle and magical. The Ministry has weakened, we don’t have sufficient charm experts to
put up protective shields, potions supplies are depleting... we... we are in desperate need for help.”
For some time, there was only silence... and snores. The shadows around Safi’s eyes were deep .

“I don’t need to explain to you – either of you,” he added, looking between Hermione and Draco,
“How it feels to be facing death and evil all on your own... while the world looks the other away. I
am truly sorry you had to endure that, at such a young age. I am here because I wish to do
something about it.”

He took out a fat scroll from inside his robes and laid it on the table. From looking at the sides,
Hermione could tell that there was over six feet of parchment in there.

“I have been working on this emergency legislation for a long time,” he said, placing a palm on the
scroll, “It is a bill proposing the implementation of a relief package for communities in crisis.
Money, Potions, a team of expert spell castors, and such things. I had the support of friends from
other countries who are also in a bad situation, but I had little hope. It’s rare that delegates from
poorer countries get a say in anything. Then I met Mr Malfoy and he offered me a perfect solution.
Britain can present the bill as its own. Mr Pendleton has graciously agreed to the scheme.”

The low snores sounded even more ridiculous after that. Hermione’s mind was whirring.

“Is that... wise?” she asked slowly, glancing at Draco.

“He won’t have to do – and more importantly say – anything,” Draco replied, “He’ll just send the
bill to the International Magical Office of Law, and once appraised, it will be read at the next ICW
session. I would have thought you’d know how emergency legislation is passed.”

“I do,” she scowled.

“His gracious agreement, by the way, went like this – Let me sleep in peace and I’ll sign my blasted
name on anything.”

Draco and Safi exchanged a short look of good humour, while Hermione simply stared. Grateful as
she was for context, she still had no idea why she was being made privy to the scheme. But she
held her tongue and waited, lest she be accused of yapping.

Safi smiled. “This is where you come in, Ms Granger.”

At last. She leaned forward with eager anticipation.

“I am not an expert in the field of law, merely studied it to the best of my ability and put this
together. It requires polishing and editing to make it sound more... legal and... British.”

He stopped speaking and looked at her expectantly. She frowned.

“I... see?”

“You will do it?”

“Me?!”

Silence. Snores. A silly little scoffing noise from Draco.

“But that’s insane!” Hermione erupted.

Then they all turned to see if she had awoken Kenny.

The snores persisted. Their conversation resumed.

“I’ve only been working in the Department of Domestic – Domestic – Law for two months. I’m in
no position to be reviewing... editing... a potentially pivotal bit of International Law!”

“Mr Malfoy has assured me that you are capable and trustworthy–”

(For one golden moment she was rattled and lost track of what was being said.)

“–understand why complete secrecy is a must. If there is even a rumour that this bill is coming
from an Afghan, they will do everything to sabotage it.”

“But with Ke–” Hermione lowered her voice, “Mr Pendleton’s reputation amongst his colleagues,
surely many will be questioning the origin of the bill!”

“Once it’s been read, it doesn’t matter,” Safi shrugged, “We need it to reach the ICW. I am
confident that the majority will support it, despite how much some countries love to use non-
intervention policies as an excuse to not care.”

“Mr Safi–”

“All I ask is that you help me make sure the Office of Law will pass this. And as a muggleborn, I’m
sure you have so much insight... the muggles at least make some attempt at providing humanitarian
aid. I do not have the ability or resources to educate myself about such things.”

“Mr Safi,” Hermione tried again, “I work for one of the most brilliant legal minds in the country.
She's also an advisor to the International Office. You couldn’t ask for a better person to help you
with this.”

“But can she be trusted?”

She didn’t have an answer to that. Beyond feelings of indignant rage and grudging professional
awe, she as yet didn’t know what to make of the woman.

“I am desperate. I am so tired. I am ready to beg for just a little money... some equipment to
counter dark curses... a stock of potions. I cannot take any chances; this plan is the only plan I have.
It must work.”

“Madam Barros will understand the gravity–”

“Will she? Ms Granger... would you, personally, trust her? Would you put the fate of your life, your
family, your country in her hands? Tell me something... where was she during your war? What was
she doing?”

“...I... have no idea.”

“And what were you doing?”

Hermione’s mouth closed with a click. Safi’s expression of raw despair melted into a small smile.
“You understand, do you not?” he murmured, “You know the pain of war. You know what it means
to fight even when hope is lost.”

Madam Barros would’ve called him an idealist, unkindly. He couldn’t even blame it on youth, or
the self-possession that comes from winning a war. He was stuck in the thick of one, drained and
fraught, putting his last hope in her hands. Her hands.
There were further arguments to be made – Kathy was more experienced, and muggleborn as well.
Takumi was even more experienced, vastly and internationally so, and most definitely replete with
compassion. But Hermione had decided. In all honesty, she had decided the moment he’d asked you
will do it? She put away all her pragmatism and practicality. She pushed aside the absurdity of
being barely twenty and having a say in something being presented to the bloody ICW. She plugged
into the reservoir that told her that little girls can do magic, fourteen-year-olds can mess with time,
sixteen-year-olds can fight battles, seventeen-year-olds can oppose Dark Lords, and eighteen-year-
olds can kill.

“I will help you,” she looked him in the eye and said, “I will do my best. It will be an honour.”

He shook her hand once more and beamed, his gratitude silent and strong. They all stood up and
the scroll was handed over to Draco.

“I hope for it to be submitted to the International Office of Magical Law in a week, so that,
inshallah, it may be presented at the ICW session on the twenty-second. And I have put a binding
charm on the scroll. Only Mr Malfoy can open it, and it must always be in the same room as him.”

Hafizullah Safi left with a light-footed gait, and he left the door open behind him. The dark,
decrepit corridor outside swallowed him whole. In his absence Kenny’s snores seemed louder.

“Better get used to that,” Draco smirked, “It’s going to be your lunchtime medley for a few days.”

He stood straight and sure in an aureole of candlelight, and she shook her head at him, while her
own legs felt like rubber. Capable and trustworthy, or just the only person in the Department of
Law that he knew?

“What a strange day,” she breathed.

She lifted her arm towards the scroll, catching sight of her watch in the process.

“Fuck!” she gasped, “Is that the time? Argh!” She began walking backwards. “Must run. Same
time, same place tomorrow? Er... yes. Bye!”

Right before the door, her heel caught on a dent on the floor and she stumbled backwards, arms
wheeling till she managed to grab onto the doorjamb. Her knees folded and she only just saved
herself from falling; her arse hovered a few inches above the ground. She squeaked as she
straightened and looked up to find a wildly entertained Draco.

She turned around and sprinted down the corridor, up the stairs, across level six... all the way to her
office.

“Where have you been?” Kathy demanded, “You’re damn lucky Madam Barros didn’t pop in.”
“Sorry,” Hermione mumbled, “I was eating. Hungry.”

She was fucking starving and now she couldn’t even help herself to a biscuit or a granola bar. Fox’s
Glacier Mints would have to sustain her till she could get a plate of whatever rubbish Theo would
serve her in the evening.

Theo was giving fish another go. She’d walked into a kitchen once again filled with smoke,
somehow generated in the process of salmon being poached. She’d walked out gnashing her teeth
and counting her footsteps till she could close the study door behind her.

Thirty-four counts in her head, (after the twenty-one it took to bring her to the position of standing
with her forehead pressed against the door,) was what it took to regain some composure. A
pulsating pain squeezed across her skull. Tired and inexplicably morose, she couldn’t believe the
day she’d had.

People caught in the crossfires of a ruthless, brutal power struggle. Young women, squibs, suffering
the entitlement of a wizard who held power over them. A girl with a headache, who felt utterly
powerless.
Three points to make the world’s grimmest triangle.

With a deep breath, she moved to the bureau and helped herself to a vial of headache potion. The
pain cleared like fog dissolving in the wind, and she got to work.

Besides one slim volume on the DPO and United Nations peacekeeping, her civics books were
dated and unfortunately unhelpful. She had treaties on all that was unjust in the world, biographies
and autobiographies of reformers, reems and reems of information about existing British laws –
magical and muggle – but very little that could bolster Safi’s bill. There was one newspaper
clipping, pressed between the pages of a book, about the formation of the Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which sparked something in her memory, leading her to dive
into a pile of old newspapers till she found an article from early September, about the UN’s
peacekeeping mission in East Timor.
But that involved setting up a multinational unit, and invoked provisions that authorised the use of
force. No chance of ICW risking the statute of secrecy with something like that.

A knock on the door jarred her out of her thoughts. If Theo had come to ask her some asinine
culinary-related question, she would scream .

But it was Draco who wafted into the room. The ends of his hair were damp and he smelled
absolutely divine, making Hermione want to scream anyway. He had the scroll with him, and he
placed it carefully on the only free spot on her desk.

“How long do you think this will go on?” he asked irascibly.

She stared at the scroll, waiting for him to unroll it. He didn’t.

“What will?”

“Theo’s attempt at slowly poisoning us.”

She breathed out a humourless laugh. He still didn’t unfurl the scroll, too busy taking in the books
and papers strewn around.

“You should ask him to move this project into your kitchen,” she begged.

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Because it’s also his kitchen. And there’s more room.”

“To make a mess.”

Stella appeared from under a folded newspaper and climbed atop The Civic Culture. The scroll
remained untouched.

“I’m surprised you keep showing up to be poisoned.”

Draco scowled. “He made the face.”

“The face?”

“Yeah. The I’m so gutted, woe is me, my mother is dead, and my girlfriend left me face.”

“That worked on you?”

His scowl deepened as he grumbled and placed two long fingers on the scroll.

“Have you made any headway?”

He looked up from the clutter, finally meeting her eyes and his presence closed in all around her.

“No. I will have to make a trip to a library, look through some more recent publications, newspaper
archives, get Jeeves to help out–”

“Jeeves?”

“Reginald Jeeves.”

After a long pause, he said I’m sorry what, while looking most perplexed and seriously... finally.
She exhaled. It was good to see him out of the loop.

She stuck her nose in the air and proclaimed, “I don’t have time to explain the internet to you right
now, Draco.”
They stood at an impasse till he wordlessly pulled at the ribbon holding the scroll together. Then he
gave it a push and it gushed like a broken dam, rippling over the desk, down to the floor, and
coming to a stop when it hit the wall behind her.

“Oh my,” Hermione croaked.

She fell into her chair, weak with intimidation, as Draco moved towards the bookshelves.

“You can’t leave the room, you know,” she reminded him.

“I am aware,” he snapped.

No words were exchanged after that. He stretched across the armchair and footstool with Asterix
and Goths, and she bent over the enormous scroll with a pen and notebook at hand. They worked in
silence and the evening pressed on; silence that was ever-so-often interrupted by the scratch of her
pen or him turning a page or Stella shuffling in her sleep.

It ended when the door opened and Theo, grinning widely, invited them to dine. The fish was not
awful, despite Theo’s general aversion to salt. The accompanying sauce and asparagus were
altogether ghastly.

On the whole, Project FOOL was going along swimmingly, which was a funny word to use while
she was barely keeping her head above water.

The majority of her time was spent in putting together the Millward case, (listing evidence, witness
statements, filling in the ridiculous number of forms the admin had thrust upon them,) hoping to be
able to file a request for a court date by the end of the week.

Bang in the middle of such hectic days, Hermione had a bizarre interlude in a derelict bedroom.

Suffice to say, Project DAFT had gone to hell. It was obviously hard to avoid Draco when his
presence was mandatory.
Hermione was sure that he had spent years teaching himself to be entirely conspicuous, no matter
what. He could not simply, unobtrusively exist in a room. It was his fault she was so obsessively
aware of him.

It wasn’t just quiet distractions that he was inflicting on her either. On the first afternoon he brought
sandwiches: caprese for her and prosciutto and spinach for himself. She blushed while unwrapping
it, so it took a while to register the lack of snores. When the sandwich was halfway up to her
mouth, she realised that Kenny was awake, sitting up in bed, and watching her.
“Draco,” Hermione hissed through closed lips, “Did you bring him one as well?”

“Nope,” Draco replied at a perfectly audible volume and took a big bite.

She sat frozen, unable to partake, for Kenny wouldn’t even blink.

“Why the hell not?” she demanded in an angry whisper.

“Didn’t want to.”

“I can’t eat while he’s staring at me!”

“Then don’t eat.”

She set her sandwich down and growled lowly, then looked up at Kenny with a forced smile.

“Would you like some of my sandwich Mr Pendleton?” she called out.

“What’s in it?” he barked.

“Um, mozzarella, tomatoes, and ba–”

“I DESPISE tomatoes.”

“Oh. Well.”

He still kept gawking. Hermione re-wrapped her food and dived back into the scroll.

Later, she stood in the stairwell and crammed the sandwich into her mouth. She chewed while the
lift carried her up to her floor.

The next afternoon, there was an additional tomato-less sandwich for Kenny. Hermione had to
continuously fight a smile as she ate, stealing glances at Draco who was most determinedly fixated
on Asterix the Gladiator. Kenny, after eating no more than two bites, turned over and went back to
sleep.

The snoring resumed, persistent but erratic, much like Chinese water torture.

Distractions notwithstanding, Hermione put everything into tidying up and anglicising Safi’s bill.
He suffered from the same affliction as her: The compulsive need to elaborate where no elaboration
was needed. She quickly realised that it was a characteristic much easier to spot in other people’s
writing. He’d written paragraph after paragraph of solid prose that needed to be broken down into
legalese.

She looked into multiple libraries across London on Saturday, including the British Library, which
she hadn’t visited in years. A scrupulous confundus charm got her through using an expired
membership card, and she came away with plenty of magically doubled books and documents, and
a thick stack of print-outs.

By the early evening, when Theo bustled into her kitchen with terrifyingly full bags, Hermione had
compiled a list of ideas and points that she thought would enrich the proposal, at times directly
lifting lines from Boutros Boutros-Ghali's An Agenda for Peace that she knew nobody in the ICW
would recognise.

She was sat on her study chair with her knees pulled up, drinking a cup of excellent green tea, when
the bequeather of said tea showed up, baring the scroll. He contemplated the cup she had waiting
for him, nicely steaming under a warming charm, but he didn’t thank her for it.

With the scroll open before her, she prepared to ascertain where she could inject her additions, but
for some reason, chose instead to make a passing comment about the 1980 UNGA emergency
special session over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She had just meant to give him a bit of
context, in passing, but in no time at all it spiralled into an hour-long discussion.

They talked about the messy state of modern politics, about muggle and magical parallels. About
battles that intersected, and common wars that were given two separate causes. About how blended
ancient civilisations, over centuries, had turned into two distinct and separate worlds.

When a lull hit, Draco broke it by asking if he might borrow J.M. Robert’s History of the World.
Looking stiff and pinched, he couldn’t quite meet her eye, while she remained startled and mute.

A lifetime ago that book had landed into his hands through shady means and, between then and
now (as she let out an ardent of course you may,) lay the history of them. The history of a tottery
(don’t call it a) friendship. The history of their dynamic and interplay; an inconceivable saga that
led to them sitting together in her study while she felt so... so...

Good heavens, she felt alive.

Draco spent nearly all of Sunday in her flat. He strolled into the study around ten in the morning,
once again freshly showered, in a Wedgewood blue jumper that she stupidly complimented before
she could think twice.

“Thanks,” he said tonelessly, one brow arched.

“Let’s sit in the living room,” she mumbled quickly, gathering and levitating her things, “More
light.”

More space , she thought. Her study seemed to get smaller every time he entered it.

The following hours were productive. Hermione spread out on the dining table, he sat on his
armchair, systematically making his way through Asterix comics. Lunch was eaten while work
carried on. She made tea once, and he twice. Time and time again, she thought she felt his eyes on
her, but they never actually were.

The day dimmed and Theo arrived with an excited whisper of Stroganoff.

“Got it!” Kathy announced as she walked into the office, too bright and chirpy for the hour,
flapping an accepted Witness Anonymity order.

A confidential owl was despatched to Jade’s, which returned promptly with a simple note that read:
Come whenever.

They went at once.

Jade lived quite close to Cavern Lane, in a narrow, three-story house that she shared with eight
other people. Hermione and Kathy were ushered into her very functional bedroom as soon as they
arrived.

“Could you please silence the room,” Jade requested stiffly.

Hermione complied.

There was a window, a standing cage with a small, sleeping white and grey owl, and a simple desk.
Kathy perched on the edge of the latter, while Hermione sat on an armchair with a broken spring.
Jade sat at the foot of the bed, eyes fierce and downcast.

“We owe you an apology,” Hermione began, hoping it didn’t sound perfunctory. She ignored the
way Kathy’s head snapped in her direction, and waited till Jade had looked up and pressed on –
“Accosting you the way we did, while you were at work... was unbelievably insensitive and
graceless. I am so terribly sorry.”

Jade only shrugged and said, “Right then.”

The subsequent transaction of information was crisp and clinical. Jade rattled out her statement like
she had practiced it a hundred times. Her account of a late evening locking up the shop, when
Millward had tied her up with an incarcerous charm and dragged her into a storage room, made
Hermione ill; but Jade herself was cold and robotic. She would not pander to any show of empathy,
any meaningless words of assurance that Kathy and Hermione tried to offer.

“You’ve got what you need. Please leave.”

They went, heads hung low. Hermione stomach was full of horrible slimy, wriggling tendrils of
guilt, horror, and pity.

“We have to take this man down,” Kathy fumed.

There was still some time before lunch, but instead of going back to the office, Hermione made a
loo-excuse and stood alone in the dark, musty stairwell, trying to reign in her emotions. She recited
runic alphabets, took heaving breaths, and mentally moved from one point of her unhappy triangle
to the other.

Safi was sitting at the table with Draco that day, the scroll and a bag from Neil’s Noshery between
them. He shot Hermione the most hopeful smile, that she did her best to reciprocate. (Kenny lay
snoring in bed, with a half-eaten sandwich by his side.)

However, his open admiration of her work ended up lifting her spirits, and they even shared a laugh
over her hard-fought bid to obtain brevity.
Zipping through her pointers, Hermione brought him up to speed in record time, and they spent the
rest of the hour plotting the final draft. She even suggested employing a tactic she’d learned from
the goblin episode –

“I say we double the money, and ask for a stock of spare wands.”

“Ms Granger, that will drive countries that are on the fence to vote against us!”

“We’re setting up a negotiation for the committee stage. Let the opposers have some sense of
victory.”

He was amused as he murmured an agreement, and went on – “What about rations? There should
be an entire segment for that. I cannot even begin to tell you about the situation in Herat and
Mazar-e Sharif...”

Twisted that they dug into their lunch while discussing the details of supplying food to the magical
settlements in dire need. They discussed special provisions for children, and ensuring safe passages
to schools and hospitals.
As always, Hermione noticed the time a little too late and she jumped to her feet while gathering
parchments with one hand and stuffing the last of her sandwich into her mouth with the other.

“Are you sure it’s ready?” she asked Safi, after suddenly finding herself unable to leave the room.

The wriggling things were back in her stomach, this time they were stirrings of doubt, stone-cold
fear, and inadequacy.

“It is,” he nodded, “It must be.”

Hermione’s eyes darted towards Draco; arms crossed and head lowered, he was watching her
carefully.

“If we could just spend a little more time–”

“I don’t have any more time to give, Ms Granger. Please.”

He stood up and towered over her, smiling in a warm, comforting way that felt almost paternal, and
she was suddenly, strangely reminded of Lupin.

“You have done a wonderful job. I feel even more confident than before. Maybe the next time we
eat together it will be a happier occasion. I would love to invite you to my home; my wife makes
the most delectable mastawa.”

He meant well and seemed utterly sincere, but Hermione was still squirmy as she returned to the
DDL.

She ran into Stamp at the foyer and he carelessly poured files into her arms and said, “The Kemball
v Numisma hearing’s tomorrow. Get the notes ready.”

Steam poured out of her ears as he marched on – she had no fucking clue what that case was about.
How was he still stupid enough to offload his work onto her?

Due to the additional work and an impromptu jaunt to the archival chambers, Hermione got home
much later than usual. Not feeling brave enough to peep into the kitchen, she went straight to the
study where the scroll lay open on her desk, and Draco was comfortably engrossed in Asterix and
Cleopatra, with a cup of tea by his side. She let her satchel slide off her shoulder and fall to the
floor, loud enough to get his attention without asking for it.

He looked down at the satchel, then up at her, a bit annoyed, but said nothing.
“I don’t suppose you bothered to fix a cup of tea for me,” she accused, tired and lacking all bite.

“I bring you your bloody lunch, Granger,” he groused, “Don’t push it.”

She pulled a face and turned away, settling at her desk with a subdued groan.

She picked up her quill... then she put it down. Her nose wrinkled.

“Dear lord, what is that smell?!”

“Theo is attempting a steak and kidney pie.”

Hermione yawned for the sixtieth time that morning, and she could tell it was getting on Takumi’s
nerves. Not that he’d say anything, but he visibly twitched at every instance. It was rather hilarious,
and she was tempted to fake a couple of yawns to see if she could make him dance.

It was just one of those days. She was beyond exhausted.

On her request, (much to her surprise,) Draco and Theo had agreed to stick around till two AM the
night before. While she’d desperately worked on the bill, they drank firewhisky and invented some
very complicated new game involving gobstones, Stella, and an empty glass.

She was feeling every minute of that late night. There was a permanent ache at the base of her head
and down her neck, her hand kept cramping, her eyes were pink-rimmed, and her hair was a puffy,
enormous ball on the top of her head.

But she – and her two colleagues – soldiered on, till they finally crossed the last ‘t’, and Kathy
swept towards the admin office with her arms full of parchment. She returned sometime later, arms
empty, and she raised them in a gesture of exaltation.
So, it was done. The future of the case rested on the Wizengamot’s partisan disposition.

On that heartening note, Hermione set off for her final afternoon in the bizarre bedroom. But first -
a pit stop to splash some cold water on her eyes and swipe some pink gloss onto her lips because
that was just how things were now, and there was

Nothing.

She. Could. Do. About. It.

“Hi,” she smiled once she had arrived and was pulling a chair back.
“Gran – Hermione,” he muttered nonchalantly, sitting back and low on his seat, tie loosened and
clearly exhausted, too.

Kenny snored, asleep on his back, with an unwrapped sandwich sitting on his gently ballooning
stomach.

Knowing that she had less than twelve hours to finalise the bill, Hermione put her head down and
got busy, but not before telling Draco to please let her know when lunch break was over.

And let her know he did, a mere two minutes before. She glared and he just matched it with
meticulous conceit, (that very exchange of expressions must’ve repeated itself a thousand times in
the history of them.)

“Try not to tumble on your way out,” he said.

Still glaring, she held out her hand, at the centre of which sat a glacier mint. His expression
faltered, transformed into a look of curiosity, and he whisked the mint off her palm. The brief press
of his blunt nails deposited electricity under her skin.

It galled her to put a pause on a very important pursuit, to waste her time on Stamps’s idiotic patent
infringement dispute that she could’ve easily made a case for even before she’d joined Barros’
team; it was that bloody straightforward.

One standard, Ministry-issued parchment – forty centimetres – was all she would give him. He
could go boil his head.

It so happened that Madam Barros intruded into the office at the same moment that Hermione was
reaching the end of the parchment, (and her patience.)
Barros always dressed to the nines, but that afternoon she had gone beyond. A gorgeous, chunky
emerald necklace adorned her neck, over white and yellow robes.

“Have you finally sent the application to the admin?” she asked the room at large.

“We have,” Kathy replied.

“Very well. I will be leaving now, to take tea with Tiberius, Zoya, and Gavin. I feel they need to be
personally apprised of the seriousness of the case.”

And once she was gone, and the parchment was filled, Hermione stepped out into the foyer and
despatched her very first inter-departmental memo. She then knocked on Stamps door, waltzed in
when given the word, and passed him the parchment with the sort of ceremony reserved for the
Olympic torch.

“Is that all?” he balked, “The only way you could have done less is if you did nothing at all!”

“If you object to my work, perhaps you ought to take it up with Madam Barros.”

“Oh, you think I won't?” he spat. There was murder in his eyes.

Hermione smiled, catty and smug, and she left him to fume, closing the door firmly behind her.
A memo landed in her bun, bearing a single word.

Fine.

When the cat's away, the mice will draft humanitarian bills.

She had been working at a pace that was furious, but also careful enough to not make any silly
errors. Wand in one hand, making modifications; quill in the other, writing judiciously. Papers,
parchment, and print-outs lay fanned around her, and her eyes darted between them, but her head
barely moved.

She had barely moved in ages.

Had it been ages? It felt like ages. She was suddenly aware of the stiffness in her legs, and a sharp,
throbbing pain at the base of her skull.

She put her wand and quill down and closed her tired, burning eyes. Reaching up, she undid
her bun and her hair came sliding down. She breathed in the comforting smell of her shampoo. Her
fingers carded through her achy scalp till she found the most painful point and lightly pressed on it.
Oh, how she wanted to shower and sleep! She trailed her fingers down the sides of her neck, tilting
her head and sighing at the soreness she found.

She slowly opened her eyes only to be confronted by Draco pinning her down with a hard and
unforgiving stare. It knocked the wind out of her.

“What?” she whispered breathlessly.

A few moments went by before he spoke. Stony gaze unwavering, his throat undulated as he
swallowed.

“It’s half six.” His voice was rough and heavy with underuse.

“Oh!” she gasped, “Why didn’t you say something sooner?!”

She was up in a flurry, gathering her stuff, rolling up the scroll and pushed it towards Draco. Her
blasted hair kept fluttering into her face, hindering the operation.
Her mind was buzzing even as they walked through corridors and down stairs, unwilling to lose the
threads of her thoughts. She kept a metaphorical finger at the place where she’d left off, mentally
cataloguing the points that were to follow. There was a pause when, just as they entered the lift, she
had stumbled over absolutely nothing. She waited for some choice witticism from Draco – but none
 came. She glanced at him, and he was blandly watching the grille close. Her thoughts shot right
back to where they had been.

He stood behind her at the floo. The same fate lay ahead of them both: Questionable supper and a
long, long night of work. She stepped into the fire for a momentary reprieve from his scalding
presence.

Chapter End Notes

1. Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, by Richard Doddridge Blackmore

2. Madame Defarge: From A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
3. "God’s” in her kitchen: Paraphrased from Pippa’s Song, by Robert Browning
4. Reference for the cat painting
 Seventy-Eight
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Admittedly, some things had changed. Much like after the first Wizarding War, there were certain
occasions when the Wizengamot delivered sound judgements. Two days after the Millward case
had been submitted, they approved the establishment of a committee that would reach out to
muggleborn children and their families a year before they were due at Hogwarts, to help them
better assimilate into the magical world. It was a motion spearheaded by an unlikely duo – Arthur
Weasley and Justin Finch-Fletchley.

At the same time, a small cavalry of disgruntled pureblood parents demanded the immediate
removal of Minerva McGonagall (and a chunk of the new Hogwarts Board of Governors) for
refusing to repeal the decision to have Muggle Studies as a core, mandatory subject for the first
three years at Hogwarts. The petitioners were turned out with the judicial equivalent of an eye
roll.

Immediately after, there was an incident in West London that stirred up great alarm regarding a
possible Death Eater revival group. There was vile graffiti, vandalism, and a bloodied muggleborn
lying under a Dark Mark. The Prophet, the people were in a frenzy for two days before it emerged
that the dead muggleborn was neither dead nor a muggleborn, and that the whole thing was some
sort of sick joke that got out of control.
The Aurors had rounded up the perpetrators in no time at all – Harry’s involvement in the case
making the front page, of course – and another set of fast-track trials were launched. Adrian Pucey
had been among the hoodlums, and he apparently was set to marry Daphne Greengrass in three
months. Hermione spotted Phaedrus Greengrass in the Ministry twice over the course of the trials:
Once in the lift, going up to Level one, and once in the Atrium, walking angrily besides Ogden.
But for all his influence (and threats), he was given no consideration. The gang was sent straight to
Azkaban, leaving behind a broken engagement and a sudden dearth of moolah in the Ministry’s
post-war rehabilitation fund.

The week ended with an exceptionally thick edition of the evening’s Prophet, extolling the
Ministry's expeditiousness.

In the midst of all that, squibs were forgotten. Women, still and always, had to wait their turn.
Draco gave an overblown second-hand account of the first reading over a meal of awfully lumpy
but flavourful chowder. Hermione somehow doubted that Kenny had actually defiantly shown his
bare bottom to the ICW, but Draco had something of a giddy look about him and she hadn’t the
heart to cut into his oration.

“He made Gill read it, thank fuck, and just sat there like a stodgy potato while the gathering got
more and more incredulous. By the time they broke for lunch, most of the delegates were
conducting private conversations that were audible to all around them. Some were adamant that
Kenny was pulling a fast one on them, and the rest were convinced that this was just the sort of
shit-stirring stunt that he would pull. Plonker ignored them all... held a scone in one hand and
picked his nose with the other. Then they were back in session and – For Salazar’s sake! I said no
thank you!”

Theo had taken advantage of their distraction, and topped their bowls up with some more lumpy
slop. He was careless with the ladle and it – plop plop plop – deposited milky chunks across
Hermione’s dining table.

“You said it wasn’t dreadful!”

“Did I say it was good?”

“Arsehole.”

Hermione reached for the salt cellar and sighed.

Scowling furiously, Draco stabbed a spoon into his bowl and continued.

“Well, after the reading was done with, there was absolute silence. Kenny, having missed out on his
siesta, was drowsy and flatulent. The floor was opened for questioning, and unsurprisingly, a lot of
questions were lobbed at the twat. He said bugger all, until he was bodily shaken by Gill, at which
point–” And here Draco displayed his remarkable talent for mimicry, “– I wrote the blasted thing,
and the International so-and-so brought it to you. Now it’s up to you muckers to sort it out, thanks.
Immediately, an American delegate suggested that the bill be chucked away without further
consideration. Gill and the remaining three British delegates shot him down, and received rather
enthusiastic backing from Austria, France, and Albania.”

Draco drank some water to assist the chowder’s journey down his throat, and Hermione took the
opportunity to contribute, because she simply had to add something of value.

“Of course, they did,” she said with gravity, “Voldemort paid them a visit after all.”

“Yes, Granger. Well done. Ten points to Gryffindor.”

(She wanted to pout.)

“Those three were followed by plenty more. Ethiopia, Nepal, Liberia, Uzbekistan, India, Bulgaria,
Yemen... Afghanistan. The majority had spoken, the bill was declared prime potential emergency
legislation material. Second reading’s tomorrow.”

“That’s, um, promising,” she mumbled.

Her chowder said, squelch.

“Did Safi seem optimistic to you?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged, “But he’s been fairly sunny and sanguine throughout.”

“Except for the whole deeply traumatised and utterly debilitated by a decades-long war thing.”

“Except that.”

She tried very hard not to make a reprehensible comparison between a decades-long war and
suffering through Theo’s chowder.

“I reckon I know exactly how he feels, now that I’m halfway through this muck,” Draco
grumbled.

Theo tried to kick him but bashed his toe against the leg of his chair instead. He yowled in pain and
Hermione stifled her laugh with her napkin.

A week since they had requested a hearing. The Wizengamot had tended to Stamp’s patent
infringement dispute, along with two other minor cases, and spent the rest of their time twiddling
their thumbs.

Women continued to wait their turn.

Hermione returned home after a frustrating day of filing and trawling through the archival
chambers because that was all there was for her to do, to find Draco standing at her kitchen door,
looking inside and shaking with laughter.

“Oh, what now,” she moaned, dropping her satchel on the sofa and rushing to have a look. She was
sure that even if her kitchen was in shambles and the entire foundation of the building was in
danger, Draco would just stand and laugh.

Something had exploded. Meat and veg shrapnel was embedded on every surface and all over poor,
shell-shocked Theo.

“Her – Hermione,” he whispered with horror, “I don’t know what happened.”

Draco was overcome with a fresh wave of mirth.

Growling under her breath, Hermione stepped inside and had the whole place spick and span with a
few waves of her wand. Then she went up to Theo and carefully pried the wooden spoon he was
clutching out of his hand. She cleaned him up as well.

“Takeaway?” she asked.

He blinked down at her as the shock melted off his face, after which he shook his head adamantly.

“No. I’m giving this another go. I have more of everything–”

“Oh, Theo. You have nothing to–”

“You didn’t taste it, alright? It was good– ”

“Explosively good,” Draco offered from the door.

“If the bloody sausages hadn’t exploded for whatever reason, I promise you, this casserole
would’ve been the best thing I’ve made so far.”

“That means absolutely nothing,” Draco interjected.

“Look, I’m sure it was very delicious, but–”

“Hermione! Please. Come on. I’ll be much more careful this time.”

He looked so pitiful. Imploring and desperate with drippy blue eyes that were half-obscured by
locks of his hair. Hermione conjured a velvet headband with a pretty bow, and after gently carding
his hair back, set it in place on his head.

“There,” she said, smiling at the ridiculous picture he made, “Now you can see what you’re
doing.”

He grinned back at her and she placed her fingers on his uncharacteristically fuzzy cheek.

“When was the last time you shaved?”

“I’m trying new things, remember?”

“Right.”

“Now off you go. I have a masterpiece to recreate.”

She shook her head and turned to leave; Draco was no longer at the door. He was back in his
armchair with History of the World and a steaming cup with what looked like her last lemon
teabag.

“God, I hope there isn’t another explosion,” she sighed as she settled deep into the sofa and rubbed
her eyes.

“Probably will be,” he replied without looking away from the book.

She wished she had some tea, as well. But the desire to venture back into the kitchen was entirely
absent.
“How was the second reading?” she asked.

He exhaled heavily – an indulgent and unnecessary show of annoyance – before closing the book
and looking her way.

“I couldn’t speak to Safi today, but he sent me a note that said it went all right. I asked Begbie –
he's Gill’s assistant – and he said there were a lot of questions aimed at Kenny and all he did was
cross his arms and stare gormlessly.”

Hermione knew the look. It was the way he had stared at her sandwich.

“Well, Gill and the others did their best to tackle them. Apparently, Kingsley’s been apprised of the
issue and he told them to support the bill no matter what. The Americans, this time backed by Italy,
Russia, and Turkey, moved to postpone the next session, but that motion was defeated.”

“So, committee stage tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s... good.”

He went back to reading. It was a funny parallel to see him so emersed in History of the World...
just the way Hermione had been so enamoured with Hogwarts: A History all those years ago.
She allowed herself thirty seconds to study the way his fingers were cradling the spine.

Then she occupied herself with case notes that were going nowhere.

Much after supper ought to be eaten, Theo emerged from the kitchen with an undeniably fragrant
casserole. And despite the under-fried sausages and the burnt onions near the bottom, Hermione
and Draco had to concede that it did actually taste rather good.

She ran in the dark; the light from the old flickering lamps in the park turned into luminescent haze
in the early morning fog. Her blood was hot, but sweat turned cold the moment it beaded her skin.
She ran fast and winter chased her. It wrapped around the weak, fading final days of November,
vice-like and parasitic; a chord of ruthless chill like it was making an unbreakable vow. Frosty dew
on the edges of the path caught the light, making two shimmering parallel lines.

There were two parallel lines and Hermione had a foot on each. One was carrying her forward, one
was stuck in place, and she felt like she was being torn in half.
No word from the Wizengamot. Instead, they got an owl from Millward’s lawyers, requesting a
meeting to put this unseemly and fallacious matter to rest. Hermione was sure that Barros would
spit in the envelope and send it back, but for whatever reason, she agreed. A meeting was set up for
the following day.

Two new cases dropped into their laps: The first involving a werewolf from Tutshill who claimed
the Ministry's suppliers had delayed his last dose of wolfsbane, and thus was responsible for
covering the cost of damages that his home had suffered. The second was a dispute between two
flatmates over owl droppings on their shared balcony.

Hermione spent fifteen moody minutes in the canteen where she ate a dry cheese sandwich while
Justin raved about the initial success of the Muggleborn Assimilation Committee. He seemed to
need her validation, as she was the venerated High Priestess of Muggleborn-kind. Not that the
praise was unwarranted – she simply wasn’t feeling very charitable at that moment. A few tables
away, Arnold and Irvin banished their trays and left, leaving Draco and Fiona to have a cosy little
lunch together.

When she finally got back to home sweet home, she breathed a sigh of relief at the clear air and the
mellow sizzling coming from the kitchen.

“Hullo,” she called out as she shed her robes and let down her hair, and “hullo, buddy,” came the
cheerful response.

She pulled out three cans of beer from her sideboard, sent one whizzing into the kitchen,
(“Thanks!”) set one on the coffee table, and took a long, soul-reviving pull from the third.

She was considering her cassette collection when Draco arrived. He zoned in on the beer even
before he’d set his attaché case down, and much like her, his first sip reeked of desperation. Maybe
he’d had a trying day as well. Maybe Fiona was dull-witted and he hated her.

“All right, Draco?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“How was–”

He veered off towards the kitchen and poked his head through the door to ask, “What are you
inflicting on us today?”

Hermione couldn’t hear Theo’s response. She turned back to face the music, and after intense
deliberation picked out Elton John, with the hope that Draco might enjoy his piano playing. Your
Song began to play, and she jumped when he spoke up right behind her.
“How does that contraption work?”

Hermione picked up a tape at random and held it out on her palm, while he came close, (um, close,)
to see.

“You see these spools?” she warbled at an inelegant pitch, “The tape wound around them is coated
with iron – ferric oxide – that can be permanently magnetised. It can be used to both record and
play sound. An electromagnetic signal is impressed onto this coating, and...”
She tapped the player to render it’s outer casing transparent, revealing its inner mechanism.
“There’s a motor in there that’s turning the spools at a fixed speed. The magnetic coating transmits
signals, and the microphone converts it into sound.”

He bent to peer at the machine and she followed. It was dangerous, but when again would she get
the chance to study his profile at such proximity, while he was focused and unguarded? She could
examine the slope of his cheek and the angle of his jaw. The sharp line of his nose and the wee dip
below his lower lip.

If I was a sculptor, heh, but then again, no–

“How?” he asked.

“How what?” She looked blankly at the player.

“How does it become sound?”

“Energy can change from one form to the other. Something like channelling magic to perform a
whole variety of things. Somewhat. I think.”

She stepped away before she lost her head. Taking a glug of beer, she perched on the arm of the
sofa, waiting for him to disengage.

He didn’t. The fascination seemed a bit Arthur Weasley-ish, but she didn’t dare voice that thought.

“Draco,” she pleaded, “What happened today?”

He sighed as he turned.

“Today was pretty shambolic. Even Safi looked peaky. Your clever ploy of distracting them with
monetary concerns didn’t really work – that matter was sorted in minutes, fixed on a sum a little
lower than what Safi had initially stipulated. Then the quibbling began. A whole lot of back and
forth, till someone decided to ask what exactly a state of crisis was in the first place. They
demanded an exact set of qualification. Which led to more quibbling. Everybody had a different
idea. They ran out of time somewhere between unignorable anarchy and oh dear, a famine.”

Hermione slumped as she absorbed his report. That was the sort of bullshit she had been afraid of;
arguments over semantics, pussyfooting, and indeed... quibbling .

“We definitely wouldn’t have qualified,” she muttered.

“Hmm?” he queried with a mouthful of beer.

“Us,” she looked up at him and quirked her mouth, “Even during the worst of it, we had a
seemingly functional Ministry. The anarchy was easily ignorable. ICW sessions carried on, and
none of the British delegates would dare to bring up Voldemort because Umbridge and Yaxley
would swallow them whole. And obviously no country was going to risk unwarranted
interference.”

Draco studied her in a far rougher manner. Not like a sculptor admiring his muse, but like a bomber
considering his target. She averted her eyes, staring at her white-knuckled grip on the beer can.

“We wouldn’t have qualified,” he agreed in a low voice.

He walked past her to his armchair, where History of the World sat waiting for him.

By and by, Theo served them perfectly palatable glazed chicken, with a soggy rocket and tomato
salad on the side.

Barros wouldn’t let Hermione sit for the meeting with Millward's lawyers. She had barely been
able to contain her furious outburst.
After trying to silently convey her displeasure to people who were too preoccupied to care, she
trailed behind Kathy and Takumi as they walked out of their office, to catch a glimpse of the
visitors so that she could get the villainish caricatures out of her head.

She stood behind the ajar door as the team of three entered: one man with an egg-shaped head, one
woman (for shame) with red hair, and a young man trailing behind them with arms full of scrolls.
Once everyone had disappeared into Barros’ office, Hermione stepped out into the foyer,
thrumming with agitation. A few moments of hesitation, followed by a little nervous bouncing, led
to her casting a tweaked and extremely potent locking charm on Stamp’s door. Then she took out
an extendable ear from her bag, crouched by Barros’ door, and slipped it through the gap
underneath.

Pzzzzzt chrrrr bzzzzzz shhhh

Thwarted.

Before she could talk herself into dismantling the privacy wards, Hermione scurried back into the
office and busied herself with the wolfsbane case, which, thanks to Lupin’s Law, was a clincher.

Sometime later, Kathy and Takumi returned, openly incensed.

“They’re offering five hundred galleons to drop the whole thing. Chuck the case, scorch the
evidence, blah bloody blah,” Kathy seethed, “We’ve sent a word to Twila; she’s on her way.”

“She won’t agree to this,” Hermione said.

“She shouldn’t.”

And sure enough, when Twila showed up, blanched and grim, she shook her head firmly at the
offer, refusing the option to take some time to think it over. Madam Barros said “Very well,” in that
enigmatic manner of hers, and instructed Takumi to let Millward’s lawyers know.

Hermione invited Twila to have lunch with her in the canteen, smiling in the most reassuring way
that she could.
They sat with bowls full of warm pumpkin soup and crusty bread, small talk quickly getting
eclipsed by their shared anger. Hermione learned that Twila, Hattie, and their friends and families
had set up camp outside Millward’s shop, hindering his aim to carry on, business as usual.

“I did the right thing, didn’t I?” she asked, “I don’t want his filthy money. I want him to burn.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed, “Yes.”

That was when she spotted Harry and another auror standing in line at the counter, collecting the
usual pile for their mates. She waved him over, thinking he might raise Twila’s spirits.

It worked beautifully. Hermione was pleased and completely unbothered by the annoyed look
Harry shot her before he left. He’d understand once she explained the whole situation to him.

“Oh, he’s even more handsome in person!” Twila gushed, “It’s a pity the papers only publish black
and white pictures. His eyes are green, aren’t they?”

“As a fresh pickled toad.”

The second half of the day dragged in the way one might be dragged when chained to the back of a
bullet train.

Millward’s lawyers owled back a thinly veiled threat that assured them that refusing to settle was a
big, terrible mistake. Barros took their letter making a vague comment about waving it around
during her casual tea and nibbles time with Ogden.
After that, they juggled the other two cases: They submitted the Tutshill affidavit, and thereafter put
their heads together to figure out if there was any discernible difference between barn owl and
snowy owl droppings, (and if not, whether there was any way to magically ascertain the source of
said droppings.)
Priori Excrementum, Hermione thought. She suggested reaching out to a muggle forensics
laboratory, and both her colleagues took her far too seriously.
At long last, when it was time to leave, their departure was unexpectedly delayed by the furious
rattling of Stamp’s door.

“What on earth?” Kathy breathed. She rushed ahead while shouting, “Are you alright, Mr
Stamp?”

Muffled howls and loud thumping emitted through the door. The rattling intensified.

Kathy tried to pull it open. Takumi tried to pull it open. Kathy cast an alohomora. Takumi cast a
finite. No surprise that nothing worked. Hermione stood mutely, doing her best to look troubled and
innocent.
Maintenance was summoned. They spent half an hour working out spells to undo whatever
mysterious, powerful enchantment had its hold on the door, but ultimately were forced to use a
reducto.

Stamp shot out and wobbled away, with the gait of one who had a dangerously full bladder. The
Maintenance team informed them that a new, privacy-charms-imbued door would take a few days
to install and that they would send Mr Stamp the bill.

“What took you so long?” Theo demanded when she stepped through her fireplace.

“Don’t ask,” she groaned, nestling into a corner of the sofa and hugging her legs.

Arms crossed mulishly, standing at the kitchen door, Theo said, “Too late. I’ve already asked. What
happened?”

Draco carefully marked his page and looked up.

So, she told them, mumblingly, staring at the rug... and bit the insides of her cheeks while they both
laughed at her. Once they were through and Theo had gone back to cook, she set her chin on her
knee and looked expectantly at Draco.

Laughter had tinged his cheeks and brightened his eyes, reminding her of life’s endless capacity for
cruelty. He was lovely and she felt a painful yearning in her soul that mingled most debilitatingly
with the anxiety over what he was about to tell her. She wanted someone, (not just someone,) to
hold her close and kiss her breathless, while telling her that everything would be fine.

She expected his face to fall, but the humour remained intact.

“The venerable delegates have agreed on a definition for state of crisis. No, I cannot tell you what
it is, because it takes up over a foot of parchment. I believe some of the more difficult members
were made to see reason by the sheer force of volume. There was another quarrel over the size of
the team of Aurors that would be despatched to employ defensive magic and lay safe passages for
rations and school-going children. And yet another about the list of potion’s supplies. The most
controversial ingredient was fucking maral root, as if that’s something anyone needs during an
emergency. But Granger, you can stop looking like I’m skinning a House-Elf over here, because
they’ve settled on a tentative final draft. If all goes well, a new bit of emergency legislation will be
passed before lunch tomorrow.”
She was silent and dazzled momentarily, for she truly had been expecting the worst. Then she
breathed out slowly and fell backwards till she could rest her head.

“Was Safi less peaky today?”

“He was. He sends a warm handshake for dear Ms Granger.”

Why did that set her off??! It had to be his voice.

Hoping he’d think she was flushing from Safi’s compliments, she quickly got to her feet, mumbling
an inane, “I’ll just...” as she left the room.

She didn’t have to just anything. However, for good measure, she splashed some water on her face,
put her stuff in the study, and changed into a warmer, more comfortable jumper.

She returned to the living room as Theo was placing fish kievs on the table. They were crumbly and
unevenly coated.

There was not even a hint of a fuss over the Tutshill incident. No court summoning, no demands of
further proof, no weeks of avoidance. The very next day a notice was sent to the reinstated
Werewolf Support Services in the Being Division, instructing them to send a representative to
survey the damage and despatch immediate compensation.
The suppliers were severely reprimanded. Someone lost their job.

Oh, look at the marvellous, dutiful efficiency of the Wizengamot.

Women continued to wait their turn.

By noon they received a notice informing them that Mr Eldon Audley Millward had filed a case of
slander against their client, the squib Twila Elliot. Triumph flashed across Barros’ face. An
inconvenient and indirect way to get Twila to court it may be, but it would still serve their
purpose.

Hermione had been obsessively looking at her watch all day. She was impatient and short because
owl droppings were the last thing on her mind. The closer the minute hand edged towards lunch,
the worse she felt. Her throat had shrunk and her stomach was rioting. It was like she was waiting
for her NEWTs results again, only with slightly larger, global repercussions.
When the hour finally struck, Hermione scurried – then slowed – then hurried down to the old
siesta room. It was pitch dark, so she summoned her army of bluebell flames, steadying and
comforting as always, and sat at the table, facing the door.
She had brought some work with her, in case the wait would be long, but after reading the same
sentence six times, she gave up trying. It was so quiet, she could hear the seconds tick by. She
started whistling, but she’d never been very good at that; she sounded shrill and wheezy. She
hummed out loud and sang the words in her head:

Little patience,
Need a little patience,
Just a little patience...

The handle of the door turned and she jumped up, nearly toppling her chair in the process. Draco
walked in, unhelpfully affectless as ever. Hermione had a question on the tip of her tongue, yet her
larynx would not cooperate. Her swollen heart went thud-thud-thud like a bass drum.

He stood halfway between the door and the table with his hands behind his back, letting the silence
and suspense become unbearably stifling.

“Out with it!” she managed to croak.

His face split into a broad, radiant grin.

“It’s done.”

Thud thud – blip – thudthudthudthudthudthud –

“...D–done...?”

“Yeah. It’s been passed.”

“Passed? Really ?! Are you being serious ?!”

He laughed, light and effervescent. “You think I’m having you on?”

“Oh. My god!”

She squealed with delight and dashed around the table, rushing towards him as her arms lifted –

His grin fell. She stopped dead.

Just two steps away, quivering on the balls of her feet, her arms slowly settled back at her sides. He
was stillness personified; his frame frozen in place, and his gaze wide, sharp, and fixed on her. It
was like he recognised her volatility, and it scared him.

For she was a balloon filled to capacity – one touch and she’d burst. Her lungs were shallow pools
and she was panting.
She rippled slightly from the precariousness of her stance and fell back onto her heels. His eyes slid
down her body and back up, after which they were somehow sharper; honed in.

The door reopened and very many people entered. One stocky figure leapt onto the bed and, just
like that, Draco was no longer in front of her. Instead, it was Safi, beaming joyously.

“Ms Granger, Alhamdulillah, we have done it!” He moved her hand up and down vigorously, as
though he had a whole lot of excessive energy to expend, “For a moment I was worried but... there
are good people, still, in this world. A team of aurors and healers are being put together as we
speak! Oh, please let me introduce you to my friends!” He stepped back and ushered the other
people forward. “They are so eager to meet you!”

She met Suraj Devkot from Nepal, Abena Bekele from Ethiopia, and Lubomir Bachvarov from
Bulgaria. They were a very friendly, very effusive bunch, whom Hermione was too dazed to fully
appreciate.

She needed to stand in an empty room. With her eyes closed. For many minutes.

More chairs were conjured, and they all sat around the table, (Safi between Hermione and Draco,)
and their chatter managed to drown out Kenny’s snores.
Safi had brought a box of fudge like sweets that were coated in crushed pistachios. He went on to
relay the past week’s events in a more detailed manner than Draco had, giving Hermione a better
idea of how tremendously galvanic and fired up the sessions had been. Bachvarov turned out to be
friends with Victor, and he said something overly-flattering about her living up to all his praise.

They left one by one, with pleasant words of farewell. Bachvarov kissed Hermione’s hand and held
onto it as he spoke – “The next time I am here, you must let me take you out for dinner. You truly
are a lovely rose, just like Victor said.”

Hermione drew her hand away, forcing out a laugh and a noncommittal hum.

Safi made her promise that they would meet again as friends, not co-conspirators, and that she
would visit Kabul to meet his wife and three children, and his mother and old uncle, and his goats.
He tried to thank her again, but she shook her head.

“You pulled this together, Mr Safi. Thank you .”

Then, it was just Draco and her and thick, tight tension. As she gathered the scrolls that she had
pointlessly brought with her, she struggled to find words that would diffuse the situation. She didn’t
expect him to do it; he never did. He kept resolutely watching her, making her skin prickle and her
fingers fumble.

One look at her watch saved her. She had less than five minutes to get back to the office.

“Oh, blast,” she huffed.

He barked a laugh. “Nothing in history has had its purpose less recognised than your watch.”

Hermione stayed facing the door but turned her head to look... in his general direction.
“Pardon me?”

“You’re always running late, scurrying about like a headless chicken.”

“I’m scarcely ever late. It mostly happens when you are invo–”

“I have never seen you look at your watch and not jump into a panic after.”

She gave him a withering look. “That’s a gross exaggeration. And I could hardly have been
checking the time while we had company – Ah! I can’t be indulging in such a braindead argument
right now.”

She resumed her egress.

“Yes, the company,” he persisted, “Bet your ego is the size of the sun by now. Did you enjoyed
being fawned at?”

Hermione wheeled around and glared. “What is your problem?”

He didn’t look like he had any problems, to be honest. Smirking superciliously, chair tipped back
on two legs, boss asleep and nowhere to be. He raised his palms in a gesture of surrender.

“No problems here, Granger.”

“Hermione,” she snapped without thinking.

“Psh. No thanks.”

She pressed her lips together. His smirk became smirkier. A three second stalemate. She made to
turn away again.

“That’s how it starts, isn’t it?”

She pulled in a long breath. “How what starts, exactly?”

“The inculcation, of course. First, it's all limpid doe-eyes and call me Hermione, and in no time at
all you’re demanding blood sacrifices at your altar.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped to the floor. He was still smirking somehow, though his tone was bitter
enough to curdle any expression.

Kenny snored like a cartoon bear.

“That’s exactly how it happened with Theo. You went from Granger to Hermione, and all of a
sudden, he’s out and about, duelling with Death Eaters even though I expressly told him to stay in
the dungeons.”

“Have you lost your mind?” she exclaimed.

“I don’t even know where it stops. Now he’s cooking for you and calling you cute little names – I
suppose he’s contractually bound to complement you at least three dozen times a week?”

“You have lost your mind! You’re–”

“I’m not getting sucked into your shit. For all I know, you’ll demand that I call you a lovely rose
next, and I might never stop vomiting.”

“You know, Draco,” she growled, “You really are the most odious little twat when you’re jealous.”

“I’m not fucking jealous!”

All at once, he was on his feet, and that obnoxious smirk was gone. They glowered at each other
across the room, while Kenny’s nap suffered a momentary disruption. He turned over, shuffled for a
bit, and the snoring resumed.

“I’m not jealous,” Draco reiterated at a lower volume.

“You are,” Hermione avowed through gritted teeth, “You are the most jealous person I’ve ever
known. You spent your entire time in school stomping around in a snit because you were jealous of
Harry. You moulded your whole bloody personality around competing with him–”

“What the fu–”

“No! You listen to me. You were jealous because Harry chose Ron, you were jealous when Theo
dared to make another friend, you were jealous that I was better at magic than you. You were
jealous over quidditch, over attention, accolades, and popularity... And now you’re jealous because
I’m getting rightful appreciation for the great deal of work I put in? Oh, I’m so sorry they were
shaking my hand rather than falling to their knees at the honour of being in your presence! How
dare anyone else get attention when Draco Malfoy is in the room. Next time I see Bachvarov, I’ll be
sure to tell him to compare you to a flower. You’re not very rose-like... so perhaps he can call you a
wilting narcissus!”

Breathing heavily, she curled her hands into tight fists and forced herself to maintain eye contact.
There was no rapid-fire retort from Draco. He gaped at her with barefaced incredulity; eyes round
and mouth slightly open.

As the silence rang on and on, she knew she had touched a nerve.

She departed without another word, dispelling her bluebells and leaving him in darkness. He was
such a brat. It should’ve been enough to extinguish her interest in him.

Barros was waiting in the office, hands on her hips, tapping her foot. Hermione got a solid fucking
earful.

So, there you have it. Even after a significant accomplishment, she was stuck with ill humour.
Things got better when she returned home, and Theo patted her back and told her he was making
celebratory (dad’s vague estimation of) paella.

Things got shit again when Draco arrived.

He had the evening’s Prophet in his hand, and he brandished it like a banner at Hermione and
Theo.

“Kenny’s vacuous, scowling mug is on the cover. The ICW’s Dark Horse makes history with pivotal
humanitarian legislation!”

He tossed it onto the coffee table, and Hermione bent forward to see the picture in question:
Kingsley, Supreme Mugwump Akingbade, and a few other senior delegates surrounded Kenny and
beamed at the camera, while Kenny scowled at something to the side.

“Nauseating,” Theo remarked, “But this is what you agreed to.”

“Yes,” Hermione sighed.

“Not to this! They’re calling him inspired. Percipient. Compassionate.”

“Are you jealous?” she sniped.

She picked up the paper and began reading as Theo went back to the kitchen, and she diligently
ignored Draco. Who, as it happened, was not in the mood to be ignored.

“I was just taking the piss, Hermione. There was no need to get so tetchy and offended.”

She scoffed from behind the paper.

...clauses of the Statute of Secrecy thus far had kept magical communities from interfering with –

“I was. You lashed out for no reason.”

That made her livid and she threw down the paper. “You lashed out for no reason. I merely
reacted.”

“In a very bitchy manner.”

“Sod off.”

He smirked, and that was it. She no longer fancied him.

“I wasn’t at all suggesting that you don’t deserve to be commended, Hermione. You do. It should
be your name in the paper.”

“I’m not bothered.”

He snorted. “So noble.”

Tucked under his other arm was a very expensive-looking bottle of elderflower wine. He walked to
the sideboard with elegant ease and took out three glasses.
She really ought not to watch him bend, now that she didn’t fancy him anymore.
While a glass floated into the kitchen, (“Cheers, thanks!”) he performed a leisurely strut towards
her, one wine baring hand extended. She accepted the glass without a thanks, because that’s what a
bitch would do, Draco.

He sneered, raised his glass, and said, “To you.”

It was delicious. In spite of herself, her eyes fluttered as she savoured the first sip. She managed to
hold back a sigh at the very least, and shot Draco a look of poison and reproach for having the
audacity to ply her with such excellent wine.

He didn’t react, because he was already deep within the pages of History of the World.

...Mr Pendleton refused to answer any questions, but it is believed that his prime motivation was an
unquenchable compassion for the plight of the magical community of Afghanistan, (that has been
caught in the crossfire between domestic insurrections and muggle conflicts since 1989,) and a
desire to ensure that no other nation suffers as Britain had during its two wizarding wars. The bill
caused a furore when presented, leading to unprecedented daily sessions for the entire week, during
which nearly every clause and provision was discussed...

Theo’s rendition of dad’s paella was shockingly splendid. Hermione googled at him, unable to find
the connection between his skills and that dish.

“Were you just pretending to be rubbish at cooking?” Draco asked, “Did you violate our ceasefire?
Oh, you have no idea what I have in store for–”

“No, you knob. I’ve been cooking for two weeks straight. I was bound to improve.”

“But,” Hermione said, “But this... this is...”

“You’re the one who’s been harping on about the merit of practice for years,” he told her.

“Well... yes...”

“It helped that there were no exact measurements involved. Robert just said to add a dash of this, a
bit of that...”

“Your dashes and bits are on point,” she smiled.

“Yes, yes. My bits are perfect.” (Hermione and Draco groaned.) “My poor neglected, forsaken
bits.”

“You just have to find some way to ruin the meal, don’t you?”

“Go to hell, Draco. I’m processing a heartbreak. Oh, Mother Morgan’s frilly petticoat. This is
sublime. Hermione you will write to Robert about this won't you? Better yet... ring him up.”

“He’ll be so proud.”
“Thank you, my dearest one. How I wish I had decided to fall in love with you instead of – Well.”

Hermione laughed, peering at him in puzzlement. “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you can
decide on.”

“Why not?” he shrugged, “We could’ve gone that way. You were definitely on the pull in the
beginning.”

Had she had food in her mouth, she would most certainly have choked.

“I was not on the pull!”

“You were. Batting those pretty eyelashes, acting all coquettishly unsure and baffled–”

“Acting?! I truly was unsure and baffled! You came out of nowhere!”

She had more than half a mind to upend his plate over his head. And Draco – who had not said a
clever word thus far – was probably loving this; basking under such unexpected validation. Even
imagining his triumphant smirk was making her blood boil. Fuck... fuck... fucking Theo.

“–coy little smiles, running hot and cold–”

“You spent so much time berating me for fancying Ron! So, which was it? Did I fancy him or was I
chasing after you?!”

“That was an obvious ploy to make me jealous.”

“Oh, bollocks!”

“Next you’ll even deny flirting with me!”

“I never flirted with you! You flirted, because that's just your way–”

“Do you think I’ve forgotten that evening when you charmingly offered to wear nice underwear
for–”

Hermione wailed. She buried her face in her hands and fucking wailed.

“That’s right,” Theo carried on, indifferent to her agony, “Was that not flirtation? Or did you often
meet blokes in the library while wearing pretty knickers for platonic reasons?”

“IsaynonsensewhenI’mfrazzled,” she moaned into her hands, wishing for immediate death... for
any one of them, really. She wasn’t picky.

“I’m sure I made a comment about marrying you at some point, and you were so eager and
enthused–”

“My goodness, Theodore. Shut up.”

She wrenched her hands away, all thunder and lightning, while he beamed at her with wicked –
downright diabolical – delight. She had no idea when he had started hating her.

A little ding emitted out of the kitchen.

“That’ll be the cake,” he grinned and left.

He had baked a cake. Bloody brilliant. With her skyrocketing blood pressure, a hefty dose of sugar
might actually do her in.
Her skin, from head to toe, was steaming hot.
Over the ringing in her ears, she could hear the steady scrape of Draco’s fork against his plate. He
was happily scarfing down paella, enjoying the dinnertime entertainment. She resumed eating.

Theo returned with a chocolate cake that had a huge crater across the middle, and a bowl of custard.
Dry cake, lumpy custard, both cloyingly sweet – thus equanimity was restored.

“I am done with cooking,” Theo declared as they dug into their pudding.

Hermione was still too peeved to speak. Draco didn’t say anything either.

“I peaked with the paella. Can only go downhill from here. Don’t you agree Hermione?”

“I don’t care.”

“That was rude! Are you sad? Did I upset you with a tantalising image of what could have been?”

She turned to him with the intention of biting his head off, but found him laughing, eyes twinkling.
Something in her snapped, and suddenly, she was laughing too. They fell about till she had tears in
her eyes.

She shoved her bowl away and said, “This is pure sugar.”

“It is!”

And they dissolved into cackles all over again.

Catching her breath, she snuck a long overdue glance at Draco. His expression was blank, and all
he was doing was methodically spooning the sugary mess into his mouth. She had avoided his
entire show of smugness and she got to witness his displeasure at her good humour.

That right there was a moment of divine justice.

They polished off the rest of the wine after dinner. The Cure played softly in the background and
Theo detailed a story about George, a toddler, his furious mother, and a faulty nosebleed nougat.
Draco read quietly.
At around eleven, Theo yawned, and made such an abrupt departure that he may as well have
disapparated.

“Bye?” Hermione called out to his back as he leapt into the fireplace.

She hadn’t even a chance to turn away before Draco strode past her, cloak in hand.

“You’re leaving, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

There was no explaining why she stood up and walked behind him. At the hearth, he faltered, and
turned to her.

“I did lash out first.”

“You did.”

She swallowed. He pulled in a long breath.

“It was...” His eyes skimmed over her face. “Uncalled for.”

“Yes.”

With that, he melted into green flames.

Hermione didn’t move. His cologne lingered in the air, mixing with ashy, floating floo powder
particles.

She stood in the empty room. With her eyes closed. For many minutes.

And when she did move, she darted to the player and changed the music to something faster,
wilder, freer.

She danced till she was breathless, breathless, breathless.

Two weeks since they had requested a hearing. Nothing had come of Millward’s accusation of
slander as yet, either.
Hermione had gone to Knockturn Alley during the weekend, to see the group picketing the shop.
Ethically, she wasn’t supposed to join them, so she wore a glamour as she handed out flasks of hot
coffee and a big tin of biscuits. Twila was as determined as ever, but Hattie was beginning to show
signs of wear and tear. Hermione understood – worry for her family took precedence, and she still
hadn’t secured another job.
The other accusers, friends, and supporters came and went; but those two stayed all through the
day. People who passed by barely spared them a glance, too concerned with their own brown
studies. Nobody paused to ask questions. One woman read a placard as she walked, but did not
come to a cold stop as she should have.

Hermione left them with empty words and a strong warming charm.

After all that, it felt sickening to spend two days attempting to mediate an argument over owl
droppings. Although, to be fair, she was sitting to the side, taking notes, while Kathy was
mediating. (It was originally meant to be Stamp’s job, but Barros’ faith in him had continued to
wane at a constant pace.)

Ellington and Speight were two young men in their late twenties, who had been sharing a flat for
three months. Their owls were called Fidget (the barn owl) and Cyrus (the snowy owl)
respectively.

“We agreed that we would clean up after ourselves! Those were your ruddy owl’s droppings all
over the balcony!”

“Cyrus only shits in a designated corner of his cage!”

“I saw him doing it! He shat on our balcony!”

“He would never! It was your ill-bred raptor!”

...And so on. Any attempt to alter their agreement to something where they cleaned the balcony on
alternate days, regardless of whose owl defecated there, fell on deaf ears. The notion that vanishing
charms were the easiest thing to do, and certainly not worth such a fuss was considered gravely
offensive.
Kathy and Hermione exchanged pained looks many times. But Speight was well-heeled, and that
was that.

The days of working on the crisis aid bill felt like a hundred lifetimes ago.

Owl droppings, she thought as she made a trip to Diagon’s owlery on Wednesday during lunch, to
send a letter to Padma.

She missed the drive, the ferment, the purpose.

Owl droppings, she grumbled as she received a response late that night.

She missed doing something valuable. She missed helping people.

Owl droppings, she blustered as she despatched another owl on Thursday morning.

She missed coming home exhausted in the best way, only to work more.

Owl droppings, she thundered as she received an affirmative word in the evening.

She missed Draco. Did he miss her, too?

Owl droppings, no more.

She had come to expect that a Hermione at the end of her tether was an eruptive thing. So even as
she heard Barros’ voice in her head, hissing words like impudent, brash, foolish, she marched on,
through the atrium and out the Ministry on Friday afternoon.

For she had a tried and tested blueprint, after all. She knew what she was doing.

She apparated onto a grassy patch amid blustery weather, and rhymed rook with brook, and moon
with noon as she trundled up the hill upon which the Lovegood House sat.
She walked along the path through the garden that was hunkering down for winter, and rued the
fact that she still hadn’t seen it in its springtime splendour. The crab apple tree was just as laden as
the last time, and Jamila Lovegood was standing under it, collecting fruit using careful severing
charms.

“Hello,” Hermione called, softly for she did not want to startle her.

Mission unaccomplished. She dropped her wand and one crab apple fell to the ground with bruising
force.

“Hello,” she replied after profuse apologies were exchange, “Yes, Xeno said he was expecting you.
Please, come in.”

They stepped into the house and, the moment she saw the painted walls, Hermione was hit with a
wave of remembrances.
Memories of the ever-present terror of war, of hallows and horcruxes, of bitterness between the best
of friends, of Theo stuck and scared, of Harry angry and hopeless, of Ron desperate and repentant,
of Tonks – round and glowing, terrified and excited – waddling down the spiral staircase.

Where – Oh.
What – Right.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she replied firmly, “Yes, I’m –”

The kitchen door opened and Luna emerged, her grin upon seeing Hermione warm, sincere, and
immediate. She absolved Jamila of the duty to take her to Xenophilius, and that was how Hermione
found herself awkwardly standing on the step below Luna, as the staircase moved upwards at a
snail’s pace.

“How have you been?” she muttered, “How was Guyana?”

“Wonderful,” Luna sighed, “We stayed in floating cabins next to a waterfall.”

“That sounds amazing. Did you encounter any of those Atar Pixies?”

“Oh, yes. An entire tribe. We witnessed a midnight ritual and saw our soulmates reflected in a pool
of opal milk.”

“Ah...” Hermione hedged. “Did you... um...”

“I’m not going to tell you who I saw, Hermione. It’s personal.”

“Right, right. Of course.”

“I’m leaving for Landes tonight. There have been ever-increasing sightings of Lou Carcolh.”

“Fascinating.”

They had arrived on the first floor, and Luna lead her down a walkway that curved along the wall.

“I miss talking to you, you know?” she said.

Hermione baulked under a rush of contrition.

“I do too, Luna. I’m... I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You were Theo’s friend first. Oh, actually,” she stopped in front of a big blue door, “That
isn’t true at all. You were my friend first. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“Erm.”

“But it’s okay,” she smiled, “I understand. Theo needs his soulmates.”

“Luna...”

She was just the purest soul, wasn’t she?

“How is he?” she asked in a small voice.

“He’s... coping,” Hermione shrugged, “The best he can.”

Luna nodded, and pushed open the door.

In parting, she said, “Take care of him. I told you – our wedding will be in five years. Don’t you
worry. And daddy’s probably by the printing press.”

Hermione ventured inside the large circular room – Xenophilius' workroom – walking carefully to
avoid the stuff that was all over the place. It reminded her of the room of hidden things. Stacks of
paper, piles of inscrutable things, models of unnameable creatures, a stone bust of Rowena
Ravenclaw...
She spotted the huge wooden printing press, creaking and humming with magic, by a round
window, and Xenophilius sitting next to it, in a patchwork armchair, resting his legs on a fluffy
ottoman.

“Ms Granger,” he greeted with a tilt of his head, “You will forgive me for remaining seated, I hope?
The changing weather has affected my legs poorly.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Hermione said, settling on the chair opposite his, “I hope pain potions
help?”

“Commercial pain potions are laced with Cipactli scales. They will slowly poison you till you die.”

“Is that so?”

He nodded gravely as he summoned a flask and two glasses from somewhere in the chaos around
them. The next thing Hermione knew, she had a huge helping of gurdyroot infusion in her hand.

“Potion brewers will never get caught because it works so gradually – anywhere between sixty to a
hundred years.”

“How can you tell if someone’s died from gradual, hundred-year poisoning, or due to natural
causes?”

“Exactly,” he averred, raising his glass to her.

Hermione took a sip the size of a dew drop.

“I’m sorry Mr Lovegood, I would really love to chat–” Not “–but I must be back at work in half an
hour. So, if you don’t mind, I would like to get to the purpose of my visit.”

“Please. Go ahead.”

“I need you to publish a story for me in The Quibbler.”

She went on to explain the Millward case, from the plight of the young squibs to the apathy of the
Wizengamot. Xenophilius listened intently, clicking his tongue with regret from time to time. And
once she was through, he simply said, “The Quibbler will always stand for justice, and boldly print
what the Prophet won’t... what the Ministry doesn’t want you to know.”

He finished his infusion, forcing Hermione to take another dew-sized sip.

“I will proudly run this story on the front page of the Quibbler’s January edition–”

“No!” she cried, “Please. This cannot wait! It has to come out this month.”

“My dear,” he said gently, “I’m afraid that is impossible. This month’s edition is going to print this
weekend . The Quibbler always comes out on the seventh of every month, and we have a trail-
blazing piece on Atar Pixies that–”

Hermione cut in again – “Please, Mr Lovegood. It’s already been two weeks since we asked for a
court date. We need sexual harassment and assault cases to be fast-tracked, to be considered a
serious crime–”

“I understand–”

“These women... they have nothing. No money, no jobs, no support system. They’re my age.
Luna’s age.”

He sighed and pressed a hand against his eyes, (Hermione vanished every last drop of her
gurdyroot infusion.)

“I can’t pay you.”

“I know. It’s fine. And I won’t be writing the piece anyway... I’m a part of their legal team. I
can’t.”

He removed his hand and peered at her.

“Please tell me I will not be sullying the name of my publication by having Rita Skeeter’s name on
it again?”

“Not at all,” Hermione assured him at once, “Have you heard of Anita Storstrand? Ex-foreign
correspondent with the Prophet.”

He shrugged. “Somewhat.”

“She’s highly respected and famously upright.”

He sniffed. “Does she know I will not be paying her?”

“Yes,” Hermione lied.

“Well. All right, Ms Granger. If you can send me the article by Monday, I will print it in this
month’s edition.”

Hermione stood up. “Thank you, Mr Lovegood. Thank you so very much. I knew I could count on
The Quibbler. Your publication has never disappointed.”

She wondered if she was laying it on thick enough, but the man smiled.

She made it back to the office seconds before she and Kathy were due for another meeting with the
owl droppings duo.
On Saturday morning, jittery and trepidatious, Hermione entered a rustic muggle coffee shop in
Uxbridge with a muffler covering the bottom half of her face and a tight grip on her bag. She
looked about the wood-and-exposed-brick interior, passing over the many occupied tables.
Delicious aromas swept her away for a bit – freshly baked bread and roasted coffee; a hint of
chocolate and cinnamon.

There was a hiss of steam, the trickle of a percolator, a man’s low chuckle...

“Hermione?”

She turned to her left and there was Parvati, smiling nervously and fidgeting with the ends of her
sleeves.

She looked so different. Her face and figure had filled out, and she was dressed very simply in a
knitted beige jumper. Her hair, while still a dark, long, and glossy sheet, was streaked with multiple
thin stripes of lavender.

“Hi,” Hermione said cautiously.

Parvati stepped forward and hugged her. Not expecting that in the least, Hermione was only able to
awkwardly pat her on the back before she pulled away, her smile even more nervous than before.

“How are you?” they both asked.

They laughed and Parvati gestured to the counter, after which the process of placing their orders
went about in silence. With a caffè latte each and a plate of shortbread, they found a large table near
the back of the room and settled. Hermione cast a quick muffliato .

She thought to take a sip before venturing into conversation, but her beverage was too hot. She
blew feebly at the foam. Parvati was still smiling nervously, waiting for Hermione to speak first.

“So,” she drew out, colouring it with all the warmth she could muster, “It’s nice to see you again,
Parvati. You look lovely.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, twisting a lavender lock, “I did this two months back, for Lav’s birthday.
You know I’ve always been pretty ace at hair charms.”

Hermione smiled thinly and nodded. She had expected Lavender to come up, but not with such
immediacy. She spread a gentle cooling charm over her cup. A few seconds later, she was able to
take a small sip.

“How have you been doing?” she asked, peering at the coffee swirls on the milky froth.

“I’m okay. Healer Asher really helped bring me out of the hole I’d dug myself into. I heard Harry’s
been seeing him as well? Oh, don’t worry,” she added with a tentative titter when Hermione looked
up sharply, “I’m not the gabby bint I used to be. I won’t go around telling anyone. I... I know better
than that.”

“I’m glad you’re doing well,” Hermione muttered, “Padma’s been singing your praises... and I’m
sure you know how rare it is for her to be sincerely impressed.”

“Oh, I know,” Parvati said with wide-eyed weightiness.

They paused to share a chuckle.

“Look, Hermione,” she sighed, “The reason I asked you to come a bit earlier is... well... I wanted to
apologise.”

Hermione reared back and stared. “Apologise?”

“Yeah. For the way I treated you back in school. I was mean and nasty. I’ve been focusing now on
being a better person... Less shallow and jealous. Because I was, by the way. Jealous. Of you.”

“You were jealous of me?!” Hermione sputtered.

“Of course,” Parvati said with a rueful shrug, “You were smarter and braver than I could ever
dream of being. You somehow befriended Harry bloody Potter, you got so pretty without even
trying, and my own sister liked you better than she liked me. You went about excelling in
everything, and not caring about what people thought because you knew you were better... it drove
me up the wall. And I took it out on you. I’m so sorry, Hermione.”

“I did care,” she admitted, “For the first four years of school, very, very few people genuinely liked
me. And even they seemed to get tired of me quite easily. While you... well, you were almost
universally liked and admired. I was jealous. So bitter and angry. Acting superior was just my way
of coping. And I am sorry, too. I was rather unkind to you as well... to you... and... Lavender. I’m so
sorry for... that she...”

“Yeah,” Parvati breathed. Her eyes were worryingly shiny.

Hermione wasn't going to mention that she was still bitter and angry a lot of the time, and that she
was just better at hiding it.

“You are brave, Parvati. Incredibly so.”

“Thank you.”

They took a much-needed breather, sipping their coffee and biting into shortbread. Parvati brushed
the corner of her eye against her shoulder. From somewhere, the same man chuckled again. Steam
hissed.

“This is an amazing thing you’re doing,” Parvati piped up by and by, “Just the sort of thing I'd
expect of you, to be honest.”

“I really appreciate your help. How did you get in touch with Anita Storstrand? Hadn’t she already
resigned by the time you started working at the Prophet?”

Parvati nodded. “Mr Cole – my boss – is a good friend of hers. He took her side while she was still
trying to reason with the editor-in-chief. You know what happened, right? She was in Moldova
when the Death Eaters took over the Ministry. She knew coming back would be a death sentence,
so she spent the time writing articles about what was going on for publications around the world...
from The States to, like, Japan or something. She moved to Oslo for a bit... Then to Chicago.
“When the war ended, she came back and said she’d continue to write for the Prophet only if they
issued a public apology for being spineless. They refused, so she left. Mr Cole kept trying on her
behalf, but even he resigned in solidarity a month back. I wanted to as well, you know... but he told
me I should stick around, gain some experience, and join their publication once they’ve got it
together.”

“They’re starting their own paper?”

"Yes. Anita’s writing a book as well, actually and–”

Parvati stopped; her eye caught on something behind Hermione. Then a woman approached their
table. They both stood up to greet her.

She had to be under five feet tall, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair and severe, square glasses set on a
round face. She shook both their hands, and said meeting Hermione was a pleasure instead of an
honour. She had a spiral bound notebook and black gel pen in her hands. Hermione liked her
already.

With perfunctory pleasantries out of the way, Parvati insisted on fetching Storstrand’s coffee for
her, leaving the other two to talk.

The first thing Hermione said was, “Ms Storstrand–”

“Anita.”

“Anita, Xenophilius Lovegood will not be able to pay you for–”

“I don’t give a fuck,” she said, waving the words away, “This story needs to be told... needs to be
shouted from rooftops. Good on you for standing up, but I hear that’s on fucking brand. And I’ve
always admired Lovegood for what he did during the wars. Better to be considered a madman than
to be craven, rotten bastards. The Prophet needs to take lessons on ethics from The Quibbler.”

“Er, yes,” Hermione hedged, trying to recover from the strong language and hoarse voice emitting
out of such a small, serious looking woman, “Parvati mentioned that you’re trying to start a paper
of your own?”

“The Weekly Sentinel,” she replied, “It’s on hold till I can get my book out of the way. I’ve seen a
fucking load of shit as a foreign correspondent. Journalism in the Magical world has an acute lack
of ethics. It’s going to be one fucking whopper of an exposé... as well as a manual.”

“Sounds smashing.”

Parvati returned with a steaming mug and Hermione took the chance to pull out a copy of the case
file for Anita’s perusal.

And no more than ten minutes later, Twila and Hattie pushed into the coffee house. Introductions
were made, and Parvati smilingly took them to the counter to order.

Once everybody was seated, Hermione picked up her cup in both hands and sat back, letting Twila
and Hattie take the reins.
George and Angelina had organised a mini quidditch tournament, consisting of seven hour-long
matches; four a side, no seekers. Hermione had no intention of going; her Sunday plan involved
pacing her flat, full of impatience and suspense, switching between beer and tea, till she hauled
herself to the Burrow for supper: Mrs Weasley's letter had given her no choice.

But earlier in the morning, just as she got home shivering and sweaty, legs shaking from her run
and arms laden with bags from the bakers and greengrocers, she received a desperate owl from
Padma, begging her to come. Tracey was dragging her along and she really, really would appreciate
having some sane company.
Another letter that she could not refuse.

Thus, she showered and didn’t put on baggy fleece pyjamas and Luna’s absurdly comfortable
werebunny slippers. Being extremely cognisant of who she would be encountering, she wore a nice
jumper, a skirt, woollen tights, and spelled the scuffs off her boots. She pulled half her hair up and
put on some earrings and perfume.

The state of her nerves went from jangled to shredded.

There was a small package among her shopping – a box of four fairy cakes that she had specially
ordered for Draco. Each was topped with a delicate narcissus made of icing. It was the most petty-
minded peace offering she had ever made, and while the idea had been to owl them to him, she was
rather easily won over by the temptation of getting to witness his reaction.

The matches were due to start in twenty minutes, and it was now or... later. Hermione was
extremely tired of waiting for things. She grabbed her bag and a coat, and flooed to the boys’ flat.

“Good, you’re here,” Draco said the moment she stepped into the sitting room.

In most cases, that would be a gratifying sentiment. However, his lack of inflection could have it go
either way. He was doing up the buckles of his flying boots, decked in fitted black joggers and a
long-sleeved black tshirt. His broom rested against his chair and a coat and shirt were draped over
its arm, the latter with PILLOCKS printed boldly across the back. He saw her frowning at it.

“My team. The Pillocks.”

“Apt.”

He looked bored by the comment and stood up, collecting his things. Hermione’s hands spasmed
around the box of fairy cakes.

“There’s also the Clotpoles, the Lardarses, the Numpties, the Bawbags, the Jebends, the
Spunktrumpets, and the Ronalds.”
“Your idea?”

“George’s.”

“Why is it good that I’m here?”

He pushed his head through the shirt. She had to remind herself that undressing was sexy, and not...
that. Not how long and firm his arms were, nor how his torso stretched taut, nor the way his hair
was mussed in the process. He shook it back into place with his fingers.

“Theo’s attempting to drown himself in the shower,” he said.

“Why?”

“He’s terrified that Luna’s going to be there today. He wants to stay back, but also doesn’t want to
disappoint George, and leave the Jebends with one player short. He’s such a valuable addition to
any team. Nobody else is quite as good at being completely useless.”

“Oh. But–”

“And I’m playing in the first round, so I don’t have the time to coax and cajole. He’s all yours. So
long.”

He made long strides towards the fireplace. Hermione panicked.

“Luna’s in Landes.”

“All right.”

He barely faltered. She gave chase.

“Yes. She told me. While I was at her house on Friday.”

He stopped and she walked over to stand between him and the floo.

“Why were you at her house?” he asked.

“I’d gone to see Xenophilius.”

“Why?”

“Well, I–” she began, before cutting herself off.

“What?”

She raised her chin. “You’re cagey all the time, Draco. It’s my turn now. You’ll see soon enough.”

Clearly annoyed, he was poised to step around her. She quickly thrust the box out to him.

“Here.”

“What’s this now?”

“See for yourself.”

An impatient twitch of his brow.

She watched him lift the lid with bated breath. At first, there was only a laden, calm-before-the-
storm nothingness. Then he began to laugh.
She smiled, close-lipped and cautious, but when he carried on for much longer than expected, she
began to wonder if he was laughing at her.

He pulled his wand out his coat and flicked it – a standard summoning charm. He kept staring
down at the cakes, bemusement and light laughter persisting, till a small golden box zoomed
through the room and into his hand.

“For you,” he grinned. His eyes were dancing; completely different to how they were when she first
arrived.

Inside the box were six chocolate roses, (so beautifully formed that she would feel bad about eating
them,) coated with shimmering pink dust.

She laughed gaspingly and the beam she threw up at him felt half-crazed. He took it in carefully,
caught between a wry smile and a chuckle.

She blinked. When she opened her eyes, he was holding a fairy cake in his fingers and proceeded to
take a large bite, smearing icing on the corner of his lips. His tongue shot out to collect it, dragging
across his upper lip.

If her core tightened any further, it would cease to exist.

He kept his gaze steadily on her as he went in for a second bite. Icing just under his cupid’s bow –
he scraped it away with a press against his lower lip.

“Good?” she murmured.

“Hmm.”

The notes of that hum sent goose pimples down her spine. His jaw moved as he chewed, and she
blindly reached into her own box to pick out a chocolate. She couldn’t help but avert her gaze when
she pushed it into her mouth, no more than she could help snapping it back immediately after.
Butterflies exploded in her stomach and dark chocolate and raspberry exploded in her mouth.

He smirked. “Good?”

She could only nod.

There it was. Bygones were bygones.

She was so far gone. Such a goner.

“Best of luck,” she blurted out, “For the match. Matches.”

He snickered as he polished off the last morsel, swiping residue off with his thumb and then licking
it .

“Thanks, rosy.”
He left and she shuddered palpably, stumbling backwards till she found an armchair to collapse
into. Her heart was on a rampage, and every pore of her skin, every nerve ending, every stuttering
pulse in her chest, mouth, wrists, neck, and between her legs was longing pleading yearning
ravening to be touched. To be ravaged.

She stared hard at the chocolate roses till they blurred, desperately attempting to quell the insanity.
It was quite some time before she was able to get up and tend to Theo.

Theo hadn’t needed to hear more than “Luna won’t be there” to happily don his JEBENDS shirt.
But halfway down the hall he stopped and demanded to know how she was convinced that Luna
wouldn’t be there, which led to a proper, long interrogation. It was only after Hermione had relayed
her meeting with Luna thrice, and insisted that No, she did not notice if Luna’s eyes were more
ashy than silvery, did Theo allow them to floo to the Burrow. By then, the first match had ended,
and the Bawbags were prepping to face the Numpties.

Theo went off to join his team, and Hermione, predictably, sought out the brightest head of hair.

She found him standing by the refreshments table, holding a bottle of pumpkin juice and laughing
with fucking Fiona. Among everyone present, he was the only one Fiona knew, so he must’ve
invited her to watch him fly and get all ruffled and sweaty and rubicund.

He was going to destroy Hermione with all the contrary, overwhelming emotions he kept pulling
out of her.

She found Padma, Parvati, and Tracey sitting to one side with team Ronald, (Ron, Harry, Dean, and
Seamus,) and she marched up to them. Ignoring the usual, awful way in which Seamus was trying
to flirt with Parvati, and the unusual way in which Dean’s nails were painted black and red,
Hermione looked straight at Ron and said, “You better win this thing.”

Ron grinned. “That’s the idea.”

She pressed on. “You need to hammer everyone else. Crush them.”

“All well, Hermione?” Harry asked with a worried, penetrating look.

“Yes.”

The others were amused and bolstered by her words. Guffawing, Ron pulled a spare shirt out of his
rucksack and offered it to her.

“How would you like to be an honorary Ronald?”

 “I would love that.”

It was his size; ridiculous on her. As long as her skirt. But she didn’t care about looking nice
anymore. She pulled it on and settled on the grass next to Padma, falling into a discussion about the
latest developments in her potion. She didn’t let her eyes or mind wander.

An hour later, when it was time for the Jebends versus the Clotpoles, Hermione looked out to watch
Theo kick off. He had Oliver Wood on his side, who would hopefully be able to balance out his
terribleness. But then again, the other team had George and Alicia.

There were plenty of people around whom she didn't recognise, or only knew by name. She took
note of each and every one, till just two remained. The backs of her eyeballs itched with the
irresistible desire to check on Draco. She looked at him. Time slowed. He was looking at her.

Chapter End Notes

1. Your Song by Elton John

2. Patience by Guns N' Roses
3. Lou Carcolh: A large, slimy, snail-like serpent from French folklore.

An insider's scoop - What Hermione did not want you to know was that the song she danced to
was Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) by The Buzzcocks.

ARTWORK:
Draco licking icing off his thumb by Bookloverdream
 Seventy-Nine
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The sky was mercilessly overcast and the wind was something awful, but Hermione stood vigil by
an open window with unflinching determination. There was a piece of toast in her hand – cold and
tough – that she was nibbling on when she remembered to. The tip of her nose could fall off and
she wouldn’t know.

At last, when the clock read half past seven, an owl came to a fluttering perch on the window sill.
She removed The Quibbler from its leg, and it made off with her knut and toast.

She carried it with her to Draco’s armchair, set the magazine on her knees and stooped over it, keen
to absorb every word.

The article spanned five pages, and right from the opening lines, displayed Anita’s expertise. She
wasn’t even a presence in the piece, completely equitable and purposed to only report, yet the depth
of research gave away her discernment and sensitivity. There was no bid for pathos for it was not
needed. She had spoken to people around Knockturn, and people who had business dealings with
Millward, (how she’d managed to get all those people to talk to her was a mystery,) and presented a
complete history of Millward and his various indiscretions. There was a picture of him included.
Hermione was finally able to put a face to the brute.
He was a man anywhere between thirty and fifty. Average build, average height, even features,
average hair, parted to the side. He was the vague, unremarkable image your mind might conjure if
you thought the word man, in a very general sense. Not someone you’d look at once, if you passed
him on the streets.

But above everything, the spotlight shone on Twila and Hattie; on Emily, Hanne, Mariam, and the
two who wished to remain anonymous. Anita really expounded on their stories, on their struggles.
Which led to perhaps the only notable ploy that she had employed: A little poke at barely healed
wounds from the war. She pointed out the way squibs were disregarded and ostracised, and claimed
it was reminiscent of the Muggleborn Register.

Hermione sat back and stared into space, shivering as icy breeze kept sweeping in through the still-
open window.

Finally, she waved her hand and it shut with a snap. The glass reverberated.

She rolled up the magazine and shoved it into her satchel. On her way to the fireplace, she snagged
a chocolate rose from the box sitting decorously on her coffee table.

The morning went by. Ellington and Speight didn’t show up for their fourth session of negotiation,
forcing Hermione to pen one of the barmiest letters she had ever written. She put in a scintilla of
labour for Stamp when he approached her with a Managerial disagreement of some sort. (If he even
once took on a meaningful case, she might’ve been shocked into actually helping.)

He came to collect just before lunch, and fumed and spluttered at her paltry effort. She sat back and
listened disinterestedly, trying to arrange her features into a Draco-esque expression of apathy.

After a few moments, Takumi very loudly asked, “Are you unable to put together a simple case, Mr
Stamp?”

“How dare you!” Stamp rounded on him furiously.

But Takumi wasn’t looking at him. He was staring pointedly at the door. Where Madam Barros was
standing.

Oh, grand.

Hermione leaned forward with anticipation. Stamp blanched like he was looking at a Boggart.

“M-Madam Barros! I-I– I’m–”

“Get back to work, Julien,” she spat dangerously.

He scarpered.

Barros turned to Kathy. “Why hasn’t that ridiculous owl matter been dealt with?”

She lingered for some reason, asking questions for much too long. She demanded to see a copy of
the letter Hermione had sent, pursing her lips as she read it. Perhaps she didn’t appreciate the
phrase faecal fowl-up. She departed with a disapproving look, and Hermione made her way to the
canteen, hoping those tiny quiches were on the menu.

Instead, she saw something even more welcoming.

The Quibbler. Here and there – at least ten copies, by her rough estimation – being waved about,
poured over, and passed around.
On her way to the counter, she walked by a table where a group of four were converged around the
article, picking up the words horrific and unbelievable. Her scan of the room had made her aware
of the fact that Draco was sitting near the back, and she did not look there again. Just as she had
collected a sandwich and some packaged pudding, a man with a long droopy moustache waylaid
her. She knew him to be a part of the barrister Allan Hoggard's team.

“You’re with Barros, aren’t you?” he asked, straight up.

“Yes.”

“This Millward case is yours, isn’t it?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

Hermione carried her lunch up to the office and ate it up in tiny, neurotic bites, knowing it would
only be a matter of time before –
Kathy burst into the room, flapping multiple copies of The Quibbler frenetically.

“Have you seen this?!” she screeched.

“What?” Hermione asked, trying to arrange her features into a Luna-esque expression of
innocence.

“There’s a whole stonking article about Millward in The Quibbler! Full of interviews with all the
girls and – Did you know?” she asked Hermione wildly.

“I–”

“You’re friendly with Twila! Did she give you any hint that this is what she had planned? Oh,
Madam Barros is going to flip!”

She exited just as she had entered – with a burst – leaving Hermione with a magazine that she
pretended to be absorbed in and astounded by as Takumi came in.

Kathy returned sometime later, her panic whittled down to a daze. She said, “Barros has gone to
meet Ogden, in case the Wizengamot thinks this was her doing.”

“Will they think that?” Hermione asked lightly, dragging her eyes across page two.

“Of course, they will! They’ve been looking for a reason to sack her for ages! She was only
brought her into the fold in the hope that it would tame her.”

“They won’t sack her,” Hermione said. Kathy could be so irritatingly short-sighted.

“Did you hear what I said?” Kathy quavered, “They’ve been looking for–”

“This piece is going to spread like wildfire. It will generate a great deal of outrage. How do you
think it will look if the Wizengamot kicks out the one woman who was supporting the cause?”

Hermione could sense Kathy and Takumi watching her. She turned the page.

And sure enough, when Hermione made a trip to the loo around four, the women she encountered
just outside had magazines clutched in their hands. She saw Darnell from the admin shuffling down
the corridor, with his nose buried in the magazine. The receptionist at the DDL had a copy at her
desk.
Barros never returned, even after it was time to knock off, and her three researchers lingered for
half an hour. After exchanging unsure looks, they finally decided to call it a day. In the lift, the
other late workers and dalliers were throwing around quotes from the article.

When Hermione was back in her flat, she rushed to the same window to collect the small pile of
correspondence that lay there. A letter from Parvati (Subject: General excitement,) and one from
Twila (Subject: Simmering Optimism,) and one from Anita (Subject: Not half fucking bad, is it?)
In the most feeble attempt at rallying, the front page of the evening’s edition of the Prophet, also
covered the Millward case. Of course, it lacked first hand interviews, and it had most painfully
sited The Quibbler as its source, but it had included a picture of the outside of Millward’s shop. It
must have been taken just a few hours prior, because goodness, there was a crowd present.

Hermione could not muster any excitement, optimism, or satisfaction. She thought she would have
a drink, and a half-serving of The Hungry Zowou’s perfect fried rice to inspire some feeling. Then
the galleon in her pocket burned, and she sighed.

It had burned the day before as well, and she had replied with a weak excuse of exhaustion and
head pains, before hiding away in her bedroom lest Theo decided to barge in and check on her. His
message today was a lot less flexible –

Come for dinner OR ELSE.

And while his threats were as frightening as the squeals of a pygmy puff, Hermione didn’t want to
risk a terrible allergic reaction by disappointing him twice in a row. Thus, she dutifully slipped into
something a little more casual and plodded through the fireplace to his flat. She prayed to sodding
Theo as she was shooting through the network with her eyes closed tight, that Draco wouldn’t be
there.

She landed in an empty sitting room, made a little moue at it, and ventured out into the hall. She
peeked into the empty terrace, peered down at the closed doors of their bedrooms, then darted
towards the kitchen. Theo was there, whistling as he watched something boil.

“I thought you were done cooking,” she called from the door.

He looked over at her and beamed. “I am. But these are beautiful pears from the Weasley orchard
and Robert’s sent me instructions on how to poach them.”

“I see.”

There was a distinct lack of fragrance in the air.

“How’s your head?” he asked.

“Better,” she shrugged, and turned away to sit at the table.

Theo slid into the chair next to her. “Where the hell did you run off to on Sunday?”

“Went home. Wasn’t feeling well.”

He was looking at her in that I can see through you sort of way, but she wasn’t going to succumb.
How was she supposed to tell him that catching Draco’s eye across the lawn had hit her like a
summoning charm? That before she knew it, she had scrambled to her feet propelled by some
burning impulse that was telling her to go to him, go to him, go go go –
Then Fiona had tugged on his arm and pushed half a cauldron cake into his hand and Hermione had
veered around with dizzying celerity, wandering blindly till she found someone to stand with.
How could she tell Theo, who was looking so concerned, that she had spent hours witnessing the
strange friendship that had blossomed between Mr Weasley and Justin, and then a few more hours
bouncing between Harry, Ron, and Padma, all the while feeling like her blood was full of splinters?
How could she admit that the moment the Lardarses claimed their victory, she scurried over to Mrs
Weasley, making excuses of extreme exhaustion and light-headedness, (promising to be there next
week,) and ran back home? How – how – could she tell him that she had pathetically, repugnantly,
stood numb and shivering on her balcony and cried?

“Are you okay, Hermione?”

“Told you, I’m better now.”

She shifted slightly and shook her hair forward. He was still, like he was puzzling something out.

“You left me,” he said eventually, “All by myself.”

“There were nearly forty people there,” she scoffed.

“People, yes. But there were no Hermiones.” He offered her his most endearing smile. “And
George was too busy with all those extra lugs from his year, and Seamus was tying himself into
knots for Parvati, so I was stuck with Draco and that Vince-and-Greg bint.”

“Who’s that?”

“You know. That woman from his department who follows him around, stroking his ego and
laughing at his jokes. Vince and Greg rolled into one.”

Hermione stared down at her hands. “She’s a lot nicer than those two.” And better looking.

“Just as thick, though.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“They bored the hell out of me. She made Draco boring, even after losing at quidditch, when he’s
supposed to be so entertainingly surly and shirty. So, I wandered off – tried to help Molly cook but
she chucked me away after I ruined the carrots. Fucking carrots. Carrots are my nemesis.
Hermione, when you’re head of the Wizengamot and Minister for Magic, I need you to outlaw
carrots, alright?
“Anyhow, spurned by everyone’s self-declared mummy, I found myself caught in Fleur's web. I
became her errand boy, fetching her cushions and tea and potions and food, while Bill rubbed her
feet and Ron alternated between heating and cooling charms, as she demanded. Second time around
a sprogged-up bird, and it wasn’t any easier.”

He shook his head ruefully, and she knew it was all an effort to cheer her up. She pushed out a
laugh and jostled his shoulder, and he faux-glared at her, seemingly for her lack of empathy.

“What would you like for dinner?” he asked.

“Something warm and comforting.”

“A culinary hug.”

“Precisely.”

“Consider it done.”
She sighed to herself once he had gone, and stared emptily at the pot within which the pears were
simmering. The sound of a low boil was soothing, as was the steam curling out of the pot, and she
got a bit lost in them; till she was jarred by the sound of approaching footsteps.

Draco came to a stop at the doorway.

“Evening,” he drawled.

“Hello,” she mumbled, and turned back to the bubbling pot.

“I know why you’d gone to the Lovegood Asylum now.”

“Hurrah.”

She sensed him moving, and suddenly his arm, encased in dark green, was blocking her view. He’d
rested his hand on the table and was looming over her, customary smirk in place. He was fresh out
of the shower again, slightly flushed, hair damp, smelling mouth-wateringly good. Much too close.
She had to look up and tilt back to meet his eye.

“You little rabble-rouser,” he said, “Been a bad girl again, haven’t you?”

Hermione died.

The end.

From beyond the grave she rasped, “Erm?”

“Getting a bit too fond of causing a stir?”

“It’s a diverting hobby,” she replied in a deceased manner.

He chuckled and leaned down a bit. “I assume things are going exactly as you wished them to?”

She huffed a dismissive, “We’ll see.”

“Why so grumpy, Granger?”

“I’m not grumpy.”

She was almost certain his eyes were gliding across her throat. They burnt her. He must’ve been
able to hear her skin sizzle . How was it possible to be this attracted to someone?

“Are you upset that your team lost the other day? You should’ve known better than to support the
Ronalds.”

“You Pillocks lost as well.”

“We did,” he grinned.

Needing a break from his face, she found herself staring at his hand, resting casually on the table.
What would he do if she stroked his fingers with hers?
“Why did you abscond? Theo was insufferable, rifling through bushes, looking for you.”

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

“What happened?”

“Headache.”

Please take a step back. Please don’t.

He nodded sagely. “That’s what you get for wearing Weasley’s clothes.”

“Right.”

She rolled her eyes and they landed back on his face. He was regarding her like one regards a small
animal attempting to perform a clever trick, but failing.

“If you had kept it on any longer, you might have died. Painfully. Covered in oozing sores.”

“I slept in it, actually,” she snapped.

The effect was immediate. His face scrunched into a grimace.

“I’ve worn Ron’s clothes plenty of times," she added, "And look – still alive.”

He pushed away from the table. “I did not need to know that.”

She crossed her arms and, now that the path to the pot was clear again, went back to watching it
simmer.

He walked out of the kitchen. His footsteps faded into nothing.

So many things faded into nothing, leaving behind wretched phantom imprints that cannot be
forgotten or looked past.

Approaching footsteps sounded once more, and Draco was back at the door, jaw firmly set.

“Are you staying for dinner?”

She squared her shoulders and glared. “Yes.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“...”

“A drink, Hermione. A beverage. Alcohol in a glass.”

“...Yeah. Er, I–I’d like that.”

“All right.”

He left again. Hermione let her shoulders relax with a heavy exhale.
Maybe he was insane. That was the thing. That was what his indefatigable aloofness and his
constantly shifting disposition were hiding. He was simply, completely bananas. Bonkers.

Much Madness is divinest Sense –

To a discerning Eye –

Hermione’s discerning eye twitched.

Draco and Theo returned together, the former bearing drinks and the latter a big bag of food. And
while the latter got busy with the pears, the former sat right across from her, and pushed a
beautifully cut tumbler full of amber liquid her way.

When she said thanks , his smile made her want to crawl across the table. Who was she to call
anyone insane?

With the syrup set to reduce, Theo joined them at the table and told Hermione to recount how The
Quibbler article came about.

“The whole story, mind you. Draco hasn’t heard it yet. From the beginning, please.”

“And the beginning would be my journey from the Lovegood’s sitting room to Xenophilius’
study?”

“But of course.”

She told the tale. All through she wished that Draco would take just one second to look impressed.

They went for a second drink each. Ate big bowls of minestrone soup. Theo told them about the
soon-to-be-launched Tufty Toffees, that made your nose hair grow down to your chin. Draco said
he’d finally be going to Kabul the next morning, to oversee the implementation of Crisis Aid.

Hermione knew there were a few things that people, without fail, lapped up with insatiable glee.
Among those were salacious gossip, twisted, gruesome crimes, and tales of someone else’s
downfall. And when two or more came together, it gave outlet to people’s enthusiasm for being
outraged in the least taxing manner possible. It was a tool that had been used and abused through
the ages.
The morning’s Prophet bore an enormous picture of Millward’s shop, and the throng outside had
swelled even more. These were the people who were willing to do a little more than the bare
minimum. The rest sent letters.
Letter after letter.
Demanding letters, angry letters.
Smoking red howlers.

(And then they went on with their days.)

The letters were tucked inside paper plane memos and sent whizzing through the Ministry. The
internal post office was overworked in a way it hadn’t been since Voldemort’s return had been
confirmed. (Perhaps that was a hyperbole, but it was what Hermione overheard in the lift on the
way back from lunch.) It carried on all through Wednesday, a day in which all Hermione did was
send a letter of her own, to Ellington and Speight: Hello. Please come. We’re so desperate to hear
more about your respective owls’ toiletry habits.

At the end of the day, she witnessed a blur of purple robes tear down the atrium while a shrieking
howler chased it all the way to the fireplaces.

The next morning was no different. She heard of letters that had made their way up to the holy
sanctum of level one. If Kingsley was to find out that she was the reason his peace was being
disrupted again...

She wrote to Ellington and Speight: Wotcher. Let’s meet, eh? It will be a HOOT.

For lunch, she wanted to see the brassbound members of the Wizengamot standing in a line, being
ruthlessly destroyed by a barraging of thunderous howlers. A re-imagining of The Third of May
1808.
But as she stepped into the foyer, Madam Barros’ door flew open, and her voice rumbled out from
within the office – “Granger.”

Groaning internally, Hermione spun around and shuffled into the room.

Barros had the most eclectic wardrobe in the world – barring Luna. However, unlike Luna, Barros’
clothes were always tasteful, elegant, and free of grotesque hellspawns. That afternoon, she was in
two-toned silk, that shifted from rust to pink.

“Don’t sit,” she said the moment Hermione stepped in, “I want this to be quick, so I expect you will
spare me your lies and dithering.”

What a menacing opening act! Move over witches in the desert place – make way for the decorated
witch behind a Ministerial desk.

“I had a spontaneous meeting with Ms Elliot last evening. She’s a bright girl. Very spirited.
Inordinately fond of you, and perfectly evasive when necessary.”

Hermione liked Barros’ earrings. A cluster of cat’s-eye stones, dangling above her shoulders.
“Ms Norwood on the other hand is a loquacious one. Rather quick to open up. It seemed she
couldn’t help herself when she told me that she’s so thankful to Hermione Granger for putting them
in touch with Anita Storstrand.”

Rust to pink, rust to pink, rust to pink as Barros crossed her arms and adopted an adamantine stare.
Hermione’s brain was silent. Smart bugger read the room and remembered the utter and
heartbreaking stupidity of words.

“Do you know the definition of the word team , Hermione Granger?”

Noun or verb?

“Do you think running off, doing things behind your colleagues’ backs, and possibly jeopardising
all their hard work is something a good team player would do?”
Hermione’s commitment to silence was a bit too strong, for Barros felt it necessary to bark out an
angry, “Answer me, Hermione Granger!”

Why did she use her whole name like that, in such moments? If it was some sort of powerplay,
Hermione didn’t get it.

“I was going to tell you,” Hermione replied, “Once we got a court date.”

“You were so sure about getting a court date?”

“Yes. I suppose we have about a year or so more of the Ministry actually caring about rectitude and
its reputation.”

“So, why wasn’t I made privy to your scheme?”

"I didn’t want to take any risks, in case your esteemed colleagues performed a sleight of
veritaserum.”

“Is that what you think about the honourable Wizengamot?”

Hermione let silence relay her answer.

Barros curled her lip. “People have allowed you to get away with too much, Hermione Granger.”

Keeping a hold on silence was, all at once, a struggle. Fuck, she was sick of being reprimanded like
an entitled child, like she hadn’t nearly lost her life struggling to get where she was. She held her
tongue but couldn’t control her expression, and felt herself glower.

“How do you know Kenneth Pendleton?”

“I don’t know him,” she replied much too quickly.

Shock kicked anger’s arse.

“He certainly seems to know you. You see, I do not believe Crisis Aid was his doing. He’s an
obstreperous fool and entirely inept. I went to speak to him about it and he was belligerent, as
expected. Told me to go tend to my tumbleweed doll. That can only be describing you.”
“Lots of people know who I am,” she scowled.

“I work with the International Magical Office of Law, in an advisory capacity. You know this,
right?”

“Yes.”

Hermione’s eyes found the tiny dent on Barros’ desk once again. I dub thee the Dint Of Doom.

“It grants me some special privileges. I asked to see a copy of the initial bill, as presented to the
ICW, and they were happy to oblige. It’s a painfully researched bit of legislature – more long-
winded than anyone with any sense would dare to present to the hotheads in the ICW. Quite a bit of
it, I imagine, was influenced by muggle law. If I had to sum it up in one word, I’d say it was...
overeager .”

Hermione feared that if she opened her mouth, she might squeak like a mouse that got its tail
caught in a trap.

Silence! calm, venerable majesty –

A dash of deep plum nudged the edge of her vision, as Barros pushed an envelope towards her.

“I have already informed our client; the Wizengamot has fast-tracked her case. The hearing will be
tomorrow morning, at ten-thirty a.m. sharp. Are we prepared?”

“We’ve been prepared for weeks,” Hermione mumbled in a strangled tone.

“Let your colleagues know.”

“Okay.”

“At once.”

“Yes. Er, yeah. Thank you. I’ll... go.”

When Hermione had stepped out and halfway closed the door, Barros called out her full name
again. She paused at the threshold, peeking over the side of the door, catching a strange look on the
woman’s face that chilled her blood.

“Well done.”

What?!

“Thank you,” Hermione gasped and closed the door with a little too much force.

Holy shit. She stayed in the foyer, hands pressed against her chest, keeping her heart from bursting
out. If she had been attached to an ECG machine, it would have melted. She thought she might’ve
been having some sort of systemic cataclysm – multi-organ upheaval.
Her method of dealing with authority had always been so straightforward. Work hard, impress,
receive praise, (repeat infinitely.) Simple. It hadn’t failed her, unless the authority in question was
inherently hateful; which was what Hermione had decided Madam Barros was.
But she had said well done, hadn’t she? She had actually said that? Well done??!
Hermione unstuck her feet and went into her office, only to find it empty and remember that it was
still lunchtime. So she wound up in the canteen, grabbing a wrapped bundle off the pile labelled
fish finger sarnies while looking around dazedly for somewhere to sit.

“Looking for a table?” Ernie asked, appearing next to her.

“Oh, no. Working lunch, I’m afraid.”

Once again, she ate at her desk, nibbling neurotically.

When her colleagues showed up, she jumped up and almost shouted the news.

Though they had, as Hermione had told Barros, been prepared for weeks, the blaring, terrifying
prospect of actuality had an unsurprisingly unnerving effect on their team. They decided to go over
every little thing – statements, their list of witnesses, questions for each witness, Anonymity
Orders, evidence...

They sat till after six, and even after, as they left the DDL, they kept up a perfervid discussion.
They conferred in the lift, and reviewed as they walked down the atrium. Once Takumi had leapt
into a fireplace, Hermione and Kathy carried on deliberating.

“The only thing left now, is to ensure that Jade and Petronella are sufficiently glamoured,”
Hermione said.

Kathy nodded a tad madly. “The admin should have put somebody up to it... but it doesn’t hurt to
make sure. I’ll come early tomorrow and see that it’s done...”

Hermione had something more to add, but it fell and echoed in the wells of silence.

Draco was making his way down the atrium. He was in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up,
khaki trousers, and his usual dragonhide boots, looking like he was returning from some
glamourous archaeological expedition. Kenny, Arnold, and a man she didn’t know were close (and
superfluously) behind him.

Kathy momentarily glanced over her shoulder, and turned back to Hermione.

“Do you think you could come a bit earlier tomorrow as well?” she asked impatiently, “We can go
over the whole thing once, before Madam Barros gets here.”
“I’ll be there,” Hermione agreed, struggling to keep her gaze from wandering.

By the time Kathy collected floo powder and left, the other team had reached the fireplaces.
Hermione looked at Draco, and he looked at her fleetingly, before turning to his companions and
saying words of farewell. Two said goodbye in return, one said humph.

Then it was just Hermione and Draco in the empty atrium, under a ceiling of false stars.

She began, “Back from–” And quickly stopped.

“Go on,” he commanded, looking as imperious as he sounded.

“No.”

“I’ve had to deal with the most vexing arsemongers. I’ve had to scale mountains. Are you going to
deny me a simple pleasure?”

“Back from Kabul then?” she recited dutifully, without missing a beat.

“No.” He grinned.

It was a disarming, exhausted grin. His nose was a little pink – sunburnt perhaps – and his hair was
stiff with dust. He hiked up his holdall as it threatened to slip off his shoulder. Right shoulder, right
hand. His left forearm was well covered with his cloak.

“You look spent,” she said.

“As I mentioned,” he replied drawlingly, “I’ve had to scale mountains. Safi decided to show me
around the wizarding settlements in Kafiristan.”

“That sounds brilliant,” she muttered.

“It was.”

She nearly humphed like Kenny. Instead, she asked, “How is Safi?”

“He’s well. Sends you his regards.”

“Did you meet his family?”

“Yeah. His wife is lovely. His kids are quiet, which is all I ask, really. His uncle is a sot. His mother
is the Dark Lord’s last remaining horcrux. His goats belong in the seventh circle of hell.”

She laughed. “How did the goats wrong you?”

“Have you heard the sound they make? Fucking horrendous. And they’re constantly shitting.”

Laughing some more, she shook her head at him, while he reached into his holdall and pulled out a
paper bag. Her laughter petered out and she stared at it.

He held it out to her. She accepted; heart in her throat.

“The box of assorted nuts and dry fruit is from Safi.”

“And the other thing?”

He smirked.

The other thing was a thick, solid slab, wrapped in newspaper. The paper itself caught her attention
at first: She assumed the language was Dari, and it had a picture of robed figures casting shield
charms as a group of small children watched.
Then she peeled it away, revealing an elaborately carved wooden tablet.

“It’s the Nuristani style of woodcarving,” Draco said, “The method and symbols are exclusive to
the area, and have been passed on from one generation to the other.”

The carving was a mixture of bold geometric patterns and delicate latticework, forming a beautiful
harmony. And dotted all over, (with a very precise spacing in between,) were pinwheel flowers,
embedded alternatively with turquoise and carnelian.

“It’s gorgeous.”

“Reminded me of your ballerina painting.”

She could see why. The flowers looked like whirling tutus, as seen from above. Degas might have
picked the pigment straight from their stones.

“You have quite an eye,” Hermione said, tracing a flower with her finger.

“I have two, actually.”

She gave him a look from under her eyelashes, hoping it said that was a piss-poor joke, and not I
adore you.

“I’ve been told they’re rather distinct.”

She looked down again. “What idiot told you that?”

Whatever he meant to say was swallowed by a yawn. He pressed his index finger and thumb
against his eyes and muttered, “Fuck me.”

When and where?

Out loud she said, “You should get an early night.”

“Plan to.” He yawned again.

She watched him floo away and stood in the ensuing silence. Silence that wasn’t a vehicle for
things unsaid, but silence that crowded around her and smothered her with her own thoughts.
She imagined Draco stepping into the sitting room. It was unlikely that he had procured any alcohol
from Afghanistan, so he wouldn’t go straight to the liquor cabinet. He would wander out into the
hallway, and run into Theo who’d popped out of the kitchen on hearing him. He would give Theo
his gift, tell him he didn’t give a fuck about dinner because he’d already eaten, and then drag
himself into his room, yawning.

Her own room, her home, awaited her. She discarded everything but the woodcarving the second
she arrived. The salon wall required some rearranging because she wanted to hang it right on top of
the Ballet Dancers, and once it was done, she stood back and admired the way they complimented
and conversed with each other.

She toed off her shoes and imagined Draco doing the same. She imagined him chucking away his
cloak, and setting down his holdall – carefully, because there were still more presents inside. One
for his mum, certainly. One for Fiona.
No – ugh – shh –
She saw him stretch... like she was doing... pulling burnt out muscles. Like her, he also padded
towards the bathroom, keen on a blistering hot shower.

His bathroom would be nothing like hers. It would....... it was exactly like hers.

Draco unbuttoned his shirt and left it at that. The pale column of his exposed torso danced
tauntingly just under the line of her vision.

“A little help?” he asked wickedly, “You know I’m awfully tired.”

She lowered her eyes and bit back a smile, gripping the panels of his shirt, letting her fingers brush
against his chest as she pulled it off him. In return, he lifted her blouse over the top of her head, too
impatient to deal with more buttons. She sensed him watching her in that piercing way of his, as
she let her trousers and knickers fall to the floor. She turned, unhooked her bra, and climbed into
the alcove, all the while feeling his eyes on her back and bum. They burnt her. He must’ve been
able to hear her skin sizzle.
She stayed facing the wall and he stepped in and stood behind her, not touching, but close enough
for crackling, fizzing static to form between them. She could nearly imagine what it would feel like
if he had been pressed against her. Crazy, thrashing orbs of some sort formed in her chest and her
stomach.
He blew onto her bare shoulder and a tremor wracked through her body.

She reached out and turned the shower on.

A hot spray lashed over them and he murmured, “Turn around.”

"No.” She closed her eyes.

“All right.”

Her – his – hands settled on her hips and they dragged upwards along the sides of her body, coming
to a halt at her ribcage. A hand lifted and swept her hair to the side, and he blew along the line of
her neck. She shivered again.
Her – his – hand returned to her ribs, and then both slid forward to cup her breasts. She barely held
back a whimper, but when her – his – his thumbs circled around her nipples, the whimper tore out,
wretched and pleading.

“Calm down, Kitten,” he said, smooth as silk. A phantasmic tongue traced the shell of her ear.

Her – his – hands slid down again, stopping at the bottom of her stomach. Without needing him to
ask, she knew to widen her stance. His fingers edged lower but not low enough – teasing along the
lips with one hand while the other gripped the back of her leg and lifted it till it rested on the rim of
the tub. She was fully at his disposal, but he still kept teasing, tracing her slit with a light touch.

“... just... ah ... go on ...”

“A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.”

He slipped his finger inside her. Him. He. Draco’s finger. One finger. In and out, long drawn. She
pushed back – two fingers, his fingers, long straight elegant fingers performing a perfectly
synchronised dance like they did over piano keys – they... curled with a divine degree of
curvature... but then pulled out to trace quick maddening circles... his fingers back inside –
His other hand fully gripped her thigh, pressing into the flesh – then that hand slid up to her breasts
– squeezed – slid down to join the other –
His hands, his hands, his hands. Both his hands devoted to making her wild and pyretic. The pace
got to a point of fury. She gasped and whined and his his his finger kept stimulating where she was
already insanely, pulsatingly sensitive.

An impression – mimesis – of a hard length pressed into her back. His finger drew a circle –
stopped - pressed down fucking hard, and he said, “Are you going to deny me a simple pleasure,
Hermione?”

She choked on a breath; on a smothered, soundless cry. Pleasure hit her like a tidal wave, and she
crumbled like a structure made of sand.
Her own hand spasmed, still inside her, and she swayed forward till she was resting her fevered
forehead against the tiles.

Slowly, she moved her hand away.

When she had calmed, she lowered her leg and turned around. Steam and spray. Silence and
solitude.

She reached for her body wash.

Afterwards, dressed in pyjamas and werebunny slippers, she stood before her mirror, carefully
drying her hair. She glared at herself.

Rotten old Millward. Twila. One of the biggest moments of her fledgling career. Tomorrow. For
goodness sake, get it together.

Barros relinquished her plum robes that morning. Her robes of Barrister Blue billowed behind her
like a cape, as she, followed by her team, strode down the basement passageway to courtroom
nine.

Hermione and Takumi settled on the benches on the side, while Barros and Kathy approached one
of the two tables near the centre of the room, where Twila was already seated.

(In one of the most painful scenes Hermione had ever had to witness, Stamp attempted to take a
seat with them. Barros, eyes flashing, said something that turned his complexion a dull red, and he
stiffly walked over to hunch on the opposite corner from Hermione and Takumi.)

On the other table, sat Millward, still trenchantly unremarkable, even with the hammy expression
of distress he had put on. His egg-headed and red-headed legal team were beside him.

Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, the courtroom began to fill up. Anita came
accompanied by a man with a short beard and long locks, whom Hermione imagined might’ve been
Parvati’s former boss. Friends and family of the victims came and claimed two entire rows of
benches. One woman wrapped in multiple shawls looked like she could be Twila’s ailing mother.
Multiple journalists from the Prophet – Skeeter and her sidekick included – took the back bench.
There was nobody recognisable after that. Hermione stopped paying attention, focusing instead on
Barros and Twila, heads close together, quietly conferring. Kathy was furiously shuffling through
all the parchment in front of her. She was so obviously panic-stricken.
A feeling that Hermione shared. Her leg kept bouncing of its own accord. Her hands kept fiddling
with the binder on her lap... While Takumi was as calm and placid as a lake on a still summer
morning.

Finally, Hermione looked up at the highest bench. The whole plum lot of them were there, like they
ought to be for a criminal trial. They were whispering amongst themselves, some staidly watching,
some wincing irritably every time Bozo’s camera flash went off. Ogden and Kingsley sat in the
centre, a mirror image of Barros and Twila. Percy was a statue with his quill hovering over
parchment, as though expecting the hearing to commence out of the blue, with no warning.

She realised then that almost everyone in the room was whispering to each other. The buzzing
wasn’t just in her ears. She picked at a hangnail and watched as Millward offered a good-natured
smile to someone on the benches.

Ogden cleared his throat. Percy’s shoulders rose up to his ears.

He began rattling off the usual names and personnel who were oh so pertinent to their justice
dispensing machinery. Percy the scribe scribbled with fervour.
The wriggling things that had taken up permanent residence inside her, awoke from their dormancy
and turned her stomach into a snake pit.

The first person to be called to the chair in the middle – thankfully lacking the chains – was Twila.
A murmur swept across the benches as she walked; Bozo took a photograph. Hers was the face that
would define this case – that naturally serious face showing determination and poise, as she sat
with her ankles cross and hands clasped, meeting the Wizengamot’s stare head on.
When Barros got to her feet, silence fell like a pall. She stood beside Twila, raised her chin at her
associates, and began presenting the case.

Even though everyone was familiar with the story by now, they entire courtroom was rivetted. Such
was the power of having a commanding voice and knowing how to use it. Different modes of
verbal conveyance would make for an interesting study, Hermione thought while her leg bouncing
turned feral, especially when you compared Barros’ oration to Anita’s narration. But the bottom-
line was that the story was ghastly, no matter how you spun it.
And that fact was not lost on the Wizengamot. When Barros wheeled around and returned to her
seat, they all wore varying expressions of bleakness. Even that excruciating shrew Edwina
Lumbard looked disturbed.

Next, Millward’s lawyers had the opportunity to pose their questions. No surprises in their
approach – they brought focus to Twila’s sorry finances and pulled out some silly anecdote from
eight years ago, when Twila had been twelve, and she had stolen a chocolate bar from Honeydukes
and then lied about it.

“A testament to the character of the mendacious accuser!” The egg-headed cretin proclaimed.

The Wizengamot’s subsequent interrogation was restrained. Even though four names had been
listed as interrogators, it was Ogden who did all the questioning. He called her young lady in a
decidedly avuncular manner.

Twila’s composure held strong throughout.

Then it was Millward’s turn on the chair. The Eggman lifted a finger as he presented their twisted
version of events, like he was Augustus of Prima Porta. He gestured sadly to their poor, maligned,
darling baby angel of a client and begged the Wizengamot to not be swayed by womanly
melodramatics.

A really bad choice of words to end his tirade with; it turned Barros’ counter-questioning into
something cold and venomous. She rattled off questions about his whereabouts, about the cheques
he had been sending out to women who no longer work for him, about why nearly every single one
of his female employees had left abruptly, and was met with a blank stare and a refrain of, “I’m
sorry, but I have no idea,” “What can I say, madam? I care,” and, “I don’t know.”
His voice was deep and flat.
When the Wizengamot interrogated him – this time they all chipped in – his entire range of
responses could be summarised thusly:

“No good deed goes unpunished. The honourable Wizengamot knows how little use we have for
squibs. I wanted to help them... and see how they repay me?”

Evidence – Millward’s financial records – were brought in: The massive sums he paid to former
employees prior to their sudden departures, the annual cheque going off to (name redacted) and
Hanne Winter, and the monthly sum (outside of her salary,) being paid to Lindy Dalton. Records
from a pawn shop in Knockturn Alley showed that he had purchased a set of proscribed magical
handcuffs that were only allowed to be used by aurors.

The Eggman said that the records bore testament to Millward’s compassionate nature. He felt
compelled to take care of his employees, even after they were no longer that. Oh, the pawnbroker?
Another horrendous liar. A drunkard, to boot.

They broke for lunch. Twila went straight to her family, and Millward and his lawyers bounded out
of the courtroom arm in arm. Kathy waited till Barros had gone before shooting out of her chair,
undoubtedly to smoke an entire pack.

Hermione and Takumi went to the canteen.

Eating felt like a ghastly waste of time. All Hermione wanted was to go back and have Ogden
announce that Millward was being chucked into Azkaban and have a happy weekend, all. She
squirmed as she became aware of Skeeter at a corner table; even then, her quick-quotes quill was
busy at work. Anita and her friend were sitting nearby as well, and Hermione carefully avoided
looking directly at her.

The queue was long. She kept mechanically shuffling ahead and picking at her thumb.

She spotted him without even trying. Or maybe she had been trying without even knowing it.
Draco was with his usual lot. Fiona was speaking animatedly, but apparently not very engagingly,
for he didn’t appear to be paying attention at all. He was sipping from a steaming mug and
offhandedly surveying the room. She let herself get so caught up in watching him, that it was too
late to quickly look away when his gaze landed on her. He bloody well caught her staring.
Fuck. Her cheeks began to smart and smoulder. She flexed her fingers in an approximation of a
wave and he gave her a measured nod in return. If he found out about the way in which she had
shamelessly, lasciviously used his words out of context, he would never speak to her again.
Fiona looked over then, following Draco’s gaze. Hermione waved at her, too, and quickly turned
away and grabbed whatever was nearest to her.

An accursed potted meat sandwich, she realised once she’d found a table that allowed her to put her
back to Draco and Fiona. Takumi made an observation about the Eggman and she had to give
herself a hard shake.

Rotten old Millward. Twila. Get it together!

It took longer for things to get started after lunch, and all because the Wizengamot took its sweet
time assembling. Impatient rustling from the benches and Barros angrily tapping her crimson nail
against the table had no impact. Elphias Doge had decided to show his face, pushing to the
forefront with a ridiculously tall, pointed hat on his head.

After such a disgraceful display of dilatoriness, Ogden bid the proceeding to continue forthwith.
The witnesses were called upon, one by one.

It started off with candid and voluble Hattie. She gave an account of what she had endured, and
what she had seen her former co-worker (name redacted) go through. When Barros asked her what
exactly she thought might have happened with (name redacted), her speculation was immediately
halted by the Eggman. He then expounded on Hattie’s dismal state of affairs – from general poverty
and the father who was incapable of supporting his family, to the pregnant, unmarried sister.
Ogden was once again kind in his interrogation, even going as far as to express regret over the
death of her brother.

Emily, Hanne, and Mariam’s testaments were short and quick, but the questioning took longer.
Barros and Kathy had perfected their dance in which they’d exchange scrolls between each witness,
while the Eggman barely expended himself at all, chanting the same refrain of, “Poor,
unscrupulous, opportunistic,” ad nauseum. He was particularly hard on Hanne for being so greedy
that even Millward’s generous annual sum, bestowed from the kindness of his bleeding heart,
wasn’t enough.
Parents, siblings, and partners took the chair to talk about all the mysterious bruises they had healed
and the behavioural changes they had noticed.

The anonymous witnesses had their faces scrambled behind shimmering glamours. From their
accounts, Hermione could tell them apart – Petronella first, followed by Jade. Which was for the
best in terms of impact, for Jade’s tale was flat out horrific. No amount of the Eggman’s pooh-
poohing could undo its effect on the entire courtroom.

“Cowards and liars!” he bayed, “Why else do you think they hide? I of course know who they are...
if the Wizengamot would let me show you what sort of squibs these are–”

Kingsley’s resounding voice tore across the room – “Exposing an anonymous witness is a
punishable offence. The Wizengamot can fine you for even suggesting it.”

Jade was led away amid a flurry of whispers.

She was followed by the mediwitch who had tended to her in the aftermath of her ordeal. She
worked at a small clinic in Torquay – a subsidiary of Mungo’s. She had bonafide medical records.
Eggman’s counter-questioning had the vigour of a deflated balloon.

Much like how Lindy Dalton looked, when it was her turn to occupy the chair. Just as she had done
with Hermione and Kathy, she deflected each and every question Barros lobbed at her, till finally –

“Why is Mr Millward paying you – and only you – extra money every month?”

Lindy threw up her hands and cried, “I don’t know none of that, do I? He’s a fine man. I have five
children. Leave me alone.”

With the Eggman she was still terse, but more forthcoming.

(“You said he’s a fine man?”

“Sure, he’s a fine man.”)

With Ogden, she only shrugged .

Up next was Rhonda O’Hearn, a woman well into her eighties. Her hair was white, her eyebrows
painted jet black.

“He’s a good chap.”

“Is he?” Barros asked, arching a brow so, so high.

“Yeah.”

“How are you acquainted?”

“I do a scourin’ charm on his robes. Mend a tear if there were one, before they goes to the shop.”
“You haven’t seen anything unsavoury go on in the shop?”

“No.”

“And how long have you provided your services to Mr Millward?”

“Eighteen years.”

Ogden asked, “Have you ever had opportunity to speak to the women in his employment?”

“Couple times.”

“And did they seem happy with their lot?”

Rhonda turned to Millward and said, “Alright, it’s been more ’an a minute. I’ll need another
galleon for that.”

Absolute pandemonium.

The Eggman buried his face in his hands. Barros glided back to her seat. Ogden and Kingsley did
their best to restore order while Rhonda was rapidly led out of the courtroom.

What happened next sent the Eggman tumbling off his wall, beyond the help of the king’s horses
and men.
He had listed four other witnesses to speak in Millward’s favour – most of whom were rich,
pureblood witches who habitually donated their old robes to Millward’s shop – and not one of them
showed up.

It was nearing four o’clock, but the court was momentarily adjourned, while a couple of bailiffs
were despatched to gather the absent witnesses, baring threats of incarceration. They came in a line,
in hooded cloaks, heads bowed like Benedictine monks.

Hermione leaned forward, hugging her binder to her chest, knowing that what was about to follow
could potentially hand the case right to them.

They approached the central chair one by one, acknowledging their names, but refusing to pull
down their hoods.

Witness 1: Devin Hines.

“I had the shop next to his. He bought it off me to expand his own. That’s all. We are not friendly.”

Witness 2: Alexandria Greengrass.

“I only ever had him around to collect last season’s robes. He never made it past the hall. My
husband – you must know my husband, Phaedrus Greengrass – always sent our girls to the far west
wing for the duration. He always had a feeling...”
Witness 3: Pippa Macmillan.

“I just wanted to get rid of some of my grandmother’s old clothes. We have over a dozen trunks full
and... I swear I had no idea about... any of this! I was told there was an unfair campaign being
launched against that man, and it would be nice if I put in a kind word. But I didn’t know. Honestly,
I didn’t .

Witness 4: Dietra Flint.

“I also only ever had him around to collect last season’s robes. He never made it past hall . My
husband – you must know my husband, Leopold Flint – always stayed close by me for the duration.
He also always had a feeling...”

With that, the Wizengamot fell into a quiet deliberation amongst each other. Hermione’s leg
was bouncing to the beat of the Immigrant Song. Her heart was thudding just as fast.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at Twila.

Once again, Kathy appeared exactly as apprehensive as Hermione felt.

Ogden cleared his throat.

“Those in favour of clearing the accused of all charges?”

Not a single hand went up.

“Those in favour of conviction?”

Eldon Millward was given a two-year sentence for sexual misconduct against Twila Eliot.
Additionally, taking the testaments of his other victims into consideration, along with the
Wizengamot’s ready recognition of the gravity of crimes of a sexual nature, he was sentenced to
another two years for each count, resulting in a fourteen-year sentence, with a further two years on
licence.

Hermione’s first thought was – that's all? But thunderous applause erupted from the benches where
friends and family sat. Aurors emerged from the shadows and whisked Millward away.

Then it hit her. They had won. They’d actually made a bit of history.

*
There was no good reason for the silence in their office. Perhaps it was a bit of delayed shock.
Maybe it was the kind of quietude that helps one really absorb momentous joy.
Whatever it was, it saw Hermione, Takumi, and Kathy sitting at their respective tables, doing and
saying nothing. The fake sun was setting in their window, throwing russet light into the room. All
the paperwork pertaining to the case lay strewn in piles and mounds across their desks. One scroll
trailed off Kathy’s and ran along the miserly length of the office.

“We should celebrate,” Kathy piped up, “Drinks later?”

“That would be nice.”

“Yes, All right.”

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment.
And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

Gravity must’ve been working on Hermione’s robes for a while. She had pulled them off and
dumped them on the corner of her desk, and quite abruptly, they slid to the ground. She let them lie
there. She had also managed to rip away her hangnail leaving a sliver of raw, open flesh. One
stroke of her finger, one non-verbal healing spell, and her finger was intact again.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Twila’s face and the triumphant roar that erupted the
moment Millward was sentenced. It was as powerful as magic. As vibrant as artificial eventide.

And the sun pours down like honey –

A memo wrested its way in from under the door, right onto Kathy’s lap.

“Madam Barros summons,” she sighed and walked out, skipping over the parchment trailing on the
floor.

Hermione picked up her robes. Takumi began tidying his desk. By the time Kathy returned, her
eyes like saucers, all documents were in neat piles.
She looked spooked; couldn’t even make it to her chair. She perched on the edge of her desk and
gaped at Hermione and Takumi slowly, in turn.

“Stamp’s gone,” she said.

“Where has he gone?” Takumi asked, not quite getting it.

But Hermione got it. Her mouth fell open. Was this going to end up being the best day in the
history of the world?

“He’s gone , Takumi. Sacked. Dismissed. Fired.”

“Oh. Oh my,” he sputtered.

Hermione pulled up her jaw and said, “About time, don’t you think?”
They both turned to her.

“All thanks to you,” Kathy said, and Takumi nodded.

“What? Excuse me?! I had nothing to do with it!” She would not allow them to spin that narrative,
lest Barros get a hint of it. “It was his own incompetence that–”

“He’s been incompetent for years,” Kathy cut in, “And would have carried on that way for years.
Do you think the Ministry is lacking in incompetence? If you hadn’t shown up, Takumi and I would
never have thought to thumb our noses at him.”

“Now, look here, I did nothing except follow Madam Barros’ instructions and–”

Kathy interrupted her again – “She’s offered me his job.”

“–the one who told me to stop being overeag– Oh my god! That’s fantastic news!”

“My heartiest congratulations, Kathy.”

“Not at once, obviously,” Kathy added, beaming manically, “I’ve to take the REPTILEs in
February, but... she’s said the position is mine as long as I pass...”

The REPTILEs. Rigorously Extensive Patent, Treaty, and International Law Examinations. So
vicious, in fact, that they were not mandated by the Department of Domestic Law. In less than three
months. How was Kathy not falling apart in terror?

“We absolutely must celebrate now,” Takumi declared. He stepped out of the room to send a
missive to his wife.

They spent the remaining minutes of the workday filing away the Millward case, and it felt most
ceremonial. It was the true testament of success – a mission accomplished, wrapped up and put to
rest. Hermione imagined that there would be many people out celebrating tonight.

And afterwards, going by a hankering professed by Kathy, they landed up in Diagon Alley, to a
fairly popular (as the crowd would suggest) Italian restaurant two shops away from Gringotts. The
restaurant wasn’t very big, even with an extension charm, and it was a Friday evening; it wasn’t at
all surprising when the host informed them that there was no room.

“Ah, come on!” Kathy pleaded, “You don’t have one free table?”

“I am sincerely sorry, but we are completely booked,” the man stated with bland politeness.

“We’re just a group of three!”

“Yes, I can see that.”

He looked at Hermione then, properly, for the first time. His eyebrows took off.

“On second thought,” he mumbled very quickly, “I think there might be something available near
the back. Let me have a word with the Manager...”
 He dashed away.

Kathy sniggered. “Hermione Granger strikes again.”

The mood was too cheerful for Hermione to be bothered. As they were led to their very centrally
located table, she was sure she was being used as advertisement, and she still didn’t care.

They called for two bottles of wine, and ate, drank, and talked about what a whirlwind of a case it
had been. They were halfway into the second bottle by the time their plates were being cleared
away, and most of it had gone into Kathy. She was decisively squiffy.

Takumi excused himself to the loo, and in that moment, Kathy swung towards Hermione and said,
“She told me, by the way.”

“Hmm?”

“Madam Barros. She told me. ‘Bout the Quibbler stuff. All you.”

“Oh.”

Hermione took a delicate sip from her glass and mumbled, “I was going to tell you, really, I–”

“It's all right – Stop,” Kathy warbled, “Hermione, you’re going places. You’re going to do so much
good. I mean... you already have ... but. Y’know. You’re... going to. So much good.”

Hermione’s mouth quivered, twitched, and curved into a grin as she watched Kathy sway and beam
at her.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she averred with a emphatic flourish of her glass, “You’re going to set the Thames on
fire.”

Chapter End Notes

1. Much Madness Is Divinest Sense, by Emily Dickinson

2. The Third of May 1808, Francisco Goya
3. "witches in the desert place": Reference to the first scene of Macbeth, by William
Shakespeare
4. "utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words": Mosquitoes, by William Faulkner
5. "Silence! calm, venerable majesty": Address to Silence, by William Wordsworth
6. "The wells of silence": Sound of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel
7. "A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.": Canto XXIV; Inferno, by Dante
Alighieri (Quoted before by Draco in chapter 72.)
8. Augustus of Prima Porta:
9. Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin.
10. "As happens sometimes...": Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
11. "And the sun pours down like honey": Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen
 Eighty
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

She levitated her cassette player, a mug of cocoa, and a plate of assorted biscuits, dry fruit, and
chocolate roses to the bedroom that morning. She’d had a lovely run in the bitter cold, and she was
now showered, buttery warm, with an empty weekend ahead of her after so very long. It was hazy
outside, with a light drizzle. Starthistle Hill hadn’t any yellow left. It was a big, lumpen tangle of
bramble. Hermione opened her balcony doors and cast a shield charm to keep the cold out and let
the pitter-patter in. She wished she had tapes of classical piano, so she could pretend Draco was in
the room with her, but she went with Enya in the absence of those.
Watermark had released on her ninth birthday. She remembered dad insisting on stopping by a
record shop on their way to Warwick castle, and they’d listened to it over and over again during the
drive to and back.

A large parcel from her parents sat on her bed and she beamed at it, feeling that old onslaught of
emotions that music and nostalgia stirred up.

Their letter rambled on a bit; dad was heartily amused by Theo’s foray in cooking, mum had
decided that it was high time Hermione caught up with contemporary literature and had sent her the
booker prize winners from the last five years. Together, they lamented at length about how much
they missed travelling, only to reveal that they were going to Corfu to celebrate mum’s forty-fifth
birthday.

By the way, would it be a terrible imposition if your old mum and dad stop by your place for
Christmas?

She fell back into bed with a pleased sigh. Music melded with rain, warmth seeped through her
veins, and everything was wonderful. She rolled to her side and considered the books she’d been
sent, zoning in on the two women among the pile. One of those was a story that was set around the
first World War, so without question she picked up the other.

She prepared the scene for the rest of the day – lit a scented candle, gathered a blanket around her,
placed the mug and plate with a stabilising charm on the bed next to her, fluffed up the second
pillow for Stella – and dived into The God of Small Things .

Only ever moving to use the loo, to flip the tape, or to refresh her mug (be it with more cocoa, or
tea, or that one time she was so distracted that she sipped plain boiled water,) Hermione stayed in
bed for the entirety of the day.

By seven in the evening, the player had been silent for some time. The rain had stopped and her
magical shield had turned misty.
Hermione didn’t know if she felt repulsed or elevated. She was stuck somewhere between the two,
just like she was stuck between the sickening turn of events and the beautiful prose. She had been
reading so much slower than she was used to, for she felt that she had forgotten how to savour
literature. Right from the moment –

‘In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of
peace, Worse Things kept happening,'

– pinned her down, all the way till –

‘He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him
and put it in her hair,'

– left her gasping, Hermione felt fear, grief, and pain like only children ever felt. What made her
not a child anymore, anyway?

“You look cosy.”

“Eep!”

She scrambled into a seated position, staring, completely terrified, at the intruder at her bedroom
door.

“You could’ve given me a heart attack! I preferred it when you announced your presence by
banging pots and pans!”

Theo’s smile was more of a wince. “Sorry,” he muttered, “And I’m sorry for what I’m about to ask
of you.”

“Oh no,” she sighed reflexively.

“I need you to leave this snug little cocoon you’ve made for yourself.”

“Oh. No.”

“Hermione, please.”

She marked her page and put down the book, so that she could properly cross her arms and pout.

“What for?” she huffed.

“You’re my best friend. I love you to pieces. You know I would do anything for you, right?”

“This... this is bad, isn’t it?”

He rubbed the patchy scruff on his jaw, looking very wounded and tormented – and she could tell
that it was somehow both genuine and a bit of a show.
“I need you to come with me to Finnigan’s.”

She scowled, “Is Luna going to be there or something?”

“No.” Theo was looking intently out of the balcony doors, at the blackness outside.

“Then? Why must I come?”

“Draco’s asked me to meet him there,” he grumbled.

“Oh – uh – kay... and? Have you had another silly fight?”

He spared her a nervous glance, then looked away again. He sighed, and leaned against the
doorjamb, continuously stroking his quasi-beard.

“We haven’t fought,” he drew out slowly, “Draco’s on a date and he wants me to meet the girl he’s
seeing.”

Bile shot up her throat. Her head spun and she... she needed Theo to go away. He had to leave.

Her chest rippled with pain.

“What’s that got to do with me?” she asked in a voice that gave far too much away.

Theo pressed his lips together and looked at her with open pity. “I really don’t want to be the third
wheel, sitting like a twat with a spanking new, loved up couple.”

She was going to throw up all the junk she had consumed through the day. “So, ask George–”

“He’s having dinner with Angeli–”

“Drag Seamus away from the bar! Or, I’m sure Dean will be loitering about? You’re chummy with
Oliver Wood too, now, aren’t you? Or, how about–”

“Hermione, please.” He said for the second time.

“What’s the bloody big deal anyway?” she exclaimed. There were tears bubbling up behind her
eyes and he needed to go, he needed to go, he needed to go. “Yes, she bores you, but you’ve put up
with her before!”

“That was years and years ago... we were all little kids then. What if she’s even more irritating and
bothersome now?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Who...” she breathed, “Who is the girl he’s seeing?”

“Astoria.”
“Who?”

“Astoria Greengrass.”

Hermione felt electrocuted.

“Daphne’s younger sister,” Theo added.

“I... Oh.”

“Who did you think I was talking about?”

“Fiona,” she murmured.

“Who’s that?”

“Vince-and-Greg bint.”

Theo wrinkled his nose. Right. He had to get out. But first...

“How long has this been going on?”

“I don’t know!”

The words exploded out of him and he pitched ahead, marching towards the balcony doors and
attempting to pull them shut. Her shield charm blocked him, he growled, and stomped towards the
armchair and thew himself onto it, uncaring about the pile of neatly folded clothes under him.

“Christmas hols haven’t started yet. I didn’t know she was back from France, let alone... Bah! But
apparently, she is back, and they ran into each other at the Portkey Office, and... and... This is like
the Bowtruckle all over again!”

“He has a habit of keeping his love life a secret from you, is it?”

She had gone cold all of a sudden. It was strange. Acid gurgled in her throat, nausea swirled in her
stomach, but it was all encased in ice. Theo had to leave so she could melt, ooze, and bleed.

“Apparently, I meddle!” Theo fell back with his arm pressed theatrically against his forehead, “And
mess up his life. All because of that stupid incident in fourth year with Pansy... which turned out
just fine in the end anyway! I don’t mess things up! I make things better, always!”

He was up on his feet again, pacing across her bedroom. Hermione had ice and acid in her heart
now. If he would just wrap up his rant and leave...

“Honestly, he was being so smug and sly that for a moment I thought he’d finally – but no.
Babbling little Tori. And of course, I expressed my utter lack of interest in catching up with her, but
he said she’s already expecting me, and he said please fucking show up. Snuck a please in there
knowing full well that nobody in the world would ever contradict a please from Draco Bloody
Malfoy. Pfff. Astoria Greengrass. She used to drink out of the pond. What is he thinking?”
“She’s not at Hogwarts then?”

“She was, for her first and second year.” (Stella leapt off the bed and began pacing behind Theo.)
“But then Voldy sprang up again, so her parents shipped her off to Beauxbatons. They meant to
send Daphne as well, but she refused because Blaise is the love of her life.”

“Wasn’t she going to marry Pucey?”

“Yeah, well, Blaise doesn’t love her. Blaise loves Blaise.” He stopped abruptly, and Stella crashed
against the back of his shoe. “Sorry, Ducky,” he said, scooping her up.

She thought she knew what it felt like, to have the object of your desire wrapped up in someone
else. But she didn’t; not at all. What she had felt before was an intimation, easily faded by time.
The searing, corrosive pain she felt right then, was not one that could be forgotten. If she let it, it
would consume her whole.

And she would let it, once Theo left.

He didn’t make any sort of move to leave. He let his words sit like a heavy canopy over them,
watching her with desperation. What a picture she must’ve made; surrounded by books and titbits,
in baggy clothes, with long, wild hair – a little sendup of a bookish homebody with a crumpled
heart.

Silence hung in the air like secret loss.

Theo had to know. If he hadn’t before, he must’ve guessed by now. And she would silently thank
him for not saying it out loud.

But he needed to leave.

“So... you’ll come?”

“No.”

“Hermione–”

“No. I – I haven’t had a day to relax and read in so long. I deserve a break.”

“You do. But... Please?”

“No.”

“If I was a manipulative bastard, I would remind you that I went with you to Australia, which is
much further off than Diagon.”

She gaped at him, which brought the moisture on the rim of her eyes dangerously close to spilling
out.

“You absolutely are a manipulative bastard. I didn’t realise that was conditional!”
“It wasn’t. I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m just... I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”

He dragged a hand down his face.

They were all so wrecked, weren’t they? All of them. What was the point of her cocoon – a
facsimile of wholesome indulgence? She was better off going to Finnigan's and facing heartbreak
head-on; looking it in the eye and letting it demolish her, all the while wearing a smile. She was
wrecked, Theo was wrecked.

Might as well embrace it.

“Fine,” she said, “Give me a minute to get changed.”

Theo’s shoulders straightened and he gently set Stella on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

She tried to smile. It was good practice.

And when he left the room, she pulled herself out of bed, and let the tears that had already gathered
fall. She would not let any fresh ones form.

(Some did, but she wiped them away before they could escape her lower lash line.)

She wore a frock, (maroon, knee length, long sleeved,) like she had someone to impress. Someone
who was already impressed by another; a Greengrass who was most likely genetically impressive.
Her hair had suffered a great deal from being left to its own devises while she lolled in bed. That,
she could do nothing about. It was only when she looked herself over in the mirror, that she saw
exactly how flayed open her face was. Pale – almost blanched. Mouth pinched. She forced herself
to smile and there was nothing in her eyes. The face of a woman painted by Modigliani.

She decided that she would approach the evening like an execution. She would place her heart on
the chopping block and let Draco deliver the coup de grâce. Then she would return to her cocoon,
flip the tape and start over.

Out in the hall, Theo unnecessarily helped her put on her coat and scarf. He mumbled another small
sorry, when they were in the lift, so she forced another smile – a gesture of wrecked solidarity.

The night was cold, but it was young. Diagon was beginning to light up for the holidays, and it was
teeming with shoppers, bar hoppers, and show stoppers. Hermione and Theo walked side by side,
and they both knew to pause at the menagerie window to look at baby nifflers in elf-hats, playing
with shiny Christmas ornaments.
Then they entered Finnigan’s, removed their coats, and headed to the bar. Cutting through the
moderate crowd, Hermione hoped that the other two hadn’t arrived yet, so she would have a little
alcohol in her before she faced the axe; but no such luck. They were already there.
Draco was leaning, (of course, he was,) smirking at a young woman in a long white sheath dress.
She had dark hair falling in soft waves, dancing around a slightly rounded face – besides those she
looked remarkably like Daphne. Beautiful features, perfect posture.

She turned as they approached and her face broke into a broad smile.

“Theodore Nott. At last.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Er, hello,” he said, patting her back and staring down at his hands as he did so.

Hermione snuck a glance at Draco, and found him smirking at her now , an oddly significant look,
like they were sharing a joke. The only joke she was in on, was herself.

Theo and Astoria parted, and Hermione found herself being pushed forward.

“Astoria, this is Hermione.”

“Oh, of course!” Astoria said, offering Hermione her hand. She had a high but melodious voice,
with a very, very slight French accent. “I’d heard that this rogue had managed to befriend you, and
at first, I didn’t believe it. Then I remembered, it’s Theodore Nott , and had no trouble believing it
at all.”

Hermione forced a response out of her throat. “Yes, I’ve come to realise that it’s Theodore Nott can
explain away a lot of strange things.”

That made Astoria laugh. How perfectly lovely. And she really did seem perfectly lovely, too.
Draco came up, putting a hand on Astoria’s back, and Hermione pulled out her smile, as practiced.
They collected drinks from the bar, (cinnamon buttered rum in giant tankards was being pushed, so
cinnamon buttered rum in giant tankards they accepted,) and moved to the table near a window,
where Hermione and Draco had once talked about potions and Kafka. She ended up sitting across
from Astoria, with Theo and Draco on either side, and she angled her chair so she faced the space
between Theo and Astoria. That kept most of Draco – barring his arm on the table – out of the field
of her vision.

“Well, Theodore Nott,” Astoria said, smiling prettily, “You have grown obnoxiously tall and your
scruffiness would make my mother weep. Explain yourself.”

Astoria was indeed talkative, but there was no trace of irritation in Theo’s demeanour. He had no
need for a human shield.
Hermione slowly but assiduously sipped her drink and zoned out while they caught up. Her being
there was so stupid. She shouldn’t have fucking agreed. Why did she think she needed confirmation
of the fact that Draco was out of her reach? It wasn’t some recondite law of nature that required
scientific proof. It was already pre-established.

When she tuned in again, Theo was asking Astoria, “How did you manage to get away from school
so early? Was it like the time you tried climbing out of a second storey window by making a rope
out of your mother’s best brassieres?”
“Merlin, Theodore!” she chastised, and lightly hit his shoulder. She shot Hermione a scandalised
look, “Please don’t judge my character on that, I was five. Anyway,” she glared at Theo, “I did not
escape. I was asked to come home because my poor sister is inconsolable since her fiancé was
thrown into Azkaban.”

“I’m sure she’s devastated,” Theo scoffed.

“She’s certainly playing the part. And I’m playing the part of the caring, doting sister.” She turned
to Hermione once again, grinning. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m the good one.”

Yes, she was that. No wonder Draco had pounced on her.

“And when I arrived at the British Ministry, lo and behold, the first face I see is this handsome
one.”

She reached out and placed her hand on Draco’s forearm. Hermione looked away and took a long
pull from her tankard.

She was addressed again, so she turned to Astoria with a smile .

“Your name’s been in the paper a lot, lately. I believe you helped put that scab Millward in
prison?”

“I was part of the legal team,” Hermione replied, all Friendly with a capital F, “And I must say, we
are tremendously grateful for your mother’s last minute about-turn.”

Astoria laughed. “Oh, my father was furious when he learned that she had agreed to testify on his
behalf... but only after the Quibbler exposé, mind you.”

Hermione also laughed, ignoring the way Draco’s fingers were tapping the surface of the table.

“So, you’re saying he didn’t always have a feeling ? He didn’t make sure you and your sister were
in the far west wing every time Millward came by?”

“Is that what mother said?” Astoria shook her head. “My family. Lunatics, the lot of them.”

Draco and Theo made twin grunts of agreement.

“That’s why I’m a Granger now,” Theo quipped, throwing Hermione a wink.

Astoria’s eyes darted speculatively between the two them. Hermione smiled.

“Where on earth is Pansy, by the way? Daphne hates her again.”

Hermione didn’t care a hoot. She zoned out once more, thinking about Christmas with her parents,
about the silver thread that pulls you out of darkness, and about
The God of Loss.
The God of Small Things.
The God of Goosebumps and Sudden Smiles.
The scrape of a chair jolted her back into reality. Theo stood, swiping up his empty tankard.

“I’m going for a refill. Anyone else?”

Hermione said no, Draco said no, but Astoria hopped up and said, “I’ll come with you,” leaving her
decidedly un empty tankard on the table.

Was that really necessary? Hermione watched them go, chattering all the way. She twisted as she
followed them to the bar, and found herself turned towards Draco. Oh, hell. She smiled.

“I wasn’t expecting you to turn up,” he said, peering at her searchingly.

Bracing herself and maintaining the smile, she replied, “I didn’t want to intrude upon your evening,
but I was given no choice.”

She looked over his shoulder at Theo and Astoria laughing at the bar, then down at her tankard.

“You always manage to wrangle your way into things.”

A jest masked as a jibe, or a jibe masked as a jest? She sighed, she smiled, etcetera. Light from the
stained-glass window turned her sleeves from maroon to swampy brown, and it stirred up the
recollection that she did actually have something important to say to him.

“We have a problem.”

“Do we?”

She sustained his amusement with single-minded focus. “Barros has figured out that Kenny didn’t
write the Crisis Aid Bill.”

“I’d have had serious doubts about her proficiency if she hadn’t.”

Even the way he sipped his drink was glib. Behind him, Theo was waving wildly to grab Vassilios’
attention while Astoria laughed uproariously.

“She knows !” Hermione pressed.

“Is she going to take it up with the ICW? Try to get the law repealed?”

“I doubt that. But Safi–”

“Won’t care anymore.” He pulled his chair closer and immobilised her with his stare. “Does she
know that you had a hand in it?”

“Yes.”

“And what about the sensational Quibbler exposé? Does she know you had a hand in that?”

“Yes.”
“Have you been suspended again?”

“No.”

“Then it’s the opposite of a problem.” He sat back, hand and drink dragging across the table. “If
nobody else, at least your boss should know what you’re capable of.”

Behind him, Astoria stepped into Theo’s personal space and slipped her hand into his back pocket.
Theo reared back in panic.
Hermione gasped, causing Draco to whirl around to look over his shoulder.

“Ha! Astoria doesn’t faff about!”

Hermione sputtered incoherently.

They both watched as Theo looked towards them with huge, terrified eyes, then at Astoria, who
threw back her head and laughed.

“Poor bugger’s out of practice,” Draco turned back around, “Never looked so terrified of being
goosed by a girl before.”

“But... But – you – she's–” Hermione reeled.

“Why are you raving?”

“He told me that she’s with you!” she cried, “You are seeing Astoria!”

“What?!” A broad, beautiful, crooked grin broke across his face. “He thinks.... Oh, Salazar. This is
fucking gold.”

He turned back quickly to watch as Theo floundered, gaping from Astoria to Draco, head moving
from side to side like a tennis umpire, even as Astoria kept pressing into him. Draco shook with
laughter, and raised his tankard to the two of them.

The world spun off its axis. She had spent the entirety of the evening looking through fogged-up
spectacles that had suddenly been wiped clean. Relief had a welcome weight to it, providing a
soothing pressure on her nerves.

She took a gulp of rum as Draco turned back to her, utterly radiant.

“How did such an enormous misunderstanding take place?” she mumbled. When she smiled, she
felt it in her eyes.

“All I said was that I’d run into Astoria, and that she was dying to meet him. Theo made his
assumptions.”

Hermione breathed out slowly. “Looks like she’s interested in a lot more than just meeting him.”
“She’s been infatuated for years,” Draco chuckled, “Hopefully she’ll put an end to his maddening
moaning and moping.”

“Don’t you think it’s too soon?” she asked, looking over at the two once more. They were throwing
back shots and giving no indication that they intended to return to the table.

“It’s been well over a month.”

“That’s hardly–”

“She doesn’t want to marry him. She wants to shag him.”

Hermione shut up and reached again for her drink while Draco turned to watch the two.

He continued – “He needs this more than I ever imagined, if he sought to turn this into a double-
date and the best he could find was you.”

The words smacked into her with the force of a bombarda to the chest. She froze with her tankard
halfway up to her mouth, staring at the rim. Her lips sort of... moved around... words... she didn’t
have.

That fucking hurt . She knew hurt well, and by god, that hurt.

Worse than the face he’d made when Harry accused him of pursuing her. Worse than boring, prissy
swot with no figure to speak of. Worse than Neville’s right – you are a girl!
She could not muster any fortitude; nary a retort nor an angry barb. No quid pro quo of any sort.
She shakily brought the tankard up to her lips and drained it.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant... he calls you his little-big sister, and that’s not someone
you bring on a date.”

She could still summon her well-practiced smile , so she did. She aimed it at him as he frowned at
her.

“I don’t believe he’s ever called me that.” There you go. Words.

“He has.” Draco’s frown deepened.

“Oh? When?”

“Granger, it was just a... I wasn’t really implying – that is to say, I didn’t... I didn’t mean that–”

“It’s all right, Draco,” she interjected hastily, “I’m already well aware of how horrible you think I
am. Now, tell me. When did Theo call me his little-big sister?”

She begged. She smiled.

She stared down at her hand, tapping her index finger against her thumb, tracking her pulse.

“You... obviously aren’t horrible.”

Hermione stood up.

“Where are you going?”

She glanced at the floor, her empty tankard, her bag, the hem of her dress, the back of her chair –
everywhere but him.

“Getting another drink. Would you like one as well?”

“No.”

She walked away. Mechanical steps carried burning eyes to the bar, to the point furthest away from
Theo and Astoria. There, she stood, clasped her hands and... nothing.

She thought she knew what it felt like, to have the object of your desire let slip how unappealing –-
- Fuck. He was going to leave her in shreds. Him. The same him whom she had vowed would
never, ever hold any power over her, when she was twelve years old and faced with a blood-epithet
for the first time in her life.

The danger of crying was real and more imminent than before.

Vassilios set a fresh drink before her, and she considered it. Chugging and fleeing felt like a solid
plan. The coup de grâce had been delivered. She could go home now.

Yet a small sip was all she could manage. How brutal, how mean, to be given a warm little spark of
hope in the cup of her hand, only to have it thoroughly extinguished by a cold reality check.

To hell with chugging. Abandon and flee.

“Oh, Hermione...!” sang Theo.

Why? Why, why why why.

“Hmm?” She smiled.

“What are you doing here? Sick of Draco already?” He was flat-out beaming, and had one arm
around Astoria’s shoulders.

“Just getting another drink.” She lifted her tankard.

Astoria had both arms around his waist. “Theo says you might have some insight into a career in
international law? I’ve been weighing my options, you see...”

“I didn’t say might,” Theo amended, “Hermione has insight into everything.”

So, she found herself walking back to the table. Keeping her eyes downcast, she was able to evade
Draco’s face. His rum was all gone, but he didn’t move to fetch more.
She settled on the same chair, and it was easier to angle away from him this time, because Astoria
plonked down on Theo’s lap. For the following twenty minutes, she catered to Astoria’s many,
many law-related queries. Alcohol and a genuine interest had filled her with great excitability, and
Hermione hadn’t the heart to half-arse her answers.
Maybe because she hadn’t a heart at all, anymore.

The topic of conversation drifted back to shared childhood exploits. Hermione had very little to
offer there. Surprisingly, Draco said even less than her. By then, Theo and Astoria were paying
attention to very little but each other.
Just a little before closing time, Seamus appeared, claiming he was conducting research for his big
Christmas Bash, and he had them sample shot-glasses full of something red, white, and sparkling,
called Yule Get Hammered. It tasted of sugar, peppermint, and vodka, and it bubbled down her
throat.

Thereupon, sufficiently light-headed, they stepped out of the pub, into the first snowfall of the
season. It was light; a sprinkle. The tiniest pinch of salt, or the gentlest shake of a snow globe.
Hermione pulled her coat tightly around her frame and walked out into the middle of the now
mostly empty alley. She tipped her face up towards the dense sky and breathed in cold air...
breathed out warm mist.

“Come on, buddy,” Theo called sloppily.

She watched him and Astoria, hand in hand, stagger down the cobbled street. He mumbled
something and she let out a peel of laughter. She honestly laughed a bit too much.

Draco stayed outside the pub, frowning at Hermione expectantly.

She had intended to apparate away as soon as possible. Yet, seeing him standing there – cloak like a
long smudge of navy, face pale and pink and so serious, hair soft and bright and better than fresh
snow – gave her such an agonising pang.
He had slain her, now he could walk her to hell. Her very own Virgil, damned by birth.

She walked towards him, and past him. Six strides later, she heard him follow. He caught up with
her in no time at all, but then matched his pace to hers. She kept her hands wrapped around her
waist and her head bowed. He kept his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched.
Neither spoke. The sound of Theo and Astoria’s laughter kept carrying over. Their trailing shadows
revealed how they were frolicking.

Draco definitely regretted what he’d said. Perhaps he was kicking himself for his carelessness and
wishing he’d held his tongue. Maybe he was surprised at her taking it badly when they’d become
so comfortable poking fun at one another. Whichever it was, his contrition was evident.
But gone were the days when him regretting being nasty to her might’ve been enough. She was not
the Goddess of Small Mercies, satisfied by a bit of self-flagellation. In the murkiest corner of her
mind, she was Salome; she would behead him for a kiss.

They turned into the path between the boys’ residence and Diagon, and it was suddenly pitch black
. The lamps weren’t lit, oddly enough.

“Argh! Ouch! You wicked witch!” Theo’s cries shot out, followed by Astoria’s giggles.

They were louder in the dark.

And Draco’s presence swelled. She imagined he had melted and merged with the shadows that
wrapped around her. With a twirl of her wrist, she conjured four, bright bluebell flames to light
their way, and to keep her sane. She heard him sigh.

He stopped outside the tall grey building and so did she. She turned to him as he watched Theo and
Astoria disappear into the lobby. Streetlight delineated his profile, like someone had dipped their
finger in phosphorescence and traced it.

“Well,” she croaked, then softly cleared her throat.

“I refuse to get into a lift with them,” he grumbled.

“Heh. Understandable.”

“Look,” he began, and peered down at her with the frown he still hadn’t shed, “I honestly did not
intend that as a slight towards you. I did not.”

“Okay,” she whispered, “I believe you.”

She decided she really was going to believe him, for the time being. The God of Irrelevancies could
work out if it was for her own sake, or because she knew what sincerity looked like on Draco
Malfoy’s face.

His frown didn't budge as he turned back to the building.

“Do you know what’s going to happen next, Granger?”

“Um... no?”

“Theo is going to take her to the sitting room, and pour her a glass of my wine. He will light up a
fire, and place her on my sofa, where he will do his best to grope every inch of her. Then, since it is
her first time in the flat, he will give her a tour and grope her in every room. He will take her out to
the terrace and impress her with his impeccable warming charm, like it isn’t one of the most
rudimentary of spells. He will bring her back in under the pretence of more wine, but instead he
will make his move right in the hall. No telling whether they’ll make it to his bedroom or not. The
more comfortable he got with Luna, the less likely it became.”

“He has truly traumatised you.”

“I’m going to sit in the bloody freezing park and give them some time to get... settled.”

He turned to her with less severity in his frown. There was a strange delicacy to the way he asked,
“Will you join me?”

She said, “All right,” even before the two syllables registered as words in her head.

Faintest snow kept falling as they sauntered down a path. Laburnum trees were bare and shrubs
were sparsely spotted with white. It was quiet enough for their footsteps to echo, and for the tiny
flames in the lamps to crackle audibly. Draco was moving with a faraway look in his eyes.
Hermione spotted a bench and broke away from the path, and by the time Draco realised, she had
made good use of scouring and repelling charms and settled on one end of it. She looked up as his
shadow fell on her, quirking up one side of her mouth. There was a lamp a few feet away and its
light fell along the side of his face, diffused, like he had been caressed by a palm coated in gold.

He sat on the other end of the bench and crossed his ankle over his knee. His exhale was a golden
cloud.

“So, Astoria’s been infatuated for years?” Hermione broached.

He smirked. “When we met, she asked about him before the customary how are you.”

“Did you tell her about Luna?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Well...” Hermione said slowly, “You say she’s infatuated, and Theo is in no position to return her
infatuation.”

“I told you,” he rolled his eyes, “She doesn’t want to–”

“Marry him, she wants to shag him. Yes.”

He chuckled and gave her a gleaming stare. “Why are you always looking for problems where there
aren’t any?”

“There is a problem here, Draco.”

“Oh really , Hermione?”

(Jesus.) “Yes. If she’s been pining after him for years, then even one night may give her hope that
something more could happen.”

“Maybe it could.”

“You know it couldn’t!”

“She’ll be fine,” Draco huffed dismissively, waving his hand, “And in any case, it’s between them.
It’s bad enough that I can’t be in my own flat because of those two, I don’t want to sit and speculate
about their relationship.”

“Or lack thereof!” she countered, “I’m just saying that you could have warned her–”

“Not my fucking responsibility. She asked me to organise a meeting, I did so. I’m not her guardian,
or his keeper.”

“You’re beastly.”

“You’re priggish.”

He leaned back comfortably and stretched his legs out, causing lamplight to spread like a hand had
rubbed powdered copper against the grain of his fine, dark grey trousers.

“What happened at the hearing?” he asked.

“Didn’t you read about it in the papers?”

“Of course, I did, but–”

“Not Skeeter’s disingenuous dung, I hope?” she injected, “There was a reasonably measured piece
in today morning’s paper.”

“I read both,” he replied haughtily, “But I thought that hearing it again, straight from the Granger’s
mouth, might be a superior, edifying experience.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “If that’s supposed to be a joke, it’s the sort of joke I’d be tempted to
take seriously.”
“My life’s goal is to be taken seriously by you,” he drawled, “Tell me what happened at the bloody
hearing.”

She told him while distractedly fiddling with the ends of her scarf. He had most likely asked as a
form of penitence or appeasement, but it felt so wonderful to be able to blather on about the case, to
let her pent-up excitement purge through her words, and to supplement each happening with her
opinions. And he listened. He asked questions. His mouth quirked every time she said Eggman. It
was extremely, stupidly easy to believe that she was not being patronised. That he wanted to hear
every word.

“Tell me about the settlements at Kafiristan,” she urged almost immediately after concluding her
account.

At which, he began his account. And what an account it was. He had a way with words; she had
known that for years, even when it was from experiencing the range of insults he hurled at all and
sundry. That talent came into its own when he spoke about his journey. He was breviloquent and
satirical in perfect doses. Concise, but vivid, tart but enthralling. Above all, he paid tribute to the
historical significance and cultural contexts in a way that only one who had really decided to be
understanding towards differences could be. One who had learned it the hard way, perhaps.

She wanted to tell him to chuck everything and become a travel writer. He could write novels set in
far off places. He could pen a fictionalised version of the war. He could become Ernest
Hemmingway.

When a lull fell, she looked up at the sky again. A snowflake landed right between her eyes. She
felt herself smile as her eyes squeezed shut, savouring the tiny, reviving nip of cold. On wiping it
away, she realised that her nose and cheeks were like ice. But blimey, she was not cold at all.
She twisted, leaning against the arm of the bench, for she’d had enough of facing away from him.
He was lost in thought, staring at the tip of his boot. For twenty seconds she waited for him to
resurface, to no avail.

“Draco.”

“Yeah?”

Oops, she hadn’t thought that far. But her floundering won her his eyes. She thought she would
never miss the moon.

“Do you really dislike Astronomy?” she asked.

“I don’t dislike it,” he replied perplexedly, “I don’t have any sort of strong feeling towards it.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t say oh,” he chided, “Tell me what you’re getting at.”

She chuckled. “I was thinking of lending you The Little Prince. It’s about a stranded pilot who met
a young boy in the middle of the desert.” She looked at him with her head tilted and continued, “A
young boy with flaxen hair who had come from a distant asteroid. He had travelled far, stopped at
many planets, met a wonderful, beguiling assortment of characters. It’s about sadness, loneliness,
the loss of childlike wonder...”

And he was in love with a rose, Draco.

“Is an inclination for astronomy a prerequisite to read this book?”

“Not necessarily.”

“I’m just asking because you tend to put strange conditions on–”

“I don’t put conditions– ”

“May I borrow it anyway?”

“Yes.”

He grinned. She blushed.

Wind had picked up a bit, gentle but shiver-inducing like someone blowing on your bare shoulder.
It made the scant snowflakes flutter in swirls and they twinkled as they fell around him. She had to
inhale deeply to pull reckless words back down her throat.

“How does one acquire a spaceship?” he asked.

She started. “You... can’t.”

“I read an essay on muggle space travel by - by Charity Burbage. I’ve wondered since. I’ve seen
shops that sell cars, but never any that sell spaceships.”

“Because there aren’t any!” she said incredulously, “You can’t just blast off into space!”

“Why not?”

“It requires years of training!”

“Took me less than a day to get a hang of flying on a broom. How much harder can it be?”

Hermione laughed. Hard. A lot.

“What ?” Draco grouched.

“You’re right,” she gasped, “How much harder can it be? It’s only rocket science.”

She dissolved into laughter once again. And he was not pleased, with a scowl deeply etched onto
his face. She wanted to shuffle closer and smoothen it away with her fingers.

“Sorry,” she breathed, pulling herself together, “It’s just... not remotely the same as flying a
broom.”

“Yeah. Got it.”

“It's easier to get a private pilot license. Would you like to fly an aircraft, Draco?”

Nothing.

“If you’d like to go to space, there’s a planetarium not too far from here. My mum told me a few
years back that they have a 3D Journey Through Space show.”

He didn’t respond. He was sulking.

“There’s also the Royal Observatory in Greenwich–”

“There’s an observatory at the Manor,” he clipped, “Not royal, I suppose, but it’s nice enough.”

“Of course, you had your own observatory.”

“Had to spend hours – entire nights – up there during Astronomy lessons with a gargantuan tosser
named Osbert Fairclough.”

“This was before Hogwarts?”

Scowl. “Yeah.”

Another spell of silence followed.

The whisper of breeze through shrubs. The crackling of lamps.

“I had one of my biggest instances of accidental magic up there. With him.”

She leaned towards him, resting her elbow on the back of the bench. “What happened?”

“It was late at night, especially so for a seven-year-old. Osbert was yapping on and on about
planetary migration.” The corners of his mouth quivered. “We were on the roof, where all the
telescopes are. I’d had enough. It was cold. I wanted to go home and told him as much multiple
times. He did not listen. The next thing I knew, his legs sank through the floor, right up to his waist.
He was completely stuck, hands plastered against his body, unable to access his wand. And
screaming bloody murder of course. I told him I’d get help.”

“My god, the poor man!” Hermione exclaimed, “Then what happened?”

Draco shrugged. “I went to bed.”

“You did not! You told him you’d get help!”

“I didn’t say immediately.”

“You were the most awful, despicable child! I hope you told your parents first thing in the
morning?”
“Well, about that...”

“You monster! ”

His mouth quivered into a grin. “I honestly forgot.”

“You did not forget.”

“I did. I was seven. Mornings were for flying and piano lessons. Oddball Osbert was the last thing
on my mind.”

“You. Did not. Forget.” Hermione’s horror knew no bounds. But the charm of his grin knew no
bounds either. So really, she was in quite a quandary. “How did nobody hear him screaming?”

“The observatory is near the edge of the property. The grounds are large.”

“How long was he stuck there?” she asked fearfully.

“Another night.” He paid no heed to her gasp. “By the way, the House-Elves who went there to
clean also didn’t say anything.”

“Well of course they didn’t, they were terri–”

“My mother, who is genuinely fond of astronomy, went to the observatory the next evening, to
consult some charts. Imagine her surprise when she saw a pair of legs hanging from the ceiling.”

“Unbelievable.”

“He’d wet himself,” Draco sniggered.

“Well obviously! I hope you were punished.”

“I was sent to bed half an hour earlier that evening.”

Hermione set her chin and turned away, glaring at fluttering snowflakes.

“Come now, Hermione. Are you telling me a powerful and forcible witch like yourself never
experienced any bouts of accidental magic?”

“I did, but they were never so sadistic!”

“Hmm. I don’t believe that.”

He was doing that thing with his voice again; that calm down kitten , Your face is fairly
symmetrical, Thanks rosy thing. Damn it, she flushed.

“W–Well,” she stuttered, “There was one time...”

“Go on,” he urged, looking gleeful.

“There was a girl at school who was very mean to me. Called me all sorts of names, stole my
things, put paint in my hair, craft glue in my food, that sort of thing. Sometimes, after she did those
things, she would inexplicably trip, or drop what she was holding.”

“I’d say she deserved much worse. What’s craft glue?”

“It’s a white paste, used to stick things together. We used it for art projects. But um... I wasn’t
finished. The teasing and bullying got worse in year three. Then the bloody morning assembly
incident happened and it came to a head. She had two of her friends hold me down while she
attempted to pour an entire bottle of glue over me. Well... the bottle flew out of her hand and
upended over her own head instead. And immediately solidified.”

“Fantastic.” He was delighted.

“It got into her ears,” Hermione whispered, “And for some reason, it wouldn’t wash off. They had
to shave her hair and eyebrows. A few weeks later, her parents shifted her to another school, and
nobody else bothered me after that.”

As his chuckles subsided, he asked, “What was the morning assembly incident?”

“Nothing,” she said at once.

“It clearly was–”

“It was nothing.”

“Hermione...”

She could see his chin lowering, his brow puckering. She pointed warningly at his face and said,
“No. Do not deploy the Mien of Persuasion.”

He laughed. “The what?!”

“I may have been, and I quote, stupid enough to cave last time, but it’s not going to work
anymore.”

“You’ll notice I haven’t told anyone your secret, Her-meow-ne.”

And he deployed it anyway. The diabolical Mien of Persuasion.

“But you have brought it up again.”

He smiled so warmly. “You’re going to tell me eventually.”

“Shan’t.”

“We’ll see.”

She bit back a grin, helpless and frightened because his eyes were going to kill her. She could never
tell him about that incident, when she was supposed to be reciting a poem before the entire school,
only to be struck by the most awful bout of stage fright, after which she had gone ahead and
spewed sick all over the headmaster’s shoes. She didn’t want to think of the moniker he would
come up with to match that.
A slightly stronger breeze swept past. Draco tipped back his head and closed his eyes as it hit his
face.

“What other lessons did you have, before Hogwarts?” Hermione asked.

He replied without moving or opening his eyes.

“Arithmetic and Numerology, History and – ( a sigh ) – Magical ancestry, Geography, Theory of
Magic, Latin, and... Reading and Grammar with Aleta Tatton.” He cracked open one eye and
smirked. “The first woman I ever fancied.”

“Oh.” Must’ve been a cow, surely.

Staring off into the distance with a fond look, he said, “Beautiful, slim, long brown hair, perfect
enunciation. I plucked a dozen giant collarette dahlias from the garden to give to her on Valentine’s
Day. My mother was furious.”

“Were you punished?” she asked dryly.

“My broom was locked away for a week.”

“How was your punishment for this so much harsher than when you left a man for dead?”

“What a gross exaggeration. Besides, astronomy instructors are ten for a knut, unlike mother’s
prized dahlias. And, as it turned out, it was all for nothing. The lovely Aleta Tatton didn’t care
about dragons or quidditch, and had no sense of humour.”

Hermione gasped, hand to her heart. “What a dullard.”

“Indeed. She bored me terribly.”

“Pitiful end to a doomed love story.”

A decided gust of wind smacked them with a dose of robust cold, the sort that even the hottest,
passion-warmed blood couldn’t ignore. They came to an unspoken conclusion – it was time to
venture indoors.

Hermione stood up and held in her sigh. Her lungs prickled in protest.

There was yet another shuddering gale. Draco’s cloak rustled. They both took a few steps away
from the bench, and it was then that Hermione realised that Draco’s cloak was not the source of the
rustling. It was coming from a shrub behind them.

“What’s that?” she murmured.

“What?”

She moved closer, and the rustling intensified.

“There’s something...”

The leaves and twigs near the bottom were trembling.

“Get away from there!” Draco called.

And the bush rustled more and more.

“It could be a bloody snake!”

“Unlikely.”

She moved closer still, bending slightly, and reached for her wand.

“Granger!” Draco growled.

“Would you relax–”

“Get the fuck away–”

“I just want to see–”

“–like the centaurs all over again–”

“Do you really think there’s a centaur hiding in this little bush?”

“–could be anything – For fuck’s sake! ”

Lumos. Light fell on the shrub, the rustling got slightly feral, and out leapt –

(Hermione squeaked and jumped back)

A dinky little froggy.

Her hand flew to her mouth as she let out a slightly hysterical giggle. Nox. The frog hopped around
in a vacant circle.

“Why on earth are you out and about in such frightful weather, Mr Frog?” she asked it.

From behind her, came a dry, disgruntled query: “Curiosity satisfied?”

She spun around to see Draco looking most unimpressed as he turned to leave.

"Yes!" She chirped, and grinned brightly at him.

Draco stopped. Half-turned, one heel lifted, torso twisted. He stopped.

She froze, smile faltering, wondering if she had something on her face and fighting the urge to paw
at it. She waited with baited breath for him to speak. But he didn't say a word. Just looked at her.

She asked, “What’s the matter?” just as he began to say, “Granger, you’re–”

They both stopped. And stared.

She reinforced her grin and shook her head. “Sorry. Go on.”

But he didn’t... not immediately. He just looked at her a little longer, punishing her for interrupting,
for breathing, for ever existing and daring to come to this point where she was pathetically wrapped
around his finger.

“You’re covered in snow,” he muttered finally, “Your hair.”

“Oh.”

She looked down at the tresses spilling down her shoulders and they were, in fact, dotted with
white. She caught hold of one flake with her thumb and index finger, dragging it down the length of
a strand till it melted, leaving hair and fingers cold and damp.

When she looked back up, Draco was already walking away.

The wind moved against them, pushing them back. Draco’s cloak kept catching on the shrubbery,
pulling him back. Nature itself was telling them to stay a while longer.

Once again outside the building, they reprised their poses from before.

“Wish me luck,” Draco said, eyeing the doorway unhappily.

“I sincerely hope they are properly sequestered in Theo’s bedroom,” she rejoined.

He smiled crookedly down at her, and again she thought he had something to say, but again, he said
nothing.

She voiced a hesitant, “Goodnight?”

He took a step back and raised his chin, as if to say, go on then. She took a few more seconds to
feast her eyes on him, as lamplight drizzled all over his hair like silver-coated fingers had gently
tousled it. Then she disapparated.
 *

The bedroom was exactly as she'd left it. The candle that she’d forgotten to dout was burning away
merrily; the scent of vanilla and magnolia was almost cloyingly strong. Next to it, Stella slept.
Hermione’s cocoon was still perfectly intact, ready for her to crawl back into.

It was made to her exact specifications, moulded to her form... and she was sure she wouldn’t fit in
it anymore.

She was lighter. She was larger.

She undressed and lay back in bed – bare legs on warm sheets, damp brown hair on a pale pink
pillowcase – and thought that feelings like the one she was suffused with could be life sustaining.
If she closed her eyes, she saw his face. His voice was lodged in her ears and his scent in her nose.
The charge and the rush of sharing space and stories would not leave her blood.

Prize-winning books were still scattered on the other side of the bed. The God of Small Things
abandoned for a wing'd hour, dropped from above.

And in the vein of books from mum...

She was thirteen when she had first been introduced to Marx. Mum’s driving force was perhaps the
guilt of leaving behind the staunchest of her political convictions, and of living in a plush house
that her grandfather had shown great foresight in purchasing. Needless to say, a year that began
with bolstering epithets about having nothing to lose but her chains, and ended with her
unshackling an innocent man, was a whole lot for a young mind to take.

She was fourteen when she read the bit about history always repeating itself, first as a tragedy, then
as a farce. And right then, with her eyes closed and Draco’s image blooming from the dark,
Hermione could think of at least one instance where the opposite was true.

Being in love at sixteen was a farce; even with the tragedy of war, the horror of death, and terror of
trauma. The unattainability of it, at sixteen, was also a farce. She knew Ron wanted her, and Ron
knew she wanted him. The distance between them – of their own making – was so facile and
pointless. Their connection, while strong and true, was a thread with few colours and no
dimension.

What was that compared to a connection that felt like it had dug down to the marrow in her bones?
And with it came actual, crippling unattainability. Though life’s rhythms may have been fairly
even; emotions, like fiendfyre, were decimating her.

And while both instances saw her alone in bed, agonisingly wistful, she hadn’t found it so dead
impossible to compartmentalise the first time. Draco had completely scrambled the tidy coils of her
mind. There were no two ways about it: Being in love at twenty was a tragedy.
Hermione did not currently possess the temperament to gracefully endure the commotion of a
typical evening with the Weasleys... but she had promised. She did a little hopping dance of dismay
in front of the fireplace, before letting out a reluctant, “The Burrow.”

The moment she stepped into their kitchen, she was greeted by a, (would you believe it,)
commotion.

A row was underway. Fleur sat at the table, her feet on Bill’s lap, yelling angrily. Mrs Weasley was
levitating food onto the table, her wand swinging in erratic arcs, also yelling angrily. She was
completely ignoring her husband, who was trying to calm her. Many statues decorated the room:
Angelina holding a basket of rolls, George behind her with his hands on her shoulders, Percy hiding
behind a newspaper, and Ron with a vial of sea-green liquid.

Nobody noticed Hermione’s arrival. She could easily escape back to the sanity of her flat.

Oh.

No.

Somebody had noticed.

Harry was shuffling towards the door, and he widened his eyes meaningfully. Mimicking his
motions, Hermione saw herself out to the back garden, and shiver-sighed as the cold hit. She
conjured warm cloaks for the both of them, and they strolled up and down the lawn as voices from
inside continued to resound.

“Do I want to know?”

Harry blew out a long breath. “Fleur wants to go to France for the remainder of her pregnancy.
There’s a healer there – Healer Fournier – who has seen the birth of every Delacour for the past
billion or so years.”

“And I suppose Mrs Weasley doesn’t want her to go.”

“Healer Seward at Mungo’s has seen the birth of every Weasley for the past billion or so years.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Hermione huffed, “I came with an appetite.”

It wasn’t snowing that evening.

It may as well have been. Because Hermione was, all but physically, still sitting on a park bench.
Harry conveyed his congratulations over the Millward affair, going on to say, “I knew the moment I
heard about the article in the Quibbler that it was your doing.”

They paced and watched the shadows of people gesticulating in the kitchen window’s square of
light.

“Shall I tell you a secret, Harry?”

“Go on.”

“That new Crisis Aid bill...? That was sort of my doing as well.”

“Really? How come?”

Meanderingly, she explained as they meandered. He had a rather lot of questions about why Draco
had come to her, and rather few (i.e., none,) about the actual bill and work that she put in.

“Shall I tell you a secret, too?” he asked afterwards.

“The rules of friendship dictate that you must.”

“I got completely wankered on Friday.”

Hermione tottered, but was quick to quash down the impulse to throw out an Oh Harry, how could
you; for when had that ever gone down well with him? Instead, she just used his own words.

“How come?”

“Ron was out with Edith. I was alone... and it just bloody well pissed me off that I’d painted myself
into this corner where I couldn’t have a drink at the end of the week. So, I had one, and honestly, I
could’ve easily stopped after that. It wasn’t a relief, or a big undoing like I’d thought it would be.
But I had another anyway, and another after that. Passed out on the floor... where Ron found me the
next morning.”

See? Wrecked. All of them.

“Did you tell Asher?” she asked timidly.

“Yeah. Had a session with him on Saturday anyway.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t bothered. Said it’s normal, and that I’d shown more self-control than most. He asked if
I want to get drunk again... and I don’t. Not really. I just hate not having a choice in the matter.”

Mrs Weasley’s voice burst out – “...EXCELLENT HEALER WHO I TRUST, AND THAT’S MY
GRANDSON...”
 “Harry, do you think you’ll–”

“Ginny’s coming home for Christmas,” He cut her off very, very firmly.

“I know,” she sighed.

“I'm taking her to the Lake District for New Year’s. Taken a week off and booked a holiday cottage
at Grizedale.”

“That sounds really wonderful.”

Heavens, it did. Imagine having a gorgeous view and a row of empty days and nights to sit on
benches and converse?

The door opened and Ron, George, and Angelina spilled out, looking like they’d escaped a haunted
house by the skin of their teeth.

“Doesn’t seem like that’s going to resolve itself anytime soon,” Ron carped, “We won’t be eating
for a good long while.”

“I knew their new found comradery was too good to last,” George remarked cheerfully, “It was
only a matter of time...”

“I said that months ago,” Angelina added.

“Here, Harry. Have a toffee.”

Harry looked uninterested and very sceptical.

“Come on, mate. If it was really dangerous, you know I’d offer it to Ron.”

One cry of protest, one proffered sweet, and one chary acceptance later, Harry’s nose hair had
grown down to his chin.

Hermione looked over at her hillock and sighed. It had been less than twenty-four hours, and she
was already crumbling from the loss of that life-sustaining feeling.

Chapter End Notes

1. "...set around the first World War": The Ghost Road, by Pat Barker. Booker Prize winner
1995.
2. The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy. Booker Prize winner 1997. The next four
quotes ("In a country..." "He folded his fear..." "Silence hung..." and "The God of...") are from
this book.
3. Salome: Eponymous character from Oscar Wilde’s play inspired by the Biblical figure.
4. The Little Prince: Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
5. “So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above,”: Silent Noon, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
6. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, by Karl Marx

This chapter (primarily the park scene) was brought to you by Jimmy Eat World’s ’Crush’. I
listened to it repeatedly and obsessively while writing.

The unofficial title of this chapter is ‘I WILL FOLLOW YOU INTO THE PARK.’
(DeathEater Lad for Cutie.)
 Eighty-One
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Misty morning. Frost on the window panes. A delicate dusting of snow on the hill.

Hermione was impassive and ascetic as she picked The Little Prince out of her bookshelf. She sat
with a pen and post-it for quite some time, as quotes and snippets carrying varying degrees of bite
swam around in her head. Finally, she settled on being cute instead.

It might end up backfiring, but oh well. How much worse could things get?

She wrote the Ode to an Expiring Frog, from The Pickwick Papers –

Can I view thee panting, lying

On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log
Expiring frog!

And in keeping with the Little Prince’s spirit, she made a drawing. No, really.

The frog from the park, dead. Hermione standing by it, upset. Draco cowering in terror behind a
lamppost.
And before she could change her mind, she put on a jacket and trainers and went out the door.

By two in the afternoon on Monday, Hermione had decided that the whole week was absolutely
rubbish; the only highlight being the newspaper rolled up in her bag, featuring a long interview
with Twila and Hattie. The Prophet had dubbed them the Dauntless Duo, (which was at least
somewhat less mawkish than the Golden Trio.) They were starting an organisation to support and
advocate for squibs: The Foundation for Squib Advancement (FSA), had filed for official
recognition, and would be open to accepting volunteers and donations from the coming week.
Ellington and Speight continued their streak of absenteeism. Hermione very nearly doodled in the
letters she sent to them, too. Something akin to the angry owl Draco had once drawn on her
Arithmancy parchment.

Dear Mr Ellington,

Where have you disappeared, OWL of a sudden? I hope you are not under the FEATHER.

Yours sincerely,
Hermione Granger
Office Of Madam Elena Barros
Department of Domestic Law
Ministry Of Magic

Dear Mr Speight,

Will the mystery of the balcony beFOWLER remain a HOOdunnit?

Yours sincerely,
Hermione Granger
Office Of Madam Elena Barros
Department of Domestic Law
Ministry Of Magic

They had no other cases. It was a karmic balancing act – the fresh, Stamp-free environment had to
be counterpoised by robbing her of meaningful work. For some reason, Kathy was completely
content with putting her feet up instead of preparing for the exam she had to sit for in two measly
months.

Hermione wandered the archives suffering from full-body paraesthesia. In that dark and gloomy
vault, it felt like the Spectre of Time was stalking her. She went in on one day, came out the next,
and had no real recollection of what transpired in between, when, surely, she must have gone home,
eaten, slept, ran, showered…

Non-action led to wars. Vacant minds dwelled on the ache of loneliness. Closed eyes were treated
to visions of graveyards and a cursed locket that had fused itself to Harry’s chest.

On one such day of impersonating flotsam, she was informed that Stamp had filed a case against
the department for wrongful termination, (despite collecting payment in lieu of notice,) and cited
her specifically for sabotage. The file now sat somewhere among the teetering piles collecting dust
in the admin office.

A few hours later, she had lunch with Twila, who had come to collect her signed and sanctioned
scroll of certification. Hermione listened all through the meal, to her plans about building a solid
organisation, and cultivating an association with the Diagon Union of Shop and Allied Workers to
widen employment prospects for squibs. Eventually, once they had garnered sufficient funds, they
would petition the Ministry to begin registering squibs as legitimate members of Magical Society,
and afford them the rights that come with it. They would demand the opportunity to apply for
administrative and clerical jobs in the Ministry, and the right to open an account at Gringotts
without needing to have it associated with a witch or wizard.

“You know you will have all the legal support you need, right?” Hermione asked.

“Of course,” Twila smiled with a bashfulness that was completely at odds with the spirited plan of
action she had just rattled off, “I actually had something else I wanted to ask you...”

“Yes?”

“We’re working on a fortnightly newsletter. Anita has a printing press that she says we are
welcome to use, and she has also offered to edit for us. We want to bring out the first one by end
January. Would you write a small forward for us? Short – just around five hundred words.”

“Um... I’m... not sure I should,” Hermione stammered, “That honour should go to nobody but you.
Or Hattie...”

“I can’t think of anyone better to write about standing up for who you are, Hermione. Hattie and I
will have our say as well, of course. But... I don’t know how much longer we’d have been stuck
waiting if it hadn’t been for you. Please, say you’ll do it.”

She obviously agreed. As they parted, she pressed ten galleons into Twila’s hand; the first of many
donations, she promised.

Then it was –

Archives. Annals, accounts, and dossiers. The chamber of regrets. Was it Wednesday– ?

– No, it was Thursday.

Thursday evening and she had just showered. She closed her fist around the ends of her hair that
were pure frizz.

I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.

Well, look again.

It was Thursday night and as she sipped lukewarm cream of vegetable cup-a-soup, she received an
owl.

Not any owl – it was Rodion, with The Little Prince. Hermione’s cold-tipped fingers undid the
packaging and opened the book to find the slip of parchment he’d left there.

Her-meow-ne, Her-meow-ne, there’s no one like Her-meow-ne,

She’s broken every human law, she breaks the law of gravity.

He had made a drawing too, but outdone her by animating it. A little cat walked across the bottom
of the parchment, up the side of the parchment, and halfway across the top of the parchment before
losing her footing and tumbling downwards. And as she hit the bottom, she transformed into a wild,
tangled scribble.

Then the scribble re-formed into a cat, and it started over again.
Hermione smiled wanly. It was silly and endearing – exactly how she had hoped he would respond.

But she couldn’t –

She couldn’t feel.

She watched the cat form and re-form. Climb over and over again. A Sisyphusian endeavour. …
Sissy-puss.

What if in some far, alternative dimension she led a life in which she could say that asinine pun to
Draco because they were together, and he’d roll his eyes but also chuckle, and then he’d hold her
tight?

Cat to scribble, scribble to cat –

How had he dared to discover Eliot on his own? Was there someone in that bookshop near the
Ministry making recommendations to him? She wondered if there was any honest, ethical way to
shut it down.

He just kept finding ways to reject her.

It was Friday morning and she ran through near opaque fog that was blurring out a desaturated
landscape. At one point, out of breath, she sat on a bench.

Then she realised she was crying. Then she realised she wasn't flotsam. She was just really fucking
sad.

And time kept bleeding –

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

– Had Draco read Four Quartets, too?

Her grandmother would’ve been sixty-eight that day. Mum’s mum. Why were all her grandparents
dead? Was dying young in her blood?

Dying young and mud.

She wore grandma’s checked skirt and pulled her hair back into a tight bun like grandma used to
make her, before ballet lessons. Friday, noon, and still no new cases –

– Well, one landlord/tenant dispute that Barros handed to Kathy without so much as flipping
through the file –
Draco was late for lunch. Fiona actually stood and waved like a maniac to grab his attention.
Hermione stabbed a cherry tomato and it spurted juice across her tray. She did not look back up
again.

“Barros has taken off,” Kathy grinned, “How about we also call it a day early? My friend’s had a
baby that I can’t wait to meet!”

Cat to scribble.

Late Friday afternoon, Hermione riffled through the cabinet in her study, unable to find the
notebook she was looking for.

Couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it –

– she yanked out the entire drawer and upended it onto the floor. The notebook tumbled out and she
summoned it into her hands like she could’ve done to begin with.

Hours buried in old jottings –

In the evening on Friday, the Spectre of Time materialised into the peace of her flat.

The steady, arrhythmic drone at Finnigan’s was soothing.

Dean was standing at the bar, wearing paint splattered dungarees and a mesh top. His nails were
electric blue. Hermione went up to him and he grinned, easy and a little scatty.

“You look snazzy,” she mumbled.

“I’m a cliché,” he laughed with a sway, “But I don’t care.”

He collected his unseemly tall glass of beer and Hermione her glass of wine.

“Join us,” he gestured over her shoulder, “You haven’t met the gang yet.”

But she had already seen a head of pale blond, alone at a table, in front of the mural. The last and
the only thing she needed.

“I will in a bit,” she told Dean, “Just need to have a word with Draco over there...”

“Oh. I should warn you then. He’s an arsehole right now.”

“Only right now?”

“More than usual. He’s in a mood. Snarled at me when I asked him to come to our table.”
“I see. I still have to speak to him.”

Moving away from the bar, Dean said, “Well, alright. He won’t snarl that hard at a girl. Probably.
Come by when you’re done!”

Unlikely, but she nodded.

She pulled together Hermione from time past, and Hermione from time future, (gather ‘round all
you clowns,) and tried to bring herself into an even headspace.

Let me hear you say

Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away!

Plodding towards him, she felt the heavy weight of perpetuity. She pulled out a chair and said,
“Hello.”

“Hi,” he muttered.

He was staring straight ahead, stiff-necked. An inebriated flush spread from his cheekbones to the
tips of his ears. There was a half-empty glass of firewhisky before him, and another full one and
two empty ones near him. A bowl of salted peanuts was at arms-reach. And his hand, his wand,
were resting on the table, moving erratically from side to side.
She followed his gaze and landed on a table full of rumbustious carousers across the room. One
man, possibly the drunkest of the drunks, was flailing around as his glass danced all around the
table, always out of reach. His companions were in splits, not remotely bothered to find out why it
was happening.

“Why are you pestering that man?” Hermione asked. She almost reached out to physically stop
him, but good sense seized her motions.

“He elbowed me at the bar,” said Draco simply.

“Are you grievously injured? Shall I take you to Mungo’s?”

“No.”

“Then leave that poor lush alone! I’m sure he didn’t deliberately jab you!”

“Doesn’t matter. His filthy elbow touched my sleeve.”

She heaved with exasperation. “He must’ve barely – Oh, for goodness’ sake!”

Draco lightly lifted his wand, levitating the glass off the table. Hermione gave up – or simply could
not find words – and just watched in dismay as he made the man chase his poison halfway down
the pub and back. Then he raised the glass even more... lowering it just so... making the man hop
on the spot, while his friends wet themselves. Finally, he hovered the glass right above the man’s
head, and when he looked up, sure enough, the drink was poured all over him. He stood dazed,
licking his chops, while next to Hermione, a small, understated laugh escaped into the world.

She turned to find Draco surveying the scene with satisfaction.

“That’s cheered you up then?” she asked snidely.

“Hmm?” He smirked so egregiously Draco-like.

“Dean informed me that you are in a mood. Harassing an innocent stranger seems to have greatly
improved that.”

The man staggered towards the bar, his garbled cry, (“‘nother fi-whishky, mate!”) rang across the
pub.

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m in a good mood around you.”

Right then, she was fully and only Hermione from time present. The runny consistency of time
clotted, and she was left with an actual, solid moment. Followed by another and another –

How was she supposed to take that? For certain, not seriously.

“Are you?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “The chances of you saying something foolish or embarrassing are always high. So
there’s always something to look forward to.”

Yes, there was that. She gnawed at her lip for a bit, wondering if this would be the irresistible,
agonising interaction that would finally kill her.

The whisky-soaked man returned to his table, brandishing a fresh glass.

“Must be really hard for you,” she said slowly, “The instances in which I manage to get by without
putting my foot in my mouth.”

“Yeah, well–” He stopped and peered at her. Those grey eyes were made for a focalised stare. They
held her. “That depends.”

“On?”

“On what you’re wearing.”

She was Hermione from a frozen moment where time ceased to exist–

Staring up, she took in his slowly forming grin with a stuttering heartbeat.

“What about what I have on right now? Will it allow me to pass the evening without making a fool
of myself?”
It was a blatant invitation and he took it. Leaning back in his chair, he scrutinised her from head to
toe, (setting light,) from toe to head, from head to toe again, (fanning the flames). Then he slid his
eyes slowly up her calves and settled on her lap.

“That skirt could stand to be shorter,” he decided.

“Is it short enough to earn me a favour?” There was a tremor in her murmur.

“You want a favour, Hermione?”

“Yes.”

“What can I do for you?”

Have your way with me.

“I... need... a document.”

“A document.”

He picked up a single peanut and took it between his white, perfectly even teeth. He sucked it into
his mouth and his lips closed.

Look somewhere else. Look literally anywhere else.

Staring at one of his discarded glasses, she said, “Would you happen to know anyone in the
Norwegian Council of Magic? And could you procure a copy of the charter granting a day off to
House-Elves?”

He said nothing. She had to seek him out again, and see his lips pulled up wryly.

“Lost the ability to stay still even for a moment, eh?” he said eventually.

“Ha ha. I suppose. So... do you think you could–”

“I could.”

“Will you?”

He glanced at the hem of her skirt once more. “I’ll think about it. What are you plotting?”

“I’ll tell you after you get me the document.”

The consequent toothy grin she received made her breath hitch. Bloody hell, she could get past this.
Would get past this. She always found her feet one way or another, like any self-respecting cat
would. Till then, maybe she could find a curse that would cause him to always be drunk and
flirtatious in her presence.

She finally got around to taking her first sip of wine

Scribble to cat.

“How did you stumble upon T. S. Eliot?”

“I was at the children’s section at the bookshop, looking for a Christmas present for Teddy,” he
replied, “How was I to resist a book called Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats?”

She laughed lightly. “You bought it then?”

“Of course.”

“He wrote grown up poetry too. One of... if not the... most brilliant and complex modernist poets.
His work is so dense with references and allegories; esoteric, challenging, but beautiful and
compelling...”

Sensing the danger of an impending sermon, she quickly bit her tongue. He was looking at her like
he was expecting a sermon.

“So... um, yeah,” she finished weakly, “If that interests you–”

“Do you have a compilation or anthology to lend me?”

She nodded. “Annotated for your convenience.”

He chuckled, and she thought that maybe he wouldn’t mind, if she said a little more.

“You have to read his poems very… deliberately, as he’s been so deliberately allusive in writing
them. He called it an extinction of personality.”

Draco said, “Surely poetry is enhanced by personality.”

“It is, but it must be shrouded. Eliot believed that individuality shone when the immortality of dead
poets and ancestors was the most prominent thing in any piece of poetry. He also used a lot of
quotations and contrasts.”

“Patchwork verses.” He put down all that remained in his glass.

“Why… yes. That’s a quaint and succinct way to describe his poems. Patchwork that’s
unfalteringly stunning.”

He frowned, so deep that a shadowed groove formed between his eyebrows. His eyes darted
between both of hers, filled with deliberation. Every passing second pulled her nerves tighter and
tighter.

Then he said, slow and measured, “That’s how I try to compose music.”

Hermione knew better than to say, You said you didn’t compose. She stayed still, quiet and tense,
and hoped that he would continue.

“Never thought to put it in those words, but essentially, yeah. Emotions, persona, disposition, what
have you… are best suppressed, if not made extinct.”

“Isn’t it a bit different for music?” she asked cautiously, “It’s much harder to be direct without
words. Music relies on its emotive qualities.”

“Evocative qualities. Emotive in a neutral sort of way. Unless it's operatic… theatrical… and
intended for a particular scene, the composition in itself should be inexplicit in its intentions; open
to interpretations. The emotions are left to the performer and the audience. And there can be a vast
difference between those impressions, too.”

“That night…” she mused, “The night before the memorial dinner… what was it you’d played?”

“A prelude by Rachmaninoff.”

“And you did something to it. You changed it up, or–”

“I drenched it with my personality.”

She huffed a laugh and gripped the stem of her glass. “That week – fortnight, in fact – it felt like
the entire castle was under an all-pervading silencing charm. A bubble charm. Arresto Momento . It
was horrible, stifling… inescapable… but you just dispelled them all. You tore through the… the
façade…”

She sucked in a breath – he was looking back with such gravity that she actually trembled.

“And that other time,” she broached softly, “The last evening at Hogwarts…”

“Ravel. Le Gibet ,” he supplied. Low. Gruff.

“You did something to that as well.”

“Just forced in some personality.”

“It was overwhelming.”

“My personality?”

“The music.”

“Made so by my overwhelming personality.”

“Perhaps.”

She grinned. The severity between them dispersed and she batted her eyelashes like a twit.

(She’d cry over that later.)

She asked, “What’s your starting point, when you’re composing? Say, you’ve put away that
overwhelming Draco Malfoy personality, and you’re sitting poised, facing those keys… where do
you begin?”

She had, unconsciously, raised her hands, pretending they were hovering over an imaginary piano,
and on realising that fact, (clued in by his smirk,) she dropped her arms and flushed painfully.

“There are many different ways to begin.”

“Such as?”

He shrugged, but the flippancy was missing. “Sometimes, just a word; the general sense it invokes,
or even how it sounds, phonetically. A place, the weather, a couplet, Arithmantic matrices.
Sometimes, things can take off during practice exercises. The way two notes fall together can
suddenly–”

He stopped. His flush was more prominent, more widespread – certainly not purely caused by
inebriation. He seemed chagrined, but even so, not closed off. She leaned onto the table, rested her
chin on her knuckles and waited.

“Those ones are the easiest to separate from yourself,” he continued slowly, “It feels almost
architectural; constructing a piece, bit by bit… Ensuring it’s harmonious and technically sound,
with enough turns and chord progressions to be interesting…”

“Without a blueprint?”

“A what?”

“A plan. A design.”

“No, there is a plan–”

(It was amazing how he could say the most cutting and brutal things without turning a hair, but
talking about something so fantastically interesting left him completely flustered.)
“–It also forms simultaneously. A few paces ahead, I suppose, but it’s… there.”

She smiled. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

He arched an eyebrow.

“The plan," she clarified, "It’s inspiration. The creative force.”

“Pff,” he jeered – or attempted to. A roll of his eyes, a swipe at the peanut bowl, a tug on his scarf,
while his flush spread down to his jaw. She loved, loved, loved the palaver.

“How does it go when you begin with a word, or a place, or the weather?” She was on the edge of
her chair by now, with both elbows on the table, straining towards him.

“They’re… anchors? A place to start that helps establish the melody, texture, tonality, etcetera.”

“Snow.”

“...Snow?”
“Hypothetically,” she elaborated, “The word is snow . How would you compose a piece about it?”

Her query induced another non-flippant shrug. “High notes, I suppose? Cold and crisp. Strophic,
homophonic. I’d keep the tempo and dynamics open – full fortissimo for a blizzard… pianissimo
for a gentle flurry…”

A gentle flurry. On a late night in a park.

“What about the Arithmantic matrices?” she asked eagerly.

His small smile was knowing. “They are particularly useful for creating rhythmic patterns.” One
long, tapered finger drew a set of square brackets on the table. “Depending on the number of rows
and columns, and the numerological value, they can be used to write monotones, or even fugues or
canons. Are you familiar with Schubert’s Erlkönig ?”

“No. But I know it’s based on a poem by our old friend Goethe.”

“Oh,” his brow wrinkled, “I didn’t know that. But well… It's a very layered piece. I tried to
structure a similar durchkomponiert using only Arithmantic expressions. The crescendo was based
on an equation for variable prophesying.”

“That’s bloody fascinating,” she breathed.

He traced and retraced the invisible bracket he’d drawn. His shoulders were bunched like he was
bracing himself for something, but his mouth was clamped shut, as though he had lost steam. But
still … he was not closed off.

Emboldened, Hermione asked, “So this is where the patchwork comes in? Your nod to Schubert, I
mean. Do you often pay homage to the immortality of dead composers?”

“It’s unavoidable,” he snorted, “Herr Dietrich was of the opinion that originality is no longer
possible, that all great musical accomplishments have already been made and we can only play
around with borrowed genius.”

“Do you share that opinion?”

“No. He was an unimaginative scavenger. Would you say Eliot’s poems are unoriginal, even with
all the dead ponces shining through?”

She glared at his word of choice, but shook her head. “Nobody would say that.”

“Right. So it isn’t unoriginal or derivative to be inspired by a splash of Schuman, or a bit of Bach, a

dash of Debussy–”

“But not even a mote of Malfoy.”

“Merlin forbid.”
“How ever do you manage?” She was batting her eyelashes again. “How do you suppress the
strong, forceful, overwhelming Draco Malfoy persona?”

Back at bracket-tracing, he replied, “Music can eclipse anything and make you realise how small
you are. Make you forget yourself.”

“All good art can.”

“Yeah.”

Art and you, she silently amended. Her fingers walked themselves to the peanut bowl, stopping
when they touched the rim. They ran along the edge in a gentle stroke, mere inches away from
where his finger was drawing brackets. One accidental slide off the tacky ceramic and her hand
would land on his, stilling its motions, smoothening over the digits that could make blizzards and
flurries, and turn numbers into melodies.

She peeked up. He was watching their hands, too.

“You save up all that personality to pour into other people’s compositions.”

Her fingers curled into the bowl, and pulled it closer to herself, and he smirked while keeping his
eyes on it.

“I only make them better.”

“If you say so.”

“You said so.”

“I didn’t say the word better. I meant that your talent for manipulation is evident when you play.”

“I can play Ode to Joy in a way that will leave you overcome with grief.”

“Oh?” She raised her brows. “That poorly?”

His eyes flicked up, bright with surprise, and he laughed. The notes of it were so pristine, that…
roll over, Beethoven … she’d found the truest ode to joy. Better than the crack of a brand new book,
and better than McGonagall saying very good, Ms Granger.

“My friends!”

Seamus descended, toting two round potion bottles filled with a bright red liquid that shimmered
with golden flakes, and set them down on the table. He dragged a chair to sit right next to
Hermione, who was, once again, jarred and irritated to find that things existed beyond the delusory
shroud that Draco kept throwing over her head.

She wanted to murder Seamus. A severing charm to his neck. Reducto till his bones were dust.
Incendio till he was a charred block of coal.
“Where’ve you been, Hermione? Haven’t seen you in yonks!”

“I was here on Sunday,” she bit out.

“Yonks!” Seamus exclaimed, “Now this here, is called a Bloody Merry. Go on, give it a go.”

Heaven knows how she resisted the urge to fling the drink in his face. And it was not good. She
kept it in her mouth for a bit, while Draco all but growled, “That was fucking vile. Like cold, bitter
tomato soup.”

“Sure look, the connoisseur Malfoy doesn’t approve. What about you?” He draped his arm around
her and squeezed her shoulders, “Any good?”

“It’s an acquired taste,” she grumbled.

Seamus let out a laugh, while Draco scoffed.

“That’s a no then,” he said, unbothered, “Now, there’s one more thing I need to ask you.”

He was too close to look directly at, so she just turned her head in his general direction. “Yes?”

“Why haven’t you brought Parvati to my pub yet? You’re good mates!”

“We’ve never been good mates. You know that.”

“You get on with her twin well enough.”

“They’re two separate people.”

“Bah, I know. Padma isn’t interested in my cock at all.”

Bletch. Hermione looked at the part of the table that was right in front of him, and edged slightly
out of his grip. “You think Parvati is?”

“Yeah. But she never replies to my owls for some fucking reason.”

She said nothing as Seamus sulked; only continued to squirm away.

Expecting Draco to bite his head off was a lost cause, it seemed; He was, once again, staring into
the distance. What good was his mood if he wouldn’t weaponise it when really required? Someone
needed to stop Seamus from being so Seamusy .

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

Draco’s grey scarf looked preposterously soft. She could imagine rubbing her cheek against it while
she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

“Are you interested in my cock?”

Her head snapped in his direction as she lurched out of his grip to glare at him.

“Excuse me?!”

He laughed and tried to pull her back in. She evaded.

“Come on, love. You’re single, aren’t you?”

“So?! ”

“Don’t you remember the rumour back in school about the size of–”

“A rumour you made up!”

“Who told you that?”

“Everyone knew!”

“Moryah!”

Hermione washed down her distaste with wine; only to have it return when Seamus snaked his arm
back around her shoulders and damn near crushed her to his side.

“Malfoy, you’re a fine chancer. Help me out.” Seamus piped up once more, “Tell me about that
friend of yours. Fiona.”

Draco’s eyes were shooting poisoned darts at him.

“What’s her story? She single?”

“You’re a cretin.”

“Oho!”

Seamus chortled as he made note of Draco’s expression, and Hermione was jostled around. She
grabbed his arm, lifted it over her head, and placed it firmly back on his lap. Then she moved her
chair away before he could notice.

Seamus winked, “I see how it is. I’ll quit asking after her, then.”

His amusement petered out, and sombreness set in quite abruptly. He pouted at the distance
between him and Hermione.

“Luna’s single now, yeah?”

“You’ve gone mad!” she slated.

“What is the point of owning the best pub in the bleeding country if I’ve to have it off with my
hand every night?”

Pinching her lips between her teeth, she just about suppressed a shudder.
However, Draco had rediscovered his acerbity. He said, “Kindly take your permanently scarring
imagery and bugger off.”

“You bugger off!”

“You’re seriously repulsive. I don’t know any woman who’d hate herself enough to willingly let
you touch her–”

“Oi!”

“...tastes can range from ludicrous to grotesque, but you are beyond any of that–”

“What the fuck?!”

“...have any wit that’s worth a damn, not even the suggestion of a personality–”

“What the fuck?! ”

“Um,” Hermione interjected nervously.

“...going around rubbing up against women, deluded enough to believe that’ll work in your
favour–”

“You tool! I’ll have you thrown out!”

Seamus shot to his feet – Draco followed – both gnashing their teeth. The people around their table
had begun to gawk. Hermione jumped up as well and grabbed Seamus’ arm.

“Look!” she hissed, “Seamus! See that group that just walked in. They look like they need your
help!”

“I don’t have to take this shite from you, pasty fucking ferret!”

“Right! I’m sure I’m robbing you of time you could spend making yourself even more unappealing
– plunging new, unprecedented depths of foulness–”

“Seamus! Seamus! Look! Those people… definitely could use your expert input… at the bar…
Come on.”

She began pulling him away, dragging him, and some of what she had said must’ve registered,
because he let her. She didn’t relent till they had reached the bar, only unleashing him when they
were a short distance away from the group that had just come in.

“I’m going to tell Vasillios to kick his arse… break his legs…”

“No.” She stood on her toes to cut off his view of Draco. “Let it go.”

“Who does he think he is? Fucking wanker. I’ll have him hauled–”
“You obviously touched a sore spot when you brought up Fiona. Forget about it. Go tend to those
people. Whip up some of your exceptional cocktails. Please.”

He scowled at her, purple-faced. “Fine. Only because you’re asking. Fucking bastard. Arsehole.”

Making a beeline for the two young women in the group, he said a loud, still very furious, “ How
ya,” causing them to jump with alarm.

Hermione shuffled back to her seat, peeking over her shoulder at every other step, in case he
decided to make a return.
At the table, Draco had started on his final glass of whisky, and his high complexion and clenched
jaw were the only indication that he had recently gone completely crackers. She sat down gingerly,
and once again peeked at the bar. By all appearances, it would be safe to assume that Seamus
would not storm back; he was aggressively, vengefully jerking a cocktail shaker. She gnawed at her
lip as she watched, feeling a little bad for foisting him on those unsuspecting people.

“Regret pushing him away?” Draco sniped.

Withered and glum, she just stared at him, finally realising that Dean had meant business with his
warning. She didn’t think it would be possible to circle the conversation back to music; not when
he was lashing out compulsively, without a thought; without even bothering to look at her.

“Wish you had kept him for yourself?” he went on.

“You have nothing to worry about, you know.” she muttered, “With Seamus.”

He turned to her sharply then, with a rapier-like gaze. “What?”

“He may be a lout, and an absolute idiot,” she explained in a dejected monotone, “But he would
never go after someone else’s… erm. He… won’t try anything with Fiona, now that he knows that
you’re… I mean, no matter how desperate or angry he is, he wouldn’t–”

“We aren’t together,” he snapped.

He didn’t look happy at all, making that declaration. She reckoned there was some kind of warning
in his manner.

Still, she persisted, adding, “You mean yet?” with a forced, coy smile. Because she couldn’t help it
and she had to know.

He looked incredulous, like he couldn’t believe she had the audacity to keep prying.

“No,” he ground out, “I mean exactly what I said.”

Training her focus on her neglected drink, she was close to wishing that the Spectre of Time would
return, in a temper that outdid even Draco’s for nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make
defence. She wanted for them to sink into hideous night.
She methodically drained her glass and he sat largely motionless. No further attempt at
conversation was made, and yet neither made the move to leave.

The fabric of time consisted of seconds that tessellated perfectly: She could see them all from her
ensnared position. The pattern lay over both of them; variegated marks on their skin, joining them
together in a plane.
They were joined by physics, and metaphysics. Magic and mundanity. By the circle of wood
between them. By their history - shared and corrosive, diametric and complementary. By
collaborative humour, combative notions, magnificent discussions, and little slips of paper tucked
into books.

It was so senseless that she couldn’t have him.

It was so senseless to be sat there, with him, still.

How unreserved and engaged he had been, before stupid, bawdy Seamus had interrupted. She had
been on the verge of asking if he’d play her one of his own creations — The quixotic part of her
mind was convinced that he would have agreed. They’d have walked through another snowy night
in Diagon, stopping at Fortescue’s to pick up some warm apple strudel and vanilla ice cream. My
treat she’d have insisted, batting her eyelashes. Then they’d have got to his building, and in the lift
she would’ve stood just a hair’s breadth away from him. The flat would’ve been dark and quiet
because Theo wouldn’t have been home, and they’d have walked down the hall, side by side…

An animated figure, the furthest thing from the Spectre of Time, was making his merry way
towards them.

“Theo,” she sighed.

“Fuck’s sake,” Draco grumbled.

“Why are you skulking out here?” Theo demanded, falling into the chair that Seamus had occupied,
“All the action is happening in the private room! Do you remember that Magical Creatures game I
cooked up for NEWTs prep? George and I have taken it to another level!”

The subject matter, along with his zeal, made Hermione ill. Iller .

“I don’t have the energy for that,” she mumbled.

He wrinkled his nose. “When did you turn seventy?”

“Monday, I think.”

“I see. Draco?”

Draco completely ignored him.

“Oh, of course. As usual, you’re nursing a grudge like it’s your own little baby.”
Draco displayed his special talent for performing ordinary tasks in a manner that conveyed what he
wanted to say. Never before had anyone scratched their jaw in a more go fuck yourself sort of way.

Theo turned to her with a long suffering sigh, belied by the impish smile he was sporting. “He’s
angry with me.”

She nodded with disinterest. Draco quaffed whisky like you’re a dreadful arse.

“He thought he was being clever, you see,” Theo pressed on, “By volunteering to run back to
Afghanistan right before Christmas, thinking he’d avoid Narcissa’s painful pureblood Yuletide
banquet. But you know what happened instead?”

She shook her head with disinterest. Draco pushed back his chair like you aren’t worth my time.

“Narcissa is organising a pre and post Yuletide banquet just for him, and he cannot get out of either.
And he’s directing his anger over his own stupid miscalculation at me, simply because I refuse to
suffer along with him. Tell me, is that on?”

Theo received no response, and nor did he expect any. Draco put on his cloak like your existence is
a stupid miscalculation.

“I don’t have time to sit around, eating foie gras while listening to Pansy bitch about… about
everything . I haven’t even started Christmas shopping and I have to owl Robert and Evelyn’s
presents by Tuesday, latest, if I want them to reach on time–”

“But they’ll be here next week,” Hermione cut in, “Didn’t I mention?”

“No, you did not!” Theo cried, most affronted.

“Oh. Well, sorry. I’d have thought they might have told you themselves…”

“So would I,” he huffed, “I will be sure to convey my disappointment.”

“In any case,” Hermione added, “I plan on getting through all my shopping on Sunday. You can tag
along, if you’d like.”

“I’d like,” he beamed, “It’s a date.”

Hermione’s gaze dropped to her grandmother’s too-long skirt and she let out a short, empty laugh.
“Keep that up and Draco might begin to look kindly upon you again, out of sheer pity.”

The edges of her vision revealed that they both were studying her intensely, with Draco halting his
imminent departure. She refused to look up.

“What’s that?” Theo probed.

“Oh, you know. There’s nothing worse – nothing sorrier – than being on a date with me.”

“I… er… disagree?” He chuckled confusedly.

Draco left. The other two watched him storm past the tables, the punters, and straight out the door.

“When is the pre-Yule banquet?” Hermione asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“Since when has he been so ill-tempered about seeing his mother?”

Theo didn’t answer, posing a question instead: “He said that dating you would be the worst thing?
He actually said that?”

“Pretty much. All in good fun.”

Good fun. Because she was supposed to have believed that it hadn’t been a crack at her.

Then again, her thoughts were a flat circle. There was a chance she might’ve even imagined their
conversation about music. Maybe he’d spent the entire hour lashing out at her, and she had made up
an alternative scenario as a coping mechanism.

It wouldn’t surprise her at all.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end…

…Which was that feelings made her stupid.

Theo was agitatedly chewing his tongue, poor lad, like he was having the hardest time trying to
figure out what to say to her.

“Who all are there?” she rushed out, “In the private room?”

“Um, everyone. Astoria, George, Angelina, Lee, Goldstein… I just sent Dean and his lot in–”

“Ron?”

“Yep.”

“All right.” She stood up.

“You’re coming?”

“No. I’m going to Grimmauld place. Harry will be alone.”

“I thought he didn’t need a babysitter anymore.”

“He doesn’t.” She collected her bag and smiled. “I’ll be over to collect you bright and early on
Sunday. If you aren’t awake, you’ll be treated to an Aguamenti charm.”
She stepped out into the night and breathed in slowly. There were so many shoeprints in the thin
layer of snow on the ground – of them, the deepest and harshest ones would’ve been Draco’s.
Snowflakes descended in rhythmic swirls:
Cold and crisp high notes. Strophic, homophonic. Pianissimo…

She apparated to the street in front of Harry’s home. His neighbours had enthusiastically embraced
the festive season, as wreaths and lights adorned every façade. There was some sort of celebration
going on next door; bright windows showed people in beautiful clothes.

She turned back to the plain door of number twelve and knocked.

“Good evening, Kreacher. How have you been?” she asked upon being let in by the House-Elf who
was wearing some sort of poncho fashioned out of tea-cosies.

“Master is in the dining room,” he replied shortly and vanished.

In the aforementioned room, all the candles were burning. Harry sat at one end, and before him,
spanning the entire length of the long table, were rivers, hills, and valleys made of scrolls and
parchment.

“Hey, you,” he said gloomily.

Hermione then learnt that Harry and Ron had struck up a deal – they would each tend to both their
paperwork for the month alternatively, and happy December had fallen into Harry’s hands. He had,
unsurprisingly, left everything till the eleventh hour. It had to be submitted on the coming Monday.

She sighed.

“Feed me and I will help you.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Hermione.”

“I know.”

So grateful was he, that he didn’t even summon Kreacher to bring them food. While he troubled
himself to make the trek to the kitchen, Hermione, with great relief, set up heavy blockades at
every avenue of her brain that didn’t directly contribute to boring, clerical shite-work, and
familiarised herself with Harry’s (complete lack of a) filing system.

Soon enough, there was sustenance, a task, and a safe, comforting presence, making her feel at ease
at long last. She studied Harry and Ron’s careless scrawls across badly compiled case notes and
filled the details onto dotted lines.
“Like the good old days, isn’t it?” she remarked.

“You mean like me leaving homework till the last minute and you having to swoop in? Or like me
making a rash, unformed plan and… you having to swoop in?”

“Whichever,” she chuckled, “Both.”

“Isn’t it comforting, though, that some things never change?” he asked as he signed his name for
the tenth time. His signature was getting looser at every instance.

“That’s almost always said about things that desperately need to change.”

“Like your hair.”

“And your gittish sense of humour.”

Some hours later, Ron returned, bearing a miniature figurine of a flobberworm.

“This here is Theodore,” he said, eyeing the thing with disgust, “Filthy oozing cheat like his
namesake.”

He sat across two chairs – arse on one, feet on the other – and told them all about George and
Theo’s pseudo bloodsport ring, but made no effort to help out with the paperwork and drudgery.
Hermione half-listened, pretending that she had completely forgotten about being cleaved open.

Time continued to bleed and so did she.

She had lied to Theo, by omission. Sunday wasn’t the only day she was dedicating to Christmas
shopping.

Saturday was unpropitiously overcast, but purpose lit up the path before her, and the presence of a
proper itinerary (written in green and purple ink,) wonkily reestablished the linearity of time. It was
the sort of agenda that would’ve been impossible to accomplish in a day, but for the ability to
apparate.

Hermione’s journey began at the British Library, in front of a computer. She studied confusing
diagrams, scoured through articles by MIT graduates, and read about photonics and diffraction on
webpages that were flashing advertisements at her. Then, with plenty of print-outs shoved into her
bag, she apparated to the Ministry maintained library in Sussex, and after minimal interaction with
the fluffy man at the counter, came away with the most advanced book on charms that she could
find.

(With two of the more time consuming tasks on her list completed, she stopped at a café for a bite
and a robust cup of builder’s tea.)

Next, she hopped over to Tottenham Court Road, looking for the electronics shop her parents had
purchased their telly from. It no longer existed, but a new one had come up in its place – bigger and
brighter. A garrulous shop assistant helped her find a portable CD player, (sleek, light, and silver,)
and a pair of headphones that cost a tad more than she had anticipated. But they were, she was told,
the best in the market, with superior sound quality, and maximum comfort. Her hands were tied.

Another crack of apparition, and she landed in Soho, stepping into dad’s favourite record shop,
which very much still existed. It was full of a diverse variety of people, and Hermione looked with
interest as she walked by a woman in black lipstick and a spiked choker, a man in torn jeans and a
patchy shirt, an older man with a long beard and fedora, a tall woman with colourful beads at the
ends of her abundant braids… till she got to the classical music section. There, in the silent
company of a woman in a chevron coat and a young man with a trumpet strapped onto his back,
she pulled out a CD for every composer Draco had mentioned in her presence. Bach, Chopin,
Ravel, Schumann, Debussy, and Rachmaninoff. Beethoven because he’d mentioned Ode to Joy.
Mozart, because the CD cover had the word essential on it. As did Brahms and Liszt. She carried
the stack to the counter to pay, knowing full well that it was too much. It would’ve been too much
had she been buying them for Harry, Theo, Ginny, or even dad.
Did she care? Of course not. Nothing mattered beyond Draco having the means to listen to music
whenever he wanted, wherever he was.

The next crack took her to the Adidas outlet on Oxford Street, where she bought some winter-
friendly athletic wear for Ginny, as requested.

Her shadow jumped as lamps came alive. She strolled vacantly and her mind wandered; from
pondering over laser theory and operation, to wondering if getting Theo a bowtruckle (that he
would most assuredly name Mandy,) would be pathetic and resentful.

She ended up inside Hamleys, surrounded by hyper children towing their parents around, and
frazzled parents scouring the shop for presents. She came out with a large and elaborate race-track
set.

Home. She could barely remember slipping into an alley behind a… Belstaff? Or a Japanese
restaurant?

Ugh, not again. She gave herself a hard shake to dislodge the mites of melancholy.

The day’s loot was discarded in a corner of her bedroom. The CD player, headphones, and
Schumann CD were fished out. Moving into the study, she spread the print-outs and the Charms
book methodically across the desk. Then, with the most careful of wand movements, she
unscrewed the bottom of the player.
Here’s what she knew:
1. The player used light waves to read the CD.
2. It did so using a low power laser beam to scan the data.
3. There was subsequent diffraction and polarisation involved.

She took out a magnifying glass from the drawer and compared the player’s mechanism to the
diagram she had printed. Everything was exactly in place. There was the diffraction grating, and
there the beam filter; a coil, amplifiers, and a bunch of diodes. She would not be touching any of
that. All she needed to do was pinpoint the lens from which the light was to emit and get the
apparatus going. She marked the spot with a teeny-tiny X .
Theo’s demon alarm clock had given her plenty of practice with charm permeation - albeit with
sound, rather than light. The principle was the same.

The issue here was that she needed to magically recreate a laser.

(She kicked off her shoes, pulled her feet up onto the chair and bent over the Charms book.)

Lumos was out of the question; that was diffused white light. However, she was fairly sure that
coloured light, whether magical or natural, got its hue from its wavelength. If she were to combine
the incantation for colour transfiguration with an illumination charm, she should achieve
wavelength coherency.

“Lumos Rubicundus ,” she tried.

Bright red light shone from her wand. Very much diffused.

Another glance at a print-out: Lasers had to be directional. The beam of light has very low
divergence.

It took over an hour of flipping through the book, consulting a few from her own bookshelf, and
excavating a textbook from fifth year, before she had formulated an incantation that could most
likely mimic a laser.

“Lux Radium Rubicundus.”

A pointed beam shot out from the tip of her wand to the opposite wall of the room. Red, sharp, and
focused.

She moved with choreographed swiftness –– Re-sealed the player. Wand pressed against the
scorch mark. Incantatio Imbuere. Lux Radium Rubicundus. Turned the player over. Popped in the
CD. Locomotor. Plugged in the headphones. Gently touched the wire. Sonorus.

It worked. It worked. If all muggle mechanics could be thus powered by magic, the result would be
revolutionary.
Hermione fiddled with the buttons till she reached Erlkönig, and sat back with her eyes closed.
Time was brought to heel by a powerful melody. Her dreams of a future utopia morphed into a
nightmarish World State.

Everyone had the same brilliant idea of getting all their shopping done on the last Sunday before
Christmas. Diagon was chock-a-block and Hermione was the sort to get easily shoved around in a
crowd. She had one hand clamped around Theo’s elbow, the other keeping her bag in place. Her
knitted hat had spontaneously loosened, and had half-fallen over her eyes, forcing her to tilt her
head up and peer out from underneath it.

After centuries, once Theo had led them into a shop, she was able to cast a quick shrinking charm
on it. Vision restored, she saw that they were in a boutique, from where she could purchase a
thumb-sized tree (unlimited engorgement capacity!) and a box of generic ornaments.

Most of what she bought that day was generic. Hermione was done being thoughtful. She was
bored stiff of shopping and all the manufactured cheeriness was doing her head in. To her surprise,
Theo’s dourness far outshone hers. His eyes were dark, his gait was urgent.
In their latest missive, mum and dad had requested that they be given tiny token presents – that is,
nothing that would add any weight to their luggage – which wilted Theo’s spirits even further. They
were through by noon, ending the expedition with sandwiches at Neil's.

In her tiny living room, Hermione enlarged the tree in a corner. A mere foot taller than herself, but
it still managed to look enormous. Theo rolled up his favoured gillyweed and cannabis blend. She
brewed two cups of tea.

With the fire burning high, they settled on the sofa, passing the joint between them. Green smoke
mixed with steam from their cups. The day diminished, the room got dark.

Theo sighed out wispy tendrils. His scraggly beard had valiantly gained length while sadly failing
to secure density. She remembered likening him to a young George Harrison back in sixth year.
Well, he had not come into his Abbey Road era.

Time was no longer bleeding. It was warping and melting. Dribbling all over. The persistence of
memory.

Flames shrank. Shadows swelled. Smoke dispersed. Tea cooled.

Everything but sound blended into the unguent decoction of time.

“At the beginning of the year, Luna and I had decided that we would move in together by
Christmas. I think I’ve put off learning my lesson for too long now.”

“What lesson?”

“Making plans is for wankers. I’ve been making them for as long as I can remember and they never
work out. My mother had plans. I had a golden plan that carried me through the war. An idyllic
little vision that looked like an ugly kitchen. Luna was there, you were there, Draco was there…”

“I’ll always be there. And I’m certain that Draco will too.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m getting a portkey, by the way. To France. For the fucking post-Yule borequet.”

“He bullied you into it?”

“What? No. I feel bad for him. Should never have taken the piss. See, Narcissa has decided that
enough time has passed since the war, and she can start hounding him. Oh Draco, how can you
leave our home to rot… Oh, Draco, how could you stop visiting your father… Oh, Draco, why must
you lower yourself to peasant work… all while making sad, I-lied-to-the-big-ol’-evil-chap-for-you
eyes.”

“He’s stopped visiting Lucius?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He’s a miserable old fogey, isn’t he? A crashing bore. But anyway. If I go, Narcissa can focus her
disdain on me.”

“What’s her problem with you?”

“What isn’t ? Like Lucius, she has decided that everything is my fault. My fault he’s turned his
back on his ideals. My fault he’s rubbing shoulders with the rabble. My fault he’s holed up in a
poor, titchy flat with no house-elves.”

“They really think he doesn’t have a mind of his own, don’t they? No agency. Like he’s a child
being led astray… which is just so rich, considering they’re the ones who led him astray when he
was an actual child!”

– A throaty laugh –
“What?”

“Heh. Nothing. You’re absolutely right.”

“Merlin’s rod, I hated those things. Year after year, I was stuck, miserably picking at my food while
father glared at me for daring to exist. Draco was always busy swanking, Vince and Greg stayed
stuck to his side. Blaise has never liked me, Daphne and Pansy were their own little unit, Marcus
and Adrian were cunts. Honestly, the only time I had fun was when they seated me next to
Millicent. She has a surprisingly dark sense of humour.”

“I have been bruisingly man-handled by her on more than one occasion.”

“She was also unfortunately susceptible to the official Slytherin code of conduct. ……Cow. I’m
sorry she hurt you, buddy.”

“Wasn’t Astoria around for those borequets?”

“I found her annoying.”

“You don’t find her annoying now.”

“She’s a sweetheart. I enjoy bonking her.”

“Argh.”

“But…”

“But?”

“I can’t really look at her. See her. Whatever. Luna was a part of me. Like… like. Like, my arm, my
leg, my eyes, my Luna. I’ve been fucking amputated. Still haven’t got a hang of living without a
part of myself. But you know something amazing?”

“Tell me.”

“I feel liberated. Can’t explain it. But I think it’s good. Plans keep you trapped.”

“It’s going to be alright, Theo. Everything. You’re going to be alright.”

“I know, darling. You’re going to be alright, too.” A warm hand on hers. “You hear me? You’re
going to be alright.”
Kathy was standing at the wide open door of their office, hopping with excitement.

“You won’t believe this!” she exclaimed, “Ellington and Speight have dropped the case!”

“About time,” Hermione muttered as she edged past her and moved towards her desk.

“They’ve invited us to their engagement party.”

“Their… I’m sorry?”

Kathy cackled. “I think we were witness to hours of foreplay.”

For the rest of the boring day, she was tickled pink. Hermione tried to enjoy her enjoyment. They
played around with the landlord/tenant dispute, niggling and petty, making her glad that her
landlady was a non-presence in her life. During the lunch hour, Draco did not even glance at her;
even though she sat at a close-by table, even though she smiled.

Snow was coming down hard when she got home in the evening; a veritable fortissimo. She threw
down her stuff, her robes, right there in front of the fireplace, and she prayed for the Spectre of
Time to appear and hurl her through the next three days, till her parents arrived. For currently,
every single passing second was stabbing her.

There was a loud pecking at the window.

Rodion fluttered amid crazed flecks of white.

Hermione quickly let him in, and shook out the last few crumbs of owl treats she had left with her.
Tied to his leg were three scrolls – three different drafts of the Norwegian Charter for the
Establishment of Fair Working Hours for House-elves. A thick lump formed in her throat.

“Wait here,” she told Rodion breathlessly, “Don’t go yet.”

She raced to the study and pulled out Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot .

For a fraught couple of minutes, she stood with a pen and post-it, as quotes and snippets carrying
varying degrees of bite swam around in her head. Finally, she settled on the things she wanted so
desperately from him: Tender words and straightforwardness.
 I can no other answer make but thanks,
And thanks, and ever thanks.

Chapter End Notes

1. "I never saw a wild thing...": Self Pity, by D. H. Lawrence.

2. "Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity": from Macavity: The Mystery Cat, by T.
S. Eliot.
3. "Time present and time past..." "...What might have been and what has been...": Burnt
Norton, by T. S. Eliot.
4. You’ve got to hide your love away by The Beatles.
5. 'A prelude by Rachmaninoff': Rachmaninoff Prelude in G Minor Op. 23 No. 5.
6. Ravel - Gaspard de la Nuit, No. 2, "Le Gibet"
7. Roll over, Beethoven by Chuck Berry.
8. "...nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence...": Sonnet 12, by William Shakespeare.
9. The persistence of memory, Salvador Dali.
10. "I can no other answer make...": Act III, Scene 3; Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare.
 Eighty-Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The ease with which Hermione was able to put together a proposal was disconcerting, (and a little
dismaying,) but it made sense since her raw materials were, in fact, rather ripe. She had been
building, unbuilding, and rebuilding versions of it in her mind since July. Admittedly, it had been
soul-crushing to deny her instincts when they told her to elaborate, and to clamp down on the
impulse to be overeager.
She used the Norwegian charter as a framework, her notes on abolition laws as anchors, and UK
labour law as a blueprint; while doing her best to suppress her personality.

The fact that she could no longer exist without something consuming and meaningful to attend to
might have been cause for worry, but she didn’t have the luxury or capacity to worry. For one
whole day and two entire nights she kept at it. Being case-free was suddenly a blessing. Takumi
had taken leave and gone off on holiday. Kathy was roaming around the office, scattering tinsel and
holly all over the place. Hermione was left to her own devices.

On Wednesday, she swung her chair around to peer out the window in her study as the barest tint of
daylight emerged in the sky, and she rolled up a concise two-and-a-half feet long scroll.

Proposal, not the final bill, she reminded herself.

Not only was it incomplete and full of cracks, it was a contentious idea during cautious times –
Hermione had no confidence in it. But, for now, all it had to do was hold Barros’ attention, and
convince her to explore possibilities.

In thirty-nine hours, her parents would touch down on British soil.

Later that morning, in her brightest blouse and with a slight glamour under her eyes, she stood in
the foyer by Barros’ door, waiting to waylay her. Instead, it was she who was waylaid by Kathy, to
be informed that the Wizengamot was having a meeting and that Madam Barros would not be back
till after lunch.

That delay gave Hermione the chance to re-read her work more times than necessary, laying fertile
ground for the growth of uncertainty and apprehension. She considered letting Kathy have a gander
at – but was turned off that idea even before it had fully formed.

Her nose remained buried in the scroll all the way down to the canteen, only rising when she
partook in her daily ritual of seeking Draco. She found him in the middle of the line, shuffling
behind his uninspiring companions.

“I can tell you what I’m plotting now,” she chirped, bounding to his side, turning a deaf ear to the
indignant squawks of the people she had casually cut in front of.

“I am on tenterhooks,” he droned.

He was more intrigued by the sandwiches on display. Any hope of that changing was gone when he
dithered before the piles of ham and BLT, like he was facing a very serious conundrum.

She leaned to one side. “Honestly, thank you so much for getting–”

“You’ve already thanked me.”

“Hello, Hermione,” Fiona smiled over her shoulder.

“Hello,” she said back.

When the time came to converge around a table, Draco waited till everyone else had settled, then
quite emphatically marched to a different table and sat down.

“Draco…?” Fiona called out weakly, and completely ineffectively.

He was tense, with his guard up so conspicuously high, that it was almost threatening. What must
Narcissa have said to him? Hermione felt wretched convulsions of pity, wishing she could find him
in the alternative dimension where she was allowed to curl into his side and ask him what the
matter was.

What she could do, however, was distract him with a bit of light verbal sparring. Hint at stupid or
embarrassing things to give him something to look forward to.

She left that table for his, feeling Fiona’s eyes on her all the way. Conversely, Draco’s eyes
remained staunchly on his tray.

“Shove off, Granger,” he spat when she’d barely just bent her knees.

“I told you I’d reveal my plan once I’d got hold of the charter. I’m a woman of my word.”

She could feel blistering waves of fury coming off him when she paused to unwrap her sandwich.
Not letting them deter her was proving to be a challenge; something that had never been a problem
before she went and got so utterly soft for him.

“I’m provisionally calling it The Elf Manumission Project. So… TEMP. Get it? Ha ha. Ahem .
So… well… anyway… One day off is akin to nothing, and doesn’t remedy the issues of
subjugation and enslavement. I’m proposing the immediate, unconditional freeing of all House-
Elves.”
She waited for… anything. The image before her stayed the same. Draco glaring downwards.
Lunch untouched.

“It’s quite alright. You don’t have to say anything. Your disapproval and scepticism is perfectly
conveyed. I imagine you’d like to tell me that I’m a fool and that it will never be approved by the
Wizengamot? Or you’d like to convince me that House-Elves like being enslaved and abused?”

“Actually,” he rapped out venomously, “I have developed a strong aversion to indentured

subjugation, if you can believe that. I have no desire to propagate it in any way.”

Her face, neck, and ears burnt, and she muttered a quick, “I can believe it.”

“Doubtful. But you’ve had your say. Now go away.”

“I – I’m not done.”

“I don’t care.”

Hermione’s head lowered with abashment. So much for being in a good mood around her. She
clenched her scroll tightly to help focus her resolve, and pitchy and desperate, she ploughed on –

“I understand that just freeing the elves and then leaving them to fend for themselves is not a
solution. I plan to draw up a formal, uniform contract that both the elf and employer must sign and
adhere to, that will detail rights, working hours, payment, holiday entitlement, and such things. A
standard work contract like you and I and any other Ministry worker has to abide by. The thing that
I’ve struggled with the most is compensation. Muggle abolition acts doled out remittance to slave
owners for the loss of their ‘workers,' but I can’t fathom the logic behind paying the upper crust to
sustain the ‘loss’ of the exploitative labour that they could’ve easily paid for, a hundred times over.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts about that.”

Another painful, silent interval. He did not share his thoughts. She fidgeted and cast an eye around,
diligently avoiding Fiona’s inquiring stare.

“Of course,” she warbled, “It could all go to hell if Madam Barros decides it isn’t worth pursuing. I
could put in an independent petition, but those scarcely get any attention, and if they do, they are
never seriously entertained.”

“How can anyone deny Hermione Granger anything, though?” he sniped nastily.

She wanted to laugh so loudly at that. God, if he knew.

She carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. “It’ll be far more advantageous if I have the office of Elena
Barros backing me, especially in the wake of Lupin’s Law and the Millward case. Might get press
coverage, too–”
“Because you’d never be able to muster up their interest on your own. The press is completely
uninterested in you.”

Again, with difficulty, she pushed through. “It’s just that Barros is so unpredictable and impossible
to impress!”

“Hasn’t she already praised you for Crisis Aid?”

“I lose my head around her. I either get angry or twitchy and… horribly inarticulate. And maybe I
haven’t worked on this proposal for long enough–”

“You’re too fucking neurotic to turn in anything less than thorough.”

“And might I remind you that you are the one who said that I don’t make a good first impression?
Or second, or third, or four–”

“Right.”

That was said at such an unexpected volume that she jumped. She looked around uneasily,
wondering if they were being stared at.

“Um… so…” What to say, what to say. “Do you think–”

“As if you care what I think.”

A downright tortuous interval.

She murmured, “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t–”

“It doesn’t matter. What I think doesn’t matter, what I say or do doesn’t matter.”

“Draco… What?”

“All that matters is what I thought before. What I did before. That’s how I’ll always be seen. By
everybody… my parents… you .”

The most flabbergasted, unbelieving tangle of words sat in her larynx, too tightly packed to escape.
She gaped at him, wondering how he could possibly think that about her. How? How????

“How?” she wheezed.

“Every fucking thing I do is perceived through that lens. Every word I say… every off-hand
comment, every stupid little joke –”

“Joke,” she choked out, and all her bitterness – every last grain of it – escaped, unbidden, alongside
that word.

“Yeah.” He nodded with such ugly vindication, like her bitterness was exactly what he had been
waiting for.
He banished his tray and stood up, pushing his chair in with rattling force. His hands gripped white
and hard on the back of the chair, and he stared down at her wearing a look that –
That…?
She couldn’t name it. She couldn’t understand it.
All she knew was that she never wanted to see it appear on his face. It took hold of her heart and
wrung it.

“You have no reason to fret over your preparedness, your boss’ approval, or your ability to put
forward a strong argument. Now go ahead and disregard all of that… as is your wont.”

Once again she had to endure the vision of him storming away, past tables and out the door. A
steady, high pitched ringing sounded in her ears. It felt like she had been bodily shaken, so hard that
none of her insides were in their rightful place anymore.

Fiona sidled up to her, oozing sagacious disapproval that was devised to make her wild.

“It’s best not to bother him when he’s troubled. He prefers to be left alone to his thoughts.”

“Excuse me,” Hermione muttered, and left.

She couldn’t make sense of what she was feeling. Her brain, swimming somewhere in the rattled
cavity of her body, was providing no assistance whatsoever.

Now go ahead and disregard all of that… as is your wont.

As was her wont? Her wont was memorising and obsessing over every bloody word he said to her.
Her wont was melting into a helpless puddle if he so much as offered her a shred of indulgence,
instances of which wouldn’t even fit on a post-it, and consisted of casual, pat flirtation that was
aimed to throw her off for his entertainment.

She recognised what she was feeling. Pure indignation.

After all the slices of cake, glasses of wine, conversations in towers, observatories, quiet rooms,
and loud pubs… how dare he accuse her of holding the past against him? What right did he have to
claim that she perceived him through a distorted lens when she saw him so clearly and brilliantly?
She saw an inspiring, stimulating, magnetic person who, with every poignant insight, every clever
turn of phrase, bludgeoned her with the mounting conviction that he had been designed with her in
mind.

She had arrived outside the DDL in no frame of mind to face Barros.

Venturing to the nearby window, she pressed a hand against her eyes and inhaled deeply. Electric
blooms erupted across blackness and she let them pulsate for a moment before pulling her hand
away. Their imprint stayed even when her eyes opened, sparkling over the winter scene outside,
blandly perfect in a way that only artificiality could accomplish.
She was so tired of feeling so ravaged. Completely tired. She could scarcely remember a time when
she didn’t feel that way.
There she was, minutes away from taking the first step to bring a long-standing goal into fruition,
and her prime focus was her own pathetic heartache.

No.

Absolutely not.

She lifted her chin and cut a determined path to Barros’ office. Scarcely had she raised her
knuckles, than the door flew open, and a voice from within bellowed –

“Come in.”

She entered, facing her boss who was draped in hunter green suede.

“Madam Barros,” she said with forced dynamism, “Good afternoon. I hope I’m not bothering
you.”

“What is it you need?”

Holding the scroll in both hands like an offering, Hermione began her well-rehearsed disquisition:
“I’ve been working on potential legislation for the emancipation and establishment of basic rights
for House-Elves, and I hope that it is an initiative you will support and be willing to attach your
name to.”

“What’s that?” she demanded, pointing a gold-tipped finger at the scroll.

Hermione took a second to re-align her thoughts. “It’s a formal, written proposal.”

“Does it contain everything you wish to communicate?”

“...Yes?”

“Are you planning on saying something that isn’t in your proposal?”

“I… suppose not?”

“Very well. Leave it here. I’ll have a look.”

“But, I–”

“Is there something vital that you’ve left out for some reason, that you must verbally convey to
me?”

Hermione wanted to tear her hair out. How could she know that? There would have to be a
discussion – some damn engagement – for that. She clenched her jaw and set the scroll on Barros’
desk.

“You may go.”

“Thank you for your time.”

Outside, she nearly screamed. Everyone was either pernicious, infuriating, or intolerable. After a
few long and deep breaths, she checked her watch. Thirty-three and a half hours till her parents
landed.

All would be right once they did.

She approached the door to her office, opening it just a crack to peek in. Kathy had brought a whole
tree inside. She was busy decorating while singing Wassail! Wassail! All Over the Town. Hermione
wheeled around and fucked off to the archival chambers for the rest of the day.

She hadn’t been able to stay on anything for long enough. There were so many things that required
her attention, yet Draco, with inevitable frequency, kept jamming his way into her thoughts,
knocking whatever else was in the forefront out of the way. Indignation had melted. Melancholy
was the reigning emotion when she returned to her flat.

She fixed herself a cup of green tea that he had bought for her from China, and stood in front of the
salon wall, staring at all his contributions. All three were simply perfect for her collection; curated,
like she had curated books for him.

They proudly adorned her wall. Had she disregarded them by doing that?

She stepped closer and peered at the little Sung dynasty cat, angry and bristling.

Could it be that her interminable longing had been evident in ways she hadn’t anticipated? Perhaps
that desire had manifested such that it made him feel like his overtures of friendship and goodwill
weren’t enough. For they were enough… had she not wanted so much more from him. They were
consistent and certainly enough for a few barbs – off-hand comments, stupid little jokes – to
harmlessly slip in… had they not been delivered to a fractured heart.

She couldn’t stand the thought of him feeling like she held any lingering disdain towards him. She
couldn’t allow that notion to persist.

Leaving the tea under a preserving charm, she made a dash to her bedroom, scrounging through the
shopping bags till she found a box of festive chocolates, which she wrapped in colourful paper.
Then she ran through the fireplace.
Fingers crossing and uncrossing, she walked down the long hallway, praying he hadn’t already left.
She paused to cast a wary eye at Theo’s closed door, (covered with criss-crossed glowing blue
chains) hoping the holiday rush would keep him at the shop for a while. Wary became daunted
when she considered Draco’s door.

But she knocked anyway.

He pulled it open with no little force, and seeing her triggered a look of unmitigated exasperation.

“Oh, good,” she smiled, relieved and nervy, “You’re still here.”

He was not in the mood for that game at all.

“Why are you here?” he blistered.

“Would you give this to Safi for me, along with my regards?” She held out the box.

He snatched it away, tossed it somewhere behind him, and made to slam the do–

“Wait, wait!” She tottered sideways, following the diminishing gap at the doorway. “When will you
get back?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Well,” she said with a skittish laugh, “I wouldn’t want to send your present to Kabul, only for you
to portkey back while the poor owl is halfway across the Caspian Sea.”

Draco looked as unimpressed as that claim deserved. He must’ve been able to taste her
desperation.

“Saturday afternoon.”

“Oh? But then you could have made it to your mother’s Yule banquet, and not had to go twi –
Okay, sorry, sorry ! You are aware of that. Of course. Didn’t mean to rub salt – oh my god, Draco.
Would you just hold on!”

“I don’t have time for your shit!”

“I’ll leave you be in a bit! Just tell me what you have planned for Christmas dinner.”

“Why?”

“Are you going to Andromeda’s?”

“She’ll be at the Weasley hovel,” he growled.

“Then…” she clasped her hands and dug in her heels, “Will you come have dinner with us? Theo,
my parents… and…”

“Fuck no.”
“Why not?! I know Theo’s foray wasn’t very promising – he made a right mess of the recipes – but
my dad really is the most marvellous cook. I can promise you a great meal.”

“I don’t want a pity-plate.”

Eyes flashing like light on a mirror, he had one hand gripping the door and the other on the frame,
like he would die if the two didn’t meet at the earliest.

“It won't be a pity-plate!” she objected fervidly, “We’d love to have you! You know Theo would,
and mum and dad–”

“You can speak on behalf of your parents, then?”

“Yes, I bloody well can! I’ve known them a rather long time. My mum is so taken with potions and
arithmancy; she’d love to have someone else to talk to about them! And my dad is very into music.
He plays the guitar. He’s also curious about quidditch, but I’ve never had the patience or inclination
to tell him much about it. You would be most welcome.”

“Oh, sure,” he sneered, “They’d welcome the chap who was absolutely, unforgivably horrible to
their daughter while at school–”

“They don’t know any of that,” she huffed, dropping her face downwards.

He fell silent. She didn’t need to look at him to know he was taken aback.

“I kept a lot from them,” she mumbled softly, “They were so gobsmacked and thrilled by the idea
that I was magical, and had finally found somewhere I belong, I hadn’t the heart to tell them. By
the time I got around to apprising them of… of the way things were… well, the stuff with you
wasn’t… it didn’t figure.”

She straightened her neck. He was wearing that look again; the one she never wanted to see appear
on his face.

“Nevertheless,” he said over a harsh sigh, “I am not going to intrude on your happy family
Christmas.”

He was straining out of the doorway, baring down the best he could without losing his hold on the
door and frame. Hermione felt such a mad burst of exasperation.

“You won’t be intruding! I’m inviting you!”

“You’ve already gone above and beyond for Theo’s sake. There’s no need to inveigle me into–”

“Good lord! You’re being ridiculous today!”

“Shut the fuck up. Not all of us are in the habit of barreling and pushing– ”

“Do you know why I keep pointing out the obvious to you, Draco?”

“Because you can’t go without hearing your own voice for longer than a few seconds!”
“No! Because you are completely, stupidly blind to the most obvious things!”

“Oh, you’re a fine one to talk!”

“Because if you would just pay attention to what’s blatantly evident, you’d realise that I like
spending time with you. Very much. I want you to be there.”

That only served to aggravate him even more. He looked incensed.

Hermione did not possess yond Draco’s Mien of Persuasion, nor any such expression that might
induce or seduce. But she had a well-practised look that dad had once dubbed ruthlessly angelic.

She looked up at him with eyes wide. One corner of her mouth gently curled up, and she said, “Join
us for dinner, Draco. Please?”

Everything – all emotion and bearing – melted away like a charm was making its way down his
face. It went slack. Utterly blank. Maddeningly, stolidly blank. And it stayed that way.

“Fine.”

She grinned. Beamingly, (a little insanely.) Draco’s brow twitched as he took note of it. For a
passing second, she thought he was going to speak; but he simply swallowed.

“Brilliant,” she said, taking a few steps backwards. “I’ll… leave you in peace now.”

His arms fell from the door and frame. He shifted, leaning one shoulder against the jamb, pushing
his tongue against the inside of his cheek, while she took another two steps backwards.

“What did Barros have to say about your proposal?”

She stopped and pursed her lips to the side ruefully. “Nothing. She told me to leave it on her desk,
and that she’d have a look. Then she dismissed me.”

“Assertion of dominance,” he explained.

“No! Really?”

“She knows that a Hermione Granger running rampant is a dangerous thing.”

Dangerous. She blew out a short, disbelieving breath. Dangerous. She was all-round ineffectual.

“By the way,” he drawled.

A smirk had begun to simmer just underneath his insouciance. She could see it and she could see
him. He looked like her Draco – well, not hers – but the Draco she knew him to be. Hers. Hers.
“Yes?”

“You really do make a horrible first impression.”

She wanted to laughcryslapkiss him.

“So do you.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“It is categorically your problem.”

“And you would most definitely be a nightmare to date.”

Was he testing her now? Like, better take my shit or I’ll accuse you of being a grudge holding
harpy ?

Her glower brought out his latent smirk.

“The rose is a coquettish creature. Haughty, demanding, and drunk on her own beauty.”

“W-What?!”

“You saw how she tormented the Little Prince with her fragrance and radiance… made him move
heaven and earth to tend to her, yet was never satisfied. Drove the poor lad so spare that he
abandoned his own planet.”

Hermione’s brain wasn’t functioning anymore. Fully dead. She was only aware of a primal
appetency that was telling her to fucking lunge at him.

“Isn’t that right?” he asked archly.

"I am not at all afraid of tigers," she recited blankly, "But I have a horror of drafts”

What must I do, to tame you ?

He lowered his chin and fixed her with a penetrating stare. “I think putting you in a glass globe will
be good for the universe in general. Prince and pauper alike.”

“It’ll have to be very large,” she murmured.

“Why’s that?”

“Potential hair expansion.”

“Oh, right. It’ll have to be palatial.”

“I’m afraid so.”

He chuckled. She could not respond in kind.

Empty lungs. Leccy on her skin. Demolition hammer heart. Grey non-matter.

“Now honestly, fuck off. My portkey will activate in ten minutes.”

Breathe in. It’s important.

“I hope Safi shoves you down a mountain,” she gasped. (He raised his eyebrows.) “Um, enjoy the
trip. See you on Saturday.”

She walked back down the long hallway suspecting that he may have cast a surreptitious jelly-legs
curse on her. A very peculiar energy was building between her muscles and bones, the kind that
educed crazy, volatile behaviour. She absolutely could not look back to see if he was still standing
at the door.

The energy wrapped around her sinews. It infiltrated muscle fibres. It was the sort of thing that
made leaping out of a window possible. It turned canaries into missiles. It always ended with her
shell-shocked, letting loose a litany of oh god’s.

Oh god, if she looked back and found him still standing there…

It was only after she had turned the corner and stepped into the sitting room that she heard the click
of his door closing.

Breathe out. It’s just as important.

At home, she paced. A turbulent march from one room to the other, to expend the mad energy.
However, she was well aware that simple physical exertion would do nothing to get rid of it. She
swept into the bedroom and decided to finish wrapping all the presents. No prizes for guessing
what she started with.

The player, CDs, and headphones were placed in a box imbued with plenty of cushioning charms.
With them, a sheet of parchment with instructions on how to get it working, and another with
Goethe’s Erl-King . She sat back, watching as a strip of ribbon tied itself into a bow, and wondered
if it was possible for him to think this gift was also just for Theo’s sake ?

For Theo’s sake . Bloody hell. Pity-plate . Where was his mind? To have every instance where she
was wholly herself, cheapened to that?!

She groaned and buried her face in her hands, brought right back to the state she was in earlier in
the day: Tired of feeling so ravaged. Completely tired. Her blood, (that had been gushing in the
aftermath of his sudden turn into cheeky, suggestive Draco,) turned cold, and she was all set to
spend hours agonising over whether he had truly meant that they were the prince and the rose, or he
was just bringing some levity back into play after a show of vulnerability; or perhaps he didn’t see
himself as the prince at all, just likened her to the arrogant rose and nestled a gibe between words
like beauty and radiance –

She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t, she couldn’t, she couldn’t torture herself wondering
about his motivations. Just like she couldn’t touch him, or even let herself look at him for too long.
He – the air around him – felt inviolable. Sacrosanct. Psyche shackled her in place. Cupid wished
to see her languish forever in the dark.

Twenty-nine hours till her parents’ arrival.

The rest of the presents were parcelled in a matter of seconds, jumping up in the air as paper flew
and wrapped around them. Then she picked up her wand and began cleaning her flat more
thoroughly than she had ever done before.

Obsessively lingering in the foyer, awaiting a summoning from Madam Barros, proved to be an
unavailing endeavour. Further assertion of dominance, no doubt. She would most likely be called
on two weeks later, and Barros would say, “Hermione Granger, you idealistic fool! Begone
forever!”

At half-past five, everything ceased to matter. She ran uninterrupted from the Ministry atrium to the
florist’s shop, and bought big bunches of daffodils and crocuses, turning up her nose at the pansies
and daphnes.

She spread them all around her flat, doing yet another round of cleaning while she was at it. She
cleaned the cleanliness.

On the balcony, she refreshed the protective charms on her plants and rearranged them so that the
ones that were thriving the most got pride of place. In the bedroom, she whipped out fresh sheets. A
duplicate of the chest of drawers was conjured. Finally, in the study, she emptied the drawers of her
desk and transfigured it back into a bed.

By the end of all that, it was quarter to seven. Her parents’ flight would land at eleven.

Another round of cleaning, then?

*
Dark snippets of London flickered across the taxi’s window. Mum’s face was pressed against it,
like a child taking in uncharted splendours. Hermione’s head was on her shoulder, and she was
staring at dad’s hair, which was visible over the top of the passenger seat.

Her hands were freezing. She rubbed and rubbed them together till mum took them between both of
hers. Her hands were toasty warm.

They were deposited at a bus stop on an empty road by a rather suspicious driver. Once his break
lights faded from view, Hermione shrunk her parents’ luggage and grabbed both their arms.

“This will be very uncomfortable,” she warned, “Brace yourselves.”

When they appeared outside her building, dad’s oath echoed through the neighbourhood. Many
darkened windows lit up. Hermione swiftly dragged them inside.

“Sweetheart,” mum said gently, “Are we supposed to see something besides empty land and
trees?”

“Oops, sorry. Parte revelio.”

“Christ alive,” dad breathed, as both him and mum gaped around the unremarkable lobby.

“This way,” Hermione said.

Mum took her hand again in the rickety lift. Hermione squeezed it tight. The night was so mellow,
and so were her thoughts. They were warm like mum’s hands. Even the tingle of nerves that arose
when she led them into her little home felt like toasty embers from a crackling winter fire.

They went first to the living room, where mum spun in a slow circle and smiled.

“Charming.”

“Yeah. Luh–Love–Ly,” dad agreed over an enormous yawn.

Hermione grinned and slipped her arm through his, taking them to the bedroom.

“But you don’t mean to give us your bedroom?” he objected.

“Tch . Of course, I do. You can put your things in there. Bathroom’s at the end of the hall. Just…
um… settle in. I’ll fix us some chamomile tea.”

She scurried out before it could become a proper scene.

A while later, she took in the visual of mum peering out the balcony doors and dad sitting back in
bed and felt perfect, placid contentment.

“So Corfu at last,” she beamed, settling at the foot of the bed.

A shared childhood love for My Family and Other Animals had been one of the very first things
mum and dad had bonded over in the early days of their relationship.

“At last indeed,” mum replied, “Almost didn’t happen. Your father would still rather not go.”

“Whyever not?!”

“Tell her, Robert.”

“Don’t start now,” dad grumbled.

“Hermione wants to know,” mum impelled smirkingly.

Dad only narrowed his eyes, so mum settled next to Hermione with a laugh –

“Your dear old dad is convinced the end is nigh! Apocalypse! Armageddon!”

“Now, look here…” dad demurred.

“At midnight, new years eve, the internet will think it’s 1900 again, and turn into a pumpkin!”

“Er, pardon?” Hermione interjected.

“You say that as if Hermione can’t literally turn things into pumpkins with a swish of her wand!
And it will bring the world to a standstill! Transportation, media, and air navigation all rely on
computer systems! There will be a coal shortage and electricity will be cut off. The bloody NHS
will collapse!”

“Do you really think they will let that happen? Governments and fat-cats have put in enough
money to sort it out. Trials and tribulations aside, they will never let billion-dollar businesses fail–”

“Then why have they planned to deploy a thousand extra prison officers on call for the millennium
celebrations? They anticipate things going very wrong !”

This was clearly an issue they had touched on before. Hermione barely followed, but she sat back
and listened with a stupid grin on her face as they carried on and on. How fantastic it must be, to be
able to have such fevered debates after twenty-two years of marriage. It gave her the bitterest,
sweetest pang. She couldn’t even bring herself to care about the supposed armageddon.

“Anyone with any sense is saying it won’t come to that!”

“So the IY2KCC was formed for a laugh?”

“You sound like a raving conspiracy theorist, Robert.”

“Your witch daughter teleported us into an invisible neighbourhood and you find the thought of
computer systems failing hard to believe?!”

They didn’t sleep till two a.m. Hermione didn’t sleep till four. The study had strange shadows. At
one point she mistook the lamp for the Spectre of Time. Her eyes closed while Draco’s must’ve
been wide open, gazing at the peaks of the Hindu Kush.

Bleary-eyed Hermione Granger, (convincingly bright-eyed under a strong glamour,) felt the act of
being summoned to her boss’ office on Christmas Eve shortly before it was time to close shop,
might set off a miraculous chain of events. It wasn’t impossible that, after being irascible as usual,
Barros would be visited by three spirits at night, after which she would be a changed woman. Light
as a feather, happy as an angel, merry as a schoolgirl, giddy as –

“Sit down.”

Hermione sat, crossing her ankles demurely.

“I have read your proposal,” she announced.

And clammed up.

More stupid mind games. Hermione wasn’t having any of that… for she had no reason to fret over
her preparedness, her boss’ approval, or her ability to put forward a strong argument.

So she spoke – “May I say something before you dub me a whimsical idealist and call it a day?”

Barros’ eyebrows shot up. Hermione may have (idealistically) imagined that she was suppressing a
smile. “Go ahead.”

“I am cognisant of the challenges of this undertaking. I know it will not be quick, or easy, as the
eradication of deep-rooted evil usually is. I know the question of compensation is tricky, I know the
Ministry doesn’t have any disposable funds, and I am sure many purebloods will follow the
Phaedrus Greengrass route if they are robbed of their slaves without any–”

“You know all this.” Barros cut in dryly, “Yet you still wish to continue.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a fool’s errand.”

“May seem that way. But we have to start somewhere.”

“And,” Barros consulted the proposal ironically, “You wish to write your contract with input from
House-Elves?”

“Absolutely. It’s their lives. They must have a say.”

“Do you truly think–”

“I am very familiar with the explosiveness of their reaction when even the word clothes is
mentioned. I have seen first hand how profoundly centuries of subjugation has marked them and
their psychology.”

“Yet you think conferring with them will get you somewhere?”

“It’s about opening a dialogue. As I said, we have to start somewhere.”

Barros eyed her keenly, with very thinly veiled derision, for long enough that Hermione completely
lost momentum. Therefore, perfectly calculated.

“How about you start by paying a visit to the Office for House-Elf Relocation next week. Ask for
Benjamin Snelling. Tell him about your undertaking.”

“Alright,” Hermione said falteringly, “Is he–”

“You may go now.”

“...To see him?”

“Leave my office, Granger. The day is over.”

She picked up her quill and diverted her attention to the parchment in front of her.

“Right. Of course.” Hermione stood up, slinging her satchel over her shoulder. “Merry Christmas,
Madam Barros.”

Her face twitched with irritation. “There’s no time for that.”

Hermione grinned as she left. A bah, humbug if there ever was one.

She kept her grin till she got home, where it only expanded into something larger. Mum was on the
floor by the tree, scrounging through the box full of baubles. Dad emerged from the kitchen with a
tray of steaming mugs. They both greeted her with utmost delight.

The air smelt of cinnamon.

Chapter End Notes

1. "Light as a feather, happy as an angel, merry as a schoolgirl, giddy as": Paraphrased from A
Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
2. The line about the internet turning into a pumpkin was stolen from Stephen Fry.
 Eighty-Three
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Under a Christmas tree decorated with a haphazard assortment of ornaments and bluebell lights,
was a handsome pile of presents. Pan a bit to the side, and there were mother and daughter, on a
sofa, feet encased in thick socks and hands cupped around mugs of Twinings Ceylon Tea. Mum’s
favourite. A tiny unicorn slept between them.

Hermione had just got through a detailed elaboration of her plans for TEMP, which had been
originally intended for Madam Barros.

She was still waiting to receive an anonymously gifted prize Turkey.

“You certainly have your work cut out for you,” mum remarked.

“Yes,” Hermione sighed, “I’m putting my faith in a spirit of recovery and reformation that I’m
afraid may be dwindling, and in the hope that people remember Dobby… and all the other elves
who fought against Voldemort. But there’s little I can do against a hard, blinkered standpoint that
believes servitude is in their very nature .”

“It’s never in anyone’s nature. It’s browbeaten”

“Precisely.”

“The next time you’re in the library, see if you can find a copy of Gilbert Stone’s A History of
Labour. He’s firmly opposed to revolutionism, but you may find his dedication to political
development helpful. ...And there’s a nice way for me to segue into this–” Mum got up and padded
over to the tree, picking up a present wrapped in handmade paper. “I would’ve chosen differently
had I known, but… here you go.”

Hermione unwrapped Women Workers of World War I – Accounts contributed by representative

workers of the work done by women in the more important branches of war employment, edited by
Gilbert Stone.

“Thank you!” she exclaimed.

She looked away from the book after a lengthier interval than she realised, for mum had wandered
off. She was standing in front of the salon wall.
“Quite a few new additions,” she noted.

“Er, yes,” Hermione muttered, shuffling to stand beside her. “Dean made that one, for my
birthday.”

“And the rest? Very eclectic… Is that Indonesian?”

“Yes,” Hermione replied shortly, “They’re souvenirs.”

“Oh?”

Staring at the Nuristani woodcarving, she said, “Draco travels a lot, for work.”

Mum turned to her. Hermione kept staring straight ahead.

“And he brings you a work of art from everywhere he goes.”

“Yes.”

“That is…” mum looked back at the wall. “...incredibly sweet. I can’t wait to meet him.”

Draco Malfoy. Sweet. Ooh baby baby, it's a wild world.

She had already given her parents a brief, sanitised introduction to Draco the previous evening;
namely, he was an informer during the war, helped her out of a few sticky situations, also worked at
the Ministry, and please don’t bring up his vile parents. She’d been very nonchalant but something
was amiss because mum hadn’t stopped giving her smiling, sidelong glances.

After letting her squirm, mum called upon her to expound on the new pieces; which she did, as
fluently as possible, under the circumstances. In the middle of that, dad came back home carrying
more stuff than they could possibly need. It was as if he had emptied the shops downstairs.

Without saying much of anything, he shot right into the kitchen, which was followed by the sound
of a chopping board hitting the worktop.

“He was moaning about needing to use matchsticks and not being able to work the blasted magicky
oven in his sleep,” mum said, “When’s his gregarious helper getting here?”

“It’s only seven. He doesn’t stir from bed before noon on a weekend.”

“Well, if he doesn’t get here within an hour, you’ll have to go fetch him. For the sake of Robert’s
sanity.”

Absently nodding, she supposed it was time she got done with the task of examining her haul. Back
on the sofa she went, and levitated the lot onto the coffee table.

That year, Mrs Weasley’s jumper was a deep violet, with a band of snowflakes around the middle.
She pulled off the one she had on, and slipped it over her head.
From Harry she got a box of assorted jams, from Ron she got a (new and improved, auror
approved) sneakoscope. Ginny got her a delicate jewelled headband, and Luna something that she
was simply going to call a talisman and be done with. Theo’s present was a pocket sized camera
and a bottle of developing solution. A Quick-Quotes quill from McGonagall. The rest was a never-
ending pile of sweets and chocolates that made her mother groan, (“Your teeth will not survive!”)
and one predictable bottle of whisky wrapped in a flyer announcing FINNIGAN’S NEW YEAR’S
KNEES-UP! BIGGER AND BETTER THAN THE LAST!

Finally, she was left with one. Bulky and heavy; another book, forsooth.

“Last but not the least?” mum murmured.

Hermione pretended not to hear her. Just for the next few minutes, she wished she was alone. She
wished her complexion was even and that the movement of her fingers prying open the wrapper
wasn’t so reverential.

The book inside was ancient. Bound in old, mottled leather and with a slightly damaged spine, the
infinitesimal buzz it emitted revealed that it was being held together by some very strong charms.

Unravelling The Veil : Theories, Stories, and Impressions of The Beyond

by
Eugenius Asklepios, the travelling philosopher of Erétria.
Translated by ––– and here was a scorch mark.

Hermione had come across Eugenius of Erétria back in first year, when she was hunting down
Nicolas Flamel. It was said that he was known to be unstable, his methods questionable, his
findings baseless, and his books restricted and no longer in circulation. How the hell had Draco got
hold of it?

“Getting spiritual these days?” mum asked.

“No,” she breathed, “We were talking about The Divine Comedy, and I’d complained about there
being no real insight into what comes after death… especially in a world where ghosts exist,
and…”

Mum said… something. It didn’t register. Hermione so wanted to peel back the cover to see if he
had left something for her in there, but she didn’t dare while being watched so closely.

So she collected everything and took it to the study, mumbling the word mess, and hoping that it
would suffice.

She sat on her desk-bed and gently opened the book. The parchment within was matchingly
ancient, not too far from papyri in appearance. The translator’s name was scorched out on the
inside cover as well, along with the date and place of publication.

Under that was a bright and fresh bit of parchment that read:
Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem
Is needed, like a dish of cream.

God help her, for her mind immediately jumped to the most prurient interpretation of cream . She’d
certainly accept that. He could be her most trusted friend if he offered that. Alternate universe
Hermione and Draco were having sex under a christmas tree, she decided. And her heart sputtered
like a dying engine.

Sighing, she removed his note and filed it away with all the others, and then folded herself in one
corner of the desk-bed with the book.

The beginning was reminiscent of Thus Spake Zarathustra: Young Eugenius withdrew from society
and hid himself in a dense spinney near the Sanctum (dubbed a temple by muggles) of Apollo
Daphnephoros, where he remained for a decade. Like Zarathrustra, he too grew weary of his
wisdom and emerged from his self-exile determined to mete it out to the masses…

Just when she got to the portion that could be a loose parallel to the God is dead declaration,
(Eugenius claimed to have had long conferences with a glimmering remnant of the deceased
Apollo – not imprint of soul, not animated corpse – A horcrux? She could only wonder…) mum
cleared her throat and drew her back to temporality.

“Your dad is demanding music,” she said, “And needs a helping hand.”

Hermione jumped to her feet, carefully set the book on the bed, and walked out of the room while
mum’s overly twinkly eyes followed her. They stayed on her before, during, and after the music
was selected, making her glad to seek shelter in the kitchen with dad, peeling potatoes and pulling
rosemary leaves off the stem. Dad was outrageously chuffed to be cooking for more than two
people, singing loudly as he went about preparing a turkey crown.

She had started on the parsnips when a telltale whoosh from the other room, and a subsequent
exclamation of, “Evelyn, you goddess!” heralded the arrival of dad’s gregarious helper.
When Hermione moved to the kitchen door, she saw Mum admiring Theo’s desultory beard with
convincing sincerity, while he puffed up his chest.

“There you are, you laggard!” Dad bellowed as he walked past Hermione, up to Theo and clapped
him on the back.

“Look at this tall, strapping, bearded man,” mum grinned.

“Yeah sure, he’s a lumberjack and he’s OK,” dad snarked, “Did I not tell you I’d like to get an early
start?”

“By the way, what’s this I hear about you running off to France tomorrow? I thought you might
want to spend some time with us,” mum said with an accusing tone.
“Do you want to see me cry?” Theo bewailed, “Is that what you want? When Draco gets here,
please feel free to tell him that you refuse to let me go. Tell him that he should face that lot on his
own.”

Dad was still on his tangent, “Did I not say there’s a ton to do? We have a whole ruddy feast to
prepare.”

“Magic makes everything go a hundred times faster, Robert .”

Theo emphasised his name in a tone that Hermione often said dad , when he was being excessively
dad-like. She slipped to the side as the two men bustled into the kitchen, sharing a smile with mum,
who tilted her head, gesturing for Hermione to sit beside her again. Hermione had to quell an
uprising of dread as she complied.

But mum didn’t interrogate her about Draco. Instead, she wanted to know more about the reality of
Greek mythology that was rooted in the magical world, (which also being something she had talked
about with Draco, kept her thoughts firmly where they always were these days.)

Hours went by like that, peppered with music requests yelled out from the kitchen that Hermione
promptly saw to. It wasn’t long before the whole flat was filled with tempting aromas. She was
also made to fetch the book McGonagall had given her for her nineteenth birthday, and had to keep
bashing away at answering mum’s queries while fighting the urge to do nothing but stare at the
clock above the mantel.

It was later, when dad brought out a canape platter and smoked salmon tartlets, and Theo followed
with moondew infused champagne, that the floo went off for the second time and Draco stepped
into the room. He was wearing his gorgeous Wedgewood blue jumper, and had a paper bag in his
hand. Rigid, a bit breathless, paler than usual, he blinked around at the room at large where
everyone had stopped what they were doing to look at him.

“Good afternoon,” he muttered, “I apologise for being late.”

“Not at all. You’re just in time.” Mum wore a warm smile as she went up to him and offered him
her hand. “It’s lovely to meet you, Draco. I’m Evelyn.”

Draco bowed his head slightly as he took it, with a half-smile that could launch an infinite number
of ships.

“Hold on!” Theo piped up, “Why does he get to call you Evelyn from day one?”

“Because he didn’t presume,” mum replied.

“You didn’t even give him a chance to presume! Draco can out-presume anyone! You do want to
see me cry!”

Chuckling over Theo’s whines, dad approached Draco with his hand outstretched.

“Robert,” he said cheerily, “You’re the chap behind the antlers, aren’t you? Inspired work. Go on
then, have a seat. Can I pour you a glass of bubbly?”
But Draco didn’t move. The fingers around the paper bag spasmed, before they lifted.

“I’ve…” he began. And ended. From within the bag, he drew out two boxes.

“What, he’s allowed to get you presents, too?” Theo burst out.

Both mum and dad shot Hermione a look of exasperation, for failing to warn Draco. She sank
deeper into her seat – Draco’s armchair – just as Draco’s look of discomfort deepened.

“Have I overstepped?” he asked awkwardly.

“Not at all,” mum insisted kindly, “We just, er, weren’t expecting you to bring anything.”

Draco’s jaw clenched even as he smiled, and Hermione felt she might have been the only one to
notice for the overall effect was so gracious and dazzling. He handed a square present to dad, a
slim, rectangular one to mum, and then approached Hermione.

“For you, from Safi,” he said, without really looking at her.

“Thanks,” she replied softly, peeping inside to see a box of that same confectionery that Safi had
distributed after Crisis Aid had been passed.

Dad was quick to tear into his gift. The box he unwrapped rattled and shook like it was full of live
animals, and had the words Quidditch Mini Matches! embossed on its lid. When he lifted it, he let
out a choked yelp as fourteen tiny broom-riding figures (seven white and seven blue) shot out and
began streaking across the room. Mum gasped and nearly dropped her half-opened present. But
when dad unfolded a board with a drawing of a pitch on it, and six goal hoops sprang up, the
figures floated down to hover over it.

“Blimey! What’s this?”

“A simulacrum,” Draco explained, “This handbook explains the rules of the game, and has a list of
all manoeuvres and formations. You can pick any six and write them in these slots here. The
players will then go on to play a match using them… no spell needed to get it started. Matches
usually last about half an hour, unless you attempt to keep the snitch hidden. Which I wouldn’t
recommend; they tend to get ferocious after thirty minutes.”

Dad was dumbfounded. “How many manoeuvres and formations are there?”

“Seventy. The permutations are extensive.”

“Righto. And – Oh!” One of the figures circled around his head. “What’s a snitch?” he asked
dazedly.

Draco flipped open the handbook and began explaining the rules, and dad entirely absorbed at
once.

Hermione wanted to cry. She sensed a prickling along the side of her face, and she turned to see
Theo standing to the side, staring right back at her, with a broad smirk. Her cheeks burned as she
quickly looked away.
But then mum gasped again.

She was holding a large Japanese folding hand-fan, gaping at its surface with awe. Hermione
shifted closer, catching sight of a painted, animated landscape of exquisite beauty. There was a
river upon which boats floated up and down. Trees swayed under the influence of a gentle breeze.
Women strolled along the banks. A scribe sat at a chabudai, writing, while a cat played around him.
A rickshaw puller raced down a road, carrying a pair of officials.

“It’s from the Heian period. Tenth century,” Draco said.

Mum slowly faced him with wide, disbelieving eyes. “It’s glorious . I’m… rather speechless. I
don’t think I can accept–”

“Then it’ll end up forgotten, in some ignorant pureblood’s collection. Gran – Hermione had
mentioned that you are a great admirer of Japanese art.”

She had?

Mum continued to look at Draco like he had six heads. Two flying figurines performed loops in the
space between them.

“Let us have a look, Evie,” dad called, and when mum turned the fan around, he let out a low
whistle. “How did you find this?”

“My family are well-acquainted with plenty of antiquarians.”

“Goodness,” mum sighed, gaping at the fan again, “I don’t know if I can… It’s… much too much.”

“Not at all,” Draco pronounced stiffly. His face was wooden; almost painfully expressionless, yet a
hint of panic was revealed by his clenched fist.

“What do I even say,” mum went on with a nervous laugh, “Thank you?”

“You’re very welcome.”

Silence followed. Hermione was too wound up to look anywhere but her knee. It was broken when
a loud clang issued from the kitchen: One of the miniature quidditch players had found its way
there. Theo dashed off to retrieve it, and dad cleared his throat.

“So… where were we?” he said to Draco, and the introduction to quidditch recommenced. Then
they decided to start a match.

“Wollongong Shimmy… might facilitate the, er, Dopplebeater Defence?”

“Not a bad call.”

“How about a Caterpillar Clatter?”

“Don’t listen to Theo, there’s no such thing. I would recommend the Rowntree Counter.”
And mum kept on studying the fan. Hermione sat quietly, sipping champagne, so wholly and
brutally full of love, that she was afraid she would spontaneously burst into violent sobs.

The match ended in just under ten minutes, with the white team taking a victory lap around the
room, after which all players zoomed back into the box.

“That was brilliant!” dad crowed, “The most delightfully chaotic yet perfectly streamlined sport
imaginable.” He beamed at Draco, “Cheers. Help yourself to some more bubbly,” and to Theo, he
said, “Well then, my boy. Let's go check on that turkey.”

They left, and mum slowly folded the fan closed and slipped it into its case.

“Draco.” She smiled, “You’re with the International Department of the Ministry, I believe?”

“I am.”

“Have you had any opportunity to travel?”

“Yes. I’ve been to Switzerland, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and China, so far. I’ll be going to the UAE
next month.”

“My, what an eclectic list.”

Hermione summoned the bottle and topped up her glass. Mum and Draco’s exchange carried on…
Hermione sat and sipped on, dizzy with affection.

When dad returned, he monopolised Draco once again. It began with “Hermione tells me you play
the piano?” and ended with the both of them in front of the cassette player, and dad giving Draco a
rundown of modern western music, from the sixties to the current year, while they spoke of
technical aspects that went over everyone else’s head. Dad kept switching tapes, Draco’s wand
hand was fully occupied – a fine musical peregrination, even with Hermione’s allegedly 'limited'
collection.
Theo perched on the arm of mum’s chair, stuffing his face with cheese canapes, regaling her with
highly embellished tales of his misadventures with George.

Hermione had an ear pointed in each direction, but taking in little. She just… sipped.
Disintegrated.

At a quarter past one, the oven finally rang, drawing dad and Theo away, and the latter, who wasn’t
finished showing off for mum, took her arm and led her forcefully to the kitchen door, making her
stand there and listen while he worked.

When Hermione had built up the nerve to look towards Draco, she found him gone. He was
nowhere in the room. She reasoned he had gone to the bathroom, and – she cast a furtive glance at
mum’s back – that meant she might be able to catch him in the hall. Even if it was for half a
minute. He hadn’t even looked her way yet. Did he hate the player and CDs?
She got up noiselessly and crept out of the room.

Draco wasn’t in the bathroom. But the study door was ajar. She pushed it open and there he was,
putting a book back into place.

“Draco,” she murmured.

“Yeah?” He turned around. Smiled.

She took a few steps in. The desk-bed sat invitingly in the middle of the room.

“You’re done with the book?” she asked.

“No. I’ve made a copy. I’d like to take my time with it.”

“You could have kept it,” she replied, walking around the desk-bed, “For as long as you needed.”

“Right. But then suddenly, on a random day at four in the morning, you’d be overcome by a
Granger-ish urge to consult a particular poem, and you’d come knocking at my door and I’d be
forced to kill you.”

“It’s funny that you think you can.”

She came to a stop in front of him, the width of one bookshelf between them, once more admiring
the colour that elevated him from handsome to faultless. The tip of his tongue peeked out to wet his
lips and it alerted her to the fact that she had been silently drinking him in.

“Uh um,” she stammered, “I’m–”

“You invented a brand new lighting charm to get the CD player to work,” he cut in casually.

She replied after a beat. “Not invented exactly. More like… modified?”

He rolled his eyes.

“...Or,” she kept going, “Combined and erm, well, yes part of the incantation was new, but–”

“You invented a brand new lighting charm,” he said, in the same casual tone, “And it’s fucking
ingenious.”

Oh. She was not going to talk him out of that.

“Thank you. …You… liked them, then? The player, headphones, and the CDs? I wasn’t sure about
the selection, just went with what you’d told me.”

He laughed. “Yes, I liked them. Fucking hell, Granger. What do you think?”
Her heart swelled to an impossible size and she lowered her head to spare him the madness of her
grin.

What about me? Do you like me?

“Did you like the book?” he asked.

“It’s incredible !” Her head and grin snapped up. “I could hardly believe it. I’ve already finished the
first chapter, and… who or what is he talking to? Did Apollo make a horcrux? There isn’t any
record that’s kept a tab on those, so it’s not exactly impossible.”

“Well–”

“Which begs the question – how much can an earth-bound fragment of a soul know about the
Beyond? We’re still only getting speculation…”

“I haven’t–”

“Eugenius’ general reputation would suggest he was probably hallucinating; but there’s so much
inside scoop! And it won’t be the first time an opinion or insight has been suppressed, will it?”

“It’s–”

“How on earth did you get a hold of it?”

“I have my ways.” He looked highly amused.

“So you have access to a lot of rare books?”

Bah, the mortifying longing in her voice. He looked even more amused as he nodded.

“Yes, of course, you – and, my god, Draco. The fan. They both must have been outrageously
expensive!”

He sniffed. “I don’t know what that word means.”

So much about that statement and the tone it was said in was evocative of Lucius Malfoy; the
drawl, the nose in the air…
But the smirk was fully Draco. The looseness of his shoulders and the gleam in his eyes was
Draco.

“Besides,” he continued, “I doubt ten of those CDs would have been cheap.”

“Nowhere even close to–”

“Have you given me presents for the next twelve Christmases in one go? It’s all clearly too much
for one.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she scoffed, “And you’ve been getting me things for months, so by that logic,
you shouldn’t have got me anything at all!”
“And yet you still outnumbered me in one fell swoop,” he countered, “I’m going to have to shower
you with presents now.”

“That’s the most terrifying threat I’ve ever received.”

The sound of an electric guitar riff suddenly blared at a horrendous volume.

“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, TURN IT DOWN!”

“MY WAND’S IN THE KITCHEN, HOLD ON!”

“HERMIONE CAN DO IT WITHOUT HER WAND!”

“YEAH, WELL, HERMIONE IS SPECIAL!”

“I’m glad you’re cheerful today,” she remarked, “I was worried my parents would be treated to
your Scrooge-like persona.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. She shrugged one shoulder, pulled up one side of her mouth, trying
to look angelic but not at all ruthless.

“It’s ineffably annoying when you do that. Bring up something that I obviously won’t know
anything about, and then wait for me to ask.”

She stepped around him and pushed onto her toes to pick out A Christmas Carol from the other
bookshelf.

“You’ll learn all about Scrooge here – Oh! Wait!”

Pulling away just as he was reaching out, she leapt over to the box into which she’d emptied her
ex-desk’s drawer. She procured a pen and post-it — stopped to breathe as a giddying wave passed
over her; a delayed reaction to the flurry of movement. Draco's brows were lost beneath his fringe
while he watched her bemusedly.

She kept the note covered as she wrote, without needing to spend any time thinking. She knew
exactly what she wanted to say.

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

Once the note was tucked away, she issued a warning: “Don’t read that till you’re back home.”

She came to a stop in front of him, the width of half a bookshelf between them, and pushed the
book into his hands.

“All right,” he smirked.

“I won’t be stupid enough to make you promise.”

“And if I promised all the same?”

“I’ll be even more suspicious.”

She zoned in on the fingers splayed over the book which he held against his chest, the cover
beautifully offset by the hue of his jumper. His frame had always been one of lean elegance, but at
that moment, she was overwhelmed by the breadth of his torso. It filled her vision. The universe
condensed to the shape of his silhouette. She lifted her eyes to his face and almost fell back in
shock upon seeing his Mien of Persuasion out in full force. His head was slightly tilted, brow lifted
in a way that she could only describe as earnest. His mouth was set in the gentlest, most sensual
curve.

Had he asked her something? Shit, she was so out of it.

“I… I mean it.” she murmured, “You can’t sneak a peek.”

“I said I wouldn’t,” he responded just as softly.

The Mien of Persuasion transformed into the Mien of I-Have-You-In-My-Thrall. And he blithely
let her stand there, mute, in his thrall, while his eyes roved over her face, painting it with fire. You
are the music while the music lasts. She was a photo negative, a stroke in a silverpoint sketch, a
chalky stalagmite, a broken hand of a broken watch, a lightning rod, a fracture in a lake of ice —
Do you like me? Say you like me.

Hermione took a step back. Another loud tune seeped in from the other room.

“Wharf Rat,” she whispered. Her voice broke.

He blinked in confusion, a frown pushing down and establishing a Mien of Puzzlement.

“We’re never going to eat,” she muttered, taking more steps back. Many more.

“I’m not going to ask,” he snapped gruffly.

“Dad is going to treat you to his Grateful Dead monologue.” (Draco’s mouth thinned with
annoyance.) “Oh, just come along. You’ll see.”

She stayed a step behind, and he held the book between his arm and hip as he walked. The need to
have a good cry was back, with the desire to march out of the building to stand in the cold being a
close second. A Prufrock-like dramatic monologue erupted within:
Do I dare… do I dare…
Wonder about the meaning behind his long quiet stare?

Decisions, indecisions, and revisions.

Predictably, the moment they made an appearance at the living room door, dad beckoned with an
excited, “Do you hear the groove on this one?”
On the other side, Theo was moving in and out of the kitchen, piling dishes onto a magically
expanded dining table that was groaning under the weight of the heartiest meal it had ever borne.
At the same time, he was still talking at mum, who was laying out table mats. Hermione rushed
over to help.

“Where did the two of you run off to?” Mum asked placidly.

“Looking for essential Christmastime literature,” Hermione intoned, taking great care to lay the
cutlery just right.

And soon after, they settled to eat. Dad grabbed Hermione’s shoulders and directed her to the head
of the table, and gestured for “the guest of honour,” Draco, to sit to her right. Mum settled to her
left, prosecco was poured into glasses, and dad delicately cut into the perfectly glazed turkey. The
lull that followed, with the scraping of forks and knives, the soft sound of glasses and dishes being
set down, was ideal for labile musings. Was it proving to be the longest, or shortest Christmas
dinner of her life? If felt like both; ephemeral like every carefully registered move that Draco made
at the edge of her vision, but also neverending like the staccato of her pulse.

“Food all right, Draco?” Dad asked.

Draco swallowed a mouthful. “It’s marvellous. I now see how enormously Theo bodged up your
recipes.”

“What about the paella!”

Everybody (but one) chuckled.

“You studied arithmancy, as well, didn’t you, Draco?” mum asked.

“Yes.”

“May I ask you a question then? If you aren’t as devotedly bound to rationality as my daughter and
I…”

“I have some experience in abandoning all rational thought.”

“Perfect,” mum laughed.

Hermione knew where this was going. She pitched in, “I’ll have you know, Draco also thinks
divination is rubbish.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Draco refuted.

She rounded on him. “You told me that true, unconditional prophecies are a myth!”

He coughed lightly and picked up his glass, eyeing the liquid that was nearly the same colour as his
hair. “You were in a flap. I wanted it to stop.” Then he quickly took a sip.

Everybody (but one) chuckled.

A chorus that sang, Yes, yes, we know exactly what you mean!

“Are you a fan of Trelawney’s work then? Have a pack of tarot cards in your pocket at all times?”
Hermione bridled.

“No,” he said shortly, and addressed mum, “Unconditional prophecies cannot exist, of course, since
we aren’t dealing with a law of magic, or nature. What divination really is… and this is something
I’m sure I’d said to Gra – Hermione as well… it’s the art of channelling and being attuned to the
resonances of magic, and uncovering a general augury for any given time in the future.”

“And how does that differ from Arithmancy?” mum asked.

“Arithmancy has a fixed point that you work towards. You can calculate the probability of an
outcome, or lay out a series of possible outcomes in numerical form. But divination is vagarious
and–”

“Unmethodical!”

In spite of the hissed interruption, Draco kept his attention on mum. “Divination isn’t a
methodology. It’s a gift that very few have. It’s the ability to discern what a certain type of magical
energy is presaging–”

“If it’s such a gift then why were we made to sit and stare into teacups and crystal balls like it's
something we could all learn? Don’t we all have the amazing Inner-Eye? ”

Draco let out a long suffering sigh and turned to her. “We have been over this. I agreed that all that
was pure waffle.” He looked back at mum. “Historically, seers and oracles had to earn their keep
and place in society. Simply being attuned to future resonances and giving out vague forecasts
wasn’t enough.”

“With that came the birth of the Prophecy!” Hermione cut in hotly, “A fleck of truth encased in an
embroidered and absolutely empty bit of poesy designed to be misinterpreted, with no regard for
the havoc it could wreak, the lives it could destroy, the wars–”

“Yes, er… all that .” Draco drawled, smirking at mum, “Prophetic artistry has admittedly led to a
lot of chaos. But one must admire the work that goes into crafting the bit of poetry . Eliot would
have been good at it.”

Hermione huffed. Mum laughed.

“Both prophecies and general forecasts are equally vague,” Draco continued, “People just prefer
the glamour of the former. And when a poor soothsayer does try to convey a warning in simple
terms, he’s often ignored. For example, Beware the Ides of March.”

“Oh, was that soothsayer a real historical figure?” mum asked excitedly, “Were those his actual
words?”

“No.” Hermione ground out, “That was Spurinna, and he saw something perilous in a sheep’s
liver.”

“But I’m sure all of us here prefer Shakespeare’s embroidered version,” Draco said.
“You’re familiar with a lot of muggle literature,” mum observed.

And that finally gave Draco pause. He acted like he simply needed to take a bite of food, instead of
making a graceful admission like, it’s all thanks to Hermione, she’s ingenious and beautiful, I
cherish her opinion and worship the ground she walks on .

Instead, the absolute bellend said, “My piano teacher introduced me to Shakespeare. Once school
started, I could only have lessons during the holidays, so in between those, he had me read plays
and compose background music for scenes of my choosing.”

“That’s a bloody interesting assignment! Sounds like a great teacher,” dad exclaimed.

“He… could be. Once in a while.”

“Which scenes?” dad asked eagerly.

“The night of omens and portents from Julius Caesar ,” Draco said with a delicate smirk, “The
opening scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A theme for Falstaff, the three drunk men
wandering about the island in The Tempest…”

“What a variety! You know, my band wrote a song called Tight-arse And-no-knickers… and no, I
will not elaborate. The less said about that, the better. Anyhoo, were you his prize student?”

“He hated me.” Draco grinned.

“Oh, Draco,” Theo chortled, “If he hated you, then what about me? Remember that lone lesson I sat
for?”

Draco barked a sudden laugh. “Merlin, I had blocked that out. What a nightmare.”

“Nobody appreciated my extemporaneous approach,” Theo lamented.

“You could’ve called it Ode to a Brain Malady.”

“It was powerful.”

“So powerful that I thought Herr Dietrich would require hospitalisation by the end of it.”

Laughter swelled and ebbed fluidly over pebbles of conversations. The last scraps were swept off
respective plates. Hermione cleared the table with a few lazy hand movements, (save for everyone’s
second glass of wine,) following which, Dad brought out a perfect dome of Christmas pudding;
dark, rich, and smelling mouth-wateringly good.

“This one’s from the baker’s downstairs, I’m afraid. There wasn’t enough time to prepare one
myself.”

Pudding concluded, everyone returned to prior occupations. While the rest of the country would’ve
tuned in to the royal broadcast that afternoon, their little party was listening to a different kind of
Queen.
Just as Bohemian Rhapsody began to play, Hermione excused herself and snuck into the bathroom,
casting a silencing charm because ‘Bismillah, no’ meant Bellatrix would never let her go —
She splashed warm water on her face and sat on the edge of the tub. The song was five minutes and
fifty-five seconds long, so she conjured her little silver otter friend while thinking of the half-
bookshelf space between Draco and her.

It was the longest Christmas dinner of her life, that was for sure. She conjured a bluebell ball for
the otter to chase across the ceiling where there was no chandelier. There shouldn’t have been any
tightness in her chest.

Killer Queen was on as Hermione settled on the sofa close to mum.

“Just look at the detail,” mum said to her, once more fixated on her new fan, “The garments, the
headgear, you can even see actual letters on the scribe’s scroll. There are tiny little people on the
boats. The cat even has whiskers! And I can’t believe it's all moving. ”

Hermione hummed, leaning into mum’s shoulder. Just being around her was soothing. As was
looking at Theo nodding off in the chair across from them. As were Dad and Draco’s voices laid
over music.

“I wish you were here for longer,” she mumbled, by and by.

“Oh, darling, we’ll be back in August. Your cousin Charlotte’s getting married.”

“I’m sure I’m not invited.”

“Of course you are,” mum chided, “Why don’t you go fetch your new camera? We should have a
picture of our first Christmas in your flat.”

She did so. When she returned mum had dragged drowsy Theo onto the sofa next to her, and called
for dad and Draco to stand behind it.

“I can take the picture,” Draco offered.

“What, can’t that camera be timed?” dad asked.

“Of course, it can,” Theo replied, “It’s magic, Robert. ”

“I’m getting very sick of that refrain, you know.”

“Then he’ll never stop saying it,” Draco muttered.

Timer set, Hermione plopped down on mum’s other side. Dad’s hand came to rest on her shoulder
and the flash went off.

“How about one with just the youngsters then?”

Before Hermione could react, mum had got up, Theo had dragged her to the middle of the sofa, and
Draco had settled where she had been.
There couldn’t have been more than two inches between their shoulders. He was emitting warmth,
cologne, and a fierce magnetic pull. A static pull. The fibres of jumper pulled at the fibres on hers.

Flash. He got up. It was over.

She got up.

“Um… tea?” she asked the room.

“Yes, please!” Theo yawned.

The late afternoon bestowed a torpidity that could not be resisted. Even the player was moved to
the table so that Draco and dad could sit while dad meandered into Supertramp and launched into
the history of the Wurlitzer electric piano.

“Bleh,” Theo groaned, “Waking up early is hell. Didn’t even get a chance to open my presents.”

“Are you saying we aren’t worth it?”

“Evelyn, what are you doing to me? ”

Ensconced in Draco’s armchair, Hermione was quiet.

Quiet till empty teacups in saucers clattered as they were set on the table. Quiet as phrases like must
be going and early morning portkey were uttered. Quiet as Theo crushed her into a tight hug. Quiet
at the afflictive soft look of grey eyes and the gentle nod of a fair head. Quiet at the end of the
shortest Christmas dinner of her life.

Boxing day and two substitute holidays meant that Hermione had three more days to spend entirely
with her parents.

On the first of those, they went to their favourite Indian restaurant for not-quite-brunch, and over
hot buttered naans, Hermione broke the news that they would be expected at the Burrow the
following day. Dad was blaisé about it, but mum needed to be reassured that they were guests and
not the centrepiece.

Dad then had to be deposited at a pub and forgotten about; a Spurs versus Watford match was going
to take up his afternoon.
As for mum, she was struck by an impulse that only ever occurred around Hermione – she wanted
to idly roam the shops. They weren’t there to take advantage of the numerous sales, only to
browse… till a salesperson in a Father Christmas hat bullied them into buying some supposedly
miraculous hair conditioner (Hermione’s split-ends were brought up far too many times.)

At a shoe shop, mum completely lost her sane straight-thinking head and insisted on purchasing a
pair of towering, glittering black stilettos for Hermione, who protested… till she tried them on and
looked in the mirror.

The enterprise was capped with hot foamy coffee replete with swirls of caramel, at a happily
decorated coffee shop. Mum pulled off her scarf, flushed from the sudden warmth.

“So I’ll finally meet the whole Weasley bunch tomorrow?”

Hermione nodded. “Ginny’s home… you’ll love her. And, Neville’s back in town, Hagrid will be
there… It's going to be a crush. We’ll go, have a bite, and make a quick getaway.”

“How are Harry and Ron, by the way?”

“They’re all right,” Hermione replied, sighing in the aroma of her beverage, “Proper aurors and
that. I see them once a week or so, and we get on much better when we aren’t spending all our time
together.”

Mum smiled. “Isn’t that true for most people? It’s bloody rare to find someone with whom time
runs out before your patience does. And when you find someone like that… it’s the most exciting
thing in the world.”

“Hmm. I imagine so.”

“Draco is such a clever and charming young man. I like him.”

Hermione hadn’t felt such a compulsion to dive into her beaded bag in quite some time.

“Stop,” she huffed.

“Well, he is. You must have many long conversations with him.”

“I converse with a lot of people.”

Mum grinned widely, then sucked in a dramatic breath. “I could not have parted with you, my
Hermione, to anyone less–”

“Do not quote Mr Bennett at me?!!”

“Why not?”

“You shan’t be parted – even if – I mean. Ugh. What the – Mum.”

She let out a peal of laughter, taking in Hermione’s undoubtedly scarlet complexion with a
distressing amount of glee.

“And those gifts.”

“He’s extremely wealthy.”

“Yes, his whole manner screams that. And I’m not talking about the many things he’s gifted you.
Just the game and the fan – they weren’t merely expensive, they were thoughtful. They were
‘impress the parents’ gifts.”

“Draco lives to impress. He needs everyone to be in awe of him.”

Mum could see right through her, yet she would remain adamant in her denial. Anything to do with
Draco felt too sacred to touch; too precarious to disturb.
Luckily, mum decided to take pity on her and moved the conversation onto booker prize winning
novels. Coffee steamed, Hermione’s ears steamed, but discussing books with mum was safe, even
ground.

Later, they picked up dad, euphoric after a four-nil victory and having made about thirty new
friends, and headed to a dark and empty alley for apparition, from which her parents required ten
minutes to recover.

Mum and dad's post-apparition horror was well matched with the sneezes and pinched expressions
post-floo.

They stepped into the Burrow –

( Atishoo! and Argh, I have soot in my eyes! )

– Right into mayhem.

“Hermione, dear!” Mrs Weasley cried with evident strain, while she brandished a whisk like it was
a whip and the mixture before her was a circus lion, “Robert, Evelyn. It’s so lovely to see you
again. Through the door, er, everyone’s in the garden. And – oh, please excuse the mess – I am
just… Well. There was an accident earlier with the trifle… and Teddy… my son George is such a
mischief-maker!”

Dad rolled up his sleeves. “How about another pair of hands, then?”

Hermione led mum outside.

The long table in the back garden had been lengthened. Once again, the lawn was littered with a
variety of chairs. A great enchanted dome hovered over it all, keeping it reasonably warm, dry, and
wind-free, but not as thoroughly as one of Hermione’s shield charms could. She lifted her wand and
rectified that.

“I’d told them to wait for you.”

Ron approached, looking awfully red as he considered mum. “I’ll bet you can cast a solid shield
charm in your sleep.”

“I’m almost sure I have cast plenty of shield charms in my sleep,” Hermione grinned, “Mum, you
remember Ron, don’t you?”

“Yes, thought I remember Ron being at least three feet shorter, I think,” mum said with a laugh.

Then commenced the most strangely awkward bit of small talk Hermione had witnessed in a while,
with Ron being uncharacteristically bashful. Thankfully, it was too long before others convened
around them.

While mum was drawn into a conversation about the “muggle compeeter insect” by Mr Weasley,
Hermione turned to George.

“What did you do to the trifle?”

“Me?! It was Teddy!”

“Right. The one-year-old.”

“One year and eight months. He’s a diabolical little imp. I shudder to think what he’ll end up like.”

“I have an idea,” Hermione replied, looking at him pointedly.

Anything he might have said would have been swallowed by the excited squeal that Ginny greeted
her with. Harry appeared behind her, and they both were also red, though Hermione suspected it
was for a very different reason than Ron.

More nice to meet you’s and how are you’ s, while Mr Weasley kept trying to bring the
conversation back to the Millenium bug. Justin’s parents were also present, and both were sceptics
like mum. Hermione caught Harry’s eye and they exchanged a grin. Others left after their
perfunctory salutations. Andromeda and Teddy, Charlie and Marius, Bill, (Fluer hadn’t left her
seat,) Angelina and her father, Lee and his parents, Luna, Xenophilius, and Jamila…

Dad and Mrs Weasley popped out then, the latter glaring at her gold-eared son before also turning
her attention to mum like a good hostess. Hermione’s poor mother got no reprieve from dad, who
went straight up to Ginny and struck up a discussion about Quidditch.

Soon –

“...match went on for three months?? Really?” dad asked with amazement.

“Yeah,” Ginny nodded excitedly, “Once we had a practice session go on for 26 hours.”
“Well, shit. Ah, by the way, can you do a Dionysus Dive?”

“Yes.”

Ron snorted. George said, “No you can’t.”

“Yes, I can!” Ginny erupted.

There were two Pfff ’s.

She stuck out her jaw and glared. “How thick are you two? I’ve been training for months!”

“Gin. Proper professionals can’t do that move,” Ron scoffed.

“You prat! I’ll show you!”

And so a group of them trudged out of the warm bubble to the orchard while Ginny retrieved six
brooms from the shed and tossed one to Harry, Ron, George, Angelina, and Charlie each. They all
took off, Ron covered the goal, and the rest were instructed to keep Ginny from scoring. Four on
one.

It didn’t take long at all for Ginny to get hold of the quaffle. She sped towards the goal, lurching to
one side so Ron followed –

(Mum and the Finch-Fletchley’s cried out. Mrs Weasley covered her eyes. Hermione slapped a
hand over her mouth. Dad let out a litany of exclamations.)

– Ginny leapt off her broom. She dived head first through the hoop with the quaffle tucked under
her arm. She landed deftly back on her broom, hovering in wait on the other side.

An applause broke out on the ground and in the sky. Ron and George grinned and ducked their
heads conceding defeat. Above all – a booming “Ruddy good, eh!”

Hagrid had arrived. Hermione sat with him, getting updates about Hogwarts, Buckbeak, and
Grawp, eventually joined by Harry and Ron, leading to a good fifteen minutes spent indulging their
nostalgia that gave even Blast-Ended Skrewts a rosy glow.
Rosy.
Draco.
Bugger. She had been doing so well.

Then a loud whoop alerted her to the fact that her father was on a broom.

Her… father … was on a broom.

High up in the air.

Hermione dashed towards mum who looked ready to keel over and die. Dad’s broom was tethered
to Ginny’s in the front, and Charlie’s at the back with magical cords, and they were taking
reasonably fast laps of the orchard, landing only after ten.
Charlie had to help dad off his broom, for he was unsteady and bandy-legged. Still, he was beaming
like a child when he stumbled over to them.

“Best thing I’ve ever done. Stupendous. Exhilarating. Better than surfing.”

Mum took hold of his arm and, for the rest of the afternoon, she did not leave his side.

The last ones to arrive were Neville and his grandmother; the party settled to eat immediately after
–

She sat next to Neville, and he seemed taller, sturdier. Like he had been scaling the alps and
repotting large plants under a bright sun.

He really did hike frequently. He really did work out in the sun, on some very interesting fluxweed
hybrids. He had broken up with Hannah. He was too busy to be sad. His best mate was a budding
herbologist from Senegal.

It was good to talk to him, but Andromeda was sitting diagonally across from Hermione, just the
right amount of out-of-focus so that she may be mistaken for someone else.
Neville’s words kept getting drowned out by the music in her head.

Great songs that were forever ruined.

Above her was the sublest gleam of magic, and a sky full of clouds.

Hermione and her parents left before anyone else, just minutes after the trifle was dished out.

“...stay a while longer?”

“We’d have loved to, Molly, but we really must pack and prepare for our flight.”

“On an aeroplane!” Mr Weasley said gleamingly.

“Yes, one of those.”

She tucked herself into dad’s side while walking to the floo. Back home, she settled into Draco’s
chair for a short, dreamless nap.

They went to the cinema that evening, to catch the latest Bond flick. It wasn’t something Hermione
or mum would have chosen, but dad thought the world was ending, so they let him have his way.

It did not hold her attention very much. It might have done, had her attention been in a biddable
state.

The film was called The World is Not Enough .

And it wasn’t.

The world is not enough because you exist.

Thirteen hours till her parents had to be at the airport.

That final morning, dad cooked for two hours while Hermione aided with magic, and packed away
enough food to last Hermione for the rest of the week. Mum read through Hermione’s TEMP
notebook, filling the margins with suggestions and remarks. Dad played two rounds of mini-
quidditch. The second one went off the rails when one of the players got into a game of cat and
mouse with Stella. Mum pruned Hermione’s plants.

“If you even run into your aunt for whatever reason, do not tell her we were here,” they reminded
her for the eleventh time.

After lunch, they went into the bedroom to pack. Hermione lingered by the door.

It felt like the steam from their final cups of tea enveloped her entire body, and when it melted
away, they were at the airport.

Dad’s embrace pulled a stream of tears out of her.

“You’ve built a wonderful life for yourself,” he murmured, “You have wonderful people in your
life, and you do wonderful work. I am so damn proud of you.”

Mum took hold of her and reiterated – “So, so proud.” In an undertone, she added, “You should tell
him.”

Hermione sniffled. Laughed. Groaned.

“Listen to your mother. She knows a thing or two.” She took Hermione’s face in her hands. “Tell
him. You deserve the best sort of happiness.”

Then she was watching them walk away, dad wheeling their trolley, mum unnecessarily making
 sure their documents were in order. But they kept looking over their shoulders, waving, smiling,
waving, smiling, waving, till they vanished from view.

Hermione had washed her face, brushed her teeth, and put on her pyjamas. It was midnight. She
was dithering between two doors in the empty, silent hall of her flat.

Ultimately, she decided to sleep in the study for just another night. She could pretend that she
would wake up to find mum sitting in the living room with a cuppa, while dad’s low snores emitted
out of the bedroom.

She climbed onto her desk-bed, kneeling in the middle, staring as Stella launched into a late night
gallop on the bookshelves.

“Just you and me,” Hermione said to her.

But staring at the shelves brought about another dawning. Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot. Draco
had put it back. She must have subconsciously summoned it, for the book came sailing into her
hand.

There was a note.

...one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.

Chapter End Notes

1. Wild World, by Cat Stevens

2. Draco's note in Eugenius' book is an excerpt from The Ad-dressing of Cats, by T.S. Eliot
3. The Lumberjack Song, by Monty Python
4. Hermione note to Draco is from Little Gidding, by T. S. Eliot
5. "You are the music..." from The Dry Salvages, by T. S. Eliot
6. Wharf Rat, by the Grateful Dead
7. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot
8. "I could not have parted..." paraphrased from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
9. Draco's final note is from East Coker, by T. S. Eliot
 Eighty-Four

MILLENNIUM BUG HITS RETAILERS!

Hermione dolefully considered the menacing headline as she stood in a rickety lift. The group
around her oozed post-holiday lethargy, just like, two years ago, muggles would have stood in lifts
at their offices, completely unaware of the upheaval devastating the wizarding world.
Ten-thousand HSBC issued credit card machines had stopped accepting transactions. An
involuntary ebullition of dread took hold of her. She was in no state to withstand another calamity.
At least dad had the Ionian sea to soothe his anxiety.

The lift arrived at her floor and she shoved the paper into her satchel, quickly switching to Magical-
Person-In-The-Business-of-Law-Making mode. A technological apocalypse would have no impact
whatsoever on the fate of House-Elves.

She sent out a request memo to Benjamin Snelling at the Office for House-Elf Relocation before
she had even settled behind her desk. Someone from the maintenance crew had done away with all
traces of Kathy’s festivity, leaving behind a staid and bland office as usual. Something that Kathy
was not happy to see when she got in, a few minutes after Hermione.

“Bad form,” she grumbled, “Had a good Christmas, Hermione? Thanks for the planner. It’s going
to be dead useful for REPTILEs prep.”

Takumi came in with a box of chocolates, and for the following few hours, they exchanged stories
while getting through their own work, compiling an annual report, and trying to devise a polite way
to tell a landlord that it was not okay to expect your tenant to pay for your own illegal extension
charms.
(The fines for those were monstrous. Shame on those who indulged in such awful, illegal
behaviour.)

Snelling’s response memo landed on her desk around noon, inviting her to come by whenever she
wished. Thereupon, she collected her things, her bearings, her conviction, and left.

There were a few people standing by the lifts on level four, who gave her directions to the Being
Division. It was right next to the Spirit Division, outside of which two empty-eyed ghosts swept
right through her. She shuddered and winced.

She ended up in a waiting room that was much smaller and dingier than the ones on level two. In
one corner sat the vampire she had encountered on her last visit to the department, reading a
magazine. There were five people waiting outside the Werewolf Support Office.
The narrowest door, (one that she would have mistaken for a storage room had it not been labelled,)
was the one on which she knocked.

“Come in,” said a very high-pitched, squeaky voice.

The interior was as small as expected, but generously decorated. There was one large photograph of
Newt Scamander on the wall, and around it were paintings of trees and animals that looked like
they'd been made by a toddler. There were also vases full of flowers, bowls full of potpourri and
shiny stones, kitschy ornaments –

“Good morning, Ms Granger.”

Overwhelmed by the décor, she had failed to notice the equally interesting personnel in the room.

Benjamin Snelling was a portly, jowly man with a thatch of sandy hair and very small green eyes.
He raised one hand and gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

“Please, do sit.”

From her left, the squeaky voice spoke once more, “Would Ms Granger like some tea?”

A house-elf in a pinafore and Balmoral hat sat behind a smaller table that was pressed against the
wall, and overrun with flowers and scrolls. She had very long eyelashes, was holding up a kettle,
and beaming.

“I’d love some. Thank you, er–”

“Bickie. Because Bickie’s mother loved biscuits.”

“It’s a lovely name,” Hermione said as she settled.

“Bickie has been my assistant for a year now,” Snelling said with a warm grin, “Best I’ve had..”

Tea was poured – a fragrant floral brew – and Hermione expressed her admiration for the most
vibrant office in the Ministry.

“All Bickie’s doing,” said Snelling proudly, “She’s something of an artist.”

“Bickie is so happy to meet Hermione Granger! Ms Granger was Dobby’s friend.”

Snelling said, “How may we help you?”

Hermione laid a copy of her proposal across the table, and once again launched into the disquisition
that was meant for Barros, to someone other than Barros. She shifted her focus between man and
elf, hoping to make it perfectly clear that she wanted a trilogue. Bickie’s gaze never wavered as
Hermione spoke.

“So, broadly, I wish to accomplish five things,” she held up her fingers as she concluded,
“Freedom, remuneration, employment contracts, protective rights, and a proper support system. But
I don’t believe any reforms should be made without input from those whom they are going to
impact. For that, I need your help.”

Snelling was quiet for a while as he scanned her proposal. Then he clasped his hands on the desk
and looked up.
“Ever since I took over Elf Relocation nearly seven years ago, I have written fifty-two letters to the
Wizengamot, the Department of Domestic Law, and even the Minister’s office, asking for one or
more of the things you listed. I have been ignored each time. This subdivision is a joke to them. But
now… to have someone with your influence taking this on… Ms Granger, I am thrilled. Of course I
will help you to the best of my ability.”

Hermione held onto her smile. “What do you think, Bickie?”

“Bickie will help, just like Dobby would have helped!” she avowed solemnly, “House-Elves need
all those things, Ms Granger. But they are so scared.”

“I know,” she sighed, “Perhaps, with you here, they will be willing to talk to me? Open up to some
new ideas?”

“Other house-elves think Bickie is a little mad,” she smiled sadly, “Like they thought Dobby was
mad. But Bickie will be strong and brave like Dobby.”

“Thank you.” Hermione let herself smile, and prepared to see herself out. “I’ll let you familiarise
yourselves with what I have on paper so far, and if you have some time later this week, we can sit
down and put together a longer, more thorough proposal… maybe even a questionnaire for the
elves…”

“Or,” Snelling countered, “We can go over it with you right now, and get all questions out of the
way.”

“I wouldn’t want you to give up your lunch break!”

“We won’t be.” He grinned at Bickie. “What are we having today?”

“Bickie has brought mushroom and chicken pies!” she pranced over to a cupboard in the corner of
the office and took out a basket from inside.

“We take turns bringing lunch,” Snelling explained meaningfully, “Neither of us care for the
canteen’s fare.”

Hermione understood the real reason. Far too many witches and wizards might have made Bickie
feel unwelcome, if not blatantly objected to her presence.

“In that case,” she said, accepting a pie and napkin, “I insist on it being my turn tomorrow.”

For an hour more, they sat together and poured over Hermione’s plan. Both man and elf engaged
with equal avidity. They pulled out a stack of the letters and petitions they had drafted over the
years, as well as Bickie’s work contract; informal and drawn up by Snelling, but fair and faithfully
adhered to. Hermione conjured a noticeboard and everything was clearly pinned up and laid out.

She left their office with a bounce in her step. The empty tedium of the rest of the work day did not
faze her. When it was time to go home, she walked slowly down the atrium, hoping to catch sight
of Draco. She found Ron and his enthusiastic auror friend, Edith instead. He grumbled about being
saddled with Harry’s workload while he and Ginny relaxed in a lakefront cabin. Edith found him
very, very funny.
That evening, she finally converted her desk-bed back into a bed-desk. When she went on to refill
the drawers, she found an envelope among her things. It was mum’s annual birthday donation, this
year intended for The Foundation for Squib Advancement.

Curling up in her own bed, she concluded the day by reading another chapter from Eugenius’ book,
about the time he took a potion for lucidity along with the draught of living death and went into a
stupor during which he claimed to have had visions of Elysium, and lengthy conversation with
wisps of light that embodied spirits of the dead.
…Whom he nearly joined as a result of his experiment. For weeks he lay in the Asklepieion,
circling the mortal coil.

She used Draco’s latest note as a bookmark.

You should tell him .

What were the odds of her getting the better of words for that?

Between the next two days, that new alliance put flesh on Hermione's bony proposal, while
simultaneously preparing an agenda for future meetings with House-Elves. There were united by
purpose and well-matched in zeal, all keen to make contributions.

"Ms Granger,” Bickie piped up at one point, “House-Elves are punished very badly when they use
magic against their masters, even when they are hurting us.”

“Oh, yes, good point,” Hermione muttered, printing self-defence clause in bold letters across the
scroll.

Consequently, they had a fun time cooking up violent and creative punishment ideas for cases of
House-Elf abuse – ideas that were obviously not put on parchment. By the end of that sitting, she
was Hermione, Snelling was Ben, and Bickie was to remain forever and always Bickie.

With that second day wrapped up, she walked to the fireplaces with Kathy, conversing absently
while on the lookout for a glimpse of pale blond. Just as she started to say goodbye, Kathy gave her
an odd look.

“If I tell you something, do you promise not to use it?”

“Erm…?”
“It might help you understand Madam Barros’ motivations,” Kathy offered knowingly.

“All right. Go on.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

Kathy looked around them nervously, so Hermione cast a verbal muffliato to ease her mind.

“You know I did a lot of filing for the Admin when I first joined the Ministry, right? Well, back in
ninety-two… November or thereabouts, there was a closed hearing that the Ministry did not want
anyone to find out about. Corban Yaxley versus Boe the House-Elf. That monster had… allegedly
… let loose a near lethal barrage of hexes on his elf, tearing him into ribbons.”

“Oh my god.”

“The head of the Elf Relocation Office at that time – I don’t remember his name – came to the
DDL to find someone to take the case… and Madam Barros agreed at once. But you know how
things were. Yaxley used his connexions and money to buy his way out… Barros threatened to go
public with things from the first war that he had worked so hard to bury. So the Wizengamot agreed
on a compromise: A closed hearing.”

“Let me guess,” Hermione seethed, “Nothing came of it.”

“Nothing. Yaxley claimed the elf directly disobeyed and threatened him. It was his word against
Boe’s. Case closed, names expunged, records sealed and hidden in the restricted section of the
archives. All of which was my supervisor’s job, so… I peeked. It was horrible. The Wizengamot
really tore into Barros for wasting their time.”

“But now everyone knows what an evil wretch Yaxley was. And he’s dead. Why is it still hidden
away? What happened to Boe?”

“No clue. And why would they reopen the case now that he’s dead?”

“Justice for–”

“You know they don’t care,” Kathy said glumly.

Just before they stepped into a fireplace, she issued a reminder – “You promised, yeah? You won’t
bring this up?”

“If I do, this whole endeavour will be seen as Madam Barros’ revenge... as it probably will even if I
don't.”

Hermione’s blood was boiling.

She spent the entire second half of Friday with Ben and Bickie, finalising their gameplan. Kathy’s
revelation had added fuel to her fire and fanned her doubts.

She may have harangued Bickie while putting together the questionnaire, but Bickie was perfectly
accommodating. She pulled out boxes full of tuna salad from her basket.

As the afternoon wore on, Hermione slipped deeper and deeper into her ‘on a mission’ persona,
helplessly, repeatedly reconsidering everything, till Ben let out a deep, rumbling laugh.

“Hermione, I think we’ve been more than thorough already. The day’s come to an end… the year is
coming to an end… surely a young ‘un has a party to get to.”

She looked at him blankly.

The world would be coming to an end.

Kind of. In a way. Probably not.

She felt like an overheated appliance that had been abruptly unplugged.

She ate a bit, mindlessly rearranged things in the study, painted her nails, read another one of
Eugenius’ misadventures. She showered and dried her hair. The brand new miracle conditioner did
nothing for her trillion and one split-ends.
She missed the girlish indulgence of getting ready alongside Ginny; sitting back and having her
hair tended to while they gossiped about all the singular characters in their lives.

She slipped into the black dress mum had bought for her in Sydney – short, fitted, long gauze
sleeves, a low neck and even lower back. She darkened her eyelids and painted her lips and
gathered her hair into a bun at the crown of her head, topping it with a jewelled headband. She
lifted her arms and stepped into the most maladroit tendu croise devant – and almost immediately
wrinkled her nose and cringed at herself. Her brand new stilettos were by the chest of drawers, still
in their box. She sat on the bed as she fit them onto her feet, stood up, and tottered back in front of
the mirror.

Never before had she looked so good. For some time, she could only gawk, till she was hit by a
very powerful moment, a bit like when she’d held her wand again, for the second time. It was an
intensification of something she’d only felt flashes of, when her parents beamed with pride, when
her teachers were complimentary, and when everything except Draco disappeared, while she was
entangled in his sentences.
You should tell him.

She took a step, (nearly snapped her ankle off,) and stumbled right into another moment; one which
gave rise to an urge to shake her fist at the heavens. The stilettos had to be carefully coated with
stabilising charms, durability charms, and tethering charms, which inevitably led to her tottering
from room to room, getting used to the feeling of having what was essentially magical velcro on
the bottoms of her shoes. Once she was sure she had progressed from newborn giraffe to relatively
nimble-footed woman, she wrapped herself up in a cloak and left.

Diagon Alley was lit up prettily. Strings of multicoloured fairy-lights criss-crossed overhead.

It was nearing eight when she walked into Finnigan’s, where green and pink flamed lanterns
effectuated a blooming, ‘Green World’ air. Despite the hour, she appeared to be among the first to
arrive. She handed her cloak to the coat rack, and saw Theo lead a bunch of people into the private
room, looking very serious. There were a few people at the bar, some sitting at tables that were
once again less than half in number and pushed to the sides. All the way across, at the far end of the
pub, she spotted Draco by one of the half-pillars that flanked the mural, involved in a discussion
with his usual company, and an additional two. Fiona was right next to him, in a strapless red
dress.

Hermione needed a drink. Maybe that potent peach concoction, or a gin and pumpkin fizz.

“Good evening!” She greeted Vassilios upon reaching the bar. He responded with disinterest. “I’d
like a–”

“Orange Enigma.”

“No, actually–”

“Boss said I have to give you an Orange Enigma.”

“Well, if boss says so…” she muttered as he busied himself.

There was a burst of the world’s most enticing scent, a flash of black in the corner of her eye, and a
low, “Granger,” that all but knocked her right onto her back. Already a bit flushed from drinking,
Draco set his empty glass on the bar, and she wondered if he had somehow broken through the
wards and learned to silently apparate.

“Hullo,” she said dazedly.

Oh, it was so good to finally be near him again.

“Another firewhisky,” he said to Vassilios.

His shirt wasn’t actually black – it was the darkest shade that purple could be without turning into
black. Her heels had provided her with a whole new angle to admire him, putting her eyes at level
with his mouth. His furrowed profile remained on Vassilios, his hand was tense on the bar, his
frame radiated impatience.
“You’re allowed to choose your own drink?” she asked.

He spared her a short glance. “You aren’t?”

“No. Seamus decided for me.”

“Yeah, well, he always takes special care of you.” He began rapidly tapping his fingers.

“I’m surprised you were even invited, after your… erm, altercation.”

“There isn’t enough room in Finnigan’s head to hold a grudge.” Then he scowled, adding in a
barely audible undertone, “If it takes that prat this long to fix two little drinks, how will he cope
with the incoming mob?”

Tap, tap, tap.

Vassilios sent Hermione’s drink sliding her way. It was in a margarita glass, bright orange speckled
with sparkling gold.

“What’s the enigma then?” she asked him good-naturedly.

He ignored her.

Draco’s tapping got more frenetic. She could not understand why he had chosen to stand next to her
if all he planned to do was show her how badly he wanted to get away. She took a defeated sip of
her drink, grateful for its sweet booziness. Soon, a tumbler of firewhisky sailed towards them, and
Vassilios moved to the other end of the bar. Hermione waited morosely for Draco to depart as well.

But he didn’t budge. He took a sip of his, she took a sip of hers, and that was all. Maybe she should
leave; beat him to the punch.
The gold in her drink shimmered and flowed like cosmic dust. She felt like she had the exact same
substance within her, floating alongside blood corpuscles.

“You look absolutely stunning.”

Her heart stopped. His fingers stopped. Her vision got unfocused and everything stopped.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

His fingers resumed a much slower, rhythmic tapping. Her heart, on the other hand, took off
galloping. You should tell him. She lifted her eyes and they fell naturally on his lips, at that moment
still in profile and barely parted. It wasn’t a look that indicated a desire to take back what had just
been said.

“Do you know what’s happening there?” she asked. When he turned to her, she gestured to the
private room behind her.

“No,” he replied softly, “Theo just said something about a midnight spectacle.”

“Want to investigate?” she grinned.

His lips pulled up. “Sure.”

She turned, began walking, and he followed. What a perfect fuck you to Fiona.

They exchanged a short look just outside the door, then Hermione knocked. Draco waited for a
total of two seconds before pushing it open and waltzing in.

There were a lot of people in the room, and no furniture. George and Lee were crouched on the
floor, over what looked like a cluster of enormous bombs. They had their wands held aloft, and
were having some sort of disagreement. Theo, Dean, and two others were deliberating over a thick
sheaf of parchment. Everyone else was just drinking and chattering at a very loud volume.

Hermione started when Theo showed up at her side.

“Hello, lovely,” he said, pulling her towards Dean and the other two, and introducing them as
Wendy and Blake.

Blake was heavily tattooed. Wendy had an astonishing cleavage. After a short and polite exchange,
the four resumed their deliberation – an ardent discussion about dragon designs, it seemed – while
Hermione and Draco stood by quietly, making quick work of their drinks.

Eventually, they reached a consensus, and Dean and Blake carried away the sheaf to George and
Lee.

“What are you planning?” Hermione asked Theo.

“Can’t say. It’s a surprise. But you can be sure it’s going to be extraordinary.”

“Hermione, are you single?” Wendy enquired out of the blue.

Theo snorted.

Hermione blinked. “I’m – um – why?”

“My friend Itziar is going back to Spain tomorrow and she desperately wants to bed a Brit before
she goes.”

“Oh,” Hermione stammered, “I’m not…”

“Don’t swing that way? Well all right.” She shifted her attention to Draco.

And Hermione burst out with, “Neville’s in town! He’s newly single!”

Theo snorted again .

“Is he fit?”

“Yes, rather,” Hermione nodded, “He’s been spending a lot of time outdoors, and it’s done wonders
for him.”

“It’s not like he could get any worse,” Draco quipped.

She turned to him with a frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means? There wasn’t any scope for him to look worse.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He’s basically a shorn basset hound.”

Theo started to laugh, which caused Draco to look very pleased with himself. Hermione glared
from one to the other.

“How horrible you both are. You act like you’re his friends–”

“I’m not his friend,” Theo sneered, “I see right through him. He acts like he’s everyone’s friend, all
bumbling and stupid, only to steal kisses–”

“Oh, for the love of–”

“I’m friends with a lot of ugly people, Granger. I’m very generous that way.”

There was a very loaded, silent impasse following that, with poor Wendy looking like she wished
she hadn’t approached such insane people with her equally insane proposition.

Then, George’s voice, magically magnified, tore across the room, laden with uncharacteristic
irritation:
“Anyone who is not associated with Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes needs to get the fuck out of
here right now ! Immediately! Clear out! I can’t hear myself think and I have just one functioning
ear!”

Slowly, ninety percent of the room’s occupancy ambled towards the door and spilled out. Hermione
stayed at Draco’s side, all the way back to the bar, but only because she had reached the bottom of
her glass. She was certainly not done being affronted on Neville’s behalf. She made a point to
glower as she squeezed between two women to get to Vassilios, (the pub had become considerably
more packed in the time that they had been away,) and went on to pout when Draco grinned and
excuse me, please’ d his way into stealing one of the women’s place.

They got their refills and she continued to pout while she followed him to an empty table. And yes,
she was genuinely angry, but she still sat next to him instead of across.

It was loud. Music was on, some generic thumping-dance-thing. Ethereal lights, glitzy clothes,
glasses full of multicoloured shimmering liquid.

“Why must you get so pettish on behalf of other people?” Draco asked eventually, “Longbottom
isn’t here to see you defend his ugly mug.”

“Would you stop?”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

“Neville is a lovely person!”

“I didn’t say he’s a bad person. I said he’s bad to look at.”

“He is not. You are a bad person!”

He turned his chair to face her, and leaned onto the table with a smirk. “Let’s make a deal.”

“No.”

“I’ll mingle with all of the ugliest people out here tonight, and I’ll be outrageously friendly towards
them.”

“No.”

“But I have one condition.”

“Draco, I said I will have no part–”

“You have to stay close at all times, to balance things out.”

How was she supposed to resist that? How could she not look away, flushed to the roots of her
hair? How could she hold back a tremulous smile?

She peeked up at him in a way she knew was painfully shy and said, “I’d have thought you’d be
enough for that.”

It won her her favourite thing: A slow, uneven grin. One that spread across his face with delicious
gradualness, matching the slowness with which, deep in her chest, a kind of roseate recklessness
began gathering.

“You expect me to walk around with a mirror?”

“It would surprise no one.”

He didn’t respond to that. Just took a sip from his glass, smirking at her through his eyes. The
reckless orb within was vibrating with tension.

You should tell him.

Tell him. Tell him. Tell him. Reach out, touch that stripe of pink on his cheekbone and say, you’re
horrible, but wonderful. When I’m with you, the world stops.

She had one hand on her lap, and the other loose around the stem of her glass. They both were
entirely motionless, stuck in a tussle between fight and flight. When they finally jumped into
action, it was to grip her own leg and shove her glass into her mouth, respectively.

Draco sat back, crossed his arms, and raised a single brow; a look devastating enough to make her
stomach tighten.
“Do you accept?” he challenged.

“Of course not.”

Slow grin again. Wicked. Hot.

She wet her lips. “I’m going to have to keep my eye on you all night, aren’t I?”

He kept his on her. “Definitely.”

A loud roar erupted as, right next to the bar, a giant singing fountain appeared. It played nothing but
a thumping drum beat on loop. Shimmering smoke bloomed out of its spout.

And who would show up to their table right then? None other than Neville.

“Longbottom!” Draco said jocosely, “Long time, mate! How have you been? You look well.”

Hermione pressed her lips together and offered Neville a tight smile.

“What’s going on with him?” he asked her with a guileless grin. “Cheering charm?”

“He’s drunk, ignore him,” she replied shortly, “Have a seat… we never got to finish our
conversation the other day. You were telling me about the self-fertilising shrubs that you’re trying
to cultivate.”

“I too would love to hear about your attempts at self-fertilisation,” Draco averred.

Hermione shot him a glare, but Neville launched into an elaboration without cottoning on.

Their company was doubled with the arrival of Fiona, (who said, “There you are!” to Draco in a
reproachful tone,) Arnold, and one of the new additions, who had very long dark hair and was
called Jessie.

“Hullo again!” Draco beamed. “Do join us! I’m sure you will each have something valuable to
contribute to this scintillating conversation about oozing plant sap. Yes yes, drag over that chair…
mind those charming, er, ruffles on your dress, Jessie.”

“Okay, what is wrong with him?" Neville asked Hermione in an undertone. “Has he been
imperiused?”

She drained her glass.

An altogether rubbish conversation ensued. Draco was unspeakably ridiculous throughout. When
somebody accidentally kicked the leg of his chair while passing, he smiled and told them he
would’ve been just as clumsy if he had such a distracting companion with him. The couple laughed
and waved. He exclaimed, “And what an interesting tie you have on!” as they went.

Everyone in their mismatched group had come to the conclusion that Draco Malfoy had imbibed
something sinister and gone barmy. Fiona wanted to take him to Mungo’s. Draco insisted they pay
a visit to the ‘delightful’ bartender instead.
Hermione conspiratorially twisted her neck as she stood. “So everyone is ugly in your book?” she
mumbled under her breath.

“Not everyone,” he whispered back.

He walked away while she battled against another smile.

They were convinced (compelled) to do a round of shots by Seamus who had taken charge behind
the bar. By the time they all got fresh drinks, their table had been claimed by others, forcing them
to find refuge by a pillar too close to the fountain. Hermione’s drink was gone in five gulps. There
was nothing else to do.

Musical vibrations rattled her bones. Shadows and light blurred. The crowd was stomping on her
chest.

Draco’s false demeanour finally broke when the question of dancing came up. Everyone ganged up
against him, tried to pull him onto the floor, and he snatched his arm out of their grasp, stared down
his nose and said a sharp, “Fuck off.”

Neville gestured for Hermione to come along. She mouthed, in a bit.

They were boneless and sinuous and dizzying as they moved. She leaned back against the pillar and
closed her eyes.

“Are you passing out?”

Draco’s voice brushed over her neck. She wanted to feel it over every inch of her skin. She wanted
to feel every inch of his skin on every inch of hers.
She opened her eyes and looked at his mouth, so amazingly close. Pink, perfect, probably warm
and whisky-flavoured. There was no need to tell him anything. She could just… just…

“Granger?”

She looked up at his eyes. Hooded and glassy under a mussed up fringe.

“It’s so loud,” she murmured, “Stuffy. I think I… I drank too much… too fast.”

His hand lifted, hesitated, and fell.

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

He’d already turned away, pushing through the crowd. Hermione lurched forward before she lost
sight of him. They wound up back at the bar, and Draco gestured for her to wait while Seamus
served a final round of cocktails with a flourish, after which he leapt over the counter and bounded
to the dancefloor.
Then, when Vassilios had his back to them, Draco made a hurrying motion and led her behind the
bar, to the sliding shelves. One tap of his wand induced a slight opening, just enough for them to
slip through. It closed behind them and cut away most of the noise.
In the passageway, lit by regular oil lamps, Hermione was suddenly, utterly alive and reeling. She
looked at Draco and her stomach was rolling. He gestured up the narrow staircase and said, “After
you.”

She didn’t know how many steps behind her he was as she ascended. The exposed skin on her
neck, back, and legs was abuzz. The light got dimmer; the climb went on and on. She was
lightheaded and unsteady, so her pace was slow. Draco did not complain.

Finally, the staircase’s destination came into view – a trapdoor on the ceiling. She looked over her
shoulder. Draco was three steps beneath her.

“Through there?” she asked.

“No. I intend for us to stand under it.”

She huffed. Alohomora .

It led to the roof, of course. A fairly large area that was almost completely overrun with empty
casks; towers and fortresses made of the bloody things. There was a ramshackled shed to one side
and a narrow ledge going around the boundary. But it was completely blessedly quiet up there.
Hermione could hear nothing but residual ringing in her own ears. The fresh, icy night air
enveloped her in glorious shivers.

“Oh, this is much better,” she declared, staring at the fairy-lights above, so much closer than
before.

Draco agreed. “Better than downstairs, yes. And infinitely better than last year, when you climbed
up on the bar and flashed your knick–”

“That never happened, you stupid bastard!” She wheeled around and glared.

He grinned.

Fuck.

Alone. On a rooftop. With him. On a beautiful new year’s eve night.

Her pulse was fluttering everywhere… erratic… in her chest, knees, throat, finger tips, upper lip…

She shivered again.

“May I…” she rasped, “Cast a warming charm on you?”

“Do you think I’m incapable of casting one myself?”

“I’ve adapted mine. Combined it with a temporary sticking charm so it lasts longer and is more
effective.”

“So that’s where Theo…” He rolled his eyes. “I should have known.” He raised and dropped his
arms. “Go ahead.”
She went ahead, knowing he would feel immediate, toasty relief, hoping he would be awestruck.
He wandered past her, eyes skimming over the buildings that surrounded them. She turned away,
spreading warm magic over her own body, through blood that was pounding away mercilessly.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” Draco asked.

His signature, high back leather armchair appeared in front of her. She complied, crossing her legs
because he was looking at them. Then he looked at her bodice. Then at her neckline. Then steadily
up to her face.

Her mouth went dry. Tell him. Hold out your hand. Say, Draco, come here. And tell him.

He conjured an identical chair for himself, right where he was, a good couple of metres away. Out
of her reach and too far for anything. He tipped his head back and took in a long breath. His eyelids
fluttered.
It was the sort of action one would take to set one’s head straight. Like, well shit, I got carried
away. The lights and the booze messed me up again. Like he was sighing in relief, or to regain
composure. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, even as she contended with the crushing blow of
yet another rejection.

“How’s your House-Elf Liberation Project going?” He kept peering at the twinkling lights.

HELP was more apt than TEMP. She didn’t really have it in her to talk anymore. But she pushed
aside her sinking heart and replied.

“I’ve been working on it with Snelling from the Office for House-Elf Relocation, and his perfect
assistant, Bickie. They’ve been enthusiastic so far; completely on board. But–”

“Is that where you’ve been during lunch this past week?”

“Yes. We eat in their office, for obvious reasons. Anyway, Bickie will be bringing in some of her
friends and acquaintances next week, for us to talk to. But I just found out that justice for House-
Elf happens to be one of Madam Barros' failed projects. I feel I am being manipulated. Now I’m
waiting for her to call me into her office to administer a full dose of discouragement, which I’m
sure she’ll consider a teaching moment. Call the venture a fool’s errand again, and tell me I’m an
idealist.”

“You think you aren’t one?”

“Not how she means it.”

Draco closed his eyes and smirked. “How does she mean it?”

“She means to say that I am idealistic in an impractical and naïve way, when really, I am idealistic
in a galvanising way.”

He sniggered, his eyes opened and shifted towards her, and her own flickered downwards.
“It’s galling every time she says it. As bad as when either of the Lovegoods call me close-minded.”

“You aren’t close-minded,” he said.

She smiled.

“You’re bloody-minded.”

She stopped smiling.

Scowling at the ground, she said, “You’re just like them, then. I am not bloody-minded. I am
determined.”

“Determinedly obdurate. Unreasonable and truculent.”

“Truculent?! ”

She reared up, ready to go as low as to say that he was the one with blood on his mind, but she was
met with bright eyes and an indulgent, teasing grin. All the rage left her. It had been a paper tiger
anyway.

They lapsed into a brief silence. Hermione re-crossed her legs. She touched the side of her neck.
She didn’t know what she was doing, but she hoped he was watching.

He wasn’t.

“Tell me about the post-Yule banquet,” she blurted.

“Nothing to tell,” he responded swiftly.

“A very formal affair, I suppose?”

“Formal. Yes.”

“My parents really liked you,” she imparted delicately.

Maybe she was an idealist in exactly the way Barros accused. Why else was she expecting a smile,
when in reality he jolted and stiffened in quick succession.

“You did have a nice time that day… didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“My mother called you charming . Can you imagine anything more outrageous?”

“Well, you only have yourself to blame for that,” he replied with a surprising amount of acridity.

“The presents helped,” she grinned.

His expression was severe. “You really didn’t tell them a thing, did you?” She was puzzled so he
added, “About me.”
Hadn’t they gone over all that already?

“They know who you are,” she said.

“You lied to them.”

“I didn’t lie!” she exclaimed, “Unless you lied. Have been lying. Unless everything has been–”

“You lied by omission,” he injected bitterly.

“I did not lie. Yes, I omitted, but–”

“You had no business doing that. Do you think they would have wanted me over, had they known?
Would they have found me charming then?”

Had he not read her post-it??

“Why are you getting into such pointless hypotheticals?”

“They deserved to know who they were eating with. It wasn’t right–”

“Then why didn’t you tell them? Or… why did you come at all?” she blared, “Why did you show
up if it was so wrong?”

“Because you fucking asked me to!”

“Exactly! Have you forgotten who you are talking to? Do you think that I–” she pointed angrily at
herself, “I – would’ve asked you to celebrate Christmas with my muggle parents if I had even the
slightest of misgivings?”

“That’s not – It’s–”

“What the bloody buggering hell do you want, Draco?”

His glare ignited, his lip curled, ready to let loose a tirade, but it was not his turn . Her nails dug
painfully into her palms.

“You threw such a tantrum when you thought your past was being held over your head. You were
unbelievably rude to me, made me seek you out to reassure you… and now you’re harping at me
for doing something in the spirit of moving on? What am I supposed to do then? What is the right
way to behave?”

“Sod that!” he barked, “This is only about your parents not having any idea who they were
entertaining and being so damn nice to.”

“Oh, so now you think you don’t deserve to be–” She cut herself off and jumped to her feet…
stumbled… but thankfully stabilised before she made an arse of herself. “How dare you?” she
spat.

He was on his feet, too. “How dare I what? ”

“How dare you berate me for being… How dare you goad me into defending your horrible past!”

He recoiled and his face fell so abruptly that it was like she had slapped him again.

“That isn’t… I wasn’t… No. I’m not – I wouldn’t–”

“We should go back,” she said coldly, “Theo will be inconsolable if we miss the show.”

He stalked away.

Hermione’s temper was bubbling and writhing. Drunkenness, fluttering shyness, wanton
anticipation… none of those remained. There was only restless rage. She vanished her chair with
violence.

Draco had just left his behind. How many stupid armchairs had he littered the world with? The
next big environmental pollutant would be furniture, and it would all be the doing of one vexing,
rankling, bloody-minded man.

“Your fucking chair,” she growled.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered from behind her.

“I’m sure you aren’t,” she snapped. Evanesco .

“No. Hermione. I’m sorry.”

She turned around and his expression stole her breath away. What he said next, drove a giant nail
through the top of her head and fixed her to the spot.

“I’m sorry for the way I was, and the way I behaved. I’m sorry for ever believing that anyone was
less-than… that you, your parents were less-than.” He regarded her quietly for a moment.
“Apparently I can’t even convey that without goading you.”

A tall, pallid, ragged figure under a canopy of rainbow lights. His hair appropriated all colours, but
his eyes held their own.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, then frowned. “I should have said it months ago. A year ago.”

“Would you have meant it, a year ago?”

“Yes ,” he insisted hotly.

“Then why didn’t you say it?”

“I didn’t know how.” He eyed the roof’s ledge wishfully, like he was seriously considering jumping
off. “You said that I could spend the rest of my life apologising to the world, and it still wouldn't be
enough.”

Her breath stalled for many long minutes.

“You said you had nothing to apologise for.”

He sighed deeply. “Which was bollocks. But I… I cannot put into words how much I despised and
resented you for saying that… and for when you chose to say it.”

“I don’t think that any more,” she choked out.

But what about when he was choosing to say all this ?

She wanted to yell at him because, yes – he did make her feel less-than… till she decided that he
was too pathetic to have any sort of bearing on her self-image.
She wanted to rage at him for having the nerve to apologise after she had already forgiven him
enough to love him.
She wanted to tell him that he didn’t make her feel less-than any anymore; he made her feel more
than anyone else ever had.
She wanted to assure him that she would accept his apology because she knew he meant it.

“I have tried to show that I am not who I was, that I don’t hold those opinions, and that I am – I
genuinely am –” he glanced over at the ledge again. “Maybe I’ve been doing a shit job, maybe it
isn’t enough–”

“No! It’s… clear… e–evident…”

With a vocabulary like hers… for words to fail her so spectacularly…

He was all sharp lines and deliberateness as he said, “I regret all of it. I regret ever saying that
word, and meaning it. I regret the… the abuse. And I wasn’t trying to get you to defend it. I
shouldn’t have been a prick while accusing you of holding it against me.” He swallowed, jaw
working like he was speaking against his will; but he did not avert his eyes. “I just don’t know how
to cope with the thought that you still do.”

I don’t.

Yet she could only (dumbly, weakly ) shake her head. There were tears clinging to her eyelashes
that she could not wipe. They fogged her vision and put everything but him out of focus. The casks
turned into blobs, the lights bled into bright streaks of colour, and Draco, sharp and clear, stood in
the middle. An unextractable mass of words remained stuck in her throat.

They held each other’s gaze for quite some time. She thought his eyes were pleading with her.
Maybe. She was too wrung out to accurately decipher anything.

Draco turned around and moved towards the trapdoor. The orb in her chest splintered as she took in
the back of his bowed head, the tension imbued in his shoulders and back. She barrelled ahead and
clamped her hand around his forearm.

He froze. Like he was made of some inflexible, immutable thing; and when he slowly faced her, he
did it just as one made of such a substance would. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly parted,
and he was so utterly still that she felt he had stopped breathing.

Then she realised –

It was his left forearm that she had grabbed. Glancing down at the point of contact – there was one
layer of cloth between his dark mark and the tips of her fingers. Her eyes flicked back up. He was
just staring. Immobile and staring.

So she smiled with everything she had. She gave his arm a squeeze, (the warm, firm flesh scarcely
yielded,) and she let go. It swung limply to his side. He came to life on a shuddering breath.
Together, they walked towards the trapdoor. Draco pulled it open and kept his eyes downcast as he
waited for her to climb down.

Their descent was just as silent, just as slow as their ascent, with Draco at an unknown distance
behind her. Her head was lowered as she carefully minded each step; her spine was at his disposal.
With each tread, she wondered what might happen if he traced the ridge with his fingers, and if he
stilled her and pressed his mouth against her nape.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs. Draco walked around her and stopped at the doorway. Stopped,
but didn’t look back. Her appeal, (to hell with the party, there’s a fireplace in Seamus’ office,)
remained unsaid.

They re-entered the pub and bedlam welcomed them back. Vassilios paused his task to shoot them a
disapproving scowl, obviously making indelicate assumptions about what they had been up to.
Hermione flushed furiously as she brushed past him. Draco stayed to collect a drink, which she
only realised after she got trapped in a cluster of dancers. The bedevilled revellers pushed and
pulled her right across the dancefloor. She used her elbows with indiscretion till she wound up at
the door to the private room, but she did not go in. She leaned against the wall next to it, arms
wrapped around herself.

Disassociation.

The dancers transformed into a network of colourful lights and, against the backdrop of a song that
sounded like I’m sorry, I regret all of it, I should have said it a year ago, she cried. Softly, like a
guitar that gently weeps. Muted sniffling that wasn't quite sorrow; it was an abreaction. Relief, and
the loosening of a knot that she hadn’t even known existed. It had been somewhere behind the
orb… small… malignant… and no more.

The door opened. Theo, George, and Lee carried out a large crate. The music was cut off and every
single source of light was doused. Through pitch-darkness and the buzz that went around, George’s
enunciation of “incendio,” rang loud. There was a hiss of a flame and the sizzle of a burning fuse.

An enormous dragon burst towards the ceiling. It was utterly dazzling, with scales made of red,
green, blue, and gold sparks, and a tail and wings of silver fire. It weaved over and under the
rafters, circled around the pillars, soared over the riotous crowd. At one point, it passed right over
her head, then went on to illuminate people around her, and eventually, Draco. For that one moment
he was ablaze, eyes round as he gazed upwards.

After a final lap, the dragon exploded into glittering shards, which fell into the lamps and re-ignited
them. A unified cry of HAPPY NEW YEAR ended with a billion kisses. George and Angelina,
Ron and Edith, Padma and Tracy, Seamus and some girl, Dean and some bloke, Theo and…
Wendy.

Draco was nowhere in sight.

Suddenly her arms were full of a sobbing Parvati.

“Happy new year, Hermione,” she wailed.

“You too,” Hermione patted her back in confusion.

Parvati pulled back. She looked awful.

“Lavender and I used to hug at midnight, every year,” she explained tearfully, “And we’d promise
we’d be friends forever. Now you and I will be friends forever, okay?”

“Um, okay.”

Padma and Tracey saved Hermione from further awkwardness, both putting an arm around Parvati.

“I know Hermione is your friend, but can she be mine, too?”

“Of course she can, Paro. Come now. Let’s go home.”

They melted away and Theo materialised. He kissed the top of her head like dad used to when she
was little and would creep downstairs at midnight to watch the grown ups have their grown up
party.

“Happy New Year, Theo.”

“Haaappy fucking New Year.”

Then he moved and Ron pulled her into a hug. One by one she embraced and acknowledged an
assortment of friends and well wishers.

She did not see Draco again that night.

 Eighty-Five
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Six chocolate éclairs, two jam turnovers, and two custard profiteroles, freshly baked and still hot,
were packed in a box and placed into Hermione’s gloved hands. She stepped out from the aromatic
warmth of the baker’s shop and into the overcast morning.

She had slept till nine on that first day of the year. Her run had been a slog; she kept stopping to
yawn and rub her eyes. She had showered and then gone back down to venture into the muggle
world, happy to find an absence of post-apocalyptic devastation. Stepping into a fully-functional
phone box, she had called the hotel her parents were staying at, and received confirmation from dad
that the internet had not turned into a pumpkin. Mum’s laughter had sounded ceaselessly in the
background. She’d returned to her neighbourhood then, in earnest pursuit of an excuse, and found it
when a passing blast of icy breeze carried with it the scent of baking.

Which led to the rest of it: The bakery, the selection of pastries, the box in her hand, and her ardent
strides towards the apparition point.

There was another mini quidditch tournament being held at the Burrow the next day. Hermione
could not wait that long to see Draco again. Not after the vacillating, sweat-inducing, emotionally
taxing dreams she’d had. His apology was carved into her brain in ancient, indelible runes.

It was not possible to tolerate such ungovernable yearning. She was going to tell him... but moment
needed to be perfect.

The two inhabitants of flat number seventy-two were in the kitchen, having an even lazier morning
than she was. Both still in nightwear, Theo slouching over the table, and Draco busy with the
French press. Hermione quickly fixed her sight back on the former and announced her presence
with a cheerful, “Good morning!”

“Well, hello!” Theo replied, eying her from between his beard and unkempt hair, “What brings you
here?”

Hermione raised the box. “I couldn’t resist the spread at the baker’s. And I thought you could use
something to ease your hangover.”

“You darling.”
She settled at the table, and opened the box. Theo snatched up an éclair.

“Coffee, Granger?” Draco muttered without turning.

His voice elicited a tremble.

“Yes, please. Thanks,” she replied without looking up from the box.

“One for Ellie, too,” Theo added.

“Who’s Ellie?” Hermione asked.

“The girl I brought home last night,” he answered nonchalantly, between bites, “Currently in my
shower.”

“But…” she faltered. And blinked in confusion. “Wendy?”

“It turned out that she was already involved with Dean.”

“I’m fairly certain I saw Dean with–”

“Jack. Yeah. They’re all together, the three of them. They wanted me to be the fourth.”

“I see. And that didn’t interest you?”

“Nope. Too many bits. Too many of the dangly sort. If I have to be with a bloke, I’d like to be
eased into it. So I found Ellie instead.”

“You certainly know how to rally,” she remarked, “Er, what about Astoria?”

“She went back to school early, to begin preparing for her exams. Somebody inspired her to get
serious about law.”

Cups of coffee landed on the table; one in front of her and two in front of Theo. Then Draco sat
down, keeping a chair between himself and Hermione, and snagged an éclair, too. Hermione looked
down at her cup, the same design as the one from which she’d gulped tea exactly a year ago.

“It’s my new year’s resolution,” Theo said.

“What is?” she asked.

“To be a slag.”

“How nice of you to find some ambition,” said Draco, “Finally doing the house of Slytherin
proud.”

Hermione grinned behind the rim of her cup.

“Yeah, yeah,” Theo flouted at his jibe, “I can taste your bitterness, Draco.”
“I believe that’s chocolate.”

“You’re going to be stuck forever in your tragic dry spell, so you’re having a go at me. And
Hermione here is clearly still languishing over the loss of Boot–”

“Hey!” she objected, “I didn’t say anything!”

“But it’s true, isn’t it? Or is there some other reason you’re languishing?”

He took a triumphant sip of coffee.

Hermione widened her eyes in horror. Her jaw fell. “My god!” she gasped, staring at nothing on top
of Theo’s head.

“What?!” he squawked, “What???! Are you – AGAIN?” His hands flew wildly into his hair and he
jumped to his feet. “Are you fucking – Draco! ARGH!”

When he had flown from the kitchen, she sat back feeling very smug. Draco was shaking with
laughter.

Theo returned soon enough, glowering angrily at her. “That was despicable and mean!”

“Serves you right.”

“Uncalled for!”

“As was your comment.”

“I am leaving. I’m storming away.” He whipped out his wand and floated two cups, one turnover,
and one profiterole towards him. “There is a naked woman in my room. You both sit here and carry
on being pathetic.”

Draco’s chuckles gradually subsided once Theo had stormed away, and he picked up a second
éclair.

Hermione smiled down at her mug. “I knew you both would like those. That’s why I got more.”

“The incessant thoughtfulness of Hermione Granger,” he droned.

“Umm,” she mumbled, fingers twitching around the cup, “What are your plans for the day?”

He replied after a considerable pause.

“I have a mountain of dull, fucking tedious paperwork to get through for the upcoming trip to Abu
Dhabi. Forms and declarations and all that.”

“Oh,” she said. Had a sip. Pressed her thumb against the cup’s handle. “Are you playing in the
tournament tomorrow?”

“Of course. Best of the Pillocks, aren’t I?”

“Are you doing anything before that? In the morning?” Her heart launched into worrying
palpitations.

“Why do you want to know?” he groused.

Tell him tell him tell him tell him

“If you’re free, and… if… if you want… I could take you to that record shop dad had told you
about. You remember? If you’d like to buy some more CDs. If you want. To go.”

Brilliantly eloquent, wasn’t that? She thought about crawling under the table.

She peeked up anxiously and their eyes met. There was an avalanche somewhere. A volcanic
eruption somewhere else. Major tectonic movement. Sudden continental shifts.

“Yeah, all right,” he said.

They both looked away. Hermione polished off the last of her coffee.

“Well, I have a ton of work to do as well,” she said pitchily, and pushed up to her feet. “I’ll meet
you downstairs at ten, tomorrow?”

“Outside Gringotts. I’ll need to exchange currency first.”

“Right. Yes.” She walked across the kitchen and stopped at the door. “Um, see you then. Best of
luck with all the forms.”

“Thanks,” he said to her knee.

The weather was on her side the next morning. The sun was out, though it had snowed the night
before. The air was as cold, crisp, and bright as Draco. He skittered down the steps of Gringotts, in
a long, dark grey coat and a pale blue polo neck jumper. Hermione needlessly pulled down her hat,
just for the sake of having something to do besides wonder at the way he was hastily making his
way to get to her.

“Hi,” she said, “Um–”

Tell him tell him tell him tell him

She pointed at Gringotts and said, “Okay?”

Dear god, Merlin, and Morgan.

Draco arched a single brow. “Yes. Er, okay.”

“Okay.”

She spun around and began making her way down Diagon Alley.

“Do you have a map, or…?”

“Or…?”

“...Side-along?”

He looked at her like she’d sometimes caught him looking at Crabbe and Goyle. Like he couldn’t
comprehend such slowness.

“It’s a nice, sunny day,” she mumbled.

“...Yes...”

“And the shop’s just twenty or so minutes away.” She glanced away nervously. “If you’re
amenable, we could walk.”

“I don’t mind walking,” he replied.

She managed to withhold yet another okay.

Through the Leaky Cauldron they went, suddenly in darkness, then back in the light, out in Muggle
London.

For a while, they were mostly quiet, save for Hermione pointing out a few landmarks, like, that
building over there is Garrick Theatre, and there’s The National Gallery, and that’s a church .

She took him through Leicester Square Gardens, to the statue of Shakespeare in the centre.
Standing before it, Hermione tried her best to be subtle about watching him. He stared for a long
moment at the scroll rolling off the pedestal the Bard was leaning against.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

His left hand clenched into a tight fist. She experienced two contradicting urges — one to take his
hand in hers to lead him away, and the other to let him sit with whatever was going through his
mind at that moment.
She stepped back and turned, slowly walking around the fountain till she was on the opposite side,
right in front of him. His gaze dropped from the scroll to her, and she smiled and tilted her head,
silently asking, shall we go on?

Go on they did: A straight perambulation down Wardour Street.

Hermione said, “You know, I haven’t read any magical plays. I haven’t even heard of any magical
playwrights.”

“You aren’t missing out,” Draco sniffed, “All we have are sentimental dramatisations of famous
biographies and legends. There’s a play about Merlin by Valorie Ivers that’s lauded by
impressionable dunces. Daryl Winthrop is the closest we come to Shakespeare… in the sense that
he wrote a lot. There’s a play about Böttger, another about a group of Happy, Hoary Hinkypunks,
one about Drest, son of Erp. They’re all rubbish.”

“Magical poetry isn’t particularly inspiring either,” Hermione added.

Draco made a face. “It isn’t. My mother is obsessed with this one anthology – Joyous Poesy About
Posies. Some plonker going on and on about flowers.”

“I’m sure they must–”

“And not in a profound, metaphorical way, so don’t try to defend something you know nothing
about. You don’t need to be contrary all the time, Granger.”

He looked snooty. She glared without feeling.

“There’s Chinatown on the right,” she told him.

A pause while Draco looked across the street, peering into alleyways and at the shopfronts.

Then he asked, “Magical literature in general is quite shit, compared to muggle stuff. Why do you
think that is?”

“Because of magic,” Hermione replied simply.

He frowned like what do you mean?

Hermione had become a collector of conversations. She had a feeling that she was about to get
another precious addition for her display cabinet. In the cool, wintery light and amid an urban
landscape, she looked into the most wondrous pair of curious eyes.

“Dean and I used to talk about this,” she began, “Mostly to do with painting, but it applies across
the board. Magic has made us complacent. There’s no need and so, no desire for creativity. The
whole wonder of visual art rests on the ability to make it move, to make the portraits sentient; it’s
not about creating a compelling image or a portrait that will captivate you. There’s no conceptual
depth, either. It’s just… a picture. You’ve seen a small variety of muggle art by now. Don’t you
agree?”

“Surrealism combined with magic would be very interesting. Imagine if the Daughter of the
Minautor was in motion. If that demented dancing Granger in the corner actually danced.”

She grinned at him. “You saw one painting and your mind opened up. Just think of what could
happen if magical artists were given access to muggle art.”
Her cheeks preemptively heated and she looked down at her boots. His boots. Their boots. Their
steps were completely out of sync.

“We should go to the National Gallery sometime,” she said mumblingly, “It has a special portrait
gallery as well.”

He didn’t respond to her suggestion. “But muggleborns aren’t a new phenomenon. Why haven’t
they done something to revolutionise the arts yet?”

She scoffed. “You’re joking, right?”

At an intersection, they waited as a few cars zoomed past them. She once again had to quell an urge
to take his hand as they crossed the road.

“Are you forgetting how muggleborns are viewed? From the age of eleven we are alienated and
considered – Oh, that’s the Queen’s Theatre. My parents brought me here to see a production of
Much Ado About Nothing, years ago. Um... Where was I?”

“Muggleborns are alienated and considered…” Draco muttered.

“Right. Muggleborns are considered outsiders who have somehow acquired magic and infiltrated
the wizarding world. From the moment we get our wands, we have to prove ourselves. What choice
do we have but to completely, wholly integrate? Even people who aren’t dangerously prejudiced,
think muggles are odd. Everyone calls Arthur Weasley mad – honestly, his fascination is borderline
insulting; just ask my mum – but at least there’s a genuine interest. Apart from him, I haven’t met a
single adult pureblood who cares about the muggle world. Even half-bloods lean fully into their
magical heritage.”

Draco was quiet. They crossed a gay bar, closed for the day. New Year's decorations were still stuck
on its windows. They passed a clothes shop, still in the process of opening, while a group stood
outside, eating bagels and patiently waiting.

“It used to be different,” he said, at last.

“Before the Statute of Secrecy?”

“Yeah. My family were particularly cosy with muggle royalty, reaping all sorts of social and fiscal
benefits. They even opposed the Statute when it was first introduced.”

“So the cornerstone of Malfoy honour isn’t purity. It’s poshness.”

“How else would we have filled up our vaults?”

They were walking by a row of restaurants now. Hermione’s nerves hadn’t allowed her to eat
breakfast, and her stomach begged her for relief. Shut up, she told it.
“I know that we owe most of our civilised existence to muggles. I shudder to think how we would
be living if we hadn’t gone through a period of co-existence,” Draco continued.

“You mean toilets,” Hermione laughed.

“And actual bathing,” he wrinkled his nose, “Hygiene in general. How we eat, live, and dress.”

“Even after that, over the years, some of the most exciting magical inventions came from aping
muggles; it's just that the majority of the population has no idea. Cameras, gramophones, the
WWN… They’re barely scratching the surface! But going deeper would require more resources –
monetary and magical – as well as the admittance that there’s a hell of a lot that we can learn from
them.”

Another intersection. Hermione locked her arms behind her back as they crossed.

“You don’t want to do away with the Statute, do you?”

“No, no, of course not. Neither side is ready for that.”

Soho was shaking its wings as they moved deeper in. They walked by a comic book shop and
Draco slowed, peering inside interestedly. He did not notice the couple that walked into a pub a
short distance away. He did not experience a metaphorical punch in the gut just because one
happened to be blond and the other brunette.

“Will things change now, with our generation?” he asked.

“I hope so,” she replied gingerly, “Though such changes take a long time to settle in. I know for a
fact that Dean is going to make amazing art. Padma’s already working on bridging the gap between
muggle medicine and magical healing – one amalgamated potion at a time.”

“And the most capable and indefatigable witch in centuries happens to be a muggleborn who is
idealistic in a galvanising sort of way, bloody-minded in a determined sort of way, and she has
made up her mind to save the wizarding world from itself.”

Hermione looked up at him with narrowed eyes, completely unable to decipher the grain and
degree of his mockery. A charming smirk tugged at his lips and he winked.

She let out a shaky laugh, warmed to the soul, and stopped walking.

“We’re here,” she said, pushing open the door to the shop.

It was mostly empty, with one or two people roaming between the racks. Draco looked about
inquisitively. She waited till he put his attention back on her, before directing him towards the
classical music section. Once there, she stepped away, allowing him to browse in peace, just how
she preferred to be left alone in bookshops. She had a gander as well; all in vain, for the cassette
selection was depressingly meagre.

She couldn’t say how much time had passed before Draco reapproached her, with overloaded
arms.

“Wow.”

“I came so close to conjuring a basket,” he grumbled. “What’s that in your hand?”

“Johann Strauss. Heard of him?”

“No.”

“That’s surprising. He was Austrian, like your teacher. Composed a lot of dance music. Waltzes,
polkas, quadrilles, and suchlike.”

“Dietrich didn’t care for dance music. Is that something you like?”

Hermione shrugged, keeping her eyes on the CD cover, while picturing herself as a repressed,
aspiring nun, blushing in the arms of Captain Draco Malfoy while they danced.

“It’s lovely, light music. Makes you feel like you can float over a ballroom. The Blue Danube is his
most well known composition, but I actually prefer… Roses from the South . It’s taken out of an
operetta, The Queen's Lace Handkerchief, and overall, it’s quite mellow, but in the final minute it
just explodes and–”

“Bloody hell, stop!” said… not Draco.

It had been said by a man standing at a nearby rack. He had a short ponytail, thick-framed glasses,
and was handsome in a deliberately rough, postmodern sort of way. He sneered at Hermione.

“You aren’t fooling anyone, little girl. The new Mel C album’s near the front, go on.”

Hermione was too stunned, too affronted to do anything but gape.

“Did you stay up all night studying? To what… impress this dandy?” He turned his sneer onto
Draco, looking him up and down. “Fancy yourself as Nick Rhodes, do you?”

With that, he stalked away.

Hermione looked at Draco. Draco looked at Hermione.

For the next half hour they collected CDs – Draco’s picks, dad’s recommendations, Hermione’s
suggestions – and filled up the basket they’d “acquired”. On his insistence, she’d had to find a
Duran Duran album to show him what Nick Rhodes looked like.

Oh, and they also took turns casting mild confundus charms on the obnoxious music-snob. (Well,
Hermione’s were mild, she wasn’t sure about Draco. He had a very I'm on the hunt, I'm after you
air to him.)
Under their influence, the snob went about giving unsolicited opinions to unsuspecting customers.
He told a young boy that Wagner was the latest talent in hip-hop. He told a woman that Yanni
exemplified girl-power. He told a nurse that Black Sabbath would be perfect for peaceful evenings
at the care home where she worked. And so on.
In the end, he purchased Mel C’s new album.

On the other hand, Draco purchased a tower. A collection that any regular, salaried individual
might take a couple of years to amass.

They walked outside into a busier, brisker ambience. Hermione pulled open her beaded pouch,
signalling for him to stow his loot away. He got all shifty and furtive, trying to hide the bags behind
his coat like they were conducting a drug deal out in the open. She quelled a giggle.

“It’s got a muggle-repelling charm on it.”

“Oh.”

He put his large package into her surprisingly accommodating purse, and her mind went exactly
where she didn’t want it to go. She shouldered her bag and turned away quickly before he could
begin questioning her sudden, violent flush.

She took him back via another route, along restaurants and business centres, and down to
Shaftesbury Avenue.

“This is Lyric Theatre,” she stated, “…All right so, magical plays are rubbish. What about magical
productions? Do they improve the literature?”

“They’re visually impressive, I suppose. Lots of clever spellwork.”

“How about the performances?”

“Shit by virtue of shitty dialogue.”

“How impressive can the spellwork be, anyhow? How many theatre performers are also magical
virtuosos? People won’t keep ooh-ing and aah-ing at charms when they know the incantation
behind them.”

“They will. People are very simple and predictable, Granger. They don’t tire of spectacles. Weren’t
you impressed by the shiny, pretty dragon the other day?”

“Are you calling me simple and predictable?”

He grinned.

“Wait, wait. You see that fountain, over there? That’s Eros. And the building in front of it… well,
you can’t really see it properly, but that’s the Criterion theatre. Oh, now over there…” (She came so
close to grabbing his elbow and dragging him across the road) “...the Horses of Helios. And the
Three Graces up there.”
“Does this spectacle impress you?”

“I am not simple.”

On they went.

“Can you imagine how amazing it would be if we combined magic with Shakespear? All the
special effects, the atmosphere… Banquo’s ghost, Hamlet’s dad could be played by actual ghosts!”

“And you could use your expertise in botched animal-transformation to play the donkey-headed
Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream.”

“Why would I do that, when you could play him without any modifications whatsoever? That’s
Haymarket Theatre, by the way. One of the oldest playhouses in London. And there’s Her
Majesty’s Theatre.”

“Another one named after her?”

“Yes, we’re embarrassingly obsessed.”

They didn’t speak while passing through Traffalgar square. Draco just appeared to be looking
around. Hermione was sinking into dismay as their jaunt was coming to an end.

Five minutes from the entrance to Diagon, she told him, “You go ahead. I’m...” She gestured
vaguely down the street.

“Why?” he frowned.

So that I may pathetically sigh and ache for you.

“I want to go up to the embankment to get a proper look at the new Observation Wheel.”

His gaze turned searching as it shifted from her to where she’d gestured, then back at her.

“I’ll come with you.”

She smiled automatically. “But the tournament will start any minute now.”

“I’m not playing in the first match.”

Back they turned.

Hermione bit down hard on her lip while her internal upheaval calmed. Then she asked, “Shall we
pick up something to drink?”

The subsequent course of the short journey to the river was undertaken with styrofoam cups in
hand. A bus rumbled by, stirring the air that in turn stirred the flaps of their coats and the ends of
their hair.

They kept going along the embankment till they were standing directly in front of the big wheel.
Even with a river in between, it loomed large. Hermione went up to the wall, pressing cold fingers
into warm styrofoam and taking a sip of spiced tea. The wind was friskier by the water.
Draco came up beside her, resting his elbows on the wall.

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—

“What’s it for?” he asked.

“It’s supposed to give you the best view of the city. You get into those pod-like things, and the
wheel goes round.”

“Fast?”

“I doubt it.”

“Can we go on it… now?”

She chuckled. “It isn’t open to the public yet.”

“The closest muggles can come to flying.”

“No, Draco. They have aeroplanes, helicopters, gliders…”

“Right.”

Ding ding!
A line of cyclists shot down the road behind them. They both watched them go, looking over their
shoulders. Their gazes brushed against each other as they turned back.

“What sort of… machines do they use to build something that big?”

“Cranes, I imagine. Hydraulics. I am not very familiar with construction machinery. But large,
intricate structures aren’t new. They’ve been around since ancient times. Back then, everything was
done manually, with scaffoldings, pulley systems, bare hands, and strong backs.”

“With magic, you can construct an entire building in days.”

“You can do a lot of things with magic,” she muttered absently.

“This is almost more impressive.”

“Maybe. But construction work and operating heavy machinery is dangerous. Not to mention the
air and noise pollution generated. Makes you wonder if it’s worth it. And oh god, the amount of
resources required and wasted! That’s a problem in every bloody industry. Fuel, coal… water!”

Her spine snapped straight and she faced him, waving her cup around for emphasis in a way that
would haunt her later that night. But her thoughts were climbing all over each other, trying to find a
way out.

“We can conjure clean, potable water with one simple incantation… while there are parts of the
world where thousands die due to droughts! We can power a train with magic, and it emits magic
purple smoke that melts into nothing! We could vanish entire landfills! We could clear up all the
toxic shit that factories dump into rivers! There are so many muggle illnesses that might be curable
with the right potions, so many dangerous invasive procedures that could be avoided… If we could
just find a way to do these things without revealing ourselves!”

Draco had let her carry on looking slightly amused, slightly speculative. He turned back to the
river, and after taking a swig from his cup said, “You might be veering close to being idealistic in
an impractical way with that.”

“Bleh.”

She stayed the way she was. Draco was more appealing than the Thames and the wheel. The noon-
time sun may dance on waves and sparkle on steel, but what it did to his hair and skin was
unparalleled. She let her frustration bleed away.

“We’re at a huge advantage here,” he said, “Would be a shame to waste it.”

“Hmm?” She shook her head and focused on his words.

“Could we power a rocket with magic?”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “I don’t see why not. Muggles have already figured out important
details like propulsion and velocity. We could deal with the lack of atmospheric pressure and
breathable air by modifying the bubble-head charm to encapsulate the whole body…”

Bullous Totalus? That might not fit as a full-body capsule. Corpus Bullitus. But it would need to be
reinforced with a Protego. Could all three be combined into a single incantation?

“Granger?” Draco cocked a brow at her.

“Sorry, did you say something?”

He smirked. “How long did it take you to figure out how to make the CD player work?”
“Um, it took me a good few hours.”

“A few hours.” He shook his head at the river.

“It was very straightforward, on the whole. The laser charm took time.”

Would she ever get a chance to touch his hair?

“Why are you bothering with the sodding Ministry?” He spoke with that hard undertone he
sometimes assumed, that was almost bitter… but not quite. “You could be inventing spells,
adapting muggle apparatus, breaking barriers like nobody's business.”

“Because bothering with the Ministry is the only way to help House-Elves. And squibs,
muggleborns, goblins, women, werewolves–“

His great big huff cut her off. He looked amused, annoyed, unsurprised... a little annoying .

“And I will invent spells and adapt muggle apparatus,” she informed him.

“You know you can’t do everything, right?”

“I know. I…” She glared down at the ground between them. She couldn’t believe what she was
about to tell him. “I made a to-do list during first year, for when I grow up. I was as righteous and
impassioned as you’d expect and I’m sure you’ll mock me endlessly for it–”

“Was?”

Growl, glare, etcetera.

“Some of it’s a bit silly, most of it is overeager and idealistic, some ideas need to be reimagined.
But I can’t let go of it. You know why, Draco?”

“Because of who you are.”

“No,” she chuckled humourlessly, “Because I’ve realised that I don’t have to do everything. Like I
said, Dean will do his bit for art, Seamus blares muggle music at any occasion, Padma is studying
muggle medicinal practices, Ben will never give up on helping house-elves, and say what you want
about her personality, Barros does stand up for the oppressed. Anita is going to revolutionise the
press. McGonagall is not going to let the Ministry interfere with Hogwarts again. Justin and Mr
Weasley are looking after muggleborn children. I don’t have to do everything. That list might be
overeager… but it isn’t overreaching anymore.”

She finally lifted her head. Draco was still looking straight ahead, squinting against the glare
coming off the wheel.

“The most challenging aspect, however, is one that I still don’t know how to combat.”

“What’s that?”
“Pureblood supremacy. It’s always there; it hides, it comes back. I can’t fight for fairer laws
because technically the laws are fair and equal for all magical folk. It’s the dispensation of justice
that’s a problem, and a pervading belief system. In my list I’d written, launch anti-prejudice camps.
I obviously don’t know the first thing about dismantling an ideology.”

“You shouldn’t have to do that,” he ground out, “That should not be your responsibility.”

“It’s grim.” She looked down again. “But then I spend a wonderful morning full of muggle music
and long walks with Draco Malfoy, and things seem considerably less grim.”

Her heart was thundering and he was silent . She couldn’t look up, she couldn’t look up, she
couldn’t look up —

Tell him.

“I – I – I’d like to – know if you have a to-do list?”

Fuck. She braved an upward glance to find him boring holes into the lid of his cup.

“Sure.” His voice cracked. “First on the list, ride a dragon.”

“I’ve already done that,” she said promptly.

“Thank you for reminding me.”

“So has Theo.”

A dog began barking loudly, somewhere in the distance. A cloud of pigeons swept across the sky.
Hermione pulled the lid of her cup and trapped steam slithered out and became one with the air.
Warm tea slipped down her throat and became one with her body. Molecules of water escaped from
her pores, and the wind carried them off to become one with the river.

For they were young, and the Thames was old

And this is the tale that River told:

“Where does your insuppressible, untiring impulse to help come from? Are you simply an
instinctual altruist, or do you have to actively cook up ways… make lists… to better the world?”

There was the unbitter bitterness again. It became one with London’s bitter undercurrent. How was
she supposed to answer that? Her cup was empty.

“Both?” she asked more than she answered. “I don’t know. But I suppose the reason I’m so charged
up about it is my standing in magical society. It’s made me hyper-aware and angry. If I’d carried on
as a muggle, economically comfortable, socially privileged, and intellectually gifted, I’d be
completely different.”

“Granger, you just prattled on about the problems plaguing muggle society. You wouldn’t be any
different.”
“Hah. I’ve always known the world is full of problems. I should thank my parents for that – politics
was dinner table conversation. They were always attending rallies, keeping me informed and well
read. But it isn’t the same. There’s a different, boiling urgency when you know what it’s like to be
discriminated against.”

“What drives your parents then?” he asked.

“They’re good, compassionate people,” she shrugged, “But if I were to dissect it more coldly, at its
core, it’s an obsession with problem solving.”

He shook his head. “It’s far more than that. On its own, problem solving is a vainglorious pursuit.
But actually doing something about it is another thing. So is seeking out ways to help.”

“What’s the point of solving a problem if not to implement the solution?”

“For the fun of it.” He smiled. It looked wrong, like it had been painted on by a bad artist. “It’s
invigorating to solve someone else’s problem, sit on the solution, and watch them flounder. Us
Malfoys made a game of it. That was our dinner table conversation.”

Her blood turned cold. “Is it still us Malfoys?”

“There’s no escaping it.”

“I think you already have, in all the ways that count. Why did you help solve the Voldemort
problem?”

“Boredom.”

“Draco,” she rumbled. Her blood flashed hot.

His badly painted smile was tight across his face. “I got tired of being the irrelevant, forgotten
one… and occasional torture subject. I wasn’t given any tasks, mocked during meetings, left to rot
at Hogwarts where the Carrows called me the child. ”

“Right. You switched sides for a bit of excitement.”

A hard grimace erased the painted smile. He didn’t say anything more, perhaps realising what an
idiot he was being. Good.

“Why did you help Safi?” she pressed hotly , “You could have happily sat on the solution and let
his family get bombed.”

He’d dropped the act. He’d dropped it completely. His voice was hollow as he said, “Two years of
living a nightmare wrecked me. Fuck, I was wrecked within a week. He had been dealing with it
for decades .”

“You’ve helped Andromeda keep the orphanage going.”

At last, he lifted his elbows off the wall and stood at his full height. His exhale was a puff of steam
that rose up to become one with the clouds.
“Did I just goad you into defending me again?”

“What’s on your to-do list, Draco?” she asked quietly.

He looked heavenwards, where the air from his lungs was now part of infinity.

“I don’t have a to-do list. I don’t even have a to-be list. I’m a work in progress that’s wondering
what the fuck I’m supposed to do, because, evidently, there’s no such thing as a clean slate.”

“Of course there isn’t,” she said.

She thought he flinched like he was going to turn away from her again, so she quickly appended the
rest of her sentence –
“Life isn’t a single slate. It goes on and on. If anything, it's an impossibly long scroll. You don’t
like what you wrote in the past, then start writing differently. If you’re sincere and diligent about it,
the new script will outstrip the old.”

There was such a brand new, enthralling rawness to him. A brokenness, a pained unguardedness.
Every expression she had ever seen on his face – blankness included – had been scrubbed away.
Standing in front of her was pure, unadulterated Draco.

“We’re all works in progress,” she murmured, “till our very last breath.”

Tell him tell him tell him tell him. Wrap your arms around his neck and say let's progress together.

Soaked in sun-mist, silverspun eyes. Sun-ripened cheekbones, compelling mouth. His lips quivered
infinitesimally at the corners. Up, then down, then back in a set, even line.

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

A dog’s bark, a honk as a car passed — Halt .

This was not her perfect moment.

She turned, falling back against the wall, staring at the tangle of shadows that trees and branches
made on the pavement. She wanted to let out a long exhale, but she couldn’t. Draco didn’t budge.

“That’s the Ministry of Defence, by the way,” she rasped, pointing at the building.

He didn’t look at it. The side of her face was on fire from his stare. She couldn’t inhale either.

“We should go. You can’t let the other Pillocks down.”

He sighed, and finally moved. First a twist to survey the horizon for a last time, then a kick away
from the wall and towards the road.
They walked, unspeaking, along the embankment gardens, not side by side like they had
throughout so far, but with her just a tiny bit behind. She matched steps with him. Heavy,
melancholy steps.

Not one of the many scenarios that she had envisioned ended with strain and vulnerability. He was
a whisp and she was a shell.

She should have taken him to St James’s Park, and found a bench by the lake. They should have sat
close together and abused the music snob, laughed, teased, flirted exorbitantly. He should’ve had a
gleam in his eyes and a playful curl to his mouth. And she would have told him.

In a shaded corner, they cast muggle-repelling charms and disapparated.

Hermione appeared on top of her hillock. Draco appeared at the base. She thought he would wait
for her as she skipped down the slope, but he didn’t. So she slowed as she watched him get further
and further away, till her motion was downright sluggish. She was second guessing making an
appearance at all, till she remembered that it would be her last chance to spend time with Ginny till
most likely mid-summer.
When she rounded the Burrow and turned into the orchard, the first and only thing she saw was
Draco pulling off his jumper to reveal a tight black t-shirt. Dean was next to him holding out a
PILLOCKS shirt. As was Fiona, contributing nothing.

She then went on to notice the rest of her surroundings. Assorted chairs had been set along the
fence, as well as a table laden with multiple large glass dispensers, from one of which Harry had
just extracted two glasses of orange squash.

“Hi, Hermione,” he greeted as he approached her, “You took your time getting here.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, “I was out, in the muggle side of town. I’d gone to a record shop.”

“A record shop?”

“Yes.”

They began walking towards the spot where Ginny, Ron, et al were sitting.

“You know, Malfoy was late too,” Harry noted, “Arrived just moments before you, in fact.”

It really didn't take Hermione more than a second to come to a decision. “He was with me.”

“In a muggle record shop.”

“Yes.” They were just a few paces away from the group, so she asked, “How was your holiday?”
loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Brilliant!” Ginny exclaimed, beaming, even as she began jabbing her wand into Ron’s arm,
pushing him to vacate the chair next to her so that Hermione could occupy it. A metal headband
kept her short hair off her face, and small, sparkling diamonds dangled from her earlobes.

“Those are new,” Hermione said admiringly.

“A christmas present,” Ginny replied with a grin, which went on to turn syrupy when she accepted
a glass from Harry.

He perched on the arm of her chair, one hand casually moving up to cup the back of her neck.

“What’s the score?” Hermione asked.

The Jebends and the Lardarses were tussling high up in the air. Theo was cruising around as
indifferently as ever, while his teammates, Oliver, Justin, and a chap named Neil, were sporting
very angry faces. Their opponents – Angelina, Lee, Marius, and a woman whose name Hermione
didn’t know – sank in an easy goal. Bill, the referee, blew his whistle.

“Ninety–Forty to the Lardarses,” Seamus sniggered.

Hermione soon found out that there were fewer teams in play this time, with some modifications.
For one, the addition of Edith meant that the Ronalds had to get rid of one of their players in order
to make room for her, (because she absolutely had to be on Ron’s team.) The immediate candidate
had been Seamus, but he had refused pointblank to be on Draco’s team. Thus, Dean had
volunteered to become a Pillock.
Ginny had formed a new team for herself, and with Charlie, Demelza, and a substitute Puddlemere
player named Liam by her side, it seemed like she was leading the day’s favourite.

Hermione expressed that opinion and Ginny nodded eagerly.

“The whole tournament’s a laugh, isn’t it?” She tossed her hair. “As if any of them stand a chance
against us.”

“Surely there’s some chance,” Harry chuckled teasingly.

“No, Harry. We’re called the Certs for a reason.”

“The reason being, you chose that name.”

“I chose it for an obvious reason.”

All through that exchange, Harry’s fingers had been inconspicuously stroking the side of Ginny’s
neck. Ginny was leaning into his side. She reached out and squeezed his knee when she said for a
reason .
Affectionate touches that were innocent and unobtrusive, perhaps only so glaring to Hermione
because she was watching them like a hawk. There was comfort in those touches. Some
possessiveness, some intimacy. It made her heart ache to think of the sort of love that would
compel someone to reach out like that; a brush here, a press there, a secret graze, all driven by need
and conducted with ease.
She didn’t know if Draco was one for casual touches, though she had vague memories of his hand
curled around Pansy’s hip… of Mandy touching him, kissing his cheek… his head on her lap… her
whispering in his ear and him dragging her away…

Ugh. Ugh. She felt sickened beyond comprehension. A formidable blockade was set-up in front of
that avenue of thought.

A whistle sounded. The match ended and nine brooms descended.

There was a short break during which Bill rushed in to check on Fleur, followed closely by Theo
who had one glove on, one off, while his teammates made a beeline towards him. The victors
collected refreshments and fell into chairs. The Pillocks and the Clotpoles strapped on their gear
and picked up their brooms.
With Bill’s return, the second match commenced.

Everyone around her was supporting the Clotpoles, consisting of George, Alicia, and two people
whose names she didn’t care to remember. From her paltry understanding of the sport, Hermione
thought the two teams were well matched. Draco was a better chaser than nameless Clotpole
number one. Alicia was a better chaser than Dean. George was a better beater than nameless
Pillock. Tracey was a better keeper than nameless Clotpole number two. It was a very hectic match,
she supposed, things were happening. There were lots of noises erupting from the audience, (along
with the usual competitive raillery.) Goals were being scored, the bludger was messing things up.

She had slipped into an inert state of being. A puddle of flesh in a chair, mind whistling like air
moving through an empty vessel, eyes vaguely tracking the flyers. Well, fine, she was only really
tracking one flyer, but that was where inertia had led her. An hour was an unreasonably long time to
keep a game going. There was always the option of reading, but then she’d have to suffer a chorus
of Oh Hermione that would inevitably erupt if she dared to bring out a book.

Besides… he really was so agile on a broom, gliding from side to side, quaffle tucked tightly under
his arm. The glee every time he scored appeared to be undoing the dispiritedness that she had
unwittingly forced upon him.

Five minutes before time, the score was eighty-sixty to the Pillocks. Hermione’s attention was
drawn to a figure creeping around the burrow and towards the refreshment table.
Padma. What a relief. She shot out of her seat and went to join her.

Padma looked exhausted. Her eyes were dark and sunken, her hair and posture were limp.

“What’s the matter?” Hermione ventured cautiously, “Is Parvati–”

“She’s fine,” Padma answered, waving her concern away as she considered the dispensers. “She
knows how to come back after a bad episode. An extended session with Asher, meditation, writing
in her diary…” She picked up a mug forlornly and continued, “I’ve been at work since yesterday
afternoon. The potion is giving us trouble.”

Hermione followed her lead and collected a mug of frothy hot chocolate. “What’s going wrong?”
she asked.
“The Dragon Pox Cure and beta blockers don’t mix!” Padma wailed, “After everything, they just
don’t bloody mix.” She chugged her hot chocolate like it was beer. She looked insane and rattled
as she wiped her mouth against her sleeve and continued: “It’s fine for children and young people.
We can just prescribe oral nonselective blockers after they’re through with their DPC doses and
they’ll be fine. But with older patients, heart issues and organ failure start so quickly – Oh, hi,
love.”

The Pillocks (and Fiona) trudged towards the table, Tracey right into Padma’s arms.

“Well played,” Hermione said to the team in general while looking at one player in particular.

Padma turned back to Hermione. “We did an ECG on over fifty different patients over seventy – all
showed huge ST segment elevation, which means they’re moments away from a massive heart
attack. They need intravenous beta blockers and DPC simultaneously.”

“My grandfather’s heart kicked off because of Dragon Pox,” Draco interjected, coming to stand
next to Hermione with a glass of ginger ale.

“What happens when the two mix?” Hermione asked.

“Beta blockers cause fatigue and slow the system, in the same way that the Sopophorous bean's
juice does. DPC contains wormwood, asphodel root, sloth brain mucus. With the two together, we
end up with something very close to–”

“The Draught of Living Death,” Hermione finished.

“And for patients so old and sickly, it’s like–”

“The draught of actual death,” Draco quipped.

Padma nodded gloomily.

“What if you administer the antidote as well?” Hermione asked.

“It turns into a grainy sludge in the patient's veins.”

“What’s wrong with them chugging down the lot?” Draco asked.

“Doesn’t work fast enough.”

Draco said something else and Padma replied. The exchange carried on in the background, but
Hermione was stuck on a page with a diagram of a horse and an aloe vera plant…

“Hoof balms,” she said brightly, ignoring their confused looks and sounds, “Use sloth brain mucus,
but it was hard to come by in the Khorasan province back in the middle ages. The horse riders there
used aloe gel instead, combined with dried termites – I think that brought down the alkalinity. It
should have the same soothing, cooling properties without being sophorus.”

“They use mugwort instead of wormwood… somewhere, don’t they?” Draco added.

Hermione nodded “Macao. Oh, and some old Irish remedies used stewed and diluted tansy stalks.”
“How do you know all this?” Padma demanded.

“Draco has this amazing book!” Hermione answered excitedly, “Potions from around the world –
thousands of variations and varieties in recipes and ingredients.”

“That’s – that’s!” Padma gasped, “You have no idea how much that could help us! Could I
maybe…?”

“Draco will be happy to lend it to you!”

“Brilliant. Excellent. Merlin, I need to submit a request for tansy and mugwort from the Mungo’s
dispensary… they take at least thirty-six hours to process…”

She looked pleadingly at Tracey, who laughed and kissed her cheek.

“Go.”

Padma, upon discovering that she lacked the patience to go back around the house, clambered over
the fence to disapparate.

“If you’ve helped solve her problem, I’ll buy you both drinks for the rest of the year!” cheered
Tracey and shuffled towards the table.

Hermione turned to grin at Draco.

But he was scowling.

“Where do you get off lending my book to people?”

She baulked. “You didn’t want to?”

“Now you’re asking?”

“I couldn’t imagine you’d refuse!”

She began walking towards the chairs. His angry steps followed.

“So you’re just going to double down on being presumptuous?”

“Did you seriously want to say no?!”

They stopped. Glared at each other.

“That’s not the point,” he snapped.

She wasn’t completely sure why she couldn’t bring herself to admit that she’d got carried away in
her enthusiasm and jumped the gun. It could’ve been the way he was glaring at her. It made her
want to push and see how much she could get away with. She wanted him to allow her a misstep
for once.
Also, Theo had once lent him her book without asking.
Also, she wanted to rile him up.

“The point should be that I don’t believe you to be stupid or callous enough to refuse.”

“You are so murderously bumptious.”

“I truly thought you would have leapt at the opportunity to contribute to the good cause of muggle-
magical synthesis,” she said full-on bumptiously and began walking again, “Just imagine, when
Padma’s giving interviews about her great accomplishment, she’ll say, I got a breakthrough thanks
to Draco Malfoy’s book. I couldn’t have done it without Draco Malfoy and his book.”

“I thought only Hermione Granger’s books were allowed to save the world.”

They stopped again. He was looking like he didn’t know what was happening or what he was
saying.

“Well, my books saved you first, which is why your book went on to…”

Oh, now he was glaring again.

“And,” she carried on, “I’m the one who actually lent her your book. So it does all lead back to
me.”

His mouth opened and closed in disbelief.

She grinned and began walking again. He charged after her.

“You are such an uppity, insolent, audacious–”

“Am I going to have to lend you a dictionary now? You have your adjectives mixed up. The ones
you're looking for are clever, admirable, astute– ”

“Deluded, conceited, pompous–”

“Now those are the perfect adjectives for you.”

“I believe the perfect adjectives for me are eye-catching, striking, distinct–”

“Ugh, you’re like an old man who’s led a very boring life.”

They stopped.

Hermione stuck out her chin. Draco frowned in confusion.

“You know. An old man sitting in his stupid, stuffy, high-backed armchair, going on and on about
that one, incredible, defining moment in his otherwise dull life. He’s made it his entire personality
but you can’t tell him to shut up, because he’s such a sorry creature.”

He looked at her for a long moment, biting a corner of his lip. She would’ve been able to start
walking again, had he not done that. Fiona appeared behind his shoulder.

“Just to clarify,” he drawled, “my incredible, life-defining moment was the time you wittered on
about how handsome you think I am?”

She considered, fleetingly, to object to his choice of words; but what was the point?

“Clearly!” she said, and quickly began walking again.

Then she heard it: A chuckle. Resigned and understated, snug between the sound of his boots
following behind her.

She was strategic about choosing her chair, settling on the second one. If he sat on her right, he
would be sitting next to only her. If he sat on her left, he’d be between her and Fiona. If he skipped
a chair and put Fiona between them, she would burst into tears. She had a sip of hot chocolate
while she waited for him to make his choice.

He sat on her left. Bugger. Fiona flittered over to his other side.

For a while they sat quietly, looking up at the Certs decimating the Ronalds. It didn’t matter how
hard Harry played, chasing was not his forte. Ginny was unstoppable, Charlie was very good, and
the rest were… there.

“George may as well declare the winner and call it a day,” Hermione mused.

Draco grunted in grudging agreement. The downturn of his mouth kept getting more and more
pronounced.

“You’re going to throw the most god awful wobbler when you lose, aren’t you?”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re a very sore loser.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Do you like losing?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“And here I thought everything was about you.”

“There’s nothing I can do if you choose to make everything about me.”

Tracey walked around them to sit on Fiona’s other side. Ginny did something terrifyingly
spectacular midair.

“That was a Sabryn Steal,” Draco yawped.

“She did a Dionysus Dive, too, when my dad asked.” Hermione added, “And after that, she and
Charlie tethered a broom between theirs and took him on a few laps around the orchard.”

“Took… your father?”

She wanted to build a home in his laugh.

“He said it was the best thing he’d ever done.”

A whistle advertised another goal. The score was hundred–twenty. Ron looked as demoralised as he
had in fifth year, when Draco had written that horrid song about him. She squinted at his profile,
wondering if he was remembering the same thing.

“Go ahead.”

“Huh?”

“Say what you have to, Granger. I can sense your uncharitable thoughts.”

“I don’t have uncharitable thoughts… ever, about anyone.” (A scoff.) “Compassionate thoughts
only,” she affirmed. (An emphatic scoff.) “And kind words,” she concluded.

“You can’t pull that line with me, of all people,” he pronounced.

“Why not you, of all people ?”

“Because I have both witnessed and been a victim of the poison that comes out of that rosebud
mouth.”

He then looked at her mouth. Thoroughly, from corner to corner. Her retort was – poof! – gone.

As he flicked his hair and refocused on the match with a self-satisfied smirk and her heart set off at
a familiar gallop, she recognised that moment to be perfect and exactly what she had desired.
She could’ve asked, you know what else my mouth can do, to stun and stump him right back. She
could’ve shown him what else it could do. She could’ve suddenly become serious and said, I’m
crazy about you. When I’m with you, the world stops. She could’ve run her fingers up his arm and
into his hair.

But Fiona and Tracey were right there, having a conversation of their own. There were nine people
above them and well over a dozen around them. Theo had emerged from the house and was making
strides towards the empty seat to her right.

“Hey,” he grouched, sitting low with his arms crossed, “I’ve just been shouted at.”
“What did you expect?” Draco responded coldly, “Why do you keep agreeing to play?”

“Why does everybody keep asking me to play?” He huffed. “They shouted at me in front of Fleur.”

“And that makes it worse?” Hermione guessed.

“Obviously.”

When the tragically one sided match ended, and Dean and the nameless Pillock came by to collect
their team, Draco said, “Lets lose this one.”

“On purpose?!” The nameless Pillock was mystified.

“Yeah.” Draco stood up and pulled gloves out of his pocket, “I’d rather lose by ten points than a
hundred.”

Dean looked over his shoulder at Ginny and winced. “I’m on board.”

And lose they did, somehow by exactly ten points. The hour it took to arrive at that end was
tortuous. Theo fell asleep, Fiona shared Hermione’s unwillingness to make polite small talk, and it
gave her all the time in the world to feel bereft.

At half-time, Seamus dropped onto Draco’s chair, handing an envelope to Hermione, Fiona, and
placing one on Theo’s lap.

“My birthday’s on Friday the seventh,” he announced happily, “We’re going to a muggle nightclub.
You both will come, yeah?”

“Um, sure,” said Hermione.

“Er, okay,” said Fiona.

Seamus went on to slather Fiona with praise and come-ons, making rubbish of Draco’s claim about
his inability to hold a grudge. Hermione remembered that she had a mug of unfinished hot
chocolate in her hand, looking down to find an unappetising film formed over the top. She vanished
the whole thing away.

A loud whistle. Game over. Theo jumped.

“S’it dun?”

“Yes.”

“Thank fuck. Time to eat?”

“No, there’s one more–”

“Mmmrghh!”
He went back to sleep.

The day’s brightness began to wane and preparation for the Lardarses versus the Certs began.
Draco’s shadow fell across her lap, like a sundial marking another hour in which he’d remain at the
epicentre of her thoughts.

He was looking stone-faced at Seamus.

“Invite for my birthday,” Seamus said smarmily, holding out an envelope, “It’s in muggle London;
will you be able to lower yourself enough to show up?”

“I’ll manage,” Draco sneered.

“Fiona says she’ll come,” Seamus went on, “Fiona says she’s excited about it.”

Draco, quite suddenly, laughed. Then he left for the refreshment table.

Though the implication of that exchange was very, very obvious, Hermione couldn’t. Just couldn’t.
Cope.

Life is very long

Between the snorer

And the sweet-talker
Between the right place, wrong moment
And the wrong place, right moment

Fell Hermione.

And she landed next to Harry again.

For the next hour, back in an inert state of being, she abstractedly watched Ginny be excellent. The
Certs’ eventual sweeping victory resulted in George vowing to never let her participate in his
tournaments again.

Padma returned. Fiona, the extras, and the nameless ones left. Mr and Mrs Weasley, Fleur, and
Percy emerged from the house. The group settled for dinner as usual in the back garden, under
Hermione’s shield charm and plenty of floating candles.

She could never remember a time in which she hadn’t stepped into a new year feeling unburdened.
The pleasure she felt, sitting with Harry, Ron, and Ginny; with Theo, George, Dean, and Padma
close by, was a burden. She missed her parents. She remembered Fred, Lupin, and Tonks. She was
completely unprepared for the week ahead.
She was small, alone in a crowd, the helpless captive of the strongest of all warriors: Time and
Patience.
 When the food was put away, Theo and George cleared the space for another fireworks display.
With everyone distracted, Hermione sidled up to Draco, who was off to the side, to give him his
bag of CDs.

“Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

He dipped a hand into the inner pocket of his coat and drew out A Christmas Carol.

“Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

What would be waiting for her behind the cover?

“I’m not Scrooge-like,” he said tartly.

“You can be.”

“You can be.”

“I know,” she smiled.

Rainbow coloured Pygmy Puffs appeared in the sky, bouncing, spinning, and making psychedelic
patterns. The design had to have been conceived under the influence of some hallucinogen. Wavy
lines, zig-zag lines, wheels and spirals.

Time and Patience, on an evening following such a day, had pinned her arms and grabbed her neck;
but also laid gentle hands on each of her cheeks.

“Does this spectacle impress you, Draco?”

“I am not simple or predictable.”

Oh, if only he was.

Chapter End Notes

1. “There is no darkness but ignorance.”: Act IV, Scene 2; Twelfth Night, by William
Shakespeare
2. “I'm on the hunt, I'm after you”: Hungry like the Wolf, by Duran Duran
3. “For they were young…”: The River's Tale, by Rudyard Kipling
4. “The fountains mingle with the river…” and “And the sunlight clasps the earth…”: Love's
Philosophy by P. B. Shelley
5. “Life is very long….” Reference to The Hollow Men, by T. S. Eliot
6. Paraphrased: “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience,” from War
and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

Additional notes:

1. Young Nick Rhodes is one of my absolute favourite Draco fancasts. I mean, look at him
here

2. I'm sorry Sporty Spice.

3. I have drawn a lot of atmospheric inspiration for his chapter from Before Sunrise.

ARTWORK:
'Then she heard it: A chuckle. Resigned and understated, snug between the sound of his boots
following behind her' by Bookloverdream
 Eighty-Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Their elevenses, an unintended consequence of Hermione arriving too early for the meeting with
the first set of house-elves, was a fraught affair. She was shoving shortbread into her mouth to keep
from chewing the skin off her lip, while Ben and Bickie were side-eyeing her like Harry and Ron
used to when the topic of homework, exams, or, well, house-elves came up.

Bickie, with good intentions certainly, had filled the room with lavender and lemongrass. Yet their
famed soothing properties were not working on Hermione at all. For some reason, the combined
scents was agitating her even more. A parchment and her Quick-Quotes quill hovered beside her,
ready to take the minutes.

So het up was she that, when two loud pops of apparition sounded, she let out a shriek and spilt
tepid tea all over her lap. Ben made a noise of alarm, Bickie let out a litany of Oh no, oh no, and the
two elves that had just appeared fell into such a devastated spiral of shame and horror that it took
Hermione five whole minutes to calm them down.

“See!” she cried, gesturing to her lap, “It’s all gone! Please stop crying, it was my fault!”

The way their heads were lowered made her chest ache.

“Please sit.” She conjured two (high back, leather, sigh,) armchairs."

Their names were Vipsy and Sipkey; young, siblings, and both wearing garments fashioned out of
the same bath towel.

Hermione served up her most winsome and friendly smile. She crossed her ankles and clasped her
hands, while doing her best to explain their proposed contract as the Quick-Quotes quill did its
thing. The whole set up made her feel sickeningly like Rita.

Within the first few minutes she knew her words weren’t being well received. Sipkey was staring at
his hands while Vipsy was shooting looks of betrayal at Bickie.

When she mentioned fixed working hours and holidays, they both looked bored.

“Our Mistress needs to eat everyday,” Vipsy droned.

“Mistress will get lonely if Vipsy and Sipkey go on holiday,” Sipkey added.

When she mentioned payment, Vipsy scoffed, (“House-Elves don’t need money,”) and Sipkey
looked up curiously.

That made her focus her attention on him when she brought up Elf rights and protection against
punishment.
“Mistress never hurts us!”

“Sipkey is a good elf. Cleans well and doesn’t speak ill of his Mistress.”

Everything went to hell when she brought up the plan for expeditious freedom. It was instinctive;
like a reflex reaction to the word. There was no chance of getting them to calm, let alone engage.

Vipsy turned downright splenetic. “Bickie said Hermione Granger wants to talk to elves about
working better. Bickie said nothing about clothes! No clothes! Never clothes!”

There was no progress beyond that. Bickie was forced to apparate away with them in tow, not
before they were able to serve Hermione a dose of pure spite.

They hadn’t even got to the questionnaire.

Ben sighed heavily. “Hermione, I think we need to hold off mentioning clothes and freedom.”

“But that’s the whole point!” she yelled. Ben baulked and she pressed her nails into her palms,
lowering her volume. “Did you see the way they reacted? Like they’ve been programmed to panic
at the mention of clothes! They need to be freed!”

“I am in complete agreement, you know that. But, my dear, I’ve been dealing with them for years
now. They’re much too traumatised to handle such extreme ideas all at once. Please, don’t bring up
clothes just yet.”

Hermione wilted.

“I used to hide clothes around the Gryffindor common room, for them to find,” she admitted
glumly, “No wonder they hated me.”

“In my early days, I used to get angry at Elves that would show up sobbing when their truly sick,
abusive masters freed them. I thought it was pathetic.”

“We need to do better… so much better…”

“That we do.”

Hermione trembled in the lift, all the way back to Level Two.

*
She dropped scrolls and folders in a heap, on a desk that had already been in a disarray. She wasn’t
even capable of organising her thoughts at that point. Draco’s note from A Christmas Carol lay next
to a tipped over desk-tidy and the consequent scattering of pens and quills. It was the stupidest note
she had received so far, outdoing even scribbly cats and three inches.

It read, There never was such a goose.

It failed to light a spark of humour like it had the evening before. Next to the note, half-hidden by a
book, were photographs from Christmas. The one with everyone was on top. Under it was the one
with, as mum put it, the youngsters – an addition to her ongoing series titled, Girl on a sofa with the
one she pines for, OR, Pictures of Futility.
A bit of a mouthful, but it had a fittingly Dadaist flair.

She rolled her shoulders and her neck. She stooped over what the Quick-Quotes quill had inscribed,
wondering what she was supposed to do with it. A Testament of Futility.

Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.

Really, what was she to do? She hadn’t a clue. So she stooped further, till her chin was resting on
the desk and did nothing. She wanted a beer, but did not want to fetch it. Eating fried rice in bed
was the only other thing that sounded appealing, but she felt guilty for even thinking about it.

A roar from beyond the door made her sit up so suddenly that her head swam. Even knowing it
could only be Theo caused her spirit to wilt. She didn’t have the stamina for company.

When it was Draco who walked into her study, she suffered another headrush.

“Um?”

His expression turned sardonic as he waited for her to come out with something a bit more
eloquent.

“What brings you here?” she asked.

“I need something to read,” he replied, pacing up to the corner of her desk and placing a finger on
the edge.

She stood up, feeling completely unmoored.

“What are you in the mood for?”

“As if you haven’t already decided for me.”

She did actually have a book in mind. One that she had already flipped through to confirm a
quotation, (You have no business to be incorrigible). There was already a post-it inside, and it was
out of its usual place on her shelf and laid across the top of a row of books.

She collected it and began walking to the other side of the desk.

“Another one by Dickens, but vastly different from The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol.
It’s one of my absolute favourites; about the French Revolution. You must’ve read about that in
History of the World . Oh, and don’t look–”

Her words died. Her train of thought crashed. For he didn’t stretch out his hand to reach for the
book. He stepped right into her personal space and took hold of it, so staggeringly close that he was
looming over her, peering down with gleaming eyes.

“Don’t look inside till I’m back home?” he completed smoothly.

She wheezed something that sounded like yes, stepping back till her bum hit the desk. He moved
right with her. They were both still holding the book.

Hermione let go as though scalded and gripped the edge of the desk by her hips. With each
laboured breath, his cologne overwhelmed her senses. He stayed where he was, frighteningly
serene, studying the cover of A Tale of Two Cities with one lock of his fringe falling down the
perfect centre of his forehead. Then he turned the book over and began reading the back.

He was a shining pharos in a murky muddle.

“Perfect – close to perfect – it’s–”

His eyes lifted; the thin, dark limbal rings encircling his irises were so precise. They trailed down
along a lock of hair by the side of her face and landed on her mouth, her chin, and followed the line
of her jaw to her neck.

“What’s close to perfect?” he murmured dulcetly.

“The book.”

“I see.”

But what he was actually seeing were the abundant, frizzy strands that had slipped out of her bun
and were falling around her shoulder. She could count his every eyelash, every hair that constituted
the faint, sparse stubble on his chin.

Then he leaned in. Hermione sucked in a loud and quivering gasp as her entire body seized. The
vee of his open collar danced in front of her, and all she had to do was sway forward to taste his
skin, to feel, against her lips, the even scantier stubble on his neck. A shaky exhale rushed out of
her, fluttering against his throat.

He froze. She was already frozen.

Four rapid beats of her racing heart.

When he pulled back, the two photographs were in his hand. His throat rippled over a swallow and
it directed her upwards. His gaze was lethally sharp. There was pink across his cheekbones. He
wasn’t looking at the photographs.

She felt a scalding flare of desire and a simultaneous avalanche of petrifying fear. And it was the
fear that forced its way to the forefront and guided her.

“Nice, aren’t they?” she blurted.

“Splendid,” he replied. Still he did not look at them.

“I… really… I have to…” she could’ve been speaking in parseltongue.

“Have to what?”

How he managed to infuse his tone with silkiness while his voice was especially low and gravelly,
she’d never know.

What had he asked?

His mouth quirked up. She traced the tiny corner brackets with her eyes, wanting instead to do so
with...

“What do you have to do?”

“Work. I have to get… get… back to work.”

“Have to?” he asked.

Each syllable was drawn out, streaking down the meagre space between them. Trails of temptation
that urged her to say no.

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

His teeth flashed from behind curved lips. It was time to look elsewhere.
She met his eyes just as he tilted his head, a little contemplatively, a little playfully.

“Immediately?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Right at this moment?”

At this murky, muddled, frazzled, futile, imperfect moment?

"Yes.”

“All right then.”

He took a step back, but barely. It was half a step. One-third of a step.

“How did it go with the elves?”

“Not well. I didn’t get through to them. I don’t know how to get them to talk to me. Of course, they
have no reason to trust me, but even Bickie’s presence didn’t help. It was just… an utter failure.”

“Do you really need me to remind you that you can’t expect a miracle in the very first meeting?”
He was still too close for her to be able to muster any disdain.

“I do not,” she told him blankly

“Do you need me to tell you that the second meeting is also probably going to be shit?”

He held out the photographs. She pried her fingers off the desk and took them.

“I don’t need you to tell me anything.”

(What a lie.)

“Fair enough,” he smirked.

His next step back was a substantial one. From that, he graduated into a fluid walk towards the
door.

“Have a frightfully productive evening,” he called on his way out.

Shortly after, she heard the floo again.

She slumped, bent due to the immense weight in her chest. It was the heavy lead of fear, the
sandbags of regret, and the debris of consternation, all bundled together to form a boulder that she
pushed up an endless slope.

An exercise of Futility.

Tobbin was indentured to the Fawley family. Maffle and Deenie had been enslaved by the Ministry.
Hermione, Ben, and Bickie had prepared a script packed with caution, and had rehearsed their
parts.

Hermione began with payment, all because Sipkey’s look of mild curiosity had been the only
positive feedback from their last attempt. However, with this lot, it was not the way to go. Maffle
and Deenie went berserk.

“Is Hermione Granger trying to get us in trouble with the Ministry?!”

“When wicked Umbridge questioned us, we told her! House-Elves are loyal! House-Elves love
their Masters! Love the Ministry! No cruciatus! Loyal!”

“I would never!” Hermione exclaimed with horror, “I want to help you!”

“We are doing our work! Not lazy, not stealing!”

It went on in that manner till Bickie intervened with surprising fierceness, telling them that they
were not being interrogated. She explained her own situation, the terms of her employment, while
the other three glared at her like she was spouting anathemas.

Any hope of gaining their trust and ear was lost when Hermione brought up punitive action for
House-Elf abuse.

“Master Sullivan punished because of Tobbin?!”

“Not because of you,” Hermione told him gently, “Because of his own actions.”

“Master doesn’t punish Tobbin. He lets Tobbin decide his own punishment.”

“He still expects you to inflict grievous injury upon yourself, for no justifiable reason. You don’t
think that’s fair, do you?”

“Hurts,” he said in a tiny, scared voice. “Punishment hurts.”

“Don’t you think Sullivan ought to face consequences for making you hurt yourself?”

Tobbin’s eyes welled up. He began, “Master Sullivan is —” ...and threw himself at a side table
holding a multitude of decorative vases.

Another absolute horrorshow. Bickie, once again, was forced to bodily remove an elf from the
room. The other two just looked angry and suspicious as they saw themselves out.

Hermione fought against an insistent onslaught of tears.

“What have we done to them?” she spoke in a broken whisper.

Ben didn’t respond. His small green eyes were sad, and wouldn’t meet hers.

She returned to her office feeling cracked and empty, like the vases that had littered Ben’s office
floor; vases that had been repaired with one simple charm.

Kathy and Takumi were out, tending to the landlord nonsense. It gave her the space she needed to
manage her despair, as well as the peace to sit with the contract and change… everything?

She wound up in a fugue. A melted interlude where hours flew by and nothing happened. Hullo
again, Spectre of Time.

Her colleagues returned just before it was time to go home. Happy that the case had been wrapped
up, they had a humorous tale to tell. Hermione’s smile was an extension of a crack, jagged across
her face.

They walked out together, and Kathy slipped her arm through Hermione’s.
“Dinner, yes?” she asked, “I’m craving Italian again.”

“Granger!” came a call from Barros’ office.

Kathy’s eyes widened and arm slipped away. “Oh, er, we’ll wait…”

“No, don’t,” Hermione muttered, “This will probably take a while.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded assuredly and stepped into the boss’ hallowed chamber. Barros, in terracotta tweed
robes, pointed at a chair in greeting.

“Out with it,” she clipped, “What progress have you made?”

Hermione swallowed a sudden surge of bile. “We’ve met five elves so far. It’s too soon to say.”

“Ah.” Barros smiled thinly. “Going exactly as expected, I see.”

You bitch.

“The point of speaking to House-Elves was to get an idea of how to proceed in a way that will best
serve their needs and interests. Which is what’s happening.”

“Oh, really? What have you deduced then?”

“Freeing them is not as pressing as improving their conditions and making them feel supported and
secure. There needs to be a system in place that helps undo their conditioning, especially with
regards to punishment. Furthermore–”

“What about payment?”

Hermione sighed out her anger.

“We’re still working that out. The elves haven’t expressed any interest in gold. And we haven’t
forgotten that we most likely won't be able to push anything past the Wizengamot if we bring that
issue up.”

“No progress there as well.”

“I would like to visit Hogwarts,” Hermione gritted out.

“When?”

“On Thursday, if you’ll allow it. I’ll send a formal request for a meeting to Headmistress
McGonagall.”

“I’ll allow it,” Barros said loftily, “No more than an hour. I expect you to be in my office in the
afternoon. Clementia Shelbey has finally been granted a hearing, and she will be here at half past
one.”

“Yes, Madam Barros.”

“Familiarise yourself with her case.”

“I will.”

“And take these,” she pointed at a giant tower of scrolls and folders at the corner of her desk, “File
them away. They pertain to the Willow House dispute and the Millward Case. Take out all the older
documents related to Shelbey, while you’re at it.”

Hermione stared at the tower. “Tomorrow?”

“Now, Granger.”

Barros picked up her handbag and left.

So there Hermione was, back in her nanoscopic office, stuck with a surfeit of parchment. Every
action, be it sorting or pulling out drawers, was an ode to her temper. She arranged all of Shelbey’s
documents across their three desks and sent her request for McGonagall to the internal post office
via memo; though they would only get to it the next morning. It took forty minutes.

She hauled herself out into the corridor, where the lamps had been dimmed.

A man stepped out of the admin office, sharing her lassitude. He yawned loudly as they both
moved towards the lifts. Once they had stepped in, Hermione leant against one wall and the man
against the opposite. On the very next floor, they picked up Justin. Another face displaying fatigue.
He nodded in reaction to Hermione's semi-wave. He had three giant scrolls tucked under his arm,
which failed to generate any interest in finding out why he was working so late. He didn’t ask her
either. The lift rattled on.

On level five, Draco, Fiona, and Arnold stepped in. Hermione mustered another semi-wave and
lowered her eyes to stare at her feet. Now she was inclined to ask questions, but the tired quietude
of the lift was impenetrable. She kept looking down while the lift gave a sudden, violent shake.
Draco’s boots entered her field of vision. They stayed there while the lift stopped and while she
waited for everyone else to step out first. They accompanied her out the lift.

Shuffling steps took the mass past the golden gates. In the atrium, Hermione slowed her steps, and
Draco adjusted to match.

“What kept you today?” she asked, her voice tuneless and low.

“Turkish emissaries,” he responded, his voice airy and empty, “They’re furious because we’ve
agreed to meet with the Emirates regarding limited legalisation of magic carpets, but have refused
them for years. Took hours to calm them down. Shacklebolt’s taking them out for dinner now.”

“It does seem unfair.”

“It is,” Draco shrugged indifferently.

“Why have they agreed to one and not the other?”

“Guess.”
“Money.”

“Bravo. What kept you?”

“Filing.”

A series of floos went off as the man from admin, Justin, and Arnold left. Fiona waited with a fist
full of powder in front of a fireplace.

“Coming, Draco?” she asked as they neared.

“Right behind you,” he nodded.

There was the straw that broke Hermione’s back. She stifled a grimace as she started off towards a
fireplace for herself.

“We’re having drinks,” Draco said, “All of us; Begbie, Masters, and that twerp Jessie will be there
too.”

Hermione flashed him a forced smile over her shoulder. “Have fun.”

“You’re welcome to join us.”

She stopped, turned fully, and spat out an empty laugh. “I’m not going to wrangle my way into your
evening again.”

“I’m asking you to come along,” he said irritably.

She just shook her head and made to turn away. But he stopped her again.

“Are you going for Finnigan’s… thing… on Friday?”

“Yes,” she sighed, tired just thinking about it.

“Of course. Can’t disappoint him, can you?”

She scowled. “That insinuation wasn’t funny the first time you made it, and hasn’t been funny
since.”

She managed three more steps before he called out once more.

“Any luck with the elves today?”

Hermione closed her eyes. It was really just a slow blink, but it was enough to envision the
alternate universe in which she could barrel into his chest with a sob, and he would take her home
and put her to bed, curl around her, and ask her that question again.

“No,” she said hoarsely, “Worse than yesterday. They accused us of trying to entrap them. There
were displays of distress, attempts at self-punishment. One poor elf got his head stuck in a vase and
– it’s not funny! ”
“Ahem. Right.” He thinned his lips ineffectually.

Being laughed at was definitely the last straw, especially over this. She turned away with finality.

He piped up with something yet again: “Have you considered–”

“Don’t keep your friends waiting,” she barked, roughly grabbing at floo powder. She left a trail on
the ground.

“Granger–”

“Bye, Draco.”

She curled up in bed, alone but for Stella sleeping on the nightstand. The day’s minutes hovered
before her and she stared at them till they looked like they’d been written in an alien script that she
had no hopes of deciphering.

After a morning spent sitting like Stańczyk in Draco’s armchair, Hermione’s journey down the
atrium was an enervated, foot-dragging shamble. She was trying to magnetise her optimism, hoping
to attract more of the stuff from the air around her. Unfortunately, there was generally not a whole
lot of it to be found in government establishments.

Encountering far too many people, (Draco, Perkins, Mr Weasley, and Percy,) at the golden gates
was not the shot in the arm she was seeking. She smiled at everyone who didn’t laugh in the face of
her failures and did her best to situate herself far away from that sort in the lift. But that sort was
also the type to position himself right next to her in spite of her efforts.

And in spite of her indignation, in spite of her spite, she obviously wasn’t unhappy to have him
near.

The last one to enter their lift was a man with a crate that was wrapped up in chains and emitting
high pitched shrieks.

“Cursed bludgers,” he explained when Mr Weasley asked. He was thankfully also the first to get off
the lift.
Just as level five was approaching, she sensed Draco stiffen. She turned to him, he squared his
shoulders and spoke in a voice that was stilted and clumsy; like he had borrowed it from someone
else.

“I hope it goes better today. With the elves, I mean.”

“Thanks.”

She wobbled as the lift stopped. Draco nodded briskly and disembarked.

Takumi was already in, perusing the files she had left on his desk.

“I see you have taken it upon yourself to distribute tasks for the upcoming case?” he remarked with
a wry smile.

“Yes, I – Oh.” She put her things down and squirmed. “Is there a problem with–”

“No, not at all,” he said with a laugh. “I’m just glad Ms Shelbey is finally getting her day in court.”

It was good, certainly, that they continued to reap the benefits of all the good press Madam Barros:
Champion of women was getting. With Kathy’s arrival, they spent a few hours sorting through the
details of the case. A one-line summation of it would be, the berks at Nimbus Racing Broom
Company fired a single mother for tending to her sick child .

A little while later she was pushing all that information out of the forefront of her mind, to make
room for Minny and Goble.

They tried yet another approach. Hermione kept her introduction brief, in which she did not
mention clothes, and said protect elves, instead of punish owners. She then encouraged Bickie to
talk about her experiences as a paid employee.
All that, for absolutely nothing. Minny and Goble sat with their arms crossed, eyes averted, and
spoke not a word. Hermione honestly suspected they had plugged their ears.

When everyone fell silent, they said, as one, “Is it done?”

“I… suppose? We’d like to ask you a few questions now, if that’s alright?”

“No.”

They disapparated.

Neither Ben nor Bickie had any words to offer. Hermione pinched her lips between her teeth,
hopped to her feet to make a hasty exit.

Yet, even that didn’t go as planned. There was a loud sound and Sipkey materialised into the room.
His ears were flattened.
“Sipkey…” he squeaked, “Sipkey has something to say.”

His stricken gaze was fixed on Bickie. Hermione held her breath.

“But Sipkey doesn’t want to betray his friends.”

“We are Sipkey’s friends,” Bickie insisted.

It took a dozen more such assurances before Sipkey, bouncing agitatedly, spoke.

“The House-Elves believe that Bickie is trying to bring ruin to them. They think you want us to
speak against our masters so that we will be punished and given clothes.”

Keeping herself from objecting was taxing.

“We want to help House-Elves!” Bickie cried, “We want House-Elves to live without fear. With
comfort and dignity, as free Elves. Like Dobby!”

“They say they will not enter this office ever again. Boe and Polly will not come tomorrow.”

Well, that was that. They'd been stymied.

“Where does Bickie go on holiday?” Sipkey asked, blinking earnestly up at her.

“Bickie has gone to many places,” she replied slowly, “Bickie has visited parks, forests, gardens,
and mountains…”

“Mountains.” Sipkey repeated wistfully, “And what does Bickie buy with her galleons?”

“Anything.”

“Honeydukes chocolates?”

“Yes. And biscuits and hats.”

The two elves nodded at each other and something was shared.

“Sipkey must go before Vipsy notices.”

He left and Ben rubbed his hands together.

“Right then, Bickie. What are we waiting for? Let's dish out the food, shall we? Why are you
standing, Hermione? Don’t tell me you mean to leave without eating?!

She stayed. She ate. She left. She brought Clementia Shelbey back into the forefront of her mind.
 *

A summoning conveyed via galleon had her stepping into her flat just to divest herself of her work
stuff and robes before hopping back into the fireplace.

In the large sitting room, Draco was bent over the bureau plat, focused on a parchment with a quill
flying across it at an admirable pace. Headphones covered his ears, while the player and a small
pile of CDs sat on the desk.

She wanted to go to him, wanted him, so badly. She was so, so tired.

The motion of her limping further into the room startled him. His face snapped in her direction,
first in a deep frown, which gradually smoothened as he took off the headphones.

[Three elemental metals have magnetic properties: Iron, nickel, and raw cobalt. Draco’s eyes,
depending on the light, could be described as any one of those. Draco’s eyes, irrespective of the
light, were always magnetic. They also had the ability to make one susceptible to overwhelming,
novelettish sentimentality.]

Before either of them could say anything, Theo charged into the room, took hold of her, and
dragged her out and down the hall to show her how he had put together and enhanced the race-track
set that she had got him.
Enhanced meant that he had expanded the simple straight track and single loop into an all-out roller
coaster that filled his entire bedroom. There were fifteen different loops, twists and turns. The track
went over every bit of furniture, all over the floor and ceiling. There were obstacles, breaks,
tunnels, and he’d even incorporated animated creature figurines.

Additionally, on his bed, wearing one of his polo shirts and no trousers, was Verity. She was rolling
a spliff and spilling stuff all over the duvet.

“Hello,” Hermione broached.

“’lo,” Verity replied.

“Do you want to see it in action?” Theo asked excitedly.

“Why of course!” Hermione did her best to sound enthused.

“Procedo!” He aimed at a black toy car with flame decals.

It shot off, up and down the track, dodging beasts, through a ring of fire breathed by a miniature
Peruvian Vipertooth, flying over a cauldron of dissolving solution, winding around the bed where
Verity continued rolling, unperturbed, till it finally zoomed off the edge of a desk and into Theo’s
waiting hand.

“Bravo,” Hermione said. Her tone was identical to Draco’s.

But Theo didn’t notice. He was zestful. “It was so much fun putting this together! I wanted to cover
the entire flat, but Draco wouldn’t let me.”

“The gall of him, trammelling your creativity like that.”

“I know! But now I’m thinking of making a lifes-sized one! Can you imagine? Maybe with
multiple tracks so it can be a race! And what if I–”

On any other day, Hermione would have told him about roller-coasters and go karting; maybe even
suggested a trip to Alton Towers. She nodded along, till Verity’s announcement of, “All right, it’s
done,” stemmed Theo’s tirade.

“Want to partake?” he asked Hermione.

She shook her head. “I have a lot to get done for tomorrow.”

They all left his room, splitting up in the hallway as two headed out towards the terrace and one
returned to the sitting room.

Draco had moved from behind the bureau plat and was now in an armchair, arranging a tea set on
the table. He poured water from his wand into a large glass teapot and, while staying intent on that
task, asked, “Have you ever had Chinese blooming tea?”

“No.”

“Would you like to?”

Hermione sat opposite him, on the sofa, in lieu of a response. He tapped his wand against the teapot
once more, heating the water within, then dropped a small, dense, green ball inside and quickly put
the lid on.
At first the ball sank to the bottom of the teapot. Once the heat acted upon it, it gradually unfurled.
The leaves peeled back, and a small white chrysanthemum emerged. It floated to the top, tethered
by a thin stalk. Following its ascent, orange lily buds slipped out. They radiated outwards like the
spokes of a wheel. Lastly, tiny, purple globe amaranth flowers flowed out and filled all the empty
spaces. The entire floral structure slowly, slowly, rotated as varied colours bled into the water,
mixing and turning it into a pale amber hue.

Something had loosened inside her as well, like she had been hypnotised into a state of ease. It was
a reprieve. A blossoming.

He poured the tea into two cups, pushing one across the table. She lifted it right up to her face,
inhaling deeply, loving the ambrosial warmth of steam on her face. It was a mild, sweet, and earthy
brew, and they took their first couple of sips in silence.
“It’s really good,” she remarked thereon.

He’d sat back and was watching her over the rim of his cup, head lowered and eyes penetrating.

“Who’s Theo brought into my flat today?”

“You don’t know?”

“Would I ask if I did? I heard them when I got back from work. Not the sort of noises that inspired
me to investigate.”

“Oh.” she made a face. “It’s Verity.”

“Who?”

“The assistant at the shop.”

He rolled his eyes like he was terribly unimpressed by the predictability.

Hermione had another sip of tea and smoothed her hand over the soft sofa seat, remembering the
time she had woken up on it.

“When are you leaving for Abu Dhabi?” she asked.

“Saturday bloody morning,” he grumbled, “That’s when their week begins, so there goes my
weekend. Did you have any luck with the elves?”

“Today was worse. They didn’t engage at all. Sipkey, whom we’d met on Monday, came back and
said…” she sighed, “He said we’ve caused a lot of upset and the other elves are boycotting our
meetings.”

“So what next?” Draco asked evenly.

“I have to re-evaluate. Heavily. I need to hear what they’re saying… or not saying. For now, it
makes more sense to implement a basic guideline for their working conditions and introduce
protective laws before we go about freeing them. It could just as well be as simple as a day off.”

“Like the Norwegian charter.”

She shrugged. Misery stole over her again.

“You called it a start, didn’t you?” he asked, “Why do you need everything to happen at once?”

“Because it’s slavery,” she erupted, “It’s not some vaguely faulty law that requires a little tweaking
here and there!”

“But if tweaking is the only way to get things done…”

“Yes, that’s why I’m re-evaluating, Draco. ”

“And clearly you’ve seen that sudden freedom will not go down well with house-elves. Do you
want to do what you think is right, or what’s best for them?”

She washed down a simmering burst of anger with a large gulp of tea.

“Just skip the derisive sanctimony around me, will you? It does absolutely nothing.”

“It irritates you,” he rejoined, “That’s all I need it to do.”

His delivery was so imperious that it made her want to throw her empty cup at his head. He sensed
that in her expression and grinned. He flicked his wand so the teapot hovered towards her, with a
cocky suggestion of, “Have another cup.”

She breathed in before taking a sip again, hoping it would calm her once more. It did, to a certain
extent. As calm as it was possible to be in the midst of a combined professional and existential
crisis while in the presence of the object of one’s desire.
…The object that wasn’t being very obligingly object-like. He resumed his silent assessment of her,
while steam and floral aroma leant his stare a headiness that it certainly did not need. She looked
into her cup as she sipped, at her hazy, startled reflection. Nothing had changed when she looked
up. There wasn’t even any expectancy in his scrutiny. It just was.

Stare stare stare stare – tell him, don’t tell him – stare stare

“Bickie and I are going to Hogwarts tomorrow,” she announced.

“Bring me a slice of chocolate tart.”

“No.”

Loud laughter wafted in from across the hall, followed by a girlish yelp and Theo saying
“Naughty.”

“They’re getting nicely stoned. You want to join them?” she questioned, knowing full well that
he’d wrinkle his nose and refuse.

He wrinkled his nose. “No.”

“She isn’t wearing any trousers,” she went on to say, stupidly.

He stayed quiet for ten whole seconds after that, to let her stew in it. His eyes dropped briefly to
her trousers.

“She’ll still be toasty, thanks to your modified warming charm. It’s such a vital part of Theo’s
wooing process.”

“I’m happy to have made some contribution to the world – Oh shit, is that the time?”

She cast a mild cooling charm on her cup, which allowed her to take three rapid and large sips.
“Somewhere to be?” he enquired draggingly.

“Yes. No. Just… need to prepare for tomorrow. Update the questionnaire, plan out what I’m going
to say to McGonagall…”

Her cup was empty after one final gulp. She jumped to her feet and, while she twisted her neck to
hitch her bag over her shoulder, her hair swung forward and formed a sheild between the two of
them. Thank god.

“I’m fucking tired of Theo lording that charm over my head like it gives him special powers of
seduction. What’s the incantation?”

“Who are you trying to seduce?” she asked.

Why did she ask that?

Draco didn’t reply. She tucked her hair behind her ear - she shouldn't have. He was watching her.
She turned her head to look at him fully, and he didn’t break eye contact. Didn’t so much as blink.

“Calor Obvolvo,” she garbled, “A horizontal ‘s’, a sharp upward flick, and a downward half-
circle.”

“Much obliged,” he pronounced.

“Yes, well…”

She swung away from the heat of his stare, and towards the heat of the fireplace, pausing when the
terrace door slid shut, and loud laughter and thumping steps were cut off by the loud slam of Theo’s
bedroom door.

“You should go to the Patents Office and register all these spells under your name.”

Hermione began making firm strides towards the floo. “No, thank you.”

“Tired of accolades, are you?”

“Can you blame me?”

“Granger, I can find ways to blame you for anything. ”

She stopped, laughed gaspingly, and turned around. He had slid low on his chair, hands clasped
over trim stomach, smiling roguishly.

“All right then.” She raised her hand in a stiff wave.

“You could stay for dinner,” he said.

There was now a little expectancy in his tone and stare. Something covert and enticing.
“I can’t. I really – I must – I have – so much work.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Fine.”

She dove into the fire.

Bursting into her flat, she collapsed on the sofa and buried her face in her hands.

What was wrong with her? She was supposed to tell him. She was dying to tell him. Why the hell
hadn’t she stayed for dinner? He would’ve offered her a drink. Their conversation would have
devolved into unconstrained flirting. She would’ve asked to see his piano. He would’ve taken her
to his room. Closed the door. The lock would’ve clicked. He would’ve looked at her as he had done
all evening. And she…

…groaned into her palms.

TEMP/HELP had thrown her off, and the whole out-of-control mess was most likely contagious. If
she made a move on Draco, that too would get arsed up. It would be prudent to wait till the project
had been successfully concluded. Surely, she could wait. He could wait. It was obvious that he
wanted – he was behaving like he wanted – it seemed like he wanted —

The questionnaire. There was so much to do. Meeting with McGonagall. They needed to talk about
the school’s budget, and he shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but
because according to Ben’s records, there were a hundred-and-sixty-one elves working at Hogwarts
before the war, and now, a hundred-and-forty remained, which meant that her active living was
suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break
through the last integuments there was also the meeting with Clementia Shelbey which meant that
she needed to brush up on O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm that flies in the night, in the
HOGWARTS, HOGWARTS, HOGGY WARTY HOGWARTS, TEACH US SOMETHING PLEASE.

She bounced on the balls of her feet in front of the fireplace at seven-thirty in the morning. When
Theo came through, she didn’t allow him a moment to breathe, rushing him downstairs.

They spent half an hour in the telephone box, passing the receiver between them. It started with
“Happy birthday, mum/dearest Evie,” and proceeded in a way that required minimal contribution
from Hermione. Theo was magnificently bombastic – addled by sleep deprivation and fuelled by
his overwhelming affection for mum. He talked about race cars, plans for building the largest, most
magical race track in the world, his upcoming trip to the Weasley Wizard Wheezes’ Cork outlet, his
brand new beard comb, and so on.

They returned to her flat with croissants fresh from the oven. At eight-thirty, Hermione left for
work and Theo settled on her sofa for a kip.
 *

One of the many benefits of working with Bickie was that Hermione didn’t have to prance through
the Ministry to get to Hogwarts. It was just a matter of taking her hand, and within a snap, they
were standing in McGonagall’s office.

The Headmistress rose from behind her desk with a smile, but whatever she said in greeting was
drowned out by a cry of abject distaste. By the time Hermione looked over, Phineas Nigellus had
vacated his portrait. Snape’s portrait was empty as well.
But Dumbledore was present, awake, and smiling down at her with a knowing sadness.

“Good morning, Ms Granger,” he said gently, “How lovely it is to see you again.”

“Likewise, Professor.”

Maybe it was lovely. That most wretchedly flawed man momentarily severed her from herself. His
voice pulled her through a time-turner-like maelstrom. He belonged to a different time. He
belonged to a different life.

“Have a seat,” said McGonagall.

Hermione Granger of the here and now sat. Dumbledore blurred into amorphous colours;
McGonagall came into focus, smiling with a warmth that she saved only for her favourite pupils.
Bickie scrambled onto the other chair, and Hermione made the necessary introductions, which were
followed by McGonagall offering them Bickie’s namesake from a tin on her desk.

For a while, it seemed like everyone was on the same page. House-Elves should not be mistreated,
yes indeed, very good. A contract? Certainly! Hogwarts will be happy to honour them as proper
employees! Protect their rights? But of course! A day off? Hogwarts can incorporate shift work
schedules that will allow that. Oh, payment? Oh. Oh, dear.

Professor McGonagall sighed. “The Ministry and the Board only covered half of what it cost to
rebuild the school, and not only have the staff’s salaries been raised, we’re paying for continued
remedial care for those who are still suffering from war injuries.”

“It’s one galleon a week.”

“To hundreds of elves, Hermione. Scores of children have been orphaned – we’ve had to double the
number of scholarships. We’ve also had to build a special, fortified wing for students that come
from Tonks Orphanage, for full-moon nights.”

“I believe Professor Dumbledore left his–”

“That is what’s paying for the education of forty-four orphans.” A slight chill pervaded
McGonagall’s demeanour. “Some of them have no surviving family members, with very little to
their name. We have to take care of their needs and accommodation through the year, till they come
of age.”

The man whose legacy was being discussed said nothing.

Not long after, McGonagall announced that she had a board meeting to attend: It was an obvious
dismissal. Hermione snuck a furtive glance towards Dumbledore’s portrait and found it empty.

Hermione and Bickie descended the spiral staircase and walked to the entrance hall and the door
that led to the basement.

“The Kitchen’s down there,” Hermione said, “Go on.”

“Just Bickie? All alone?!”

“That’s how it should be. I have no right to barge in and start preaching at them. You know them,
understand them. It should be just you, Bickie. It can be no one else.”

“But – But –” Bickie’s eyes were full of stars. “Bickie isn’t a Ministry official–”

Hermione smiled. “You are an employee of a Ministry official. But more than that, you are a valued
member of our team. You’ve helped shape this contract. Go talk to them. Find me when you’re
through.”

“Bickie will do her best,” she quaked, still in disbelief.

“I know you will. Just… um.”

“Yes, Hermione?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, could you do me a favour?”

“Anything for Hermione.”

“If they have some chocolate tarts lying around, could you bring me a slice?”

“Bickie will!”

Wearily, vacantly, Hermione stepped over to the house point hourglasses. Hufflepuff was in the
lead. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were neck and neck. Slytherin was lagging.

She turned and looked up at the grand staircase, and felt a pull. It was the bubble calling out to her;
its thin, iridescent shell luring her back into its embrace.

Hermione climbed.
She walked past classrooms, heard Hestia’s voice coming out of one, Binns’ from another. She
traversed a passage full of tapestries and walked down the stone bridge. With every step the surface
of the bubble quivered. She saw it so clearly now – how had she missed it before?

Perhaps it was because she lived outside of it now.

Leading a regular, ordinary life. The everyday humdrum of trauma and tedium.

Could she call it normalcy? She’d never had any objective benchmark for that.

Hermione climbed some more.

A corridor stretched before her, brightly lit from sunlight reflected off the thick snow outside. She
stared out the arched windows, some closed and iced over, some open and showing the grounds.

Behold the groves that shine with silver frost,

Their beauty wither'd, and their verdure lost.

That passageway was another maelstrom. At the end, where it opened to a large archway, she saw a
lush, balmy summer day, and Draco, gleaming, leaning against the balustrade. She came to a stop
next to him.

“Do you remember,” she asked, “When we stood here and debated whether Hagrid could be
Hephustus?”

Draco scoffed. “There was no debate. We both agreed that the incompetent oaf was too–”

“Shut up. He’s–”

“But more than that,” Draco cut in, “I remember your heavily rehearsed and performative
apology.”

She pulled a face and he grinned, squinting slightly against the sun’s glare.

Hagrid came out of his hut, carrying a dead animal. He trudged through the snow towards
Buckbeak’s shelter.

“Back then, I never imagined we would ever be able to maintain civility for longer than a few
minutes–”

“Yeah, it took a lot of time and effort to develop a tolerance for your overbear –”

Hermione loudly carried on over him. “Never thought we’d be able to have a lengthy conversation,
let alone get on so brilliantly. Never thought I’d want to be around you over anyone else. Never
ever ever imagined I’d fall in love with you.”

He inhaled sharply, turned to her with round, astonished eyes, and —

Hermione’s insides twisted. She leaned out into the cold and watched Hagrid return to his hut. The
bell rang. Continuing to stare outside, she silently disillusioned herself as groups of students began
passing down the corridor. Their noise and chatter reduced to a hum, and she pulled herself
together.

She started to imagine what the scene in the kitchens might be like, but gave up almost
immediately. Presuming what House-Elves would say was what had messed things up in the first
place. Instead she mulled over the tragic impossibility of remuneration for Elvish labour. The only
solution she could think of was starting an independent fund for that purpose, but her experience
selling SPEW badges told her how well that would go.

Students thinned. Soon the corridor was empty again. Hermione dropped her disillusionment mere
moments before Bickie appeared.

“How did it go?” she demanded. Her arms reflexively wrapped around her waist in a protective
posture, as she waited for the worst.

“The House-Elves were very busy preparing dinner,” Bickie replied, “They made Bickie sit on a
stool and wait, but now they are ready to talk. Bickie has come to take Hermione back to the
Ministry so that she doesn’t get in trouble with her boss.”

“That’s so thoughtful of you.”

Bickie held out a small paper box, “A slice of chocolate tart.”

Hermione smiled as she took Bickie’s hand. A second later, they were in the Ministry’s atrium.
Then she said, “Best of luck.

She went to the canteen. No bounce, no sheen, no subtle rainbow as she moved. Colours were
stagnant and mundane.

She found him after a quick scan, sitting by himself and immersed in A Tale of Two Cities while he
ate. She had only fifteen minutes before Barros was expecting her, driving her to make a quick dash
to collect a chicken caesar salad before heading to his table. She tried to embody grace and poise
while falling into a chair like a limp puppet.

“Where are your friends?” she asked, meaning, Is Fiona going to show up to make my day worse
again?

He surfaced from the book with rapid, annoyed blinks. His reply was also suffused with annoyance.
“They’re tending to irate diplomats from Turkmenistan.”

“Flying carpets again?”

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t you there?”

“Because Gill and the lot decided not to include Kenny in their discussion.”

“Good call.”
He marked his page, closed the book, and sat back with a packet of crisps, regarding her with
narrowed eyes.

“Got all that pressing work done last night?”

She nodded with a mouth full of salad.

“Why are you here then? Did Hogwarts’ elves turn you away?”

She swallowed in a hurry. “I never saw them. Bickie’s speaking to them right now.”

“The elf?” He reared back in confusion. “By herself?”

“Yes.” She raised her chin challengingly.

“A House-Elf as a representative of the Ministry.”

“No,” she jeered, “A House-Elf as a representative of a movement to empower House-Elves. They

will be so much more open to dialogue if it’s just her. I told you, I’ve realised that I need to… listen
more. Better.”

He spared her a moment of shrewd consideration.

“Have you also realised that in order to listen, you need to be quiet for more than five seconds at a
time? Can you manage that?”

She glared. He smiled smugly. She began counting in her head and continued to glare.

There was an impasse.

“That was fifteen seconds,” she informed him, by and by, “And unsurprisingly, you offered nothing
of value.”

His mouth jumped up, his eyes doing that dancing thing as they both attended to their meal.
Hermione wished she had picked up some pumpkin juice; her throat was parched.

“Why’d you called Theo over at seven-thirty in the morning?”

“To wish my mum a happy birthday.” Her voice was scratchy. “Dad had mentioned that she’s a bit
shaken up about turning forty-five, so I thought nothing better to distract her than an early morning
Theo-loquy.”

“I will be stealing that.” – she gestured you’re welcome to – “And really? Your mother’s forty-five?
Doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”

“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes.

“Really, she–”

“Give up. She isn’t around to find you charming.”

“What if I want you to find me charming?”

Heavens above. She put her fork down. “That’s a lost cause, isn’t it?”

“But you’re so good at instilling hope in lost causes.”

That – undeterred by the insurmountable hopelessness of all her present causes – made her smile
so. It was a stupid, bashful, besotted little woman smile that gave away how utterly charming she
found him. She placed the paper box in front of him and stood up.

“What’s that?”

“Open it.”

She banished her tray, clutched the strap of her satchel, and waited. He cocked a brow as he
plucked at the cover, then his frame jolted with surprise.

He turned to her with round, astonished eyes, and —

“Enjoy,” she beamed, and floated out of the canteen.

Clementia Shelbey was a woman of thirty-seven, with a craggy, worn out face that didn’t fit her.
The fact that her case had first been registered when she was twenty-seven, probably explained it.
Kathy had been given the responsibility to conduct the interview. Hermione sat back in her chair,
ready to take notes, and the story unfolded:

The pursuer, Clementia Anne Shelbey, began working with Nimbus Racing Broom Company
(hereon, NRBC,) on the 12th of July, 1984. She served as a customer service associate for three
years, before being promoted to a managerial position. On 9th November, 1988, she learned of her
pregnancy, continued to work for the next eight months, whereupon, she took the expected three
month paid maternity leave provided by NRBC. She returned to work on 12th December, 1989.
Two weeks later, her infant son fell gravely ill. Clementia was forced to care for him, and requested
additional leave. NRBC denied her request. She asked a few colleagues to cover for her, and
resubmitted the request. She was granted two days leave. Two days after which, her son had to be
rushed to St. Mungo’s. NRBC terminated her employment the next day. The colleagues who had
previously agreed to cover for her denied ever doing so.

The interview carried on for over an hour. Every aspect of it was grim; from going skint during a
medical emergency, to the long-drawn illness that her son suffered.

He was fine now, though. Ten years old, fond of gobstones. She’d brought photographs. Lots of
them. Hermione’s leg began to bounce…

[She stood by the same old window – her Window of Contemplation – and charmed a cool breeze
to waft over her face.]
…She burst into Ben’s office where Bickie was waiting for her.

“I’m sorry – I’m so sorry – the meeting ran long. How did it go, Bickie? What happened?”

Bickie reported, the Quick-Quotes quill duly documented:

House-Elves want to work. They didn’t understand why some mad elves and interfering humans
were so obsessed with freedom. They would work regardless. Hogwarts was their home and they
loved it. Headmistress McGonagall took her tea without milk or sugar.
Galleons? Silly. However, to be the official Kitchen and Cleaning Staff of Hogwarts would be nice.
Would they get uniforms with shiny buttons and crisp creases? They were intrigued by the thought
of a day off in which they could float paper boats on the Hogwarts lake.
But freedom? How unnecessary. How absurd. What do humans know about freedom anyway? It
was hilarious that they thought themselves any freer than House-Elves.

“How many House-Elves do we have here, Ben?” Hermione asked during the hour in which they
were meant to be meeting elves that didn’t show up.

“In the Ministry? Sixty.”

“So that’s just sixty galleons a week. Three thousand one hundred and twenty a year. Hardly a
fortune!”

“The Wizengamot will insist it is.”

“And how many House-Elves in Mungo’s?”

“Same as Hogwarts.”

“Oh.”

“It isn’t just big institutions, Hermione. Businesses, establishments, restaurants, families. It’s going
to be a financial adjustment, big or small, and…”

“And nobody likes making those.”

“Especially not so soon after a war.”

“I’m going to need a copy of your registry,” she said.

 *

You may call her the queen of multi-tasking.

Hermione was organising Clementia's son’s medical records, while simultaneously dictating letters
to her Quick-Quotes quill. She was also sending messages to Theo via the charmed galleon, as he
tried to navigate muggle liquor shops. He had somehow taken on the responsibility of procuring a
gift for Seamus on behalf of nearly everyone invited.

Just as she signed the letter to Honeydukes, Kathy and Takumi returned with boxes containing
every piece of correspondence between Clementia and NRBC.

“Eight years of letters,” Kathy griped, “It’s going to take hours to sort through.”

An accurate estimation. By the time they’d concluded their undertaking, all three bore the sour
visage of those who’d been summarily reminded of the overall shittiness of the world.

After a day like that, Hermione was not allowed to have a hot dinner and read in bed. She was
expected to get ready for a party.
Her one and only incentive was the possibility of being called stunning.

And what happens when a heightened awareness of the world’s shittiness meets a recurring
reminder of how pathetic you’ve become?

Well, she found herself digging through Pat’s cast-offs, looking for something exciting and skimpy.
It was pitiable, it was sad, but then she unearthed a veritable scrap of cloth masquerading as a top
and yanked it over her head (after discarding her bra for there was no scope for it).
The top was deep red, slightly shiny, low cut, with straps nearly as thin as a strand of her hair. The
back consisted of nothing more than four suchlike straps, criss-crossing. There was a matching
(tiny) skirt.

A shiver went through her at the thought of Draco’s gaze sweeping over her. She let down her hair
and good grief. Sleekeazy sat on her dressing table, as compelling as a bottle labelled DRINK ME.
It robbed another twenty minutes of her life. Finally, she stepped into the stilettos on which her
charms were still holding strong, and slipped on a coat.

There it was then. There she was. All that just for the possibility of getting a compliment. But after
such a hellish week, she deserved one measly compliment. She might even tell him, maybe, if he
called her stunning again.
A surprisingly small group had gathered at Finnigan’s, (outside which was a CLOSED FOR
BIRTHDAY sign). It was almost a Hogwarts reunion, and Hermione stopped looking around and
smiling when she locked eyes with Cho, followed by Terry. Seamus was by the bar, which was
covered with evidence of Theo’s untamable enthusiasm. She went over and wished him, failing to
avoid the cursory birthday hug.
Theo was nearby too, talking to Dean and his usual arty assortment. She thought he was looking at
her when she waved, but he wasn’t, so she dropped her arm praying nobody had seen. George and
Angelina might have, for they came around swiftly and saved her from standing awkwardly by
herself.

Soon after, Harry, Ron, and Edith came in. Then Draco and Fiona. Hermione toyed with the buttons
of her coat. Michael and Anthony broke into a bottle, too impatient for the party to start. The last to
arrive was Luna.

“Here you go. This is where we’re going.” Seamus went about distributing maps, on which a
happening spot in Islington was circled in red. “Apparate into the alley behind it, I’ve already set
up a muggle-repelling charm.”

An excited murmur went around and Seamus basked in it.

“Right then, one at a time; lets get a fucking move on!” Without demur, he reached out and plucked
Fiona’s sleeve. “I’ll take you along, love.”

Both Hermione and Luna decided to attach themselves to Harry, whispering among each other as
they walked around the corner of the alley and into the club, bypassing the long queue outside,
thanks to Seamus' pull... or the power of magic.

They walked into the deep sea. It was dark, with sudden surprising flashes of bright lights, and all
sorts of strange and dangerous creatures swarmed through the murk. They packed every square
inch of it. Unlike the deep sea, it was thunderously loud. Racy music, amplified bass. Ron’s
towering frame and waving arm was a beacon. He led them to the cloakroom, where Hermione felt
a sudden brutal blow of self-consciousness at the thought of removing her coat.

But she did it, for it was the one thing in her control.

“Oh. Wow.” Ron sputtered, “Hermione. You look… wow.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, and slunk away.

Seamus had reserved four tables in one corner for his party to stand around. They were near enough
to the bar, so that’s where they naturally progressed. Harry and Hermione asked for coke, and they
both refused the shots of Jägermeister that Michael was very passionate about. Afterwards, there
was a mass migration to the dance floor, though some moved to the tables; among them, Draco,
carrying a glass of stout.

Draco, who hadn’t so much as glanced at her.

Well, fine. Hermione cast a few spells to soften the music just around the tables and turned to Harry
with a smile.
“So, what were you saying about vengeful snarling gumboots?”

He launched into a monologue that helped her loosen up... somewhat. The fulcrum of her thoughts
was still diagonally opposite to her, hidden by her hair.

A hand slid up her bare back and clamped around her shoulder, followed by Seamus practically
shouting into her ear – “Why. Aren’t. You. Dancing?”

“I will in a bit,” she lied.

“Harry, mate–”

“I don’t dance,” he said flatly.

His response led to a stupid back and forth of Oh, c’mon and Not happening. Huffing with boredom
and willing the birthday boy to spontaneously disintegrate, Hermione’s eyes wandered —

She had finally caught Draco’s attention. Rather, Seamus’ hand on her shoulder had. He was
glaring at it unswervingly, (surprising that it didn’t disintegrate,) till he wrenched his face away and
took a generous sip from his glass. A thrill coursed through her and she looked away as well. Her
pulse began to thunder with the repetitive beat of music.

Seamus’ hand trailed across her back as he left.

“I’m leaving,” Harry groused, tinkling the ice in his glass.

Hermione, ripped out of Dra-taxia, lamented, “Already?”

He nodded stiffly and it was then that she finally saw how much being around so many drunk
revellers was getting to him.

“I am as well,” Luna said in a small voice.

“Then I’m leaving, too,” Hermione decided, “Thank god, honestly. How do you feel about picking
up a few tubs of ice cream and–”

“Er,” Luna said regrettably, “I have to pack. Rolf and I are going to Eswatini tomorrow, to look for
Lightning Birds.

“My portkey leaves in an hour,” Harry added, “I’m spending the weekend in Holyhead.”

“Oh.”

“Well, bye,” Luna said, slipping away abruptly.

Harry quaffed his drink. “I’m sorry. I really need to get out of here.”

“What about tomorrow’s appointment with Asher?”

“He has a fireplace in his office, Hermione.”

“Right.”

He gave her a one-armed hug and pushed off.

And Hermione was alone. The light flashed blue, green, blue, green. The loudspeakers threw out
dizzying music and the words Life, mysterious life.

She paid another visit to the bar and returned with a fruity martini that could’ve been green apple,
or pineapple, or cherry and apple. She couldn’t tell what had been said, she’d just put up two
fingers while Parvati was speaking to the bartender.

Padma and Tracey were at the tables, much to Hermione’s relief. She kept her back to Draco, (with
her hair pulled over her shoulder because desperation never sleeps.) Padma was all atwitter and
Hermione quietly listened (staying silent for much longer than five seconds,) slowly sipping her
drink that turned out to be apple flavoured.
Draco might not have been paying her a spot of attention, but in her head he was, and it was
working her into a state of complete turmoil. She kept waiting for him to come over and join the
conversation.

Colourful beams and strobes whipped through the air.

Much like the flashing lights, people made brief, dizzying appearances. Ron was drunk. Theo was
drunker, and came to tell her that some Becca wanted to take him home to show him her play
station.

“Hermione, what’s a play station?”

“A euphemism,” she told him and he went away happy.

Dean also tried to get her to dance but she refused. She peeked over her shoulder to watch him
leave, and instead ended up looking straight into Draco’s eyes. She whipped her head around
quickly. The knowledge that he was in fact watching her made everything so much worse.

Better. Worse. Better.

Eventually, she was left alone again and in need of the loo. She went through the horrid press of
bodies, slightly wobbly, for the charms on her shoes had chosen the best possible time to teach her
the importance of regular re-enforcement. The passage to the bathrooms was right next to the stairs
and of course there was a sodding queue. She stood hugging her bag to her chest, behind a group of
women yapping about seeing Bush at Hammersmith. When she finally got into the foul, dingy loo
– pink and purple lights and inane scribbles on the walls – too sober to ignore the stench, she
scoured everything before attending to her business.

On stumbling out of the passageway, some bloke with his trousers so low that his pants were
spilling out crashed into her, nearly sent her tumbling. Then he stuck two-fingers up at her, like it
had been her fault.
The song changed to something that made the crowd go wild. A man and a woman grabbed
Hermione and tried to draw her closer, forcing her to deploy stinging hexes. They let her go and
laughed their heads off. (“Ha! She’s electric!)

She was done. It was time to consider being watched from afar as a compliment, and divest herself
of fatuity, foppery, futility, and failure. It was bound to start all over again next week anyway.

Twice she stumbled on her way back, and once just as she got to the table, gripping the corner
before she could smack her chin on it. The charms hadn’t just faded, they’d gone rogue.

“Falling on your arse already? It’s barely even midnight.”

Those were the first words he’d chosen to say to her. She pursed her lips and positioned herself in
front of him, keeping the table safely in between.

“Hermione, let’s dance,” Parvati urged, wabbling in anticipation.

“I’m going home,” she replied.

“You’re leaving?” Draco asked.

Hermione nodded at Parvati. “It’s been a long day. I’m completely knackered.”

“Granger, you can barely walk, how do you expect to apparate in one piece?”

“I’ve had one drink, hours ago. I’m perfectly sober.” Hermione told Parvati.

“One drink for you is like–”

“It’s like one drink.”

“One dance! Come onnnn!”

“No.”

So instead, Parvati grabbed an unsuspecting Fiona and took off with her.

Hermione dropped her eyes to the table and the dark rings that countless glasses had left behind.
Imprints of wild nights and bad decisions.

“Well…” she began.

“It’s for the best, that you chose not to dance.”

“Because I’m the demented dancing flower-creature?”

He chuckled. “Yes. But also…”

There was something lurking in his tone, something raring to go; the sort of thing that would leave
him feeling very pleased with himself. It was the sizzle of a matchstick before it ignited.

He waited till she had lifted her chin and faced him.
“Also,” he drew out slowly, “You look far too tempting as it is.”

Her heart was a grenade that fell into her stomach and exploded. He did not smirk, he did not wink.
He did not tilt his head teasingly, nor look away smugly. He met her stupefaction head-on, with
nothing but pristine, unmistakable seriousness.

“Draco,” she implored, giving everything away. Her want and pathetic desperation was laid bare.
She had never heard herself sound like that before.

A portentous tremor passed over his features. He set his glass down and leaned forward.

“Yeah?”

Draco Draco, burning bright. He was almost straining towards her, over the table. Flashing disco
lights framed his fearful symmetry. He was green, blue, red, purple, yellow; she’d take him in any
hue or shade. Smouldering and vaporising. One with the dancing particles of sound waves,
vibrating at irregular frequencies. Can I take you home?

“Bye,” she squeaked, and spun around before she could see his reaction.

She fled as swiftly as she could while navigating through a horde and staggering on a stupid pair of
high heels. A week’s worth of tears were building up behind her eyes. She summoned her coat from
outside the cloakroom, which was full of new arrivals. The dark and the general level of
intoxication was an adequate cover; and if it wasn’t, she didn’t care. She just needed to get home,
rip off her frills, and let the impending breakdown take over.

The temperature outside was a benefaction. Expect the coldest night of the month, the morning’s
paper had said. Between her blood and the air, she hoped she might attain equilibrium.

She didn’t.

Apparating to a slight distance from her building, Hermione made slow strides homewards. Her
shoes continued to misbehave, threatening ankle dislocation. Fuck you, she told them, Just… fuck
you. Still, she refused to cast stabilising charms. Nobody – nothing – was allowed the luxury of
stability that night.

Brave little Hermione Granger. Wilful, bold, war heroine. Doesn’t back down. Codswallop. She
stepped into the dingy lobby and her chin began to quiver.

Such cowardice was not new. She had sat on her feelings for Ron for years. She knew how it went.
Draco would give up and grow resentful. He’d find someone else. Hermione would cope, because
suppressing painful emotions was a doddle. Someday, years from now, she’d be glad nothing had
ever happened.

A loud noise from outside sent her pitching forward. She just about regained her footing as her bag
slipped off her shoulder and fell thunderously to the floor.
She wheeled around and saw Draco emerge from the caliginous night. He flicked his wand, the bag
went sailing towards him. He hung it over his shoulder.
Hermione’s brain snuffed it. Her lungs went up in flames.

“Splinched yourself?” he delicately enquired while taking slow, prowling steps towards her. His
coat was unbuttoned, his gloves and scarf were missing.

“No,” she breathed, “I – I told you. I’m not drunk.”

“I realise you’re ungainly at best, but even you can manage to go without tripping every third
step.”

He kept walking and walking, closer and closer.

“It’s these blasted shoes,” she whispered.

He stopped and his gaze sunk to her feet.

“Yes,” he appraised, “They’re very nice.”

What was happening?

“I’ll let you borrow them sometime.”

He smirked indulgently. “I, unlike you, don’t have the legs for them.”

She began moving towards him, as helpless as iron filings against a magnet.

“What are you doing here, Draco?”

His smirk dissolved. Her shadow reached him and he wet his lips.

“I came to watch you fall on your arse.”

What a perfect moment for her to trip. He would see her fall on her face . She yelped, tucking her
chin, throwing her arms out, waiting for the impact.

He was in front of her in a flash. Her hands fell onto his shoulders gripping hard from sheer panic.
He grabbed her hips, sure and steadying. The whole macrocosm came to a standstill.

Hermione panted, staring down at the top button of his shirt. The night was so very quiet. Her
fingers were pale and pink-tipped, resting on the sinful softness of his coat… on the strong, solidity
of his shoulders that were rising and falling with his laboured breaths. Under her raised arms were
his lowered ones. On her hips were his hands, wrapped tightly around the curve.

“Merlin’s sake, Granger.”

It was a strangled utterance.

She looked up. His jaw was clenched and cheeks were red.

He said, “Why the everloving fuck are you holding back?”

The words shot through her like a hundred amperes. Hermione fell on her sword. She kissed him.
And from the absolute moment that her lips fell onto his, warm and soft and slightly parted, he was
kissing her back.

Oh, how he kissed her back.

His fingers dug into her with madness inducing pressure. He took her lower lip between his,
assertively, definitively, like, this is happening, I will steal the air from your lungs and you will let
me, you will let me — and she stepped into him, yes, please, never stop.
Her blood was blistering, scorching, ultra-hot. Erupting. Every nerve-ending in her body was
shooting sparks. Her stomach was folding in on itself. He yanked her closer, wrapped his arms
around her. Flicked his tongue - his tongue - along the seam of her mouth and groaned when she
reciprocated.

It was a strangled sound.

The grinding, grating sound of the lift arriving and its grille sliding open forced them apart. She
snapped her head to the side and, amid shuddering breaths, with a curtain of stars before her eyes,
stared at a man with four Knarls on leashes. They were rebelling against their ties, cutting a
meandering path to the exit. Neither beasts nor man paid any attention to the two people tangled up
in each other as –

Draco cupped her cheek and turned her face back towards him. His mouth descended on hers again,
and she fell right back into him. His fingers slid into her hair while his thumb placed embers on her
cheek. She dragged her hands down his chest, around his ribs, under his coat and up his back,
splaying her fingers over his shoulder blades. Hot and taut. She felt them glide as the arm around
her waist tightened and pulled her closer . She was flush against him.

His tongue slid against hers and she felt herself being redesigned, reforged.

For so excruciatingly long, she had been helpless against life’s circles, always spinning, spiralling,
and circuiting. Draco had picked her up and carried her to the sun. They were in the white-hot
centre of it all, the point of burning stillness, and everything revolved around them.

But they were actually moving. Draco was walking them backwards, keeping her steadily tethered
to his body. His mouth - white hot - remained sewn to hers even as he gripped the lapels of her coat
and pushed it off. It hadn’t even fallen to her feet before his hands were back on her. Long fingers
on bare, flaming skin; those nothing-straps felt like a hindrance of the worst sort.

Her back hit a wall… a corner…

He’d backed her into the corner of the lift, breaking away from her lips and dragging his mouth up
her jaw, under her ear. She shivered to the bones, needing to feel him . She fisted the cloth beneath
her hands, hoping it would crumble and fall apart under the pressure… but it didn’t, so she
scrabbled at it desperately, pulling it out of his trousers. At long last, she touched the smooth
expanse of his back. He gasped, his muscles jumped – had her burning hands been cold? – He
licked along the strap on her shoulder, scraped his teeth over her collarbone, squeezed her bum and
pulled her hips to his. She felt him hard against her, and her head fell back against the wall with a
thunk. Her fingers raked down his spine.
This was happening. It was actually happening. Through the starry haze, she saw that they had
arrived at her floor; the lift was wide open and waiting.

“We’re–” she rasped, bringing her hands to his chest and pushing.

He pulled away looking utterly bewildered. Eyes muzzy, brow furrowed, lips reddened – Fuck. Oh
god damn fuck. She kissed him, pushing blindly, till she had him against the frame of the lift’s
entrance.

Laxo, she thought and all his buttons came undone.

His muscles jumped again when she smoothed her hands over his chest and stomach, tracing the
subtle definition. He made a noise deep in his throat and squeezed her bum once more, bunching up
her skirt so his fingers danced along the bottom of her knickers.

The lift had had enough. The grille was forced out, shoving them out into the landing. Hermione
was wrenched away from him, falling backwards. In a trice, he pulled her back in; then bent
slightly at the knees to loop one arm under her arse, and picked her up.
She went straight for his hair, as fine, soft, and luxurious as she’d ever imagined. She pressed her
face into it, breathing in, running her nails over his scalp, provoking a quavering exhale. She kissed
his forehead, his temple, shell of his ear, whatever she could access while he carried her down the
landing.

All of a sudden, she was set down and spun around. Her door hung before her and Draco hovered
behind her. He slid his hands low on her stomach, and one drifted upwards tauntingly, stopping
under her breast.

His voice blew right into her ear: “Are you going to invite me in?”

Hermione was sort of abstractly aware of surging ahead, dragging him along, and unlocking the
door. Her mind only registered the loud slam, the darkness in her flat, the fervidity with which she
turned back to him.

In one rough motion she’d forced his coat, shirt, and her bag off his shoulders. Voracious hands and
lips felt out every part of his torso
– firm lean smooth –
When he tugged at the hem of her top, she leaned back to let him divest her of it. It cleared her
head and she got to see the glorious, intemperate look on his face when he realised that she was
completely bare underneath. It had her stomach flipping; had her hooking her fingers through his
belt loops and pulling him close, skin against skin, oh yes, oh yes, he gripped her chin, tilted her
face up, kissed her hard, and she was once again pressed against a wall.

She wanted him closer. She wanted to be completely flattened. She wanted to get absorbed into
him.

He finally handled her breasts. She cried out; a sound that he acknowledged with a thrust of his
hips and a sound of his own… she pressing against him right there … his thumbs circled her
nipples and she felt it everywhere, on every square inch of her skin, the soles of her feet –
– She lightly scratched down his torso, loving the texture of the hair beneath his navel –

Then he was fiddling with the zip at the side of her skirt. It was terribly noisy as it came undone,
parting the material, parting her gasp and his sigh. He slid down, crouching before her to pull the
skirt and her knickers down her legs, stabilising her as she stepped out of them.

For a few moments, he stayed in that position, gaze tracking up and down her body.

This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be standing, in nothing but a pair of stilettos, with a
shirtless Draco at her feet. It couldn’t be real.

He tilted forward and pressed his mouth to her stomach. It tensed painfully in response. Her legs
pressed together and her hands slapped back against the wall. He kissed up her body, paid attention
to each rib, both breasts, either side of her neck, till he reached her mouth and pushed his tongue
inside. Large warm hands, concomitantly, flowed down her sides, lower and lower and lower —

He broke away, panting, eyes darting between hers. His voice was deep and gruff as he began to
say, “Can I–”

“Yeah,” she urged, “Yes.”

“Fuck,” he ground out in an undertone, and slid his hand between her legs.

Hermione was not long for this world. She knew there was no chance of survival when his fingers
stroked her, when he lifted her leg and pulled it up against his waist and held it there, when the
strokes became more intent, building, reaching –

“Your thumb… just… higher… Oh GOD. ”

– executing destruction. Perfect, she felt perfect, he was perfect. She clamped her hands around his
neck and pulled him into an artless, desperate kiss. He met her urgency perfectly; his tongue
mimicked his fingers, his lips matched his pace. Hermione was gasping, thrusting against his hand
recklessly. Dying at the mounting pressure and revived by the succouring touches.
Before she knew it, she was reaching for the front of his trousers, cupping him through the fabric.

He gasped and drew back. His teeth were hard on his lip as he pulled her hand away and placed it
on his shoulder. She didn’t have the capacity to ask him what was wrong, nor to be embarrassed by
how completely soaked his fingers were. Even those few seconds of reprieve amped up her
desperation ten-fold. When he touched her again, she whined.

The end was closing in… right there, right there, right there… because good lord, it was him –
Draco – making it happen. His eyes that she was looking into, his – his – fingers inside her. They
curved, parted, and she was babbling and heaving. She said… she said… his… name?

“Yes, Hermione?” Hummed against the corner of her mouth.

One swipe of his thumb and the pressure burst like a sonic boom. The leg in his grasp convulsed,
the other gave out. If it hadn’t been for him and the wall, she would’ve been on the floor. A
squeaky wail tore out of her, eyes squeezed shut, nails digging into his shoulders.

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Blimey. She stayed suspended in sublimity while her muscles loosened
and the electricity crackling through her blood lessened. Draco stayed pressed against her.
Slowly, she peeled back her eyelids. He was staring at her with that blazing directness that always
pulled her to pieces.

He kissed her with abandon, prying her off the wall. His arms locked tight around her, taking her…
she didn’t care where. Sometimes he was guiding her, sometimes lifting her off the ground,
sometimes letting her shoes drag over the floor; she didn’t care about any of it. All that mattered
was that his lips, tongue, and teeth were doing a glorious job of winding her up all over again.

They burst through a door – the door – door – bedroom – his palms were on her bare bottom,
angling her upwards, letting her feel exactly how wound up he was. One particular thrust made her
head roll back from the impact. She was arched over his arms and he sucked hard on the juncture of
her neck and shoulder.

His trousers needed to go. She wriggled out of his grasp and popped open the button, pulled the zip
–

He pushed down forcefully on her shoulders. She expected to fall to the ground, but ended up
seated on her bed. A hard breath rushed out of her and she looked up at him, feeling fucking feral.
He smirked.
He smirked and her insides contracted.
He smirked as he lowered his trousers and pants.
He straightened and there it was. Certainly not three inches, and not triple that, either. It was just
right, exactly what she needed, because she felt so empty; so horridly, utterly empty. She reached
towards him, he stopped her by catching hold of her wrist.

Once again, he pushed her. Back and back until she was flat on her back. Then he moved away
again.

Hermione lifted up on her elbows and watched, riveted as he toed off his shoes and peeled off his
socks. In the darkened room, he was a man of marble, and he picked up one of her legs. His
knuckles skated down her calf before gently unhooking her shoe. He repeated the same action on
the other one.

He put one knee on the bed, tongue pushed against the inside of his cheek. One hand descended
right beside her arm.

“Move back,” he said low and rumbly.

She complied gracelessly, burningly, and when she was sprawled across the middle of the bed, he
slinked over and settled on top of her.

Draco on top of her. Naked and on top of her. Chest brushing hers with each shared breath. Skin
smooth and laid over hers. Elbows by her head and knees by her thighs to keep from crushing her.
Which was… why ? He was hot and steely against her stomach.

He seemed to be drinking her in. His eyes left a scald wherever they settled: Her forehead, her eyes,
her cheeks, her mouth, her neck, her neck, her neck —

“You don’t like freckles,” she spouted.

He looked extremely taken aback. “What?”

“You’d said,” she mumbled, wishing she hadn’t, “You’d called Ron’s skin diseased.”

It took a few moments, but his expression unclouded, getting replaced by amusement.

“I don’t like Weasley’s freckles,” he drawled. His voice, in the quiet, in the dark, made her ribs
contract.

He continued, “I don’t like Weasley’s anything. This…” He dipped his head and lightly bit the spot
at the side of her neck. “...This…” His lips brushed tantalisingly against it. “...is an
embellishment.”

She stopped breathing. He arose and shifted, and his mouth settled on the point where her temple
met her cheekbone.

“There’s another one here, you know?” he murmured, “It’s tiny; barely even visible.”

He shifted again and kissed her mouth, restarting her breath. It was the deepest, most thorough kiss
of her life. She could stay in it forever. She could spend eternity pressing her lips to his, over and
over, responding to each stroke and draw of his tongue. His kiss was as complex as he was, as hard
to unravel and as easy to get lost in. The longing stretched across her body and coursing between
her legs could wait. The world could wait.

But once again, Draco shifted. He slid down her neck and found her breasts, taking each into his
mouth with slow sucks. He licked down the depression beneath her ribs, around her belly button,
dipped into the hollows above her pelvic bones. He kissed the tops of her thighs. From there, he
looked up at her, letting expectancy thicken.

He licked her just around where she needed him – then exactly there – then back around – then
then then – she was writhing and whimpering like a torture victim. Each lick of fire felt so good
that it hurt. When he left the spot for her chest again, she couldn’t take it anymore. The emptiness
within her had turned into an aching vacuum. She took hold of his face and pulled him up, kissed
him, and kicked up her legs till they were fixed over his.

He pulled back, frowning, but before he could speak, she said, “Yes. Now. Yes.”

His eyes flared and his mouth closed with a click. He reached down to position himself.

Hermione practically gurgled when he slid inside her. There was some pressure, a slight sting as
she adjusted, but it was his low growl of, “Ah, fuck,” that murdered her.
The best feeling she had ever known. Peerless fulfillment, a wholeness — With one push and a
burst of tingles, she knew that it wouldn’t take long.
He started slow, torturing drags and presses. When he reached between them to touch her, her eyes
rolled back and her neck twisted to the side, because… Oh god.
Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh godohgodohgo –

He lifted the top half of his body up with one hand and began moving faster. Jerks and thrusts,
fingers tripping over her. His choked, breathy grunts forced her eyes open, and he was entirely
gorgeous and mesmerising in that moment. Hermione skimmed her hands over his chest, neck, and
hair. She lifted her hips, tightened her legs around him, and their moans were harmonised. His eyes
flew open, bright and blown wide.
Hermione shattered; as close as possible to literally shattering without literally shattering. Her
vertebrae came apart. Her limbs seized. She was shooting like a cannonball through pure bliss. In
some realm of consciousness, she was aware of Draco moving erratically above her, giving way to
a guttural cry let out through clenched teeth.

She resurfaced with the comfort of his weight upon her. His gasps filled her hair, his sweat on her
skin. She lifted a hand that weighed five stone, and swept it over his back.

Everything was pristine. Perfect, euphoric, whole. They didn’t ever need to move.

Draco rolled off her and fell heavily to the side. From the corner of her eye, she watched as he
stared up at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath. Silence stretched between them.

His inhales were a few milliseconds behind hers. His exhales were more drawn out. The silence
was louder than both. And as Hermione’s frenzied heartbeat slowed, her mind went into overdrive.
She sat up. Her head spun.
Her dressing gown was draped over the footboard where she had left it earlier in the evening. An
incredibly embarrassing scene followed, in which she tried to get it on: The first time it was upside
down, and the second, one sleeve was inside out, her arm got stuck, and it was awful. Feeling his
eyes on her back didn’t help in any way. At long last, she got to her feet, feeling shaky and bandy-
legged.

“Bathroom,” she mumbled and wobbled out of the room.

Her hands were shaking when she closed the bathroom door behind her.

The bathroom. Where she’d been just a few hours ago, showering. It was like she’d come to after
an extended stay in a twilight zone. She stood insensibly for a bit before moving on to use the loo.

The mirror showed no mercy while she washed her hands. Her formerly smoothened hair was
rumpled and haywire. She was flushed, luminous, and covered with pink smudges in the shade
Blushing Berry; transferred from her lips, to his, to her skin. She splashed cold water on her face
and cast a contraceptive charm.

He must’ve started getting dressed by now. Or, perhaps, he was fully dressed and waiting to bid her
an awkward farewell.

What if he had already left?

Her walk back to the bedroom was wary. The door was ajar and she stood before it, mutely
pleading for some sort of idea of what was waiting for her inside. The door and its negligible gap
had nothing for her. She drew in a fortifying breath. Entered.

Draco was leaning back against the headboard, with his legs stretched out in front of him. He was
still naked, drinking water from a tall glass, which he momentarily paused as she shuffled towards
the bed. She couldn’t take her eyes off the picture he made, in her bed, nude, and watching her.

He drained the glass and refilled it with a tap of his wand.

“Water?”

“Thanks.”

She took the glass. Just held it. They stared and stared at each other. Someone with a mallet was
going to town on her heart. He sat up a bit, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

The glass spontaneously vanished. Hermione lunged at him.

His grunt of surprise was muffled against her mouth. She straddled his legs, held his face and
kissed him through his shock, until he was right with her in the frenzy. They swayed back and forth
under their opposing forces.
Draco clawed at the belt of her gown – manic, clumsy – and scraped it off her to toss away
somewhere. She was determined and sure of her course when she reached down to touch him. He
didn’t stop her; quite the opposite. He moaned into her mouth and pushed into her hand and she
learned the feel and texture of him, felt him get larger and harder.

“Shit, Granger. Fuck.”

He forced her up on her knees and took a nipple in his mouth. She tangled the fingers of her free
hand in his hair, anchoring him to her. This is real, her heart stuttered, This is really real.

His searching fingers descended, and she flinched and hissed the moment he touched her.

“Gently. It’s… I’m a bit…”

“Sorry,” he whispered.

He eased the pressure, softened the pace. Even his ministrations on her chest became delicate.
Hermione fittingly tempered her strokes. They fell into the most sinfully slow, smouldering build
up. Every tiny motion intensified her desire. She felt delirious, sinuous, moving like a wave. Her
head tipped back and her eyes closed. I love you, her mind sighed, God, I love you.

Her wrist jerked involuntarily, causing her hand to twist around him, just under the head. He pulled
the ends of her hair. His teeth found her flesh. The sensation jolted through her.

“Gah,” she huffed.

She pushed his head back and he understood immediately. He grasped her waist and eased her
down on his hardness.

He was overwhelmingly breathtaking again. Brow pinched with focus, eyelashes fluttering. She
kissed those eyebrows that arched and furrowed and drove her up the wall. She kissed those lids
that hid the eyes that were her undoing. She kissed that sharp, snooty, disdainful nose. She kissed
the high cheekbones that would be stained with colour when he got drunk and flirted with her. She
kissed the point of his chin. She kissed the corners of his mouth that quirked up and pulled down
and formed tiny, nail-mark like brackets when he grinned his widest.

He caught her lips and kissed her properly. She began rocking into him – still slow, still
smouldering. Their mouths joined and came apart with the motion.
 Slow, slow, then not so slow. The soreness faded. Desperation rekindled. Not slow at all and he met
every rise and fall. They were moving, breathing hard, hands roaming; but once again, to
Hermione, they were the static centre of the universe. Everything around them rattled.

It shook.

Whirled.

Chapter End Notes

1. “...such a goose”: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.

2. “Droll thing life is…”: Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.
3. “You have no business to be incorrigible,”: A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.
4. Stańczyk, Jan Matejko.
5. “He shall never know I love him…”: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
6. “Her active living was suspended…”: Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence.
7. “O Rose…”: The Sick Rose by William Blake.
8. “Behold the groves that shine…”: Winter - The Fourth Pastoral, or Daphne by Alexander
Pope.
9. “Tyger Tyger, burning bright,”: The Tyger, by William Blake.
 Eighty-Seven
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Light blistered over her eyelids. That meant she had she forgotten to darken her curtains and slept
in far too late.

Wake up, Hermione.

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace —

Wake up.

She pulled the covers over her head. Her eyelashes were stuck together. She rubbed at them,
groaning, and pulled her legs in a stretch that sent a shiver up her sore, naked body.

Naked.

Body.

Her eyes flew open and she was very, very awake. She stopped moving. Stopped breathing.

She strained her ears for the sound of another person’s breathing. She glanced down at the mattress,
(moving just her eyes,) to see if it looked like there was a heavier weight on the other side.

Fuck.

She couldn’t tell. And she couldn’t.

Just couldn’t.
Handle the overwhelming psychosomatic turmoil.
That.
Was happening.

Bracing herself didn’t feel adequate enough. She needed a full body armour. She closed her eyes as
she slowly turned. When she opened them, she saw the other side of her bed, rumpled and slept in,
decidedly empty.

Her breath returned in painful fits and starts. She reached out and touched the wrinkles that he had
carved into the sheets.

Her whole body was sore and a sickened feeling was stealing over it. She settled her feet onto the
ground, and there were her stilettos, right where he had dropped them after peeling them off her
feet. Her dressing gown was all the way across the room, near the balcony doors, where he had
hurled it. It was collecting sunbeams that streamed in through the undarkened curtains. Hermione
summoned it and pulled it on. Warm. She flinched.

Moving into the hall, she saw the rest of her clothes. Her top lay by the coat rack where he had
flung it over his shoulder. Skirt and knickers were bunched up by the wall where he had dragged
them down her legs. Beaded bag was by the door where she had pushed off his shirt and coat; his
shirt and coat that were gone.

She ventured woodenly into the living room. Empty. Silent. There was a dusting of floo powder
around the hearth. Like moss on stone. A little trail of mouldy breadcrumbs.

She felt numb. Her walk felt different; awkward and unlike her own.

His tongue slid against hers and she felt herself being redesigned, reforged.

Back in the bedroom, she stood naked in front of the mirror, trying to find herself. Her hair, his
hands had been in. Her skin, he had touched, kissed, licked, bitten, god.
There was a shallow scrape by her hipbone where his nails had dug in. There was a red spot on her
right breast, and one on the left side of her neck, right over the mole.

An embellishment.

She shuffled closer to the mirror and peered at her face.

There’s another one here, you know? It’s tiny; barely even visible.

She stepped back.

This is not I. I had no body once–

only what served my need to laugh and run—

And she looked away from the mirror and down at her feet, from where he’d stared up at her.

It was nine-fifty a.m. Hermione went to have a shower.

It was ten-fifteen a.m.

Hermione slathered lotion on her skin, then stood with her wand for a whole minute before
deciding against fading the marks he had left. The visible ones were small anyway, compared to the
invisible, indelible, all encompassing ones that she could do nothing about. She couldn’t erase the
feeling of him moving inside her…

Shiver.

She wrapping the gown back around herself. She tossed last night’s clothes in a heap on the floor
by the dressing table; the unexciting knickers being the cherry on top.

With hope that arose even after strictly telling it not to, Hermione searched every window for a
glimpse of Rodion, then the whole flat for a note. She even looked in the kitchen cupboard. Accio
Draco’s note would lead to a small swarm of them rushing towards her. Maybe if she tried Accio
Draco’s note that he wrote this morning before fleeing …

Nothing.

She’d told hope to stay away.

She returned to bed, sneering at the stupid knickers as she passed them. She curled up on the side
he’d slept on, pulling her knees to her chest and pressing her face into the pillow. Yes. There he
was. That was him. Embedded in the threads.

It was ten-fifty-five a.m.

Hermione woke up for a second time, hot and sweaty.

Perfect, she felt perfect, he was perfect. She clamped her hands around his neck and pulled him
into an artless, desperate kiss.

She rolled back to the other side of the bed and stared at the ceiling. She’d had a rigid schedule for
the day – get an early start, begin planning for all the meetings that lay ahead, finish Clementia’s
case report, and get started on her forward for the FSA newsletter.

To hell with it all.

The starry film that had lain over her eyes last night was now wrapped tight around her brain like a
fishing net. She needed to unravel it or she would never be able to move. She closed her eyes and
saw him looking utterly bewildered. Eyes muzzy, brow furrowed, lips reddened —

She genuinely couldn’t believe he’d just gone without so much as an awkward goodbye. Maybe…
maybe he would… come back? Now? …Now?
Her head lifted to look at the door. As it fell back down, she glanced at the bland knickers.

Had he been drunk? Was she his Terry?

But he’d sat with one glass all night, because he had to –

Abu Dhabi.

Right.

He left the country without telling her.

God, she felt numb.

Why the everloving fuck are you holding back?

This was why.

It was eleven-ten a.m.

Hermione was lying across the bed, on her stomach, legs in the air, staring out through the balcony
doors. Fog was building, cutting short the brief hours of morning sunlight.

As hard as they tried, the powerful triumvirate of Assuetude, Self-sabotage, and Insecurity could
not establish their rule. Simply put, Hermione was unable to truly believe that she was a reckless
impulse, an indiscretion, a Terry.

He had wanted her to kiss him. She saw it through the disaster area that her head had been the last
week. He would’ve let her kiss him on the banks of the Thames.

He would’ve let her draw him away from the Burrow.

She could have kissed him in her study, she could have kissed him in his sitting room.

He chased after her to get her to kiss him.

He basically told her to kiss him.

She had kissed him and…

Fucking toppling dominoes.

She had kissed him and there was no stopping the rest of it.

Not a chance.

And he…

Fingers digging into her. A groan. A gruff oath. Are you going to invite me in?

It hadn’t been reckless, nor an impulse.

The question remained if he wanted it to happen again, or if slipping away without telling her was
the answer to that.

Maybe he just didn’t think about it – her – at all. Maybe he didn’t have the energy to deal with it –
her – that early in the morning. Those things wouldn’t exactly be out of character.

Maybe… maybe… there was regret.

Maybe she was hungry.

She climbed out of bed, glaring at the ugly knickers as she passed.

It was eleven-thirty-five a.m.

Hermione sat up against the headboard, right next to where Draco had sat, drinking his glass of
water and zapping her short-lived, bathroom-mirror-generated clarity. There was a plate of jam
slathered toast and pear slices on her lap, and a miniature unicorn jumping over her crossed ankles.

Regret, after a fashion.

Here’s how it was supposed to have happened: In a perfect, light, good-humoured moment, she
would have said, “Draco, I love you. Shall we discuss the intricacies of this monumental
development?”

Everything would have been clear and straightforward. He wouldn’t return the depth of her
sentiment, but he’d definitely want to kiss her.

They could have done that.

They did do that.

So much of it. Not enough of it.

The last bit of toast went into her mouth and she stretched out to put the plate on the nightstand.
Her eyes got caught on the hideous knickers.

It was twelve p.m.

Hermione lay flat on her back with her eyes closed and the phantom weight of the most ruinous
young man on top of her. His phantom skin was warm and lovely against hers. His elbows
bracketed her head, his phantom lips parted hers. Phantom licks, phantom touches, phantom teeth
mapped her body. Then a phantom length pushed into her and her back arched just from the
memory.

When she opened her eyes, they were flooded with tears.

How could he have simply left? He reforged and redesigned her, moulded her to him, powdered her
bones, made marks on her skin, and imprints on her bed, and……

Gone.

With her faculties overpowered, she hadn’t held back at all. Spread under him, melted into him,
told him yes, and yes, and yes, held his face and kissed every treasured feature…

She rolled onto her side.

Everything blurred.

Those unsightly knickers.

It wasn’t fair.

*
It was twelve-thirty-five p.m.

Hermione was sitting with her arms around her legs and her chin on her knees. There were salty
tracks on her cheeks but her eyes were dry. It was a posture that suggested timidity, but she was
brimming with determination.

She wasn’t going to let it play out this way. He wasn’t allowed to scarper off to another bloody
country.

But that gave her time to plan.

At that moment, the only strategy she had come up with was bursting into his room on the very
evening that he returned, brandishing her wand and hissing with indignation. He didn’t stand a
chance against her rage and spells.

And then she would kiss him again. If he allowed it.

She tilted her head and wiped her cheek on her knee.

One thing she was sure of: She would not be able to function if last night didn’t go beyond last
night. It would be a heartbreak that she would not recover from.

No, she couldn’t allow that.

She ought to go to Kingsley’s home and demand a portkey to The Empty Quarter.

She flopped onto her side. Closed her eyes.

He broke away, panting, eyes darting between hers. His voice was deep and gruff as he began to
say, “Can I–”

Come back. Please, please, please come back.

She opened her eyes and saw the knickers.

The abhorrent, contemptible, insipidly modest, offensively uninspiring, anaemically pastel,

revoltingly pink, cotton knickers.

Hermione lifted her hand and banished them from existence, like she’d banished that glass of water
before tensing on the balls of her feet and leaping at —

She leapt off the bed and pulled away the dressing gown. She dressed carelessly; stupid powder
blue cotton bra, stupid black cotton knickers, socks, trousers, shirt, jumper, jacket, muffler…

…Boots.
…A hat.

Nothing matched.

She marched out of the door.

In the lift, she was reunited with her coat. It sat rumpled in a corner, where he had let it fall.
Between then and now, as shoe prints made evident, someone had stood on it. Hermione picked it
up, marched back to her flat, opened the door, threw it in, and shut the door.

A little more marching, an apparition, and a lot more marching later, she found herself staring up at
the Queen of Time, towering over the entrance of Selfridges. That could’ve been her, if she knew
how to slay the Spectre.

(O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.)

She didn’t waste Time wandering like she would have if mum was with her. She went straight to
the lingerie department.

Row after row of lace, silk, organza, net… cotton; with colours aplenty.

She picked the ones that she liked best, (ignoring the padded and push-up cups that were telling her,
you could do with some help, dear). They weren’t exactly cheap. She didn’t exactly care.

A dark blue balconette with scalloped trims along the cups and band, and matching knickers that
had little bows on the sides.
A strapless bra of cream satin overlaid with black lace, and matching French knickers.
An olive green bralette that was only lace, and matching knickers that were much the same.
A purple bra with a deep vee, and matching high-leg knickers.
Her favourite was one that also lodged a lump in her throat – A burgundy set covered in roses.

She went to pay and the woman at the desk upheld a look of professional disinterest. Then she was
back out in the icy winter gloom.

Two-twenty p.m.

It was only after she’d apparated to Diagon that she wondered why she’d gone there. Sure, she
wanted a drink, but the thought of Finnigan’s and everyone she’d find within was unbearable.

It was two-forty-five p.m. Hermione was home. Three p.m. She was back in bed with a subpar hot
toddy. Three-thirty p.m. She went for a second. Four p.m. The sun was gone; she had all lamps
blazing because the darkened bedroom was making her cry. Four-fifteen. She finished a third toddy.
Four-seventeen. She pressed her face into the Draco-scented pillow.
It was almost… she couldn’t stand it… too much… don’t stop.

The end crashed around her like brilliant, brilliant agony to the tune of his lilting groan.

He kissed her as he pulled out, kissed her as spells were cast, kissed her as they righted themselves
in her bed.

He kept kissing her — or she kept kissing him — Holding his face — his hands in her hair – hers on
his chest — a pause — his eyes were opals.

Somnolence seeped in through the walls.

Six a.m. Sunday.

She ran till her chest was ballooning with gasps. She huffed and panted, bent over with her hands
against her knees.
Behind closed eyes she saw sunlight glinting over dancing waves and sand beneath her feet. With
opened eyes she saw fog coiling around tired trees.

Hermione straightened and began to walk. The Spectre of Time trailed behind her.

But what was life if not a constant spate of dying? Each second marked its own death. Each death
was marked by the footfalls of the Spectre; by the beat of her pulse.

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

It only stopped when she was with Draco.

Perhaps that’s all that love was: When someone took your heart in their hands and stilled the
incessant death knell. She had, as always, needlessly overcomplicated the notion.

The fog was so dense, eating up the landscape like Devouring Time.

Where can we live but days?

Hermione and the Spectre kept walking. In circles, of course.

Always circles.

It was seven-fifteen a.m.

Hermione sat at her table with a bowl of porridge and newspapers.

In the wizarding world, fourteen criminals – all Death Eaters or Snatchers – had been hospitalised
after a disgruntled Azkaban guard put Doxy eggs in their meals. Lucius Malfoy was among them.
They’d been cured and the guard arrested.

In the muggle world, the NHS was in crisis. The first full-blown flu epidemic since 1989.

In Hermione’s world, there was only loneliness.

She looked at Draco’s armchair.

It was eight-thirty a.m.

Owls began frequenting her windows, bearing responses from some of the establishments she had
written to. Hermione sat with them and a calendar, and the week ahead began taking shape before
her.

She was going to be wildly busy. Good.

Her pen hovered over Friday, the 14th of January.

Draco would return that night. She wrote, Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws.

It was twelve p.m.

Hermione sat with a blank parchment, trying to find words of sapience and inspiration. She
pottered into the bedroom and changed her bedding… but kept the Draco-scented pillow as it was.

It was six p.m.

The parchment was still blank, but Clementia’s case report was complete, and Hermione had
penned confirmation letters to all that had proposed a time for meeting. She pulled on a coat – not
the same one as the night. That she had cleaned and put away.

She owled the letters and apparated to her hillock.

Light snow, dark sky. There was a time when every window of the Burrow would light up when the
sun set. That night, only the kitchen and sitting room windows glowed.

Screaming rose in volume as she neared the back garden. Mrs Weasley and Fleur were at it again.

“Hope you aren’t hungry,” said a disembodied voice.

She jumped out of her skin.

Low laughter led her to the fallen log where Ron was sitting, smoking. With a hand on her chest
and a glare, she approached the spot next to him and sat.

“How long has it been going on today?”

“Only about fifteen minutes so far. We have a long evening ahead of us.” Ron sighed. “I know it’s
her first grandchild, but I wish she’d lay off.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed, “Although… you can see why she’d have become even more
overprotective… after…”

Ron blew green smoke into the air.

“You’ve started smoking too?”

“Nah. Theo left me one to recover from the shop. Place is bonkers on the weekend. Want a drag?”

“Sure, why not.”

Soon enough, green smoke surrounded them, muting the ruckus blaring out of the house.

“Robards is going to let me take the lead on an operation tomorrow.”

“Ron, that’s incredible!”

He turned red and passed the spliff to her. “It’s not that much of a big deal. There’s a bunch of
muppets minting fake galleons and I’ve to root them out, find their hideout…”

“That does sound like a bit of a big deal,” she said.

“It isn’t. They aren’t good fakes, see? So Robards reckoned it’ll be good practice for a junior auror.
I was sure he’d pick Harry, but… well. I got the owl. He said I have a special talent for strategy,
and that I can think on my feet.”

“It’s true,” Hermione smiled.

“Right. So… um, how’s the house-elf thing getting on?”

“Oh, fine.”

Not. But she didn’t elaborate. She could tell Ron had been bursting to tell his news over dinner…
dinner that had been soured and overtaken by other things.

“Tell me more about the case. How do you plan to tackle it?”

His face split into a huge grin.

“Well, so…”
Seven-thirty a.m. Monday.

Hermione wore the burgundy rose set.

She was on her feet almost the entire day, starting with an inability to stay still while she redrafted
the Elf Contract with Ben and Bickie. Pacing in that tiny office, she tried to contain her agitation
while they scrapped point after point.

Cold bones all day. The Spectre’s hand stayed on her shoulder.

She stood for an hour by Kathy’s desk while they exchanged notes on Clementia’s case.

“Did you attend the party last night?” Kathy asked absently.

“What party?”

“Ellington and Speight’s engagement party.”

It took her some time to remember who they were.

“No. You didn’t either?”

Kathy looked at her like she was mad. “The REPTILEs are in a month.”

On her feet Hermione remained, in Flourish and Blotts while the manager greeted her like an old
friend and gave her an unnecessary tour of the shop, while Bickie spoke to the two elves indentured
to it.
She caught a glimpse of them on the way out. One was old, the other was young, with frameless
glasses perched on the end of his long nose.

She then stood by Takumi’s desk while they compiled evidence for Clementia’s case.

It really was no surprise she collapsed in bed the moment she got back home. Her face went
straight into the Draco-scented pillow.

The scent was fading.

Oh no.

She flew into a panic and cast a strong preserving charm.

She came apart with one final sway, her hands on his shoulders and her temple resting against his,
sighing right into his ear.

He kept her folded against him, tracing the dip of her waist.

“All right, Granger?” He asked. Strangled.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Then he further knocked the wind out of her by flipping them. She landed on her back with a gasp
and he pushed into her again.

Seven-thirty a.m. Tuesday.

Hermione wore the dark blue set.

She felt her soul die as they officially took payment off the contract. Bickie patted her shoulder and
that made her feel selfish, foolish, and ashamed.

“I think,” she mumbled, “we should start collecting signatures in support of the cause. Otherwise
the Wizengamot will think we’re a group of raving, batty–”

Ben ceased her diatribe with a simple, “Let’s.”

Barros called her in for an update. There was a bitter taste in her mouth as she recited the changes
they had made.
Her colleagues entered afterwards to discuss Shelbey v NRBC. Kathy took the stage and Hermione
stepped aside, into silence.

Her mind wandered… to Draco.

It wandered like a wandering minstrel with no responsibilities.

She was on the rack by the time she could escape.

And still, it would be hours till she could go home.

She sat in her chair and pressed her legs together, trying to force sanity back into the equation. She
was painfully, desperately, abominably randy.

She couldn’t say how the rest of the day went. But it went.

Dizzy, tizzy, lying in bed, but she didn’t want to touch herself. She sensed it would not be a joyous
relief. She would think of him and she would cry.

Yet the clamour for an escape was not beaten down. At such a low and defeated point, she found
her solution in a Weasley Wizard Wheezes product. Sacrilege.

Love in the Library – A sweltering, swotty romance. She opened the box and settled her head on the
Draco-scented pillow.

Half an hour later, she awoke cursing George Weasley and his mediocre magic. The daydream
hadn’t allowed her to imagine a partner of her choosing.
She’d had bookshelf sex, followed by table sex with a brawny, dark-haired Victor lookalike.

She felt horrible.

And there was a huge puddle of drool on the Draco-scented pillow.

It simply had to be cleaned.

Draco, Draco burning bright.

His arms around her formed a bubble more incandescent than anything Time had ever seen.

The sun. They were on the sun. Planetary movement carried on around them.

His fingers played music on her skin —

Seven-thirty a.m. Wednesday.

Hermione wore the cream-and-black-lace set.

His scent was phantasmic too, now. She imagined catching a whiff of it, but it was never actually
there.

Beyond that, and the usual tribulations of the day, she was also required to visit The Leaky
Cauldron. Hermione had little hope when she entered the dingy pub with Bickie.

She certainly didn’t expect a bright flash of light that made her whip up her wand – Flipendo –

Bozo and his camera went crashing into a nearby table.

A bit of hell was raised, but Hermione merely stowed away her wand and said, “Don’t ambush
people if you don’t want to be jinxed.”

Well, she drawled. She tried for that maddening, superior Malfoy tone.

“Right you are, Ms Granger,” Tom the innkeeper purred, “Please, won't you join me at the bar?”

The fracas settled, but Bozo didn’t leave. He slid into a corner booth and took another picture of
her. She suspected he had been paid to be there. It took just one glance at him over her shoulder to
melt the lens of his camera.

He left the pub swearing.

“Oh, dear…” Tom muttered, displeased.

There was something unpleasant about him. He reminded her of Igor from a Frankenstein parody
that dad loved. He sat her in the middle of the bar, under a low hanging lamp that was like a
spotlight. He gave one word answers to her questions about elves; his interest lay elsewhere.

“That Finnigan boy… he was your classmate?”

“Yes. We’re good friends.”

“Ah, such a privilege to have your friendship! You, Mr Weasley… Mr Potter.”

Hermione said nothing.

“I so admire how, out of loyalty, you continue to frequent a substandard establishment! I’ve heard
such awful things about their vivers. Now, I have the finest Scotch from the highlands, aged in
wiggentree casks. May I offer you a tipple?”

“No, you may not.”

“Tea then. The finest, most golden Darjeeling from the foothills of the Himalayas…”

She drank a cup of forgettable tea and Tom dodged her questions till Bickie came back looking
none the happier.

“Norkle only spoke about Finnigan’s horrible pub,” she reported.

Dismal day.

At the end of it, she tore off all her clothes, the pretty bra, and stood in the French knickers, waiting
for deliverance.

Deliverance remained undelivered. She dressed and went to the sideboard in the living room.

Her bar was down to two beers, half a bottle of firewhisky, and a bottle of gin that had been sitting
there for so long that she decided she would only open it once the contract had been instated.

She settled on the sofa with the can of beer, a blanket, and Eugenius’ book. There she would remain
for the rest of the day. An engrossing book would be the only thing that would divert her mind, (as
long as she didn’t think about who gave it to her).

During one of his travels, Eugenius found a mysterious lake, clear as glass, fed by the river Styx
itself. He looked in and saw lost souls that had fallen off Charon’s boat. They told him about the
immense crush and subsequent release of death…

The whole concept of being ferried down a river that separates two worlds wasn’t so different from
Harry’s version of needing to get on a train to go ‘on’.
Myths, personal beliefs, and self-proclaimed adytums stayed with you even after death. She
glanced at the Spectre and wondered where she would end up, when the time came.

She’d spent a little over half an hour reading when the floo flared.

She peeped over the book. It was Draco.

The death knell stopped.

She couldn’t believe her eyes.

He was there. Impossibly.

Wrapped up in his travelling cloak, holdall on his shoulder, feet encased in extra-sturdy boots, a
thin dusting of sand over all.

She scuttered up, reaching out to place the book on the coffee table. The blanket slid to the floor.
The pounding in her chest and wrists was pure wonder. Anticipation. Vitality.

He took in her appearance slowly, from the knot on her head, to dad’s old jumper hanging off her,
to her bare legs, to the outlandish werebunny slippers. Then back up.

Aeons and rabbits and light raced between their clashing glances. He gave a small enquiring quirk
of his brow.

“You’re here,” she marvelled in a whisper.

At that, his shoulders relaxed.

“No,” he said, “I’m… elsewhere.”

She laughed gaspingly. And at that, he smirked.

He walked to his armchair and dropped the holdall on it. With his wand, he quickly syphoned all
the sand away, then he loosened the clasp of his cloak and draped it over the back of his chair. He
ran his fingers through his hair, tousling it slightly. He bent, unlaced his boots, and pulled them off.
He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves.

“Have you eaten?”

“Huh?”

“Dinner. Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Good.” He took a brown paper bag out of his holdall. “I brought shawarma.”

The paper bag went flying and settled neatly in the middle of her dining table.

Once again, some magnetic force propelled her towards him before she had even a conscious
thought about moving. Then she was a bloodhound; her nose was leading her. And once she got
close enough to be able to smell him, she thought her knees would buckle under the intensity of her
relief.

“How did you get here?”

“Portkey,” he replied glibly, “then floo.”

She felt the awe in her own eyes as she watched him loosen his collar. “You weren’t supposed to be
back till Saturday.”

He rolled his shoulders tiredly. “The Sheikh decided to give us the full holiday experience to win us
over. Took us up on their grandest carpets, over Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Ras Al Khaimah, and then
to an oasis deep in the desert where luxury tents had been set up for the following two nights.”

“That all sounds very exciting.”

“Yes,” he remarked dryly, “Until I found out that only senior delegates get their own tents. Peers,
assistants, and researchers had to share.”

“Oh.”

“Six to a tent. Shared bathroom. One look at those niffy, sweaty men scratching their crotches and I
knew I had to leave.”

“And you just…?”

“Just?”

“Left?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t Kenny mind?”

“Do you think he minded?”

Draco was either very fascinated by the University of Bristol lettering on her jumper, or he was
staring at —

Suddenly, his arm shot out. He grabbed the hem and pulled. She inhaled sharply as she went
crashing ahead, barely managing to get her hands up and against his chest.

His breath fell against her cheek.

She stared dumbly at his throat - her hair came tumbling down. Then his fingers were combing
through it, twisting around the locks at the back of her head.
He tugged lightly, compelling her to look up. His gaze was ruminative as it tracked over her
features.

“You could’ve told me,” she said in a small voice.

“What?”

He looked into her eyes. She vapourised.

“You should’ve woken me up… let me know… before you left.”

He frowned. “I woke up three minutes before my portkey was set to activate. I dressed while
running to my room. I arrived at the consulate with my shirt unbuttoned, only one shoe on, and
in… whatever state you’d left me in.”

She wanted to say that he still could have woken her, but then, on envisioning the full sequence, she
found herself biting back a grin. What state had she left him in?
“I daresay you made a worse first impression than Kenny, for once.”

She smoothed her hands up his chest to wrap her arms around his neck. A whish of sheer
exhilaration passed over her.

“Not for long.” He let go of her hair and flattened his palm against the small of her back. Pulled her
closer. “He made a horribly insulting remark about the Sheikh’s attire not long after.”

“He’s entirely terrible,” she murmured, fiddling with the short hair at the base of his skull, “You
should get rid of him.”

He leaned in and spoke against the tiny, near-invisible mark at her temple. “I will.”

She shivered and closed her eyes. “You have a plan?”

“Working on it.” His lips dragged down her cheek.

“Have you put it on your to-do list?”

He kissed her and her blood was liquid fire. She smiled before she responded, pressing herself into
him. His lips were warm and dry, like the desert air. The kiss wasn’t like the last time, all blazing
urgency and frenzy. It was slow, intense, compounding, like a tight bundle of flowers gradually
unfurling underwater.
She fisted his hair and pushed up higher on her toes like a rising, blooming chrysanthemum, and
angled her head to devour him. His hands were globe amaranth flowers meandering over every
inch of her back.

Until he abruptly stopped. He pulled back just an inch, looking at her oddly.

“Have you given up on bras?”

She pressed a light buss against his jaw. “I don’t always wear one when I’m alone at home.”

“And when you’re going to nightclubs.”

“I could hardly have worn anything under that top.”

“Indeed.”

He pushed his mouth against hers once more, they stumbled slightly from the force of it.

Did he see how exquisitely she fit in his arms? How perfectly their lips slotted and moved like
they’d finally discovered their raison d'etre?

Hermione undid his buttons manually this time, with fingers unsteady. They slid open like orange
lily buds and she broke away from his mouth to latch onto each sliver of skin that was revealed.
Stippled kisses on his chest. Tiny footprints on smooth sand. She reached his trousers, unbuttoned
and forced them, and his pants, past his hips and let them drop.
She gently brushed the back of her knuckles across his abdomen. His breath quivered. Then she
took him in her hand and rested her forehead on his sternum so she could watch.

Could marvel at her fingers wrapped firmly around his shaft.

After all the harrowing phantoms, dreams, and daydreams…

“...oh, yeah,” he breathed, barely audible, distractedly caressing her back.

She stroked, tugged. Squeezed. He twitched in her grip.

At which point, he fell onto her so hard, they stumbled and shuffled backwards, till her legs hit the
sofa.

Draco kicked off his trousers as they collapsed, and pulled her lips to his.
She stroked him with the same momentum that had made him buckle, and soon, it seemed he
couldn’t keep up with the mechanism of kissing. Head tipped back, his eyes were closed, his brows
were deeply furrowed.

Completely captivating. The tip of her tongue fit so well in the vertical groove that ran up his torso.

He came when her itinerant mouth flitted across his shoulder, spilling all over her hand and his
stomach. She watched in rapt fascination as his jaw first clenched and then fell open for a low
groan to roll out.
She could have stared at him forever. Her own arousal was vicious and alive; but she would
withstand that agony for this. Her palm passed over his racing heart. There was a dusting of stubble
on his jaw like sand that he’d forgotten to syphon away. The barest hint of sunburn on the bridge of
his nose. She hovered her thumb over it. Blue veins on his closed eyelids were like the imprint of
an ancient river. She reached his hair and dragged her fingers through it like the wind combing over
shifting sand dunes.

He pulled her jumper off with one smooth motion and pushed her back till her head landed on the
armrest. A hard breath rushed out of her but he only raised a brow at her startlement, even as he
made quick work of her knickers.

Her heart was in her throat. Or stomach. Or head.

He sank to his knees on the floor and pulled one of her legs over his shoulder. He parted her with a
gentle swipe of his thumb; the sensation whizzed through every cell in her body.

“This is all I’ve been able to think about,” he declared gruffly, before pressing his mouth against
her.

Gentleness and slow compounding was a thing of the past. He just… he was…

Hermione would’ve gone shooting through the ceiling if he hadn’t had an arm like a barricade over
her stomach. Her heel kept battering into his back but she couldn’t help it.

Couldn’t.

“Can’t,” she whimpered.

She grabbed his hair to – push him away? Pull him closer?
Her other hand searched blindly for purchase, before landing on top of the sofa backrest. She
gripped it so hard.
His hand glided down her thigh and joined his mouth in earnest pursuit. Both methodical and
completely unpredictable.

And.

The climax built like a concerto. It hit like the snap of a whip. And.

She remembered the night she’d stood at the window of her motel room watching the circling flare
of the Cape Byron Lighthouse, and the brief, blinding moment when the light shone right into her
eyes.

Light reflected in his eyes when she resurfaced.

He was uncannily still. His mouth and chin were glossy; he ran the back of his hand over them. —
He looked like he wanted to demolish her.

Her hand slid away from his hair, trailing down the side of his face as it fell.

He pressed his cheek against the inside of her thigh, softly grazing it with his stubble. She jumped
at the strange sensation, her leg automatically tried to escape, but he held fast. Another soft rub of
his chin. A tiny bite.

Then he stared. For some time, he just stared.

But the moment she tried to sit up, he swung her leg over to the opposite side of his body, climbed
on the sofa and straddled her other leg. He inched forward just enough, till he nudged her with his
tip.

He waited.

Tense as a trigger.

She swallowed.

He pushed into her and it felt marvellously overmuch.

She saw herself lying pathetically in bed crying for this, saw eyes like opals, saw him as he was:
Looming over her, panting, sweat dotting his skin.

She grabbed the backrest again… and his arm… and she…

All at once, he slowed.

He leaned towards her, folding her leg as he did and pushing in deeper. He grasped her chin and
kissed her.

Slow. Slow. Slow. Heavenly friction. He made starbursts on her chest. She made spirals on his
back. She pushed his head back and licked a stripe from the base of his throat to his chin.
The sound he let out was decisive.

Reality ruptured. In that chasm fell his name in her voice. His fringe tangled into her eyelashes.

Draco sagged backwards, bending both her knees to make room for himself on the sofa. She
couldn’t move on her own. Her muscles were jelly.

He slumped in the corner like he, too, had wobbly muscles.

He was tired, it was plain to see. As if on cue, he yawned. His nose crinkled before his hand came
up to cover his mouth.

“I’ll just… come from the...”

He watched her as she pulled on her jumper and made a quick escape.

There she was once more, before her bathroom mirror. What day was it? She couldn’t even
remember waking up in the morning.

Maybe she hadn’t.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, Draco was right outside, holding a toilet bag and a bundle
against his chest, but otherwise unclothed.

“May I?” he gesturing with a tilt of his head.

“Yes, of course,” she muttered and moved out of the way.

The door closed behind him.

Maybe if she hit her head against the wall, it would start working properly again?

The paper bag on the dining table held four lamb shawarma wrapped in waxed paper. Hermione set
two plates. She sat at the table and waited.

He did plan on eating with her...?

She would have thought he'd have gone home to shower.

Quick shower? Long shower?

She bounced in her seat.

It was a quick one.

His walk was sluggish when he returned, with his hair damp and fragrant. He was in black joggers
and a long-sleeved grey t-shirt, very much ready for bed.

Whose bed?

For a while they ate in extremely dense silence; although Hermione suspected that Draco was too
knackered to attribute any deeper qualities to said silence.

She was going barmy.

He started on his second roll when she was just about halfway through with her first. They ate and
drank as if they hadn’t just —

“You shared a dorm and bathroom at Hogwarts.” She looked at him and quickly down at her plate.
Then… slowly… back up at him.

“Yes,” he replied coarsely, “I also followed a timetable, wore a uniform, and pretended to take an
addle-pated ghost seriously. I have no desire to do any of those things anymore.”

“Sharing a tent isn’t all that bad,” she persisted for some ungodly reason, “I went camping with my
parents a couple of times and it was loads of fun.”

“You’re comparing your parents to those disgus—” He yawned.

“Camping with Harry and Ron was bad. But that was for other reasons.”

“Being in a tent with Potter and Weasley would be hell even without the fear of death.”

He yawned again. Blinked hard. There was a slight redness under his eyes.

“You’re exhausted,” she brilliantly observed.

“Not at all. I’m ready to jump hurdles and run la–” Yawn.

He polished off dinner in two bites after that, and sat rubbing his eyes while she cleared the table
with some quick spells.

She could have the leftover shawarma for lunch tomorrow.

What was tomorrow?

“Draco?”

He pulled his hands away and blinked blearily. It was so endearing, she wanted to cry.
He drew himself up, loose and unusually limp, and approached his bag. She expected him to grab it
and leave. Instead, he walked past it and out the room.

They took turns brushing their teeth; him first, then her.

She crept into the bedroom with a light tread. He was on his back, eyes closed, pressing his shape
into the sheets.

When she climbed into bed, his eyes slit open.

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“If I jostled you.”

“You didn’t.”

She settled her head on the pillow, facing him. As droopy and tired as his eyes were, hers felt bright
and alert. She wanted him to kiss her. But he turned his face back to the ceiling, eyes falling shut
like trapdoors.

She wanted to kiss him so badly.

Would he be able to sleep with the incessant clamour of her heart?

Would he be gone again when she woke up?

Could she ask him?

Had he fallen asleep?

“There was an incident at Azkaban–”

“I know.”

“Your father–”

“I was informed.”

“He’s–”

“Fine now.”

“Yes. But–”

“Goodnight, Granger.”
“Goodnight.”

Nox at the lamps on the wall. Opaco at the curtains. Minuo at the tiny lamp on her nightstand.

In the darkened room, he was a man of marble.

“If you don’t stop gawking at me I’m going to put a pillowcase over your head.”

“Just go to sleep, Draco.”

“Stop gawking.”

Over the next ten minutes his breathing slowed and deepened. For the next hour, Hermione listened
to it rise and fall.

All at once, he slowed.

He leaned towards her, folding her leg between them. He grasped her chin and kissed her.

Darkened curtains, and a dark, early morning beyond.

It was the sixth morning of waking up with a racing pulse. Usually, the Spectre would be standing
by the mirror, tapping seconds on the surface with a finger that had no reflection.

She closed her eyes as she slowly turned. When she opened them, she saw Draco asleep on his
stomach, face turned the other way. His back was moving with the same slow, deep breaths that had
lulled her to sleep.
If hope, by nature, swelled, then relief collapsed. A bur hole drilled into her skull to let the dread
out.

The temptation to reach for his hair was a monster. She wanted to burrow into his side and bask in
the warmth that he had gathered over the night, if only just to confirm that he wasn’t a phantom.
But that might wake him, and he would leave.

Running didn’t work out. Her thoughts took on that responsibility so her legs decided to not bother.
She walked for half an hour, till she felt coated in frost.

Before heading back up, she decided to pick up some freshly baked goods. They could have
breakfast together at the very least.

Maybe they could shower together.

Good lord, that idea took hold of her.

As quietly as she could manage, she toed off her trainers, and unzipped her jacket. She entered the
bedroom and found him risen and shining, sitting up with the blanket still over his legs, the Prophet
on his lap, and a cup of tea hovering by his side. His brows rose at her entry like she was an
unexpected intruder.

“Oh. You’re aw–”

“No, I’m not awake,” he droned.

If hope floated and relief collapsed, tension most certainly snapped.

“Well, good morning to you, too.” She took a few more steps into the room. Stopped. Two steps.
Stop. “I don’t suppose you made me a cup of tea?”

“I did not.”

“Of course you didn’t. Are you going to the Ministry today?”

He casually turned a page of the paper. “Not a chance. Already missed out on a holiday, I have no
intention of enduring that pit of despair.”

“Right. Well, I have to go to work.”

“Of course you do.” he parroted, and took a sip of tea.

“I need to shower.”

“You have my permission.”

Deep breath.

“I think you could do with one, too.”

Draco caught on immediately. Within moments the paper was discarded, the cup was set aside and
he was standing before her, pulling her shirt over her head. She didn’t care about the slightly
discoloured, off-white cotton bra underneath anymore than he appeared to.

A trail of clothes was left on the path to the bathroom. She climbed into the alcove, all the while
feeling his eyes on her back and bum. They burnt her. She turned around as he stepped in and
grabbed her arm to pull her close.

She reached out and turned the shower on.

Hot water, hotter kisses.

He fell back against the tiles, she lifted her leg and rested it on the rim of the tub behind him. He
only directed himself inside her before relinquishing control and letting her set the pace. She’d
wanted to draw it out – an actual dream come true – but as always, found the situation out of her
control.

She saw the full spectrum of light within each droplet that raced down his body.

Panting and melting, steam and spray, she looked up and he pushed back her sodden locks with
both hands. Those hands then travelled over her skull, around her neck, and returned to cup her
face. His thumbs stroked her cheekbones as he gazed at her, and she wondered if he would tell her
that she looked like a drowned cat.

She blinked away the water that had gathered in her eyelashes and stared back.

A droplet ran down the sharp slope of his cheek and nestled in the corner of his mouth. His hair
was similarly pushed back and plastered to his skull, like it used to be, years ago. But that style
looked so different on him now; older and refined.

God, he was so attractive.

Striking, symmetrical, distinct.

She owed him more adjectives, she thought, as his thumbs slowed and his gaze dropped to her lips.

Beautiful. Compelling. Magnetic.

He let go of her face, reaching for her shampoo. On reading the label, inexplicably, he scowled.

“What on earth does Pantene mean?”

“It’s a brand,” she replied.

“What’s it supposed to smell like?”

“Like a generic shampoo, I suppose?”

“Which is what ?”

“I don’t know. Sweet? Floral?”

“Oh, I know it’s floral. But what flower?”

“I don’t know.”

Water and silence rained on them. Draco scowled more after turning the bottle around and looking
through the ingredients.

His annoyance decreased when he looked at the two bottles of body wash with their scents clearly
labelled. Why was he being a snob about her toiletries when his own toilet bag full of things was
within arm’s reach?

But before she could ask, he squeezed out some of the orange blossom one on a sponge. He turned
her around by the shoulders, pushed her hair aside, and began soaping her back. She had no
questions after that. Just an extremely extended shower that concluded ten minutes before she had
to leave for work.

They left the bathroom wrapped in towels, and Hermione collected their clothes on the way back
while Draco walked past them without a care. He ditched his towel at the foot of the bed and slid
under the duvet. A charm to re-warm and refresh his tea, a flick of the paper, and he was in the
exact same pose as before. It took every molecule of will power she possessed to cart herself over
to the wardrobe.

Eight-twenty a.m. Thursday.

Hermione wore the olive green set.

With her back to the bed, she had to bend in the most awkward manner to pull on the knickers, lest
she give him a very improper show. She had a strong suspicion that he was watching. It was only
after she’d put on the bralette that he spoke.

“Granger.”

She twisted her neck slightly. “Yes?”

“Turn around.”

She did, and for once she was sure about what he was thinking. He studied her like she’d been cast
in bronze and mounted.

Finally, with a great deal of severity, he said, “Get dressed now if you truly intend to go to work.”

She spun around and blindly reached for a shirt. He shook out the paper.

Clothed and ready to go, she stood at the foot of the bed, feeling just as naked as before.

“So…”

“There’s an article about you, here. Why did you assault a journalist?”
“Bozo is not a journalist.”

He grinned. “Do I have to ward your floo before I leave?”

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll–”

“There’s a box of muffins on the dining table. Please help yourself.”

“Is that supposed to be my breakfast?”

“Yes?”

“I see.”

“You can take your time,” she waffled, “I mean, there’s no rush. For you to leave.”

That definitely needed to be said to someone lounging indolently in bed. He laughed at her.

“Or…” she broached.

“Yeah?”

“Nobody knows you’re back.”

“...Yeah…?”

“You can still have your holiday. Here.”

Oh, he was really laughing now. “A holiday… in your flat.”

Shit shit shit. She squirmed.

“Well… I have plenty of books. Food. Tea. …A bed.”

“A proper resort.”

“It’s just a suggestion,” she said waspishly, anger emerging out of acute mortification.

She should have just said bye.

“A brilliant suggestion. What’s a luxury tent compared to Granger’s wee flat and concrete bed?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my bed! And at least you won't be sharing space with six–”

“Still sharing space, though. Sharing a bathroom.”

“Are you saying I’m as bad as–”

“At least I’d have had my own bed in the tent.”

“Oh, sharing a bed with me is a problem?”

He laughed harder. She wanted to die.

“I’m not holding you hostage, you know? You’re free to leave.”

“Thank Merlin.” He jabbed his elbow, hard, on the mattress. “Did you steal this from the Hogwarts
hospital wing?”

“It came with the flat,” she snapped.

His laughter evaporated. He looked offended. Hermione thudded out of the room.

The floo purged all her bluster. When she landed in the atrium, she was reeling.

Stuck in an overcrowded lift, she suffocated on sheer disbelief at herself. Essentially, she’d said,
Nobody knows you’re here. Let me keep you.

Thank god he just laughed instead of hexing her and fleeing.

Hermione went through the first part of the workday with an errant buzz in her head.

Around noon, Bickie went off to proselytise among the Ministry elves, while Ben was up to his
ears in old records, pulling out all cases of egregious House-Elf abuse.

Hermione returned to Diagon, to Flourish and Blotts and Leaky Cauldron, where she got two
attestations of support. Tom’s signature seemed contingent on her committing to frequent his
establishment over Finnigan’s, so she fed him a few lies.

There was a bench on the pavement a short distance away, outside a tea shop that was closed on
that day. Hermione cast a glamour on her face and thought about summers at home before the
world upturned.

Every year, on the sunniest morning, mum would don permanently grass-stained dungarees and set
about trimming the hedgerow. Hermione would loll on the grass and watch her.

You really need to get in there. Snip away the overgrown branches around and inside the bush. You
need to let sunlight and air pass through to keep it healthy and growing.

Hermione hacked away at the overgrowth till she found the older branches that reminded her that
he had been right there with her when the dominoes toppled. The question had been if he’d wanted
it to happen again; which he clearly did. There didn’t seem to be any conflicting notions abounding
when that went on.

[But what on earth was happening? What were they doing? What did not holding back mean?]

It’s important to not go too far. Who wants a boring, overly-manicured hedge? The most beautiful
gardens, Hermione, are a little teeming. A little wild.
The late afternoon saw her standing in front of a fireplace. Standing at the edge of a cliff. The strap
of her satchel was a vine. She grabbed on and swung.

The living room was dark and Draco’s holdall was missing. The hall was dark. The bedroom door
was framed with a thin rim of light.

She pushed in and found him sprawled in bed, wearing a green jumper and grey joggers, reading an
O level chemistry textbook. He had a wine glass in one hand, full of a rich, golden syrup like
liquid. His CD player and headphones were on the nightstand.

She stood at the foot of the bed, made breathless by the need to laugh and burst into tears.

The “Hi,” she let out was its verbal counterpart.

“Hello,” he replied lazily.

He waited, clearly anticipating a ‘you’re still here’ from her, to which he’d say, ‘no, I’m elsewhere,’
and she’d cry from the burden of all her feelings.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the glass.

“Dandelion wine.”

He put down the textbook and settled deeper into the pillows.
…Pillows that had definitely been engorged.

“I went out and bought this, since all you have is gin and no mixers, and atrocious whisky.”

She didn’t know why (she did know why) she told him, “Seamus gifted me that whisky.”

“That explains it,” he said coolly, “You got some three hundred owls today, by the way. I’ve
dumped the lot on your desk.”

“I'd better go have a look,” she mumbled and walked away.

She had to walk away, because the beam she’d been holding back was vehemently trying to escape.
She saw his holdall on the corner chair. His clothes from last night, draped over a coat hanger,
dangled from the handle of her wardrobe.

There were just eight letters on her desk. She stood rifling through them, registering nothing,
trying to come up with something reasonable to talk about... when his hands appeared on the desk,
resting on either side of her hips. Warmth spread across her back and his voice threaded through her
hair.

“Fan mail?”

He pushed more firmly against her. Her shoulders fell onto his chest.
“Hate mail?” he prompted.

“No.”

She tilted her head back till it was nestled between his neck and shoulder. His chest expanded as he
inhaled deeply.

“Then?”

“They’re RSVPs confirming meetings to discuss the contract. I won't have a free minute this
weekend, and the week ahead.”

He hummed, sending prickles down her body. She closed her eyes. One of his hands lifted off the
desk and squeezed her hip. Then his fingers danced over the stretched, taut line of her throat. They
tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Do you want a glass of wine?”

“Okay.”

He backed away so abruptly, she yelped and teetered like she’d forgotten she had a spine. Before
she could turn around and glare at him, he’d already left the room.

She went instead to change into comfortable clothes. For a mad moment, she considered stripping
and going up to him in nothing but his cloak. She felt the material absently while she stood before
her wardrobe…

Draco was pouring wine into a glass when she emerged in a jumper and pair of shorts.

“Shall I order some takeaway?” she asked.

“Do what you want,” he shrugged, “But there’s enough chicken Marengo for one wizard and one
kitten.”

Hermione experienced a brief power cut.

“You... cooked?”

“Don’t be daft.” He turned around. “I had to arrange for food as well, as you have nothing here.”

“Nothing? I’d left you muffins, and there’s bread, eggs, fruit, and instant sou–”

“Bruised pears and dry bread,” he sniffed, “As holiday resorts go, this one’s a real shithole.”

“I beg your pardon?” she exclaimed, “A shithole?!”

“Yeah,” he replied bleakly, “No food, nothing to drink, and my back–”

“A shithole! How dare you? And stop saying there’s no food! I–”
“Go ahead and fix yourself a dippy egg for supper then. But as I was saying, I’m sure my back has
suffered permanent damage from your mattress.”

“I told you you’re free to leave! I didn’t force you to stay!”

“Shrill, nagging, shrew of a hostess as well.”

“Shrew?! ” she sputtered… well, shrilly. He was so — “Why did you stay then? Why don’t you –
you –”

He began walking in a very distracting manner, came right up to her, and held out the glass.

“–go home if you’re so miserable?” she finished weakly.

“The hostess looks bloody gorgeous naked.”

Preposterous that that drove all her righteous indignation away. She snatched the glass out of his
hands even as her cheeks flared. Nose in the air, she settled in his armchair with what she hoped
was an air of hardened indifference.

And it wasn’t his armchair. It was her armchair.

Even so, she regretted her choice when he settled on the sofa, charming and sporting, one of his
arms stretched over the backrest, making the seat next to him look so incredibly inviting.
Hermione pulled her legs up and tucked them under her bum.

The wine was lovely. Dry, sweet, like spring in liquid form. Her appreciation might've been
apparent in her expression, but she was adamantly against voicing it. She expected him to come up
with another rude remark, even braced herself for it - instead, he pointed to the chemistry textbook
sitting on the coffee table and asked her about chemical reactions and stoichiometry.

In practically no time, they were embroiled in a discussion about reagents and reactive properties,
which branched onto potions, granting Hermione the chance to sit beside him. They argued over
the possible chemical reactions that resulted in a potion becoming what it was, where the
contribution of magic came in, and the potential for innovation if the two were better understood
and combined.
They zoned in on Pepper-Up and took it apart. Hovering above the spread of books, she conjured a
shiny blue diagram of a piperine molecule the best she could remember from her brief obsession
with Kekulé structures when she was ten. She knew balsam contained calcium oxalate crystals, and
according to Draco’s favourite antiquarian, (he did indeed have a favourite), bicorn horn wasn’t too
different from ivory; which meant it was mostly made of dentine, and Hermione knew a hell of a
lot about that .

They carried on for hours, the wine finished, and they had pages and pages of equations of potential
chemical reactions taking place in the time it took to brew a basic, controlled, unmodified batch of
Pepper-Up.

It was a quarter to nine when she remembered food.

Over dinner, she asked if the ICW really was considering repealing the carpet ban. He snorted and
told her about the utter washout that was the negotiation.
He enquired if she had managed to suppress her ego and make necessary changes to the Elf
Contract. She told him if she was governed by her ego, she would have kicked him out of her flat
for calling it a shithole. She went on to detail all the amendments she’d made.

“And I’ve to write a forward for the FSA newsletter,” she sighed afterwards, “It’s only five hundred
words, but I haven’t the faintest idea what to say.”

“How is that possible?” he countered flippantly, “Just be idealistically galvanising, or galvanisingly

ideal–”

“You are so annoying.”

He grinned and dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin.

“Writing something like that would be easy for anyone else," he went on, "Five hundred words of
zealous, bolstering bullshit? It’s a breeze.”

“I don’t want it to be bullshit”

“That’s the point. It’s always harder to find the right words when they mean something.”

Oh, she didn’t need to be told that . Sometimes words got welded to one's throat.

“But they’re right there, aren’t they?”

“Erm?”

“At the tip of your tongue, under all that creamy skin.”

Yes.

"Just think about that arsehole Millward. About squibs, witches, muggleborns, house-elves,
orphans, werewolves, orphaned werewolves, goblins, centaurs, fairies, muggle studies, the ailing
and indisposed, war, famine, droughts… and… etcetera. You’ll find yourself ranting in no time.
You’ll have five thousand words within minutes.”

Then –

Tiny lemon meringue tarts like clouds on a flaky buttery cradle.

She hummed on the first bite. Draco watched her darkly. Under the table, he dragged his foot along
hers as he dragged the fork out of his mouth. She caught his ankle between hers and ran a socked
foot up his calf as she swiped a crumb off her plate and sucked it into her mouth.
Later –

They were in her bed, stripped to their underwear and all over each other. The lamps were blazing a
strange orange like a sunset over the Savannah. Like the poster that used to hang in her
paediatrician’s office.

(She had been poised to snuff them, but he stopped her with a rough “don’t.”)

They were lying on their sides, facing each other, his tongue scraping over the lace covering her
chest. His hair was like feathers against her face. She was so aroused, she wanted him to peel her
skin off.

She saw fulgent, heated grey when he lifted his head.

A playful lick against her lower lip – He squeezed her breast, pushed his thigh between her legs,
and she crushed her mouth to his, kissing him till she went up in smoke.

His arm tunnelled underneath her and rolled her on top of him. Her legs fell astride his body and he
gripped her bum with both hands to push her down against him.

She’d kissed him far beyond the capacity of her lungs. She broke away with a gasp, whilst she kept
helplessly grinding against him. Her hair was everywhere, stuck to her face, neck, and drizzling
over and around him. He reached up to push it away, and a flash of red and black in her periphery
pulled her attention. She turned, caught his wrist to —
He wrenched it out of her grasp so hard that it jostled her off him. She slid to the side with a low
sound of surprise, while he slammed his arm – face down – on the bed.

A single staggered, heaving breath from her punctured the otherwise oppressive silence that had
commandeered the room. She was immobilised, gaping at his clenched fists and jaw as he seethed
at the ceiling.

“S–sorry,” she rasped.

His mouth thinned. He didn’t say anything, just looked so furious that she almost considered letting
out a long stream of apologies… but for what ? It wasn’t like she didn’t know it was there.

She propped herself up on her elbow and decided to just ask him what the hell the matter was.

He beat her to it. He - haltingly - lifted his arm, and, while continuing to glare up at the ceiling,
presented it to her.

The Dark Mark had faded to a dull red, and only still so starkly delineated because of his pallor.
However, it wasn’t the mark that held her attention for long; it was the black lettering that ran
alongside it. Printed in his handwriting, following the curve of the snake, were the words: This
thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.

Hermione touched her fingers to his wrist and his fist tightened.

Once upon a time, he was who he used to be.

Now, Recognition and Renunciation were both carved into the skin of who he’d become.

She stared at it while his pulse hammered against her fingertips. When she looked back at his face,
he was still fixated on the ceiling; his expression a tight mask of anger.

Was it really anger?

She wanted him warm and unfettered again. She let go off his arm and settled into the pillow. Her
cheek was a hair's-breadth away from his shoulder.

“I think Prospero would be a good name for you.”

His arm fell back to his side. Between two blinks, his stomach caved as he let out a long breath.

“First name or surname?” he asked in a croaky voice.

She smiled to herself. “First, of course. Draco Prospero is more of a tongue-twister than a name.”

“Prospero Malfoy is a ghastly name.”

“Not at all. It suits you. In fact, I’m sure there must be at least one Prospero somewhere in your
family tree.”

“There isn’t.”
She couldn’t see his face, but character was bleeding back into his voice.

“There should be. You can be.”

“It’s dreadful.”

“It’s elegant.”

“It’s poncy.”

“It’s poetic.”

“It’s horrendous. Can you imagine screaming the name Prospero when I’m licking your fanny?”

“Oh my god.” She buried her face in his shoulder.

“I reckon it's worse than Thorfinn or Rodolphus.”

“Of course, you’d go there,” she groaned.

“As bad as Seamus.”

She laughed and wriggled closer, till her mouth was at his neck. Then, feeling brave, she bit him.

“I’d manage,” she told him primly.

“Oh, really?”

He nudged her off his shoulder, and before she knew it, he was on top of her, wearing the sort of
smirk that did not bode well.

“Let's give it a try, shall we?”

“What?”

He moved downwards, till he was able to divest her of her knickers. She lifted up on her elbows
and watched him go.

She was all set to blurt out another what, but he silenced her with a firm touch.

“Now,” he said with glittering eyes, ‘If you want to come, you have to call me Prospero. If you call
me anything else, I’ll stop.”

“You’re–”

His fingers tripped over sensitive nerves and she whimpered.

“I’m?”

“You’re… serious…?”

“Absolutely.”

“What if–” Gasp. “What if I don’t say any name… any…thing. At all.”
“I’ll stop.”

“This is so stupid.”

“You said you’d manage.”

Then his mouth was on her and she fell back with a stifled cry.

He went about it like an absolute sadist. Slowing the more she lurched. The second he hit a spot
that made her moan, he’d pull away. And when she hissed “yes”, he stopped completely.

Hermione once again lifted off the pillow, ready to ?!?!?!

He looked back at her from between her legs, somehow still all lording and imperious in such a
position.

“Why aren’t you saying it?” he asked

“Ugh – why are you – Dra–”

“Ah! Wrong name.”

What a hellacious, damnable, prattish prat. She was suffering, and there he was —

She set her chin, widened her eyes and said, “Oh, Prospero.”

And promptly burst into laughter.

Her head fell back and her eyes squeezed shut. The utter ridiculousness of it all hit her at full pelt.
The mattress bounced as he climbed back up to settle over her.

“Do you concede?” he asked

She hummed in agreement, carding a hand through his hair.

“You do?”

“Yes,” she sighed, “You were right.”

“Right about what?” Muffled against her skin.

“Draco is much more accessible when in the throes of passion.”

He pulled back with a sudden loud laugh. Radiant, devastating. She loved him so much.

He went down her body again, and resumed taking her apart. He didn’t stop when she writhed, and
he didn’t stop when she groaned. He didn’t stop when she fisted the sheets, and he didn’t stop when
she reached down to push his head closer.

And when she said, “Fuck – Drac – Oh –”

He didn’t stop.
She had only done it one and a half times before. The second time was half because she couldn’t get
past how unpleasant she had found the experience the first time.

He was surprised when she got up and pushed his legs apart to make room for herself. Surprise
turned to incredulity when she roughly knotted her hair back.

Feeling how hard he was brought up the temptation to just drop the venture and straddle him
instead.

But no.

He reached out blindly for the second pillow like he was physically incapable of looking away from
her. He threw it behind him and settled back.

She took him in her mouth, just the head, slow and soft, and he groaned like she had done
something spectacular. It was enough to make her glow with pride; a glow that gleamed brighter
and brighter as she found a rhythm that had his hips jerking and oaths flying out his mouth.

She catalogued every little thing. He was so flushed from glorious, glorious unravelment. On one
forceful suck, he growled and an arm went flying back to grip the grille of the headboard.

She went faster. She trailed a hand into the hair beneath his navel and he took hold of it, lacing
their fingers together.

He called out her name. A warning.

She didn’t stop.

The tint of indigo on their skin revealed that it was just a tad later than usual.
Her eyes had opened to his chest. Her head was resting near his shoulder. His arm was between
them, ending with his hand gripping her thigh.

She was never going to move. Even if Fiendfyre were to ravage the building.

Last night, they’d just… kept going. On and on. She didn’t know what the time was when she’d
doused the lamps and faded.

She wanted to stay like this till he awoke. She wanted tea under blankets, a shared hot shower, only
to climb back into bed to make a mess of each other again. She leaned her head back to look at
Draco’s sleeping profile.

Eyelashes curling above reddened cheeks. Hair in a disarray and catching all the scant light in the
room. Every line was smooth and relaxed. Serene. Blurring into the hazy outlines of the nebulous
hour.
The scars on his chest were a scattering of unicorn hairs. She slowly traced the longest one all the
way up to his clavicle.

“Whassit?” he rasped.

A sudden fissure in farrow land.

“You’re awake?” she whispered, tracing the knob of his collarbone with her thumb.

“Pillowcase – fucking – head.”

“Excuse me?”

He grumbled and all serenity left his face as it scrunched up. He turned sharply, putting his back to
her.

She felt a moment of affront, followed by an immediate urge to cosy up to his back; to hook an arm
and a leg over him.

Alas, she had work. It was her turn to bring lunch.

By the time she returned from her foray downstairs, Draco was awake. Just like the previous
morning, he was lazing in bed with tea and the paper. She almost smiled before she remembered
the pillowcase threat.

He did smile, though, very self-approvingly.

“Shower?”

“You are not invited. I’m running very late.”

“I can be quick.”

“No. I’m sure you didn’t make me a cup of tea today either?”
“Nope.”

She flounced away.

…And left the bathroom door unlocked.

He did not barge in. Which was for the best, since it allowed her the presence of mind to erase all
the many, many marks he had left on her.

Eight-Fifteen a.m. Friday.

Hermione was supposed to wear the purple set.

Yet there was an internal vociferation that demanded she wear the one with roses. She wasn’t too
careful about not giving him a show, either. In any other situation, she might have been hideously
self-conscious; but Hermione was nothing if not driven, and he had forced her hand.

Scarcely had she hooked the bra and shaken her hair loose, when he was there, spinning her
around.

“This one’s very pretty,” he murmured, and she knew she had won.

Or lost, since she was very, very easily persuaded to join his mission. It was an enthralling journey
that ended with her standing bent with her hands planted on the mattress, and him pressed up
behind her, worming his fingers into the cups of her bra.

She came to her senses, pushed back, and slipped out of his grasp.

“What?” he demanded, gruff and impatient and sexy.

“I told you I’m running late.” She righted all that he had set askew.

“Riiiight,” he drew out, “As if all that wasn’t for my benefit.”

“I’m just getting dressed for work!”

“Do you usually get dressed in such a performative manner?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said airily, “I am simply getting dressed. If you find
that distracting, put a pillowcase over your head.”

He laughed. She turned around quickly before he could see her grin.

And once she was clothed, he followed her into the living room. When she went to grab her satchel
and robes from the study, he followed her there as well.

“Stop it!” she scolded after he blocked her way four times at the door.

“You tease me, I’ll bother you.”

She ground her teeth and barrelled past him.

He was only more determined after that, dogging her footsteps so closely that he kept toeing off her
pumps. She was forced to shove her hand against his chest and leave it there (so as to keep him at a
literal arm’s length,) walking backwards and sideways as she collected the bag with lunch for three.
He kept bearing down on her.

“I got you some rolls and a currant bun,” she barked, scuttling to the fireplace and looking over her
buffer-arm.

“You’re shit at organising breakfast,” he grinned.

She gathered floo powder in her other hand with a scowl.

“Fix yourself a dippy egg. Oh, and if you say the word shit with reference to me… or my flat… one
more time, I will annihilate you.”

“In the bedroom?”

She shoved him before pulling back her arm.

“Good bye, Draco.”

“Have a shit da–”

“Ministry for Magic Atrium!”

She stepped out of the fire and a giggle tore out of her. A woman in Unspeakable robes scurried
away with a nervous glance.

It was an entirely useless day, although it could be said that she was unfairly ascribing that
adjective to the day, when it was more pertinent to her. She was either fighting a smile, or
squirming and itching for it to end. She pictured him in bed again when she got back. The cups of
her bra were really his phantom hands and he was phantomly pressed against her back. What if she
hadn’t stopped him? He’d been so hard against her —

“Hermione? Hullo??!”

“...Sorry?”

“The statements,” Kathy said, very slowly, “Are you through with them?”

“Yes, yes. All done.”

“Are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine!”

A call for updates came at four and Hermione was steeped in horror that it would end up being one
of those days in which they’d be forced to stay late.
Fortunately, Barros announced her departure after just half an hour; ‘high tea with Tiberius’
beckoned. A heart-warming instance of collegial understanding followed, namely:

“I have so much left to cover for the REPTILEs,” said Kathy.

“It’s my nephew’s birthday,” said Takumi.

“Let's call it a day,” said Hermione.

She was the first one out of the door, while the other two were still packing up. After making some
long, progressive strides down the atrium, she realised she had forgotten her robes in the office.

She stopped. To hell with it. Resumed long strides.

She arrived home all of a dither, blinking off the bright green blaze from her eyes.

He crashed into her, sending her zooming backwards. His lips smothered her cry of shock, and the
groan of relief that soon followed. She grabbed his neck to keep steady.

Frantic hands were everywhere but not enough. Her satchel dropped with a whump. Her clothes fell
away piece by piece till she remained in only burgundy roses.
She ended up in the same position as the morning: bowed at the waist with her hands planted on top
of the sideboard. He was pressed up behind her, pulling aside the strap of her bra with his teeth.
Knickers were nudged out of the way to grant him access.

As quick and rough as his hands were, his mouth was sliding slow and searing from her jaw to the
point of her shoulder.

She felt rampageous, reaching around his head to pull him back by the hair, and twisted her neck to
kiss him. Still he kept it slow, twining his tongue around hers... till she pushed and bit and forced
him back into a delirium.

She spread her legs, broke away, and the only words she was able to convey were, “Inside… If you
will.”

He rumbled something that ended with, “...fucking will.”

His hands abandoned all stations to angle her hips upwards and he pushed in. Her arm fell from his
head and slapped against the sideboard with such force that her palm stung. It stung and it was so

She pressed back and pulled ahead in tandem with him, and leant increasingly heavier upon the
sideboard till she was down on her elbows and he was folded over her, moving relentlessly.

She clenched so hard she thought she had imploded. There was a crash inside her skull like a vast
edifice had collapsed. He kept moving through it, somehow; his lurching grunts painted purple
flowers in a void.

Her legs were torpid, useless, anaesthetised appendages. Her elbows skid on the wood bringing her
forehead to hover just a centimetre or so above it. Utterly bleary, she was; with her hair forming a
dam around her slumped head. Draco’s mouth was at the nape of her neck, pushing strenuous
bursts of air against her skin.

They did not move for aeons.

When they did, it began with him straightening, (a white chrysanthemum,) and her slowly spinning,
(an orange lily bud.) She tipped forward. The curve where his neck met his shoulder matched the
curve of her forehead exactly.

“You’re early,” he noted.

She lifted her head and simply replied, “Yes.”

“How come?”

She spoke the words as she thought them without taking a second to consider – “Brassy, brown-
nosing Barros is taking tea with tritely tittering Tiberius.”

First, he looked appalled. Then, he laughed like he was laughing at himself for laughing.

Bright eyes, and a post-orgasmic flush. The arc of his mouth was perfect like the arc of his arm
swallowing her waist, tethering her to him.

He let go, and sank against the sideboard beside her.

“I’m going home.”

No.

“Now?”

“Soon. My portkey from Abu Dhabi was for half six.”

Hermione shook her hair forward and began seeking her stuff. The crash hadn’t been just in her
head: They’d toppled over a tower of cassettes that were now strewn over the floor. She repaired
and re-stacked them.

Her satchel was right there on the hearth. Her shirt was on the floor by the sofa.

“Will you eat before you go?”

“Theo will have dinner waiting.”

“Of course.”

Trousers… Trousers?

She spun in a circle.

“There’s some leftover chestnut bisque in the kitchen. A kitten’s worth of it.”

She smiled thinly as she looked under the coffee table. Behind each armchair.

“Draco?”

“Her-meow-ne?”

“Can you spot my trousers?”

“I vanished them.”

Her mouth fell open while he uncaringly pulled up his joggers from his calves to his hips.

“Why would you do that?”

“They were in the way.”

“Couldn’t you just take them off?”

“Too much manoeuvring.” He stood with low slung joggers, hair tousled, and arms crossed over
naked chest.
“What if they were special?”

“Special… trousers.”

“Yes! What if they were a gift, or an heirloom?”

“Heirloom… trousers.”

“What if I’d been wearing my grandmother’s skirt?”

“If you were wearing a skirt, Granger, there’d have been no need to vanish it.”

“Ugh!” She began yanking her shirt on.

“Wait, wait.”

She paused. “What?”

He frowned at her shirt. “There’s no need for that.”

She wrapped it tightly around herself and stalked out of the room.

“All right, that’ll do as well,” he called.

Only the apprehension that she would look very, very idiotic kept her from covering her bum with
her hands.

When she came back, Draco was in his work clothes. Cloak and holdall were on his armchair. She
perched on the other side of the sofa and did her best to look blasé.

“Here.” He chucked a ball of black fabric on her lap. “I conjured a pair of trousers for you.”

She eyed them charily. “Thank you, Draco. I will absolutely wear a pair of trousers that you can
finite out of existence whenever your evil little heart desires.”

On cue, he waved his wand and willed them away. He smirked and dropped a paper bag on her lap.

“How about this then?”

For as long as she got evidence otherwise, she was going to let herself believe that he brought
presents just for her. Even if there was another little paper bag in his holdall for–

There was a woven wall hanging inside, covered in an intricate, complicated pattern of squares,
triangles and lines. It was as long as her forearm and ended in colourful tassels.

“It’s called Al Sadu, woven on floor looms by Bedouin women.”

Course threads. Black lines. Red, pink, white, and orange shapes.
“The colours,” she said, “They’re the same as Yam Story.”

Draco leaned in close and she held her breath. He peered at the weave, then at the wall.

“Yeah. I thought they’d go well together.”

He looked at her. She wet her lips.

She stood before the wall and moved things around till the two abstractions were hanging at level
with one another, with a line of small pieces between them.

Different expressions of different ideas from two women from very different worlds… united by
colour. Sweeping ancestral reverie and a bold embodiment of the desert landscape. Side by side, on
her wall. It was riveting.

She turned around, awash with adoration. And he casually sat with arms crossed over his pale blue
shirt, like it was no big deal.

“It’s perfect. Thank you,” she murmured fervently.

He shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

She was paralysed and she wished he would be, too. She wanted to make him forget about the time
and about his imminent departure. She threw a question like it was a dart and prayed that it met its
mark.

“Does music look like abstract art in your head?”

“No.”

That was all.

“Oh,” she said, and tugged at her sleeve.

(O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.)

She couldn’t find the words to ask him to stay again.

“I can, however, imagine what abstract art sounds like.”

He was speculatively considering the wall behind her. She returned to the sofa and sat much closer
to him.

“What would those two sound like?”

“You said that one’s about dreams–”

“Not dreams. The Dreaming. It's… it’s like a worldview. A compendium of cultural narratives.”

“Oh.” His mouth turned downwards. “Well, I wouldn’t know what to do with that .”
“I’ll ask dad to send some indigenous music, if you’re interested. It has a very distinct sound.”

He shrugged.

“Um, what about the other one?”

“That’s more straightforward, isn’t it?” he clipped, “I can disassemble it like an arithmantic
expression. The pattern establishes the rhythm.”

“And the shapes and colours?”

“The shapes dictate the placement and tone. Colours…”

He trailed off and she waited.

“...Well those ones there are warm. So, warm sounding keys. F, A, Eb Major…”

She didn’t know what made those keys ‘warm’ and wanted to ask. There were so many things she
wanted to ask.

“I heard some traditional Bedouin music in the desert. It’s played over chanted poetry.”

Did he like it? Could they stay in a desert tent together and listen to the music while she had her
head on his shoulder? Had he heard Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade ? Could his antiquarian find
a crumbling book full of old Bedouin poetry? Was he also fascinated by the impact the astrolabe
had on the study of astronomy in the Arabian Peninsula? What did he think of the Nazif method of
potion brewing?

“Wait here,” she urged and sped off to the study.

She was feeling a bit like she was about to miss a flight, or running late for potions with Snape.

Among her heftier tomes, was a book on twentieth century art. She carried it to her desk, and once
she had retrieved a post-it, faltered.

The first meaningful thing she had ever said to him was via post-it.

Take the tide at the flood.

Could she?

She picked up a pen. Stella brought her attention to a book at the corner of her desk. A Tale of Two
Cities.

What if…?

The parchment inside read, Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and
can't get it.
She laughed though she wanted to cry, and shook her head at herself.

On the post-it she wrote, Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

She went back to him and sat closer still. She opened the book and laid it across both their laps.

Tout de suite, she began showing him one abstract painting after another and asked him what it
would sound like. Everything from Orphism to Abstract Expressionism to Suprematism. She
showed him Pollock, Kandinsky, Krasner, Delauney, Mondrian, Miro, Frankenthaler…

He said Merlin, another ? He huffed with impatience. He said, This is getting boring. But she
refused to let up.

At Rothko, he got ponderous.

“What is it?” she probed.

“You remember when I played Ravel?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him. Then back at the painting. And she understood.

Shit, she wanted to go through the whole book with him. But his watch began to whirr and chime.

(You cannot conquer Time.)

He sighed in theatrical relief.

“Keep the book,” she told him.

Don’t go. Please.

She remained seated while he put the book with his belongings and shook out his cloak. She stood
when he fastened it around his neck.

Would he kiss her goodbye? If he kissed her goodbye, he might not leave. If he kissed her, things
would snowball.

He went right up to the fireplace, saying, “Well, goodbye, Granger. It’s been grand.”

“Bye,” she croaked. It blended into the sound of his fingers digging into floo powder.

He called his destination. The flames flared and turned green.

His heel lifted off the floor and he looked over his shoulder with a half-grin.

Say, Fuck it. I’ll stay.

 Say, I can’t get enough of you.

Say, Come with me and I’ll show you what a good mattress is .

He said, “Let me know if your weekend clears up,” and took the final step.

Chapter End Notes

1. Come Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot Of Peace, by Sir Philip Sidney.
2. “This is not I. I had no body once...”: Naked Girl and Mirror, by Judith A. Wright
3. “O let not Time deceive you...”: As I Walked Out One Evening, by W. H. Auden
4. “What are days for?”: Days, by Philip Larkin
5. “Devouring Time” and “Pluck the keen teeth...”: from Sonnet 19, by William Shakespeare
6. Young Frankenstein, directed by Mel Brooks and starring Marty Feldman as Igor.
7. “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”: Act V, Scene 1; The Tempest, by William
Shakepeare.
8. “Hell, it is well known, has no fury like...”: Very Good, Jeeves! By P. G. Wodehouse
10. “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”: An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde.

The unofficial title of this chapter is ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom. I want you in my room.’

ARTWORK:
Discussing potions and chemisty, brought to you by columbula and made by littlelundmark
 Eighty-Eight
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Hermione’s weekend did not clear up. All she had were brief intervals sprinkled scrimpily across
forty-eight hours.

During a morning of running with shivery gales propelling her forward, she fully accepted the fact
that she got swept up in things.

This thing of turbulence I acknowledge mine.

(Stone the bloody crows. She had swayed her hips while pulling on her knickers.)

The night before, moments away from sleep, she saw the inside of her skull. It was a gloomy
cavern, missing lots of things; most notably, a brain.

A small figure arose from the blackness. It was Hermione with her hair in a tight bun, dressed
exactly like McGonagall.

Who are you?

“I am Rational Thought,” said Tiny Tartan Hermione, “And you have kept me locked away for far
too long.”

I’m sorry.
“Are you?” Tiny Tartan Hermione asked severely, “You didn’t seem sorry while you were letting
that young man have his way with you all over the place.”

Well …

“I am meant to be your defining trait.”

Real, human-sized Hermione fell asleep and dreamt.

(She’d said, “Inside… if you will.”

Inside… if you will.)

Fabius Fortescue was the late Florean’s younger brother. He left Saturday’s patronage in the hands
of his assistant, and took Hermione to the backroom which belonged in Willy Wonka’s factory.

The walls were pink, brown, green, and yellow, lined with shelves that bore glass bowls full of
fruit, bottles of syrups, jars of nuts and sweets. In the centre of the room were seven humongous
rainbow-coloured vats. They had little taps on them, from which three house-elves (wearing large
cornets on their heads), were collecting cauldrons full of ice cream that they then carried to tiny
workstations.

One of the elves bounded up to Fabius and held out a spoon.

“Trixie mixed raspberry ice cream with walnuts, coconut ice bits, and cherry jam! Trixie calls it
Pink Paradise! ”

“Marvellous!” Fabius declared, “How about you let Ms Granger have a taste as well?”

It was quickly evident that those elves were sincerely enthused by their work. They had a mad
scientist sort of joy about mixing flavours and toppings and coming up with creative names. Above
all, there was no denying the mutual fondness between them and their ‘master’, however much the
use of that word soured the deal. They might actually have survived a discussion on Elf Liberation.

...One step at a time.

Fabius took her through a door behind the workstations, to his office which was no less colourful.
He listened patiently while she spoke, asking the odd question out of general curiosity rather than
apprehension. There really wasn’t anything for him to contest.
Hermione left with a large helping of a vanilla-chocolate-and-caramel-cobweb concoction called
Triple Trouble.

(She ate it in quick bites while pacing in front of her bookshelves, mentally putting together a list of
books she wanted to give Draco.

It had started as an attempt to let Theo feel like he was doing something to help someone he cared
about. It grew into a mission to broaden Draco’s perspective.
But now? She was picking out books that meant something to her. Books that had little pockets
containing pieces of her soul.

Stop gawking. He’d had to come right out and say it. Because she had been so transparently unable
to keep her eyes off him.)

The day was darkening. The temperature had dropped considerably.

Hermione stood under a bald chestnut tree. A plain, monochromatic landscape had taken over what
once used to be a garden full of poppies and peonies. In front of her were three gravestones. Remus
Lupin. Nymphadora Tonks. Edward Tonks.

If things had been different, maybe they would have been happy, at last.

She spun her wand in waves and a carpet of pink and purple geraniums spread across all three
graves.

Wind rattled over dry and brittle branches, and carried her away, past Andromeda’s house that once
looked to be of a respectable size, but now was completely dwarfed by the mansion that extended
across the grounds in the near distance. All turrets and windows, from where she was standing.

An elf met her at tall, spindly gates.

“Good afternoon,” he bowed, “Knoppy will take you to Madam Tonks.”

They walked down a wide path flanked on both sides by playgrounds. Small children were
tumbling, running, and frolicking; some hovering on toy brooms. There was a treehouse sat upon a
large oak, and an elaborate climbing frame nearby. There were swings and a merry-go-round with
every kind of dragon.

A young woman came jogging down the path. Hermione looked over her shoulder when she loudly
clapped his hands. Her voice, magically amplified, bellowed – “All right, children. It’s getting dark.
Time to come inside. In a single file, please.”
The interior was very plain; Knoppy took her down a hall of polished wood and cream walls, up a
long staircase, to another plain corridor. At the end of that was Andromeda’s study, a room that
offered no relief from the relentless austerity. The only burst of brightness was in one corner; a
small soft play area where a blue-haired toddler was chewing on a bright red foam ball.

Andromeda paced up to Hermione and took her hand smilingly. Her voice was low, warm, and
collected. “Lovely to see you again.”

Hermione smiled in return, over an outbreak of goose pimples.

“I’m sorry, but you will have to excuse me for a few minutes. We’re expecting a crate of Wolfsbane
for Thursday’s full moon, and I have to sign for it. Would you mind watching Edward till I
return?”

“Not at all,” she replied, keen on getting some time to compose herself.

She let out a slow breath once Andromeda had gone, silencing the clashing melodies that had
erupted in her head.

Such an irrational reaction.

The ceiling was plain. Even, white plaster. No fixtures.

She wandered over to a wall that had a row of photographs. There was one from Ted and
Andromeda’s wedding, in which her resemblance to her sister was even more pronounced in
features, but utterly lacking in expression. Next was a photograph of baby Tonks, and three more of
the family over the course of many years. One of Tonks’ and Lupin’s wedding, with him looking as
ragged as she’d always remembered him to be. In the very next one, he was happiness personified,
sitting on a bed with Tonks and a newborn Teddy.
Further on: Teddy as a toddler. Teddy and Harry. The inauguration of the orphanage. Teddy
standing for the first time. Teddy on a swing while Andromeda and Draco watched.

Something hit her shoe. It was the ball that had previously been in Teddy’s mouth. She glanced up
and found the child staring at her.

“Ball,” he said.

“Ball,” Hermione agreed.

She bent down and took hold of it – ugh, it was soggy – and rolled it back towards Teddy after a
quick scouring charm. He put it right back into his mouth.

As she lowered herself into the armchair nearest to him, his hair turned from blue to bright red.

“Do you know what colour that ball is, Teddy?” she asked with an encouraging smile.

Teddy said, “Ball,” and threw it onto her lap.

“Right,” she accepted with a sigh, “Ball.”

She lifted the damp thing with two fingers and rolled it back at him. But Teddy’s interest had
shifted. He rifled through a tub full of toys and came away with a rubber wand.

He pointed it at Hermione and said, “Soupy pie!”

There was a long silence.

“Soupy pie!” he repeated in a near-shriek.

Hermione put a hand on her heart and said, “Ah!” with all the stupefaction she could muster.

Her thespian talents were lacking. Teddy was not impressed, and made it clear by flinging the wand
at her with more force than she would have imagined him capable of. It went thwack against her
chest, and if it hadn’t been made of rubber she would have died on the spot. (Clearly she had a
different sort of talent for dramatics.)

Before she could offer it back to him, Teddy was waddling towards her. His hand fell on hers –
Ugh, even his fingers were soggy – and then he had half-clambered onto her lap.

She smiled weakly as he stared up, wondering if it would be bad to levitate him a short distance
away. Then he lifted a soggy finger and pointed at her… Face? Bag?

“Er… Yes?”

He said something. She had no idea what because she was more focused on the fact that he had
nearly grabbed a fistful of her hair. She began waving the rubber wand in front of his face.

“Look, Teddy! Look at the lovely wand!”

He stayed half on her lap, but stopped grasping.

“Soupy pie.”

“Yes, that’s a great spell! Do you know another?”

“Pie.”

“What about accio? Do you know that one? Accio?”

“Ack O.”

“Very good!” she gently eased him off her person and pressed the wand into his hand, “Why don’t
you try it.”

“Soupy Pie!” he said and chucked the wand over his shoulder.

Andromeda and Knoppy came back. Hermione jumped to her feet.

“My apologies for keeping you waiting,” Andromeda said as she breezed across the room with a
scroll tucked under her arm, “The Ministry insists on making such an affair out of everything. I
hope the little one wasn’t any trouble?”
“None!” Hermione carped, watching as Knoppy picked the kid up and carried him off with a gently
cooed bathtime for master Teddy .

Andromeda tucked the scroll away in a drawer then approached Hermione, who forced herself to
zone in on details, like the fact that Andromeda did not look emaciated and crazed. Her hair, brown
with a few strands of grey, fell in loose waves. She had those same dark, hooded eyes, but they
were softer. Had they been a little wider, they’d be like Narcissa’s. A bit like Draco’s. When she
smiled they crinkled at the corners.

“Would you like a tour?” she asked.

First they went downstairs, to the kitchens and dining hall. There were two elves in each room,
ensuring loaded platters, pitchers, and tureens went smoothly from one to the other.

“According to our records,” Hermione said, “You have six elves tied to the orphanage, and one
personally bound to you. Is that correct?”

“It is.”

The hall was spartan as well, long tables, long benches, tall windows, not enough lamps. The
ceiling was high, coffered, no fixtures. While they stood there, fifty-odd children shuffled in and
began filling the benches. One little girl with curling pigtails broke away and ran to Andromeda,
wrapping her arms around the woman’s knees.

“Hullo, Lauren,” she said, crouching to the girl's level, “Is everything all right?”

“You haven’t read to us in days,” Young Lauren accused.

“Oh dear, you’re right. How absolutely terrible of me. I’ll be sure to read you a bedtime story
tonight. What would you like to hear?”

“The story about the Cornish pixie’s birthday party!”

“Well, that is our favourite.”

She patted Lauren’s cheek, and the little girl skipped away.

Upstairs, there were rooms, double the size of a standard Hogwarts dorm.

“The older ones are at school, so two floors are entirely empty,” Andromeda told her.

Everything came in eights; beds, wardrobes, desks, and chairs. The ceilings was bare. And here, at
last, was a riot of colour: Children’s art and posters on the walls, a set of quidditch balls and bats in
one corner, butterflies on the bedding, ribbons draped over bed posts.

“It’s eight to a room till they turn thirteen, then it's four,” Andromeda explained, “We’re getting
some single rooms prepared for those who will be of age in the next two years.” Then she raised
her wand and said, “Construo Rectus.”

Walls sprang up around each bed, enclosing them in a small chamber.

“For full moon nights.” Her tone turned metallic. “There are mostly girls here; forty of the sixty-
three. Greyback had his preferences.”

This one's mine. Delicious girl... what a treat... I do enjoy the softness of the skin...

Hermione locked her hands behind her back and they carried on.

The common area was as large as the dining room. Armchairs, round tables, chess sets, cards, and
gobstones were scattered around. There was a wireless, a few easels and boxes of paint. Toys of all
kinds. The ceiling was domed and smooth.

The tour ended at the library, where the ceiling rose to a perfect point above them. It had six large
shelves, and only two held books.

“Thanks to Arthur’s initiative, we’ve finally found a very competent team of muggleborn teachers
to take care of the children’s pre-Hogwarts education. I also contacted some of Nymphadora’s old
instructors, and Draco reached out to some of his, so we’ve got a very thorough curriculum in place
now. But I have a favour to ask of you, Hermione. Draco told me you’ve lent him a muggle book or
two.”

“Oh,” Hermione said, and her ears got very warm. A book or two?!?!

“Indeed,” Andromeda smiled, “I would really appreciate it if you’d compile a list of essential
reading for the children here, fiction and nonfiction. As you can see, our library is woefully
deficient at the moment.”

“I would be happy to,” Hermione said readily.

She cast an eye over what they had. Some magical picture books, a few Enid Blyton’s, Old
Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, The Tales of Beedle the Bard...

They returned to Andromeda’s office and, just like the sky outside, it too was much darker. When
they sat on either side of her desk, Andromeda had deeper shadows on her face.

“Now,” she began, but stopped as Knoppy brought some tea. Hermione sat with her hands clasped
tightly while it was served. The elf left with a bow, and Andromeda continued –

“Where were we? Yes. I believe the floor is yours.”

Hermione brought out a binder from her bag, and began her well-practised pitch. Andromeda
listened without interruption, occasionally nodding and sipping tea. At the end of it, she reached for
a quill.

Hermione didn’t squirm through the first part of the ensuing small talk as they finished their tea,
but she got progressively, needlessly fidgety while saying the most innocuous things.

She didn’t like Andromeda saying Draco's name.

It was much later than she had planned, when she stood to leave. Knoppy was waiting for her, and
he opened the large study door.

“Hermione,” Andromeda called.

She turned.

The shadow of the door stretched across the room and sliced the woman behind the desk in half. It
highlighted the lidded, half-moon of her eyes and turned her hair black.

Hermione broke out in a cold sweat.

“Y–Yes?”

“I’d just like to say,” she said slowly, “even if I didn’t agree with your initiative, I would have
backed it. Do you know why?”

“No,” Hermione breathed.

“You killed Bellatrix.”

That face. That voice. Those words. Hermione almost threw up all over her shoes.

She backed out of the door, unable to respond.

No idea how she made it out of the mansion. Just tailing behind little elf feet.

Out the gate.

Apparition.

Home, and she did in fact throw up.

A change of clothes.

There was a scrape on her knee, nail marks on her arm, and multiple shallow cuts on her neck. She
wanted to erase them completely; she wanted no residues of that awful night to claim any part of
her body...

No scars, but residues remained.

An evening run to match the morning run…

This time she ran against the wind.

Just think about that arsehole Millward.

Yes, he was an arsehole.

Squibs.

She wasn’t a squib and she couldn’t write as one. She had no business agreeing to this.

Witches.

Muggleborns.

There was a larger commentary to be made, wasn’t there?

House-elves, orphans, werewolves, orphaned werewolves, goblins, centaurs, fairies, muggle

studies, the ailing and indisposed, war, famine, droughts…

She dipped her quill in the inkpot.

Bright and early in the morning, McGonagall greeted Hermione with cordiality which took on a
vaguely apologetic tinge when she went over the amended contract. Perhaps it was the guilt of
having played a part in blighting the initiative of a beloved student. Maybe she feared she had
tarnished Hermione's spirit forever. Maybe she’d realised she had been an impediment in bettering
the world. Any moment now, she’d say I’m sorry. I am so, so, wretchedly sorry.

“Hermione,” she said, “I hope you can forgive me. But I really must put my students first.”

Oh no, she was actually apologising.

“You must!” Hermione exclaimed promptly, “You always have!”

They parted on good terms, after an exceedingly polite discussion about the new and improved
Muggle Studies curriculum.
The Scamander Institute of Magizoological Studies was bound in mystery and a Fidelius charm.
The location arrived by owl, on a tightly rolled scroll that crumbled into dust soon after she had
gleaned its secret.

She apparated to a spot in the Norfolk Broads, on the banks of River Bure.

(On that spot she stayed for a while, for it was so very peaceful.

The water was smooth and reflective as a looking-glass. Thin mist hung low by the ground, drifting
between tall, dry, frost-blanched grass. Above was a sky without the city’s greyness. Near the
horizon, a windmill rotated torpidly.

The air smelt cold and fresh. She wished he was there with her, pressed against her back, arms
wrapped around her.)

After walking a short distance, she heard the hum of a protective shield and shivered when passing
through it.

She had been prepared for something peculiar. She had not been prepared for a ginormous brown
suitcase, as large as a six-storey building. It didn’t have any windows or doors, but the handle on
top had tiny chimneys on it. Spread around it was a lush, rolling lawn dotted with buttercups and
elm trees.

It was warm as a summer’s day. Hermione shrugged off her coat, and had taken only a single step
when a cobbled path unfurled below her feet.

A little further on, she encountered a bronze sculpture of Newt Scamander. His physicality had
been considerably enhanced, compared to what his portraits betrayed, and he was holding the
suitcase that the building was designed after. He was staring charismatically off in the distance with
dead metal eyes, and all manner of creatures surrounded him.

Hermione kept walking.

A doorway appeared on the suitcase’s façade when she neared and she wound up in a small
vestibule so full of hanging plants that they formed a green baldachin. The walls were completely
covered with ivy, save for a noticeboard that had photographs and newspaper clippings. Piped
music played in the background.

Hermione looked around for a bit, examined the noticeboard, admired the plants while waiting for
someone to show up.

Nobody did.

“Um, hello?”
Plants began to rustle and sway most alarmingly. She whipped out her wand... and squawked when
a white-haired Demiguise materialised in front of her.

It gazed at her with glittering, intelligent black eyes and held out a clipboard with a quill attached; a
from requesting her name and purpose of visit. The moment she had filled it, the Demiguise melted
away.

Minutes passed amid generic jazz. Hermione rocked back and forth on her feet.

More rustling. The ivy covering the back wall began to shift and slide till an archway was revealed,
and who would be standing there but one Luna Lovegood.

“Welcome,” she greeted warmly.

Ivy travelled along the passageway that they traversed, letting out random sparks like there were
glow worms nesting within.

“Did you find any lightning birds?” Hermione asked.

“We found feathers. Well, feathers without the electric barbules. A team is working on recharging
them.”

The passageway opened into a huge open space with a dozen crisscrossing flights of stairs, like a
tangled network. They went high up, all the way up. Ivy wound around the handrails.

“Would you like to see the rooms?” Luna asked.

Hermione agreed, not knowing what she was agreeing to.

They began to climb. At the end of each staircase was a door, and behind each door lay a different
habitat.

Room One was a dense forest that resounded with the cry of various birds. Hermione spotted a
Jobberknoll, an Augrey, and a Fwooper. A Golden Snidget whizzed by. Glumbumbles buzzed
around a strange black hive. Clabberts hung from low branches. Mokes scaled up the trunks of the
tallest trees.

Room Two was a marsh; muggy and dark and smelly. The ground was thick with moss and
Bundimuns. A family of Dugbogs watched the two intruders suspiciously. Skittering salamanders
were lone bursts of red-hot light.

“We have a larger sanctuary at Hickling Broad that houses all the aquatic creatures and the more
dangerously classified ones,” Luna said, “I could take you there sometime in the summer, if Rolf
permits it.”
"Oh, I'd like that."

Room Three was a craggy desert. A Thunderbird with bandaged wings slept a perch set upon the
highest rock. A magical shield separated it from a cave where two Runespoors dwelled.

Room Four was a meadow full of the most vibrant flowers. The weather was balmy, the air
saccharine. Horklumps popped up amongst the blooms, and fairies, pixies, and billywigs hovered
over them. Imps lived in a fallen, hollow log. Six unicorns and three foals capered in the distance.

There was a cheer, and then eight house-elves in aprons and rubber boots came running.

Hermione walked out with a bouquet bound in twine, so large that she needed both arms to hold it.

“Is Theo well?” Luna asked, displaying none of the discomfiture that Hermione would have in her
place.

So she responded with enough discomfiture to compensate: He’s well. Busy. The shop. George.
Cork. Things.

Room Five was a grassland. Jarvey’s popped in and out of little burrows. Nifflers inhabited one
large tree that was draped in trumpery jewellery. Diricawls flashed in and out of existence. Winged
horses marched in a straight line, led by a Porlock.

Room Six was a hill bathed in weak wintery sunlight. Luna put her finger against her lips.

“The mooncalves are asleep underground,” she whispered, “If you come on a full moon night, you
can see them dance.”

There was one tree on the side of the hill, and it was replete with bowtruckles.

Room Seven was a snowy landscape, and it was completely empty.

“It’s for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” Luna informed her, “When we are able to bring one
back.”

The eighth door opened into another ivy-ridden passageway. Past that was a quadrangle with a
ceiling displaying an imitation of the sky. In the middle was a pond with a single Ramora
swimming in circles.

Rolf Scamander was sitting on a nearby wooden bench, observing the fish and taking notes. He
resembled his grandfather; a thin face with dark hair that hung above serious, close-set eyes. He
looked up as Hermione and Luna approached and a gentle smile pulled at his features.
Introductions were made. He proved to have a manner as approachable as his appearance, and a
low, pleasant voice.

Hermione put down her bouquet on another bench and eased her binder out of her bag.

“I won’t take up much of your time,” she began.

“I’m not terribly busy,” he replied, “I’ve been trying for weeks to calculate the exact suction
capacity of a ramora’s dorsal fin, but Perseus here is a moody chap. He's been unwilling to
cooperate.”

All three watched the Ramora lazily swish its tail.

“However,” Rolf continued, “I don’t wish to waste your time. What sort of Magizoologist would I
be if I didn’t support an endeavour to help our friends, the elves? Luna, did Ms Granger meet our
gardening staff?”

Luna nodded.

“They’re free to come and go as they please,” Rolf explained, “But they don’t seem to want to
leave!”

“Who would want to leave an eternal spring garden?” Luna sighed.

“Who indeed! Now, Ms Granger. Where must I sign?”

“Your support will mean a lot ,” Hermione said ardently, handing him the binder, “Your name… the
Institute–”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Hermione. Rolf.” Luna was looking at her watch. “It’s half past one. Marina is
expecting me in the lab.”

She turned towards an archway at the opposite side of the quadrangle.

Hermione smiled and waved. When she looked back at Rolf, he was still watching Luna go with an
expression of soft wonder.

High-necked dress robes of the darkest blue: The set that she’d worn for Dumbledore’s funeral. She
brushed Sleekeazy through her hair and pulled it into something resembling a French twist.
Earrings, a bracelet, make up, and hey presto, here was Hermione Granger’s go at looking
sophisticated.
Had sophistication actually been achieved?

She lifted her chin and turned away.

Right at the junction where West Cromwell Road became proper, there was a tree.

Well, there was more than one tree, but the tree being referred to was the broadest one, behind other
taller ones. It had a prominent knot on its trunk, which when hit with a revelio, pushed inwards till
it formed a square opening.

Hermione stepped inside and the opening resealed instantly. Her first thought was to raise her wand
and panic, but she forced herself to breathe as the ground began sinking, taking her downwards for
what felt like weeks.

When the square reopened, she was left gaping and at a luxurious, brutalist cave bathed in milky
white light. Its uneven walls were made of unpolished white agate; large glowing moonstones and
geometric ice sculptures stood on pedestals along them. Silver chains and fairies trapped in crystals
ran all over the ceiling. (Execrable; that needed to be banned.) At one side was a pool and cascade
that looked to be made of liquid mercury. The reception desk was just an enormous chunk of white
quartz, and behind it stood a veela.

A deep, musical voice called out her name.

A fittingly dazzling man approached her, wearing robes of shimmering white fabric that contrasted
starkly with his skin. His braided hair was pulled back with a silver ribbon.

He engulfed her hand in his and said, “Welcome to The Ivory Grotto. I am Samual Adebayo, the
manager.”

“Hello,” she said inanely, before waking up to the fact that her hand was very, very limp in his. She
quickly remedied that with a robust shake.

Adebayo smiled. “Such an honour to have you here. Mr Fawley has instructed me to show you
around, and he will meet you at his office once we are through.”

She felt so out of her depth.

“Oh, that’s… well… perfectly fine.”

It was soon vexatiously evident that she absolutely was out of her depth; right from the moment she
entered an octagonal glass lift that took her even deeper underground.
It was the most lavish hotel she had ever seen, easily outdoing The Langham in Melbourne. She
was sickened, but also, much to her consternation, awed by the extravagance. The corridors abided
by the general theme - rocky, glowing white channels with rows of silver double-doors on each
side.

Seventy rooms and ten suites in all, of varying size and luxury, and Adebayo showed her an
example of each type. She met elves in two of them, one cleaning, one stocking a pantry.
(The Executive Suite was exactly where she'd have expected Draco to flee when he was being
hounded by the evil green alarm clock. The bathroom was like a fantastical mermaid lagoon, with a
cascade of mercury-like liquid ending in a lightly steaming pool. She could picture him emerging
from it, shimmering rivulets trickling down his naked body...)

Back in the corridor, she straightened her act.

“Mr Adebayo, there are a hundred elves here, are there not?”

“Yes,” he replied, gesturing back towards the lift, “One for each room and ten for the general
maintenance. Ten work in the kitchens, but let me assure you, they only assist. All our dishes are
prepared only by human chefs.”

Lah di da.

“You aren’t always filled to capacity.”

“We often are. Tourism is picking up again. From the first week of April, we are sure to see
frequent crowds. We also receive emissaries and foreign delegations throughout the year, and
we’ve hosted nearly every quidditch team in the world.”

“Be that as it may,” she said with great patience, “What becomes of the elves during the off-
season?”

“They are accommodated in the storage chamber. There’s honestly no telling when guests might
drop by, you see? And our restaurant enjoys steady patronage all year round.”

“I’d like to see it,” she said shortly.

“See?” He looked nervous.

“The storage chamber.”

“Ah.” Definitely nervous. “As you wish.”

The lift didn’t go beyond the lobby. They stepped out and Hermione was taken to a door hidden
behind a moonstone, that had been invisible till Adebayo gave it four taps with his wand. The
moment they stepped past it, they were on a different planet.

Murky brown walls. Dripping oil lamps with weak flames. They went down creaky wooden steps,
and at the base, they were met with a mass of eager elves, all wrapped in scraps of the same fabric
that Adebayo’s robes were made of.

They wanted to know what they could do, how they could help. Why hadn't the Master summoned
them if he needed something?
That’s when Hermione was introduced. Some forty pairs of big, round eyes looked in her direction.

Hermione Granger? Miss Hermione Granger. THE Hermione Granger.

She did her best to smile sweetly.

Their rooms which were crammed between shelves and cupboards and looked like dismal nuclear
bunkers with tatty beds and tiny chest of drawers. They were horrible on their own, but after seeing
all the mindless opulence above, they made her stomach turn.

Nevertheless, she complimented them on how spick and span they kept their space, and how well
the hotel was maintained.

It was nice to experience another happy parting with elves.

She gave Adebayo a sharp look when they were back in the lobby. He had the decency to look
ashamed.

“That is unacceptable. How can an establishment of such repute stow away its workers in such
horrible conditions?”

“It is not ideal…” he mumbled contritely.

“And it’s not like you’d have to spend a knut! Elvish magic is powerful enough to transform that
space. I can only assume they’ve been forbidden from bettering their living conditions.”

“They are not allowed to make any changes to the hotel,” he explained weakly.

She fulminated as the lift carried them down to the lowest level. It opened up into an anteroom that
was a museum for Fawley ancestors. Dozens of portraits watched with silent censor as the two
walked to the largest set of silver doors thus far.

“I should warn you,” Adebayo muttered, “Mr Fawley’s son, Mr Sullivan Fawley, will also be
present.”

“He requires a warning, does he?” she asked grimly.

“I’m afraid so.”

Then he knocked.

The door flew open as though somewhere, a spring had been triggered. Adebayo nodded and took a
step back, and Hermione entered.

She was done being taken by the swank and ostentation of old money. Her focus went right to the
man sitting behind an enormous ivory desk.

He was the oldest looking old man she had ever seen. His head was completely hairless, but his
ears had loads of the stuff. His eyes were dull and rheumy, and his skin was peppered with liver
spots. He was, on the whole, very shapeless, and crumpled like a handkerchief that had lain
forgotten in a pocket for years.

“Good evening.” His voice was the pitiful, final puff of an empty aerosol can. “How lovely it is to
meet you.”

“Likewise,” she said, taking his frail hand with as little pressure as possible.
“This is my son, Sullivan,” he gestured to the man standing behind him, leaning against a shelf
bearing many hospitality-related trophies.

Unlike his father who had embraced age with abandon, Sullivan was a man trying his best to not let
his show, masking it with unnaturally black hair and unnaturally arched eyebrows. His robes were
at least two sizes too small and that appeared to be deliberate.

He nodded coldly at Hermione’s how do you do, and watched her closely as she settled.

He made a variety of sounds expressing everything from disinterest to disparagement while she
elaborated on the intricacies of the contract. Old Fawley made low whistling sounds, but she didn’t
think those were meant to be a commentary of any sort.

At the end of her patter, Old Fawley asked, “But what is the need for all this?”

Hermione’s complete lack of surprise gave a theatrical yawn.

“House-Elves are your workforce. They deserve to live with dignity and be treated with kindness,
humanity, and–”

“But they aren’t human, are they?” Sullivan cut in.

His tone reminded her of Stamp. She couldn’t look at him without thinking about poor Tobbin
wailing and throwing himself at a table.

“They aren’t, but I believe we are. And so, we should behave humanely, don’t you think?”

“Ho ho ho,” Old Fawley chortled like Father Christmas’ great-grandfather, “I think we should
include Samuel in this discussion. After all, he looks after the day-to-day functioning… er, yes…
Scrippy!”

An elf appeared and bowed so deeply his nose touched the ground.

“Fetch Samuel at once.”

“Yes, Master Fawley.”

While they waited, Sullivan persisted with his impassioned arseholery.

“You can’t possibly be with the Ministry,” he scowled, “Such childishness has no place in the
government.”

“I will be happy to wait if you’d like to confirm the fact. The Ministry will be closed but I’m sure
Minister Shacklebolt will be happy to entertain someone as important as you.”

(She had come so close to saying impotent.)

“Are you not aware that elves like to work?”

“I am not denying them the opportunity to work. I am improving the environment that they work
in. Do you believe they like being at someone’s beck and call and enduring the most horrible
abuse?”

“The House-Elves at The Ivory Grotto are not abused,” he sneered.

He picked up a trophy from the shelf and buffed it against his chest.

“I’m here to ensure that they never will be.”

“The… er… difference in your lineage is very obvious, young Ms Granger. There are some things
about the Wizarding world you probably will never understand.”

“But I do understand the dangers of stagna–”

He set the trophy down very loudly, cutting her short.

He grinned. “I suppose we shall never see eye-to-eye.”

“I suppose not.” Her tether fell at her feet. “For instance, say… during a war, I would choose to
fight, and you would go off on an extended holiday somewhere.”

Three things happened:

Sullivan turned white with rage.

Old Fawley said, “Ho ho ho, you truly are as fiery as they say.”

Adebayo entered the room.

He proved to be a good ally, declaring that he would have no problem replicating a shift work
schedule for the elves, and that, as far as he was concerned, the other stipulations were perfectly
reasonable.
She then, looking only at the elder, requested he grant the elves permission to redress the cramped
and damp conditions they were stuck in.

He conceded, reached for an absurdly long white quill, and signed the petition with a shaky hand.

“This is ridiculous,” Sullivan growled.

“Oh, let the little blighters have some rights,” Old Fawley responded jovially, “They’re still our
property.”

Hermione bit the inside of her cheek.

When she stood to leave, the old man stopped her.

“I must insist you dine at our restaurant tonight,” he said, “Our chateaubriand is the best in the
country and goes perfectly with a glass of aged Médoc.”

“Oh, I couldn’t–”
“I insist!” he wheezed, while behind him, his son stewed with rage, “We can’t have Hermione
Granger leave our hotel hungry!”

At home, she had three-day old rolls, cup-a-soup, and a wilted rocket salad to look forward to. She
tried to project a half-hearted acquiescence.

“Samuel, take our esteemed guest to the restaurant and ensure that Walter takes good care of her.”

She gathered a proper gulp of air once she was no longer in the foul Fawley presence. No doubt,
there was a hint of hypocrisy in agreeing to feast on their fare, but Hermione decided to think of it
as a rare, noble expenditure of pureblood’s gold.

“Thank you for your support,” she said to Adebayo.

He nodded somewhat bashfully.

In an adjoining cave with a river of mercury running through it, was a restaurant full of silver-
clothed tables, floating crystal lamps, and tall vases of white flowers. People watched her being led
to a table for two like there was nothing else to look at. She pulled her spine and neck straighter
than they had ever been, fighting an urge to nod at all who looked, while repeatedly saying, how
kind of you to let me come.

After being seated, she could do nothing but glance around self-consciously, taking in the
beautifully dressed diners, the monotonous murmur of conversations and delicate clink of forks and
knives. Looking to her right, she started when she found Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass
staring at her from a few tables over.

A second later, all three looked away.

Food and wine arrived, decadent and scrumptious. A champagne and strawberry posset topped off
the meal.

And it was so, with a full stomach and a lightly wined-up brain, that Hermione followed Adebayo
down the lobby and to the tree-lift that would take her back overground. Standing in the square
opening, she clasped her hands tightly in front of her body, in plain view, and offered him a close-
lipped smile. The opening began to diminish. Conterum omnia crystallis.

Just as it sealed completely, she heard a loud shatter, followed by the fluttering of a hundred little
wings.

(She had thrown off her robes, let down her hair, and was lying in bed with eyes half-closed.

The Ivory Grotto seemed like the sort of place Draco would take a girl he fancied. But if hiding in
her flat and then scurrying away before Theo suspected were indicators, there weren’t to be any
dates for them, were there?
Let me know if your weekend clears up was not Let me take you out.

He’d taken Mandy out.

Every wretched occurrence in her life — and Mick Jagger — had taught her that she couldn’t
always get what she wanted.

There was more, wasn’t there? About trying and getting what you need…

She stared bleary-eyed at his side of the bed – he had a side of the bed – and remembered the way
she had caressed him, over and over again. His chest, his face, his hair. Obsessive, reverent,
possessive, and blatant.

What must he have thought…)

Hermione awoke an hour-and-fifteen later.

“Shit,” she hissed and tumbled out of bed, summoning a jumper as she raced to the study. She sat
behind her desk and slapped herself twice.

Once more for good measure.

(It was five minutes to midnight when she set the quill down. She stood up and stretched, bending
her spine backwards till it cracked.

Technically still the weekend.

Good thing she didn’t have an owl, because she would not have been able to stop herself.)

Dear Twila,

Here it is! I’m so sorry it’s taken until the last minute – work has been mental these past few weeks.
Please don’t hesitate to let me know if it isn’t suitable for your purpose. I know it’s shorter than you
had asked.

I am eagerly looking forward to seeing what you and Hattie have put together. My best to you both!
Hermione

LET US BE INTRACTABLE

By Hermione Jean Granger

At the end of war, there isn’t peace.

It will soon be two years since jubilant cries of “we won” rang across the nation, and they echo
still, through the present while we slowly continue to recover. The war left gaping holes in every
aspect of our lives as individuals and a society. But even after we have mended and rebuilt, we will
not emerge into an era of peace. There was no peace before the war, either. We have never known
peace.

Violence isn’t just war, death, and unforgivable curses. Violence is entrenched in a system that
continues to divide people by blood and magical ability. It is propagated with every instance of
miscarriage of justice, of discrimination, of being-alienation, and creature-abuse. Violence is the
denial of equal opportunity. It is the suppression of certain voices. It is the brassbound aversion to
progress in the name of tradition.

The structure of our society is anti-peace. The ones in power wield oppression like a weapon. They
use their deep-rooted ideologies as a shield while they continue to inflict harm on those without
power or social standing. Even a small display of bigotry is an act of aggression, and the utterance
of a single slur is an assault; they perpetuate the endless cycle of violence.

There will be no peace until there is equality.

And equality will have to be fought for. We must break down the existing structure with the only
tools at our disposal: spirit, determination, and integrity. We must be recalcitrant. We must raise
hell. We must redefine the status quo.

Twila Elliot and Hattie Norwood are doing exactly that. From the moment I met them, their spirit,
determination, and integrity renewed my hope for peace. Not only did they stand up to their
aggressor, they ensured that he faced the consequences of his brutality. They did not bend, they did
not relent.

The Foundation for Squib Advancement is a brazen, revolutionary building block for a brand new
social structure. Let us help it thrive. Let us build upon it. Let us lay to waste everything that tries
to hold us down. Let us be intractable.
A point that Hermione and Ben had given much consideration to, was the role of elves in
manufacturing. They were indispensable to the production line. Short of actuating a magical
version of an Industrial Revolution, Hermione didn’t see any way to free them from that particular
sector.
Human magic and labour came in when they did, but a lot had to be left to the elves, for their magic
was not as likely to fade or weaken.

Absolutely miserable smoggy day. Amidst the dreariness, Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes stood out
like a purple and orange traffic cone.

It was much too crowded for twelve o’clock on a Monday, especially considering that most
children would’ve been at school. Hermione pottered around till Verity spotted her, who then took
her to George.

“If it isn’t the most charming jack-in-office I’ve seen!” he said as he guided her past the curtains
behind which they kept their more ‘serious’ products, to the door that led to the cellar.

Boxes were stacked from the floor to the ceiling, and in the middle of the room was an enormous
round table piled high with… things. Theo, Lee, Angelina, Blake, a man with an imperial
moustache (later introduced as Conrad,) and three elves were sitting around the table, tinkering
with… things.

Hermione was given a quick rundown of how Weasley products were made, magicked, preserved,
and packaged. Considering the fact that she knew (most) of those people and, more importantly,
knew them to be good people, it all seemed very upright and straight-forward.

George made her turn around and held the binder against her back while he signed.

She was ready to leave when an elbow locked around hers and she was towed out of the shop by
Mister Fahrenheit. Sputtered words were ignored, and she was dragged to Neil’s.

“I don’t have time for this!”

“The Ministry allows you time to eat, doesn't it?”

“I have to be present for a meeting with ex-NRBC employees in twenty minutes!”

“And you will be,” Theo told her placidly.

She jolly well couldn’t tell him that she wanted to rush to the canteen to get a few precious minutes
with his vexatious friend-oblique-brother.
However, when a cheesy jacket potato and a foamy cup of coffee were set before her, she puffed up
her cheeks and let out a slow, calming breath.

“That's right,” Theo smiled, “Allow that steaming brain to cool off for a bit.”

She ate obligingly while he spoke about his time at Cork, and showed her photographs of the huge
race track he had set up along the staircase of the outlet. The same bloody thing from a billion
angles.

While walking her back to Leaky, he said, “I’m thinking of changing my name.”

“Why?”

“Narcissa wont stop writing to me. Theodore,” he said in a voice like a stage actress from the
forties, “Since you are the only person my son listens to, I implore you to convince him to visit his
father. Theodore, you, too, have spent many happy summers at the Manor. I must believe you would
not like to see it in ruins."

“What did Draco have to say about that?” she asked nonchalantly.

“I haven’t told him.”

Stopping a few feet away from the fireplace, they turned to face each other.

“I… can’t bring myself to,” Theo elaborated morosely.

Hermione had to leave. She gave him a quick squeeze around the waist and scarpered.

For to lose time irks him most who most knows.

Irks her who most knows, too.

Hermione’s legs were bouncing as she stared at the second hand on her watch swing round and
round. She was on the fifth floor of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, on time
that had been borrowed with great difficulty. Gwenda Bardsley, hospital administrator, had left her
to fester in a room with ugly taupe walls and uncomfortable wooden chairs.

The second hand completed nine more laps before, finally, a door said, “Ms Granger, do come in.”

Gwenda Bardsley’s office was spacious, all over the shop, and occupied by a woman with straw-
like hair and a bloodless complexion. She also wore gold dentures that she had a habit of grinding.
Her jaw moved from side to side, making a grating sound while Hermione did her best to talk with
pleasant efficiency, despite mostly imagining mum and dad’s despair.

“This is a hospital, Ms Granger,” she said, afterwards.

Quelle surprise! Hermione nodded solemnly.

“We can’t be doing away with house-elves.”

“I don’t believe I ever said that.” Now Hermione wanted to grind her teeth.

Bardsley’s dentures clacked while she spoke. The sound was liable to drive Hermione through the
ground and right into the fourth floor Janus Thickey Ward. She deployed the dissociative trick that
she had perfected over the years, (honed in particular during History of Magic lessons and during
Umbridge’s Reign of Error), that allowed her to absorb words without really listening to the
speaker.

Every healer and trainee-healer had an elf that tailed them at all times.

“Surely healers don’t work round the clock. Why can’t the elves have time off when their assigned
healer does?”

There were half as many elves as healers, so when one healer’s shift ended, the elf attached itself to
the healer who’d replaced them. It was imperative for the elf to be there for emergencies. Say, when
a healer required it to fetch someone or pass a message.

“Aurors use patronuses. Or protean charms.”

Most healers are not very adept at advanced defensive magic. It was also absurd to expect them to
pull out quills or wands during an emergency.

(Elves as pagers, basically.)

“Could you not bring in more elves then? So there’s one for each healer?”

Hermione couldn’t believe she’d said that.

Bardsley said they couldn’t. That’s all.

(Quick-Quotes quills… with protean charms. Why hadn’t that been done yet? It would be faster
than elf-conveyed messaging.)

“Are you opposed to appointing an elf that will look after elvish interests and act as a liaison
between Mungo’s and the Ministry?”

(Back in fourth year, Flitwick had mentioned that there was a variant of the sticking charm that
allowed you to bind something to a mobile object…)

Mungo’s was a hospital! They didn’t have time for such superfluity! They were saving lives! As
administrator, the virtuous Gwenda Bardsley was there to correspond with the Ministry when
necessary.

“For – clack – Merlin’s sake – clack – !”

“You aren’t going to sign.”

“I’m sorry. Clack. No.”

Hermione sulked all the way to the cart in the open courtyard, where Padma stood with her neck
curved like a crane's.

“Gwenda is a horrendous cow.”

“Really?” Padma was taken aback. “She seems so harmless.”

An elf appeared.

“Trainee-healer Patil! Healer Cuthbert needs you to bring Mr Gunner’s test results to the Alchemy
Room at once.”

The elf disapparated, Padma dashed off, Hermione took a sulky sip of coffee.

It was hard to maintain a satisfying sulk when on the move.

She took a breath by the lifts — and found herself in the only company she desired. Long coat and
soft scarf, hair pushed to the side, he was holding a large present. Behind him, Arnold held a wine
bottle in a floral bag.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“Granger.”

Granger, he said. Not my love, my heart, o dainty duck, o dear…

“What’s all that?” Her eyes flickered over his armload, his face, then quickly away.

“For the Dutch Ambassador,” Arnold replied instead of Draco, “If you ply her with gifts, she
endures Mr Pendleton’s quirks with good humour.”

Draco made a disgruntled sound. The lift arrived and all three went in.
What if he’d taken her unavailability over weekend as a conclusion to their… their… dalliance?

He hadn’t even looked at her.

“Where are you coming from?” he asked.

“Mungo’s. The administrator is completely dead from the neck up,” she rattled off, delighted at
being addressed, “And she turned me away after giving me a very sanctimonious lecture about all
the life-saving that they do, which certainly put me in place and so I will go thoroughly chastised to
Ogden's Distillery later today, but oh , not directly there because the Wizarding world feels a
bizarre need to be secretive about the most nonsensical things, which has forced me to first go to
Finnigan’s, put up with Seamus’ tripe, and then end my day trying to sweet talk a firewhisky
baron.”

There was a beat of silence.

Draco said, “That was a very long sentence.”

Like your dad’s.

Hermione scowled inwardly, and nobody said anything else till the lift opened at level five.

Draco said, “Granger,” and walked away.

Between the lift and the office lay four minutes, during which Tiny Tartan Hermione recited a runic
alphabet.

Yes, Seamus had lots of prime tripe for her. She deployed yet another dissociative trick that she had
perfected over the years, (honed in particular during nights in her dorm, and before/after quidditch
matches,) that allowed her to absorb neither words nor voice.

He carried on right up to when their decanter-portkey glowed blue.

They appeared outside a building with a high mansard roof. Heavy clouds and sparkling blue-
brown smoke that was puffing out of a nearby chimney shrouded the almost-full moon.

Inside was a long hall.

A shout of “Seamus Finnigan, you tool!” rolled towards them, followed by an abdominous man
with a swinging gait. He had a Mesopotamian amulet around his neck.

“Get stuffed!” Seamus called back cheerfully.

He was much older than she expected, glancing at her with polite disinterest while Seamus
introduced him as Tillius Ogden.

She had known, right from his reluctance to take them where his potations were made, that the
meeting would not go the way she wanted.

Once again, she disassociated and paced quietly amid racks and barrels, and the other two kept up a
rush of laddish banter. A sheet of glass separated them from an area where at least fifty people in
white were working around enormous copper cauldrons bubbling over blue-brown flames. Elves in
white rags moved between them with sacks of grain. All wore bubble-head charms.

She just wanted to get it over with.

Tillius started to say, “Look at the elves there. Do they look exploita–”

“Thank you for your time.”

Seamus gave her a portkey to return with, while choosing to stay and make merry with his pal. She
landed back in his office and used his fireplace to go straight home.

The sweet smell of flowers was overbearing. In her dark living room she stood stock-still, without
lighting the lamps, till her eyes adjusted.
A wave of exhaustion carried her to the study, and she set down her satchel, dropped her robes. She
lit the stained-glass lamp, turning the room into an imprint of the Hogwarts library. She took off her
pumps and burrowed into the armchair; so incredibly tired and it was only Tuesday.

She would have been all right with six out of eight, if the two abstainers hadn’t been the entire
healthcare system, and one of the biggest magical companies, whose owner happened to be related
to the Chief Warlock.

Clouds rumbled. It was going to be a cold and bleak night.

She wanted to put her head on mum’s shoulder and cry for a bit. About work, about life, about
society… about Draco.

Nothing is in my control. Mum, I don’t know what to do.

Being without that comfort was also her own fault. She had… how had dad put it? .... fractured
their lives. Fractured her own life. All in the quest to do the right thing. What if she was incapable
of doing anything right? What if she’d end up ruining the elves’ lives, too? What if the endeavour
really was as myopic and misguided as everyone said? What if…

She heard the floo; heard footsteps. Then there was a tall, blond figure standing at the door, leaning
against the jamb.

Dark clouds parted. Warmth burst upon her, sinking into every tired bone.

Hermione stood up and began walking up to him in one smooth motion.

(Tiny Tartan Hermione materialised, screaming Mayday, mayday! You’re getting swept up again!

Real, human-sized Hermione flicked her away.)

When she reached the door, she dodged his grasping hands, darted around him and into the hall.
She paced backwards, grinning as he arched one brow. He took a step, she turned and raced
towards the bedroom, making it just about three steps in before he got hold of her. He spun her
around, he kissed her. And she exploded into a million fluttery things.

Oh mercy, yes.

She fell in love, once again, with the process of unmaking him. She messed up the arrangement of
his hair, threw off that finely tailored coat, crumpled his shirt as she pulled it off his shoulders, slid
her hand into his trousers with no regard for creases. She wrecked his composure, brought a florid
shade onto his cheeks, a wildness into his eyes.

He looked so breathtakingly good with traces of her all over him – lipstick staining the stretch
between his mouth and his jaw, teeth marks on his neck, her hair sweeping and travelling all over
him as she tasted him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

She was overpowered by his sigh against her skin. A tremulous, susurrating expulsion of air that
compelled her to say his name, just to hear him respond and confirm that it was him, it really was
him. It was –

"Draco."

"Hmm?"

She drowned in a confluence of exhilaration and relief; her body sparked to life while her soul was
soothed.

How kind of you to let me come.

Afterwards, she lay catching her breath, her arms were plastered to her sides and her legs were
stretched out straight and crossed at the ankles. Draco, a bit lower, was sprawled languidly with his
head on a pillow, at level with her ribs. His legs glanced off the edge of the bed. There was a strip
of No Man’s Land between them.
She could only see the top of his head; soft hair that was made for a lover to gently play with
during a beautiful afterglow. His fingers were on the edge of No Man’s Land, lazily tapping out a
mystery tune. There was a scar on his shin that she hadn’t noticed before – an indent roughly the
size of her thumb.

“Who got you flowers?” he asked abruptly.

“The elves at the Scamander Institute gave them to me. They have an enormous meadow in there.
Also a marsh, a woodland, a desert… as well as a whole tundra set aside for Crumple-Horned
Snorkacks.”

She went on to give him a detailed description because he seemed greatly entertained by it and she
could power her will with that sort of satisfaction.

“I think Rolf fancies Luna,” she finished.

“Does she return his feelings?”

“I couldn’t tell. She did ask me about Theo, though.”

“Did you tell her he’s getting his leg over every bird within reach?”

“Of course not. How did it go with the Dutch ambassador, by the way?”

“All right,” he muttered lethargically, “She liked the baubles. Kenny got away with calling her a
parsimonious vulture.”

He pulled out his arms and pointed his toes as he stretched, and she was gripped by a sudden terror
that he was going to leave.

“I went to the orphanage on Saturday,” she said quickly.

He only settled deeper into the bed, like he had fused into it.

“I heard.”

“It’s impressive.”

“I’m sure Aunt Andromeda was delighted to have had it sanctified by the honourable Granger.”

“She was, actually.”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

Hermione looked out the balcony doors. The shield charm that protected her plants was holding
strong. Beyond that, there was a heavy shower. Hundreds of snowflakes sparked in the pitch-
blackness, as they met magic.

“Are you good friends with Teddy?”

“He’s a year old,” Draco said in a baffled tone.

“He’ll be two in four months.”

He tilted his head up to shoot her a look. “What sort of friendship am I supposed to strike up with
an almost-two-year-old? Not much of a conversationalist, that boy.”

Stuttering again, Granger? Shit, you’re a dreadful conversationalist.

“But are you… good… with him?” she went on as he turned away again, “Does Andromeda ask
you to watch him?”

“Yeah, once in a while,” he replied flippantly, “Not much to it. Just keep an eye to ensure he
doesn’t test the limits of his mortality. Make sure he doesn’t touch you, because his fingers are
always wet.”

Hermione fought a smile. “So, you aren’t good with him. That’s… I mean, I thought there was
something wrong with me–”

“There’s a lot wrong with you. For starters–”

“HE ADORES HARRY. They get on so well.”

“He adores me more. You should see his hair when I’m around.”

“And even Ginny and George are –”

“Well, they’re fairly close to his intellectual level, aren’t they? Theo has full conversations with
him.”

He bent one leg. One El Greco hand settled on his chest.

“I think it’s because both Harry and Theo didn’t have a childhood,” she mused after an interval,
“They must behold it as something so, so precious. Teddy’s lost his parents, and I suppose they
want him to feel love and joy like they never – What?”

“Nothing at all,” he chuckled, “Do carry on with your romanticising. Oh, I beg your pardon.
Your… er, psychological rundown.”

She huffed and crossed her arms. “You know what, Draco? I’m going to take your sarcasm
seriously from here on. So there. Now, about Ginny, she’s incredibly patient and unflappable. She
doesn’t have the same playful dynamic with Teddy, but–”

“Why don’t we get straight to you? Why does Teddy hate you?”

“He doesn’t hate me!” she replied irately, crossing her arms even tighter, “We’ve barely spent any
time together and I’m not sure how to interact with him.”

“Because you’ve never been a child.” he stated simply.

He lifted the arm not on his chest, listlessly rolled his wrist, and let it fall back down heavily.

“I’ve had considerable experience being a child,” she mumbled.

“Rubbish. I’m certain you were pontificating like a grown up from the day you were born. I bet you
came out of the womb reciting Hermione Granger's Code of Righteous Conduct. ”

“And I bet it took you ages to get the hang of speech, with that silver spoon permanently stuck in
your mouth.”

“Better a silver spoon in the mouth than a broomstick up the arse.”

“I have no interest in knowing what you prefer in which orifice.”

“Fair enough.” He looked up at her over the fringe falling into his eyes and grinned. “I, too, would
much prefer to talk about your orifices instead.”

She erupted with something between laughter and affront.

His eyes drifted a little lower at… well. Her arms were crossed right under her breasts. She flushed
and let her arms fall. His grin widened and his eyes travelled down the length of her body.

“Andromeda asked me to help stock their library,” she said, sounding humiliatingly flustered.

“Heard that too,” he said, still grinning.

He looked away again after that, providing her with the palliating sight of the top of his head.

“She said I came highly recommended from someone who has greatly benefitted from my taste in
literature.”

He snorted dismissively. “Remember, Granger, they’re children. They like children’s books. Spare
them the massive history tomes, the philosophical–”

“Don’t lecture me about books. It’s the stupidest thing you could do.”

She smiled when he shook with a light laugh, and they settled into another silence.

The weather had only got worse. There was a permanent shimmer outside the balcony.
Perhaps Draco was formulating a fortissimo in his head. She could tell that he was looking out of
the balcony doors, too.

A month ago, she would have traded her soul for exactly this. Yet, now that she had it, she wished
it could’ve been simple and okay for her to slip down and curl around him. To lay her head on his
chest as he wrapped his arm around her. To thus watch the snow while tracing the scars on the snow
of his skin.

As minutes slipped by, she felt something insurgent erupt within her. Restlessness, and a strange
nausea.
She tried to find a pattern in the blizzard, like he probably saw so easily. Who else was sitting
quietly and watching it churn? Maybe Ginny, alone in her room after a long day of training. Mrs
Weasley, while people around her tucked into the food she had lovingly prepared. Aunt Malorie
from her discordant home. Andromeda from her study with the insidious shadows.

Insurgency turned to broiling anxiety.

“Draco?” she whispered.

“What?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Fuck off.”

She bit the corner of her lip uneasily. “Okay. Never mind.”

“Asking to ask a question is the most maddening thing, and you know it.”

He looked up at her over the fringe falling into his eyes and glared. Then he turned away
disapprovingly.

“Sorry.”

“Just ask, and spare me the dithering.”

Her heart was racing. “Do you… when you look at Andromeda… sometimes… er, do you look at
her and see…”

She was unable to finish; to say the name.

Draco had stiffened so much that it made her realise how very relaxed he had been prior to her
opening her stupid mouth. She wanted to hide inside him.

“Sometimes,” he gritted out.

The admission hung in the air like a dementor, and it had the same impact as one. He probably
hated her for drawing it out of him.

“How do you cope with that?” she asked weakly.

“She doesn’t have Teddy’s abilities,” he snapped, “It’s not like she can help how she looks.”

“I know that.”

“All the worst shit that’s happened to her has been because of that bitch. She isn’t – she’s
absolutely nothing like Bellatrix.”
“I know that!” Hermione pressed, feeling straight-up panicked, “I wasn’t suggesting that they’re
similar at all! I was only–”

“She has to live with her face. Don’t you think she has the same thought every time she looks in a
mirror?” he barked. Cold, bitter, cold.

Fuck, why had she brought this up. She wanted to reach out — but if she’d thought it would have
been unwelcome before…

“Every time I look in the mirror, I see my father.”

All thoughts, systems, and insurgencies came to a screeching halt. Hermione stared at the hand
splayed on his chest in shock. It had stiffened too, fingers pressing into the hard flesh.

“Do you?” he asked rancorously.

Her voice squeezed out through choked up tubes. “Do I what?”

“See my father when you look at me.”

“No!” she vowed at once, “I can’t really even think of you both in the same context anymore!”

(On that tangent: I scarcely ever think about him and I’m almost constantly thinking about you.)

“He’ll always be my father.”

When he said that, all the tightness and contempt had gone from his voice. He sounded empty.

“Why have you stopped visiting him?” she broached after a while, once the silence had become
unendurable.

She didn’t expect an answer, but how long could she sit mute after a proclamation like that?

Draco’s fingers lifted, twitched, and fell.

The bed was a decaying raft and they were lost at sea.

She could touch his hair. A comforting stroke. Just one.

“He’s like the Manor,” he said in a sudden, dry rasp.

Words like a current that rocked the raft.

“Both relics of former glory. Fucking artificial glory. Delusion. Ugly, decrepit, haunted, and filled
with poison. I just can’t bring myself to be around either of them. They make me feel sick.
Infected.”

Billows rocking the raft back and forth.

“He’d started treating me to his peculiar brand of honeyed scorn. You know what I mean, don’t
you? All light and pleasant like we’re acquaintances talking about the weather, while just letting me
fucking have it. Like I’m a Weasley or something. I said that to him, once. And he said, Oh, you’re
much, much worse than a Weasley. It’s all my doing, did you know? My fault he’s rotting in prison.
I couldn’t look at him anymore. He pushed me back two years every time.”

The storm outside had nothing on the squall within.

“And he never shut up about the confounded manor. The Malfoy heritage, a legacy accrued over
centuries, you ingrate, you’re letting it moulder. Bullshit. It’d begun mouldering the moment that
snake slithered all over it. Full of things that’ve absorbed blood and screams. The sort of blood he’d
call dirty, mind you. It’s soaked into the carpets, spattered over the walls. Why the hell would I ever
set foot in there again? But he goes on and on.”

And then, to her absolute horror, Draco’s hand lifted to his face, like… like he was wiping
something away.

“And I’m stuck in the position where I have to keep saying no to a man who has nothing left. A
man who never once said no to me.”

“Why can’t your mother deal with it?” she asked in a very low voice.

“I’m the heir. The honourable heir. It’s still in Father’s name, but I’m next in line.”

“And why doesn’t she visit him?”

“The Ministry denies her applications. They don’t want to allow Lucius Malfoy the luxury of
seeing his wife too often. She saw him the week before Christmas – a guard accompanied her from
the Portkey office to Azkaban and back. And she got to see him for an hour when he’d been
hospitalised.”

“He doesn't blame her at all? If she hadn’t lied about Harry, we might not have won.”

Draco touched his face again. The wind and sea roared in her ears.

“That’s my fault, too. It wouldn’t have come to that if it hadn’t been for me. If I’d stayed by the
Dark Lord’s side as intended, she wouldn’t have been worried about me. Ha! I turned the tides of
the war. Me. With my shitty pittance of information about raids and attacks that had no impact
whatsoever on the Dark Lord’s agenda… Secretly healing the wounds of those who were actually
fighting…
“Those were my great contributions. As if the outcome wouldn’t have been exactly the same with
or without my deflection.”

“You’d said you were sure Voldemort was going to win. Your father probably did as well, and
now–”

“He needs someone to blame. Yeah. What’s a son if not a ready-made scapegoat?”

Another swipe at his face.

Hermione was frozen. She didn't want to risk doing anything that might cause him to put his guard
back up. She was both yearning to and fearful of seeing how he looked.

“Mother believes I am beholden to him. Blood and family… They keep the world spinning. I’m
forever a Malfoy. He’ll always be my father and he loves me, really.”

He sucked in a long breath with a very poorly disguised tremor.

“Thank you, Father, for being so good to me. Thank you for the grand house, and the galleons. For
the toys, the piano, the brooms, the birthday parties. Thank you for never saying no, for always
insisting I’m nothing less than a prodigy, for shutting down entire shops so I may browse
undisturbed, for the best seats during quidditch matches.”

Another, longer wipe.

“Thank you for the poison, for saddling me with the burden of family honour, for the inheritance of
pureblood rot, for the torture, the trauma, the mark on my arm. Thank you for telling me that I’ve
been the biggest disappointment of your life. Thank you, Father… but I think I’ve paid my dues.”

Their raft had flipped. They were drowning.

“He’ll always be your father,” Hermione said, soft and shaky, “but you are not his son, in all the
ways that matter.”

It got so very quiet once neither of them were speaking. The heavy, hellish calm after the storm.
Hermione held off for exactly two minutes and fifteen seconds that she painstakingly counted out.
During that time, he reached up to his face twice.

“Draco…”

He didn’t respond.

“Are you–”

“Where else did you go over the weekend?”

“...Look, Draco–”
“Where else did you go?”

God, his voice. Like shards.

“Fortescue's.”

“And then?”

“Back to Hogwarts for a bit. I had breakfast with McGonagall.”

“How delightful. Where next?”

“The Scamander Institute. After that, The Ivory Grotto. It’s very glitzy.”

“You’d think that.”

“Fawley and son are both cretins. But the old man signed the petition and treated me to a free meal
at the restaurant.”

“The perks of being Granger.”

His voice quivered on the second word. His hand rose again. Hermione swallowed with great
difficulty.

“Blaise and Daphne were there. What’s the deal with those two?”

“No clue.”

“Theo said she’s in love with him.”

“Probably is.”

“But he doesn’t feel the same.”

“He doesn’t.”

“...You really don’t care do you?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Draco…”

“Draco.”

“Just shut up.”

She couldn’t take it anymore. She slid down to his level, landing on his pillow. He quickly turned
away, but not before she saw dewy eyes and clumpy eyelashes.
Her heart lurched so hard, it took charge of her actions. She grabbed his chin, pulled his face back,
and kissed him.
He was wholly unyielding at first. For five seconds.

She counted as she gently pressed her lips to his over and over again.

Eight seconds.

Finally, his fingers sank into her hair. His body turned towards her. He kissed her back.

He was cool to touch. His breath kept stuttering. There was wetness against her palm as she held
his face. A drop fell on her cheek; another fell on the corner of her jaw and trickled down her neck
and into her hair. They could be silvery tears full of traumatic memories, and she would willingly
take them all. He could deposit a hundred – a thousand – on her skin. She’d be his bridge over
troubled water.

His hand waded past her tresses and closed around the back of her neck.

For just a moment, she opened her eyes and saw his squeezed shut.

He was at times ferociously rough; at times heartbreakingly subdued…

They kissed for a very, very, very long time.

Till all five of her senses belonged to him.

She wanted to perish the sorrow behind those sealed eyes and neutralise the acid that he kept
hidden beneath his tongue. He could burn a hole through the roof of her mouth and she wouldn’t
care. She slanted her mouth over his and tried to draw out all his grief.

When he pulled away, his lips were swollen. His eyes, cloudy and unfocused, remained lowered as
he extracted his hands, rolled away and off the bed.

Hermione sat up. He kept his face averted while he gathered his clothes, pulled on only his pants
and trousers, and left the room with the latter still unbuttoned. Moments later, she heard the sound
of the bathroom door closing.

She wasn’t able to move as soon as she thought of moving. It took some time for the thought to
turn into action. Once her feet had found the floor, she ignored the scattered garments around her
and reached for her dressing gown.
The storm was now inside her chest. Not a snowstorm, nor a seastorm; it was a clangorous
thunderstorm. She stood at the bedroom door, peering across the hall full of inky shadows.

She would offer him her hand when he came out, and lead him back to bed. She’d put on some
music as soothing as the weather was wild. She’d floo for takeaway. She’d curl up around him –
(could she please, please, curl up around him?) – She’d tell him his deflection and contributions did
matter; they brought him to where he was… with her. She’d tell him he’d burst into her life all
incendiary and contrary, forcing her to realise the true depth of her reservoir of emotions.
 When he came out, he was dressed. His complexion was even, and his eyes were dry. There was
hardly even a hint of pink on his lash line. He walked straight into the living room keeping his head
lowered…

…Kicking off a cyclone. Hermione was caught in its vortex.

She followed him clumsily into the even darker room. So dark that the snowy windows appeared
luminous. Brilliant silver like memories.

Draco pointed his wand at the fireplace and the world turned warm brown like an old photograph.

She perched on the arm of a chair while he donned his coat and scarf. He became the figure that
had stood at her study door, and it was like nothing had happened between then and now.

“You could stay,” she murmured, because of course she fucking did. That was just who she was
doomed to be.

“Can’t,” he clipped, looking somewhere in the vicinity of her knees.

“Okay,” she said, loathing how feebly it came out.

He left and the room turned bright green like a magical forest where druidesses once roamed.

Hermione fell backwards. Her body landed on the seat of the chair. Every other part of her
continued to plummet.

Chapter End Notes

1. “How kind of you to let me come”: From My Fair Lady.

2. You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones
3. “For to lose time irks him most who most knows.”: Purgatorio, Canto III, by Dante
Alighieri.
4. “O dainty duck, o dear”: From Act V, Scene 1, A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William
Shakespeare
5. El Greco Hand: Reference to ‘The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest’, El Greco. Isn't
there a pianist-ish elegance to it? There’s also some mystery surrounded the gesture, which I
thought fit well with the mystery surrounding Hermione’s inscrutable loverboy.
6. Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel

I picked the name ‘Fawley’ off the Sacred Twenty-Eight list, because it was among the few
that weren’t friend or foe. Upon further “research” I discovered that there is some lore related
to them in canon-adjacent shit that I do not care about and cannot force myself to read about.
Sullivan is supposed to be around the same age as Hermione, but again... I don’t care. He’s
what Draco would have grown up to be in a Voldemort-free world.

The Scamander Institute of Magizoological Studies was, of course, greatly inspired by the
Fantastic Beasts film.
 Eighty-Nine
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

There was a certain type of grief – a raw, inveterate grief – that sat just under your skin. It was the
grief of a child, and it was always one fomenting question away from escaping.

It could come out when you were curled up on a window ledge, sickened by the atrocity you were
planning to inflict on your own parents, and a friend asked, “What’s wrong?”

It could come out when you, fresh from committing said atrocity, had perched on the bed of a
friend just barely awake and she asked, “How’re your parents?”

God. No matter how clinically she approached it, the grief was stirred.

Still wrapped in a towel, standing blankly in front of her wardrobe, Hermione brushed a finger
under her eye.

Grief would keep oozing out. Sometimes helplessly, sometimes surprisingly, and sometimes
cathartically. If she stood still, it could escape in bands and mummify her. Perhaps as years went by
and the shell of adulthood hardened and built upon itself, the grief would be buried and broken up,
like a layer of weathered rock fragments.

Last evening, Draco’s grief had rushed out — Helplessly, yes. Surprisingly, certainly.
Cathartically… She hoped so.

It would only have come out if he trusted her, yet he couldn’t even look her in the eye as he fled.

She gripped the top of her towel miserably, not at all up to plodding through another day. She
wished she could run for hours on end.

Hermione got ready for work.

Snow continued its onslaught but the Ministry let them pretend it was bright and sunny from inside
their warren. It all seemed particularly dystopian to her that day; an impression made firmer while
she toiled through witness statements that displayed a great reluctance towards candour, unaffected
by the fact that a multinational corporation was going hammer and tongs against one impecunious
witch.
For lunch, she went down to the canteen with her heart in a vice. Draco wasn’t there.

At the end of the day, she walked to the atrium extremely slowly… for nothing.

Never-changing Hogsmeade, slumbering in wintery tones. First stop: Honeydukes.

While his wife watched over the shop, Ambrosius Flume took Hermione down to the cellar full of
wooden crates and boxes that held their stock. Their own brand of chocolate was made in a small
adjoining room, by an elf so old, so like a pile of old grey rags come to life.

“He's belonged to the Redding family for two generations,” Flume told her.

“Hello,” Hermione said to the elf. He gave her a Kreacher-like death stare.

They returned upstairs and Hermione made the speech she was sick of making. Flume allowed her
to chug along, until she brought up Fortescue’s. At that, he puffed up like an enraged frog. Perhaps
the big franchises of London could afford to rain luxuries upon their elves, but the Flumes and
Reddings were hard-working families who valued tradition. Thank you and toodle pip.

It was all downhill from there.

That these people, who’d been right at the epicentre of the final battle and had seen first hand the
way elves had fought and died, could still remain so cavalier and indifferent to their plight was
revolting. What would it take to break through the resolve of parochial narrow-mindedness?

Something in her died with each encounter, especially when she was invariably met with pursed
lips and perfunctory politeness that was enforced only because she happened to be who she
was. But she was also the silly muggleborn talking through her hat. She could taste their
condescension the moment she dropped the word exploitation. It would have made a perfect period
drama musical: One woman marching down the street preaching progress and liberation, while the
villagers stuck their heads out of their windows, wagged their fingers, and scoldingly sang –

Imprudent outsider! Better take out your muggle brain and exchange it!
You may insinuate yourself into our world but you cannot dare to change it!

Busy, busy Rosmerta said, “Do you think I have fixed working hours?”

At Zonko’s she was very careful to steer clear of any mention of Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes.
Zonko’s forehead wrinkled with strain while the cause was explained. He didn’t… quite
understand, you see? Sorry, m’dear, a… a contract , you say?

Only good Aberforth leant her his support. He remembered Dobby fondly while setting a mug of
mead before her. Hermione had a sip or two, secretly vanished the rest, and headed off.

She had barely had time to settle on her chair in the office, when a howling notice was sent around
the Ministry.

SUPREME MUGWUMP AKINGBADE CALLS FOR AN EMERGENCY ICW ASSEMBLY. ALL

MEMBERS AND AFFILIATES TO CONVENE AT ONCE!

Hermione, Kathy, and Takumi peeked into the foyer as Madam Barros charged out to heed the call.

They later learned, (from their receptionist, who heard it from Madam Mandrake’s assistant, who
was friends with a low level employee and expert eavesdropper at the International Magical Office
of Law,) that a Chimaera had broken past the enchantments surrounding a magical reserve at
Rhodes, and charged into a thankfully remote part of the muggle side of Akramitis mountain. It had
been sighted by at least two dozen muggles and one man had been killed.

A tragedy — and Hermione was unmoved. She didn’t know where, in her body, to withdraw more
concern from.

She performed another slow walk to the fireplaces, and moved to the side while the Ministry’s
human grot paraded by. In groups, in pairs, or alone. The stream kept up for quite some time,
before being reduced to the odd straggler, like sparse droplets after a downfall.

Then it was only her, alone. In one go, all the lamps dimmed, broadening shadows and muting the
glow of the memorial obelisk.

She had been waiting for thirty-five minutes. Five more and she’d give up.

Three minutes passed, four minutes passed, five minutes passed.

Well, two more.

Fate played games, didn’t it? It would ensure that Draco would come marching down the atrium the
moment she stepped into the floo. It didn’t matter if she waited for two more – well, three –
minutes, or sixty.

Multiple footsteps sounded from beyond the golden gates. When they rounded the corner, she saw
that they were indeed multiple. Fourteen people in all, two of whom were wearing robes with
meandros running along the hems. They all stared at the lone girl standing in the empty, darkened
atrium.

Why was it so cold?

Draco frowned severely as he broke away from the group. Fiona followed.

“Granger?” He stopped in front of her.

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Hello, Hermione.”

“Hello, Fiona.”

A rush of sound as everyone else departed.

“How are things?” Hermione gabbled, “You all must be going mad.”

“Oh yes,” Fiona laughed half-heartedly, “We’ve spent all day making sure the incident doesn’t
make it to the muggle news. People took photographs and wid-yers… it’s such a mess.”

“Hmm.”

Draco barked, “Why are you still here?”

“I.” His expression, so forbidding, made her hesitant. And irate. And tired. “Wanted a word with
you.”

There was a prolonged silence.

She should have just gone home.

Fiona forced out another laugh. “Well, I suppose I’ll get going then. Ha ha. Try and have some fun
in Rhodes, Draco.”

They were alone. There was another prolonged silence.

“You’re going to Rhodes?” Hermione asked, feeling stupid on top of everything else.

“Portkey will activate in..." He checked his watch, "Sixty-eight minutes.”

A lump formed in her throat. “Is it safe?”

“I’m not going to wrestle the beast.” Unsaid: You idiot. “It’s already been contained.”

“Right.”

Then she noticed the objects in his hands. Attaché case in the right, and in the left –
“A cake tin portkey,” she mumbled.

“I don’t believe there’s anything for us to talk about,” he said. Curt and leery.

His leeriness helped her pipe steel into her nerves. She pulled her sight away from the portkey,
ready to meet him head on.

He was glaring at her mouth.

“Theo’ll be working late, and I thought you might want to come over.”

“I have to pack for the trip,” he said forthwith.

“Of course.”

“You could come over.”

His eyes snapped up, alarmed at himself and commanding her to refuse.

She did not refuse. His face tightened with disapproval.

For some still moments they seemed to be calling each other’s bluff…

…Before walking together to the nearest fireplace.

She was quiet and he was quiet while striding across the sitting room and down the hallway in his
flat. He pushed open his door and held it for her, and she dipped her head in silent thanks as she
stepped inside.

The lamps came on. She looked around curiously, like she hadn’t been there before.
He strode past her – every little sound resonated loudly – and put his attaché case and portkey on a
console table by the door. She examined the very decorative brackets of the table, while fighting
against the urge to fidget and say something (stupid) to dispel the unease in the air.

He walked to the wall near his desk and tapped it thrice, revealing a walk-in wardrobe. He entered
and came out sans-cloak. Then he approached the large golden cage, from which he gently
collected Rodion and carried him to the window to let him out.

Finally, he came up in front of her and wordlessly slid his fingers under the strap of her satchel,
tugging it off her shoulder. It floated off to settle beside the cake tin. Every inch of his aspect
screamed, well, what now ?

She felt like a trespasser, like she had arm-twisted him into bringing her into his space. So she did
the only thing she could think of. She took off her robes and let them fall to the floor.

Unease got buried under the sounds of rustling clothes, ragged breaths, and a scramble to get onto
the bed. He spread her out with great intent and more than a hint of anger.
He made an extra effort to drive her crazy; his mouth was persistent but his licks was light, and he
kept bringing her to the brink and reeling her back, over and over again, till she was ready to sob.

The first word she spoke in his room was his name.

Eventually — ugh and please and I’m going to die .

It was the last one that made him gleam with sadistic satisfaction. He reached up, grabbed her, and
rolled her onto her stomach. Hands squeezed her bum. Lips brushed against the base of her spine.
Fingers fanned across her shoulder blades and pushed her hair aside. Guttural words fell into her
ears.

“On your knees… if you will.”

He kept up a seething pace, one hand reaching around her, and she came on a dragged out cry that
was muffled against sheets that smelt like him. He collapsed shortly after, so forcefully that the
impact bounced her into the air.

She stayed still, she kept her eyes closed. Her watch was by her ear, going tick-tick-tick-tick .

There was a rustle, followed by a tired huff. She felt and heard him climb out of bed. A magical
entryway opened and closed.

Twenty more ticks before she finally rolled over.

The tester above displayed a stylised rendition of the night sky. A nice thing to look at as sleep sunk
into your pores. Was there was a spell that would cause the stars to light up?

So quiet, so comfortable. Rubbing her legs against the sheets felt heavenly. His hatred for her bed
was completely understandable. Being accustomed to such a bed, she wouldn’t be surprised to find
him bothered by a pea under twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdowns.

She was in his bed.

By the wooden stars above, she had not expected to be; not after hours of wondering if she’d ever
see him again…

There was something of a meandros-like pattern here.

Contrary to former convictions from the ancient era of, oh, a while ago, she hadn’t imperiused him
into inviting her over.

He had broken down in front of her, and she was in his bed. What the hell was she doing being
awkward and reticent? She ought to be showing him that it was okay, that he could break down,
that she’d be there, and that things would stay the same.

Yes.
She stretched her arms above her head, and the tips of her fingers only just tickled the headboard.

Some time passed before a different wall, next to the bookshelf, opened up. Draco emerged with
damp hair and a towel around his waist. Hermione rose onto her elbows and smiled at him with
open admiration. His reaction was something between disturbance, suspicion, and I don’t have time
for this.

“You were right,” she said, and let it hang.

Perfect bait, was it not? He would not ignore that. To be sure —

“Right about what?”

“I have a concrete bed.”

Swift surprise flickered across his face and he deviated from his path, coming to stand at the corner
of the bed. A few quick-fire blinks, and he looked at her that way. The good way. The way that kept
her shyness over nudity forever at bay.

She made a show of looking around the room.

“Depressing lack of colour here, though.”

He tilted his head. “There’s some red in the rug.”

“Hardly.”

“Why aren’t you dressed?”

“I don’t have to rush to Greece.” She sat up and loosely draped her arms over her legs.

“Theo will be home soon.”

With a laugh that made him even more confused, she picked up a twisted lump of her clothes near
the edge of the bed.

“How does one gain access to the bathroom?” she asked as she slid onto the floor.

A tiny drop fell from the ends of his hair to his shoulder. She gathered her courage, reached out and
collected the drop, then rubbed her finger and thumb together, letting the moisture seep into her
skin.

“Three raps and a porta revelio.” He looked from her hand, to her face, to her hand.

When the wall closed behind her, she found herself standing amongst shelves piled with fluffy
towels and dressing gowns, and a large cupboard that she did not open. There was another door that
led to a bathroom bigger than the prefect’s bathrooms at Hogwarts. Charmed windows let in warm,
diffused light that gleamed over the aquamarine tiles of a large pool-like tub. The shower alcove
was bigger than her entire bathroom.

She stood at the sink with golden taps, in front of an enormous gilded mirror, and splashed cold
water on her face. Untwisting the fabric she had brought with her revealed that it was only her skirt,
tights, and knickers.

She returned to the room wearing her hair like a cloak. Her shirt was peeking out from under the
bed; she bent and looked further to see if —

“Looking for this?”

Draco’s holdall zoomed across the room to settle by the portkey. Draco, the person, fully dressed
and decked in a travelling cloak, stood before a slowly sealing wall with a dark blue bra hanging
from his finger.

The moment she was near enough, he snatched it up in his fist and held it high above his head.

There was an impasse, nothing like the one in the atrium. She tried to smile into him, the best she
knew how. He only raised his eyebrows challengingly.

“That’s not fair.” And when that did not result in any conciliatory move, she very cleverly added,
“You’re tall.”

“You have lovely, perky tits.”

She reached up and attempted to grab his hand in an effort to hide the violence of her blush and the
voltage of her beam. Every possible tactic to stretch her height failed and she scarcely reached his
wrist.

And so, as a recalibrating manoeuvre, she threw her arms around his neck and fell into him.

“Hmpf,” he said as his back hit the wall.

After a stretch, when she allowed them a short reprieve, he murmured, “I should–”

She kissed him again.

Some time later:

“When will you come back?”

“Monday afternoon. Granger, I have to go.”

“Go later.”

“Seriously, I need mmph.”

She sighed. His buttery soft cloak was her third favourite texture, after his skin and his sheets.
Fourth, after the smoothness of his lips. Fifth, after the sharp-soft combination of his teeth and
tongue. Sixth, after the silk of his hair. Seventh, after the incongruously rough patch by his ear, that
his razor must have missed.

He shoved her back and she staggered to regain her footing.

“Shit!” he growled, running to his portkey – already glowing blue – in leaps and bounds.

He disappeared in the pose of The Skating Minister, taking her bra on its very first excursion to a
foreign land.

At once she felt a tide of dread begin to rise up from her gut. Like all tides, it was governed by
some celestial pull that she could do nothing about.

She dressed quickly, tidied his bed, and left his room.

Before she could make a neat escape, Theo stepped out of the fireplace.

“Hi!” she said far too loudly.

“Ahh!! What the–?! You frightened the shit out of me!”

“Oh! Sorry!” She smiled broadly. “I just thought you might like some company for dinner?”

He gaped at her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes!”

“Erm, I only came by to pick up some stuff, George is expecting me at his place. But I can let him
know that–”

“Oh no! Work comes first, always!” She darted around him. “It’s all right – some other time!
Bye!”

Dread rose higher the next morning, when Madam Barros called Hermione into her office without
her colleagues. It took her embarrassingly long to reason that Barros couldn't possible pin the
blame for the chimaera’s escape on her. She most likely wanted to hear about the number of
signatures she had failed to collect, and mock her for it.
There was a man in the room, sitting across from her boss. He made a bold first impression in
swish burgundy robes and a handlebar moustache on a haughty face that observed Hermione’s
entrance with contempt.

“Granger,” Barros said, “This is Mr Phaedrus Greengrass.”

“Good afternoon,” Hermione said.

Her hand made a suggestion of lifting, but Greengrass’ remained staunchly clasped on his lap. He
merely bequeathed a slight incline of his head.

“Mr Greengrass, as you must be aware, has supported many of the Ministry’s rebuilding efforts.”

Sure. Up until his prospective son-in-law landed up in prison.

“I believe you are working to push a bit of reformation of your own, Ms Granger,” Greengrass
spoke in a slow, considered tone, “I am most curious about what one of our young saviours has up
her sleeve.”

Hermione didn’t want to oblige. However, Barros’ firm nod was not to be snubbed. She went on to
deliver the most reluctant rendition of the enterprise.

Greengrass turned to Barros. “She can’t be serious.”

Hermione turned towards the door.

“Hold on, Granger,” Barros snapped, “What is your objection, Phaedrus?”

“A contract for House-Elves? It’s unheard of. Absurd.”

Barros deferred to Hermione with a look. What the fuck was she supposed to say? She let out every
tired line that she had come up with since she had first envisioned the contract. Greengrass said not
a word till they were all wonkily stacked atop each other.

“What fanciful rubbish! Why are you encouraging such ideas, Elena? Why do we need a
contractual binding when House-Elves are already magically bound to us? Bah. Of course, there’s
no need to inflict unnecessary pain on them, but we cannot take responsibility for how they choose
to punish themselves.”
He glanced at Hermione from the corner of his eye. “Ms. Granger ought to find herself another
little project. She might benefit from Arthur Weasley’s program for muggleborns; might help her
understand how things work.”

Barros was staring at her. Hermione had no notion of how to respond. If she spoke to him like she
had to Sullivan, she would get bloody suspended.

He sat back after retrieving a cigar and lighter from his pocket.

“Now, if either of you ladies has a plan to reform the arbitrary nature of our criminal justice
system…”
He clicked his lighter twice before a scarlet flame burst into life. First he lightly browned the cigar,
then he brought it to his mouth, puffing and sucking like a pompous, lordy, chauvinistic —

What if someone were to cast a flagro?

The flame flared, blooming in front of his face and latching onto his magnificent moustache.
Greengrass roared. He tossed the lighter and cigar and batted at his whiskers like a common
muggle.

“Efflo!”

Barros was on her feet, wand out, absolutely aghast.

The fire died immediately, leaving the man, who was wheezing like a damaged accordion, with a
threadbare travesty of a moustache.

“YOU!” he thundered and charged towards Hermione.

Barros quickly put up a shield between them.

“Calm down, Phaedrus,” she commanded.

“She tried to immolate me!”

The self-possession of a seasoned barrister was untouchable.

“Where is your wand, Granger?” Barros asked with a grim undertone.

“In my robes,” Hermione replied with a shrill overtone.

“Show it here.”

Prior Incantato revealed that the last spell her wand had performed was a warding charm on her
fireplace.

“She must have another wand!”

Robes were checked. Summoning charms were deployed. Greengrass was so unbelievably red and
seething that Hermione wanted to suggest he change his name.

Redrum, like in that film her parents loved.

“She did it! She did it, I tell you!” Redrum shouted, “She must have done it without a wand!”

“Wandless magic?” Hermione sputtered in shock, “From a mere muggleborn?”

He turned to her, all teeth and flashing eyes like he was about to dive face-first into Barros’ shield.

“I believe your lighter must have malfunctioned,” Barros said decisively, which fanned the flames,
as it were.
They evoked a seizure and Redrum let out a litany of enraged half-words, ending with a shake of
his fist and, “You haven’t seen the last of me!”

He left in high dudgeon.

Hermione slowly looked towards Barros, hoping for a shifty smile from a co-conspirator.

What a silly, silly girl she was.

“I should fire you,” Barros spat.

Hermione bit her tongue because it wanted to say, haven’t we had enough fire for today?

“I called you here to win over a huge ally. Mr Greengrass is not only rich and influential, he
represents the interests of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.”

Every single word of that sentence made her sick. Anger-particles were compounding across
Barros’ face and, surely, her own.

“Not only was your delivery completely pathetic, you –”

“My delivery didn’t matter,” Hermione erupted, “He was never going to agree. There was no
chance.”

“You set a most eminent individual on fire, in my office.”

“You checked my wand, I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, don’t even try that with me, Hermione Granger. You… idiotic girl. How do you expect to
accomplish anything – how do you expect to function if you cannot control your temper?”

“I did not do it.”

“Get out of my sight.”

Hermione wanted to set another fire. Burn the whole department. Burn the Ministry. Burn Barros.
Burn, burn, bam, bam, ba-bam. Standing by the Window of Contemplation wasn’t calming her. She
paced for a while and dear god why hadn’t she been sacked?

She wheeled around and hurried to the auror headquarters. Ron’s head was clearly visible over the
top of his cubicle, and straight to him she went.

“Look who’s here,” he said when she burst into his space.

A head of tangled black hair popped up from the next cubicle.

“You both are eating with me today,” she announced with no room for refusal.

But her voice was… well, the boys recognised the implications. A worried glance was exchanged.
Hermione turned away and walked on, giving them time to exchange all the necessary looks and
nervous whispers of Hermione’s having a Hermione moment.
They shared a lift with many lunch-goers. That, of all things, had a positive impact on her state of
mind.

At last, with food gathered and a table secured with a Muffliato, Hermione told Harry and Ron what
had happened.

Ron immediately provided the most helpful input. He told her, “You can’t just go around igniting
people.”

Harry, slumped with strangely tired exasperation, said, “You know, when you’re no longer a
juvenile, delinquency can be a serious problem.”

“Oh, shush,” she huffed, “I didn’t actually do it. I just considered the possibility and–”

“If you can simply will things into happening, I have a list for you.”

“Harry, Barros checked my wand. There’s no proof I did anything. He was already holding an open
flame up to his face. Maybe there really was a problem with his lighter.”

Ron’s shock and unsettlement suddenly gave way to sniggers.

“Did his skin crisp up?” he asked.

“Of course not. Do you think I’d be this calm if I’d actually injured someone?”

Harry coughed.

“He wasn’t hurt at all. Only his moustache – and pride – didn’t survive.”

“Excellent.”

“I suppose we’ll be seeing him in our neck of the woods soon,” Harry sighed.

“Maybe.”

Ron wouldn’t stop sniggering. It was infectious.

Hermione traversed the length and breadth of Diagon Alley on Saturday morning. Desperate to
begin the day pleasantly, she first stopped by Enrico’s shop. As someone who had spent his youth
in his muggle father’s workshop, he was an avid proponent of the superiority of hand-crafted
furniture. The human touch.
There were no elves under his thumb, but he lent his support just the same.

That exhausted the day's quota of pleasantness. There was room now for outright brutality - At a
cauldron maker’s, a forger clipped an elf with a chisel. Hermione’s hair filled with static as she
reared up, threw caution to the wind, and used her name for all it was worth.

The owner of the workshop signed the petition.

She went to the Apothecary and to Eeylops Owl Emporium and acquired two ayes. Madam Malkin
and Madam Primpernelle gave her two awkward nays. All she got from the Magical Menagerie
was a breather, while watching baby creatures play around. The warlock at Obscurus Books signed,
the wizard at Amanuensis Quills went on and on about the importance of tiny elf hands in his line
of work. Gentle Ollivander made her stay for a chat after signing. At Potage's Cauldron Shop she
flashed around the signature from their main supplier. Quality Quidditch, Scribbulus, Sugarplum's,
Twilfitt and Tattings, an assortment of tea shops, restaurants, and She’d Had Enough .

It was only a little past one, allowing her the leisure of a mosey down to her next destination. Every
other thought flew the coop, and what remained were memories of the last time she’d walked
through muggle London. It was a different path; she could've given him another tour. Passing by
The British Museum, she imagined a conversation about the ethicality of its rooms full of loot, his
favourite antiquarian, and what he had once said about the pureblood obsession with collecting
totems and artefacts.

At Gower street, even that thread was lost. She felt a visceral pang for a life that was never meant
to be hers. UCL had featured in a (very, very) long list she had compiled in the Pre-magical
Era. She reached the main campus and stood in a courtyard, just as a group emerged from the main
building... after spending the morning in the library, perhaps. The world belonged to them; they
were free in a way she had never known. Their responsibilities didn’t extend beyond themselves
and their education. They were adults but they didn’t have to grow up just yet.
The girl among the group, in a bright blue coat… What was her life like? Was she headed to a pub
to drink and talk about her dissertation? Was she deeply entrenched in a fascinatingly niche area of
study? Was she dating that handsome bloke next to her? Was love ravaging her, inside and out?

“Hermione!”

She took a deep breath and pried out a smile for Dean. His boyfriend and his girlfriend were there
too, and all three were stylish and colourful, making Hermione feel terribly drab.

“Bloody good to see you,” Dean beamed, “You remember Jack and Wendy, yeah? What do you say
guys, another one for the League of Unapologetic Muggleborn People?”

“Is that what you call yourselves?” Hermione laughed incredulously.

Dean nodded. “We are LUMP. The avant-garde. Come along now, Myron doesn’t appreciate
laggards.”

Slade was to their left, and Dean took her straight up to it, to a bench by the entrance, where a
young woman was sitting and drawing. There was a slight drop along the building, secured by a
railing, and Wendy made a surreptitious move with her wand that caused a part of the railing to
break off and form a bridge. It led to a strip of wall on which the words Goldenwisps’ College of
Magical Painting appeared. The woman on the bench didn’t notice a thing.

The esteemed members of LUMP – and Hermione – passed through.

They stepped into an enormous room made entirely of glass, flooded with natural light that was not
natural. Easels were scattered everywhere, giant cabinets full of paints, brushes, palettes, et al, that
were being dusted by a pair of elves...
There were pedestals with half made sculptures, a large table with rolls of canvas —

“This way.”

A door to the side led not to sunny Elysium as the studio suggested, but a dark corridor full of
paintings. At the end was the office of Myron Beakerbotch.

“Go on,” Dean urged, “We’ll hang back. It’s better he doesn’t see you with us.”

It didn’t make a difference.

Nothing about the man surprised her – not his ruffled robes and Van Dyke beard, nor his look of
apathy. She disliked him at once, and he sent her off in record time.

Dean welcomed her back with a look of commiseration.

“Do you have anywhere to be, or would you like to have a gander at our pathetic excuse for an art
district?”

The other door in the studio led to an open square, with low structures surrounding a floor of
encaustic tiles.

First they visited a lively witch in a paint splattered smock who mixed pigments and sold them.
Right next door was a shop that sold more art supplies. The rest were studios and galleries, all
essentially displaying the exact same stuff. They spent hours dipping in and out of them, getting
more annoyed with each one, till Hermione was accosted by an artist who wanted to make a larger
than life portrait of her, (as well as Mr Potter and Mr Weasley, of course). Dean stood behind him
and pretended to vomit while she struggled to keep a straight face.

The pilgrimage ended at a gallery that showcased tapestries that were, though still staid, a slight
reprieve. Hermione was studying a huge mountain landscape filled with Graphorns and trolls, when
a drawling voice called out from above a winding iron staircase.

“Hullo, children.”
The speaker descended and was greeted with great warmth by the other three. He was a rail-thin
man in a long fur coat, with shoulder-length hair framing a weathered face. His eyes were lined
with black. Purple rhinestones hung from his ears.

“Haven’t seen you Lumps around in a while. Come, I’ll let you buy me dinner.”

“Eddie Stafford,” Dean pronounced, “Eddie, this is…”

“Hermione Granger.” Eddie took her hand and kissed it. “Modern day Joan of Arc, patron saint of
all us muggleborns. Well this is an honour indeed. I shall let you buy me dinner.”

With that, he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her outside.

She had got caught in a rip current. There was no reclaiming her hand, and there was no way to
avoid getting swept up by the increasingly impassioned discussion about the boring art they’d
seen.

Eddie brought them back into the muggle world, and kept them walking till they arrived at a small
chippy where they suffered a queue. When their turn came, he elegantly declined to contribute to
the cost.

A sidle into an alley and a side-along apparition brought them to Eddie’s warzone of a flat. His
flatmate was clearly asleep in the next room, as snores permeated through the walls.
The four crowded around a table meant for two, littered with empty bottles. Had she leaned back
her head would’ve touched the wall.

But conversation flowed like it had all the room in the world.

Eddie had been a student at Goldenwisps too, until he’d been expelled for his dedication to
animating overtly homoerotic male nudes. He was unbelievably well-read and utterly set on
revolutionising magical painting.

“If you think things are bad now, the eighties were hell. Before Beakerbotch, we had Gervasius
Carlson. Absolute cunt. He used to incendio my work on a weekly basis, and quash any attempt I
made to broaden the minds of my braindead brethren. Sonia Boyce was giving a lecture right next
door and we weren’t allowed to go. Derek Jarman himself was speaking at the ICA and we weren’t
allowed to go. Stanley Spencer retrospective; we weren’t allowed to go. Hockney – nope.
“That was the first time Lordy Waldemar had died, it was a brand new world, and no new horizons
were sought. And it’s the same sorry fucking story all over again.”

It was as though Hermione had spent the past nine years being wound up for exactly this moment.
She burst out with a proper tirade.

They flew from cultural stagnation to societal woes. The elf contract got the validation that she had
been so very hungry for. She shared a copy of her FSA forward, and Jack pounded his fist on the
table while Eddie declared it to be a manifesto for the ages. (They, so far, had only one slogan, to
wit: We are LUMP, not lumpen.)

Hermione received a badge that looked disturbingly lump-like, with the word LUMP stamped
across it in red.
Food was consumed, alcohol was brought out, hours zoomed by. That League of Unapologetic
Muggleborn People thrived in each other’s company.

Buzzing with vitality, glowing with affirmation, bolstered with ideas, it was late by the time
Hermione returned to the dark quietude of her flat.

The sound of the door closing echoed down the barren hall.

Sunday morning’s Prophet, the most elaborate publication of the week, featured photographs of
Hermione scurrying around Diagon. The reporter, (not Rita, but adjacent), had visited every
establishment that Hermione had, in an attempt to unearth her diabolical scheme. Some had
gracefully demurred. Some had been gobby gits.

The Elf Contract had made national news.

In the most lukewarm, uninspiring way.

Hermione wrote to Xenophilius.

She was looking forward to the stability of dinner at the Burrow, after the past two weeks.

(There was really only one thing she wanted more than a hearty meal.)

The kitchen smelt mouthwatering and Hermione called out a happy greeting to the figure fussing
over the oven.
“Hello, dear,” Mrs Weasley replied absently. Croakily. Like she’d been crying.

Oh, bother.

“What’s happened?” Hermione broached.

“Nothing at all.” Mrs Weasley stayed as she was. “Those boys have run off with Teddy and
Andromeda is getting hassled because it's past his bedtime. Would you hop over to Grimmauld
Place and fetch them?”

“Um, sure…”

In Harry’s drawing room, all the furniture had been pushed to the side. The whole area had been
taken over by a winding, looping, twisting race track. The boys – Harry with Teddy on his
shoulders, Ron, Theo, and George, stood by the window, enrapt in a very serious debate.

“I’m telling you it’ll work!” Ron insisted hotly, “The angle is perfect, there’s no need for magic.”

“You’re risking hours of hard labour,” Theo griped.

Hermione cleared her throat loudly.

Four heads turned her way, muttered distractedly, ( hullo – hi – alright? – hi ) and turned back.
Teddy giggled.

“You’re being summoned,” she tried again, “Andromeda wants Teddy back.”

“Right. Let’s do it then,” Ron said.

“If the finale falls flat,” George threatened, “the next one will go right up your –”

“Careful,” Harry cut in.

“– nose.”

Teddy giggled again.

It would take a while, Hermione guessed, so she sat on a chair flush with the frame of the fireplace
and pulled a book out of her bag.

Anon, loud whoops and cheers broke out.

“I told you, didn’t I!” Ron blustered.

She stood up. “Can we go now?”

Once Teddy was back with Andromeda, and the table was being laid, Hermione pulled Ron to the
side and asked why his mother was upset.
“Bill finally put his foot down,” he disclosed, face scrunching with discomfort, “Took Fleur’s side.
They’ll leave for France in a couple of weeks.”

There was no stability over supper. Just strain and the odd sniffle. Fleur hadn’t come, but Bill had,
and he looked guilty and unwell.

Therefore, when Harry plucked her sleeve and asked her to come by for a cup of tea, she hoped she
would find some stability there.

The Drawing room had been set right by Kreacher. Hermione, Harry, and Ron had barely got
comfortable before he appeared with a tray.

“So,” Ron began conversationally, “You were in the papers.”

“I am aware.”

Strong mint tea reminded her of home, and of using it as a vehicle to dose her parents. She took a
small sip.

“Here’s something you’re unaware of,” Harry added, “after our chat over lunch, when Ron and I
got back to our desks, who do you think marched into Robards’ office?”

Hermione sagged under the weight of the universe.

“Mmhm.” Ron smiled.

A silver beam tore into the room via the fireplace, and it took the form of an ocelot, from which a
commanding voice emitted –

Weasley. Blacktooth Layton’s been caught and I don’t trust Desmond to follow procedure. Go take
care of it .

Ron let out a sound of agony even before the patronus' glow had fully vanisheded.

“Why me? Why is it always me? ”

“You’re the star of the department, aren’t you?” Harry said, “Robards’ favourite.”

Ron grumbled incoherently as he clasped his cloak.

“Some might even call you The Chosen One..."

“Fuck right off, Harry.”

He stomped through the floo.

Hermione had opened her mouth to comment of Harry's gleeful expression, but Ron’s head
reappeared - “Don’t tell her about the Greengrass stuff till I get back.” - And popped away.

They sat in companionable silence. It could very easily be called stable.

She was a glutton for punishment.

“Five months today,” she mumbled, averting her eyes and putting her cup down.

“Five months since what?”

“Since you started seeing Asher.”

Harry was quiet for a bit. Then - “How do you remember these things? I didn't – I don’t think even
Asher remembered.”

She shrugged. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Hermione.”

“I mean, you had a tough time at the night club and…”

She trailed off and looked up. Harry was frowning at her hands that she was… wringing? She
stilled them and he met her eyes.

“That wasn’t because of the alcohol. It was the flashing green lights.”

“God.”

But Harry only laughed at her stricken expression.

“I’m honestly fine. I don’t spend my days thinking about getting sloshed. I dunno… I feel…
lighter, I suppose.” He went a bit red around the neck. “Hopeful, too. About work and… Ginny
more than anything. Asher says I’m finally coming out of survival mode.”

“I’m so glad,” she whispered.

“It helps that you’re running around, setting fires and keeping the spotlight off me.”

“Told you I’ll always be there for you.”

He smiled, but turned away and she knew he had expended his patience for sentimentality. He did
look different compared to tenebrous memories from months ago. He seemed calm; forehead
unlined, eyes placid but a little ironic. He looked younger, even with the dark stubble on his jaw.

“What?” he asked guardedly.

“You’re a household name, Harry Potter.”

“So is Madam Glossy.”

“And you have an elf.”

He pulled a facetious expression of woe. “Where do I sign?”

The way he stooped, the way he held a quill hadn't changed at all, in all the years she had known
him. So often she’d made fun of that same cramped scrawl that had come to hold so much power.

Harry handed back her quill and binder, saying, “Kreacher will hate you even more now.”

“His grandchildren won’t.”

“What grandchildren? You’ll name this thing after Dobby, won't you?”

“Of course.”

Dobby’s Decree. Dobby’s Directive. The Dictate of Dobby. The Dobby Declaration.

A roar announced Ron's return. He balled up his cloak in his hand and threw it across the room like
he was practising for the shot put.

“Dez is an idiot and I need a holiday,” he humphed as he collapsed on the sofa.

Hermione let him whinge for a sufficient amount of time, then clapped her hands against her thighs
and said, “What about Greengrass?”

“Oh, yeah.” He put his feet on the table and grinned. “So he storms in looking absolutely livid–”

“He’d tried to patch up his tash, but may have overdone the hair-growth potion,” Harry interjected,
“Looked like a schnauzer.”

Ron carried on, “Harry and I whipped out a pair of Extendable Ears.”

“Robards doesn't have wards on his door?” Hermione asked.

“Doesn’t have a door. He doesn’t believe in them. But we couldn’t exactly hang around
listening…”

“Not that we needed the ears for Greengrass, mind you. He was shouting.”

“What was it, Harry? Immolation, attempted murder…”

“Savage, blood-thirsty muggleborn.”

“That was the best one,” Ron nodded fondly, “Well, then your boss was called in.”

Hermione’s hand flew up to her face to muffle a groan.

Harry grinned. “I thought you weren’t worried. There was no proof, aftera–”

“Not the time,” she gritted out.

“Your boss said she’d checked your wand and robes. She’s a member of the Wizengamot.” Ron
shrugged. “Robards wasn’t going to doubt her.”

“Which, of course, drove Greengrass mental.”

Redrum.

“Screaming, shouting, and more of the same. Robards hates him.”

“Why?” Hermione asked.

“The stupid chuffer threatened him back when we’d arrested Pucey,” Ron said, “He didn’t fancy
that.”

“He started howling about wandless magic, and Robards asked him to prove it. Obviously, he
demanded to know how that could be proven. To which… Robards replied… It can’t. ”

“I’m genuinely surprised the man didn’t explode on the spot.”

Harry smirked, “Robards knows full well who helped me get a hang of wandless disarming and
summoning.”

“So… nothing happened.” Hermione was having trouble keeping up.

“Not a thing,” Ron clarified, “Your boss and ours let you get away with common assault.”

A tidy bow on an untidy episode. In the affairs of both Goblins and Greengrasses, she had emerged
unscathed. Image really was everything.

“I love corruption,” she said.

She wondered about spontaneous anaemia while waiting outside Barros’ office for a final review of
Clementia’s case file. Kathy and Takumi wanted to know if she was feeling faint.

She told them no.

The only thing keeping her on her feet was the anticipation of Draco’s return.

Barros glared when Hermione spoke out of turn. She criticised her summarising notes as usual. It
was a disconcertingly ordinary meeting.
Later, to recover, she gave her comrades a sanitised version of Greengrass’ rebuff.

“You are friendly with some old magical families, aren’t you?” Ben asked, “Madam Barros is right,
unfortunately. Their support will boost our initiative.”

Hermione allowed herself a moment to quell a burst of ire.

“Well, we already have Potter, Ollivander, and Fawley. Andromeda’s a Black and I can get Nott;
Abbott, Longbottom... Slughorn might be amenable. And… Malfoy. Malfoy will sign.
Shacklebolt… Well. Heh. Oh, George is a Weasley, and both his parents will be on board. Molly’s a
Prewett.”

Who else was there? That creep Cadfan Burke? MacDougal, Shafiq, and Macmillan were all on the
Wizengamot. She couldn't bear to approach Lavender’s parents and she refused to visit the Flints
and the Bulstrodes. If only Astoria was still in the country. Getting her to sign would be the biggest
slap on Redrum’s face

With each passing minute, her ability to focus on anything but her watch diminished.

She might run into him in the lift.

Catch up with him in the atrium and ask if he was back.

But she didn’t encounter him in the lift.

He wasn’t in the atrium. Fiona was.

“I read about what you’re doing to help house-elves," she smiled, "Jolly decent of you.”

“Thanks,” Hermione replied, hating her for being so nice.

“And would you believe it? Today I’m waiting for Draco.”

“What.”

She hated her, full stop.

“We had made a bet,” Fiona twittered, “over the outcome of Sunday's match. Do you follow the
Spanish Quidditch League, Hermione?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, he owes me a drink for each goal scored by Madrid.”

“I see. Have fun. Bye.”

Don’t. Just don’t.

No. Stop. Stop. Shhh. Don’t.

Do not.

Bam, bam, ba —

Her study was in desperate need of tidying.

She spun her chair away from the desk, watching fluttering, gauzy drapes and the night beyond.

She cooked up multiple scenarios, each worse than the last.

The silence, how it throngs. Are you awake up there?

Starry and full of feeling the window faces you.
Hands of the winds transpose to your near countenance
The remotest night.

Dead inside and standing out in the cold on a dark evening, she clutched a warm mug of some
original Molly Weasley concoction in her mittened hands. It tasted like pumpkin, nutmeg, and
melted toffee. It kept the sickness at the back of her throat at bay, but couldn’t touch cold, cold
anguish.

The area around the Burrow had been taken over by a full-scale, dazzlingly lit-up race track. It
began at the garage in the front yard, where the Ford Anglia was humming and emitting fumes and
Mrs Weasley stood guard, holding her wand like a truncheon, ready to decimate anyone who even
hinted at wanting to get inside.
The track went around the house, took a round of the back garden, went over the pond, and entered
the orchard, where the quidditch hoops had been enlarged and set aflame. It circled over the tops of
trees, formed a tall spiral, finally ending on Hermione’s hillock, upon which sat many crates full of
fireworks.

Eager spectators awaited the show. There were so many of them already, and the sound of
apparition was yet to cease.

Draco was still in bed with Fiona.

Hermione stood to the side, at the bottom of her hijacked hillock, wanting it to end.

Theo, George, and Lee were bustling up and down, serious and resolute, as though posing to be
fitted in as new additions toThe School of Athens.
The next round of cracks sounded the arrival of LUMP and sundry. They swelled around her and
departed. Only Eddie stayed. He had come with the sole intention of hanging around with her. She
felt a bit proud of herself for that, and his conversation was a welcome – and intimidating –
diversion. Keeping up with him took everything out of her - he spoke about advanced sentience
charms that only artists studied, the ongoing case of General Pinochet, and how it was high time
someone conducted a serious, anthropological study of magical society. All through it, with
abhorrent tenacity, Hermione kept scanning the crowd.

After some time, Eddie turned things around with a non sequitur:

“Do you know him?”

“Who?”

“That dark haired chap by the crates.”

Hermione peered up the hillock. “I think he’s called Neil. He has… something to do with
Puddlemere United.”

“Quidditch. Ugh.”

“I wholehearted–”

Draco appeared on the hillock, in his dark grey coat. Alone.

“Ooh, is that who you’ve been looking around for?”

“No.”

He carefully took in the course sprawling around him; his eyes swept over the landscape and…
stopped at her. She turned back to Eddie.

“—get started?”

Oh, he’d been talking.

“...contemporary pop art could learn a thing or two. Kitsch is shallow shit without irony. And this
masterpiece is chock full of irony.”

“Does it matter if the creators of this masterpiece are unaware of its overwhelming irony?”

“Not when I get to point and laugh.”

Hermione chuckled, and he kept her chuckling with his natter all the way till the car was set in
motion.
The crowd ate up every second of it, though nobody could outdo Mr Weasley, who looked like he
was dancing on a bed of burning coals.

As the final lot of fireworks were set off, Eddie decided he was going to take a chance on the
presumed-Neil. She watched him go, leap over the track, and trudge up the hill.

“Hello, Granger.”

His voice walloped her something awful, but she locked her limbs and sight in place.

“Welcome back, Draco. How was your trip?”

He replied after a few seconds. “Eventful.”

“As expected.”

The car was being wheeled back into the garage, for another go. Eddie laughed rollickingly at
something.

“Who is that man?”

“His name is Eddie Stafford. He’s a friend of Dean’s.”

“Very amusing, is he?”

“Oh, yes. Very.”

Amusing and coming back with a swinging gait, a toss of his hair and glittering earrings.

“Alas!” he exclaimed, grinning at Hermione and ignoring Draco, “A raging heterosexual.”

“Tough luck.”

“Maybe I shall have better luck in Pah-ree. ...Yes,” he acknowledged Hermione’s surprise, “I am
off to Pah-ree. A bit old fashioned to head there for a breakthrough, but it is what it is. I need to be
in a place where they value stiff cocks over stiff upper lips.”

A bit of wickedness stole over his expression. He gave her a searching glance, then slowly leaned
down to kiss her cheek.

“You are absolutely dazzling. If magic were capable of making certain fundamental changes, I
would be whisking you away to elope right this instance.”

He walked back half a dozen paces and spun into nothingness.

The one whose benefit all that had been for, wasn’t going to react.
It was time to go.

“Well,” she addressed her mug with a tinge of finality, “I’ve had enough of this… spectacle.”

“We were held back in Rhodes for an additional day,” Draco muttered tightly, “The specialist who
was meant to reinforce the enchantments missed his portkey. Us underlings were moved out of a
somewhat passable hotel, and shoved straight into Tartarus.”

The Ford Anglia zoomed into round two. How was everybody just as excited by the same inane
show?

“It was a nightmare,” Draco groused sourly, “Two to a room the size of your kitchen. Twin beds,
far worse than yours. Bare windows. Not a stitch of drapery. Have you heard of such a thing?”

The car whizzed past them, wheels sparking worryingly.

“I got to share a bottle of raki with Markos Samaras, though.”

“Who’s that?”

“Keeper of the Greek national team.”

Right. Quidditch.

“He brought three cousins along. You’ve heard of the Grey Sisters who shared one eye? Those lads
shared a single brain cell.”

Hermione’s insides were developing sinkholes; turning inside out. “You were delayed?” she asked
in a subdued voice.

“Did you not hear what I just said?”

“You got back… today.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw him shoot her an annoyed look.

“You’re exceptionally dense this evening. No wonder that simpleton had you laughing so hard.”

Mr Weasley was returning his car to the garage. George, Theo, and Lee were carefully dismantling
the track under Mrs Weasley’s watchful eye.

“Are you going to Finnigan’s with the rest of them?” she asked.
“Are you?”

“No. I have to work tomorrow.”

“As do I.”

Bam, bam, ba-bam

“Will you come over?”

“Yes.”

Fifteen minutes since she’d returned to her flat, let down her hair, and thrown off her shapeless
jumper.

Five minutes since she’d started pacing from the coffee table to the dining table.

He wasn’t going to show up. Theo had coerced him into going to the pub, or he’d decided he’d
much rather buy drinks for Fiona, or she had been waiting for him at his flat. In his bedroom. In his
bed.

Oh, there he was.

He’d left his coat behind and brought a paper bag with olive leaves painted on it. Hermione took a
step towards him, reaching out…

He said, “Not now.”

“Not…?”

“Later,” he asserted, and put the bag on a chair as he continued to advance closer. “Did you know
the Ministry ensures we receive the morning’s Prophet, no matter where we are? You’ve had a busy
weekend.”

“I accidentally caused Phaedrus Greengrass’ moustache to catch fire.”

The spark of sheer surprise on his face evoked so much wistfulness in her. Why couldn’t it always
be like this? Why did she have to sustain so much turmoil during long in-between moments?

He took her face in his hands, thumbs resting at the corners of her mouth, and said, “Look at that.
The bad girl’s back.”
Her throat went dry. Elsewhere, the opposite reaction.

“Another suspension?”

She shook her head. “Barros covered for me.”

“You’ve bent even your unyielding boss to your will. How utterly unsurprising.” His hands flowed
smoothly from her face to her waist. “You have a way of doing that, don’t you?”

Then he pulled her against him and upwards, bringing her to the tips of her toes. Her eyes closed,
head tilted automatically, and she was pressed into the back of an armchair.

He was lost in the depths of her hair, exploring the terrain of her neck and sending tingles coursing
through her body…

And she – and she – and she said —

“You aren’t allowed to be with anyone else.”

He went completely rigid. Hermione’s eyes flew open with fast-dawning dismay.

Blood churned like a roaring whirlpool. Bronchial sacs inflated like blisters.

Draco’s breath fell in puffs against her collar as his shoulders lifted and fell with the beginning of
sentences he never verbalised.

Until finally: “Does this rule apply to you as well?”

She let herself blink at last. “Of course.”

“All right.”

He drew his tongue along the tendon on the side of her neck, inciting a gasp that ended their
standstill. He pulled back, his eyes were at half-mast, and he kissed her. Slowly, exploratorily, like
he was doing it for the first time.

Blue-hot and enthralling. Gentle as her lower lip fell between both of his, gentle as he tilted his
head the other way, gentle as lips slowly parted.
When had they separated long enough for him to pull off her top? When had she unbuttoned his
shirt? But his arms were locked around her and she couldn’t get rid of the obstructive garment.

“Get this off,” she urged.

One rolled sleeve got caught on his arm and ohmygod he was taking too long.

“Stop. Let me. Resolvo .”

She threw it away and sighed when their bare skin was reunited. She mapped his neck with her lips
and tasted his hums through vibrations that added sweetness to the salt of his skin.

Hands went everywhere, his and hers, unwaveringly slow and dilatory. She stroked him through his
trousers, he palmed her breasts.
She was going off her head, yearning for a firmer touch but also not wanting to change a thing.

He walked his fingers down her torso and undid the button of her jeans.

“Take them off properly. Don’t you dare vanish them.”

His laughter filled her hair; rough, a little dark, and it made her stomach quiver. He bent to strip
them off her, then removed his trousers as well. He gripped her hips as he straightened and…
That’s it.

He stood still.

“What is it?” she stuttered.

A simple one-shoulder shrug. “Just awaiting further instructions.”

She laughed as she leaned up to kiss him, feeling his mouth curve up when she touched it with her
own.

She couldn’t understand what was happening. They were simply... touching, kissing... Smooth
palms, slightly rough fingers skimmed down her back, over the outsides of her thighs, kneaded her
bum, circled her hip bones. She paid her respects to each scar on his chest with tender caresses,
drew a crooked river down his stomach.

A sigh against her ear: “Your skin is like silk.”

A sweeping touch along her silhouette.

A trace of his broad shoulders.

A brush at the underside of her breasts.

Fingers running up along his spine.

He pinched her nipples. Sharply. The need packed within her detonated.

Then well so and she it fuck.

She clasped a hand around his neck to keep him fixed in place while her tongue swept vehemently
into his mouth, lifting her hips and winding a leg around his. He turned and moved her backwards,
till the arm of the chair was under her bum. Her legs were pushed aside. That firm touch she’d been
yearning for was finally administered.

She broke away from his mouth with a throaty moan.

Eyes squeezed shut, teeth pressed into her lower lip, she was jolted out of her own body and thrown
back in, over and over again. Her hips caught onto the rhythm of his fingers, and she latched onto
his shoulder to keep the glorious, harrowing flow going.
So good. Tension curling through her muscles. She forced open her eyes and stared into his,
conflagrant. He was breathing hard, watching her unblinkingly. She whimpered and he kissed her
like he was doing it for the last time, ever.
When he spun her around and bent her over the arm of the chair, anticipation stole her breath.
But the height… something… was off. She almost sobbed when he didn’t glide inside and ease her
agony.

She was spun again, kissed, a granitelike length pressed into her stomach, and then they were on
the floor, with his legs stretched out, hers flanking his lap, and she sank onto him in the most
impatient, unpolished manner.

Still it wasn’t right. She clutched his shoulders and rose and fell and rose and fell without getting a
fulfilling drag inside her. She leaned back, supported herself by holding his shins, and that was it.

His hands were like metal clamps that swallowed up her waist. Her head fell back when his teeth
began attacking her chest, between muffled words like hot and tight.

A bead of perspiration that settled in the hollow of her throat was caught by his wandering mouth.

Suddenly, he forced her to still. Before she could so much as whine with despondency, she wound
up flat on her back, fibres of the rug slightly rough against her skin, and he stood on his knees
before her. He lifted her legs, her hips, her lower back off the floor, and locked her knees around his
waist. Then he plunged inside and her vision was taken over by stars.

If the pace was rash before, it had become brutal. He kept going harder harder harder and she kept
getting dragged back till she reached out and grabbed a leg of the coffee table to keep in place.
It was so good and just right and oh fuck and oh god and ugh yes please don’t ever ever ever ever
stop.

A rough, panting grunt of approval from him made her realise she’d been babbling out loud.

She was right on the precipice and her hands moved on their own; one to squeeze her breast and the
other trailing down her stomach to where they were joined.

“Fuck,” Draco blared, and slammed against her, sending both her and the table dragging
backwards.

Once, twice, and six... seven... eight... nine...

She arched completely off the floor. Lightning crashed into the room from all directions, painting
the world white. White as a supernova. As absolution. And she burst out her skin and became one
with it.

She opened her eyes to the ceiling. Her limbs were splayed inelegantly. Her throat felt raw.

It took a considerable amount of time for her mind and body to get back in sync.

She gingerly lifted her head and saw Draco sprawled nearby, leaning against the sofa with his head
on the seat. He was staring at the ceiling like he was seeing through it, and through all the
subsequent ceilings and floors above, straight into the dark night sky. His face was red. His neck
and chest and knees were red.
Hermione forced herself up and scrabbled across the carpet, wincing when cool air hit the chafed
skin of her back. She rested her head close – but not too close – to his.

“I need a detailed account of the Greengrass incident,” he rasped.

She rolled her face towards him with a laugh. He was still staring up, smirking lazily.

“I need a detailed account of how such a big, disastrous incident was resolved.”

Nothing else compared to this; nothing even came close. Not the validation of similar wavelengths,
nor the comfort of old friendships. Nothing.

She felt jubilant, so whole, listening to his mordant, almost whiny description of what, in all
honesty, sounded like a perfectly decent budget hotel, his horror at having to endure a fifteen
minute bus ride, his account of the magical sanctuary, and the sardonic commentary about all the
meetings between diplomats.
He gave her all she wanted – his eyes, his laughter, his attention, that little half-smile that told her
he was interested – as she let him know what she had been up to.

When he eventually yawned and flicked his wand to summon his clothes, she almost asked him to
stay the night. But he’d be wanting his own bed, and moreover, it was well past eleven. Theo could
return from the pub at any moment.
She watched him get dressed with a bittersweet stab.

He left and she stared through the ceiling as he had. She saw the Milky Way in all its splendour -
All its splendour was nothing but a will-o'-the-wisp when compared to the immensity of what she
was feeling.

All right. She laughed to herself. All right.

Blood rushed to her head when she stood, making her fall back into the sofa. A minute went by
before she tried again.

She gathered her clothes, and threw them onto the corner chair in her bedroom. She dribbled
murtlap essence down her back and slipped into pyjamas. She brewed herself a cup of chamomile
tea and put on some soft music.

Only after all that did she settle back with the paper bag.

Inside, was her bra.

And a framed Greek mosaic, depicting Sisyphus. Brown, blue, and white tesserae were constantly
shifting, making it appear like he was rolling his boulder up the hill. For over five minutes she
watched, mesmerised, and waited for him to reach the top. He didn’t.
She hung it next to the etching from The Divine Comedy .
There was a book: A compilation of everything Hypatia had written, said, or commented about
Arithmancy, including transcripts from lectures and excerpts from a destroyed manuscript.

Also, a small red figure Pyxis, featuring the nine muses. It was filled with bite-sized squares of
baklava.

The words too much echoed like a siren through her head.

As she was leaving for bed, Sisyphus reached the top of his hill. For a few seconds, the image froze
and the tiles stayed in place. It was a picture of accomplishment.

The boulder rolled down, Sisyphus trudged to follow, Hermione doused the lamps.

Not great, receiving a memo from the Head Auror requesting your presence, moments before the
end of the day. Hermione felt a strong, petulant urge to send a response that read, Shan’t. Don’t
wanna.

Harry and Ron were investigating a burglary, so Edith took her through the maze of cubicles, to the
minotaur’s lair Robards’ door-free office. The man inside, in robes of red, was sitting back in his
chair with the overweening ease of a seasoned copper.

“Good afternoon,” he said as Edith backed out of the room.

“Good afternoon,” Hermione muttered back.

His hair was greying quite aesthetically. He was well built with a strong nose and weak jaw.

“You know what this is about.”

Not a flaming clue.

“I suppose.”

He laughed. It came from somewhere deep inside him, rich and rumbling.

“No need to look so apprehensive. I called you here merely to inform you that Phaedrus Greengrass
had levelled a spurious allegation against you, which has been summarily disproved by a witness to
the incident.”

Hermione had nothing to say.

He went on, “Mr Greengrass has made tall claims about taking the issue up with higher authorities,
but it is common knowledge that the Minister for Magic no longer entertains him, after he kicked
up such a commotion for Pucey. Anyhow, as things stand, I will not be drawing up a formal report
for this bogus affair.”

“Okay,” Hermione said slowly, “Thank you.”

Robards nodded, not-so-secretly smiling in a not-so-comforting way.

“There is one more thing. Another incident.”

“There is?”

“Yes. Sunday, the sixteenth of January, at approximately ten past eight in the evening, all the fairies
in the lobby of the Ivory Grotto spontaneously escaped from their casings. Their decampment
coincided with your departure from the hotel.”

“How odd,” Hermione breathed.

“Is it not? The Manager was quick to say that he was looking right at you as you were leaving, and
he swore it was not your doing.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Of course not.”

Robards picked up a miniature quaffle from his desk, threw it in the air, and caught it with one
hand.

“Once is nothing. Twice can be a coincidence. But if something were to happen for the third
time…” He set the quaffle down again and levelled a no-nonsense look upon her. “I’ll have a hard
time brushing it aside. Do you understand?”

She gulped. Nodded.

“Good. That’s all then.”

Hermione stood up, smiling like she’d never learnt how.

“Ms Granger,” he called when she’d come so close to making her escape, “You would have made
an excellent auror, you know. I would have loved to have all three of you in my department.”

She laughed it off and wished him well, but he was wrong. She would’ve made a rubbish auror,
because she didn’t ever wish to duel again.
Chapter End Notes

1. The bam-baming is from “I wanna be sedated” by Ramones

2. The Skating Minister, Henry Raeburn
3. “The silence, how it throngs...”: Moonlit Night, by Rainer Maria Rilke
4. The School of Athens, Raphael.
For the past four chapters, Hermione has been the personification of ‘The Sex Has Made Me
Stupid’ by Robots In Disguise.
 Ninety
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“Hermione, where’s the final witness list?”

“It’s there.” She stared at Kathy. “Isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid not,” Kathy replied, rifling through the sheafs on her desk.

“Oh no,” Hermione groaned, “I must have left it at home – my desk was a mess – I’m sorry.” She
hopped to her feet. “I’ll go fetch it right now.”

“We have until four to submit the file, you can fetch it during lunch.”

“But!”

“Madam Barros will be calling upon us anytime,” Takumi added calmly.

“Honestly. Relax. It’s all right.”

“Would you like a cup of green tea?”

She must have had an air of mania about her to elicit such a reaction. Her brain had sundered into
particles that buzzed and moved like separate mad, frenzied, corybantic entities. A dense cluster of
angry bees. She grinned weakly, accepted the tea, and went back to the three different tasks she’d
been immersed in. Four, actually. The ongoing task from the evening before, daydreaming about
Draco, was at the forefront.

Barros, in true form and with predictable maliciousness, didn’t call upon them till ten minutes
before lunch, and she kept them till ten minutes remained of it, before shoving off to demolish a
fancy spread with some bigwigs.

Hermione denounced her boss and colleagues in long, under-her-breath mutterings as she took the
lift to the atrium.

Owing to her vertical disadvantage and the mob that had swaddled around the entrance after having
eaten, she couldn't spot him till she’d arrived at the counter. He was sitting near the back wall, with
Fiona.
Hermione collected a something-or-the-other sandwich and pumpkin juice and made a raging
beeline towards their table.

She had two minutes and twenty-four seconds to eat, four minutes to race home and back up to
level —
Draco and Fiona were sharing a tray. One packet of crisps, one plate of food. Hermione set her own
tray down loudly, as her stomach burned, her appetite died, and the brain-bees brought out their
stings. Draco, who it appeared was intent on a scroll, looked up at the noise, gave her a
disinterested nod, and went back to it. His shirt was glaucous blue, with a light herringbone pattern.
It suited him.

Fiona smiled and emitted an inane chirrup of a greeting.

Hermione certainly wouldn’t smile back.

She tore a bite out of her sawdust sandwich.

Another bite. A gulp of juice. A bite. David Attenborough should have been narrating the scene.

Out of all the one-time cats, Hermione is the most ferocious. When her territory is encroached
upon, she threatens the transgressor with a most frightening display.

“In a rush, are you?”

Wow. Now she was making snide remarks about her table manners? A burst of anger, a stab of
betrayal. She glanced at Draco who didn't care a whit.

“I am.”

“Oh.” Smile. “I see.”

Bite, chew, fuck you.

More and more people were leaving. Just seven or eight tables remained occupied. Her two minutes
were up.

Fiona prodded Draco’s arm. “Eat.”

He turned to her, frowning. “What?”

“Eat, Draco.”

He huffed, picked up a piece of bread, and went back to reading.

“What is that?” Hermione glared at the back of the scroll.

“You know how it is,” Fiona simpered, “Draco has to write all of Mr Pendleton’s reports and
accounts for him.”

“It looks like Draco is trying to decipher Geber’s life creating elixir,” she spat testily, “Is writing
boring, procedural drivel really that difficult?”

His head jerked in her direction, eyes narrowed. Both he and Fiona reached into the packet of crisps
at the same time. Their hands brushed.

“Oops!” Fiona tittered as they looked at one another.

How utterly revolting. Who the hell was she to be allowed accidental touches and the casual
intimacy of sharing food? How often did it happen, alongside friendly wagers and going out for
drinks, and probably flirting at each other’s desks?

An ashwinder egg is extremely hot, volatile, and flammable. If not frozen in time, it can set fire to
its surroundings. Inside its burning shells, lay Hermione’s bitter, envious heart.

“No, you go ahead!” Fiona playfully pushed his shoulder.

Violence bled into Hermione’s temper. She vanished her tray and the half-eaten food and stood up,
dragging her chair back in a way that was an expression of said violence.

She braced herself with a white-knuckle grip on the back of the chair as she shoved it in.

“Draco, come with me.”

She could have just said petrificus totalus instead. He peered over the scroll, wearing an expression
of loose surprise.

“I need help. To look for something. My study’s a mess.”

"If you need some tips on how to organise your space, I can help," Fiona piped up, "My methods
are tried and tested.”

What a good little receptionist you are.

Hermione. Only. Looked. At. Him. If he refused, she would perish on the spot.

He rolled up the scroll, handed it to Fiona, and unfolded from his chair like a curl of pretty smoke
and a vision of felicity.

She walked away from the table. He followed.

They merged with another group that was caught up in a serious discussion about poltergeists. In
the atrium, the group drifted towards the lifts. Hermione and Draco turned towards the fireplaces.

He remained a few steps behind her, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was weighed down by
reluctance. It was late, after all. They needed to be back at their desks… she checked her watch…
three minutes ago.

She barrelled into a fireplace and went straight to the study, keen to avoid whatever Draco-esque
comment he was sure to bestow upon her. There wasn’t time for it.

The witness list peeked out from under a pile of books. She carefully put it in her pocket. Next to
the books, there was a pile of parchment, that was next to a pile of newspaper cut outs, that was
next to a pile of scrolls, that was next to a pile of folders. Stella moved between them like the steed
that carried Napoleon across the Alps.
“Merlin, you weren’t lying about the mess,” Draco drawled from behind.

“Yes, thank you.” She snapped out of panic. “I haven’t been able to – Um.”

He was very close. He snuck his hands inside her robes and claimed a decisive hold of her bottom.

He kissed her. The Natural World came together to sing a song about glory. She threw her hands
into his hair and pressed forward as though trying to leave an imprint of herself on him.

He kissed her, because he’d said he wouldn’t be with anyone else.

She had withstood his contempt and bigotry, understood that he had remade himself, discovered
who he had become and loved him for it. He was hers. She had earned him.

He was hers, he was hers, hers hers hers and hers alone.

When his hand drifted to the inside of her thigh, she pulled out of his grip.

“What?” he demanded, already reaching for her again.

“We’re late, Draco.”

“Yes, very late.”

He pulled her back in, kissed her harder, grasping her robes as though ready to yank them off.

“No.” She turned her face away, gasping. “I have to–”

“Your coyness has been noted.”

He wound an arm around her hips as though preparing to pick her up. So she pushed him.

“What?”

“I have to get back to work!”

His look of incomprehension suggested she was speaking mermish.

“Why else did you ask me here?”

“To help me look for a scroll.”

“The one you found in under a second?”

“It… could have taken longer.”

His frustration was beyond words, it seemed.

“We should get back,” she said.

“You must get a kick out being… suggestive… and then…”

He reached up to fix his hair. Quick as a hummingbird, Hermione darted ahead and clamped her
fingers around his wrist.

He stared at her like she was completely and wholly off her rocker. Understandable.

“Are you drunk?” he asked incredulously, “Have you been jinxed? Did you sample some untested
Weasley product?”

“Let’s move!” she trilled, and in that while, apprehended his other arm as well, for good measure.

Walking backwards, she led him to the fireplace. You know, as you do.

She was forced to relinquish her hold in the atrium. It was empty but for a few people moving
towards the opposite row of fireplaces, and a couple of witches and a guard by the visitor’s
entrance.

“Fucking batty,” Draco grumbled under his breath.

“Oh, stop it,” she huffed in return, not as worried about his opinion of her sanity as much as the
danger of him fixing his hair.

“Did you think I fancied a caper?” he harped, “Did my sitting there, clearly occupied with
something, suggest that I had time for a stroll to your little nesting box–”

“Did I threaten you at wandpoint?” she hissed, glaring at him, “Did I forcefully tow you–”

“–didn’t even get a chance to eat properly.”

“Fine! I’m sorry.” She stared stonily ahead at the distant golden gates. “I’m so very sorry for
dragging you away from your cute, cosy, darling shared lunch. Maybe you can make up for it over
dinner.”

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence. Silence. Silence.

And then –

“Ah.”

Hermione wanted to tear down the atrium in a wild sprint, like a gazelle being chased by a lion, so
terrifically fast that she’d slice through the fabric of time and disappear forever and would never
have to experience whatever was about to come next.
Which was more silence. She picked up her pace.

“Do you reckon the hair’s enough? Would you like to wipe some lipstick on my collar as well?”

“Wot,” she choked.

“Or maybe leave a mark on my neck?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You most certainly do.”

“No.”

“You’re terribly obvious, Granger.”

“You’re raving.”

“Pitifully obvious.”

You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! Melting!

“If I was so obvious, why did it take you this long to realise?”

“Because I assumed you wanted to have sex, and stopped thinking.”

They’d reached the gates, and thankfully, there were already a few people there, waiting for a lift.

“We’ll take the next one,” Draco muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

She would not be listening to him.

A lift arrived and the other people shuffled in.

Not Hermione though. He shifted beside her, radiating all kinds of terrifying smug energy, and she
was too rattled to try and figure out if his mockery was better than the outrage she had feared.

The guard at the gate had a cough. It filled every moment of the time it took for another lift to
arrive.

One auror and two hitwizards stepped out of it. Hermione and Draco stepped in.

It was just the two of them, and a few paper planes.

“Now then,” Draco said as the lift began shimmying upwards, “Where were we?”

The most asinine rhetorical question of them all. Hermione pressed her lips into a thin line, glaring
ahead while he turned to her.
“I have to return the favour, of course.”

She spun to face him. “Huh?”

“No point in doing anything to your hair,” he mused, “it always looks like you’ve gone a round or
two. However…”

That was the point at which he began moving towards her, and before she knew it, he had crowded
her against the side of the lift. His arms caged her in.

“I could leave a mark,” he finished, dark and delicate, setting off hoofbeats in her chest.

She couldn’t find her voice; not with his face so close, eyes hooded under dishevelled hair.

“On which side of your neck shall I place it? Do you have a preference? I must admit, I’m partial
to…”

His eyes dropped to the left. She sucked in a quivering breath and held it as his head dipped. Her
eyes closed as soft lips pressed an open-mouthed kiss on her skin.

They realised that the lift had stopped extremely belatedly. The grille slid aside, Draco jumped back
and Hermione’s face snapped towards the opening.

It was Harry. As in, Potter. Yes, that one. Harry Potter. Oh my god, it was Harry .

He was carrying an armful of scrolls and had been rendered incapable of motion as he took in their
proximity… Draco’s hair… Hermione’s complexion…

He sighed heavily . He stepped into the lift and turned to face the closing grille.

They were moving again. She stared at her shoes. Draco moved to the far corner.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Hell’s bells.

“Hi, Harry!” Hermione squeaked, “What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” Harry deadpanned.

“N–No. I meant on level six…”

“Floo breaches. I’d come to collect the reports.”

“Oh.”

Draco quietly exited at the next stop. A woman in bottle green robes and a man in a fuzzy brown
ushanka climbed aboard.
Horrid silence.

“Level Two - Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” said Our Lady of the Lift.

Hermione and Harry walked out in horrid silence.

In moments of discomfort this ferocious beast transforms into a small burrowing creature, seeking
shelter in the nearest pile of dirt.

She struggled and struggled to calm herself.

“Yes, Hermione, you have driven me straight back to the hard stuff, if that's what you’re
wondering.”

“Hey!” she cried, slapping his arm reflexively.

He scowled.

Once they’d arrived at the fork in the passageway, they stopped. Both sighed, in the same lets get
this over with way.

Hermione opened with a strong, “Erm.”

“I’d really hoped you would have told me, rather than…” Harry grimaced.

Her rebuttal? A concise, “I... Er.”

“I was afraid of this,” Harry went on, “Catching you… bleh. But not… not in the bloody
Ministry.”

“Hold on,” she sputtered, “…Excuse me?”

“What?”

“You – you – um,” Get it together. “You suspected?”

“Are you under the impression that I’m not painfully familiar with how you act around a bloke you
fancy?”

Boiling blood rushed into her face. Harrowed admin drones flew past them and down the corridor.

“I’ve been waiting for you to spit it out, had half a mind to tell you that I know, but even the
thought of saying it out loud made me ill. I thought, if you’re weren’t admitting it and I didn’t
acknowledge it… it wouldn't be true.”

Was this real life? How were they having this conversation in the drab badlands between their
respective departments?

On one side, the craggy, hyperarid mountainous terrain where Wild Aurors roam, and on the other,
the grassy ridge of the DDL, so steep and narrow that only the most surefooted –

“How long did you plan to keep it a secret?”

She gaped at him. “How long do you think it’s been going on?”

“I dunno,” he shrugged, “Since your birthday, at least.”

“Jesus, no. It’s just been… I suppose… three weeks. Since Seamus’ birthday.”

Harry gave her a blank, unbelieving look. Then he shook his head. “Has every other single man in
the world died ? I’d be gladder to see you ruin a marriage than… Malfoy? Malfoy ? Are you mad?
God, you have no idea how long I’ve been dying to say that to you.”

One of the scrolls fell from his arms and went rolling down the corridor like a doomed boulder in
hell.

“Accio,” Hermione grumbled, “And yes, Malfoy. Draco. If you’re planning to harangue me out of
it, I’ll tell you now itself that you’ll be wasting your breath.”

She pushed the scroll into the cradle of his arms and he sighed again. What was it, for the fifth
time? On the wall behind him, just a few paces down, was the Window of Contemplation. Magical
Maintenance had made it rain.

“Oi, Potter!”

They both jumped. Auror Desmond was swaggering his way towards them.

“What’s the hold up? Robards is getting restless.”

“Right, coming,” Harry called back, and in a serious undertone, “We’ll talk about this later.”

Hermione nodded and turned away quickly, before she’d have to engage in any polite, passing
nonsense with Desmond.

She took a moment outside the office door, preparing herself to hear any number of permutations of
where have you been in tones ranging from worried to annoyed.

Be brainy brain-bees. She pushed past the door.

“Where’d you run off?” Kathy cried fretfully.

“Had a headache, was out of headache potion. Sorry,” Hermione mumbled dully, and passed on the
witness list.

It was still hours away from four. She didn’t see what the problem was.
They didn’t bother her anymore after that.

She was good for nothing and got nothing done.

Aside from her brash, jealousy driven impulsivity, aside from Harry finding them out when she
didn’t even know what they were, aside from the impending fall out of both those occurrences…
All she could think about was how Draco had shrunk away and quietly walked out when Harry had
chanced upon them.
She had to wonder if there was any point in talking about it with Harry if there wasn’t to be an it to
talk about anymore.

She put her head down on the table.

A few minutes later, Takumi placed another cup of tea in front of her.

Harry was waiting for her at the same spot in the corridor.

“Let’s go,” he said firmly, “Ron will be at Wheezes for a bit.”

There was determination in the set of his shoulders and stomp of his feet. They were going to have
a discussion, a very rare thing indeed, coming from Harry. How lucky that he chose this instance to
exhibit atypical behaviour.

They settled in his drawing room and he didn’t offer her tea, a teaspoon of Felix Felicis, not even a
basin to vomit into.

“Have at it,” she grumbled.

She set her sight on the Black family tapestry. Sirius and Regulus.

“Look, Hermione. I don’t want to harangue you,” he said, his words clearly rehearsed and tone
surprisingly gentle, “You always put yourself last, tolerate a lot of shit, and… I’ve spoken to Asher
about it, I know it’s partly my fault–”

Her eyes flew back to him, stunned at the solemnity of his expression.

“But you shouldn’t have to. You shouldn’t be with a nasty prick who calls you names. You should
be with someone who treats you well.”
“He does.”

“He’s inherently cruel. It doesn’t matter if he isn’t outwardly prejudiced anymore, some things
can’t change.”

“He isn’t cruel,” she said, “He can be. But he isn’t.”

“He’s a dick.”

“He isn’t,” she flared, “And do you think he would want anything to do with me if he was still
secretly prejudiced?”

“Has he even told you he’s sorry?”

“Yes, he has.”

“In so many words?”

“And more.”

A pause. Harry’s umpteenth sigh.

“I don’t hate him anymore, all right? It’s fine, he’s… there. Comes by for quidditch because Gin
and George think he’s amusing. But this… this is on another level.”

Strange that she had never closely studied the restored tapestry before, only now discovering that
Harry had enacted his own fig leaf campaign. The branch next to Sirius and Regulus’ had a
decorative leaf hiding a name. Then. Andromeda, married to Edward. Narcissa, married to a leaf.
Their son, Draco.

“Don’t give me the silent treatment,” Harry said beratingly.

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

Or if there even remained anything to tell him about.

“Does he… Malfoy … Does Malfoy…” T’was taking a great toll on him, that sentence. “make you
happy?”

“Yes.”

He deflated and sank back into the sofa. “Bletch.”

“Can you stop doing that? I understand that you find this distasteful, but there’s no need to keep
throwing it in my face.”

“Sorry,” he grunted, “I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

Hermione deflated, too. Airless, limp, and galled, they sat across from each other, not
understanding each other.

“He listens to me,” she said softly, “And not like he’s doing me a favour. He’s read every book I’ve
recommended. He makes me feel interesting and clever…”

And funny, desirable, witty, unpredictable, completely unlike myself and more like myself than I
ever remember feeling… Like who I want to feel like.

“I’m sorry, what? You need him to make you feel clever? Not like everyone around you tells you
that over and over again, eh?”

“Yes, they tell me,” she ground out, “He engages.”

A twitchy repose.
Trying not to decompose
Under Harry’s stare.

And that was today’s episode of Harry-ed Haikus with Hermione. Thank you very much.

“You have to tell Ron,” he sighed, by and by.

She made a small noise of woe.

“You do,” he pushed, “It’ll be horrible if he finds out some other way, especially if you’re in the
habit of carrying on in Ministry lifts.”

“We aren’t–” She stopped short at his withering look. “Fine. You’re right. I’ll tell him.” If Draco
doesn’t put an end to things.

“Just do me one favour?” Harry asked.

“What?”

“Make sure I’m nowhere in the vicinity when you tell him.”

She wrinkled her nose. “All right.”

To her surprise, Harry smiled. It was not a true smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“Better still, make sure we’re in different countries.”

She glared.

“At least take him down to Brighton, so he has the option of walking into the sea.”
“You’re a riot, Harry,” she huffed, “I’m going home.”

“Hey, listen,” he said as she was collecting floo powder.

He came right up to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Doubting you hasn’t ever got me anywhere. This is a shock… a very, very unpleasant shock… but
if you’re happy…”

She hugged him so that they didn’t have to say anything more. All she had ready to spill out of her
was a laugh at the thought that his acknowledgement of her happiness might be the reason for its
end.

She needed to devise a game plan to defuse the situation. Somehow walk Draco around to tolerate a
few people knowing.

Only Harry and Ron… Ginny… Theo…

He’d leg it the second she’d bring up that last one.

There would be no time to plan, because Draco was in her living room. He might have only just
arrived, for he was still vanishing soot off his robes and standing rather near the hearth.

He was stern and aloof. His hair looked like it had never been subjected to her eager fingers.

So this was it.

“Harry figured it out,” she said waveringly.

“Did he? What an exceptional auror, he is.” There was hardness from Time Past in his voice.

“He said I need to tell Ron.”

“Naturally. Can’t have any secrets from the no-better half.”

“Don’t talk about them like that.”

He sneered and turned away. He ended up facing the salon wall, which made his lip curl. He turned
away from that as well.

Hermione walked out of the room. She had initially planned to go to the study, but she couldn’t
stomach being in the room where just a few hours ago, he had been hers. She went into the
bedroom, and threw her robes and satchel on the chair, or rather, over the peak of the pile already
on the chair.

She perched at the edge of her bed and waited for him to show up.
It took a few minutes.

Even then, he hung in the space between her bed and the door, ready to be on his way.

“Draco. If this isn’t…”

He was a statue. He knew exactly what she was going to say.

“I can’t keep secrets from Theo. I need to tell him.”

His eyebrows twitched.

He let her words sit in the distance between them. Deafening silence in the wilderness. Sinking and
coming apart.

“Okay.”

“How – how’s that again?”

Draco grimaced like she was a puzzling bit of feculence.

“Okay,” he drew out slowly.

“Okay to… tell Theo?”

“Yeah.”

“I... know you didn’t want people to know, and Harry –”

“I don’t give a fuck about Potter.”

Why the hell was he looking bewildered? Hermione was bewildered.

“You don’t want to tell Theo.”

“I don’t.”

“Then?”

“I don’t want to tell him. You can.”

What the dickens?

“So you aren’t…” she swallowed the thickness in her throat, “...opposed to him finding out?”

Draco’s distaste slowly melted as he moved a few steps deeper into the room, right up to the foot of
the bed.

“I’d made an unbreakable vow to myself–”

“It’s impossible to make an un–”

“To myself in fourth year, swearing to never divulge my personal business to Theo. He always
makes a muck of it.”

She sat up as tall as she could, staring at him in disbelief. “The Pansy fiasco.”

“He told you about that?” Draco, suddenly enraged, took a step forward.

“No. He just told me that something happened; not what happened.”

“Oh.”

“What happened?”

“None of your business.”

He was very near now. Legs inches from her knees. She had to tilt her head up to look at him.

Then he touched the side of her face. In the Natural World, the sun rose, bathing everything in
golden tones.

“You told him about Mandy.”

“I didn’t care if he mucked that up.”

“Poor Mandy.”

Sod Mandy. Nobody cared about Mandy. Hermione was suffused with unencumbered lightness.

She was smiling and she couldn’t stop. And he stopped her heart with the simple act of removing
his robes.

“You’ll be there when I tell him?” she broached.

“Absolutely not.”

Her hair had been half up. He let it down. Fingers raked across her scalp and she was tempted to
give him a whole arsenal of ammunition by purring and rubbing her cheek against his arm.
And licking him.

“You will,” she said.

“Will not. He’ll be unbearable.”

“Exactly. I shouldn’t have to deal with that alone.”

“Telling him is your call. I will not stick around for it.”

“You will .”
“Only if I can be there when you tell Weasley.” He began tackling the buttons of her blouse.

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Then I won’t–”

“Shh.”

“Always get your way, don’t you?”

“I’ve been told I can bend anyone to my will.”

He laughed richly, and she felt so happy her vision swam.

He gathered up her blouse in his fists and pulled it off her shoulders.

“At least tell me what you plan to say to Weasley then.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I can help.” He pulled her to her feet, just to unzip her skirt and let it drop to the floor. “Start by
telling him he’s ugly, insipid, poor, and oafish.”

“He isn’t any of those things.” She tried to wriggle away… pointlessly.

“Then.” He sat her down on the bed. “Tell him about how you spent month after month trying to
seduce me.”

“I’ve never – I haven’t – I didn’t . ”

She jabbed his stomach. It was taut .

“Tell him about how you latched onto me, wouldn’t and couldn’t let me be, tried to use literature to
manipulate me.”

“Deluded! Complete— Oh!”

She was flat on her back and he crawled over, looming above her like the most unrighteous angel.

“Paraded around in your bra.”

“What? ”

Once again, she tried to escape, which did nothing besides settle him more comfortably between
her parted legs. He took hold of her forearms and pinned them on either side of her head.

“There I was, enjoying a peaceful morning of music and solitude, and who should barge in but–”

“I was not parading!” she protested roundly as the humiliating memory ate her alive, “I got caught
in the rain.”

“And promptly rushed over to let me have a peek?”

“I had no idea that my shirt had become transparent.” Her cheeks were smoking. “I didn’t know.”

His smirk worked her up even further.

“It’s not like I… bothered you. I thought you didn’t even notice!”

“That’s right. Pretty girl flashed her bra at me, and I didn’t notice.”

Her legs tightened around him. He had to have noticed that.

“It was a boring, unsightly bra,” she added, “Positively matronly.”

“Do not insult that bra,” he chided “It has great historical relevance that rivals the Dragonharbour
Accord, or the Treaty of Versailles.”

He looked very proud of himself for that second one. She would too, if she had any clue what he
was getting at.

“That illustrious, tatty, matronly bra gave me the best possible strategy to cope with you. Did you
notice that I found you much more tolerable after that?”

“I noticed no such thing.”

“Every time I wound up in the presence of an overbearing and tedious Granger – which was often –
I tried to picture what the raving termagant might have on under her shirt. Drowned out the din
beautifully.”

“You outrageous creep.” She twisted an arm out of his grip and jabbed a finger into his chest.

“Still works like a charm. I don’t think I’ve heard a word you’ve said in months.”

She smiled. Because they both knew that was a lie.

“What about my books?” she asked.

Her condemnatory finger changed its ways. It stroked the skin behind his ear. The underside of his
jaw. His smooth cheek.

“What about them?”

“Why didn’t they make you more tolerant towards me?”

“Books contain words. Bras contain tits. Can you guess which of those I prefer?”

“My god, you are vile,” she decried, desperately holding in a giggle.
He snapped the strap of her current, non-matronly bra, not ashamed in the least.

“From this day forward,” she said, “You are not allowed anywhere near my books.”

“Am I allowed near your bras?”

“No.”

“Then we’d better get this one far, far away from me.”

She couldn’t contain her laugh when he prised his hands underneath her, unhooked the contentious
undergarment, and tossed it to the side. He smiled down at her bare chest like he was being
reacquainted with old friends.

“You are a boor,” she informed him, “and you are shallow. Utterly beneath me.”

“Oh, really?”

He shoved his arm under the small of her back and she let out a squeal when he rolled them over, to
a position in which he was, in fact, beneath her.

Her hair fell all around them like a heavy curtain that blocked out everything but the face that
stopped time. He grinned up at her, eyes bright grey, cheeks decadently pink, hair just a little darker
under her shadow. In that moment, her heart beat for nothing and nobody but him.

The words were right there, on the tip of her tongue. Hanging on for dear life.

He gripped the back of her neck and pulled her face down to his.

An hour later, he departed.

For the first time since she’d tripped over her heels and toppled into his arms, she didn’t feel like
she was dangling over a precipice with only his grace and temperament keeping her from
plummeting. There was actual, solid ground beneath her feet. She rewinded her memory and
replayed the past hour.
She rewinded and replayed A Little Respect over and over again as she and her cassette player went
from room to room, undoing messes.

At the end of a very long day, Hermione had an indulgent, procrastinating shower.

The FSA Newsletter had come out early that afternoon. By the time the Ministry was emptying, it
had been circulated among its employees, all because her name was on it. She had been half-
petrified while leaving the office that Barros would call her in and tear into her for the offensive,
unchecked idealism that her forward was brimming with. Fortunately, she was able to make a clean
break.

She thought about Ernie chasing her down in the atrium, demanding to know why she didn’t
consider him important enough to sign her petition. Old Uncle Basil was a part of the Wizengamot,
not him, nor his sister. Hermione ended up agreeing to visit their home the next day. If Ernie’s self-
importance and Pippa’s desire to move past the Millward fiasco got her more names on her list, she
was all for it.

She thought about Clementia’s hearing in four days.

She thought about fractals.

Anything to keep from thinking about the fact that she had to get dressed, set her teeth, and tell
Theo that —

Argh, she was thinking about it. As she had been all day, when she wasn’t thinking about what she
was going to tell Ron. The latter ought to have been much more daunting, but for the predictability
factor. She could brace herself for Ron’s rage and disapproval; she could not do the same for a
loose canon.

Time shrunk when courage was lacking.

She passed through the floo with the words in manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum
whispered under her breath.

“Well well!” Theo cheered from the open liquor cabinet, “What a lovely surprise. I thought you
were coming for dinner tomorrow?”
Draco was working at the desk, in the most unmistakable Disapproving Draco stance. Nobody
exemplified silent remonstration like him. They could’ve been back in school, to a time when he
conveyed his general objection to her person without even looking up.

“I might be busy tomorrow, so I thought…” Hermione squirmed. “I thought I’d come by today. You
don’t mind, do you?”

“Do I mind?” Theo scoffed smilingly, “Drink?”

“Yes. Definitely. Um, Theo?”

“You’re all right with firewhisky? Draco’s put all sorts of hexes on the wines so I can’t touch
them.”

“Because you’re a pilfering arsehole,” Draco provided.

“Oh, here’s some – Ow, FUCK! Draco, you absolute tosspot – firewhisky, it is.”

“Theo…”

“All of Diagon’s flapping that newsletter around. Have you seen the evening’s Prophet?”

“Not yet. Listen, Theo…”

“Ice?”

“No. Theo.”

“Yes, darling?” he asked absently as he poured whisky into three tumblers.

“I need to tell you something.”

Critters were performing star jumps in her stomach.

Theo paused and glanced at her, and whatever he saw in her expression, made him baulk.

“Is everything okay?” he asked with utmost concern.

“Yes!” she quickly assured him, “Nothing’s wrong. I just need to tell you something.” He frowned,
so she added, “I promise. Everything’s okay.”

“Right.” He didn’t seem very reassured as he topped up the final glass. “Do you need me to banish
the idiot from the room?”

At the edge of her vision, the id— Draco sat back, crossed his arms, and finally turned towards her.

Hermione mumbled, “He can stay.”

The drinks were dished out. She sank onto the sofa and Theo took the chair in front of her.

“What’s up, Hermione?” he asked, brow wrinkled.

“There’s really no reason to worry,” she said, then took a huge gulp of whisky like there was every
reason to.

“What is it?” Theo urged, edging towards alarmed.

She couldn’t say what had got into her. She was so inexplicably jittery.

“Okay, so…” she began. She stopped. She reached out to put down her glass.

Theo was chewing his tongue, just as keyed up.

“Well, the thing is… I…” She took a deep breath. “I am – er, I mean – We. We are –” Her eyes
darted towards Draco. “–That is to say, Draco and I are—”

Theo exploded with laughter. He howled. His eyes squeezed shut, his face got redder and redder as
he slapped a hand against the arm of his chair and rocked forward and backwards. Firewhisky
sloshed all over his other hand.
On and on he went. No, seriously, he went on . Hermione gawked at him with no earthly notion on
how to retaliate. She turned to Draco, who was watching Theo with a twisted expression of
disgust.

“Oh my,” Theo choked, and she quickly jolted back to look at him. He was staring at her with
actual tears in his eyes. “What an unforeseen turnofevents.”

His voice devolved into a dog whistle by the end, and he fell straight back into hysterics.

“When – when did this,” gasp , “Unexpected, startling, blindsiding, completely unthought of
development occur?”

Hermione tried to unlock her jaw. Draco beat her to it.

“No,” he barked.

“Pardon?”

“You’ve been informed. That’s the end of it.”

“How have I been informed, Draco?”

Draco scowled. “Granger is stupidly terrified of upsetting you.”

“You see now why you were demoted?”

Theo leapt up. He set his tumbler on the table, marched to the fireplace. With a loud cry of “Diagon
Alley,” he was gone.

Hermione looked towards Draco for enlightenment and only got a stony glower that said, do you
see what you’ve done?

So she went back to her drink.

Maybe it wasn’t Theo who messed things up. Maybe Draco perpetuated acts of self-sabotage
fuelled by his distaste for Theo’s reaction to things.

Bit by bit, she emptied her glass. Draco had gone through his as well. The cabinet opened and a
bottle came sailing out and flew towards him. That racket seemed to give him permission to make a
racket too.

“Are you happy now?” he griped, “Who knows where he’s gone, what he’s up to.”

Hermione sniffed. “Pass me the bottle.”

“I will not.”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t get to dull any of this with alcohol.”

“You—!”

When Theo returned, it was with a large box in hand. He was vibrating with excitement as placed it
on the table. Draco arose and came closer, Hermione shifted to the edge of the sofa and leaned
closer. Theo flipped the lid open to reveal a cake.

Printed on top, in black icing:

Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test

Theodore Nott Has Achieved:

Matchmaking O

He had reached the absolute limit of obnoxiousness. The peak of insufferability. The nadir of oafish
humour.

“Yes!” Theo yelped, pointing rapidly between Hermione and Draco, “Exactly!”

Hermione refused to look at Draco because he was just as obnoxious. Rotten boys, both of them.
This was the stupidest thing that had happened to her and she wanted to go home.
“Get bent,” Draco snarled, “Any normal person would have the same reaction to such a
monstrosity.”

“Oh, sure. You both are normal,” Theo nasalised, walking out of the room.

Hermione and Draco sat in shared but acrimonious revulsion.

“I really hope this was worth–”

“Shut up, Draco.”

Theo came back with plates and cutlery, humming some tuneless rubbish. He cut them all a slice,
making sure his included the O. He alone tucked in.

“Stop being such grumpy gargoyles,” He said between mouthfuls, “Bloody good cake, this.
Strawberry, vanilla, and marzipan.”

It did look good and smelt better. She deserved a slice of bloody good cake. So she picked up the
plate. Draco remained adamant, standing with his arms crossed and scowling.

“Can you at least tell me–”

“No.”

“But–”

“Piss off.”

“Hermione?”

She shovelled cake into her mouth mutinously.

“Fine. Have it your way. The vindication is enough. I can live off it for ages.”

Hermione pushed away her empty plate, and Theo attacked Draco’s untouched one.

He said, “Incidentally, my little playthings – OUCH. For shit’s sake, Draco; you can’t smite God.
God smites you. Now, as I was saying… I have something to tell you as well.”

“Go ahead,” Hermione said stiffly, after a too-long moment in which nobody spoke.

“Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes has acquired a rather plum chunk of land in wizarding New York.”

“Congratulations.” She really did try to inject some warmth in her tone.

“Thank you! Their extension charm laws are much more lax than ours, and they aren’t too bothered
about the number of storeys. There’s enough space to have an outdoor area with a race track, and
maybe a good sized ring for miniature creature battles.”

“Fantastic.”

“There’s still much to do. Lots of permits and other official whatnots to get stamped and sealed. We
have to either find a good bunch of builders there, or shell out a good few galleons to get portkeys
for Conrad and his men. Someone has to take care of all that, oversee the construction, and so forth.
Soooo… I’ll be relocating for a bit.”

"What?When?”

“Sunday,” he replied, then quickly added, “The next one.”

“For how long?”

“Around five to six months.”

“Five to six…!” Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times. “You’re moving to New
York in eight days for five to six months? Why didn’t you mention this sooner?”

“It only got finalised today,” Theo shrugged lightly.

Lightly, but he was excited. It was easy to tell. He was bursting with it.

“George is leaving it all up to me,” he continued as the excitement became more and more
apparent, “I have free rein on design, it’s going to be my own little Madhouse to build as I please.
The Church of Theo.”

He beamed broadly. Hermione did her best to reciprocate.

“...leaving the bloody continent,” Draco grouched faintly, “There was no need to tell him.”

He got two severe glares for it.

“I’ll keep popping over,” Theo said after a few beats, “Every other week.”

More cake was the only thing that made sense.

Theo cut them a slice each, and when she reached out to collect hers, he gave her wrist a knowing
squeeze.

It didn’t taste the same. Marzipan didn’t go well with unexpected tristesse. As soon as he finished
his, Theo flooed for dinner. They had another drink, moved to the kitchen to eat, and all the while
Theo kept up a diverting monologue about his Madhouse plans.
They returned to the sitting room, Theo had yet another slice of cake, and didn’t let it come in the
way of his delivery.

Ultimately, he decided he was tired, and with the most irksome and obvious look between her and
Draco, he left the room with a sing-songy, “Goodnight!”
Sighing as she stood up, Hermione took a gander at the cross young man sitting to the side, glaring
at his knees.

“The cake really is very good,” she told him, “You should have some, once I’ve left and there’s
nobody around to see.”

He glowered at her from under a heavy brow — why on earth did that give rise to a wave of
affection in her addled heart?

“And thank you.”

As she had hoped, he tensed like he was expecting something caustic.

“For Sisyphus, the book, and the box of sweets. They’re so perfect.”

Could have gone with a better word. But Draco loosened, just a tad. His brow rose and he took on
the same, look of bewilderment as the day before.

“You’re welcome.”

He stood up. Her pulse spiked.

“I read your forward,” he said, “Under the word limit? I’m astonished.”

“I decided it might be better to keep it short and pithy. Thought it might be more potent that way.”

“I don’t think length would’ve made a difference. You’re rather adept at slapping a point across
someone’s face. I would know.”

His mouth quivered and she almost fell over.

“Did my writing strike you?”

“I’m still reeling.”

How he electrified her within seconds. And he came just a little closer, up to the edge of the table
between them.

“I’m leaving for France tomorrow morning.”

“Why?” She wilted. “To visit your mother?”

“She's having our vases evaluated before she sells them off to some French collector. I’m required
to sit there in my best bib and tucker to mourn the loss.”

“Sounds fun.”
“I’m taking along some copies of the newsletter, to put in each guest room. Two for Pansy’s
room.”

“Pansy lives with your mother?”

“She's there more often than not,” Draco rolled his eyes, “They’ve become quite close this past
year; mostly by moaning about my wayward ways.”

She stared, trying to use her Matilda-powers to pull him around the table and over to her. Then she
would snatch him away and not let him go.

There were too many women in his life.

“What will leaving two newsletters in her bedroom accomplish?”

“Nothing at all.” All of a sudden, like a meteor’s flight, he grinned. “I’m just being intractable.”

Her head lowered as she laughed, out of shyness, or maybe as a gesture of supplication, to concede
to the way he conquered all her thoughts and made them so ridiculous. Led by three scary words
were things like… how do you keep pulling me deeper… don’t go… if I drink some shrinking
solution, will you put me in your pocket and take me with you… I miss you already.

“Bye,” she said, and she hurried towards the fireplace.

“I’m not done holding this evening against you, by the way,” he said.

She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Have a slice of cake. You’ll feel better.”

GOADING GRANGER THREATENS POST-WAR TRANQUILLITY

By Rita Skeeter
At a time of unprecedented reform and rehabilitation, claimed war heroine Hermione Granger has
released a call for insurrection. Titled, “Let Us Be Intractable,” the inflammatory piece was
published on the front page of a newsletter brought out by The Foundation for Squib Advancement.
Ms Granger, within the first few lines itself, makes a mockery of the Ministry’s rebuilding efforts
and all the hard work that has been put into

Blah bloody blah.

……nothing less than an attempt to provoke and incite, using her influence to……

………according to sources, hopes to lead House-Elves into a bloody mutiny to outdo even the
Goblin Rebellion of 1752………

Twila’s letter that next morning smoothed over the few feathers that Rita had ruffled. Their
foundation had received a burst of donations, as well as a response – at last – from the Diagon
Union of Shop and Allied Workers.

Hermione prepared to embark on a Peregrination of Pureblood Property.

She had her bag shouldered, boots on, cloak clasped, and was ready to walk out of her door when
her name was called from the living room. She plodged her way there, and sighed at Ginny’s
widely grinning head in the fireplace.

“Harry told you,” she muttered.

"The question is, why didn’t you?” Ginny parried smoothly

Hermione kneeled and pursed her lips to the side. “I was going to. And I have a meeting with
Darrell Abbott in… twelve minutes.”

“I have to be on the pitch in under ten. Make it quick.”

As always, Hermione found herself being a little more honest with Ginny. She called her feelings
“interest” and she admitted to it having grown over a period of some time. She told her about
Seamus’ birthday, the fact that Draco followed her home, and Ginny laughed her floating head off.
She wasn't really fussed beyond 'are you having a good time?'
“You know what’s hilarious?” she asked as Hermione stood up.

“Is it actually hilarious?”

“Christmas hols, fifth year – sixth for you – you insisted on staying back and I was stuck at home
with two very moody boys. They kept harping on about your newfound friendship with Theo,
Slytherin this and Death-Eater that, and I kept telling them what’s the big deal, it’s not like she’s
shagging Malfoy.”

“Sure, Ginny,” Hermione said dryly, “That’s hilarious. You know what isn’t? I have to tell your
brother later today.”

Ginny pulled a sympathetic face. “You don’t have to tell him anything.”

“Harry says I do.”

“We disagree on things once in a while. Listen, if Ron starts being a dick, you just leave, all right?
Oh shit, times up – I’m really glad you’re finally getting – Yeah, yeah, I’m coming! Bye,
Hermione–”

Darrell Abbott was a mournful man. He wasn’t all there, which you could expect from someone
whose wife had been slaughtered. He was alone in a large house surrounded by empty land.

They spoke for a while about Hannah and his participation was desultory at best. An elf with amber
eyes lurked in the background.

He signed his name and immediately afterwards, asked Hermione what it was for. She explained,
he nodded, and a few minutes later, asked her again.

Hermione erased his name as she walked out of the house.

*
Augusta Longbottom was very much there. She was more there than anyone Hermione had ever
met.

“I’ve always liked you, Granger,” she declaimed; which was nice to know, considering they’d
never directly spoken.

“You helped bring my Neville out of his shell,” she went on, “What a mousy little boy he was. That
first year, I was sure he wouldn’t make a single friend.”

“Neville’s wonderful,” Hermione replied shortly.

“Yes, he did turn out all right,” Augusta agreed with grudging approval, “Put up a good show
during the battle. I was certain he would be headed straight to the auror headquarters. Herbology
is… adequate. But slightly disappointing, nonetheless.”

Hermione felt her nostrils flair. “I don’t see how him pursuing something he’s exceptional at could
be disappointing.”

“He’d grown something of a spine and I had hoped something would come of it.”

“He’s always had a spine, no matter how hard some people tried to divest him of it.”

Augusta’s eyes narrowed. She attached that icy stare upon Hermione and waited for her to run for
cover. Hermione raised her eyebrows.

“You’re vicious, aren’t you?”

Hermione raised her eyebrows higher.

“Good. That’s how you get people to listen. Always be vicious.”

Well… okay?

“Say it!” the old woman barked, “Say you’ll always be vicious.”

Only after Hermione had recited, “I’ll always be vicious,” did Augusta sign.

*
Ernie MacMillan was dreadful. There. She had admitted it. Pompous, irritating, ignorant, et cetera
would no longer be enough to mask the general contempt she felt for him. She followed him
through the wide passageways of a mansion that showcased the best of English Baroque, while not
at all following his lecture about its architecture.

Sermon and travail ended in an overdecorated drawing room, where sat Pippa MacMillan… and
Millicent Bulstrode.

When introductions were made, she was “Pippa’s good friend Millie, who’s also very interested in
your venture.”

Hermione looked at Ernie, and he cleverly avoided her eye by ordering an elf to bring tea. Millicent
also avoided her eye, less cleverly and more blatantly.

The pitch was made in record time, and she would have been impressed with herself had she not
been delivering it to an audience only keen on making a statement. All three signed and Hermione
left behind an untouched cup of tea.

“I’m sorry,” Millicent called when Hermione was already past the door. She didn’t turn back.

It was five past four. Harry would be at Mungo’s. Hermione, who had only just changed out of her
robes, rocked on her feet in the hall of her flat.

So stupid to have thought that telling Theo would be the more daunting task.

But it had to be done, no matter what Ginny believed.

And maybe, once their friends knew, together with the fact that they wouldn’t be going around with
other people, she could call what she and Draco had a relationship.

…Right? Ipso facto?

It's give them some level of verisimilitude, at least.

Grimmauld Place's drawing room greeted her emptily.

Kreacher appeared with a tacit question embedded in his scowl.

“Good afternoon, Kreacher. Is Ron home?” she asked.

“In his room.”

He watched her as she made her way out the room, and followed her out to watch her scale up
creaky stairs.

Ron’s closed door was the last favour the universe would bestow. You can still turn back, the
Blessed One boomed. Hermione knocked, and the Blessed One snorted, causing a cloudburst
somewhere in the eastern hemisphere.

Ron threw his door open, and reared back in surprise when he saw who it was.

“Hermione. Hi,” he stuttered, and quickly tried to shut out her view of his room.

Too late, though. She had seen the calamitous scene within. Even now, his rumpled bed, strewn
with wrappers and magazines, was visible. Ron looked rather dishevelled himself, in a threadbare
jumper and boxer shorts. His hair was flat on the side that he had been lying on.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” she broached.

“’Course not,” he said abashedly.

“Could we talk? I have something to tell you.”

“Is something wrong?”

Immediate worry. She should have found a better opening line.

“Nothing is wrong.”

“Right. Let’s… er, go downstairs.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again as they creaked their way to the first floor.

“Yes, Ron.” But you won't be.

“Skeeter went after you again.”

“I wasn’t surprised at all. Did you read what I wrote?”

“Not yet. Just been so busy at work.”

“Yes, of course.”

They occupied the same seats as last week. She didn’t think there was any deeper meaning to that,
besides more fodder to fuel her obsession with circles.
“Want something to drink?”

She shook her head.

“All right.” He smiled and lifted his arms in an exaggerated shrug. “Tell me.”

That jumper was stupidly small on him. The cuffs of his sleeves were miles away from his wrists.
And the way his knees folded when he sat… he was so damn tall. How did he manage to stay
steady on a broom? With his height, the centaur of gravity had to be completely off.

Not a good time to laugh, you twit.

“Hermione?”

He looked so unsuspecting and she felt horribly guilty. Why should she feel guilty?

“I’m seeing someone,” she blurted out.

His face fell. “Oh.”

But then it lifted again, in a false, bracing smile. “Well, that’s good, innit? It’s been a while since
Terry. High time and all that.”

She bit a corner of her lip and gripped her knees to keep from wringing her hands. The vaguely
inimical, squirmy tension in his frame made clear what he would ask next.

“Who’s the lucky chap?”

Her hands spasmed and twisted, instinctively gravitating closer together. She released her lip and
clenched her jaw hard till her back teeth ground together.

The longer she drew this out…

“It’s Draco,” she said.

“That’s not funny,” Ron replied promptly.

He’d gone bone-white. Sickly white. Dipped in peroxide. A moment later, he was on his feet,
displaying all that height to its best advantage.

“That’s not funny!” he shouted.

She averted her face, following his deceptively short shadow on the floor.

“I’m not joking,” she whispered.

“Have you lost your mind?”

To say he was distressed would actually be funny. He was horror-struck, rattled, and peeking
between the two, there was hurt. It was centred in his eyes, smeared over irises that begged her to
take it all back.

“Perfectly sane,” she whispered.

“You can’t possibly be!” he railed, “You’re seeing him? Seeing him? What the fuck does that even
mean? You’re willingly spending time with him? Going out with him? Letting him touch you?”

“That’s not your–”

“Malfoy,” he spat out virulently, “You…”

He swallowed hard. Opened his mouth and closed it. He stood up and walked away, she twisted in
her seat to follow, until he was standing at the window and staring out at the cold, blue twilight

“I used to wonder how you could bear being around him.” He spoke like he was parched. “I
understood mum fawning over him… and Seamus, Dean, and the rest being alright with having
him around. But you ? How can you even be near him without remembering the things he’s said to
you? I saw it. Saw you becoming…” he said the next word with an ugliness completely antithetical
to its meaning, “friendly. How?”

“He isn’t that person anymore,” she muttered, “He’s nothing like that.”

“Who fucking cares?”

“I do.”

“WHO CARES?” he thundered, and she jumped out of her skin at the suddenness of his volume.

He turned around and was the embodiment of pure rancour.

“Even if – if – he’s miraculously turned into a hufflepuff bunny rabbit… Who. Cares. Why should
it matter? I’m not saying he should be thrown into Azkaban. He can go on living his fucking empty
toffish life. Why does he… why would you ? How could you ? How have you just forgotten
everything?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she hissed, at a very purposely controlled decibel, “I’ve moved on. And I
happen to like who he is now.”

His face scrunched up horrendously.

“I’m not here to explain myself to you.”

“You bloody well have to!”

“No. I don’t.” She stood up, ready to leave.

“The hell you don’t! This is me you’re talking to!”

“So? You don’t have a say in who I choose to spend my time with.”
“I do if it’s that’s fucking gutless shit-spewing —”

“Bye,” she spat and turned away.

“Listen to me!”

She heard his angry footsteps following her.

“You don’t know him,” she wheeled around, “And that’s fine, you can have your opinions. But I
know him, I know how much he’s changed. He’s apologised to me and–”

“I apologised to you!” Ron roared.

“What?”

“I apologised. I changed. And even then… I’ve never called you the worst possible name. I’ve
never thought you were beneath me. I’ve never hexed you, or oh… wished you dead.”

“What… Ron…”

“My apology wasn’t enough, was it? What did Malfoy do right then?”

What an absolute googly he’d delivered. She was mute and rooted.
All his rage had evaporated, too. What remained was redolent of all the heartbreaking emotions
playing on his face the night of Fred’s funeral. The night she had turned him away.

“Why wasn’t my apology enough?”

“I accepted your apology,” she murmured.

“Did you?” His voice broke. “Had no problem pushing me away, though.”

“We’re such good friends, Ron. No, please, just listen. We’re wonderful as friends, but the moment
the other… stuff… comes in the way, we’re simply horrid to each other.”

“You never gave us a proper chance.” He didn’t look that tall anymore. His shoulders were slumped
and rounded. “What’d I do so rotten that you just…”

She heard another voice, but it was not Blessed, and nor did it boom. Thin, feeble, and feminine, it
cried – You left me. Again and again, without a thought. Like I was nothing. Over every fight, every
perceived slight. Lavender. The forest.

“We wouldn’t have been happy together.”

“You wouldn’t have been happy with me,” he ground out, “I get it.”

She pulled in a breath, trying to find some words of solace, but he turned back to the window.
“You’re brilliant, in every way. Beautiful. I know I don’t deserve you.”

Cold and scratchy introspection.

It was dark enough for her to faintly see his reflection in the window. She wished it wasn’t so.

“I’ve always known it,” he went on in the same manner, “Took me a while to accept it. Had to
meditate for hours in a bamboo grove to fucking get it. I don’t deserve you… but how the bloody
fuck does Malfoy end up being the one to?”

A palm slammed against the pane. It reverberated.

“Why does Malfoy get to have you? How does that make any sense?”

“You deserve better than me,” she began. Tried. “Someone who’ll appreciate–”

“Shut up, please.”

“What about Edith?”

Once again, he presented her with a full view of his displeasure. Brick red was bleeding up his neck
and into the extreme pallor of his face.

“We’re on Malfoy right now. Tell me, what is it about him? What’s he got? Is it the vaults? The
natty clothes? The hair?”

“You know I’m not like that!”

“Maybe he hasn’t changed at all. Maybe you just like being belittled. Does that get you fired up? I
mean, you fancied me even when I was an absolute shit, and–”

“RON.”

“Fuck – bugger – Argh.”

He whirled around again, taking an aimless circuit in front of the window and reminding her of a
furious creature threshing in a net, before returning right back where he had been, palm against the
pane; palm against faintly reflected palm.

“You need to go.”

She wavered. One step towards him and one back.

“Fucking… please, Hermione. Go or I’ll end up saying something horrible. I don’t want to. I never
want to do that again.”

So he said after he’d cast horrible aspersions on her character.

Torn between umbrage and deep pity, she eyed the stuck up bits of his hair, his hunched shoulders,
the long, gangly limbs encased in twilight. There was no way to make a difference; to make it not
be like it had been that summer.
She thought they had come such a long way since then.

She turned around and left.

Stepping into her flat, she gazed about freshly tidied space, breathed in the scent of honeysuckle
that she had picked up from the florist after her morning run. The sky looked darker from her small
windows.

It was nothing like that summer.

Ron’s pain was a splinter under her skin; another recruit of latent grief. Harry could say that she put
herself last too often, but here again, her doing something purely for herself was seen as an act of
betrayal. Here again, Ron’s hurt was more poignant than hers, and would require all of Harry’s
attention.

But she didn’t mind, and she wasn’t sorry.

She felt no compulsion to dissect or explain why Draco’s apology meant more or why he made her
feel more than Ron ever did. Why should she have to? She didn’t want to. All that was down to
individual proclivities and incomprehensible impulses that made one utterly attuned to someone
else.
There was a reason she thought about magnets the nearer she got to him. His charge was perfectly
polarised to attract hers. They were being pulled together and she would not fight physics.

Sisyphus was hard at his task, tesserae moving like lustrous beetles. There was no way of knowing
how close he was to the summit.

…Everyone was constantly going places. Only she was stuck on an unending incline.

But her boulder was a capricious burden.

At times gruellingly heavy, but sometimes, so very light. A waft of honeysuckle. A tiny curl of
snow landing on a window ledge. A sweeping touch along her silhouette. Her lower lip falling
between both of his.

She dug her fingers into her pocket and brought out a dull, scuffed galleon.

Don’t make any plans for tomorrow.

Minutes later, a reply: My day is yours, buddy.

Chapter End Notes

1. "Look what you've done! I'm melting!”: From the The Wizard of Oz (1938)
2. A Little Respect by Erasure
3. “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum” : Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend
my spirit – final word of Mary Queen of Scotts, before her execution.
 Ninety-One
Chapter Notes

The soul, atmosphere, and tone of this chapter is brought to you by Fresh Feeling by EELS . If
you want an enhanced sensory experience, I’d highly recommend listening to it. This chapter
wouldn’t be what it is without that song.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Hermione’s orders notwithstanding, Theodore Nott slept till half past eleven on that Sunday
morning.

When he finally deigned to emerge from his bedroom, she was waiting as patiently as her
constitution permitted, reading a chapter from Draco’s latest bequest. He squinted at her from
between two snarled brown thickets on his head and face, chirred the word coffee , and vanished.

An hour later, he danced into the room as jaunty as Jiminy Cricket, hair and beard flattened, and the
old bluegreen scarf around his neck.

“What are you sitting and reading for?” He asked, grinning widely, “Shouldn’t we be on our way?”

The pond near the southwest corner of Hampstead Heath was a sweet sanctuary free of swimmers
and surrounded by bird-filled greenery in the summer. Hermione had sat by it with Grandpa Bruce
once, just a few months before he died.

At the tapered end of January, the ground was cold and hard. Hermione and Theo’s exhales
solidified before them as they trudged close to the edge of the pond, next to a tree.

“Right here,” Hermione puffed, and stepped through a magical shield into the little domain she’d
spent all morning creating.

Instantly, there was warmth. The surface of the shield soaked up whatever little sun there was
outside and focused it within, filling the space with light. The ground was covered with soft grass.
It was just like their favourite patch by Hogwarts Lake.

Theo pulled her into a crushing hug from behind. She laughed, even as tears flooded her eyes.
Already . Imagine that.

She had a basket full of goodies from Mabel’s bakery, they shed their coats and heavy jumpers and
settled on the grass for what she had meant to be breakfast, turned into lunch. Theo picked up
where he had last left off, further expounding on his plans for the upcoming shop. He was serious,
even-toned and eager, not diving into hyperboles like he usually would.

“I’ve never seen you so excited about something before,” Hermione remarked.

He smiled and bit into a small bakewell tart. There was an eruption of cheeps from starlings in the
trees around them.

“How could I not be? I’m getting appreciated for some of my barmiest strokes of genius. I’m going
somewhere new, doing something different, and I just completed the greatest matchmaking project
of the century.”

She rolled her eyes and looked towards the pond's still waters.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me as if I didn’t deliver you the man of your dreams. And you know I
could have been so much worse.”

“You got a cake .”

“Exactly. Only a cake. I exercised restraint. Because Draco is your problem now and I didn’t want
you to have to deal with more of his moaning than you already will have to. I’m such a good
friend.”

Just like that, she was welling up again. “You are. You really, truly are.”

“Are you getting teary-eyed?”

“Obviously,” she sniffled, “You’re running off and I will miss you.”

“I’ll miss you terribly, too. But–”

“Honestly, you’ve been… I can’t even begin to tell you how much you’ve meant to me. So
wonderful, kind, and supportive.”

“As have–”

“And I… don’t know. Theo, you… you just… I feel like you changed everything .”

He said her name slowly, and held on till she had turned her teary eyes towards him.

“I know you changed everything. I mean, I went to you with the intention of changing things, but
you overachieving force of nature, you turned everything around. But, that said, can you do
something for me, please?”

“Anything,” she breathed.

“Can you stop acting like I’m dying?”

A watery laugh escaped her as she shook her head at herself, reaching out for a butterfly cake
covered in sprinkles.

She had succumbed to a mirage of stolen comforts, warmth, grass, and nostalgia of her own
making. Her period was five days away. It was a perfect storm.

When nothing but crumbs remained, Theo produced a cigarette case from his pocket.

“I have something for us as well,” he said and shook out two spliffs of immoderate length.

“Those look lethal,” Hermione said.

“They’re fairly mild. Mostly gillyweed, some cannabis, and the freshest bouncing bulb leaves. I’ve
perfected the blend. If I decided to sell it, I’d be obscenely rich.”

“As opposed to?”

“Merely disgustingly rich.”

Theo lit both with his wand and passed one to her. She knew not to expect a lashing against the
back of her throat, but the smoothness still surprised her. She took a long pull. Held it in. Breathed
out. Green smoke bloomed out of her mouth.

It was fascinating.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Green smoke plume.

She repeated the sequence a few times, till Theo lay back on the grass and let out a happy hum. She
stretched out too. The grass was so soft beneath her.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Green mushroom cloud.

“How did we become friends, Theo?”

“Weren’t you there?”

“I suppose I was,” she mused, “But it feels like… one day you invaded my spot in the library, and
the next day, we were…”

“Please say it.”

“Buddies.”

He chortled. “That might be exactly how it went. Happens that way sometimes, doesn’t it? I had
one conversation with George about the many practical uses of musical fountains, and the very next
day he said we should be partners.”

The shield charm warped light in the most amazing way. Sky was so much bluer than it had been in
months. Green clouds.

It did happen that way sometimes. She met Neville on the Hogwarts Express and he had lost his
toad. Instant friends. Harry and Ron sat in the same compartment, both sore thumbs in their own
way. Instant friends. She lied about a Troll-related incident, and… well.
Theo put his hand on hers and said, you’re my friend, Hermione. And I’m your friend . And so it
was.

“We were in dire straits, weren’t we?” Theo added, “You needed someone who understood and
accepted you, pretty warts and all. I needed… to be needed. To feel useful and pertinent.”

“That doesn’t sound very healthy,” she said slowly.

“Pff. We were the healthiest part of a very unhealthy year.”

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Green smokey billow.

“Do you even remember that year?” she murmured.

Theo made smoke rings.

Smoke circles.

A circle within a circle within a circle.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. A straight column of green mist.

It went shooting up towards the sky but spread out once it hit the shield and hung there till, bit by
bit, it leaked out as clear air, back into the real world.

She pictured her life as a column.

No, as a horizontal line. A long memory-line stretching on and on, and she closed her eyes and
became a butterfly hovering above it. The Spectre of Time was her guide.

Shall we go ? the Spectre asked.

Let us go then, you and I.

She saw the pond in the early morn, with the sun rising like butter melts and the clouds ungreen.
She saw Sysiphus and smelt honeysuckle and a curl of snow landed on a window ledge. She saw
the stuck up bits of Ron’s hair, Ginny’s floating head, Theo howling with laughter, Harry’s eyes
placid but a little ironic, Draco. And Draco. And Draco. Entire film reels of Draco.

The Spectre kept closing a fist around her, enveloping her in darkness at unexpected moments.
She’d fluttered out and find herself at a different point.

Dark snippets of London flickered across the taxi’s window and mum’s face was pressed against it.
Draco and Draco.

She turned twenty under pink clouds in an azure sky.

Light duck-egg blue walls. A flat of one’s own. He was the enigma of dawn.

Her holiday with mum and dad was a colourful smear in the memory-line. Flashing landscapes.
Sea, shore, and verdure. If I can’t forgive you, who can I forgive?

The Spectre took her in two hands. Butterfly trapped in a clamshell.

It opened up and she emerged encased in a bubble. Floating and bobbing through Hogwarts.

Draco, Theo, Ginny, Luna, Padma, Dean, Neville —

She turned nineteen in a common room of purple and copper. Draco sitting by the window.

The Spectre popped the bubble, cupped a hand behind her, and hurried her through a blur; a small
blue gazebo floating through pure black nothingness.

Mum, dad, and the wreckage of a family. She had done that. What had she done? My life’s been
fractured, Hermione. I can’t go back.

A jetty shooting off the shore.

Gravestone after gravestone after gravestone.

George’s closed door.

Hermione. Say it. Say you love me.

Burnt brown hair on the floor.

The spectre’s fist crushed her wings. It was so, so dark.

And she emerged right in front of Draco’s face staring murderously at her while she screamed and
he screamed.

She screamed and Ginny and Ron screamed because Harry was dead.

So many dead. I’m sorry, Lavender.

The Spectre kept grabbing her. Harder. Leaving her in darkness for longer.
Draco Malfoy had arrived at Shell Cottage.

An agonising medley.

The search for horcruxes, from a distant butterfly’s eye view, was a mirror image of her Australian
holiday. A colourful smear in the memory-line. Flashing landscapes. Rolling hills, deep forests, and
snow.

Harry, we'll get through this, you know? You'll kill that sadistic bastard, and we'll all be able to live
again.

It doesn't fucking feel that way. I mean, we're not even close... And I feel like such a twat... donno
what to do...

Shhh. You'll figure it out. I believe in you. And I'll help... I promise. I won't leave you like... like... I
won't leave you.

She turned eighteen in a moor, under a full moon.

A wedding filled with joy turned into a hub of violence and she was stuttering again.

And suddenly Voldemort was in front of her, hovering with no apparent means of flight.

Mum and Dad slumped against each other, deep in slumber. She switched off the telly and stood
before them, her wand clenched tightly in her hand.

And at last. She arrived at the end of the year she was trying to remember.

The Spectre pinched her wings between two fingers and kept her in place. The other hand began
raining blows on the memory-line. She watched it break into big and small and jarring fragments.
Pieces of memory fell into a stygian abyss, and re-emerged as the red smoke that swirls inside
remembralls.

Only then was she allowed to flutter over the remnants, her life in jagged vignettes.

She didn’t remember turning seventeen.

How did that school year begin?

Packing away as many books as possible at the last minute, dashing between bookshelf and trunk
by leaping across her bed, creating furrows in the starry bedding. Mum came into the room, smiling
indulgently with a muffin wrapped in a serviette, telling her it was time to leave.

They scrambled into dad’s Bentley. Pakistan was giving England a tough time; dad cursed softly
along with the commentary. Mum sat dreading the fact that Aunt Vicky was coming by later that
morning.

They got to King’s Cross… traversed through swarms… pushed through the wall…

Narcissa Malfoy and Rosalind Parkinson were standing nearby and they looked at her parents like
they were cockroaches that had scurried out from under a kitchen cupboard. Those looks weren’t
just looks any longer – they were purveyors of intent. They meant torture, death, and a Dark Mark
hanging above your corpse.

She begged – she pushed – mum and dad to go back home. You know how tedious Aunt Vicky
becomes if she’s made to wait.

Yes. So very tedious. They said they loved her. They told her to remember to eat well, to sleep
enough, and to take regular breaks. Oh, they’d said love you already? Well she must hear it again.

She stood by herself trying to slow her pulse as her hands itched to grasp something.

Well, not quite by herself.

She could see Pansy Parkinson standing a few feet away from the corner of her eye. Sneering, of
course ———

Hermione opened her eyes. Or maybe the butterfly had closed her eyes and was imagining she was
Hermione. Good lord, it was bright.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. A curling spiral of green brume.

“Theo?”

He hummed. Still blowing circles.

“Are we dead?”

“I hope not.”

“Yeah.”

She sensed him turn his face towards her.

“Imagine dying under this indestructible shield of yours, hidden and rotting away, never to be
found.”

“You idiot,” she sighed, and looked at him, “If I died, the shield would die with me. We’d be
found.”
“Right. That’s good.”

Suddenly he was laughing uproariously. Thunderously. She thought he might bring down the
indestructible shield. He might break the sky.

His eyes were closed, nose scrunched up.

What what she asked.

“Just… just…” he sucked in a huge gulp of air over gurgles of laughter, “If I die and you die…
Draco will be fucking devastated. He’ll have… no one … but his mother… Merlin, to survive the
war and then…”

He was out of his mind and Hermione felt peels of laughter escaping her own throat.

“So much new fodder for Harry’s healer. He told me he wants me to be happy… but whoops, I died
instead.”

He was red and gasping. “Luna… she’ll live with horrible guilt for the rest of her life…”

“Theo.” Hermione reached out and grabbed his arm. “My parents !”

“Oh fuck!”

They both burst into renewed laughter. If sound could escape the bubble, they’d have melted the ice
clinging to high branches and scared all the birds away.

It gradually petered out. She blinked, long and slow.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. A diffused haze of green. The sky looked like algae.

“I honestly don’t remember that year,” she said, a little hoarse from laughter, “What the hell was
it?”

“A precursor to doom.”

“Quite.” Green steam. “But you know what I do remember? Anger. So much anger. Bitterness and
terror and jealousy and sadness… God. That’s literally all it feels like. Jagged pieces of rage and
depression.”

She still had rage. Bitterness, jealousy, terror, and sadness, too. But she had them. They didn’t have
her.

“That’s okay, Hermione. Who wasn’t depressed that year?”

“Evil people.”

“Yeah, them. And who wasn’t full of rage?”

“You.”

“Ha! What?”

“You were an oasis of calm and brightness,” she whispered, “Kind, generous, and equanimous.”

Theo was laughing again, but it was a strange laugh. Like he was in a bubble within their bubble.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Tufty green nebulae.

“You’re too fond of me, you goose.” He smiled at her, all warm and Theo-like, “I’m not nearly as
put together as that. I was fucking terrified of anger.”

Her brows pulled down in a frown and it felt like her forehead was dribbling down her face.

“I didn’t let myself be angry. I couldn’t . I had to be in control and I had to be incontrovertibly good
– especially that year. I was so sure that if I wasn’t… if I let myself go for even one second… it
would be a short and slippery slope to becoming my father’s son.”

He blew a smoke ring that was a familial, generational cycle of pain. She thought of Draco, pale
naked and raw… He’ll always be my father.

“Do you remember… last year in the common room, when Draco and Ginny were having a row
about his Dark Mark? And of course, you came along and delivered the blow that sent him
packing?”

“Yes,” she replied quietly.

“Then you’ll remember the way I lashed out at the Bowtruckle. Well, I thought about that every
single day for months. I was so sure that if you and Luna hadn’t been there… I’d just get angrier
and louder… and furniture would start flying about, crashing against the walls... there’d be a loud
boom... Mandy would scream her last…”

“Theo.” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. That didn’t fit him at all.

“It took healing from a war, loving Luna, being around you, and more than anything, seeing Draco
become who he is, for me to realise that I am not him. I’m not my father.”

“You aren’t. Not at all. Absolutely not.”

“Yeah. I’m not.”

He turned to her with a wide smile and they both knew to say the next line together:

“Not with a double t.”

They turned back to the sky. Was it darker?

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Two parallel shafts of green vapour.

Smoke spread out against the shield like cream on top of milk. Slowly, it seeped out. The sky was
definitely darker. Reflections on the pond were murky streaks; blending together like old
memories.

“Was that really us?” Hermione pondered.

“It really was.” The smile was still there, in his voice. “But it isn’t us anymore.”

“No. It isn’t.” She laughed, suddenly out of breath.

God, what a beautiful fucking day.

“Do you ever feel grateful for what we went through?” Theo asked, “The war and all that.”

“Do you?” she sputtered, involuntarily shrinking away.

“A bit?” He sounded like he wasn’t sure if he was saying what he meant to say. “The first night
back in our flat after Hogwarts, Draco and I got completely sozzled and went out onto the terrace to
throw reductor curses at all his clothes and things from… before. He stood in front of this great
heap of ash, drinking straight from the bottle, and he asked me…”

Theo inhaled. Held. Exhaled. Green curlicues.

“What did he ask?”

“He asked me, would I have ever been so free without first being marked? ”

Hermione rubbed the back of her head against the grass. She crossed her ankles. Would she have
known the agony and ecstasy of love without him first being marked?

“And I wondered,” Theo went on, “Would I have realised how utterly not Nott I am, if father and I
hadn’t literally been on opposite sides? Isn’t there some revelation that only the war could have led
you to?”

It wasn’t hard to pin that down, not after her recent journey as a butterfly. She inhaled twice, held
on for twice as long, let out a hinterland rainforest of smoke.

“Mum and dad forgave me.” Her voice shook right from the first syllable. “If it wasn’t for the war,
I’d never have done what I did to them. I wouldn’t have betrayed their trust, fractured their lives,
destroyed their relationships with their siblings, ruined a thriving practice, and forced them into a
new context that... I know they say they’re happy… but…”

In — Ho — Ex —
“It’s so ridiculous. The Wilkins professionally, the Grangers at home. Like bloody stage names;
they have to put on a performance every day. I did that to them, and they forgave me. They took me
back in almost immediately. Dad apologised to me . Mum couldn’t get a hold of her anger and
disappointment, but she still took care of me. They brought me back to myself.”

That’s what the war had shown her. Forgiveness that was Unconditional Love. And it was
heartbreaking. Soul crushing. Breathtaking. Mind boggling.

“I don’t know how I could possibly deserve love like that.”

“Who does, if not you?”

The sun gave the horizon a golden outline. When green smoke passed over it, it turned chartreuse.
Theo and Hermione stayed unspeaking for quite some time, till their spliffs were stubs that they
vanished. The last of the green smoke cleared away. Hermione looked past her shoe, at the point
where her lush conjured grass ended and met the real world.

“I adore your parents,” Theo said suddenly.

“They adore you,” she smiled. It was brittle but it was real.

“I know.”

His expression warmed her heart, but fractured it just a little more.

“I always assumed the Malfoys were the parents I’d always dreamed of. The best of the best,
pouring all their affection on Draco, and letting me feel the spindrift. Merlin, they were rubbish
parents to us both. Now I wonder if they liked me at all… or if I was meant to be an example to
Draco, of what not to be. I wasn’t polished enough, wasn’t picking up any prissy skills… as if it
was my fault I had a shit dad.”

She clasped her hand on her solar plexus. She could’ve sworn it was humming.

“Meeting Robert and Evelyn was a revelation,” he said.

“You’re a Granger now.”

“One of the best things to have happened to me.”

There was a flair around them; that startling rush of orange, meeting blue and making pink.

Those colours spinning together, darkening, pinwheel flowers of turquoise and carnelian hanging
on her wall.

Theo was lost in thought.

“Pip pip, fare thee well, godspeed,” sang the birds.

“Do you ever imagine what the world would’ve been like if none of it had happened?” Theo asked.

“Not really? Maybe in passing…? I can’t imagine having the time to.”

“See, that’s what you’re missing out on by not being a lazy loafer.”

“I’ve thought about the people we’ve lost and what their lives might have looked like.”

“I’m not talking about just the war, though.” Theo put his hands behind his head and sighed. “I
mean… everything. No Voldemort. None of the rest. There’d still be prejudice – even I am not that
fanciful – but no overlord to take it to gratuitous extremes.”

“Would I still get to be a witch?”

“You are a witch.”

She nodded. Her hands slipped to the ground and drifted over the grass. Draco had the softest, most
glorious hair.

“I would’ve been the same,” she said, “At least to begin with. Same parents, same childhood,
McGonagall turning into a cat in the living room…”

“I’d be the same, too,” Theo decided, “Same bastard of a father, same life-defining tragedy. I
would’ve latched onto Draco, and been the strange, quiet Nott boy with a dead mum. Do you think
you would’ve become friends with Potter and Weasley?”

Hmm. Would she have? Ron wouldn’t have been all that different either. He would still have
thought she was a nightmare . Harry would be so different. And after a childhood full of love, he’d
be the better for it. He’d still be him – good, selfless, and brave… just not broken.

“Harry and Ron would find each other. Luna would call them soulmates, I think. They’d end up in
the same compartment, and probably talk about… quidditch. And I’d still run into Neville. He’d be
different too – he’d have his parents – but he’d still lose Trevor, and I’d offer to help find him.”

“Who’s Trevor?”

“Neville’s toad. He was always hopping away. Anyway, during my hunt, I’d end up in Harry and
Ron’s carriage. Harry would know Neville because both their dads would be aurors, so he’d offer to
help as well, and of course Ron would come along…”

Hermione broke off to grin gormlessly at nothing.

“Go on,” Theo nudged.

“That would be our great first year adventure. We’d be The Fellowship of the Toad.”

“Lot less glamorous than what you’re used to.”

“Perfect, just for that.”

A bright tangerine cape of light fluttered over sloping roofs.

“How long would you have remained friends with Draco, if nothing came along to shake up his
worldview?”

Theo looked away, a bit. Orange struck the side of his face.

“If things never got dire, I would have happily remained his friend forever, tuning out the
pureblood nonsense as I always did.”

“Didn’t you ever resent or dislike him for having everything you didn’t… and still being such a
horrible arse?”

Theo laughed dryly and shook his head. “Never. I have an appalling blind spot when it comes to
him.”

Hermione stared at his slightly averted face.

She wouldn’t call it a blind spot. It was wilful ignorance.

She pined after Ron for years, in spite of their unmatched personalities. She went along with
everything Harry did, ignoring the niggling feeling that his brashness would be her downfall. She
developed an unflinching attachment to Theo, despite his friendship with a bigot. Theo remained
loyal to said bigot, even while knowing he was mixed up in something terribly evil.

That wilful ignorance was… Unconditional Love. Dumbledore would love this drivel.

The evening star was a faint spot where orange was losing to darker hues. She imagined it was
very, very cold outside the shield.

Something
cold is in the air,
an aura of ice
and phlegm.
All day I've built
a lifetime and now
the sun sinks to
undo it.

“Can we move out of hypotheticals now?” Theo begged as if it had been her idea to delve into
them in the first place.
“Happily. I’ve never been a fan.”

“Good.” His face and focus were back on her, a bit too sharply. “Have you told Draco you’re in
love with him?”

A wave of burn flooded her. It was her turn to look away, a bit.

“I’m not,” she mumbled, “It’s only been… some weeks.”

“Are you really lying to me, Hermione? To me ? ME?! ”

“Shove off.”

“My dear, sweet churlish one. You gave it all away on the evening of the Astoria
misunderstanding.”

She was quiet for a while, wondering what to do with all the twisting feelings inside her.

“You could tell I was…” she finally said, low and embittered, “...but you still dragged me along.”

He squeezed her fingers. “I am sorry about that. But it worked out alright, didn’t it? As it always
does when I’m involved, no matter what certain slanderers say. Now, back to the point. When are
you going to tell him?”

She sat up, drawing her knees close and setting her chin on them. She wanted to transform into a
chrysalis and re-emerge as a butterfly. Theo followed her up and shuffled near enough to brush her
shoulder with his.

“Is there any need to? You saw through me, mum and Harry saw through me. He probably already
knows.”

Theo cackled, bumping against her repeatedly. “Your mother, your best friend, and your… Potter
know you very well and they understand that shy little smiles and overwhelming affection are not
in fact an essential part of the Hermione experience.”

Darkness was getting more definitive. The red cape had dropped behind the houses. Violent violet
above.

Hermione shrunk into herself.

“You won’t tell him, will you?”

That made him recoil with shock.

“How could you even ask me that? As if I don’t guard your secrets as dearly as my own?”

She huffed a laugh.

“Even if I wasn’t the best friend and secret keeper in the world,” he went on, “I wouldn’t say a
thing. Looking at someone as you tell them you love them for the first time is… fucking incredible.
I wouldn’t take that away from anyone, let alone you.”
He stretched his hands upwards, high as they’d go, flexing his fingers and slowly making a fist as
though he wanted to grip the sky and yank it out of the way, to reveal all that was hidden behind it.

“You still love Luna.”

“‘Course I do. Always will.”

“Will you see her before you leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is… still a break, isn’t it? When do you plan to talk about it?”

“I don’t plan anymore, remember?”

She made a face and jostled him this time. “Plan to run off to America, though.”

“Not a plan,” he grinned, “It fell into my lap. Usually, I don’t think beyond the next twelve hours.”

“I see.”

“Yep. So now, I plan to get up and buy you dinner. I haven’t bought you dinner in ages.”

“You bought me dinner two days ago.”

“Exactly. Ages.”

He stood up, offered her his hand and pulled her up. Her legs stung as she got her bearings. They
put on their warm clothes.

“Somewhere muggle,” he carried on while Hermione took down her enchantments, “And nice.
Nice by my standards, please. I am begging you to fleece me. Why does that sound vaguely
naughty? Anyhow, after that, I plan to pick up some pudding and wine, and we shall have it in my
kitchen while we wait for Draco to get back from Brittany. We shan’t let him have any. I will then
pretend to feel terribly sleepy very suddenly, so the two of you can greet each other properly. And
tomorrow morning…”

The shield was down. The bubble had burst. They both shivered as cold air curled around them.

“Tomorrow morning?” Hermione probed.

“I will shave this foul beard. I can’t believe you’ve let me to go around like this for so long.”
Chapter End Notes

Merciless Time, Wayward Memory, and the Fresh Feeling when the Twain Meet.

1. “Let us go then you and I”: from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot
2. Hermione imagining she’s a butterfly/butterfly imagining she’s Hermione is a nod to
Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream.
3. “Something cold is in the air...”: The Fury Of Sunsets, by Anne Sexton
 Ninety-Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Among the uncountable ways in which Hermione’s Mondays have had a poor start, she would
award ‘receiving a letter from Cormac McLaggen’ pride of place. There was nothing to admire
about the way he managed to distil his patented brand of obnoxiousness into a simple missive,
requesting a meeting to “have a chinwag about the House-Elf rhubarb.”

Her response, quickly despatched to avoid the rising tide of good sense, said: Six O’clock,
Wednesday, at Finnigan’s.

His rejoinder, arriving early in the afternoon while she was at work, said: Six O’clock, Wednesday,
at THE LEAKY CAULDRON.

There was nothing charming about the way he had carved his aggressive enunciation into those
capitalised words. The reason for his insistence was far too obvious – Seamus did not allow the
press into his establishment. Tom welcomed them.

Telling herself, over and over again, that to him, Ogden was Uncle Tiberius, was the only way she
survived sending him a final confirmation.

If she could get him to sign before anything else, she could make a speedy escape. But knowing
that creep…

Hermione also had an abundance of Mondays that ended poorly.

Have another, you sweet thing. Barros called for her.

…Only to make a show of putting her work away, giving the impression that Hermione had been
the one to insist on an impromptu get-together. Then she made a series of hand gestures – here’s the
church and here’s the steeple – and set her chin on the pointed roof.

“Tell me,” she commanded.

Hermione, the steadfast grim soldier, told her.

“I’m going to see Professor Slughorn after work,” she added at the end of her report, “And I’m
meeting Cormac McLaggen on Wednesday. On Saturday, I have appointments with the Managing
Director of Ellerby and Spudmore, as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Phantomlight Publishing.”

“Make sure you have something expensive and edible for Horace Slughorn.”

“Already taken care of.”

“And what after these meetings?”

“I… think it’s done.”

“You think it’s done?”

“It is done. It’s… ready. Unless you would like to look it over once more?”

“I couldn’t bear to.”

“There’s one more thing,” Hermione muttered, peering through the gap between Barros’ fists to see
all the people, “I’d like to submit it as an independent petitioner.”

She was slow to glance upwards, but quick to register the understanding on Barros’ face. She knew
that Hermione knew about the Yaxley debacle. She knew that Hermione knew that she knew. It was
one dreadful vortex of knowing, gathering momentum in the scummy pond of politics.

“What was that?” she asked, only to hear Hermione say it again.

Hermione said it again.

“Why?”

“I would like you to be on the bench, to have a vote.” It wasn’t really a lie.

Barros raised a withering brow. “And you think I will vote in your favour?”

Hermione was genuinely thrown back. She blinked.

“Well, of course!” she exclaimed.

At first, it was a twitch, almost like a tic. Then it became a quiver. Then it revealed what it truly
was: A suppressed smile.

Barros’ send off was predictably cutting and lacking in the fanfare of civility. But Hermione stood
in the space between their offices with a strange, strange feeling. It reminded her of being
summoned by McGonagall after she’d got herself involved in some mess or the other with Harry
and Ron, for a special, private scolding. There was more disapproval, sterner reprimands, but there
would be one point when the tirade would pause. Hermione would use it to her advantage, to put
forth a weak defence for her conduct.

And there would be a twitch… almost like a tic…

Not even a quarter of an hour later, Hermione received a full, unsuppressed smile from Horace
Slughorn. She’d stepped into his humongous office straight from the Ministry, and found him
behind a desk, looking at her like he had been doing nothing but sitting in wait for a very long time.
Fanned out in front of him were four FSA newsletters.

After much fanfare and inordinate gentility, he pushed all four towards her – he wanted her to sign
them. The cost of one of his signatures was four of hers.

Four signatures and a box of pricey sweets.

When they finally arrived at the point, he wore the same banal, tickled-pink look of wonder as
when she used to recite verbose bits of theory that nobody else had thought to memorise.

“I hope you will lend your support to the cause,” she completed.

His smile spread. Like cold hard butter that tears through bread.

“You know I have the highest regard for…”

Her attention suddenly trod on ice. It slipped. It skidded past blurring minutes, seeing nothing but a
vividly coloured smoking jacket.

A crackling log brought things back into focus.

Slughorn Leghorn was blustering away, absentmindedly tweaking the lapels of his jacket. Firelight
reflected off his scalp.

“—Surely you can understand…”

She placed the binder exactly where the newsletters had lain. A list of surnames like a row of
crystallised pineapple.

“I’m meeting Cormac day after,” she cut in with no attempt at subtlety. Between the behemoth
sofas, velvet curtains, and general abundance of tassels, there was no place for it in that room. “I
have a feeling his uncle Tiberius Ogden must have urged him to reach out.”

“Ms Granger,” he sighed, “you have great ambitions and wonderfully loyal friends. You will go far.
I believe you will accomplish anything you put your mind to–”

“Harry suggested I name the contract after Dobby, and I agree. He saved our lives. We wouldn't
have been here if it weren’t for him. It’s very important to Harry that we honour Dobby’s memory
and what he stood for.”

“Undoubtedly. Cer– cert–”

“That night wasn’t the only time Bellatix Lestrange might have got the better of me, if an elf hadn’t
intervened. Even here at Hogwarts… and that poor elf was killed, too.”

“That’s most unfort–”

“Can you imagine, Professor, that people have the effrontery to justify subjugating House-Elves by
invoking the innate workings of nature… to me, who not long ago was accused of having
unnaturally acquired magic?”

Slughorn blanched. Tiny glassy dots of sweat appeared on his head. It was almost as satisfying as if
she herself had smashed a bottle over it.

“But it’s so heartening to have the blessings of someone as influential and perspicacious as Madam
Elena Barros.” She gave that name some time to disseminate before continuing – “Mr Fawley – the
elder, I mean; owner of The Ivory Grotto – was immediately on board. He even had the hotel’s
elves’ living quarters spruced up, at my request.”
Something was muttered from under a moustache that quivered.

Hermione smiled. “I’m sure headmistress McGonagall told you that Hogwarts stands firmly behind
this motion. I can’t imagine anyone who was present at the battle and witnessed how bravely the
elves fought alongside us would be against granting them rights and a life of dignity.”

That enormous, gregarious man was trying to disappear into himself by lifting his shoulders up to
his ears. He watched her with beady eyes like a mouse peering out of a tiny crevice.

“I do hope you’ll continue to subscribe to the FSA newsletter,” Hermione said amiably, “and to its
message of equality for all magicfolk, beings, and creatures.”

He knew what she was doing. He knew that she knew that he knew. It was a bright green feather of
knowing caught in a circulatory draught.

Slughorn’s clumsy fingers caught hold of it and dipped it in a pot of ink.

Bent him to my will, didn’t I, Draco?

Under a strong disillusionment spell, Hermione climbed down the stairs, dodging students who
were headed down for dinner. Landing on the third floor, the sound of her footsteps changed. Her
vision tunnelled and she walked into the Hogwarts library, and when she became visible once more,
she was smiling.

Madam Pince didn’t greet her with any degree of fanfare, or even recognition for that matter. She
glanced perturbedly at the permission slip that Hermione had cajoled out of Slughorn and said,
“Fine. Go on.”

It felt like a regrounding, a sprinkling of water on thirsty roots. The old half-thought that had
reemerged as a whim during her morning run solidified... Something just for herself, a pet project, a
mental retreat…

Her finger was a little boat bobbing over undulating book-spines as she sought something that went
beyond Advanced Eccentric Enchantments and A Guide to Spell Modification . A challenging quest
for someone who had scoured the restricted section many times over...

“Do my eyes deceive me? Hermione Granger?”

Professor Flitwick hobbled lightly down the narrow path between two shelves, his limp markedly
improved, his hat a bit askew, and his arms full of books.

The unplanned rhythms of the universe were finally in sync with her. She ended up following
Flitwick to his office and having a late dinner while hurling questions at him.
He bid her farewell at half past nine; she slipped from his office to her living room with arms full of
books and notes.

There, she spread everything out on the blue and white carpet, turning them into ships in the ocean
while she was the demiurge looking from above.

People were inherently simple. That was it. Everything else – the multitudes and complexity they
apparently contained – were gathered, overfed, and treasured the way Slughorn gathered people of
influence. Motivations were calculated, guile was cultivated, equivocation measured, cunning worn
like slimy armoury, shrewdness, fandango… all to keep from sinking in the scummy pond of
politics.

It was endless. Cyclical. Exhausting. Dispiriting. So stupendously, mind-numbingly boring.

Hermione closed her eyes and saw a bright white castle hidden amid the hills of Friedberg. A path
from that castle led down to a cluster of cottages where students of Advanced Magical Studies
stayed.

She would go there in three years.

Till 2003, she would put everything she had into ensuring her original plan for House-Elf
emancipation came to fruition, one step at a time. By 2003, she would be where Kathy was now,
and she would be ready for the REPTILEs.

Then she would take a year off, and let herself become the simple, hungry, gobbler of knowledge
that she was.

Draco could take up potioneering, or arithmancy, or multiple courses like she planned to. At the
end of a long day of learning, they’d share a meal in their cottage and talk about what they’d
studied. They’d have Bavarian beer in charming little pubs, walk around, sit on benches, and look
at views. They’d end up, always, in their soft, warm, Draco-approved bed…

The scene vanished like a curtain had fallen, revealing absolute chaos. It was The Room of
Unbidden Things, where ideas were towers of old, yellowed newspapers, worries turned into
howlers that screamed bloody murder, plans were bluebell flames hissing and darting around like
feral snitches —

Tiny Tartan Hermione flickered into existence.

Silencio.

Arresto Momento.

Real, human-sized Hermione opened her eyes.

Parchment cut to size Agglutino Page 126 of The Laws of Charm Amalgamation
 binding or sticking Spelling Solution takes eight months to brew

An orbit set path Hitch your wagon to a Star Cohaeresco

Page 73 of Properties of Charms and Complex Imbuing Changeable infusion

Protean like spokes of a wheel ad Paging Dr Granger

A draught bath will take at least three weeks to be effective

Sonitus controlled hovering charm page 12 Leviosa deleo

Green alarm clock — name on the back — — insum —

Lumos Rubicundus

Commutatio Incepte Testing testing Sonorus

The day of Clementia’s hearing was beastly cold. Barros’ team was the first to arrive in the
courtroom.

Hermione, who had been up all night, became proficient in the art of yawning with minimal jaw
movement. She found herself entranced by the shape of light puddles, lulled by the sound of
Kathy’s incessant foot tapping. She was sitting in the bottom of a vial. Her eyes were watering.

Eventually, five plummy plutocrats claimed their bench.

“Where are the representatives of Nimbus Racing Broom Company?” Ogden asked.

Many minutes went by and they still did not make an appearance. A bailiff was sent off to make
inquiries.
Some half an hour later, when tiny bubbles had collected along the surface of her glass enclosure,
the bailiff returned with a man wearing a shade of grey that only Draco could look good in. He had
a warbling voice. Capillary waves danced above her head.

It was decided, by the esteemed representatives of the Wizengamot, that the pittance that NRBC
was offering as compensation was perfectly sufficient for what Clementia had endured. Barros shot
up and said it was not acceptable to the claimant. The grey man argued that the amount had been
calculated in accordance with Clementia’s salary and benefits in the year 1989. Barros’ rebuttal was
silenced by the arrival of a howling memo that declared time was up and the courtroom needed to
be prepared for the next dispute.

A Mexican wave of shrugs made its way across the high bench. Oh well then. Another day then.
NRBC was fined for causing delay and wasting the honourable Wizengamot’s time – a sum that
exceeded what they were willing to pay Clementia.

A sombre procession made its way upstairs, led by a deathly white Clementia and an openly
incensed Madam Barros. Upon reaching the atrium, their despondent claimant begged off from
engaging in further contriving and made a hasty exit.

In the lift, Barros began rattling instructions with the speed of a livestock auctioneer. Kathy was
scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, Takumi disembarked on the next floor for he had been instructed
to pay a visit to the NRBC office.

Hermione rubbed her eyes.

Rubbed them again when she was back in her chair and Kathy had run off to the admin office and
Barros was locked up in hers. Rubbed them as she wrote a letter – coherency was questionable –
she had to read through it multiple times.

By the time the work day concluded, she had wound up inside a painting by Chagall. Shades of
blue, a floating goat. She grew a fishtail and flew to the owlery to send her letter to Ginny.

It was to Ginny, wasn’t it?

She doubled back to make sure she had written the correct name on the envelope.

Hopefully by this time tomorrow, a mass boycott of Nimbus brooms would be underway.

Yawning as she carried a cup of tea to the study, Hermione surveyed the destruction caused by her
all-nighter. Crumpled balls of parchment lay strewn all over the flat like the remnants of a brutal
hailstorm. While she added two careful drops of revive potion to her cup, she observed the fruits of
her labour: Four rolls of parchment with a Quick-Quotes quill inside each.

It was time to conduct more diligent testing. Her methods kept escalating till she found herself
running laps between the kitchen and study, stumbling often, and expending the burst of energy that
the potion had bestowed.
She had no choice to admit that she needed assistance.

Every other avenue discarded (which meant that she didn’t consider them at all), Hermione wound
up in another, exponentially more decorous hall, pacing towards Draco’s room.

She knocked. He opened the door in a semi-undone condition - she had caught him in the middle of
undressing. Four buttons loosened, shirt untucked, hair scattered like it had just experienced the
brush of a woollen jumper.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

What had? She hadn’t given much thought to her own condition. ‘Ragged’, she imagined, might’ve
been a good term for it.

“I’ve been scrambling,” she huffed, “from room to room.”

“Why have you been scrambling?”

“I’m… it’s… I need your help.” There was a horrible, plaintive undercurrent to her request. “Could
you come with me, please?”

He pushed his door open a little wider. “I can help you well enough right here.”

It took her a few seconds to understand what he meant.

“Not that! Please, just come with me. I’ve put something together and I need someone to help me
test its limits.”

The gap at the door narrowed. Draco said, “There are only two things for which I am willing to get
dishevelled and out of breath. You’ve ruled out the first, quidditch is obviously out of the question,
and you mentioned the word scrambling … so, no thank you.”

A blatant, thoughtless refusal like that did not sit well with Hermione. His lidded, supercilious
expression didn’t help matters either. She reached out, grasped his arm, and began pulling him
down the hall.

“Excuse me?!”

He said a lot more with added colour, and she was able to completely disregard his sputtering till,
unfortunately, he remembered the size-and-strength advantage he had over her. He brought them to
a halt just a few steps away from the door to the sitting room.

Hermione spun to face him, brimming with pugnacious determination. “Why must you always kick
up a fuss?”

She dug her heels in the ground and tugged. The aforementioned size-and-strength advantage
conspired with Newton's Third Law of Motion and acted against her. Draco managed to
reacquisition his arm.

He turned around - a sound of deep aggravation raced up her throat - but he only took out his wand
to shut his bedroom door. Those same glowing chains that decorated Theo’s door appeared on his
as well.
Disdain characterised his lope around and past her. When he reached the fireplace, she was sure
he’d run off somewhere else… until she heard him call out her address. She pushed in after him.

“This way,” she ordered. If he was going to be needlessly contemptuous then so was she.

Once she had him in the study, she administered the treatment originally devised for Zacharias
Smith during DA meetings. She launched information at him without bothering to see if it met its
target.

“I had this idea while I was talking to Gwenda Bardsley at Mungo’s. It’s a way to send messages
without using hands, wands, or elves. I’ve placed a protean charm on the parchment, and of course,
these are Quick-Quotes quills – it would’ve taken much too long to make my own – they will write
your message for you. I’ve also imbued a modified sticking charm and an anchored binding spell
that… Well, see for yourself. Incepte.”

The parchment fluttered into the air and hovered by her head, just a little above eye level.

“No magic needed to keep it in place.” Hermione walked around to the other side of the desk.
“Once I wrote my name on the slot in the corner, it bound itself to me. The quill work as usual –
Scribo and sisto to make it start and stop writing. Now, to send a message, all I have to do is
append a name.” She pushed forward the other piece of parchment on which she had written ‘Draco
Malfoy’. “Scribo ad Draco Malfoy . And see? A message just for you.

The words she spoke appeared on his parchment, while it glowed red and emitted a little bell-like
tinkle.

“They only ring if the amplifying charm hasn’t been activated – sonorus or silencio – depending on
whether you want the messages to be read out aloud or not. Those took the longest time to properly
imbue. Sisto . Would you like to give it a try?”

He didn’t.

“All that’s left is for me to test the strength of the charms. That’s why I was scrambling. Go to the
kitchen, please, I want to see if there’s any delay over short distances.”

He didn’t move.

“Do you need a map?” she asked.

Sometimes words were excavation tools. From under years of personal evolution emerged young
Draco’s Mien of Petulance.

“Get on with it,” she huffed, blowing away the final layer of dirt.

The actor strutted off stage. Considering his stiff movements, Hermione gave him some time to
reach his destination while meandering around the room, very pleased with the way the quill and
parchment followed her every step.

A minute later she said, “Have you reached?”

Seventeen seconds went by before her parchment glowed red and Draco’s voice announced, "Yes."
Not good. She hadn’t experienced any lags before, but it did take time for her to get from the study
to the kitchen…

“Are you responding as soon as you receive my message?”

Twenty seconds.

"No."

She lost her rag.

She found him leaning against the worktop, eating chocolate biscuits out of a tin that she had been
saving for a day that she could spend in bed with a book.

“Do you ever take a break from being an intolerable–”

The parchment repeated her words mockingly.

Her broken spirit revived Draco’s wounded one. He was exultant and for pity’s sake, it was a
gorgeous look on him.

“I’m going downstairs,” she muttered, scratching her arm while boring holes into the floor, “To
take a round of the neighbourhood. Could you please respond in a timely manner? By that I mean
immediately.”

“Of course I will,” he assured her affably.

To his credit, his responses came promptly from then on, while she was in the lift and all through
her circuit of the neighbourhood. However, since he had reclaimed his panache, none of her simple
questions were answered correspondingly. Or answered at all.

She asked him which room he was in, and he said: “Leaving a mess in the wake of magical
invention is an embarrassing cliche. Honestly, how long does it take to vanish a few bits of
parchment?”

She asked him if her voice was loud and clear, and he said: “Having a tidy desk means nothing if
the insides of your drawers look like junk shops after an earthquake.”

She was forced to silence her parchment when he made an inquiry into the colour of her underwear,
right when she was passing by a large group stationed outside the pub. From then on, she was
forced to snatch the parchment out of the air every time it glowed red.

All in all, the trial could be deemed a success. She returned to the flat satisfied… but ticked off…
in need of some more reviving tea… excited… overwrought… big yawn … her eyes watered… she
rubbed them…
He was in the study, lounging in the desk chair, well pleased.

“Finite,” she mumbled, aiming for the parchment and quill hovering by his head. They landed
tamely on his lap.

Then, for some ruinous reason, her subconscious decided that a wad of parchment by her foot was
an exposed landmine. Half her body did its best to avoid contact and the other half stayed put.
She tripped over her own feet – stumbled – skittered – scrambled for purchase and found it at the
edge of the desk.

She straightened, placed her quill and parchment on the desk, clasped her hands, and waited for the
inevitable, lancinating dose of wit.

Draco grinned with all his perfect, gleaming teeth. “How does someone who looks so poised and
graceful standing still, move in a manner so completely devoid of grace?”

That verbal javelin made a perfect landing midway between compliment and insult, and Hermione,
with no idea which way to go, held onto it and spun round and round till she felt like she ought to
be wearing sky-high heels and sparkling lingerie.

“I’d like to increase the distance even more now, so if you could go—”

“Look at you now,” he intruded, “Svelte and lissom as a sprite. One would expect you to glide
around — But no. You’re like a drunk Erumpent on a blood-fuelled rampage. Flee fast, good
gentlemen, or you’ll come underfoot.”

She scowled. “I may be a little clumsy when I’m distracted, but I’m not some uncoordinated
buffoon, skittering and stumbling–”

Something – (his expressive little smirk) – told her exactly what he was thinking about. He tilted
his head in a charming, ludic manner that instantly made her want to take the parchment’s place on
his lap.

She would’ve curled up against his chest, tucked her head under his chin and said, ‘Help me’. He
would’ve asked, ‘What else have I been doing?’

She would’ve said, ‘Help me more,’ and he’d have wanted to know, ‘Help you with what?’

She would’ve told him… ‘With anything. Everything. Just help me.’

She moved away (the very soul of grace), putting the armchair between them.

“What shall I call these? I had pagers on my mind while devising them, and parchmenter would be
a suitable homage, but it’s such an awkward sounding word. And, well, there aren’t any actual
pages involved in pagers. No other muggle counterpart would be a good fit. Well… I suppose these
are somewhat similar to walkie-talkies but–”

“Similar to what?”

“Walkie-talkies. Another muggle communication device, also called handheld transceivers. I

could… maybe… call them… Floatie-Writies… but that’s a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think?”

“Granger, are you a Scrambly-Rambly?”

He made her want to eat her own arm.

She scooped up the nearest ball of parchment and hurled it at him.

It didn’t even traverse half the distance between them, landing pathetically by the back legs of the
armchair. They both eyed it with equal and opposite disdain, then looked at each other.

Draco's wand moved like a viper. A pot of ink zoomed across the room and upended over
Hermione’s head.

She shrieked.

Deep black ink dribbled down her hair, onto her face and shoulders.

“You – you – complete and utter – arsehole! ”

A thick gloop slid down the side of her nose.

Tergeo, she thought, Tergeo, tergeo, god damn tergeo.

But tergeo was never enough for her hair. She would need to shampoo it twice, at least.

“What is wrong with you, you inveterate wanker?!”

“You threw that at me.”

“It didn’t even touch you! It came nowhere near you!”

“It’s the thought that counts,” he sniffed.

A sinister, simmering pall fell over Hermione. “You are done for, Malfoy.”

She raised her arms and every single crumpled ball of parchment in the room rose with them. After
a whispered incantation, they darkened and grew heavy and sodden with water.

Draco shot up to his feet. “What do you think you’re–”

Splat!

A wet missile hit him square in the chest. Crisp white shirt soaked. Tiny specks dashed across his
face.

“You bi–”
Splat!

On his left shoulder. He stumbled back.

“Fucking stop or I’ll–”

Splat!

His stomach, just above the belt. He turned around and raced towards the door.

Splat! – His lower back. Splat! – she missed. It hit the wall. Splat – his calf.

Splat! – On the door as it closed behind him.

“Open the door!” she yelled, hammering her fist against it.

“You are deranged!” he shouted back, “Fucking mad!”

“Open the door or I’ll break it down!”

“This is your rented flat, you flaming lunatic!”

There was no locking charm that could best her. Hermione bent slightly, peering at the knob —

A jet of ice cold water gushed through the gap beneath the door, soaking her from feet to waist. She
screamed, jumped back, all the floating missiles fell to the floor —

Draco displayed his size-and-strength-and-speed advantage to its best potential. Before she knew
which way was up, it was down. She was slung over his shoulder, her legs caught in a vice made of
his arms, and the side of her face pressed against the cold, wet patch on the back of his shirt.

"Put me down! Put me down or I’ll –”

“As you wish, hellcat.”

She was thrown into bed. All the air left her lungs. Draco climbed on top of her, straddling her legs
and locking them in place, and pinning down her arms with an iron grip.

“Now what?” he asked through gritted teeth.

Glittering droplets on his face. Droplets as far as his shirt was unbuttoned.

“Now this,” she said and flicked her wrists, sending a stinging hex up his arms.

He let out a strangled howl and she promptly brought her freed hands to his ribs, pressing –

He recovered much too quickly. They were back where they started, except he kept his palms
against hers, making any sort of movement impossible.
The only solution Hermione could think of was a brutal knockback jinx that would send him flying
against the wall and snap his spine.

“Think tickling is a potent weapon, do you?”

“No,” she said immediately.

A flash of teeth ——

Wriggling fingers found every inch of her torso no matter how much she thrashed or tried to push
him away — for god’s sake stop please stop okay sorry fine please stop okay Draco stop all right I
concede please I surrender —

“You surrender?”

"Yes yes YES for the love of – stop —"

He stopped. Palm against palm, once again bolting her in place. Fingers woven between hers. Face
much closer than before. Victorious gleam in mesmeric eyes.

He waited while she caught her breath.

“I won.”

“Only – because – I – let – you,” she panted.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Because I – draw the line – at murder.”

“The unimpeachable morality of Hermione Granger,” he murmured.

Then he kissed her. Whatever little progress she had made on regaining her breath was eviscerated.

His lips and chin were cold. His mouth was burning hot.
A hard push. A pull on her lower lip. His tongue found hers, tied up a helpless moan.

They didn’t kiss often enough. They went too long without touching, without being pressed so
close that not even air molecules could fight their way in.

Draco shifted, and she felt against her hip how very ready he was for what such a kiss inevitably
entailed.
And she couldn’t ever imagine not being ready...

He didn’t relinquish his hold on her hands. His fingers only tightened, slotting in the space between
her knuckles. She squeezed his hands back, yanking her legs out from under him and throwing
them over his hips.

He shifted again, properly aligning them and when he rocked against her she wailed – muted wail,
muffled wail, for his mouth never parted from hers.

Still not relinquishing her hands.

Moving against her, faster and rougher… and kissing her.

Draco’s kiss was the anti-dementor’s kiss. It launched a great soulful efflorescence, where every
inch of her body mind and soul reached the flourishing limits of their capabilities —

What??

Dunno.

Hand freed. Clothes shed. Wet clothes. Soaked trousers clung on with the determination of suction
cups. She told him to vanish them and he didn’t seem to have the presence of mind to make a
comment about that.

The touch of two fingers and the slide of damp naked skin severed her brainstem.

She belted her dressing gown four times while he dressed, so she wouldn’t give into temptation that
would see her going up to him to wrap her arms around his waist and nuzzle her face against his
still bare chest.

He turned as he picked up his shirt, and his back put on a beautiful demonstration of how all the
various systems in the body came together to create movement. Gliding shoulder blades, tightening
longissimus, stretching trapezius, the sinuous curve of his spine as an arm slid into a sleeve…

“Draco, will you sign my petition?”

“Yeah,” he said, casually.

He turned again as he buttoned up, head lowered and focused.

She went to the study.

There were small puddles all over the floor. She had dried those and was vanishing fallen missiles
when Draco came in.

“I’m meeting Cormac tomorrow, by the way,” she said, sending him a quick look, “He’s expressed
some interest in the project.”

“Cormac?”

“McLaggen.”

“Ah.”
Her hair tumbled forward as she bent over her satchel to fish out the TEMP/HELP binder.

“I asked to meet at Finnegan’s but he's adamant about going to The Leaky Cauldron.”

She opened it to the right page, laid a quill across the parchment and pushed it towards Draco, who
was listening to her with an impassively raised brow.

“He wants the press to be there.”

Draco picked up the quill. She shot him a scowl as she went to retrieve a fresh pot of ink from her
junk shop drawer and winced at the crack when she unscrewed the lid.

“I’m fairly certain he wants it to look like something it isn’t.”

Draco frowned questioningly while dipping the quill in the pot.

“He wants the press to catch us there… so it looks like we’re… well. But that obviously won't be
the case. It won’t be what he’s trying to make it look like it is.”

Articulacy ended when an attempt to convey something important began.

Draco put the quill down.

“What? Why? What’s the matter?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll sign it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“What time are you meeting him?”

“Er… six?”

He left the room.

She followed after him. The rejoining of her brainstem must have been tenuous, for it came apart
again.

“Bye?” she said, but he slipped into the fireplace without a word.

He was the human equivalent of a spanner. He could spin her and toss her into space, into a
nebulous galactic realm, and bring her right back to the exact same spot where nothing was the
same.

She had meant to tell him to take his Floatie-Writie home, so that further tests could be conducted.
She’d planned to clean up the flat, have a shower, call for some takeaway...

She stretched out on the sofa and drifted off.

Hermione ventured where she hadn’t been in over four years, since she’d given up trying to
impress Victor – The sports section of the Daily Prophet.

(Why hadn’t she thought of him sooner?)

There was not a single castigating word against Nimbus. She wasn’t expecting a furore, but there
weren’t even a few-roar…ies.

…She hadn’t slept very well.

There had been dreams – vivid, whacky, outrageous dreams like a grotesquely exaggerated
commedia dell'arte performance – and all she remembered of them was that they had been.

Things were bleak in the office. Takumi’s unflappable tenacity won him a five minute confab with
someone from NRBC whose designation was not disclosed, but that enigmatic individual only
doubled down on what the grey man had said during the hearing.

At six P.M. sharp, Hermione stood a few metres away from The Leaky Cauldron, scuffing her shoe
against the damp pavement and wondering if she had been mistaken in the inferences she had
drawn the day before. There was no delivering glimmer of pale blond in the vicinity.

"Hermione!"

She looked over her shoulder and practically keeled over. For there was Draco. And Theo. And
George. And Angelina, Lee, Oliver Wood, and Conrad with his moustache.

“Where’s the hulking young rapscallion?” George asked when they’d neared.

“Erm–What?”

“Shouldn’t we get going?” Theo asked cheerfully, “Don’t want to keep him waiting.”

Hermione wrenched her eyes away from them, and aimed a very significant glare at Draco before
beginning a fretful march towards the pub. He understood, quickly coming ahead to march beside
her.

“What’s happening?” she hissed from the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t ask me. Theo’s the one who decided to assemble an army.”

“You… told him…?”

“Hearing McLaggen’s name set him off,” he shrugged.

Then he smiled, arrogant and self-congratulatory. It should have been hideously annoying. It should
have made her whip around and send everyone else packing.
But evidently, she had developed a Pavlovian association between that smile and a whacking great
orgasm.

The Leaky Cauldron was as busy as you’d expect on any given evening. Even so, Cormac
McLaggen was easy to spot. He was even brawnier than she remembered, a brick of a man stuffed
in a tight white jumper, sitting at a table right in the middle of the pub. His eyes locked in on her,
very predator-like, like years hadn’t passed, like she was still diving behind quidditch stands to
escape that same horrid leer.

He stood up, walked around the table, arms lifting…

A chair from the next table shot out of its own volition and fell into his path. He was startled,
staring at the chair like he didn't know what it was, before once again looking up. This time, he
noticed the coalition fanned out around her.

“The fuck’s all this?” he demanded.

“Hullo McLagging, old mate!” George piped up, “You didn’t think you were the only one intrigued
by our Hermione’s enterprising venture, were you?”

(Please stand by while words permeate an inordinately thick skull.)

“It’s McLaggen,” he growled.

“I’m sure it is.”

Everyone sat. Chairs were pulled up from hither and thither, and soon that small table for no more
than four, was expanded to accommodate a party of nine.

Within one quick dekko, Hermione spotted a glint of a camera lens in the corner booth. A simple
melting charm took care of that; a lot more subtle than what she had done to Bozo’s camera. The
poor sod wouldn’t realise something was off till he tried to develop his pictures.

“Now then, McSlaggen,” George continued –

”McLaggen! ”

“How have you been? The last I saw you, McFloggen, you were trying to teach the future keeper of
Puddlemere United how to properly cover the hoops. Isn’t that right, Oliver?”
“That’s right,” Oliver nodded much too dourly, “You’re the reason I had a gammie arm and
couldn’t play in the first match against Ravenclaw. Where’ve you landed up then?”

“I keep for the Wigtown Wanderers,” McLaggen muttered.

“No,” Oliver barked, “You don’t.”

Tom came by with mugs of ale, and McLaggen tried to use that slight disturbance to bury the
words, “Reserve team.”

“Pish.” Oliver was not going to let anything get buried. “I’ve watched a few reserve league games
and you weren’t there. Didn’t even make that cut, eh?”

“Oh, be nice, Oliver,” George rebuked, “I’m sure McHaggis is a great–”

“McLaggen!”

What the hell was going on? She glanced to Draco, hoping to grab his attention and get some sort
of explanation from expressive, Draco Malfoy Eyebrow Movements — he was already looking at
her. Smirking and lounging in his chair, arms crossed.

“Love,” George addressed Angelina, “You have some fond memories of McBraggen as well, don’t
you?”

“McLaggen!!”

“Oh yes.” Angelina, unlike Oliver, was completely composed, “Worst trial of my life, after half my
team got itself banned from playing. First time a prospective beater put two of his own teammates
in the hospital wing.”

If nothing else, Cormac showed he was capable of improvement. The year following that, he had
put only one of his teammates in the hospital wing.

“Aw, you’re being too harsh on poor McWagon–”

“Argh!”

“How about we let Hermione speak now,” Theo chimed in.

Dearest Theo, never letting her be forgotten. Even when that’s exactly what she desperately
desired.

“Who are you?” McLaggen yapped.

“Steady on, McCracken! Surely you recognise Theo Nott?”

Hermione stepped in before George’s head was separated from his body. She began her spiel,
abbreviated for the sake of her target’s circumscribed intellect, and brought out the binder as
quickly as possible.
Everyone signed, even Conrad (while twirling his moustache). Draco leaned forward as he did,
pinching the quill between thumb and index finger like he sometimes pinched her —

Not now.

Theo signed for the second time, as did George, before passing it onto –

“Here you go, McNoggen.”

The quill was snapped in two. Hermione repaired and handed it back.

He didn’t even look as he drew a realistic illustration of a strand of his own wiry hair. It could very
well be read as McNoggin. Or Mimbulus mimbletonia.

When Hermione said thank you, he gave her a very dirty look.

“Incidentally, McHaggis–”

“It’s McLaggen, you damn thundering arsewipe! ”

“By gum, you’re a loud one! My sincerest apologies, McLuggage–”

“What the fuck you playing at, Granger?” McLumpit bayed, loud enough to startle surrounding
patrons.

Hermione gave herself a shake. “I beg your pardon?”

He carried on, even louder – “What did you bring this circus with you for, huh? I took time out to
help you out a bit, get you in with Uncle Tibby, and this is what I get? Bunch of manky fucking
clever clogs and a bloody Death Eat—”

McLaggen’s chair went flying back and all four legs snapped, sending him and his considerable
bulk crashing onto the floor. In addition to that, his tankard exploded... that one wasn't her doing,
was it?

She had magical, crepitating rage rushing through her blood, inciting her to put that loathsome
maggot’s head through the table. To hang him from the rafters and slowly peel his skin off and then
make him eat it.

Every single patron in the pub had stopped in their tracks to stare. The photographer in the corner
was kneeling on his table and snapping away with his defective camera.

“We’re done here,” Hermione spat, getting to her feet. She waited till McLaggen, barking and
yowling, dripping with ale, had stood up too, then pointedly erased his name from the binder.

There was a loud screech of wood on wood… and Draco was storming out of the pub.

Theo went after him. Hermione wanted —

“MY UNCLE TIBBY WILL–”

“Oh, shut the hell up, McGaggin’,” she snapped, (received a reluctant, pitying snort from George),
and took off.

The photographer was also making a beeline for the exit; a confundo redirected him towards the
bar.

It was drizzling outside. People’s walks had slowed, and some shops had begun to close. She saw
Theo standing nearby, staring down the alley despondently, and when she reached his side he gave
her a sad little shrug.

Draco was already far ahead, catching every single ray the lamp posts were emitting.

Hermione chased after him, while swiping a hasty hand over her face to cast a glamour. She had
suffered enough gawking for one lifetime.

He ducked into the lane of workshops and she accelerated.

“Draco!” she called when she’d dived in after him.

He barely faltered and kept on walking.

She called out again, glad that all the shutters were down.

“Draco!” she gasped, winded, finally close enough to grasp his arm.

He turned to her with vehemence, which quickly turned to… alarm?

Oh, right. The glamour. She let it drop and his mouth thinned with anger again.

“Are you all right?” she asked, trying to sound benign rather than chesty.

“Cracking.” He snatched his arm away.

She peered up at him, wondering how to say no, you aren’t without saying the words no, you aren’t.
That lane was so badly lit, and they were standing near the edge of the ambit of one lamp’s
influence. Gentle spray of water turned into a sandstorm. There were diamonds in his hair.

“Why did you erase his signature?” Draco asked, gruff with rancour.

“He’s a vile, chauvinistic slimeball,” Hermione replied promptly, “I don’t want to be associated
with the likes of him.”

Not what Draco wanted to hear. He scowled deeply.

“Don’t act like that came as a surprise to you. You knew exactly what he’s like and you still agreed
to meet him, because of who his uncle is. You needed his signature.”

She opened and closed her mouth helplessly, silently imploring him to see her sincerity and concern
for him.

“Do you honestly think that’s the first time someone’s called me a Death Eater?” His inflection
twisted around the words. “And it won’t be the last.”
“Who–”

“You really hit the nail on the head when you said that the Ministry palmed me off to Kenny
because they could find no other way to punish me.”

“You know that was in jest!”

He scoffed. “Two of the other candidates kicked up such a fuss when they saw me. Ring the alarm
bell, it’s a blooming Death Eater.” Again, the twist. “They both got much higher positions.

Drizzle was gathering momentum, threatening to become a downpour. But if Hermione shivered, it
was from the chill in his eyes.

“For the first few weeks on the job, Fiona was the only one who spoke to me.”

Hermione hated that. She had some sort of horrible, internal reaction to it, that felt like acid reflux.

“The point here, Granger, is that going out on a limb for this is absolutely meaningless. You will
accomplish nothing. It is not warranted nor remotely appreciated.”

Her hair was getting heavy. Cold had sunk through all the layers she had on. And Draco still wasn’t
finished.

“There’s an entire species banking on you, is there not? You’ll make a hash of your project if you
don’t clamp down on the impulse to jump to everyone’s defence. Antagonising the Chief Warlock’s
nephew was –”

“Why did you bring along Theo… Oliver… George… if not to antagonise him?” Hermione posed
in an oddly quiet and ponderous voice, completely antithetical to his.

It was very jarring. She was sure she would be screaming. Her throat was raw and tense like she
had.

“I didn’t ask them to come,” he ground out.

She had always loved the sound of rain pelting a cobbled street. The beat was so dynamic and
entrancing; far better than rain on the roof of a tent in the middle of hell.

That sound was all that existed while they stared each other down.

Until, far in the distance, a cloud rumbled. One of the lamps hissed and flickered.

“My aunt is expecting me for dinner,” Draco said, low and quiet, now matching the character of her
voice.

She stood shivering when he stalked off, and watched him till he reached the end of the lane and
got consumed by shadows.

She sneezed. It ran like a current through her body.

The nearest apparition point was back in Diagon and she shuffled towards it. The shopping area
was almost completely deserted, save for a few people cowering under brollies.

She left her cold, sopping clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor, and stood under a blast of hot
water.

Theo came by for dinner, and after the initial few enquiries, they ate in silence. They were so good
at sharing each other’s sadness.

Till late in the night, she sat on her balcony, watching it pour, sipping on tea with a healthy splash
of Pepper-Up, the chime above her head going ballistic.

She wished to cry. She could only shiver.

She had meant to write to Victor. She didn’t want to.

Those four enchanted rolls of parchment were cold, too. She’d lost all interest in them.

She missed mum.

At last, on Thursday morning, there was something of worth in the sports section.

Harpies back out of Nimbus sponsorship deal; return brand new Ultrafast VR4 brooms!

There was not a whole lot to it beyond that headline, just that the coach, Kippler, had released a
statement saying that the Harpies would not be affiliated with a company that didn’t treat its
women employees fairly. It was a small snippet crammed in a corner, while the page was
dominated by an expansive story about the Spanish League final.
But it was not small enough to escape Barros’ sharp eye. Hermione was called upon, questions
were asked, all of which came under one umbrella response: “I just wrote to a friend. Some good
old catching up.”
Hermione was thrown out with a not-so-surprising lack of consequences. The desperation on
everyone's faces, post the disastrous hearing, had made it fairly clear that she would get away with
some minor underhand tactics.

Reaching the canteen a bit earlier than usual, she initially sat alone, quietly nibbling on a tartlet.
Around ten minutes later, Justin dropped into a chair, dragging it close to her and telling her about
the upcoming weekend tour of Wizarding London for muggleborn children. Five minutes after that,
her table was surrounded. Draco sat across from her, Fiona and Arnold on either side, and they,
along with Justin, struck up a conversation about the Spanish League final.

Hermione, quiet even now, kept her eyes lowered and imagined a different scenario, with just two
at the table…

He called her sly. He told her it was absurd that she could get away with so much.
How indiscriminately you wrap people around your finger — Why haven’t I been able to do it to
you — Well, I am awfully inflexible, Granger … (He plucked off a bit of his chocolate cake with a
fork and held it up to her mouth)

Justin stood up. She decided to leave with him.

At half past nine at night, she broke out of the enchantments surrounding Starthistle Hill and into a
phone box. It would’ve been early in the morning, warm and summery, in Melbourne, and mum
should’ve been out in her garden, greeting the day.

The phone rang five times before she answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi, mum. I hope I didn’t wake you?”

“Of course you didn’t wake me. How good it is to hear your voice!”

Hermione closed her eyes as they filled with tears, and she leaned back against a wall.

“How are you? How’s dad? How’s everything?”

“Business as usual here; except your dear dad has become obsessed with paragliding. Says it's the
closest he can get to being on a broom. I cannot think of a single encounter with the Weasleys that
has ended well for me.”

Draco would have loved that. Go on, Granger. Tell your mother off.
“How about you, sweetheart?”

She hesitated for a moment. A motorcycle zoomed across the road outside; its roar was loud, its
light painted the glass around her.
Hermione gave her mother a sanitised, halcyon version of her life. She didn’t know why – she had
promised she wouldn’t do that anymore – but it was a compulsion that she couldn’t temper.
Everything was fine.

“Charlotte’s wedding invitations arrived yesterday,” mum told her, “Yours as well, along with a
note saying that they would have mailed it to you, had there not been such ridiculous secrecy
surrounding your life and whereabouts. You’re going to have to come up with a good story for
them.”

“Right.”

“We will, too, of course. First time we’re coming face to face with the whole gang since the
disappearance. They’re simply raring to have a go at us. It’s going to be an absolutely hellish
weekend, and we simply cannot beg off, at the risk of being subjected to further disdain. Mal and
Vicky have been conspiring, if you’ll believe it. Their combined rage awaits us.”

Silence at both ends.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione whispered.

Some more silence.

“No,” mum said shakily, “I’m – I’m sorry, I–”

“You’re allowed to still be angry with me, mum.” Hermione closed her eyes again. “I know you’ve
forgiven me, and you love me. But you can still be angry. You should be angry for as long as you
need.”

Mum sniffled. Hermione wished they could hug.

“Incidentally,” mum spoke in a bracing, slightly high-pitched voice that she used when going for a
deliberate topic change, “You’re allowed to bring a guest to the wedding. So… will you be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, Hermione. You still haven’t–”

“I’ll let you know.”

Mum sighed heavily. “How is Draco?”

Draco was – like everything else – fine.

“Mum,” she said through her teeth to keep her voice even, “Can you tell me the recipe for your
special hot chocolate?”
Later that night, she lay in bed, reading the evening’s paper.

The Prophet, exhibiting its usual knack for insensitivity, had let a man write the article, and he
maintained a spirit of condescension and befuddlement throughout the piece. A quote by Gwenog
Jones was printed in bold — You [censored] blokes are the problem! You can’t [censored] us,
expect us to house your [censored] little babbers, and then punish us for it!

Also out that day: A new edition of The Quibbler, featuring a piece on what they’d decided to call
‘Granger’s Elf Liberation Drive’.
G.E.L.D.
Geld.

However, the article in itself was sweet. Written by Luna, it opened with an interview with the
elves that worked in the flower field room, before branching out to cover broader elf-related
issues…

…Hermione closed her eyes and rolled over to Draco’s side of the bed…

Good morning.

Exciting stuff in the papers. Meaghan McCormack, keeper for the Pride of Portree, regular sister of
a Weird Sister, and four months pregnant at the time, had a lot to say.

Over the course of the day, there were whispers that the uproar might’ve spread internationally. It
was said that the organisers of the Spanish League were brassed off with how much advertisement
space they’d happily handed over to Nimbus.
She really ought to write to Victor…

Like a wilting vine seeking warmth, Hermione crept into Ben’s office at lunch. She stroked the
floral porcelain of her tea cup while she told them how the meeting with McLaggen went up in
flames.

Bickie offered her a slice of lemon drizzle cake and said, “Bad man who insults Hermione’s friends
is not a friend of House-Elves.”
Was Hermione a friend of House-Elves? How many times had that been brought into question?

It was very difficult to contemplate the damage sending McLaggen to the ground might have
inflicted. Her thoughts were once more an overgrown hedge, and barbed wire surrounded the area
most needing to be pruned. They left deep gashes all over Tiny Tartan Hermione, who (smeared
with camouflage paint, secateurs clenched between teeth) was attempting to crawl under them.

Even with all the tolerance and good judgement Ogden had previously shown, she couldn’t imagine
how he’d react to whatever bloated, hyperbolised version of events McLaggen would relay to
him…

Tiny Tartan Hermione committed Harakiri with the secateurs.

Ow — OW. Barbed wire spread across her lower stomach. She pressed a palm against it and cast a
warming charm, while she sat back in her chair and watched Kathy pace up and down the tiny
office, trying to memorise a very long scroll listing international law amendments of the past
century.

Would her legacy be that of a misguided do-gooder? That headcase Chronic Crusader, inflicting
advocacy where it was neither warranted nor remotely appreciated.

Mind and uterus, in tandem, became dense, barbed snares.

The twinges in her stomach conquered everything else when she was once again leaving Starthistle
Hill. She returned with a heavy bag, and laid out her loot on the dining table.

Hot shower, comfy fleece pyjamas, more warming charms on her stomach —

Into a big black mug went Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate, hot milk, a splash of Bailey’s… another
splash for luck… a good measure of dark rum… a sprinkle of cinnamon.

It tasted irresponsibly rich. The forbidden drink. The aroma that had haunted her as a little girl, but
she had never been allowed to sample. Sip after sip she took, standing by the table, watching
firelight dance inside the rum bottle.

She watched as it turned green.

Draco stood like a Ministry bailiff would, when sent to fetch an absconder. But bailiffs didn’t wear
soft looking brown jumpers and tapered joggers and they didn’t at all inspire complete willingness
to surrender. She wondered if he had come to tell her off again, or to declare his intention to never
see her again…

“I have come to collect,” he announced sternly.

Dread melded with the discomfort in her stomach.

“I helped you with your floating scrolls when you asked–”

Sure. That’s exactly how it had played out.

“–You are under obligation to return the favour.”

“Do you think,” she posed, “If you had come in, said good evening Granger, and just asked for my
help, that I would have refused? You must have confused me with someone else. Perhaps someone
who needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming, when help is required.”

He was riled up. Good.

“Theo expects a farewell party.”

“Perfectly fair.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Obviously. When else? It’s his last day in town.”

“Will… You… Help… Me.”

“Plan a farewell party?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. Her face made her do it. “Of course, Draco.”

He approached the table. An acrid frown took in the display.

“What’s all that?”

“Have a taste.” She held out her mug.

His mouth had been everywhere. All over her. Why did the act of him taking a sip from her mug
make her flush and want to look away?
She didn’t look away, though, and caught the infinitesimal jump of his eyebrows. He approved.

“I’ll fix you one while you fetch some parchment, envelopes, and pens from the study. Pens are–”

“I know what they are,” he huffed.

“Just making sure. You bark at me when I mention muggle things without an explanation. Also, do
bear in mind that you are fetching these things for party-planning purposes. You are not doing me a
favour. I wouldn’t want to upset our tally of obligations.”

She received daggers as he left the room, and her face smiled even wider. A contortion it
determinedly maintained while she made a second mug of boozy chocolate.

[Let it be very clear that her face was a separate entity at that point. She was not responsible for its
actions.]

By the time Draco returned, she had settled on the sofa and pulled the coffee table a bit closer. He
pushed their mugs to the side, and went about arranging things in an absurdly punctilious manner.
Envelopes in a perfectly aligned stack, one bit of parchment in front of each of them, pens placed
horizontally on top.

His movements were taut, his manner was offish. Heaven help her, she was going to have to give
him yet another lesson in moving past moments of vulnerability.

Finally, when he sat back, picked up his mug, and looked blankly at her, she briefly gave up
battling against her face.

“Shall I make a list of people to invite?” she broached smilingly.

He made a go ahead gesture.

“You could write out the invitation?”

“Fine.” He put his mug down and picked up a pen.

Hermione began jotting down names. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Draco making no
progress at all.

“Having trouble?”

“No.”

You are cordially, he wrote.

“Maybe we can include a charming little couplet,” she suggested.

“A couplet? ”

“Yes.” She – Her face grinned. “I have a hidden talent for poetry.”

“I must insist you keep it hidden.”

“I’ll have you know my attempts display a lot more sophistication than rhyming thing, ring, and
king.”

Draco’s hand hovered midair for a few beats, before he put the pen down. He said, “There she sat,
Her-meow-ne the cat, Swishing her tail indignantly.”

“Words with no merit, From Draco the ferret, Licking his chops malignant–”

“Why the fuck are you inviting Potter?”

The glare she shot him was twofold – One for a question like that, and one for clipping her wings
of poesy. "Why shouldn’t I?”
“Theo and Potter aren’t friends. I can… accept inviting Weasley, though I can’t really stomach it. Is
it the case that you simply can not invite one without the other? Like Tracey and Patil, they cease to
exist if they can't hold hands and rub up against each other every few minutes?”

Glare multiplied tenfold. “We can’t invite everyone except Harry. That’s horrible. Besides, Harry
and Theo are friends.”

Her face lifted into a small smile as she remembered a bottle of unwise, egregiously cheap
whisky…

“Please pull yourself out of whatever mawkish memory you’ve sunk into and remember that it’s my
flat.”

She underlined Harry’s name three times. “Also Theo’s flat. Theo’s party. Harry’s getting an
invitation, deal with it. And honestly, isn’t it high time you grew up? What possible reason is there
to cling onto old rivalries now, after everything–”

“Ours is a rivalry that will stand the test of time, Granger. It is steadfast, eternal, unmoved by the
shifting sands of –”

“Oh, please. It’s patently childish. You’ve fought on the same side and made it out by the skin of
your teeth. You’ve shared ownership of more than one wand–” (how he scowled) “You’re more
alike than you realise. I think you’ll appreciate Harry’s sense of humour.”

“He almost killed me. And threatened to do so again, not that long ago.”

When you made a face of abject disgust at the thought of being with me.

“He wasn’t himself then,” she muttered, “He apologised.”

Draco resumed writing the invitation.

“What about Ron? You get on perfectly well with the rest of the Weasleys. You’re downright
friendly with Bill, George, and Ginny.”

“Forced cooperation isn’t friendliness,” he bit back.

“It’s been nearly two years, Draco. I don’t think you can call it forced anymore. I'm sure you’ll
appreciate Ron’s sense of humour, too–” (how he scoffed) “I’m not saying you should get chummy
with him – absolutely not that – but this pointlessly hostile posturing can stop. After all, you learnt
to endure my presence.”

Draco set the pen down again.

“I am…” He stared at her. “...Genuinely offended on your behalf.”

Her face wanted to rip into half a grin — No, no, no. Submit to me, you beast.
She turned back to the list.

“They’re wonderful people, Harry and Ron.”

A fed up exhale.

“Honestly, they’re–”

“Shut up, Hermione.”

He’d got a bloody good hang of the game. A sharp and brittle shut up … but then Hermione, in his
voice…

She tried again. “I’m just saying–"

“I know you are. You always are. And shut up means I want you to stop saying.”

“Plan your own party then!"

“It’s Theo’s–”

“Shut up, Draco.”

He put a final full stop on the invitation and settled back with his mug. Watching her. She
momentarily forgot how to spell Seamus.

“Finnigan?!” Draco erupted, “Is this a farewell party or a gathering of your admirers?”

“Are you going to say that Seamus isn’t Theo’s friend now? God, is there anyone you don’t object
to?”

She wasn’t going to let him distract her anymore. She was hungry. Eighteen people on the list so
far. Who else… Who else…

“He’s a detestable dog with two dicks – and for some reason you’re more than happy to let him
have his hands all over you.”

“Seamus has never touched me.”

“He’s touched you plenty.”

“Frankly, I seriously doubt he’s even seen a naked woman in… erm, the flesh. You should pity
him.”

“I save my pity for those who are being subjected to his company. Namely, myself, thanks to you,
because you’re so fond of–”
“Theo is fond of him. He thinks he’s amusing.”

“You think it’s amusing to have some randy degenerate pawing at you.”

“I do not! I’ve told you this before, he’s ribald and stupid, but he’d never actually do anything
untoward.”

“You have an innate and definitive insight into just about everyone’s character, don’t you?”

“I’ve known him for nine years. He’s harmless. Dean’s the one who kissed me–”

“What? ”

Oh bother. She set the list aside and took a long pull from her mug. How was he able to draw such
candour out of her, while simultaneously making her so weary of every word she said?

Spanner. Orbit-disrupter.

“It was a long time ago,” she mumbled, “Ginny had just left him for Harry and he was desperately
unhappy.”

She could feel his stare compressing and manipulating the space between them.

“And you welcomed his advances?”

“No. He… er, caught me by surprise.”

“He forced himself on you.”

“It wasn’t like that. Anyway… I pushed him away, he was horrified and apologised at once. I didn’t
speak to him for a while after. But it’s been years and we’ve obviously moved on.”

Reaching the bottom of her mug, she gazed down into the empty blackness. Form a vacuum and
suck me in, won’t you? The mug exhibited mug-typical behaviour.
Hermione finally turned to Draco. He was licking chocolate off his upper lip, eyes like jagged
icicles that broke off and skewered her.

“So this is a list of your admirers."

"No.”

“Who else have you had a tryst with? Weasley? Well, of course, Weasley–”

“Nothing ever happened with Ron.”

“George Weasley?”

“No!”
“Jordan? Wood? Oh, what about Longbottom? You’re always so quick to jump to his defence.”

That was the last straw. She had to take back control of the situation, and she knew exactly how to
do that.

She crossed her arms, raised her chin, and said, “Padma.”

Yes. His expression. Exactly. Round six thousand goes to Granger.

Slowly, the barefaced surprise melted away, revealing something dangerous. A head-lowered,
softly-smirking, arm-sliding-along-the-back-of-the-sofa kind of dangerous.

“You had a tryst with Patil?”

The rough timbre of his voice gave her goose pimples.

“We kissed. Once,” she whispered, “We were drunk… in… in the library… and it… happened.”

He pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek while he absorbed that.

“Goodness, Granger. What sort of shenanigans did you get up to in the library? Wearing pretty
knickers, kissing girls…”

“I–”

He shifted closer, eyes boring into hers. “Were you pressed up against a bookshelf?”

She shook her head dumbly. “No, we –”

“Was your uniform, inexplicably, three sizes too small?”

“It was after Slughorn’s Christmas party. I was wearing a dress. Padma was –”

“How short?” He leaned in. “Up to here?” He placed a hand on her knee cap, large and hot as
coals.

“A little higher,” she whispered.

“Here?” His hand slid above her knee.

“Little more.”

“Here?” He gently squeezed her thigh.

“Yes.”

“And your hair?” He glanced at it, hanging around her face, then settled on her mouth. “Up or
down?”

“Down,” she croaked.

He wet his lips. Hermione’s chest was going to explode.

His hand began sliding even higher —

She locked her fingers around his wrist and stopped him.

“I have my period,” she blurted.

First, he reacted with the predictable male panic that that word educed, blinking away from her
mouth.

Then he scowled.

“It is deliberate, isn’t it?” he griped, “You enjoy doing this. The most twisted and sadistic little
game you could come up with.”

“What are you – What?” she sputtered.

“I don’t know which one of your old flames told you that such coquetry is cute, but let me assure
you–”

“What are you on about? I just – you asked! ”

He shot her a very dark look and emptied his mug.

After that, they carried on quietly, duplicating the invitation and putting them into envelopes. His
fingers brushed against hers every time something passed between them, and he kept breathing out
heavily like each touch was akin to a thousand papercuts. Once they were through, he arose stiffly
and moved towards the fireplace to send them.

“Will you come back?”

He glanced over his shoulder.

“I’ll make you another if you are,” she added, waving her mug about.

Please, please, please, please.

“Make it stronger.”

Hermione had to pace around for a bit to recalibrate. She ordered dinner, prepared their drinks, and
eventually, landed back on the sofa.

It shouldn’t have taken him so long to attach some letters to Rodion’s leg…

Shortly after an arm delivered a bag of takeaway through the floo, he returned, and she was quick
to initiate another discussion about party particulars. He wasn’t bothered at all; sat back all taciturn
and nonchalant, even when she cautiously suggested letting Seamus handle the drinks. He was
lounging, in fact, draped against the corner of the sofa, long finger idly tapping against his mug,
faint flush climbing up his face like a rising rufescent fog, legs parted at a thirty degree angle…

Over dinner, he asked her how she’d managed to imbue charms and set up magical triggers on the
Floaty – the Parchmenter – the thingy without a good long soak in a Fixing Draught. She
metaphorically rubbed her hands in glee as she explained tethering charms and how she had figured
out a way to sandwich transfixion charms between each layer of magic.

“A separate figo between each spell prefixed with a figere keeps it all in place. Of course, they will
eventually wear out, but I am quite sure they’ll last as long as the Quick-Quotes quills.”

“How did you work that out?” he asked, and bit into the last sweet date wanton.

"I had a chat with Flitwick. And, well, lots of experimentation –”

“Ah, yes. You are big on experimentation, apparently.”

She burned bright red but ploughed on. “I wanted to figure out a way to do it without potion baths.
They take too long and don’t allow so many spells to exist simultaneously. I do however want to
imbue the protean charm using a Fixing Draught in the future, so that it’s as potent as it can
possibly be.”

“What’s the point if every other spell eventually wears out?”

“I want the charm to have unlimited reach, so you can send a message to anyone as long as you
know the name they’ve scribed on their parchment. They'll all be marked with a bindrune, so
they’ll be connected, irrespective of when they’re made and who makes them. It’ll be like a… a…
brand new network of communication.”

He sat back, crossed his arms, and contemplated her from under his fringe.

“What?”

“Will you humbly refrain from patenting this creation as well?”

She shook her head. “I’m going to speak to Mr Weasley about it. I believe he knows someone in
the Patents Office.”

“Good.”

Infinitesimal jump of his eyebrows. (Approval.) Then a slight lowering. (Interest.) A gentle tilt of
the head.

Hermione picked up her empty plate and headed into the kitchen.

When she turned away from the sink, he was right there, pushing his chest into her face. He braced
a hand on her hip and reached behind her to place his plate. His hand didn’t move as the other
pulled out his wand. He muttered scourgify into her hair and she heard the plate wipe itself clean.

Then he pulled back. She looked up.

Clenched jaw, red cheeks —

She hooked her arms around his neck and kissed him. He tugged her tight against himself with a
low moan and…

They really really didn’t kiss enough. By Jove, they didn’t. If they did, she’d never have reason to
question the utter rightness of the world. He rubbed his tongue against hers and fisted the back of
her shirt. She stroked the skin behind his ears with her thumbs, pushing up higher and higher on her
toes.

She kept her eyes closed for a few seconds after they broke apart, keeping the moment inside
herself for just that much longer. When she opened them, she looked directly into his eyes, and the
moment stayed riveted between them.

“Make me another hot chocolate,” he murmured.

“Even stronger than the last?”

“Why not.”

He pressed his mouth against hers once more, firm and quick.
His hand slid around her as he stepped back, lingering for a moment at her waist.

She prepared two more mugs, his a little stronger, hers less so. Her emotions were volcanic. She
needed to keep her wits about her.

But as hard as she tried to come up with something safe and absorbing to talk about, there was only
chaos in the upper storey. Heart was a roaring flame, brain was being cooked.

“Have you had time to read anything by Hypatia?” Draco asked casually.

“Yes!” Hermione cried with disproportionate enthusiasm.

Draco lurched with surprise.

“Erm, sorry. I mean, yes.” She nodded ardently. “Just this weekend I read the transcript of her
lecture at The Academy in Crete. She drew the most fascinating correlation between basic
numerology, Euclidean geometry, and fixed planetary movement that can be used to determine the
hour when the consequence of any given action would occur…”

Conversation was quicksand. She ended up summoning the book and they poured over it, reading
fragments and excerpts and testing out theories by throwing things and wonkily balancing them on
the edge of the table.

Draco had not overcome his struggles with grasping the Ancient Greek number system and the
concept of no zero.

“— just a symbol to them, Draco. The notion of nothing, numerologically, was considered a
paradox.”
“But if something isn’t going to happen, the probability is zero–”

“Exactly! It isn't. It’s nothing–”

“But you need that zero to determine what’s one. How could they have formed a comparative—”

She dragged him to the study, muttering wait, wait, just hold on.

Stained glass lamp lit, a muted spectrum — She hunted along the shelves till she found
November’s Journal of Advances in Modern Arithmancy that had an article about a recent
breakthrough: Experts finally crack the code behind mysterious Proto-Hellenic tablet discovered
buried in the Pontic steppe...

The argument carried on and on. They had to repeatedly cast warming charms on their drinks.
Draco conjured the usual high back leather armchair. Hermione conjured a blackboard and drew
graph after graph… solved equation after equation… until finally —

“Oh, all right. You’ve made your point. Put a sock in it.”

Draco scowled and drank deeply. Hermione, slightly out of breath, fell into her own armchair. She
could make a graph to chart the correlation between narky Draco, vindicated Hermione, and how
endearing she would find him at any given moment.

“Ah,” she sighed, “the harsh acerbity of the Dracoish patois. Put a sock in it means, ‘Granger, you
are right and I am a doughnut’, does it not?”

She’d tried to mimic his voice. It was a travesty.

Draco’s mug was almost at his mouth. He paused. Lowered it. “It absolutely does not.”

Hermione shook her head. “Roughly. The subtleties of language are often lost in translation,
especially when one as crude as Dracoish is involved.”

“It’s far superior to that twee and sentimental dialect, Grangerese, in which every sentence needs to
pay deference to its misguided lodestar.”

“Grangerese is the language of universal truths and – Where are you going?”

He’d set his mug on the footstool and stood up.

Looking down his nose at her, he drawled, “Ordinarily, I’d say ‘the bathroom’. But if I were to
translate that to Grangerese… Let’s see. I am going to accommodate a pathetically human,
biologically inescapable weakness. Then I will, helplessly, commit the sin of expending precious
water. However, the great truth-spewing Granger once told me that unlike muggles, magical folk
are capable of producing clean, potable water with a simple charm. Therefore, we can all ease our
minds for I will not be inflicting any lasting damage on nature.”

She laughed to herself, after the bathroom door clicked shut. She put her mug down next to his,
stood up, and looked at the scene: His mug and hers, his huge chair and her smaller one.
Pressing slightly shaky hands against leather, she cast a strong preserving charm, encasing his
magic in hers.

She returned the journal to its rightful place on the bookshelf. Someday, when she was very very
old, she would open a library, and it would be full of marvellous books collected and selected over
a lifetime. Muggle and magical. Fiction and non. Journals and magazines. Storey on top of storey,
full of stories. It would be the Tower of Biblio and she would live in a small room at the very
top…

My chin cupped in both hands, high up in my garret

I shall see the workshops where they chatter and sing,
The chimneys, the belfries, those masts of the city,
And the skies that make one dream of eternity.

“Are you caressing your bookshelves?”

She hummed in affirmation, without turning around.

He perched on the arm of his chair, facing her, and her vision blurred because she was so focused
on the periphery.

“I love my bookshelves.”

He laughed softly as she turned to him.

“A person's bookshelves are their biography. And – Oh, before I continue, please understand that I
don’t care if I sound twee or sentimental. All right?”

“Granger, you’ve never given me any reason to believe you care about how you sound.”

“Hmph. As I was saying, a person’s bookshelves are their biography. It’s the story of their lives
spread across completely independent stories…”

“Is this the hidden talent making itself known?”

She resumed caressing. “It’s amazing how a book binds itself to the time when you first read it. Its
pages hold so much more than just words… they absorb your emotions… they’re time-capsules…
they’re full of little pockets containing pieces of your soul…”

“Speaking of souls, you are piercing mine with your eloquence. Like a red hot rusty poker.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Go on then,” he goaded, “What secrets do these here bookshelves hold? Tell us the story of
Granger, in books.”

“Why should I?” she sniped.

“Because you’re simply dying to.”

She was. She had been since she was thirteen and had first come up with the idea.

She walked her fingers up the narrow wood.

“It won’t be complete,” she mused, “A lot of the books I read as a kid are sitting in my parents’
attic on the other side of the world. The furthest I can go is… here. The Canterbury Tales. The last
book I read before McGonagall showed up. It took ages to get through, and mum had to help me
because it’s all in Middle English. Post-McGonagall, we have… these. Science books and
encyclopaedias – mostly physics – because I was so determined to unearth an explanation for
magic. I thought I’d find something written between the hard lines of scientific facts. My parents
knew it was a pointless undertaking, but they were too gobsmacked to do anything but go along
with it. We gave up when we reached nuclear fission. There were no answers.”

She lovingly stroked the spine of Hogwarts: A History.

“After my first trip to Diagon Alley, I only read magical textbooks, books on magical theory,
history, society… something from every bloody section of the library. I was used to being an
outsider… but being the ignorant one was… untenable. That first year, I was a complete basket
case. Even before I became friends with Harry and Ron and had to contend with riddles and three-
headed dogs and evil forces…”

She peeked over her shoulder, and he hadn’t budged. Mug resting on his knee. Brows furrowed and
face intent. Attentive. Listening.

She turned back and continued.

“After that, my reading became defined by what the three of us were going through. Second year, I
read as much as I could about the founders, Hogwarts… potions books… got access to the
restricted section… But … I did get through a lot of Wodehouse, as well as David Copperfield
while I couldn’t sleep… er, when I was… stuck in the hospital wing…”

“When you were Her-meow-ne.”

Huff. “Yes. Then I was out of commission for two months.”

She drifted from one shelf to the other.

“You see these?” she asked, pointing out a row of thick, spiral-bound books, “My parents compiled
these every year, for me to read over the summer. They’re a condensed version of everything I’d
have learnt had I gone to regular – er, muggle school. A bit of every subject.”

Draco cleared his throat. “May I borrow those?”

She smiled and didn’t let him see. “Of course. Before third year, mum decided it was time I got my
politics straight, after I told her how backwards magical society was. Here begins the development
of class consciousness.” She chuckled. “Draco, I think you could do with some Marxism in your
life.
“I read half of his row, and these volumes of classical poetry, when Harry and Ron stopped
speaking to me. But I had too many lessons… Sometimes I was tempted to use the Time-Turner to
steal a few hours of blissful peace…”

“You had a Time-Turner? In third year?”

“Yes. Dumbledore gave it to me. Terribly irresponsible, don’t you think?”

“It’s mad. And–”

“Fourth year, I lost my head researching things for Harry. Dragons, for god’s sake. How to breathe
underwater. Yeesh. …All these compendiums of advanced magic...
“That following summer, I read everything by Wilde, by Heller, Saki, more Wodehouse. I just
needed to laugh. I read them while stuck in that awful room… forced to clean that awful house…
Draco, you must read Wilde and Heller.”

Onward.

“I got a bit more into…” Her ears warmed, “...Romance over fifth year. There wasn’t much time to
read, and life revolved around Dumbledore’s Army and the OWLs, but Austen kept me sane.
Alcott. Brontë. Fitzgerald…”

A sideways shuffle.

“The summer before sixth year, I read fifty-seven books.”

“Fifty-seven?”

“Mmhmm.”

“How on earth did you have the time?”

“They weren’t all War and Peace. Some were anthologies of short stories. I read more than one at a
time, usually one fiction, one non-fiction, interspersed with poetry. I couldn’t sleep – residual pain
from Dolohov’s curse wouldn’t let me. When I did manage to get some shuteye, I’d wake up
screaming within an hour. The first time it happened, I terrified mum and dad, so I only got into
bed while they were at work. Initially, I tried to read about spells and magic – I had to prepare;
everything was horrible – but not being able to do magic, or practise the spells was making me lose
my mind. And I just… switched off. I decided… hmm… it was my last chance to just be myself.
Precocious young Hermione, daughter of dentists and a voracious reader. I locked myself in my
room and did nothing but read muggle books.”

She also snuck out to visit Pete sometimes. He didn’t need to know that.

“Your parents just… let you be?”

“I hadn’t told them anything and acted like everything was normal. I overheard them talking once;
they thought I was finally displaying teenagerish tendencies. They thought I was lovesick over Ron
— Stop it. You were with Pansy Parkinson. Anyway, I read all of these.” She swiped a hand over
multiple rows. “Some of which I later… gave to Theo… for… and… Oh.”

Her hand paused over a particular book. She pulled it out and spun around. He had that pensive,
slightly stern look to him, just like that night on the Astronomy tower. And just like that night, it
made her want to hold his hand. Instead, she held out the book. He flinched like she had hexed
him.

Camus’ The Rebel.

He watched, eagle-eyed, as she flipped it open to the pertinent page; as she pulled out the folded bit
of parchment…

“Don’t,” he rasped, “Don’t open it.”

She froze. “What is it? The… spiral thing?”

“My mother’s handkerchief.” He stared at the slip between her hands like it was threatening him
with bodily harm. “What's left of it. She had given it to me over the holidays and I forgot to return
it. There was an accident, one night, while I was working on the cabinet. A fire.” He tore his eyes
away, focusing on his knee. “I can’t… read those words again. Can’t look at them.”

“Would you like me to destroy–”

“No!” He exclaimed with a rush of air. His shoulders were limp. He looked wildly up at her – blink
– down at his knee. “Would you object to… leaving it there? On that page?”

She put it back and closed the book. She turned and walked slowly to slide it back into place, and
stayed in that position for a bit, with her arm raised. Heart was a charred, smoking piece of coal,
brain was enveloped in fumes.

She turned around and returned to her chair, first perching on the edge, then leaning back and back
till her shoulders were pressed against the cushion.
Draco slipped onto the seat of his.

It was strange, the silence, after such a prolonged exposure to her own voice. Lost and faded echoes
of it lingered, but they didn’t sound like her anymore.

Both their mugs had to be rewarmed.

“Being tortured was the most cinematic experience of my life.”

That didn’t sound like her either. Draco looked up sharply. He was sitting in line with the little glass
dragonfly on the lampshade. It became a blue blob of light on his cheek.

“Vivid… rousing… and musical. Ugh, the music. It was loud, intense, like I was in the middle of a
concert hall. These were songs that I loved, that I used to listen to all the time… and I can’t
anymore. Even a few opening notes send me running.”
Hermione took a large sip. Chocolate – that could help one recover from a brush with a dementor –
could not drive away crowding demons of a hideous past.

“Among those was a prelude by Chopin.” She stared out the window across the room. “Theo
smuggled me into the music room one night, and you played it. You played it beautifully. It made
me think of…”

“Of?”

“Um.”

“Of what?

“The words you don’t want to think of.”

Transparent curtains. Thick foggy glass. Thin layer of frost. Swirl of mist. It is sweet, through the
mist, to see the stars —

“Why did you forgive me?”

The swiftness with which she turned her head made her dizzy.

When she blinked, she saw Ron glaring disbelievingly.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Draco staring defiantly.

Ron. Draco. Ron. Draco. Ron. Draco.

Like a lenticular picture.

“You had already forgiven me,” he added, “even before I’d apologised.”

“Yes.”

A line appeared between his brows. She wanted to rub it away and tell him it didn’t matter. Because
she loved him now.

“Why?” he ground out, “How? ”

“You didn’t make it easy,” she murmured, and a tremor shot up her legs. “You didn’t make it easy
at all.”

The line deepened – a tightly closed third eye. His head lowered, the dragonfly took flight, settling
on the flushed pink bridge of his nose.

“You were so consistently obnoxious; so hateful, onerous, and nasty. Yes, I had… said some things,
but I did try to apologise, and you…” She stopped to take a breath. “Everyone was so sure you had
changed, to some degree. But everything you did and said made me want to keep hating you.”
His gaze was like eager fingers digging through the chaff in her head to get to the point.

“Being in the Hogwarts bubble helped. All those afternoons in the library… I don’t know. Our
conversations went from spiteful to aggravating to interesting and I just ended up getting to know
the person in front of me. By the end of it, I knew you were different, and…”

She shrugged.

And you made the world stop. And then you stopped. To listen. To me.

“And?” he pressed. His voice was heavy.

“And we ate cake in your room. You gave me… some sort of explanation…” She shrugged again.
“I decided to believe it. Believe you.”

They lifted their mugs in unison. She watched him over the rim. The dragonfly’s wings fluttered
over his eyes; grey opals turned into blue sapphires.

And back to opals.

“I could tell you more,” he said slowly.

“More?”

“I still can’t present you with a tidy trajectory for when and how things changed. I wasn’t sitting
there measuring my bigotry – I was just trying to stay afloat.”

He shifted his weight, setting his elbow on the arm of his chair. The dragonfly perched on his
shoulder.
He let out a weighty breath, a solid thing that lodged itself in the machinery of Old Time’s factory.

“Those galleons that you’d made,” he said, “the prototype for the scrolls, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“I was so bloody proud of myself for using your tricks against you. I put Rosmerta under the
imperius curse in the beginning of October. Jolly proud of that, too. It was the only unforgivable I’d
managed to get right. I bragged about it to Snape, because he wouldn’t stop following me –
something between a shadow, a sentient oil spill, and the most miserable Pogrebin. I told him I had
it all under control. My plan was foolproof. I called you a.”

His jaw clicked. She looked away.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Snape tore my head off for it. Told me that if I ever used that word in his presence again, the Dark
Lord wouldn’t be my biggest worry. He asked me how it felt to be stealing ideas from a
muggleborn who was unequivocally better at wielding magic than I was.” Draco laughed vacantly.
“As if I hadn’t been asked that a hundred times before. As if I hadn’t lived with it for years, had it
festering under my skin until I decided it didn’t fucking matter because I was intrinsically superior
and there was nothing you could do about it.”

She did not want to hear that. She didn't want to look at him saying it. She wanted to bolt from the
room.

He wouldn’t meet her eye.

“He was crowding me against the wall, bearing down on me, threatening me. I wanted to hex him,
but I just couldn’t. I was incapable of aiming a simple stunner at Severus Snape… and I was
expected to murder Albus bloody Dumbledore. When Bell got sent to the hospital, I spent an entire
day and night being violently sick. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t. None of it.

“The Dark Lord was very busy that winter. Between hunting for the Elder Wand, building alliances
with giants and Dementors, he spent only a couple of nights at the Manor. Merlin, he made those
nights count. When he was, mercifully, away, I went flying. I ought to have been in the library,
searching for spells to help me with the cabinet, but…” He finally looked at her. “...but not being
able to put those spells to practice was making me lose my mind.”

He held her gaze for just a second or two.

“At first, I kept to the manor grounds and surrounding areas, because I was afraid he – or Bellatrix
– would return at any point. But soon enough, I was close to bursting out of my skin. They’d what
– torture me? Kill me? For flying? Fucking fine. A necessary end, will come when it will come,
etcetera. Draco shall go forth.

“I flew down to Warminster, circled the town for a bit. Then I decided to get down and walk. It was
stupid, careless, but I was not in control. I felt like I had been imperiused… by some wretched part
of myself. It was telling me to join in with those simple townspeople, chuck it all. For a minute, I
even considered leaving my mother to her fate. The very next minute, I almost threw myself in
front of a passing bus.

“I found a pub, a grimy little hole, with a scraggly ginger behind the bar. Could have well been a
Weasley. I got a drink, sat in a corner, and just… watched those people. Those muggles. Inferior
and ferine. One man looked like Zabini. One girl had Daphne’s hair. One twerp had a stupid,
hangdog expression like Longbottom. I had three drinks while they went about their evening…
talking, laughing, getting sloshed enough to sing…

“I kept going back. Days were hell and that shitty pub became my refuge. I kept shifting closer to
the middle so I could listen in. Most were having a moan about their jobs, their families. Normal,
mundane rubbish. One entire evening I heard two chaps argue about religion and inward reflection.
They kept quoting one… Kirk... Ego... something. The next evening, I…”

He scratched his jaw.

“I went home with a muggle girl.”

Another acid reflux-like burn.

“While flying back, all I wanted to do was zoom over to Azkaban and shout about it. Would you
like to know what I just did, Father?

“The evening after that – two days before Christmas – I got drunk enough to approach those chaps
who’d been discussing religion. I simply barrelled into their booth and asked them what they were
talking about. Niles and Waller they were called, couldn’t have been more than three or four years
older than I was, and they were discussing Solipsism. The more I listened, the more I was sure they
were nitwits. But I also wanted to bash my skull in and free myself from the reality I had
purportedly created for myself. Finally, they asked me what I was reading and I told them History
of the World by J. M. Roberts, which made them laugh for a very long time. But they... huh. We
talked about wars across centuries. I managed to salvage my reputation by bringing up Coriolanus.
We talked about sodding Shakespeare. After a while, they asked me if I’d seen the latest film
adaptation of Othello.

“The next thing I knew, I was being shoved into a ramshackle black car, and we were hurtling
towards Trowbridge. They dragged me into a lamentable little house with crumbling walls, up a
narrow staircase, into a titchy little room. I was forced to sit on a leather sack, in front of a
television, handed a bottle of piss-poor vodka…

“...I watched Othello.”

His eyelids were lowered and the shadow of his eyelashes hid his eyes completely.

“By the time it finished, Waller had crawled away somewhere and Niles had passed out on the
floor. I was completely off my face… can’t say for certain how I made it out of that house, or into a
nearby… park? I think? I had no idea where I was, so I summoned Fellow–”

“Falo,” he repeated slowly, for Hermione had asked, “My mother’s elf. He brought me back
home… however, the state I was in… I made things needlessly challenging. Splinched myself, but I
wouldn’t allow him to fetch mother. He healed me the best he could.”

(“Where did you splinch yourself?”

“My leg.”

“The scar on your shin?”

“Yeah.”)

“Christmas.” A weighted pause. “Was when mother gave me her handkerchief. I had to be given
hourly doses of calming draughts all through boxing day.

“Niles and Waller had me do shots of every kind. Sometimes, after they’d drunk far too much,
they’d walk around the empty streets to sober up before they could drive back. I’d silently trail
behind them while they talked about… about, oh fuck me, ideas . Concepts that went flying over
my head because I was stuck grappling with the most basic dichotomy of life and death. They did,
in fact, talk about the fallacy of dying one night. Granger, would you believe me if I told you I held
my tongue? That same night, they took me back to their ghastly home to watch Much Ado About
Nothing.

“The Dark Lord threw a party on New Year’s Eve. All creatures from the nine circles showed up.
There were Dementors in the hall. Someone brought entertainment; a muggle couple. The man had
the same outlandish hairstyle as Niles – shorn all over save for a bristly strip going down the
middle of his head. He could have been Niles. Niles could have been him. Our guests took turns
having their fun with them, while the Dark Lord indulged in some of the finest wine from our
collection.”

Draco shifted to the opposite side of his chair. Dragonfly hopped to the other shoulder. Hermione
vanished both their mugs, and he flexed his hand like he had forgotten he’d been holding onto
something.

“The night before I was to return to Hogwarts, we drove to a nearby hill. Niles and Waller dropped
down on the hard, frozen ground and began waxing poetic about the fucking stars, as you do.

“But they didn’t stop at the stars. They mapped out the solar system. They went back a billion
years, forward a billion years, yapping on and on about endless expansion…

"Kept going deeper, wider… cosmology, metaphysics, time and matter… The universe hanging on
top of me got bigger, heavier, more vital, and I was so small, so insignificant… the magic inside
me, even smaller… so fucking incidental … so run of the mill compared to the absolutely perfect
set of conditions that allowed the world to come into existence…

“I wanted to stay on that hill forever…

“I wanted to be who I was… on that hill… forever…

“I knew, the next morning, I would have to force myself to become something I absolutely was
not.

“I was not a killer.”

He finally lifted his eyes. She saw what he was seeing. The whole universe. The impossible
vastness. Scintillating silver starlight.

I would, to compose my eclogues chastely,

Lie down close to the sky like an astrologer…

“You know what Dumbledore said to me that night on the tower? Draco, you are not a killer. I had
to try and convince both of us otherwise.”

“You went straight to him? Once you got back to Hogwarts?”

He nodded.

“And he turned you away.”

A splash of water fell on the back of her hand. She was – had been – weeping. Oh.

She reached up to wipe her eyes.

“Did you ever see Niles and Waller again?”

“No.”

“Will you?”

He shrugged. Eyes dropped.

Hermione rubbed her face. When she withdrew her hands, Draco was leaving the room.

She heard the click of the bathroom door.

He was still putting himself back together, after thoroughly, piece by piece, carving and cleaving
himself out of every place, thing, and person that contextualised him as who he was Before. Save
for Theo and his mother, Draco Malfoy had jettisoned everything from his past.

But he wasn’t running away. The thing of darkness had been acknowledged.

It was no wonder he had reforged and redefined her with a kiss. He had drawn his arms around her,
and pulled her into After.

She put what he had just told her alongside what he had divulged that first night in her flat… that
last night at Hogwarts… slices of raspberry and vanilla cake…
Maybe there was a trajectory, barely discernible from the gory trajectory of war —

A door opened, there were footsteps, and another door creaked.

Hermione ventured out into the hall and saw his shadow slide across the gap under the bedroom
door.

She made a stop at the bathroom – studied, for a moment, her blanched complexion and red eyes –

In the unlit bedroom, Draco had removed his jumper and was lying in bed in a plain white t-shirt,
staring at the ceiling. His mouth was a thin line and his arms were stiff by his side.

She stood by the bed, one knee on the mattress, and stared at him, sensing a dilemma hovering over
the horizon of her thoughts. But she let a gale of temperance sweep across the landscape, dispersing
it.

He had been through it that evening. They both had been going through it all their lives. They had
known fear that grew like a raviging tumour, loneliness like hypothermia, hopelessness that shrunk
and dehydrated the spirit.

Why should they nurse such fragility all on their own? Her bed was their raft, wasn’t it? It had
weathered a storm, it could withstand the weight of a tiny shelter.

She climbed in and pulled his arm aside to make room, and kept her eyes averted as she settled at
his side. His scent, the first whiff of which had come to her months and months ago on a summer
afternoon, brought out the lost freshness of that winter night. She nestled her head against the curve
of his neck. Her palm slipped across his chest and came to a rest at the base of his ribcage.

He had gone completely still. Shallow breaths. She wanted to slide her hand upwards to check if his
heart was hammering as wildly as hers.

Slowly, he relaxed. He did not shuffle away.

“The Dark Lord would have killed my mother if you hadn’t let me go that day.”

She curled and uncurled her fingers, running them over his chest. It wasn’t a comforting stroke, but
it wasn’t not one either.

“That’s why I helped you,” he said, “at the wedding.”

Oh, all the ways they had collided over the years. Loathing, rage, jealousy, vengeance, obligation,
barter, compromise…

…And now…

Now his fingers were twirling the ends of her hair.

I love you.

“Draco. I… I… hexed Snape once.”

“When?”

“First year. I thought, erroneously, that he was jinxing Harry’s broom during a match. So I placed
some bluebell flames on his robes.”

Draco exhaled hard, his stomach caved. “You’re very partial to fire, aren’t you? Have a hidden
arsonist streak as well?”

“No. It’s just that fire is… sure-fire.”

She felt his chin brush against the top of her head.

“You are an efficient witch.”

“Nothing if not that.” She closed her eyes.

“I hexed Hagrid.”

“Draco. Why? ”

“You know why.”

“That was your own bloody fault, you horrible–”

“I used to leave dungbombs in the greenhouses for Sprout to find.”

“What did Sprout ever do to you?”

“She expected me to take herbology seriously.”

“Prat. Did you try anything on McGonagall?”

“Don’t be daft. Of course not.”

She woke up because she’d heard a loud banging noise.

It was still dark. She was alone in bed. The curtains were fluttering and the balcony doors were
open.

She scrambled out in a panic, grabbing her wand off the nightstand.

“Draco?” she croaked, “Draco, are you all right?”

He was standing with his back to her, straining over the railing so that his face pushed past the
shield and into the cold night.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” he clipped, without turning, “Go back to bed.”

“Are you –”
“I’m fine. ”

“What –”

“Go back to bed, Granger. ”

His delivery brooked no arguments.

For some time, she stood just on the other side of the doors. Then she moved to perch on the bed.
Then she lay down.

She closed her eyes quickly when he finally came back inside. The doors rattled as he closed them,
the impact reached the bottles on her dressing table.

He climbed into bed and she stayed up till his breathing evened out and deepened.

The next time she awoke, cyanic dawn was staining the curtains. She had forgotten to darken them
again.

And she almost broke down crying.

She was lying on her side, in a semi-foetal position, and Draco’s chest was expanding and
contracting against her back. His breath was in her hair, glancing off the back of her neck. His legs
were folded along hers. His arm was draped over her waist, underscoring her own arm. Moving just
her eyes, she looked down at them, side by side, his dwarfing hers —

Strong and masculine but long and elegant; a smattering of hair, gentle ridges of veins, ending in a
loose fist, half-resting on her narrow hand. Her wrist was hidden under his.

She was so warm. Whole and safe and perfect.

The day hadn’t begun, the night hadn’t ended. At that unspecific hour, she was separated from the
world. She had no compunctions to be anything, to put herself into structures and boxes as dictated
by life, time, and perception. She was only Hermione, as raw, as bare, as unaffected as she’d ever
been. She was a woman, small and delicate, fragile and young, wrapped up in the arms of the one
she loved.
If Draco were to ask her where she wanted to stay and who she wanted to be forever, this would be
her answer.

Gradually, morning began to demand acknowledgement –

A light of recognition fills

The whole great day, and bright
The tiny world of lovers’ arms.

Draco pulled in a deep breath. As he breathed out, his arm slid away. He turned to lie on his back.

His normal, sleep-heavy respiring resumed. Hermione slipped out of bed and got ready for her run.

She did not run.

She plodded. As though, instead of trainers, she had put on enormous clown shoes, or squelching
wet flippers. That same ungainly gait brought her back home, where Draco was asleep, still. She
peeked into the study, and lingered, staring at their chairs, still locked in conversation.

After a very long shower, she entered a bedroom sans Draco. The bed had been made. She dressed
quickly, scurried into the living room, and there she found him, lying on the sofa, face hidden
behind the paper, having a cuppa tea.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, Rosie Lea.

Her shoulders fell with relief.

“You made just that one cup?” she asked quiveringly.

A distracted yeah while he flipped a page.

When he spoke again, Hermione had brewed a cup of her own and was sat at the dining table,
penning a letter.

“You’ve thrown the league in a disarray. There’s major infighting happening among the Arrows.
More than half the team wants to boycott Nimbus, but the coach is chummy with Whitehorn.”

“What kind of coach sides with a company over his own team?”

“A bad one. There’s unrest in the Spanish League, too.”

“By next week, international teams will be joining in.”

“Oh?”
She heard the crinkle of the paper being lowered.

“I’m seeing to that right now.” She smiled absently while trying to frame sentences in their simplest
form.

“How so?”

“By writing to Victor.”

“Krum?”

“Yep.”

There were a few beats of silence before he pulled the paper back up.

A while later, he had stood up and was stretching his back with his hands behind his head,
expanding his torso, lengthening his spine and neck. He hadn’t put his jumper back on, and the
tightening muscles of his arms were displayed in all their glory. He bent backwards a bit, causing
the front of his t-shirt to lift, revealing a hint of that trail of fair hair beneath his navel.

Good lord.

Hermione forced herself to look outside the window. It was shaping up to be a decently sunny day.

“I have to be at the Ellerby and Spudmore main office in an hour,” she squeaked, “I have a meeting
with Burkhard Glöckner.”

“I’ll come with you.”

She moved convulsively.

He was so beautifully brightly lit up, that same shadowed young man from the night before.

“There’s a museum of brooms through the ages on the first floor,” he elaborated, “I haven’t been
since I was fourteen. Hopefully they’ll have some new additions.”

Hermione ran her tongue along her teeth. “I have to go to Diagon next.”

“As do I.”

“We could go to Mabel’s after, to pick up the cake.”

“Fine.”

He left, briefly, for a change of clothes, and Hermione munched on some toast and read the papers
in a way that demonstrated that fine practice long perfected by the corporate sector: Tokenism.
Upon his return, she scrambled and rambled to quickly disengage the part of her that was
clamouring to greet him like they’d been parted for years.
It was all for naught, because soon they were in the lift, and all she could think about was the last
time they’d been in there together. His cologne needled her self-control. The brush of his sleeve
against his coat when he moved his arm reminded her of the sound it made when she shoved it off
his shoulders…

Out in the bright morning light, things began making sense again. They apparated to the outskirts
of Milton Keynes, to what looked like a small parrock to muggles, but was actually multiple large
buildings owned by Ellerby and Spudmore. Bronze gates, under an arch upon which those same
names were boldly embossed, welcomed them into a sizable area. The manufacturing unit was near
the back, emitting smoke and sparks from tall chimneys. There was a large multi-storey warehouse
to one side. The main office was in the middle, a tall building with hundreds of arched windows.

Hermione and Draco walked inside, and split up in the lobby.

She was made to wait for close to half an hour before a woman in flouncy robes took her to
Glöckner’s office.

He was a very old man with sunken eyes and no interest in House-Elves. He made the latter very
evident very early on, so Hermione spoke slowly and waveringly out of sheer spite.

The meeting ended with the most insincere I’m sorry and the most unnecessary I’ll walk you out,
and the two of them paced towards the lobby in silence.

Draco was waiting by the door. He twitched with surprise when he saw the fossil that had attached
itself to her.

“Young Malfoy!” the fossil sibilated, “What a marvellous surprise! Oh, but not so young anymore.
You are a man now!”

He stuck out his hand. Draco… looked at it.

Uno, dos, tres.

Glöckner dropped his hand awkwardly.

“I am so sorry for what has befallen your father. Terribly unfortunate.”

“Is it?” Draco asked waspishly, “Is it unfortunate?”

Glöckner’s eyes darted towards Hermione. “Oh, I am merely offering my sympathies to you, dear
boy. We at Ellerby and Spudmore will always be grateful to your family’s long patronage–”

Draco walked away. Glöckner’s mouth closed with a snap and he turned to Hermione with a look
of deep offence. She gave him the sort of steely smile she’d seen Barros shoot at the slimiest of
defence barristers and followed after Draco.

As they walked towards the gates she said, “You never told me you knew him.”

“Can’t imagine how I forgot,” he snapped.

“Absolute rotter.”
“He was a staunch and open supporter of Grindelwald. You can see why he got along so well with
my father.”

“How did he escape prison?”

Draco made a noise of disgust. “Fled to England while the arrests were happening, quickly created
one of the fastest brooms in the market, let E&S absorb his company, and all was forgotten.”

They apparated to Diagon and split up outside Flourish and Blotts. Hermione had to head into the
side lane to Phantomlight Publishing, and Draco was off to place orders for the party.

“Wait!” she called out, “Please tell me you wont get into a brawl with Seamus.”

He sneered. “I don’t brawl, Granger. It’s undignified.”

“Then please don't–”

He rolled his eyes and stalked off. She rolled her eyes at his receding back.

That next meeting couldn’t have been more different to the previous one. Rosheen Coleman was a
lovely, lively woman who shook Hermione’s hand hard enough to pull it out of its socket. She
showed her around the Publishing House, where a press was humming and spitting out pages,
which were then being sewn together by two bright eyed elves wearing smocks made of old leather
book covers.

Hermione’s petition received some sustenance at last, and she was about to leave when she was
accosted by a batty old woman brandishing a book in her face.

"Oooh Hermione Granger! Lookie, it’s Hermione Granger. It’s me book launch today, Ms Granger.
Smile for a photograph, won't you love, for me book launch…”

Flash! Click!

She had to wrestle herself free, but not before her desperate, offhand comment, (“I’m sure your
book is wonderful and insightful!”) was taken as an official statement for the press release.

She grumbled about it to Draco when they met again. He had a large paper bag in his hand. The
wind and sun were playing with his hair, and it looked like a champagne whirlpool.

“What was her book about?”

“Apart from that, the meeting went well. I would have hated it if my final appointment hadn’t been
successful. They have some impressive titles under their belt, too. I mean–”

“Granger.”

“What?”

“What was the title of the madwoman’s book?”

“Psssth mmphuns.”

“Didn’t catch that, sorry.”

She ground her teeth. “It was Portents and Premonitions: A Guide. ”

Draco threw his head back and laughed.

Such a cruel contradiction.

Draco laughing at her expense,

Was its own recompense —

They apparated to Regent’s Park with her hand wrapped around his elbow.

Her hands were deep in her pockets while they walked to Mabel’s bakery.

The woman greeted her cheerfully, and added with a cheeky wink, “Every time you visit, it’s with a
different young man.”

“I brought Theo here last summer,” Hermione muttered at Draco’s raised brow.

With another bag in hand, they walked back to the park. There, behind some trees, she gave him a
rolled up parchment with a quill in between.

“It’s yours,” she maffled, “Already has your name on it.”

She watched him slide it into his pocket, feeling ridiculously diffident. “I’ll come by around half
five?”

“All right.”

“Um. See you.”

He lifted his hand and made a shooing gesture.

She stuck her tongue out at him, took two steps back, and spun.
Chapter End Notes

1. “wings of poesy”: From Ode to a Nightingale, by John Keats

2. “Heart was aflame, brain was being cooked”: Hermione doesn’t know it, but this was taken
from Heart Cooks Brain by Modest Mouse
3. “My chin cupped in both hands…”, “It is sweet, through the mist…”, “I would, to compose
my eclogues…”: from Paysage, by Charles Baudelaire (translated by William Aggeler)
4. “A necessary end…. Draco shall go forth”: Paraphrased from Act II, Scene 2; Julius Caesar,
by William Shakespeare
5. “Kirk... Ego... something” = Kirkegaard
6. Othello (1995), directed by Oliver Parker (Draco was mighty perplexed by how much Iago
resembled Gilderoy Lockhart)
7. Much Ado About Nothing (1993), directed by Kenneth Branagh (Draco was mighty
perplexed by how much Benedick resembled Gilderoy Lockhart. Hold on, was that
Trelawney??)
8. “A light of recognition fills…”: Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles, by W. H. Auden
9. Have a Cuppa Tea by The Kinks

The theme for Draco's monologue is A Bad Dream by Keane

 Ninety-Three
Chapter Notes

On today’s episode of Continued Malarkey, we will be taking a short drive through a tropical
isthmus. Relax, let your hair down, fix yourself a margarita. Let's have a good time.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Chin resting on her knees, she watched yellow steam rise from her cauldron. The Fixing Draught
was going through its final boil, before it needed to be left to simmer for thirteen hours. A timer
ticked softly in the background, and it marked the tenth time she snuck a look at the two armchairs
across the room.

Ding!

She straightened, dropped her feet to the floor, and added eight drops of clove oil into the brew. The
steam turned rusty. Once again she sat back, and her eyes fell on the pile of spiral-bound books
placed at the edge of the bureau.

Still sour from his refusal to acknowledge her poetic bent, she had decided to compose an original
epigram to embellish the inner covers; a pentastich spread across all five:

O clay-brained, cream-faced villain!

Mine wings of poesy thou hast clipped,

But mine ego shalt forever remain unchipped,

Unlike the state of thy unfortunate shoulder,

A foetid wound whence thy soul shalt moulder

Next to the books was her camera.

Moving photographs existed, speaking and singing parchment did as well, but for some reason no
attempt had been made to combine the two. What if she were to put a basic sound capturing charm
on her camera? Would it stick while she soaked the reel in developing solution? If that worked,
could she fashion a camera that was capable of recording for longer intervals? Could she video an
entire party, all evening long? Once developed would the whole thing fit on a single photograph,
like a flat, palm-sized telly?
…That semi-gaseous liquid in a pensieve allowed for complete immersion into a memory. But what
if the image were to be brought to the surface somehow? She could push a beam of light through it.
She could create a camera obscura that would allow her to watch her own memories projected onto
a wall. Not only lived memories, but memories of dreams. A butterfly’s journey given a filmic
realisation. Cinéma de Granger. The Majestic Dramedy of Hermione…

Ding!

Flames were lowered, a lid placed on the cauldron.

She styled her hair while McLaggen was having dinner with his Uncle Tibby, spinning a specious
yarn, and ruining all she had worked towards.

Well, she got through just one side before needing a break – her arms made a very impassioned
demand for it. She wandered around the flat, which inevitably compelled her into pushing open the
study door so she could look at their chairs every time she passed.

The peel of a bell sent her running.

On her desk, the quick-quotes quill was moving fast –

Finnigan’s here.

That put to rest her worry that the charms wouldn’t hold across larger distances. But the sprawling
grin on her face came exclusively from imagining the expression that must’ve supplemented that
statement.

After performing necessary intonations, she and the parchment floated back to the bedroom, where
faced the mirror and pulled forward the remaining half of her hair.

“That’s good. Has he begun setting up the bar?”

“I want him Finni-gone.”

Draco’s voice wafted around her. She imagined he was in the room, lounging in bed and idly
watching her get ready.

“How long have you been sitting on that one?” she asked.

“Sentiment or jeu de mots?”

“With your sparkling wit, Draco, I can’t imagine there was any delay between the two.”

Would that have made him smile? That slow crooked smile, with the tiny brackets in the corners. A
smile in parenthesis. An aside, just for her.
There was silence for some time.

Finally, when her hair was smooth and glossy, she did a slow spin before the mirror. It had grown
impractically long. She tucked it behind her ears, dragging her hands down till they cupped her
neck, and stared at her reflection.

Here was her list of things to do after the Elf Contract was passed:

1. Open that long-neglected bottle of gin.

2. Get a haircut.

“Merlin, he won’t shut up. I’ve never endured an uglier voice. His lower register is identical to the
sound Longbottom’s toad made when Goyle dropped that sack of Pungous Onions on it.”

“What??” she yelped.

“I’m throwing him out. This is insupportable. By that I mean the foundation of this building cannot
support such frequencies.”

“What happened to the toad?!”

“What do you think? He was flattened.”

“What????”

She could see her own expression. It might have been comical if she hadn’t been so viscerally
horrified.

“Someone’s at the door – Probably the food. Granger, would you please get here quickly? Or I’ll
drop something proportionately heavy on your favourite lecher.”

Oh, god, what if he’d been saying all that in front of Seamus? What if he’d had the parchment
announcing all her responses? Of course he’d have done that. He absolutely, unerringly would’ve.

She hadn’t said anything unkind or insulting, though, had she?

Poor little Trevor…

“Finite,” she growled, letting the parchment drop onto the dressing table.

Black and plain, her top left something to be desired, so she rooted around her wardrobe till she
found mum’s scarf from back when she was Hermione’s age – soft foulard with a bright and
colourful paisley pattern – and hung it around her neck.

Camera and books were slid inside her beaded bag. Shoes were laced up. Clothes were made
impervious to soot…
There was a very large gramophone in one corner of Theo and Draco’s sitting room, the sconces
were dimmed, the tacky shell-lamp was bright, and all the curtains had been pulled back. The glass
wall behind the bureau plat was painted in sunset colours. Nyx was pulling on her shawl at the
horizon, still a while away from tapping at the window to join the gathering.

Their dining room was just as enormous, made to look even larger by moving all the furniture out
of the way. The long dining table was pushed against the wall, and Draco, with his back to her, was
arranging an elaborate finger and fork buffet. On an adjacent wall Seamus was establishing a
boozer. He was the first to spot her.

He moved with lamentable swiftness – and then she was being hugged.

Over his shoulder, she saw Draco pivot, armed with the glare of one who was manifestly furious
about being proven right, and couldn’t believe that he had found himself in such a disagreeable
state of mind.

Hermione disengaged.

“Hi, Seamus. Quite an extensive selection this time, hm?”

Draco began marching towards the doors.

“Aw, ‘course you’d notice! Those colourful bottles are all premixed cocktails, and see that purple
one? That’s a blackcurrant margarita, specially for–”

“Granger, you’re needed on the terrace,” Draco spoke from the threshold.

No, he didn’t speak. He decreed.

Then he sauntered off with the confidence of one who always expects to be obliged.

Seamus sneered.

“I’ll be right back,” Hermione muttered, and followed after the love of her — Draco.

A warming charm – her warming charm – her spell brought forth by his magic – welcomed her to
the terrace. The Windsor chairs had been multiplied, a few tables and ashtrays were scattered
around, and hovering over their heads were dozens of unlit paper lanterns. Above those, Nyx’s
shawl fluttered fetchingly as she pushed on with her flamboyant descent.

“I thought I’d save the lamp-lighting honour for our local pyromaniac,” Draco said, glaring no
longer.

Hermione remembered that it was she who ought to be glaring. “You killed Trevor!”

He looked completely nonplussed.

“Neville’s toad, you dolt!”

“Oh.” – A very flat Oh – “I didn’t kill him. Goyle killed him. Mind you, there’s an unfair amount of
intent implied by the word kill. It wasn't premeditated amphibicide. It was involuntary toad-
slaughter. Goyle wasn’t in the habit of looking before he threw things around… or before he did
anything else, for that matter.”

She made a sound of impatience that did not do justice to the amount she was weathering. “There is
no scope for intercession here. Amphibicide is amphibicide. God, Neville will be devastated!”

(As much as she wanted to, she did not give voice – nor wail – to the words: Your toady killed
Neville’s toadie!)

“He already knows. I told him, back in the memorable days when Hogwarts was hell. Would you
like to know what he said?”

“What?” she bit back.

“Serves him right for constantly running away.”

“He would never say that!”

She reached out and smacked him before she knew better. Draco looked down at his chest,
eyebrows climbing up. Then he looked at her offending hand, then at her, and then waited,
scurrilously, for the Keeper of Sins to make note of her malefaction.

“He did say that,” Draco drawled eventually, “And to be fair, at that time, he was fresh from a
lashing and bleeding from ten different places.”

Poor Neville. Poor, poor Trevor. She had so hoped he’d been living a happy life somewhere near
the Hogwarts lake, splashing around with other warty, semi-aquatic friends who—

“Granger.”

“Huh?”

“The lamps.”

“Right.”

She turned around, feeling extremely muddleheaded.

“I don’t see why you’re upset,” Draco piped up while she considered the lamps, “Here’s the thing
about toads, Granger… they croa– ”

“No!” She spun, pointing furiously. “Don’t you dare.”

He smiled. A smile in parenthesis.

He could have seized her hand, pulled her to him and kissed her. He could’ve said, Hello, Granger.
We haven’t said hello yet.
To that, she might’ve said, Well that’s just not on. And she could have kissed him more.

She wouldn’t have minded, if that had happened.

Sighing, she turned back to the lamps, and sighed again, softer, when Draco’s footsteps faded into
non-existence.

She made a stab at artistry, alternating between red, white, and blue flames, before realising the
overall effect was overwhelmingly patriotic, and promptly turned them all blue. She stared up for a
few moments, at her galaxy of blazing bluebell stars, wondering if they would give Nyx, whose
stars were so faint, so far, so slow to emerge, a complex.

“I’M HOME. FINNIGAN, MY MAN, WHERE’S THE HOOLEY?”

Hermione marched into the hall, followed the trail of ruckus and barrelled into Theo the moment
she spotted him just outside his room. Arms around his waist, she felt a tide of emotion rise and
swell and flood into her eyes.

“Again?” he wondered, sounding unduly mirthful.

“Yes,” she spouted, “This will happen at regular intervals until you leave. Please resign yourself to
it.”

He began to chuckle, she carried on.

“It’s all well and good that you are so blasé about leaving, but I happen to be a true friend, who
actually loves you–”

“Hold your hippogriffs! How dare you?”

A waggish diatribe was what she wanted, and a waggish diatribe was what she got. At a certain
point, Draco, who was stepping out of the dining room also got caught in it, much to his
bafflement, and it ended when Theo kissed the top of her head and slammed his door in her face.

He didn’t reappear till after a few guests had arrived, and when he did, in a stripy polo shirt, he shot
her a grin that, combined with his clean shaven cheek and air of ease, made him look, suddenly, so
very young. That grin was the moon to her tide of tears and she forced herself to grin back, tossed
him the camera, and turned away.

The hall was a dark strip, faintly blue at one end from the light seeping in from the terrace, faintly
tawny in the middle, and once again faintly blue towards the bedrooms, from the chains on the
doors.

Dean and Jack brought a large stack of records and planted themselves by the gramophone,
declaring their intention to be the evening’s DJs. The opening line of the first song – ‘this bed is on
fire with passionate love' – set off a roar of appreciative laughs, and ‘she only comes when she's on
top’ caused a sudden rise in the numbers requiring a second drink.
While leaning against the railing on the terrace, blackcurrant margarita in hand, idly musing over
the curious similarity in Trevor and Bellatrix’s ends – Death, the great leveller indeed – Hermione
spotted a head of dirty blond hair – Luna had not been on the list – she was not supposed to be in
town —
She stepped into the sitting room just as Ron and Harry emerged from the fireplace. The former
scrunched up his face and stalked past her, the latter stayed, very woebegone.

“He broke up with Edith,” he informed her, “Said it wasn’t fair to her, to keep it going.”

She responded with an indistinguishable mumble.

Harry sighed. “That’s not all. Robards is sending him off to Montrose tomorrow to look into some
dodgy potionware making rounds. Guess who’s been assigned as his partner?”

“Not Edith?”

“Yes. Yes, Edith.”

He wandered away, and not a moment after, Padma and Tracey leapt in, bringing an entirely
different subcurrent.

“Hermione!” Padma sang, “Oh, Hermione, Hermione!”

There was an interim of arm-clutching and turbulent on-the-spot-hopping.

“The International Potion Regulatory Authority has approved the DPC admixture! We can start
administering it tomorrow!”

Hermione laughed with wondrous surprise. “That’s incredible,” she professed.

She felt a burst of pride for her, a rush of awe. They had come up with an unseasoned idea over
study sessions four years ago, and Padma had brought it to life, driven it to its brilliant,
revolutionary conclusion.

But soon, as she found herself back on the terrace listening to Padma’s excited chitter, an internal
schism ripped through her like a faultline, resulting in a polarity of emotions. Night and day, like
that half-sun-half-moon tattoo on Pete’s arm. Hurrah for healing advancements, and a Huzzah for
the melding of muggle and magical practices… but would she ever feel the incredible rush of a
professional accomplishment of such magnitude? The incomparable satisfaction of doing
something good, helping those who need it…

Her empty glass was a godsend. She shuffled towards the dining room, brushing shoulders with the
tiddly mass that scuttled in the opposite direction, and stopped just inside the doors. A conference
was preceding in front of the table, a very felicitous coming together to all involved, except Draco,
who looked so bored by everyone.
It was easy to snuff her desire for a cocktail to curtail the cocktail of contrary contentions within…
simply by watching him.

He was forced to engage with a directly posed question. His response was short, and (she could tell
by the shape of his lips as he spoke) incredibly trenchant. George laughed and clapped him on the
shoulder, and he eyed the hand touching him disdainfully as he shrugged it off.

He had become so different with her. It wasn’t an unusual phenomenon – blokes were different
once you had sex with them. She had known it, witnessed it, and experienced it. But the fact that it
was this bloke…

Draco Malfoy had softened. He had let her in.

…As, at some point, he must’ve let Pansy in. Let Mandy in. Mandy who got to kiss his cheek in
front of everyone in the Great Hall. Maybe he had let Fiona in, when she was the only one at work
speaking to him. He might not have been sleeping with her now, but that didn’t mean —

Hermione was diseased. Such blazing envy was a fever, a sickness. It infected every organ, every
aspect of her half-life, half-love, half-accomplishments.

We rock the body, rock the body, come on.

She turned to the bar.

Deep purple liquid sloshed as it entered her glass. An eddy formed where stream hit surface. A
perfect opening image, cinematographically, had she been videoing the evening. What if she ran
away and became a filmmaker? Harry had laughed it off, but she had enough inspiration to take the
fantasy genre by storm. Guaranteed success – what a refreshingly peculiar concept.

The magnetic draw reached her first, a series of hooks latching along her spine.

He reached her second, placing an empty glass next to hers. She expected him to grab the
firewhisky; but instead, he took hold of a bottle with a tangerine mixture.

“Branching out?” she broached.

“It’s called a garibaldi, I believe.”

“Has Seamus finally endeared himself to you with his libations?”

A question not worthy of a reaction. He insouciantly topped up his glass, only declaring, “I have
developed a taste for oranges.”

Raucous laughter erupted from behind – George had said something that had the others rolling in
the aisles.
“What’s going on over there?” Hermione asked, shuffling a little closer.

Her elbow brushed along Draco’s arm as she brought her glass to her lips.
His nose crinkled charmingly. He lowered his head and spoke close to her ear.

“Don’t ask me to explain how a group of half-wits can derive hours of entertainment by discussing
bogeys and flatulence. George Weasley makes me long for Teddy’s meaningless babble. And that
one – Verity – has a distended void where her brain ought to be. And in that void, unconnected
words are formed without reason and sent hurtling out of her mouth, unhindered. Theo’s type is
depressingly evident.”

Hermione scoffed to cover a laugh.

She had missed him. Spent all of last evening, all of last night, most of the morning, and a few
moments not too long ago with him, and… she still missed him. Such unabating escalation was
alarming and she desperately needed to consult some experts on the matter.

“Who’s that chap in red?” he asked aggravatedly.

“Every time I see him, my conviction that he’s called Neil is strengthened,” she murmured, raising
her neck and chin.

“His laugh sounds like a mating kneazle.”

“Oh, look. You escaped just in time. Here comes Ernie.”

“Plonker.”

Ernie approached the group, tipping a hat that didn’t exist, a hearty and resounding “What-ho!”
rolling off his tongue.

“He’s going to send them running, just you wait,” Hermione said, “Any second now, his index
finger will spring up with all the posturing of a self-styled pedagogue and — Yes. There it is.”

Draco laughed. It was a low rumble, the kind that, were she to rest her head on his chest, she would
feel against her cheek.

“I brought you the books, by the way. The, erm, abridged version of the national curriculum.”

“Much obliged.”

“May I drop them off in your room?”

“Be my guest.”

“Now?”

“Do you need a map?” he asked in a denigratory falsetto.

She studied the purple in her glass. “There are a lot of people around, have you noticed? Much
chaos. I am liable to get turned around.”

She sensed him looking at her. All the fishhooks tugged at once.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to show you the way.”

“It’s for the best.”

“All right. Come along.”

He swept past her. She followed after the love of her — Draco .

She felt like she was moving in slow motion; like she was walking a few centimetres above the
ground. The thump of music/thump of heart – Past Conrad and Lee who grinned widely – Puffs of
smoke leaking out of the corners of their mouths...

From either side, the sound of stomping feet and whooping laughter…

Draco’s back. Even strides.

His hand against the door, blue chains vanished, he pushed it open, and she stepped in.

The door shut away most of the noise. His room, bathed in lovely low tapers, was an ivory tower.
Had she been brave – or mindless – she would’ve kicked off her shoes, lept into his bed, and
begged him to curl up around her again.

Leaving her glass on the console table, she went to his desk while peering into her bag to extract
the books.

She heard the thud of his glass being set down, felt him follow her through vibrations along the
strings that connected them.

She whirled around and surrendered to the pull, crashing into him. Orange on his palate and
blackcurrant on hers; the resulting kiss, a sweet and tart blend. Very rough, very heavy, his hand
gripped the back of her head and fully pushed opened her mouth. She so nearly buckled, she almost
crumbled to the ground… He hmmm’d when she scraped her nails down his torso and the sound
zizzed along the flat of his tongue, along hers…

His fingers strummed the strings, teased the hooks, and settled at the base of her spine. Other hand
squeezed her breast… released… squeezed again.

He broke away when she began battling the button of his trousers.

“I… I thought you…”

“Yes,” she whispered.

She kissed a path from his mouth to his jaw till she could suck at the skin right underneath it. He
seemed to forget his hesitation and clutched her hips as she journeyed down his neck, smooth and
burning, and he groaned at the drag of the backs of her fingers as she unzipped his trousers.

He let her walk him backwards while she freed him from his pants. He was gasping, and she was
smiling at the satiny feel of him, the taut state of him. She manoeuvred him back… and back… his
adam’s apple quivered beneath her lips… she bit his chin… traced a phantom bracket at the corner
of his mouth…

“Sit down.”

“What?” His voice was pure air.

“Sit.”

He looked over his shoulder, taken aback by his own furniture. And once he’d settled on the velvet
settee and she’d lowered herself to the floor, his bearing was somehow still the same as the first
time she had knelt between his legs.
Of all the ways in which she had caused him to be speechless and slack-jawed – with a slap, a
verbal attack, an unexpected joke – this was her favourite. For once, for fucking once, he actually
looked like how she felt every time he so much as touched her – sheer disbelief, mind-melting
anticipation…

She pushed his trousers down to his ankles and smoothed her hands up his legs, feeling the hair that
had melted into his skin in the soft light. She kissed the inside of his knee, the inside of the opposite
thigh. Her fingers slid down the shallow groove from his chest to his stomach, thinking There. That
was where the strings originated.

Her mouth neared his groin, her thumbs traced the sharp jut of his pelvic bones. He was quaking
from the force of his breathing and his left hand was a tight fist by his leg, knuckles protruding like
four shiny pearls. His right hand pushed back her hair and clamped around it.

His clean scent roused her enthusiasm to the point of madness, but she held on, just for three
seconds longer, because it felt so delicious.

When she licked around his tip – only tart and not at all sweet – he released a long breath. When
she carried on along the length of his shaft, his legs tightened around her. When she reached
underneath to palm his sack, he bit his lips between his teeth.

After that, the mechanics of what she was doing faded into the background, and there was only
him.

Somehow, he was the stimulator, not her. She was only reacting… to when he moaned, when he
growled through his teeth, when his head fell back, and when he forced it up again, eyes like dark
glittering ash, so he could watch…
And when he watched she sucked harder because it made his brow scrunch and mouth fall open.

Velvety rutilant petals settled under his eyes.

She rose on her knees to change the angle, to be able to accommodate more —

“Fuck,” he hissed, “Oh, Ff–u–uh”

She drew a zigzag down his chest, a whirl under his navel, then slipped back between his legs to
execute a slightly firmer tug.

“Granger. Grrr-ranger. I’m about to–”

The rest of his sentence got usurped by something close to a roar. His hips arced off the seat and
she, even as her eyes watered, even as she did her utmost to change nothing, was, as ever, riveted
by him coming undone.

He lay collapsed, with his head resting against the back of the settee, eyes closed, legs mildly
twitching, for quite some time after. And for a while, she stayed where she was.
Then she moved to sit beside him, summoning their glasses from the table. Leaving his to levitate
patiently by his limp arm, she drank from hers – more salty than sweet that first sip – and it soothed
the back of her throat.

He could’ve been bleeding under his skin, the way florid pink was gushing under paper-thin ivory.
His panting hadn’t yet petered out when his eyes opened in a blank, disorientated stare.

“I’m blind.”

Her rosebud mouth didn’t just spew poison, did it? She had another sip, to keep from blurting that
out. To do something other than grin like a moron. She shook her hair forward to cover —

Draco brushed it back.

She turned to him as his fingers swept down the curve of her cheek, down her neck, and wrapped
loosely around the base of her throat. With his other hand, he pried her glass away and set it afloat.
He kissed her softly, like he sometimes did in the afterglow, a spaced out, accidental brush of lips.
But this time, after one graze, he came back for another. And another. And yet another. Hermione’s
eyes fluttered shut. Her heart fluttered open. Her stomach just fluttered.

He kissed her again, he kissed her again.

She drew back when his hand landed on her lap, quickly dropping her own on top of it.

“No.”

“What do you need?” he murmured.

“Nothing,” she said promptly, though she was on fire, “I just…”

His mouth was the colour of carnations. She reached out and touched it like she would have
touched the petals of one; gentle so as not to bruise.

They were kissing again. He didn’t try to move his hand any further, and she didn’t move her hand
from on top of his. She held it – held his hand – and kissed him.

They were forced apart a second time by the sound of loud cheering from outside.

Because the flat was full of people. There was a party going on.
Draco was unsteady as he stood and did up his trousers; a little stumble in his hop as he pulled
them up. He took a breath after that, as though doing up something internally. He walked to the
console table, retrieving his wand as he did, and drew a large oval on the wall above it,
materialising a mirror framed with gilded pomegranate branches. Hermione picked up both their
glasses and walked ahead till she had a better vantage point to watch him critically combing
through his hair.
What she really wished to do was stand next to him, to see him and her framed together, side by
side, still aflush from intimacy. His shirt was black, too; she thought they’d look good together.

He turned once his appearance was to his satisfaction, banishing the mirror with a hapless jab-dash-
wave. Gesturing to himself, as if to say, am I not a fine specimen of a man, he asked,
“Impeccable?”

Yes. “Foppish.”

He started towards her and she began edging away.

“My bag is on your desk. Would you please…?”

By the time he’d performed a brief half-turn and flick of his wand, she had her back against his
door. He came closer, reached out – past her – twisted the handle –

They spilled out into the real world, into real time. Sound energy was a real opposing force in the
air. She smiled at him, holding out his drink, but he was fixated on what was behind her.

Which happened to be some sort of Ancient Egyptian frieze. Each figure was posed with
awkwardly placed limbs: Tracey, her mouth hanging open, was collecting an unlit spliff from a
dreadfully amused George. Beside him, Dean, with a bottle of beer by his mouth, looked even more
dreadful and even more amused. Finally, there was Seamus, with Trevor’s long-dead corpse
jammed in this gullet.

Hermione turned back to… an unbelievably smug and orgulous Draco, and there was no mystery
surrounding where all that was aimed.

“Excuse me,” she said.

He smirked down at her, with not even the slightest reduction in conceit. She gave him his glass, he
gave her her bag, and she drifted down the hall paying no mind to their audience.

What in the blazes was wrong with her, that she felt thrilled by his smugness? She was a mere
detail in a pathetic pissing contest between two egotistical twonks, and here she was, wanting to
gloat over the fact that Draco considered having her as something to gloat about. Not having her
per say, rather, having her while Seamus didn’t. There was an important distinction between the
two, which got lost somewhere in the murk of her mind.

She wound up back on the terrace with a fresh glass, and reunited with a Padma who was deeper in
her cups than before. Much, much deeper.
“Where’dyou goooo?” she asked.

“Tell her,” came Tracey’s voice from behind, “Tell her where you’d gone off to.”

Hermione drank, Tracey lit the spliff, and in that while Padma looked from one to the other saying
what what what what till Tracey finally enlightened her.
Laughter followed, traumatically reminiscent of Theo’s reaction to the same revelation. Hermione
pursed her lips and nodded through the various recollections of you used to yell at each other in the
common room and library, and other related shit. A lot of people had ventured out for a smoke,
nearly every chair had been claimed. Padma was louder than anyone else.

A little while later, Harry rolled by like a lost sheep.

“Bah,” he bleated, “The drink-or-dare game’s become a shitstorm.”

“How’s Ron doing?” Hermione asked.

“He was dared to have three Nosebleed Nougats at once, and let them run their course for a whole
minute. He is now recovering by downing straight vodka to thin whatever blood he has left.”

“But is he okay? Is he…”

“Creating a scene?” Harry sighed and took a tired pull from his bottle of pumpkin juice, “Come on
Hermione, give him some credit.”

Fair enough. She’d give Ron some credit as soon as she’d vaulted Padma over the railing she was
happily clutching for support... Padma, who went on to inundate Harry with gratitude: For if he
hadn’t been a lousy cheater in sixth year, she would never have conspired with Hermione, and it
never would have paved the way for her to make healing history. Not one mention of Draco or his
book. Hermione scowled on his behalf.

Harry turned to her – “You conspired against me?!”

Pretty soon, Hermione and Harry ended up pacing up and down the hall vacantly. He told her about
a long conversation that had occurred between Ron and himself while Ginny mediated, reviewing
the repercussions of Hermione’s personal affairs. She did her best not to storm off, to huff, and rail
indignantly at the thought of the three of them discussing the forgivability of her actions by
reminding herself, once again, that they didn’t know Draco like she did… or at all. Ron had “come
around” – whatever that meant. Well life is a cigarette, smoked to the end. But if you rock it a little
bit, then you burn all your friends —

They hovered by the sitting room door and watched Oliver stand on one leg with his head
completely obscured by smoke, for he had six pepper imps in his mouth.

They lingered at the dining room door and Harry raised his arm like he was facing his mortal
enemy, ready to summon the most powerful wand in the world.
“Accio sausage rolls,” he boomed.

They went back to pacing…

…Until they encountered Draco and Harry vanished like he’d had the invisibility cloak on stand by
all evening.

“Um,” Hermione said, immediately succeeded by, “Oh dear.”

Theo and Luna were holding hands as they disappeared into his room. She hadn’t imagined seeing
her afterall. Draco turned away, rolling his eyes at the ceiling to share Heaven’s frustrations with
mortals and their foibles. He then headed towards the sitting room and Hermione followed the love
of —

She followed with her empty glass dangling upside down from her loosely swinging hand.

She sat down next to Harry, and sadly discovered that Padma and Tracey had decided to expand
their reign of terror beyond the terrace.

“LET’S HAVE A DUEL!” Seamus bellowed, out of bloody nowhere.

“Now look here,” George countered, “We have to function within the bounds of a reasonable
interpretation of the law.”

“Well, alright, ALRIGHT.” Seamus clambered and stood tall upon the centre table, bearing a toothy
grin. “If you’re joining the game, Malfoy, it’s your turn.”

“I am not joining,” Draco said menacingly.

A burst of ooooooh’s.

“Ron,” Seamus continued, not looking away from Draco, “you haven’t had a chance to dare anyone
yet. Why don’t you take on Malfoy ? Go on. Dare ‘im.”

Next to Hermione, Harry groaned, “For fuck’s sake.”

In a flash, he was haring across the room.

“I think it’s time we got going,” he stated firmly to Ron, who was swelling with rancour.

“Oi, don’t be a downer, Harry.”

“Shut up, Seamus. Ron, mate, let's go. You’ve got to catch a train tomorrow morning.”

He began pulling him up by the arm. Ron didn’t put up a fight; his depleted blood and vodka-
saturated brain cells were focused on causing the spontaneous incineration of one Seamus
Finnigan. On the other side of the circle of people, Draco was doing the exact same thing.

An arm slipped over Hermione’s shoulders. She started, but it was only Theo.
“You know darling,” he declared with an indulgent smile, “I honestly believe the world revolves
around you.”

Harry and Ron were making a quick headway towards the fireplace. “Have a grand old time across
the pond, Nott,” Harry called, before they both fled. More oooohs and a few cackles erupted in
their wake. The game recommenced. On the sofa, Padma and Tracey were thrashing around with
laughter at the The Direful Tragedy of Hermione, which was akin to guffawing while Desdemona
lay dying.

Seamus was everything Draco had said he was.

Theo sniggered and she remembered something else –

“Is everything okay?” she muttered into his ear.

“I should be asking you that.”

“I saw you with Luna.”

“Hmm.” No part of his smile floundered. “She’s gone home.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Nothing’s changed.”

“But what about –”

“We need to take some pictures together, don’t you think? Yes, yes we do. GEORGIE, WHERE’S
THE CHUFFING CAMERA? AND WHERE’S MY BROTHER? MY CHERUB, MY ONE, MY
CONSTANT?”

Draco’s temper suffered further ruffling from that soppy but Wagnarian summoning. He was the
furthest thing from a cherub while that first photograph was taken. For the next, Hermione ended
up pressed against his side. His hand was low on her back. It remained there for the third and the
fourth, after which it moved discreetly to her bum and gave it a little squeeze.

She was pulled away by… someone… Tracey…

Hermione deserved another drink.

Over the course of that drink, she witnessed the excitement intensify and the general frenzy expand.
Her scarf was snatched away and tied around Dean’s head while he and Alicia did a flamenco-
inspired dance to Maria, you've gotta see her, going insane and out of their minds.

A rasping instance on embracing a Lust for Life, propelled the dares being tossed around to get
more and more preposterous. The party as a whole descended into a state of advanced, late-stage
degeneracy that was impossible to recover from. Decibels usually heard only during wars and
quidditch matches were reached when Lee, Blake, and Jack were challenged to make a late night
run through Diagon, all the way to the shop… completely starkers.

Hermione launched an expeditious investigation into the whereabouts of her camera, not at all
amenable to ending up with a reel full of assorted knobs, bollocks, and bare arses. She found it
back in George’s grasp, as he led the bacchanalians towards the door, and she snatched it away.

“Killjoy!” he yelled after her.

She pushed on in the opposite direction and watched from a distance as everybody filtered out,
taking with them the noise and the rowdiness, leaving a blissful quiet in their wake.

All that remained was the calming sound of a needle at the end of a record.

Silence. Wow.

She needed the loo. Blastedly, the guest bathroom was occupied, so she stood outside it, resentfully
eyeing the chains across Draco and Theo’s doors.

It was Angelina who stepped out, by and by.

“Where’s everyone gone?” She looked staggered, she may have arrived via Time-Turner.

“Downstairs,” Hermione mumbled and slipped around her.

It was even quieter, after. She crept slowly towards the dining room, wondering if she was the only
one left.

The rightful occupants of the flat were out on the terrace, sharing a bottle of firewhisky on their
final night as flatmates. A blurry memory of the same two standing before a swirling, moonlit sea
flashed in her mind.

They both turned to her when she slid aside the glass doors.

“Well. I’ll be off,” she said.

“And you’ll be back tomorrow morning,” Theo put in.

“Of course.”

She hugged him, smiled at Draco, and —— There was her scarf, half-wrapped around a chair leg.
She bent to untangle it, and when she looked back at the chaps, she found Theo glaring keenly at
Draco while he frowned in abject confusion.

Not wanting to impose any further, she slipped away, closing the glass door behind her.

She crept across the sitting room and had barely lifted her arm to collect floo powder, when:
“Granger.”

“Draco…?”

He came right up to her, a very odd expression daubed over his face – somewhat thoughtful,
somewhat reluctant.

“What’s the matter?” she queried.

“Nothing,” he muttered, “Er… goodnight.”

Ah. So that’s what it was about.

Even though she knew it would irritate him, Hermione grinned.

“Isn’t it shameful that Theo has to be the one to tell you how to properly see off your guests?
Aren’t you meant to be a well-bred, blue-blooded, plague on modern society?”

His expression underwent a slight revision: A decrease in reluctance, a tinge of good-humour laced
into thoughtfulness…

“Blue-blooded, sure. Plague on modern society, definitely. But you know better than anyone that I
was terribly ill-bred.”

She attempted to present a moue that conveyed both disapproval and agreement simultaneously.

“Too rich and privileged to display social niceties,” he added.

“Niceties of any kind, really.”

“I already have a manor, don’t need to have manners.”

She pressed her lips together.

“Fuck propriety, I own property.”

An unrestrainable laugh bubbled out of her.

And he took hold of her face and kissed her; a kiss that was a seamless continuation of the earlier
one, in his room. A shiver shot down her chest, into her stomach, and she immediately tilted her
head to press fully against his mouth. She rested her hands on his chest… but kept her feet firmly
planted on the ground, letting him bend as much as necessary to get to her.

When he let her go, she was so jumbled up, her whispered goodnight was the rasp of a kitten’s
tongue.

He smirked, and his eyes were glistering as he took two steps back.

The moment she was back in her flat, she covered her face with her hands. She had to hide her
 happiness from the universe, for it was sure to sabotage it.

She found a chair and sat for a moment; gripping her knees tightly while her legs bounced up and
down of their own volition, more and more urgent, till she jumped up and whizzed around the
room, squirrel-like… squirrel-that-had-dived-into-a-vat-of-Euphoria-like… full of too much
muchness that had to be expended. She bounded into the hall, and into the study. She rollicked into
the bedroom, performed a pirouette without any permission from the Faculty of Thought, and
backward-dived into bed. Her pulse was violent. Her legs wouldn’t still.

She shot up and dashed onto the balcony to stand right where Draco had the night before. She stuck
her head out of the shield and beamed brazenly up at the sky.

Chapter End Notes

Songs mentioned:
1. Laid by James
2. Bodyrock by Moby
3. Pumping On Your Stereo by Supergrass
4. Maria by Blondie
5. Lust for Life by Iggy Pop

Chapter theme:
‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ by The Darkness
 Ninety-Four
Chapter Notes

Putting this on top in case you’d like to listen while reading:

I cannot tell you what Draco’s pieces sound like, but here are some examples to give you a
very general gist. For the first, Mikhail Glinka – Nocturne in F minor, "La Separation". The
second, Maurice Ravel - Une Barque sur l'Ocean.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

King’s Cross, at a late morning hour, was teeming. Hermione kept her head down as she shouldered
through the thick crowd. Trolleys scraped against the hard platform, the stridulous echo of
conversations combined with stomping, clomping, shuffling feet and distant chugging wheels —

Hermione was dreaming about King’s Cross at a late morning hour. Awareness came quickly, even
as the noises lingered in her subconscious —

The noises were most definitely real.

She sat up in bed, frantically rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and the racket registered as the sound
not of a busy station, but of a fractious group of tanked-up partiers. She made her way to the study
much like a drunkard herself; stumbling here and there down the dark hall as though it was the
deck of a ship caught in a raging storm.

Stella was beside herself, running amok in front of the bureau where, in a basin full of developing
solution, lay twenty screaming photographs.

“Silencio! ” Hermione bellowed in a heavy and scratchy voice, remembering when glorious silence
fell, that yelling had been unnecessary.

Stella capered out of the room.

Hermione stared blearily from the basin to the covered cauldron full of simmering Fixing Draught,
to the timer that revealed it still needed another forty-three minutes. She rubbed her eyes again and
left for the bathroom.

Right on the dot, she switched off the burner and left Protean-infused parchment bits to soak in the
potion.

An appraisal of the situation in the basin led to a rather underwhelming conclusion – the sound
capturing charm hadn’t worked. It had caught only vague atmospheric resonances –
indistinguishable chatter, music, random hoots of laughter, and the occasional, oi, camera’s this
way and move move move.
But she had been right about one thing, in her very dewy-eyed and biassed opinion: They looked
good together, Draco and her, side by side in an ever-swelling group. There was one photograph in
particular – just the two of them after Theo moved away to pull someone in – both looking to the
side and grinning, flushed from the atmosphere, alcohol, and maybe a little from what they had
done earlier, Draco’s hand on her back…

Dare she start a new series?

Lovers . Her heart swelled so much it nearly choked her.

Dadaism could move aside for something Nouveau. They could twine around each other like
flowering vines.

She stumbled upon another a little while later, while flipping through the papers. Under a headline
that read, Hermione the Hypocrite swoons over Pureblood Pip, (next to a load of reeking rubbish
about frail principles that were vanquished by the “smokey gaze and shining fair hair of a rakish,
‘reformed’ Death Eater”), was a photograph of them walking down Diagon, surrounded by a fuzzy
halo of light. The sun was behind them, Draco’s hair was indeed shining, her muffler was fluttering
—

He was frowning at her and she pouted. Then he threw his head back and laughed, while she gazed
at him with the overwhelmed euphoria of Icarus. With the devotion of a pilgrim. With the
dedication of a bird watcher. With the awe of a girl beholding the one who could stop time.

The photograph paused and started all over again.

He was frowning at her and she pouted…

Lovers.

She could not tell you a thing about the morning’s news.

And she could not fathom how it took until she was standing in front of the fireplace for her to
wonder about Draco’s possible reaction to the outing of their outing. But even then, she wasn’t
panicking; she was only anticipating panic.

Panic didn’t set in even while she waited at the midpoint between Draco and Theo’s rooms, both
chained up, both silent.

She knocked on Draco’s door. He pulled it open.

“Hel–”

She was yanked in, the door slammed shut, she was pressed against it, and

well

okay.

Yes. Very good. Excellent.

His mouth was laced with toothpaste. His hair was damp. Musk and spice and bergamot. She
pushed her hands under his shirt to feel smooth, warmed skin.
He pulled back with a tug to her lower lip, and kept it between his teeth till she opened her eyes to
meet his, glinting darkly. He released her lip, grinned slowly, and pressed his mouth against her
neck. Her top was bunched up in tight fists while knuckles dragged up and down her sides. He
pushed a leg between hers, pressing firmly, pinning her in place.

Her head fell back against the door.

The CD player and headphones were on his bed, as was the Prophet, still rolled up, along with a
spiral bound book, opened to a page with a dark blue tab. Physics.

Like the magnetism between them – Physics.

The exothermic reactions induced by every brush of skin – Chemistry. The burning need pooling
between her legs – Biology. The charting of bodies – Geography. The give and take of kisses, the
groans that carried over – Maths. The rhythm of their breaths, the syntax of their sighs, the
harmonious noises – Linguistics. Philology. Pure poetics.

“What were you listening to?” she murmured.

He hummed a question mark into the hollow of her clavicle.

“Which CD?”

“Who’s Next.”

“Nice.”

“I can play Baba O’Riley on the piano now.”

She had something complementary to offer, but he pulled her top aside and sucked hard on the
curve of her shoulder. All that came out was “Mmh.” Her eyes fell shut again, she ground her pelvis
against his leg, and dragged her fingers down his back.

Lover. Lover lover lover lover lover.

Said a voice, stentorian like a drill sergeant’s: “Portkey activates in an hour, where is everybody?”

Draco panted against her ear, briefly pressing her tighter between the door and his body. She
welcomed it, breathing deeply against his neck.
He moved away with a low, “Fix your bloody hair.” It was impossible to miss the way he adjusted
his trousers.

What once was a high ponytail now hung limply from the base of her skull. She restored it and
exited the room.
There was a strange murkiness outside. Theo stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out the
terrace doors in a curiously ruminative pose. It was the nature of goodbye, she supposed. The
racing high of a new adventure melded with the melancholy low of parting with friends and
resulted in the straight line that his mouth was set in.

“Hi,” she muttered cautiously as she neared.

It broke his contemplation well enough for him to shoot her the slyest of sly smiles.

“Mind putting those out?” he gestured outside, “Neither of us have been able to.”

Flickering against February's gloom, long after the demise of Nyx’s stars, Hermione’s bluebell
flames were going strong. She raised her hand, drew a sweeping rainbow of finite, and they died
quickly, in succession – poof poof poof – and the lanterns floated down to settle in a line along the
railing.

“Come on,” Theo said, leaning back on his heels, “I’m dying for some coffee.”

They settled in the kitchen. Hermione floated a thin lemon slice over her tea and Theo splashed
frothy milk into his mug. She gave him copies of the photographs which they un-silenced one by
one, and she gave him a Quick-Quotes Parchment and relayed instructions.

“Will you get to work from day one?”

“No, I have till Wednesday to get accustomed to things, and I will do so by making use of all the
facilities available to me at Elysium Hotel and Spa. I’ll get a massage in the morning, spend all
afternoon floating in the pool, hang around the bar to chat up a dishy American, catch up on some
reading–”

Hermione could not hold back a little snort.

“Have something to say?”

“I’m sorry, but when was the last time you read… anything?”

He sat back, closed one eye, and squinted into the distance as though trying to remember the events
of a past life.

“Well… let's see… hmm. I suppose… around… NEWTs?”

She smiled and had a sip of tea. He picked up his mug as well, and raised it to her salutationally.

“I’ll have you know, you little snob, that I frequently consult very thick books on charms. You’re
not the only one who needs to conduct research for work. I also recently finished the
unputdownable Trickster’s Guide to Skirting Danger by Jess Tersbells. So there.”

At that, she laughed outright, and toasted him in return.

A few moments passed. Steam rose sharply when she blew into her cup, the lemon slice zoomed to
the edge.
“What happened with Luna last night?”

She asked that and he slumped slightly, but not in a defeated sort of way. It was a so here we are
sort of way.

“Nothing happened.”

“Theo…”

“Honestly, nothing happened. Nothing’s changed. We – I’m leaving and she… she’s going to
Cameroon. Then Sweden. Then… wherever.” He put his mug down again and crossed his arms.
“Nothing happened.”

“Oh.”

He began chewing his tongue. She’d always assumed it was a tick, an involuntary reaction to stress,
like she sometimes wrung her hands. But perhaps it was a very concerted attempt to mash down the
rage that he was so desperately fearful of.

“She’s sleeping with Scamander.”

Shit.

“Did she tell you that?”

“Didn’t have to,” he muttered roughly, “I could tell. Usually, she always has something to say about
him – oh, Rolf said this, Rolf did that, Rolf is of the opinion.. . Last night – nothing. Even when I
asked about him.”

“You… erm…”

“I know I don’t have any right to be upset, Hermione.”

Having no right didn’t mean very much when it came to feeling things. You felt what you felt, and
it was horribly inconvenient, especially when those feelings were, despite your protests, given more
power than feelings should be allowed.

“Is it over then?” she broached.

He shrugged. With the way his arms were crossed, the whole gesture looked very… tight.

“I’ll be back in England by end August. Luna’s fellowship concludes in September – though I’m
certain she’ll carry on working at the institute. Maybe by then, everything else won't seem bigger
than us, and… I suppose we can have a chat, her and I, over cake and wine on your twenty-first
birthday.”

He stood up and went about fixing himself a second mug of coffee. Hermione was deeply
contemplating her lemon slice when Draco swept in with multiple paper packages.
She watched, in a daze, as the table got covered in all manner of things; sausages, bacon, kippers,
tomatoes, eggs scrambled and benedict… toast, crumpets, pastries, rowies… a variety of jams, a
platter of berries…
Draco bent very close to her ear and murmured, “I hope you’re taking notes. This is a proper
breakfast.”

This extravagant, unnecessary, wasteful spread. Sure.

Theo sat back in his chair and placed a mug in front of Draco, beaming when the King of Couth
performed an array of spells to check if it had been tampered with.

As they tucked in, nobody would’ve ever guessed that Theo had been distressed just minutes ago.
She knew, and she saw the strain behind his cheerfulness at first, but even as she watched, he got
caught up in his own chatter, and became enthused by the plans he was detailing. So much so, that
by the time they’d had their fill and put away the ridiculous amount left over, he was in a state of
bright-eyed, palm-rubbing excitement.

The three of them convened in the sitting room, standing around a portkey (a rusty letter opener),
with five minutes left for activation.

Hermione was weeping. Theo pulled her against his chest and called her a goose, a silly goat, a
sobby snobby little thing, and that only made it worse. She let out a helpless watery chuckle when,
after Draco stuck out his hand very proper-like, Theo ignored it in favour of a hug, and Draco
enacted the most awkward pat-on-the-back-in-lieu-of-an-embrace she’d ever seen.

Then Theo turned to her once more, brimming with unexpected seriousness.

“Promise me something,” he entreated. His eyes darted briefly towards Draco.

Oh no. Oh damn. He looked so grave. It was going to be a please take care of my brother kind of
request, wasn’t it? Right in front of Draco.

“Please, Hermione. Buddy,” he went on, “You have to do right by me. I need you to promise.”

Dear lord, she would expire from the horror of it all.

“One of these days.” He stopped. Sighed heavily and nodded once again towards Draco. “One of
these days, this pervert is going to want to bonk you on my bed, and you have to refu–”

“Shut the fuck up, you thrice damned twaddler!” Draco snarled.

And that’s how he vanished into the blue – grinning broadly while Draco railed and ranted, and
Hermione was in splits.

There was an uncanny emptiness in the room when the light cleared.

She inhaled generously, trying to pinch together the two extremes of laughter and sorrow. Draco
was trapped somewhere between blinking bemusedly and glowering. Neither knew what to do with
themselves. There was a distinct aimlessness to the way he turned and drew a sharp ‘P’ with his
wand to pull the curtains aside. Dreary, lustreless light percolated through the room.
“Listen here,” she quavered, just to fill the silence, “I will never, ever agree to–”

“Oh, go sling your hook,” he growled, rounding on her furiously, “If I was given a choice between
sex on his bed and eternal celibacy, I would pick the latter. That thing is a serious health risk; a
legitimate contagion. Do you honestly think I want to roll around in layers and layers of dried up
spunk?”

“Ugh!”

“I’ll bet it even squelches , that’s how saturated it is with bodily fluids.”

“He hasn’t been gone two minutes and you’re dragging his good name through the mud!”

“He called me a pervert.”

She could’ve reminded him of what he had said to her the last time he was inside her – when she
had ink in her hair and he had water in his – about how the ink was a trifle and that he was about to
spurt so explosively he could paint her from head to toe. But he was going to come inside her and
she was going to be able to taste it .

Words hot against her jaw before he pulled back to show her he meant business…

He was frowning oddly at her. Her whole face felt red.

“Soooo you can figure out how to play songs by ear?”

His tongue rang along his teeth as wondered about the sudden topic change. Hopefully he’d decide
that she had suppressed the most devastatingly witty riposte for the sake of his feelings.

“I can,” he returned reluctantly, “More or less.”

It was her turn to watch him. Cautiously, with a jazz ostinato in her chest. In the light, his sable
jumper was a deep, deep maroon, like ruby port or Amarena cherries. It ripened his complexion.

“Would you play something?” For me. She hadn’t meant to sound so plaintive. “Not The Who.
Something of yours.”

With his head slightly lowered, his gaze was the purr of a double bass. She was prepared for a
sullen ‘ No’, or even a jeered ‘ First show me your bra.’

He simply turned around and walked off.

Dismissal or invitation?

She followed behind him into the hall.

He left his bedroom door vaguely ajar after entering. An invitation, then. According to the Draco
Malfoy School of Thought, validation was to be bestowed sparingly, and in a subtle, almost
symbolic manner.

She cut a straight and focused path to the settee, which immediately gave rise very vivid memories
from the night before. She sat right in the middle, instinctually smoothening her hands over the
velvet.
He was standing beside the piano when she peered up, smirking knowingly. His fingers curled into
the cuff of his sleeves, once again a rich sable. Two smooth tugs and they were at his elbows.

Such finesse in the lines of those forearms. It was unfair.

His back was straight when he settled on the bench. A wave of his wand opened up the lid, and
then he stretched his wrists – up and down, up and down – fingers fanned out and relaxed – a few
rolls – fingers interlocked and pulled – a final upward spread of his palms —

One long inhale – a slow swell of his chest – he stared down at the keys placidly, with his fingers
hovering over them, and one foot discreetly tapping a beat on the pedals without pushing down —

Draco was not the sort to give voice to ribbons of loquacity. He did not waste his time crafting
elegant verbiage, he did not wax rhapsodic. Draco was brusque. Insolent and sarky. He would much
rather sharpen his oration till it had the point of a rondel dagger, than carve decorative patterns on
its surface. He aimed to execute a perfect, surgical cut to the quick, and there was a time when he
used to chuck those daggers around whenever he pleased, at whomever he pleased.

But when he played music…

There was a line that started somewhere deep and sequestered, a place that held a mode of
expression far beyond the rigid limitations of mere words. That line travelled down his arms, into
long and sensual fingers…

Within just four notes, prickles were racing down Hermione’s neck and back.

It was the sound of a mournful, tender apocalypse.

Everything that he had told her on Friday night, Hermione saw and Hermione felt , with crushing,
overpowering clarity.

She saw a dark room where mother and son cowered together, she heard a whisper, a hiss, and a
demented cackle.

She felt the sharp, bitter cold that stung him as he flew through the night. She saw icy streets, snow
swirling under lamps as he walked into a pub. Light spilt out when he pushed open the door, his
shadow fell on the pavement like something dark that he was leaving outside.

She saw him sat in a corner, she saw him shift closer; she saw him with purple smudges under his
eyes, sipping a drink of amber that buffed a hint of pink into his waxy pallor. She saw his hands
grasp a strange pair of hips, she felt the brush of rough sheets in a strange bed…
Strange skin…

She saw two strange shadowy figures, she felt their words like whips, like lariats, like the icy
smack of wind as he flew back to where he never wanted to return.

A town’s facade blurred through the open window of an old car that jangled like a heart that
couldn’t believe its own daring. Her head spun with alcohol and adrenaline. She saw the peeling
wallpaper of an untidy bedsit, saw static in a small telly — But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
for daws to peck at. I am not what I am — She saw him almost tumble down a flight of stairs, she
saw him wandering down suburban streets, she saw trees, she heard a cry for help, she felt the raw
agony of flesh being ripped out of his leg.

The tempo switched. Against a rousing, frantic movement, she sensed a burn unlike any other on
her forearm. She felt his revulsion, watching those whom he was meant to be one of. She saw the
glint of blood under a lavish chandelier, incarnadine, like the wine in a glass held by a skeletal
hand.

Torture. Screaming. Stay in the shadows with me, mother.

He stopped mid-air. The music sighed, quivered, and slowed once more.

She saw a hill, steep and looming. She hated its callous symbolism. She saw a boy made of
starlight and moonlight, a constellation set in a pattern forevermore, a lost Little Prince, (one must
imagine him happy)… she saw him climb the brae.

She felt the stretch in his neck as he looked up. The shadowy figures unleashed their whips and
lariats. She saw the welkin swell around him, she heard the breath that burst out of his lungs –

The sky fell. It wrapped around him. Snuffed him out.

The world was always such an intensely mystifying place after he stopped playing.

“That was incredible,” she said thickly, because obviously, she had welled up.

He pulled back his shoulders that had hunched at some point, and tilted his head up towards the
ceiling for three seconds — his jaw sharp and tight — and then he looked at her.

There was nothing in his expression. She imagined he hadn’t enough left in him to lend to his facial
muscles.

“You have such a brilliant command over tempo.”

God, that sounded pretentious. She wasn’t dad. She was a prized idiot who ought to retire her
claims to cleverness and supposed mastery of the English tongue.

“It was just so… evocative. There was – there was a narrative. So poignant and beautiful. I –” She
chuckled, all warbly, breathless, and stupid. “Well, you can see I’m rather overwhelmed.”

He just kept staring at her, with the whole bloody universe swirling around him. She reached up to
wipe her tears.

After several seconds of staring, she made one final attempt: “What’s it called?”

He turned back to the piano, gently running his index finger along the natural keys without pressing
them.

“It’s called, Draco is not a mincing ponce who titles his compositions.” His voice was even and
clear, somehow the only stone left unturned
He began another tune.

Light, high notes tinkled by quickly, like a fluttering breeze through dry leaves. They swept away
the vestiges of the last piece and brought in a completely different atmosphere.

And they stayed that way, light and chiming; dancing like dappled sunlight winking across the
ground. Like the wind fluttering over water and like the ripples it caused, upon which sunlight
formed a shimmering web. Somewhere, sometime, Draco had stood by a distant sea, soaked in sun-
mist, silverspun eyes squinting against the glare, and the music had taken shape in his mind.

It petered out like the wind slowed.

She wished he hadn’t stopped because he had left her with a kind of tortuous wistfulness that had
been as light as the music while it had lasted, but congealed into something heavy and solid in her
chest once it stopped. It was a yearning for…

What?

For the wind, maybe.

And the sun and rippling waves.

She asked him if that’s what it had been about.

“Yeah,” Draco replied, making a careful study of stretching his fingers.

He let down the lid and leaned back slightly, peering at the piano. It was a strange pose, like a
painter stepping away from his canvas to make sure he’d got the perspective right. Then he shot her
a speculative glance, swung a leg over the stool so that he was straddling it, and faced her.

Well, Granger?

Good enough for you, Granger?

Get the hell out of my room, Granger?

“You are exceptionally talented,” she told him. Words voiced softly, like they were meant to be
something else.

Nothing about his manner changed. He only speculated for a few seconds longer, only to remark,
“And you are exceptionally talented at imbuing charms.”

Naturally, that threw her. “Well, I –”

“You are also exceptionally talented at tethering spells, aren’t you?”

“Erm, I’ve had plenty of practice.”

“Could you cast one on any object?”

“Of course, as long as it isn’t too unwieldy.”

“A snitch?”

She laughed. “Really, Draco? I thought your methods of cheating were a bit more subtle than that.”

He ignored her. “What about a book?”

“Of course.”

“A diary?”

“A diary is a book.”

“A tumbler of firewhisky?”

“Yes?”

“What about a small animal?”

“That would amount to cruelty.”

“A wand?”

“Casting a spell on a wand is always tricky because –”

“What about a cape?”

“Yes.”

“A quill?”

“Clearly.”

“A pot of ink?”

“Yes.”

“An alarm clock?”

Fucking strike her dead. Blow her to smithereens. One bolt of lightning, please.

“What an odd array of objects,” Hermione said gaily. (Hermione had been more convincing as
Bellatrix.) “Yes.” She executed a sensational eye-roll. “I suppose I could tether an alarm clock to y–
someone.”

“And what else could you do with an alarm clock?”

“What else?” she tittered in confusion, “Whatever do you mean?”

He lowered his chin. It was a despicable look on him. It put his eyes in the centre of everything and
emphasised all his sharp angles.
“Hmm?” she blinked avidly.

He let her carry on for a while, savouring how inexpressibly daft she looked. Then he crossed his
arms, cracked a little smirk and asked, “Who exactly are you keeping this act up for?”

She didn’t know, all right?

“You are barmy,” she declared and hopped to her feet, racing to his bookshelf.

It probably wasn’t wise, putting her back to him, but she had more faith in his disinclination to
harm her, than in her ability to school her features. A fresh set of goose pimples shuddered over her
skin when she heard him approach.

“Sussing out my biography?”

“This is not even close to complete, is it? I’ve seen the shelves in your study.”

She sounded like a nervous little sparrow. There was an actual cheep from her when he pulled the
scrunchie out of her hair. He spread out the strands, piece by piece, then tugged a long glissando
from her scalp to the ends. From there his hands found natural purchase on her hips. His thumbs
slipped under her top and swiped back and forth along the band of her trousers.

She turned around. His grin was pure mischief.

“What?” she said like a sparrow would if it knew how to sound petulant.

His grin was diabolical delight. He backed her up against the bookshelf, raising his eyebrows like,
you tell me .

When in doubt, deviate. (Swearing by a tactic that never worked was a sign of Unmatchable
Fortitude.)

“Have you any plans for the day?” she asked.

He traced the bow of her lips with one finger, and looked almost as intently as he did at piano keys.
At the corner of her mouth, he pressed slightly till her lips parted with a short burst of air.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’ll be going to the Bur–”

Rodion turned feral. He flapped around loud and wayward as an unstable helicopter, hooting
threateningly at the window by his cage. Draco’s sigh was the long-suffering kind you’d hear from
people of a certain age or belonging to a certain class that he knew nothing of.

Hermione stayed where she was while he retrieved a letter from a pygmy owl. A fracas ensued
when the little one attempted to stick it’s head between the bars of Rodion’s cage to steal a few
treats, and Draco had to intervene – calming one, tossing a treat in the other’s mouth and basically
hurling it out the window.
He didn’t look very chuffed about receiving that bit of post. The envelope was pretty, fashioned out
of smooth, expensive parchment dyed lilac. She had a good guess about whom it was from.
“There’s a photograph of us in today’s paper,” she hurried out.

The way he looked up, frowned, and stole another glance at the envelope confirmed her suspicions.
At least it wasn’t a howler; though Hermione couldn’t picture Narcissa Malfoy suffering through
the indignity of yelling at a piece of parchment.

She only spoke again after Draco had summoned the Prophet from his bed, and found the relevant
page. There was a distinct absence of… well, anything resembling her own reaction to seeing the
picture. His eyes moved rapidly from side to side as he scanned the article.

“I’m pleasantly surprised by the restraint Skeeter has shown. I’d much rather be called a Hypocrite
than the slag she – and you – tried so hard to paint me as.”

“Save it,” he flared, “There isn’t enough room on your prim little chin to take on any more.”

“You can’t honestly believe that bothers me.”

Look at us. Doesn’t everything else just melt away?

“How can it not?”

“A woman more than twice my age has a sad obsession with slandering me. It’s a pathetic quest for
vengeance and I pity her.”

He gave her withering look, like she was a liar, like she was still as drenched in disingenuity as she
had been during the alarm clock business.

“Is this about reformed being in inverted commas?”

He scowled and threw the paper over his shoulder, onto the desk behind him. It landed right next to
the pile of spiral-bound books.

“Excuse me for a minute,” he ground out.

The letter was an unstable missile clutched in brittle fingers. Those were not fingers that made
music; but fingers that twisted nervously around the handle of a broom during a flight towards
short-lived freedom —

Click .

Her scrunchie was on the floor. She picked it up and sat down again, lifting her arms to retie her
hair, but ending up rubbing her face instead.

The parchment inside the envelope would be pretty too. Lilac, or pale pink, or perfect ivory. Fine
grain, cold-pressed. Narcissa’s handwriting would be pristine and cultivated, written with a pretty
quill on an antique writing desk, by a window, perhaps, in her pretty coastal château.

Her words would be ugly.

Hermione was so tired, suddenly. The mass in her chest returned – the yearning, the thing, the
whatever –

Draco stepped back in.

He stood by his bed and leant against the post, which put almost the entire room between them. He
wouldn’t look at her either, opting to stare blandly at the floor. Shiny white marble laid over an
underpinning as sturdy and dependable as generational wealth.

“What did your mother have to say?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Right.”

“Nothing you have to concern yourself with.”

To hell with his pat dismissal, a pox on his mother, and sod his obnoxiously huge bedroom. He
wouldn’t tell her? Fine. She already knew, anyway. And now she was going to make him feel some
of that gnawing, tiring, discomfiting displacement.

She stood up and strolled towards the console table, taking his time, thanks. She leant against it,
mirroring his pose, but kept her chin raised, letting him see that it did indeed have room for plenty
more.

(It didn’t. It really didn’t. She was blighted, buggered, and beaten.)

“As I was saying before, I’ll be going to the Burrow later today.”

“My condolences. May the fortifying powers of ancient magic be with you during these difficult
times.”

“I’m going to talk to Mr Weasley about getting a patent for the parchment.”

[Patented perambulant protean parchment.]

“Okay.” Draco shrugged.

“Will you come with me?”

“Fuck, no.”

(Don’t react yet. Breathe in. Breathe out.)

“Ron’s away. Harry will be there, but you survived being in the same room as him last night. You’ll
be fine. Andromeda and Teddy will be there, too, and you can be sure the food will be exemplary as
it always is–”
“It’s never exemplary,” he coldly interjected, “It’s edible, which admittedly is the best one can hope
for from that shabby travesty that they call a kitchen.”

“You don’t get to be an arse just because you’re a little cheesed off, all right?” she said as evenly as
she could manage, “That stops being acceptable after the age of… of… five, though with your
stunted emotional maturity–”

He pushed away from the bedpost. Red in the face. Angry.

“I refuse to step in that…” He pulled in a deep breath, “house.”

“You have been there,” she continued with astonishing patience, “plenty of times.”

But her patience took a nosedive when she saw how blithely he continued to demonstrate a lack of
it.

“I’ve been around it. Outside.” His fingers went tap tap tap against the side of his leg. “In that
dominion of disease-ridden poultry. Only stepped inside once to use the floo, and mortar rained
down from the ceiling when I closed the door.”

“You’re being absolutely beastly to people who are nothing but kind to –”

“I’ve earned their kindness.”

“And what the hell have they done to earn your denigration?” she sneered.

“It’s just the truth,” he retorted heedlessly. “I have this whole flat to myself now. I can finally drink
wine without Theo popping up and taking a swig straight from the bottle. Why the fuck would I
want to spend the first day of my independence at the Bothy?”

“You know full well that it’s called the Burrow!”

“How is that better?”

“Wilful… spiteful… lordliness isn’t endearing in the least, Draco. That’s the truth!”

“I don’t exist to endear myself to you.”

Had he cast a wandless, non-verbal glacius? No, it was just the hostility of his glare. She felt ice
form as deep as her axons, numbing her. She pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder and
stalked out of the room.

She did her best not to slow down as she moved from the hall to the sitting room. She tried not to
listen for footsteps that did not sound. And when she was back in her flat, her nervous system had
the audacity to thaw into a fretful, distressed state.

He took great pleasure in proving her wrong. One way or another, deliberately or unknowingly.
Discordant Draco… Mulish Malfoy… must’ve sensed her daring to think that he had become more
discerning with his barbs.
She sat in front of the cauldron, watching the slow process of osmosis darken the parchment it held.
Then she watched magic spark into life, binding potion to fibre, leaving them dry and good as new.

It took hours, and she just watched.

By the end, it was still only just a little past two. The Weasley’s weren’t expecting her till six.

She went over anyway.

Mrs Weasley, wearing muddy wellies and a gilet over her robes, burst in through the back door just
as Hermione had shaken off post-floo disorientation. She appeared too frazzled for hellos and thrust
three large brown paper packages into Hermione’s hands.

“Would you take these to Ginny’s room, please? Thank you, thank you, dear – there’s been an
infestation of Horklumps in a few of our pear trees – they’ve rootle deep into the trunks–”

She scurried back out the door, leaving Hermione with another spell of disorientation to recover
from. Then she dutifully trudged upstairs.

After placing the packages on Ginny’s bed, she stood by the window, watching Mr and Mrs
Weasley spray something on the infested trees while Bill and Percy, wearing bright red gloves,
plucked off the pests. She shivered and turned away, leaning back against the glass. It was colder in
that room than the rest of the house.

She perched on the stool where Ginny did her hair and stared at pallid stripes of sun and faint,
fluttering shadows of leaves on the floor..

Light, high notes tinkled by quickly — she closed her eyes, gently massaged her sternum, and let
the whole thing play out. Somehow, the echoic memory of his music hadn’t faded in the least.

In the landing, she met Andromeda just as the latter was exiting the bathroom.

“Hello – Oh.”

Hermione’s polite greeting faltered when Andromeda reached out and took hold of her shoulders in
a bracing semi-embrace.

“Darling girl!” she exclaimed expansively, “I owe you yet another thanks. You’re like my personal
avenger, are you not? Oh, I would’ve given an arm and a leg to see Narcissa’s expression when she
first saw the paper!”

Hermione said something that sounded like erp . She got an approving, appraising look for that,
and an affectionate squeeze before Andromeda let her arms drop.

“I am also rather proud of Draco. He’s done well for himself.”

In the midst of an internal cartwheel, Hermione found her (anxious sparrow) voice: “We were just
shopping for Theo’s party. It was – I mean it wasn’t anything.”
Andromeda’s grin spread wide across her face, putting a small dimple on her left cheek and turning
her eyes into charming half moons. That grin bore no resemblance to Bellatrix. It didn’t have a
glimmer of Narcissa. That grin was something Andromeda shared only with her daughter.

“I see. Now, we must hurry downstairs, because I left Edward with George and that’s never wise,
but even less so before he’s meant to take his afternoon kip.”

When they got to the living room where George was racing from one end to the other with Teddy
held above his head and Andromeda cut it short with a firm ahem and time to sleep my sweet boy,
Teddy said, “Oh shit.”

“That’s Ron’s doing,” George spilt at once, “I swear, Andromeda, last week, he–”

“I am aware,” Andromeda said dryly, wrestling to get a proper hold on a wriggling, hyperactive
toddler ardently chanting oh shit oh shit oh shit, “But don’t even try to pretend as though you are in
any way a better influence on my grandson.”

She draped him over her shoulder and hobbled out; Teddy waved a tightly closed fist up until the
two disappeared through the door.

“What did you give him?” Hermione demanded.

“Beg pardon?” George grinned unabashedly with his hands behind his head.

“There was something in Teddy’s hand.”

“Was there?”

“There is no universe in which Ron is a worse influence on a child than you.”

He made a pooh-poohing gesture and fell backwards onto a chair. His earring – a tiny golden
pygmy puff – swung like a pendulum.

“Andromeda is a scary witch, cut from the same abrasive cloth as my own dear mum. If she
honestly suspected I was corrupting young Teddy, she would’ve hand-fed my goolies to the garden
gnomes.”

A door slammed. A medley of thumps closed in. There was a distant roar of the floo, someone
climbed up the stairs, and Arthur Weasley came into the room, looking cold and spent. Lethargic
greetings were shared. A few minutes later, Mrs Weasley brought tea and sandwiches for three, and
left quickly after some words about needing a good soak.

Hermione waited awhile, till a sizable dent had been made in the victuals, before getting down to
business. They listened with two very distinctive presentations of interest while she explained.

“I’m not sure if I can apply for a patent,” she concluded, “since I’ve used a Quick-Quotes quill, and
making my own version is obviously very dicey.”

Mr Weasley nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll have a word with Wilhelmina, she’ll know exactly what to
do. Hold on…”
He left for the kitchen. Hermione frowned at her hands wondering who –

“Lee’s mum,” George astutely divulged, “She works in the Patents Office.”

Right. That was awfully convenient.

“These are rather nifty,” George added, picking up the parchment and peering at the name slot, “I’d
say clever charm work, Granger, but that’s redundant.”

Redundant or not, it was nice to hear. Hermione smiled at him, as strenuous as it was.

“What do you call ‘em?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ve considered–” Floatie-Writie died on the tip of her tongue. Evidently, there
was only one person she was comfortable enough to admit that to. “Protean Parchment. Pro-Par for
short.”

“That’s Pro-Par boring.”

She pursed her lips and exhaled hard.

All of a sudden the room got very dark. Hard pellets of rain began tapping on the windows.

“Lumos,” George chanted with a fairy-like flourish of his wand, “How about ‘Hermione’s Hovering
Howler’.”

She grimaced. “It doesn’t howl.”

“Hmmm. Hermione’s–”

“No.”

“Granger’s Auto-Babbler. Or, G.A.B.”

Ooh, she liked that very much. It was clever. Hermione gives the magical world the gift of the
GAB.

…No.

“Listen, George.”

“I’m all ear.”

“I don’t want my name on it.”

He bent towards her, hands on his knees. “Why not?”

“Putting your own name on something you’re selling is just so—” Do NOT finish that sentence.

But George was too sharp to not realise where she was going. He smiled broadly and settled back
comfortably once again.

“Look here, poppet. I happen to know a thing or two about marketing. Names sell. And your
name…? Goodness gracious me. Besides, oh learned keeper of the law, you must know all about
the monetary advantages of having your name on something you’re selling.”

“I’m not doing this for money.”

He thought she was idiotic and hilarious. It was written all over his face. Hermione summoned the
tea pot and freshened her cup.

When Mr Weasley returned, he was not alone. Wilhelmina Jordan followed, with scrolls galore and
a purple quill stuck in the coiled bun on her head.

It took even longer to get through the logistics in that second instance, for Wilhelmina was
extremely particular. When it came to the question of Quick-Quotes, she made it very clear that
adapting a pre-patented product was grounds for ineligibility.

Then she went on to say, “In such cases, your best bet is to sell the idea to Quick-Quotes Quills.”

“But then it would be theirs,” Hermione mumbled agitatedly, “They would have full control over
how it’s sold, and where, and… and… for what purpose…”

If she brought up Mungo’s and elves, the whole discussion would come to a screeching halt. Let
them think she was feeling proprietorial.

“The other possibility, which sometimes happens in cases where there’s no pre-patented product
involved, is that they take on your product, while contractually letting you keep it in your name and
paying you the standard licence fees on each sale. That’s what happened when Honeydukes began
making and selling Bertie Bott’s and Drooble's.”
Wilhelmina pursed her lips to the side and gave Hermione a long look. “I have a feeling Shane
Hopkins – owner of Quick-Quotes – might be happy to bend the rules in this case. I know him
rather well; I can owl him for you.”

Of course, she knew him. Two degrees of separation in the magical world and all that.

“There’d be nothing stopping him from meeting me, refusing to work with me, and going on to
launch his own version of the parchment, would there?”

George cleared his throat and sat up again, wearing that same broad smile. “As a successful
business owner myself, let me tell you, it would be far more advantageous to collaborate with
Hermione Granger, than dare to steal her idea.”

“That’s what I think,” Wilhelmina nodded.

The other three exchanged looks while Hermione watched on, some sort of understanding was
achieved, and the next thing she knew, she was being asked to preemptively complete an
application form, put together a short abstract, and pay a ten galleon processing fee. They had
decided it was a foregone conclusion for some reason, and she was too busy fretting over the
abstract to let herself feel annoyed or comforted.

Ultimately, it came down to her name, to magic’s diehard fetish for names, and the fact that
intellectual property and licence fees had a longer shelf life when they were involved.
“I just really want to make sure this reaches the right places, and helps… those who need it.” And
once again, Hermione iterated, “I don’t care about money.”

“Well, you should!”

Everyone flinched at Mr Weasley’s uncannily loud pronouncement, even the man himself. From
the corner of her eye, she saw George smile again.

Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,

Imputes to me and my damn'd works the cause —

They all listened to the rain pelt for a few seconds.

“It’s good to have something coming in on the side,” Mr Weasley finally mumbled, “Important to
have savings.”

She took a breath. And she took in the grey invading his temples and the lines running across his
forehead and down the sides of his mouth. She’d seen those lines on dad, as he’d handed her a
cheque that she would never be worthy of.

She swallowed, picked up the purple quill, and wrote Granger’s Auto-Babbler.

Wilhelmina rolled and scooped everything up in the cradle of her arms.

“I’ll send word once Shane has got back to me,” she said, swiftly and softly, “If all goes as planned
and you come to a written agreement, I will accelerate the process and you should be granted a
patent in ten business days.”

“Excuse me,” George piped up, “Care to tell me why it takes months for my patents to be granted?
I may not be Granger, but Weasley isn’t too shabby either, is it?”

“Brian handles Wheezes products, because of my son’s association with your company,” she
replied while walking towards the door, “And he works under orders that came straight from the
Head Auror’s office. Your products require additional scrutiny.”

Thereafter, while George smiled pleasantly at the unpleasant weather, a few moments of strained
glances passed between Hermione and Mr Weasley.

Until she asked him what he had said to the Wizengamot while pitching the Muggle Protection Act
and the Muggleborn Assimilation Committee.

He loosened visibly and said, “Well, Madam Barros helped a lot…”

She fished out a notebook from her bag and transcribed everything he went on to say, word for
word.

The sun set, the rain stopped, the smell of exemplary cooking emitted out of the Burrows warm and
charming kitchen. Andromeda reemerged with a freshly scrubbed, fully recharged Teddy who was
at once whisked away by George. Angelina arrived, and Bill and Fluer. Percy marched down the
stairs.

Minutes before dinner, Wilhelmina’s head appeared in the fireplace and conveyed the news that
Shane Hopkins was most keen to meet Ms Granger, and would do so on Tuesday.

George winked at her as he swung Teddy round and round.

Harry, it turned out, was visiting Ginny, and didn’t show up. Hermione felt a burning surge of anger
towards Draco.

Just as she had requested, Victor fired the starting pistol that launched international interest in
Nimbus’ misdeeds. It was the only piece of news in the sports section. She read through it numbly,
and through the letter he had sent her, where he once again invited her to visit him.

Work was a stream of petty, deadening affairs, all the way till she found respite in Ben’s office.
There was another elf positioned on a stool besides Bickie’s desk; the dearest, smallest one she had
ever seen, with enormous watery blue eyes and sizable chunks missing from both ears. Ben
introduced him as Mit.

“Bickie needs an assistant, you see. Someone to handle paperwork while she’s busy painting, or
tending to flowers.”

Hermione’s heart went out to that incredibly kind man, that undefeated man, thanklessly
persevering while jammed into a tiny office, spending year after fruitless year chasing a cause that
nobody cared about…

Her heart returned encased in cement.

“It’s ready,” she said quietly, “I’ve done all I can, I think.”

He perked up. “You’ve collected every last signature?”

“Every willing signature, yes – save for one.” She paused for pro-par dramatic effect. “The head of
the Office for House-Elf Relocation.”
His joyful chuckle, the sound of resounding optimism, continued to depress her even hours later,
when she sat in her study with the three-feet-long form W431 before her. Her thoroughly revised
binder full of whimsical idealism depressed her. The line where she’d written Dobby’s Directive in
pencil, (while thinking about Chipper Choppers and the fact that she really was her father’s
daughter), depressed her. The slightly shorter form W522 lay a bit to the side, depressing her.
A depressing reminder that the endeavour was not really a ‘directive’, but an Order of Wizengamot
– which necessitated a seventy-five percent majority and the approval of the Chief Warlock and
Minister for Magic.

The charmed galleon in her pocket kept burning, bearing delirious (depressing) odes to Long Island
iced tea.

So deep was she in that depressive void, that it took a loud rap on the door frame to bring her out of
it.

Hand on hammering heart, she took in his presence filling up the entrance to a capacity far beyond
his lean build.

But he was always doing that, wasn’t he? Extending over more than he ought to?

Draco was still dressed for work; shirt, tie, robes, et al, even his hair was brushed to the side, and he
was holding a five-book-tall stack, the thickest of which was the art book she had lent him… had it
really been over three weeks ago? An unexpected spasm made her leg jump, thankfully hidden by
the desk.
His – perhaps slightly subdued – eyes lifted away from her and darted to the high back armchair
sitting like a throne before her small, common one. He looked at it for a long moment, then at the
floor, and stiff movements brought him to the desk, where he set the stack down.

Hermione stood up.

Why? Did she plan on shaking his hand?

Blimey, the book on top was Cheirokmeta by Zosimos of Panopolis. The original text, complete
and illustrated, embossed in gold, holy mother of god, she had only found excerpts in alchemic
florilegia in the Hogwarts library.

She stared at him, openmouthed. He remained focused on his chair.

“I thought these might interest you,” he muttered, “Some are rare, some no longer in
circulation…”

“Thank you.”

As peace offerings went, that deserved an O for Outstanding. Pro-par conciliation, however,
demanded an A for Apology. As fiercely tempting as it was to look at the books that lay
underneath, Hermione closed her hands into fists and continued to stare at him.

His mouth tightened. Eyes wandered across the bookshelves and landed back on the chair.
Slowly, he unstuck his jaw. “About yesterday morning.” A long pause. “My mother has a tendency
to frame her sentences in a way that completely… obliterates my composure.”

Probably not the time to call him a five year old again.

“She saw the photograph,” Hermione stated, by way of an alternative.

“Yeah.” Draco frowned and continued to deem it necessary to address furniture instead of her.
“And she objected to our…”

Not quite a pause, according to the amplified ticking of her watch.

It felt like forever and a day. Hermione’s concrete-encased heart palpitated.

“...Association.”

It stopped beating altogether.

“Are you here to end it?”

Finally, he looked at her. His frown cleared away and left his face completely smooth.

“No.”

That was all he said. Just a monotonous no.

“Are you going to spend the rest of our association being a nasty sod, inveighing against
everything and everyone?”

“I apologise for that.”

Now it was upon her to bestow an A for Acceptance.

Every last piece of her was keeping her from doing so.

“What was in that letter, Draco?”

“You needn’t concern yourself–”

“I will concern – it is my – It concerns me! I am the bloody concern!”

The bloody concern. Excellently put. Concrete heart was really just dry cement packed together. It
crumbled and dissolved into her bloodstream, leaving it even muddier than before.

“No,” Draco said in that slow, rumbly tone of barely-checked exasperation, “You aren’t. This isn’t
about you at all. This is about her, and about me –”

“There would be no letter… no anything… if I wasn’t –”

“There would have been a letter,” he horned in, “There have been letters. Somehow, even after
living through an absolute nightmare, Mother still – she –”
He was unwilling to complete that sentence. Hermione scoffed. Emphatically. She waved her scoff
like a muddy-red banner.

“Not her first nightmare, was it? Nor is it the first time she’s disdained her own family for making
disagreeable choices. She turned her back to Andromeda while Voldemort was at his most
powerful, and happily let Sirius get thrown into Azkaban. Why would it be any different this
time?”

“Because it’s me,” he retorted roughly. His palms slapped against the desk as he tried to loom over
her, even with the obstacle between them.

Her hands were shaking so she locked them behind her back.

“Oh, but you did make a difference, didn’t you? She told the lie of the century for you. Turned the
tides for you.”

“Was it really for me?” He leaned further over the desk, “What was the point of going to such ends
to ensure I was alive, if she’s just going to badger and harangue me into wishing I had never been
born?”

Why the hell was he asking her?

“There’s a long way between not wanting someone dead and respecting them as a person,” she told
him, “You of all people should know that. You should understand it better than most.”

They had traversed that distance together, hadn’t they? That strange and enthralling journey they
took together —

Hermione was fighting tears, fighting them like she had never fought them before, maybe. The
strain sent currents up the side of her face.

“I am not just someone .”

“You were born before Voldemort fell. What kind of future do you imagine she saw for you?”

His mouth turned down sharply at the corners, and that should have stopped her. But it didn’t. If
she stopped, she would cry, and she could not allow herself to… in front of him… over this… with
her muddy blood thick and sludgy…

“You had your life-altering epiphany after seeing the fallacy of blood-purity and the horror of
violence and and and… the… the… pointless brutality of war. Your mother did not. She’s grown
into adulthood with her beliefs, saw war once, then saw it again – deviated a bit the second time
because even she isn’t cold enough to want her son dead — ha, well done, her – mummy of the
year award goes to Narcissa Malfoy — but she’s still a lousy, bigoted, small-minded –”

”You do not fucking talk about my mother that way!”

It came flying out of his mouth, processed and packaged, with a bow on top. She had tapped just
the spot on his knee and he had reflexively kicked her.

Muddy blood hissed and boiled. Anger swept under her skin, forming an impenetrable barricade,
blocking off any other emotion. She wished she wasn’t already standing because she wanted to
jump to her feet. She wanted to upturn her desk and pelt him with canaries, with anything she could
get her hands on, with burning bluebell flames —

Look, Draco, isn't it the Granger girl?

“Get. Fucked. Draco.”

He reared back. His hands slipped off the desk as his spine instinctively straightened.

And as he studied her, his expression evened out; his anger ebbed as he watched hers rise and rise
and seethe. It packed up like a diligent worker after a job well done.

“I will talk as I please about someone who thinks I’m dirty, unworthy, subhuman… Don’t you dare
ask me to be decorous about any of this!”

“I thought you might understand,” he said with calm disdain, “That you might make a brief effort
to sympathise–”

“Sympathise?!” she shrieked, “You thought I would sympathise with…!? You came here to tell me
she… ugh… and expected me to… to??? Did you want me to say, there, there, it’s not her fault?
Let's look at things from her perspective, shall we? Oh, she’s set in her ways, the poor dear. It’s
understandable that she doesn't want her son associating with filth. That’s what you wanted? You
wanted me to sympathise with –”

“Not with her!”

Would you look at that, his anger was back. A puny, weaponless thing that didn’t stand a chance
against her towering goliath of rage.
Her arms unlocked and went flying up at her sides.

“I see! But of course! Forgive me! I’m so sorry, Draco. You have all my sympathies. Must be such a
terrific burden, being the last untainted thread of two of the purest bloodlines. Mummy always gave
you what you wanted, didn’t she? But now, you poor devil, you wretch, you sad case; you’re
suddenly being deprived, not being allowed your shag of choice –”

“ENOUGH.”

Rich red crawled up his neck and burst over his jaw. They exchanged menacing glares for many
long moments.

“Point taken,” he spat. And he left.

Hermione stood under the shower for over an hour.

The steady trickle of water down the drain carried away gobbets of her anger, leaving her with raw
regret.

She should not have lost her temper.

She would not have lost her temper if he had offered her more than one bland word of reassurance.

…Maybe he would have if she hadn’t lost her temper.

But it wasn’t about her, apparently. It was about his mother, for whom he got branded, for whom he
had fought against his soul to try and kill for. Ditching a muggleborn was child’s play in
comparison. Were the books meant to soften the blow? Did he think she was that comically
simple?

Think about the contract. Think about forms W431 and W522.

Instead she thought – Draco. Like the ceaseless white-noise of spraying water.

It carried on all night

and lingered in the back of her mind the next morning, while she stood in a queue in one corner of
the admin office, waiting to take the first concrete step to fulfil point eight of her comprehensive to-
do list.

She could hear the periodic thump of a stamp hitting parchment, followed by a croaky “Next!” The
chap behind her was a shuffler with squeaky shoes. The woman in front of her was in desperate
need of antiperspirant.

Hermione couldn’t breathe.

She broke away from the line – (head down, so she knocked into someone) – “Excuse me,” she
garbled and didn’t stop or slow till she was standing by the Window of Contemplation. There was a
gold-lacquered, early-autumnal warmth to the light outside.

The weight in her chest was unbearable.

Putting the contract up for consideration without even a suggestion of remuneration was plain
wrong. The Ministry, at the very least, should be urged to set a precedent, and it could jolly well
afford it now, even while repaying the loans it took from France and America. Donations to the
rehabilitation fund were still pouring in, despite the fact that rebuilding was complete and human
rehabilitation had taken a backseat. Percy had mentioned that the next annual budget would include
an increase in consumption tax, and the upper bracket of income tax.

She imagined saying all that to Kingsley as he sat on that high bench and looked down at her as
though she was actively plotting the downfall of his establishment.
“You called it a start, didn’t you? Why do you need everything to happen at once?”

When she rejoined the end of the queue, her arms were crossed tightly across her chest to prevent
its weight from folding her in half. The smelly woman was one person away from getting her turn.

Unable to focun on runic alphabets, she counted seconds and got all the way up to one thousand
and twenty.

The witch installed at the desk had little black cats on her pointy hat and an air of moribund
boredom that was tragic to see so early in the morning. Galleons were exchanged for an
acknowledgement slip. There was a stamp and a stamp; W431 and W522 disappeared into two of
the ten trays floating behind the witch’s chair.

“Next,” she croaked.

Relief was not expected, so its nonarrival was not particularly harrowing. A full-body, jangling
numbness set in, like when you received a solid knock to the ulnar nerve. She felt terrible. Ghastly.
She wanted a time-turner. She should not have submitted the petition. She should not have lost her
temper.

Half an hour before lunch, she tendered an offhand lie about heading to the Archival Chambers to
her colleagues and made a dash to the atrium, where Wilhelmina was awaiting her. A sweeping
swirl of green carried them to the Quick-Quotes Quill main office, located somewhere Wimborne.

They were directed to a reception area and told to wait on a row of chairs that faced a large,
floating sculpture of a quill with barbs made of threads of magical light. The galleon in her pocket
burnt, bearing an ode to divine cheesecakes by the only living boy in New York. Her ribs creaked
with each breath. She looked up at the ceiling – a dome made of darkly tinted glass – and thought,
Love is a layered thing.

When the summoning came, Wilhelmina swept up her hand in a ‘go on’ gesture, sending her off on
her own.

Shane Hopkins’ office was full of taxidermied birds. For a moment, Hermione was sure she had
nodded off in the reception, and the giant quill sculpture had inspired a seriously grotesque
nightmare.

“Ms Granger.” a fair-haired man in a three-piece suit purred from between a dove and crow on his
desk, “This is an honour.”

A stuffed ostrich standing in one corner. A vulture crouched on a shelf that was full of tiny things
like robins, sparrows, and wrens. A swan on a pedestal. The walls were cluttered with framed
quills, along with short write-ups about their avian source. Not a single window, one shabby
chandelier on a too-high ceiling.
There, with the grandeur of a final act, Hermione’s sanity finally moulted.

“I believe you were in the same year as my son, Wayne Hopkins,” said Shane Hopkins.

Quaint.

Sadly, her wits weren’t absent enough to not register how wretchedly sick she was of presenting –
selling — fucking peddling her ideas to a flaccid face sitting behind a desk, over and over and over
again…

Hopkins wasn’t completely apathetic, though. He had a glint in his eyes. Not the beautiful grey
glint of interest, but the sickly glint of that reflects off lucre. He peered at the parchment with
mercantile fervour.

Then, to her intense horror, he tapped the crow with his wand and its eyes and beak flew open with
a startled caw.

“ROMIL-DAAA,” he shouted into its maw, making Hermione’s nerves ring.

To be sure, moments later, Romilda walked into the room, in perfectly tailored robes of red and a
prevailing air of haughtiness. Her hair was done up in large curls. She barely glanced at Hermione.

“Yes, Mr Hopkins?”

Hopkins should tell his son to marry Romilda and take her surname. They were both equally full of
themselves. Vain Wayne Vane.

“Fetch Piper, Teels, and Hackett. And a cup of tea for our lovely guest.”

He aimed a horrid smile at Hermione. She smiled back, horridly.

Tea arrived in a cup with a quill-handle, along with a trio in loose white robes – the heads of
various branches of the Quick-Quotes manufacturing apparatus. Their scrutiny of the parchment
was a bit more palatable. They asked question that she couldn't risk answering with anything more
than a word. She didn’t trust anyone in that room.

She placed her cup next to the doves feet once they had cleared out.

Hopkins smiled again. “With your reputation, and QQQ’s commitment to quality, GAB could be a
gamechanger.”

She forewent all… that.

“We will have to set up a registry, of course,” she said, “to make sure that there are no
impersonators, and that there aren’t two GABs with the same name.”

After all, it was inevitable that in the coming years, England would witness a boom in the Harry
sector. There was also strong growth potential in the Hermione, Ronald, and perhaps even Neville
segments. Hopkins nodded and prattled at length about knowing so-and-so in the Magical
Communication Services Department, and about the excitement and novelty of the product making
up for any potential inconvenience that mandatory registration stirred up.
“It will not impact our profit margin in the least.”

Hermione leaned back in her seat – Jesus, there was an embalmed goose peering around the side of
the desk.

“I feel we should tap into Mungo’s and its subsidiaries,” she said, suppressing a shudder, “Healers
would welcome an instant, hands-free mode of communication. And since there are new trainees
joining every year, we can be sure of large orders coming in like clockwork.”

Yes indeed, said the Glint of Greed.

“I will certainly reach out to–”

“Not Gwenda Bardsley, I hope!” she interjected with a stupid stupid smile, “I’m afraid she is
notoriously parsimonious.”

Hopkins chortled and decided to take that as an invitation to indulge in blatant sexism. “Looks the
part, doesn’t she? Miserable hag. And those robes! If she worked for me I’d – but I’d never hire
such a frightful creature.”

Being already on edge didn’t help: When he re-awoke the crow and yelled, “ROMIL-DAAA ,”
Hermione jolted.

“Yes, Mr Hopkins?”

“Book a table at the club for Sunday, the Veelas are performing.” He turned to Hermione with a
suggestion of a wink. “Healer Smethwyck loves watching them dance.”

Hermione's eyes darted towards the door, fearing the potential beginning of a Hitchcock film, and
she quickly asked about costs and pricings.

It led to a long exposition that she didn't listen to.

The conclusion: “I’ll have Romil-da owl you a contract in a few days, Ms Granger. Perhaps you’d
like to engage the services of a legal advisor before you sign it… for your own peace of mind.”

“I work in the Department of Domestic Law, Mr Hopkins.”

He smiled at her like she was a child who had professed a fondness for finger painting.

Hermione got the hell out of there.

*
She ate dinner at the burrow, wishing she wasn’t.

Why had she submitted it? The future of an entire, brutally subjugated species — and she’d —
handed it over, just like that — rushed it, when she should have spent years perfecting it — years
during which elves would continue to be brutally subjugated —

All she wanted was to be safely floating on their raft, pouring her woes out to him. He would say
something that sat right on the line between terse and comforting, and her mind would quieten.
Then he would roll on top of her and fill her up completely, so the only thing that remained in her
was him – hot, snug, moving at a steady pace – he’d whisper something in her ear; dirty – or
desperate – or her name, dirty and desperate – he’d overwhelm her with physics, chemistry, biology
– the science of loving him —

When Harry asked her to come over, she agreed. He had that tightness around his eyes…
Grimmauld Place must’ve felt ten times larger when Ron was away.

She said very little while they sat in his drawing room, sipping on hibiscus tea. He gave her a very
thorough account of the Harpies versus Falcon’s friendly match that he’d gone for; Ginny’s first as
a provisional part of the main squad. She had excelled, obviously, and scored three of their seven
goals. There was no tightness around his eyes by the end of it.

Later, after a trip to the bathroom, she lingered quietly by the door and watched Harry stroke the
fire. Dark and light slithered over the walls, and for a split second, they created the shape of Sirius’
shadow.

“Mind if I crash here tonight?”

He turned to her with confusion. She half-smiled and shrugged one shoulder.

“I miss my room.”

He shrugged both shoulders. “You don’t have to ask.”

They both fell back onto the sofa. She rooted around in her beaded cornucopia till she found a little
leather sack and emptied its contents onto the centre table.

“Have you ever played Gobgood Lovestones, Harry? I can teach you.”

“Ah!” He scrunched up his face and pressed a hand against his forehead. “My scar!”

“Oh, look here, it’s fairly simple...”

Harry was terrible at it. His gobstones kept sailing around the room, ricocheting off things, and
breaking ornaments. They grinned at each other every time there was a crash and every time they
heard a grunt of disapproval coming from the hall.
Finally, she was back in her old room. After months of duck-egg blue simplicity, its extravagance
made her dizzy. It was like being in a Morris & Co showroom.

Her gut was plummeting but the weight in her chest was crushing. Her body was being stretched
across centuries. She lay on her side, smoothed her palm over the closely knotted shrubbery on the
bedding, and imagined it parting to reveal a gateway to another plane of existence where she hadn’t
selfishly chased after her own space, or been so easily convinced to use the money she got as a
result of tearing down her parents’ sense of self…

There, the Wilkins lived happily ever after, and Hermione lived in this house with Harry and Ron.
From Gryffindor tower, to tent, to Grimmauld place – it was just another circle in their symbiotic
existence. She stood a little off-centre stage, making bubbles to encase them all in. She recognised
that phantasmal life more than the life she was living.

She wouldn’t have fallen in love —

When she recognised those stirrings - far stronger, deeper, and more staggering than she’d ever
experienced – the kind of stirrings that weren’t an extension and intensification of friendship – she
knew exactly what to call them.

But then it kept going. Where the hell was the ‘so this is love’ finality?

Was it not love, then? Was it not love, still?

Love is a layered thing.

A densely layered, multi-layered thing that she might have to keep slicing through for the rest of
her life, sinking farther and farther in till she had no means of getting back out. Or maybe, there’d
be an end – an inner sanctum called Ultimate Love.

Maybe it would be a solid, blisteringly hot ball that would incinerate her the moment she touched
it.

Maybe it would be a tender bulb, wrapped in a paper-thin tunic. Maybe if she cared for it and
nurtured it, it would grow into something magnificent.

“Pfff.” She flopped onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow.

She kept poeticising about things as if she, with her head full of other people’s descriptions of life,
had some sort of deep philosophical understanding about how it all worked. She knew nothing. She
had so confidently likened sex to running once.

It was a very special type of desperation that drove someone to fabricate such inartistic metaphors
to comprehend the world. If Draco were to catch wind of her thoughts, he’d call her twee and
sentimental.
 She shouldn’t have yelled at him for being shaken by the conditionality of his mother’s love, while
she sat in a kingdom furnished by her mother’s unconditional love. It really hadn’t been about her
at all. When he had said that simple no, he had meant no, simply.
But he couldn’t simply expect her to brush past the issue. She wanted him to jump to her defence as
quickly as he jumped to his mother’s; because Hermione would defend him at the drop of a hat, to
her friends, to complete strangers, to sleazy cads, to her own detriment. She merited more than one
lousy syllable.

She wanted to go to him. She would not go to him.

Chapter End Notes

1. “But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve…”: Act I, Scene 1; Othello, by William
Shakespeare
2. “Arthur, whose giddy son”: from Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, by Alexander Pope
 Ninety-Five
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Howling memos ripped through the Ministry on Wednesday morning. Something mysterious and
potentially toxic had hissed out of a gasholder on level nine, and was making its way up. All
personnel were to evacuate immediately. Bubble-head charms were to be deployed at once.
Warning, warning, warning.

Takumi was frozen an inch above his chair. Kathy was still at the door. Hermione had scarcely put
her satchel down.

For a moment, before trepidation set in, while making a bubble out of magic, she marvelled at the
way reality sometimes chased after errant thoughts.
Those fanciful musings died when she stepped into the corridor, right into a chaotic swarm.
Hermione did not do well in chaotic swarms. Panic sounded like a boiling pot. She ducked her
head, pushed out her elbows, and prepared to tunnel like a mole on a mission.

Someone grabbed the back of her robes. She shrieked and looked behind –

“Oh, thank god.”

She caught hold of Harry’s hand and they waded through the mass together. It took a while for their
combined persona to make an impression, but when it did, the path before them was cleared. They
wound up in a lift packed beyond capacity and she tightened her grip on his hand. The crowd was
even thicker in the atrium, miles worse than the morning when the Symphonic Spout made its
debut.

OhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygod

She pressed into Harry’s side, squinting her eyes like if she saw less it would actually be less, and
let him take charge. Her world was all backs and shoulders anyway.

Brave Harry got them through a fireplace. But even after they were standing in the sublime peace
of his drawing room, she was unable to immediately let go. He had to flex his arm to shake her off.
Then they moved swiftly, dashing into their respective bathrooms for a thorough shower and a deep
scouring of their clothes.
Hermione conjured a simple t-shirt and joggers to put on instead.

There was to be no speculation about what had happened because Harry didn’t like to think about
the Department of Mysteries. Instead, they remembered the time in second year when Neville had
tripped and doused a good number of people with bulbadox juice, causing a disastrous outbreak of
green boils. It wasn’t too long after that when Ron stepped out of the floo.

“Why’re you home?” he demanded, baffled and unhappy, setting his rucksack on the floor.
“There was an accident – some sort of gas leak – on level nine. The whole building had to be
evacuated,” Harry said.

Ron frowned. “Level nine? Do you think it –” He caught himself just in time, loudly clearing his
throat. “Any injuries? Do we have to go?”

“Not yet,” Harry mumbled, eyes lowered, “Robards will send word.”

Ron sat, crossed his left ankle over his right knee, fidgeted, and switched over. Hermione crossed
her arms tightly and pressed her fingers into her upper arms. Then eased them. Then pressed them
in again. Harry looked between the two of them gloomily.

That painful silence was broken by Kreacher and a tray bearing pumpkin juice.

“Thank you,” said Hermione, “Thanks,” said Harry, and “Cheers,” said Ron, all at the same time.

“Er,” Hermione offered after another few minutes, “How was the assignment? Did you catch the
culprits?”

“Yeah,” Ron grunted, “It goes a lot deeper than we thought, they’d even branched into adulterated
potion ingredients. I reckon your boss might even take the case on.”

“Oh?”

Ron didn’t say anything further. Harry sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Hermione drained
her glass.

“Well.” She hopped to her feet. “I’ll head off. Loads of pending work to tend to.”

There were no objections. Harry smiled somberly. Ron gave a stiff nod.

Hermione let out a long breath in the solitude of her study.

The pile of books lay untouched on her desk. A small part of her, spitefully, wanted to owl them all
back to him. The other, larger part recoiled at the thought of dealing with him spitefully.

On any other day, she would have leapt at the chance to spend this unexpected holiday pouring over
fantastic, rare tomes, but…

She set Cheirokmeta aside, unveiling De Nullitate Magiae by Doctor Mirabilis. Under that, The
Practical Magic of Abramelin. Then, The Legendary Adventures of Ímar Ua Donnubáin. And
finally, her art book.

It was an astonishing selection – perfectly varied, intriguingly complementary. Unsteady fingers

pulled aside the cover of the first book...

See here, this witch named Granger!

She quickly flicked open the rest and found a scrap of parchment in each:

Odd to begin with and she only grows stranger.

Her hair is electric,

Her ways are eccentric,

Beg or berate, you cannot hope to change her.

He could change her with a kiss, didn’t he know? She could be unmade, or remade; or brought back
to her original form after suffering violent mutation.

She closed the books, one by one, and then her eyes —

There was an inexplicable lapse between that moment and the next, where she’d wound up settled
deep in the chair made of his magic, with the art book.

Pages flew past like thunderclaps while she sought the El Greco painting that his hands reminded
her of. She ignored the face and stared at the long, pale fingers against dark cloth, emerging like a
bouquet out of a frilly, ruffled cuff.
After another thunderous round of flicking, she found Millet’s Gleaners. Women with faces blurred
under shadows, eyes set on their tasks, strong backs accustomed to labour.

A very apt prince and pauper visual, like their chairs, and their beds, and their breakfasts. Looking
between the two paintings, she thought – Him and her? Was it… them? Was it……

Nonsensical, reductive, romanticised, antediluvian crap?

Certainly, that.

Because him and her… they were… they were –

She zoomed through the pages and landed on a completely different painting. It was the one she
would have shown him had they not fought, to fill the gap in her shelf-biography.

The Grangers sat on their living room sofa on a grey October day; dad with Hermione on his lap,
and mum with the book on hers, open to Giacomo Balla’s Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash.

“What a funny looking doggy!” Hermione exclaimed, “Why does it have so many legs and tails?”

“That’s how doggies look when they walk and wag their tails,” dad told her.

“No, they don’t!”

“They would, if you took lots of photographs while they were walking, so you got a picture of every
little movement that makes up a single step,” mum said, “It’s called Chronophotography”
“Kron–know–fuh–tog–ruh—FEE!”

“Very good! Like this, see. Look at my arm, sweetheart.”

There was another lapse and she was moving through her flat like a gale, like a smudge in a
photograph, throwing off conjured clothes and putting on real ones. She sailed downstairs while her
mind raced, and the moment it settled on a fixed destination, she disapparated.

A red, yellow, blue, and white mosaic under her feet. Buildings wrapped around her. The Magical
art district was quiet and sparsely populated. A few people sat around the edge, bent over drawing
books. Two wizards in brown robes were levitating large, wrapped canvases into Goldenwisps.
Hermione wandered in and out of galleries. There was nothing new to see, but she looked at it all
anyway. It was a distracting sort of semi-boredom that saved her from dwelling on anything.

She had stepped out of House of Portraits and was headed towards Tapestries Galore! when her
name was yelled across the courtyard.

“What are you doing here?” Wendy called while walking towards her, carrying many large bags.

They met right in the middle.

“There was an incident at the Ministry today.”

“I heard.”

“I thought,” Hermione quirked her brow, “I’d see if there’s anything new or exciting here.”

“There isn’t.”

“So I’ve come to realise.”

“But I can show you something new and exciting, if you’ll come with me.”

Hermione latched onto Wendy’s arm without any hesitation.

They appeared in a vast and windy field – or a low hill. Acres of rough grass spread around them.

“Where are we?” Hermione breathed.

“Darwen,” Wendy replied, “Look over there, you can see Jubilee Tower.”

Hermione was too taken up by the huge warehouse-like structure just a few metres away. It seemed
worn-down and unsound, and on its front wall, spray-painted in bright red was: L.U.M.P. (Not
Lumpen).

“C’mon, c’mon,” Wendy dragged her along.

The interior was a completely different story. It was nice and warm, brightly lit with clean white
light, and three of the four walls were gleaming, freshly plastered and painted. The fourth wall –
the largest – was the site of a mural, currently in progress. Five brush-wielders on brooms were
flying from right to left, up and down, sketching shapes and laying down a base of neutral
colours…

Moving like dragonflies to loud, energetic music blaring out of a gramophone.

Wendy silenced it with a curl of her wand.

“Look who I found wandering the district!”

A very unnecessary cheer went around, the loudest and most jubilant one from Dean, who veered
to the ground and ran towards her.

“Well, hello! Isn’t this a perfect surprise. Welcome to the headquarters of the League of
Unapologetic Muggleborn People.”

She could only laugh vaguely, still not sure what it all meant. The others were introduced. Besides
Dean, Wendy, and Jack, there was a Libby, an Arun, and an Elle, (or El, or L).

“We’re going to have a big bash, a celebration of what it means to be muggleborn. A festival,”
Dean said.

“Lumpfest?”

He rolled his eyes like he had heard that far too many times. “Sure, why not. There’ll be an
exhibition, for starters, and… Come along.”

He leaned a bit to the side, indicating that she should follow. He led her out through a small door on
one of the side walls, into an large fenced enclosure with an alder tree in the corner. The warming
charm extended across here as well. At one side, three shirtless blokes were putting together a
makeshift wooden stage.

“Music and food here. So far, we’ve got a strong line up of two bands. There’ll be stalls all along
here, with food from various different countries. Shay’ll set up the bar there. George and Lee will
be in that corner by the tree, selling muggle magic tricks.”

They stood there for a while, watching the stage slowly come together. Clouds drifted over a faded
sun, sinking them all in shadows. It might rain… but she could see the shimmer of a strong shield
hovering above.

“How did you chance upon this abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere?”

Dean blinked, breaking away from some faraway thought. “Simon found it. His gran lives nearby.”

Who the hell was Simon?

“You’ll need to get permission from the Ministry,” Hermione said gravely.

“Hmm?”
“You’ll need permission to hold a sizable, public, magical event out in the open like this. You’ll
also have to register the headquarters, and have your wards and shields vetted. Otherwise aurors
will descend and send you packing even before you can begin.”

Dean — He was laughing.

“You probably don’t realise this, Hermione, but the average witch or wizard can’t cast such strong
enchantments. A team from Magical Maintenance put ‘em up last week.”

“Oh.” She flushed.

“We aren’t organising a debauched underground rave, just so you know. We are establishing
ourselves as a legitimate countercultural movement.”

“Right.”

“Come on,” he grinned, “Let's go back in.”

The music was back on and the artists were singing along lustily.

“Her soul slides away… But don't look back in anger…”

She shifted closer to Dean. “And that’s the pièce de résistance?”

“Hopefully.”

“Not another ode to Moulin Rouge, I suppose?”

“Oh, no. We’re going full Diego Rivera. Viva la revolución.”

“Would you mind if I watched you work for a while? I mean, I wouldn’t want to hinder or
distract–”

He spun around to face her, hand on his chest, looking aghast. “Why would I object to having our
patron saint watching over us?”

“Humph. Shut up.”

“In fact, I’ve been meaning to ask – Will you pose as Liberty Leading the People for the bronze
sculpture we have planned?”

She scowled and stuck up two fingers.

Cackling, he reached into a nearby crate and pulled out a bottle of beer, dotted invitingly with
condensation.

“Stay as long as you like, Hermione. Obviously.”

So she did. She conjured a high back leather armchair for herself and stayed the entire day and well
into the night.
The lid flew off her bottle just as Dean took off on his broom again.

They were aiming for something grand and emblematic; even at such an embryonic stage, the
mural showed promise. She could make out the shapes of a hundred human figures of all sizes.
There were solid shapes that would be machines, nebulous shapes that would be magic. There
would be metaphors and symbols, history and culture, all set against a backdrop of the London
skyline.

Had they not fought, Draco might’ve been sitting next to her on an identical chair, and she would
have asked him if he had seen Rivera's Flower Vendor in the art book.

She would have told him about the time she’d spent hours painstakingly trying to copy it, as an
eight year old. It had turned out horrible, of course. The lilies on the vendor’s back looked like a
mountain of giant, swollen pustules. Overcome with revulsion, Hermione had crumpled up her
effort and bawled.
But dad had salvaged it, framed it, and hung it in his office, so that he could tell his younger
patients that the lily-pustules were fallen teeth, and that’s what would happen if they didn’t brush
twice a day.

Had they not fought, she would have told him everything she knew about the Mexican Revolution.

And she would have told him that she’d heard it all from mum, the summer before third year, while
they’d pottered around the small lawn outside their hotel in Provence, in the early morning hours.
Hermione’s feet had been bare on the dew-damp grass, because it’d felt nice… because her
extremities had been numb for weeks after she’d woken up from being petrified.

She would’ve told him those things because she wanted him to know more about her than he knew
about the world.

Why should anyone know anything about her?

Fate was ungovernable, aleatory, and by some weird act of random kindness, two lonely souls had
found each other for the most harrowing experiences of their lives. It was a mutually dependent
friendship forged in haste, sealed with desperation, and she would forever be grateful that she’d had
Theo during those dark hours.

But that had been an aberration for aberrant times. Hermione Granger was meant to be alone.
She was alone in the library and alone wandering corridors. She was alone in her dorm, with drapes
tightly drawn around her bed, and alone turning bluebell flames into faux-patronuses, devoid of
happiness.

She was alone in the summers when she locked away half of herself – and mum and dad locked
away half of themselves, too.

She was alone, bent over a book, in a tent with Harry and Ron. She was alone when Ron left and
she chased after him, and alone when Harry missed him and she had broken his wand. Harry
missed Ron because it would always be Ron whom he missed. She was the one Victor would miss
because she was the only one Victor spoke to.
She was alone in her bitterness when they reunited.

She was alone in a house of mourners, alone in a world where the same fatigue and the same fever
played over every face, alone after the shallow repairs of what once was… but hadn’t been for
years… a family.

Alone with her magic, alone on a ledge, alone by the lake, alone on the beach, alone while she
scurried around with a binder full of pipe dreams, alone as a useless spectator while her peers – her
kind – turned nothingness into something spectacular.

If feelings were quantifiable, if she could pick them up, shake them free of impurities and guises,
and compare them on a weighing balance, Hermione would have demonstrated what she knew for
sure – that she had been resented more than she had been loved.

The details of what had occurred on Wednesday were locked away in inaccessible chambers and a
secret file kept in Head Auror Robard’s cabinet of classified cases. Business as usual resumed the
following day.

Nimbus Racing Broom Company adhered to corporate tradition and threw money at its problem, a
little too late. It was more than had been demanded, much more than Clementia had dared to hope
for, and she looked several years younger in her disbelief. She shook all their hands, one by one,
with manic enthusiasm, as though hoping to draw water out of them.

“Oh, thank you, thank you thank you,” she spumed.

Hermione felt a shiver run down her spine. Barros was watching her with scary, Sphynx-like
intensity. So, she made a foolish, schoolgirl error: She smiled. Barros could not bear such a slight
with composure. She glared and stormed away.
The dodgy potionware file did in fact land up in their office; a simple, straightforward case that fell
upon Kathy. Too simple to keep Hermione from doing anything besides obsessing about the
upcoming lunch hour.
She could plan out to the very last degree how she would behave when she saw him, but she knew
it would all go up in the air when she actually did see him. There was a pounding in her ears, a
buzzing chainsaw somewhere in her midsection. When the time came and tingling legs pulled her
away from her desk, quite suddenly, she couldn’t wait to see him. She was dying to see him,
however his demeanour may be. She would sit next to him, no matter who else may be there. She
would look at him, talk to him, walk back with him —

“Hermione.”

Kathy sidled into the space between her and the door, with a look of helplessness that was
horrendously annoying – as annoying as the tug of kinship it sparked.

“I could really use your help.”

Piss off.

“You know,” Kathy ducked her head woefully, “as someone who got seven outstanding NEWTs.”

God damn it, fuck, fuck, bollocks, and botheration.

She shared Kathy’s soggy jam sandwich in the smoking room on level three, trailing behind her
while she paced like an insomniac and answered questions from The Principles of International
Magical Law. The room was a magically expanded space with a false sky and open arches, full of a
variety of smoke and smokers, and blessedly, a spell that kept the air fresh.

For the remainder of the day, she was forced to make a list of all the ways in which the accused had
(shoddily, witlessly) adulterated their ingredients — How had people fallen for it? What kind of
blithering moron couldn’t tell the difference between goosegrass and regular, dried grass?

If there was any hope of finding peace at the LUMP headquarters, it was lost mere minutes after
she’d settled with a nice cold beer. Arun with his long hair and burning skull shirt put on Judas
Priest at a deafening volume.

She craved piano music; beautiful and complex. She scratched at the sticker on her bottle, unable to
comprehend such levels of irritation.

(_ ratislav, it read.)

The mysterious Simon made an appearance. Once she saw his face, she recognised him as a
Ravenclaw from Ginny’s year. Happy, floppy-haired kid. A tall frame packed from head to toe with
Northern gregariousness. He stood by her chair and talked her ear off about culture, cuisine, and the
politics of food. Hermione said nowt.

Thankfully, the tempo was brought down with softer music as evening cooled everyone’s fervour.
But mellowness didn’t have the impact she’d hoped for either. There was pressure building in her
head, like during taking off or landing.

Please fasten your seatbelts and secure all hand luggage…

And I do not want to be a rose

I do not wish to be pale pink
But flower scarlet, flower gold
And have no thorns to distance me

Across a plastic sea of takeaway boxes, it was determined that Hermione was not a patron saint, but
a prophetess. It was decided that her FSA forward would be written on a scroll held by the most
prominent figure in the mural. It took so much ardent begging to dissuade them from giving that
figure her likeliness.

She fell quiet once the conversation shifted to an up-and-coming art movement, with hints of pre-
Raphaelite proclivities. Jack was in favour – the sanctity of visual art – Dean was against – they’re
anti-progress – and the rest formed factions behind the two.

Stuckism, the movement was called. Its proponents were the Stuckists. Could she join?

Clever, vocal, opinionated, keen as mustard, and always equipped to engage, Hermione could only
pick at the label on her bottle

( ___slav, it read.)

It was very late when she stood to leave.

“We’re having a little bonfire tomorrow,” Dean told her, wagging his eyebrows, “Bring Draco.”

She stood before her shelves, looking for something new and different to read among the booker
prize winners, landing on a suitably bleak-seeming one that began with a funeral on a cold
February day. She turned on her bedside lamp, bright as yellow, warm as yellow, and read less than
a chapter before switching to De Nullitate Magiae.

Bright as yellow, warm as yellow, was the sun on a surprisingly clear day when the usual smell of
ink and lignin was missing from the morning’s Prophet, replaced with the pungent stench of
bullshit reeking out of NRBC’s apology and claims of ‘extreme change in company policy’.
Hermione couldn’t pay much attention to it, not just because she was unable to stomach the
disingenuity, but because a new FSA newsletter had also arrived that morning with a footer that
boggled her mind.

The Foundation for Squib Advancement office has relocated to 8, Haliwinkle Street. Property
generously donated by Ms Millicent Fridiswed Bulstrode.

She felt like an addict by the end of the day, craving, like mad, loud music, bright colours, and the
waxy scent of Wyvern & Newt Magical Paint Binding Solution.

Once again, her speedy retreat was foiled by Kathy and her pathetic desperation.

“Do you think you could – if you have no other commitments, of course – come over for a bit?
Trade agreements are doing my head in.”

Can’t. Nope. Get lost, begone, and go boil your head.

The REPTILEs were four days away.

Hermione said, “Lead the way.”

Kathy’s relief was as grating as it was gratifying — No, it was only grating. She kept zealously
thanking her in a lift full of people who watched on curiously.

Just a step short of the golden gates, she felt it: A full-body lurch, almost like the tug of a portkey. It
got stronger the farther they moved down the atrium.

And there he was, in the distance, by the fireplaces.

Hermione whipped her head to the side, saying, “Hmm yes,” in response to whatever Kathy had
been prattling on about.

His presence shuddered through her, setting off that soul-sequestered clamour to be near him,
activating the latent magnetism that pulled her to achieve that end. She had goose pimples. A
tremor at the bottom of her stomach.
She did not look away from Kathy, and he remained a smudge of black and blonde at the edge of
her vision.

Why wasn’t he leaving? Why was he just standing there?

“Yes, that’s right,” she said – and, mercifully, spotted an available fireplace before they had to get
any closer to where he was… still just standing .

Kathy’s flat boasted of floral wallpaper, plants galore, and the laziest springer spaniel that had ever
lived. It snored from underneath the sofa they were sitting on, going over centuries of international
commerce. An hour went by.
Had he been shocked into a state of paralysis? Had he been waiting for someone? A colleague?
Kenny? Fiona?

She rubbed her sternum and another hour went by.

Until…

Deliverance, thy name is —

Well, it was Kathy’s boyfriend. She forgot his name as soon as he said it.

They tried to get her to stay for a late dinner, but she graciously declined.

The headquarters was empty. She could hear voices and laughter coming from outside, but took a
moment to step up to the mural and look at it properly, closely. The Lumps had made a lot of
progress that day. The newly added scroll was still blank, save for three words – LET US BE.

What a course it had been for Dean… from evenings spent sketching his friends in the Gryffindor
common room, to envisioning and creating a sprawling allegorical masterpiece. Must’ve been so
nice to have clear, visual evidence of his evolution.

She wished she had never cut away the charred ends of her hair. They might have reached the backs
of her knees by now.

“There you are!”

It was Elle, (or El, or L), in a Che Guevara shirt, carrying a stack of pizza boxes.

Hermione lifted her arms a bit. Here I am.

They stepped out into the enclosure.

The bonfire was merry, crackling, rapt in a serpentine dance. Draco would have peered into it and
heard its silent song.

Quite a few people were huddled around the flames, sitting on stools and benches, or standing, their
angles and outlines illuminated with amber. She saw Justin and waved. She saw Parvati and
Seamus. Seamus saw her and turned away.

She summoned a bottle from a nearby crate and conjured a stool a bit apart from the groups that
had formed. Heat flashed over her body – a cleansing by fire – and the first pull of beer made her
shiver. The joviality around her was an obscure, allegorical clutter. She rested her cheek against her
fist and thought about the time Dean had made her a rendering of Melencolia, with himself as the
personification of melancholy.

Heh.

There were so many descriptions of melancholy as a lighter, sweeter sorrow; but surely when it
piled up and piled up, it could weigh enough to break even the strongest of spirits?
 “Nah then, Hector, play summat!”

“Yeah!”

“Go on, mate!”

Hector, presumably, stood up and collected an acoustic guitar from a case behind him. He settled
into position and strummed across the strings once, spreading a hush over the gathering.

Then he began a hauntingly enchanting tune that went right through her and knotted in her chest.
Have mercy, oh Melancholy.

Saw it written and I saw it say

Pink moon is on its way

His voice was soft and just a little guttural, and he sang in a slight whisper that was made for the
nighttime. People swayed and the fire swayed.

There was a low click – click – fzzzt — Jack held a lighter against a cigarette. Dean came up behind
him, wrapped one arm around his waist and set his chin on his shoulder. He delicately took hold of
Jack’s wrist and brought the cigarette to his own mouth.

Hermione stretched her legs out towards the fire and watched the soles of her trainers glow like
embers. She watched smoke rise, mingle with the smoke of spliffs and cigarettes, and warp when it
hit the shield charm. The sky was a medley of shifting clouds, stained green, stained grey, stained
amber…

And in the middle of it all was a —

Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon.

Chapter End Notes

1. All the magic books/authors are real. I’ve just Nicolas Flamel-ed ‘em.
2. The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest, El Greco.
3. Des Glaneuses, Jean-François Millet
4. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, Giacomo Balla.
5. Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis
6. Vendedora de Flores, Diego Rivera
7. “A world where the same fatigue…”: Nana, by Émile Zola
8. Bright as Yellow by The Innocence Mission
9. Book that “began with a funeral on a cold February day”: Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan
10. Melencolia I, Albrecht Dürer
11. Pink Moon by Nick Drake

(Good on Hector for not playing Wonderwall, eh?)

(Viva la Judas Priest.)

 Ninety-Six
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Hermione was bent at the waist, hands braced against her thighs, as she struggled to catch her
breath after ten laps around the park and achieving a new personal record in speed.

This was why people lived fast and died young – there was no room for thought.

A drop of sweat raced around the back of her ear, down the line of her jaw, and stopped at the point
of her chin. The path of Draco’s finger before he tipped her chin up and kissed her.

...She was going to have to run ten more laps.

“To-Who?”

She straightened with a jerk.

On the arm of a bench, sat a large barn owl with the judgemental eyes of Themis.

“What?” Hermione huffed.

It stuck out its leg. There was a letter with her name.

A contract, as promised by Hopkins. She read through it sullenly while chewing on toast, out on the
balcony in a corner where there was a tiny bit of sun to help dry her freshly washed hair. She didn’t
feel like taking the time to do it with her wand.

The contract was standard and unambiguous: Intellectual property belongs solely to Hermione Jean
Granger and manufacturing rights belong solely to Quick-Quotes Quills plc . It magically bound
them into a loyal partnership, ensured they would adhere to patency laws, and never disclose the
enchantments behind the production of Granger’s Auto-Babbler. Hermione would receive twenty-
five percent of the gross profits (before tax) on sales.

She gave it a few more very thorough perusals at her desk, knocking her pen against the wood at
each word. Then she shrugged to herself and signed it.
The parchment glowed bright for three seconds. A minute later, it glowed again, and Hopkin’s
signature had appeared under hers.

Now what?

The censorious owl returned shortly after, with an invitation to a get-together with the team
tomorrow, and waited till she’d penned a response in the affirmative.
Okay, now what?

She spun her chair around and watched the owl fly off, till it was nothing but a condemning spot in
the distance. Out damned spot! Out I say!

A tinkling from the drawer made her shoulders jump. She was stunned, baffled even, that with all
the recent gabbing, she had completely forgotten about her own GAB. She took it out, and shook it
out, and goodness, it was more than half full.

Theodore Nott: I love it here. The sky is blue. In February. If you were to see my suite, you’d
scream and cry and run away.

Theodore Nott: As promised, I spent the afternoon floating in the pool.

Theodore Nott: I’ve made a friend. His name is Joshua. We’re going Downtown.

Theodore Nott: Hello?

Theodore Nott: Hermione???

Theodore Nott: Fuck it, I’m using the galleon.

Then —

Draco Malfoy: Did you make it back home in one piece?

Draco Malfoy: Are you home?

And finally, in ink that was still slightly wet —

Draco Malfoy: Could you come over for dinner tonight?

Hermione’s tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. There was no chance of a verbal response.
She was only just able to string together non-verbal incantations to activate the scroll, and, blindly
reaching for the quill, unable to tear her eyes from the words, she wrote, What time?

She didn’t move or breathe or think or blink. It took him twenty-three seconds to reply.

Seven.

Okay.

Nothing after that.

Dinner meant he wanted to talk. Conversations could be good or bad, but before he said anything,
good or bad, she would tell him she wished she hadn’t lost her temper. She would tell him she was
sorry his mother was such a bitch.

In different words.

It was currently ten past nine. Nine hours and fifty minutes to go.
De Nullitate Magiae was a very absorbing book. Hermione lost herself in hypotheticals about
magical potential energy. She checked her watch at quarter past ten, at half past eleven, at one, at
twenty past two, at three, at half past three, at half past four, and following that, after every fifteen
minutes.

At six, she had another shower.

At quarter to seven, she switched her black top for a pink one.

At ten to seven, she switched her pink top for a purple one.

From five to seven till one minute to seven, she paced in front of the fireplace.

She stared at her watch and saw each second of the final minute pass.

At seven sharp, she forced herself to count to sixty. Then she scooped up a handful of floo powder.

She tore through the stratosphere, shivered past the mesosphere, lost her skin in the thermosphere,
packed her chest cavity with burning black soot in the exosphere, and stumbled, abraded and
suffocated, into Draco’s sitting room.

He was on the sofa with the evening’s Prophet open before him.

“Hi,” she croaked.

He unfolded slowly, slowly folded the paper, all while keeping her trapped with his gaze. He was
dressed very casually, hair mussed, but nothing about him felt at ease. His expression was as stiff
and formal as she’d ever seen it.

“How are you?” she managed to ask.

“Fine.” He walked a bit closer, stopping at the arm of the sofa. Almost as an afterthought, he added,
“And you?”

“I’m all right.”

She took a few, small steps closer, stopping when his gaze dropped to her feet disapprovingly.

“Your floo’s been blocked all week,” he remarked coolly.

“I was out, with Dean–”

His eyes jumped up, hard and hostile.

“And Jack,” she rushed out, “and Wendy and the rest of L.U.M.P.. They’re planning a festival – art,
food, music, and suchlike – and well…”

She trailed off weakly. Draco raised his chin, pressed his mouth into a thin line, like he was vacuum
sealing it.
How many clashes had they survived now? Why was it still so difficult to even begin to sort it out?
He stood there, like he’d stood by the fireplaces, all clammed up after being the one to initiate the
standoff.

Well, she had something planned. That might set the ball rolling.

“Look, I’d like to –”

“Just so you're aware…”

Ah, so he had only been waiting to interrupt her.

“…I’d written back to my mother that very morning, immediately after you’d flounced off. I told
her, for the hundredth time, that my life and choices are not open to interpretation or criticism.
Furthermore, I did not come by on Monday evening with the intention of rationalising or gaining
sympathy for her opinions.”

Anything else she had planned to say flew out the window.

“Then for what? What did you expect from me when you told me–”

“I didn’t tell you anything!” he upbraided, “I had no intention of discussing the matter. You pushed
as you always do.”

Hermione took a step forward. Furious. “Obviously I did! And you kept blathering on about how it
had nothing to do with me –”

“Because it absolutely didn’t. You might have been an issue for her – among many other issues –
but you are not the issue at hand. Which you would jolly well understand, if you weren’t under the
impression that I am still pathetic enough to cater to my parents’ fucked up ideals.”

She tumbled like a house of cards. A sharp stab of pain killed her asperity.

Her voice was a quivering thing when she said, “I don’t think that at all, Draco.” She closed her
eyes, trying to neatly stack her cards again. “I can understand your anger. You should have been the
one who made all the difference in the world to your mother.”

When she opened her eyes, his demeanour had changed too; but it was too impalpable to identify.

She carried on –

“I can understand that her censure affects you in a certain way, makes you behave in a certain way.
I hope you can understand that the subject of blood purity affects me in a certain way, no matter the
context or source.”

A certain cleaving, she could call it. But how to tell him that if it hadn’t been her rage, he would
have seen her tears; there was no other option, certainly not forbearance. Because she wasn’t strong
at all – at all – at all – anymore, when it came to him.
There was a much more notable change in him after that proclamation. Guilt. Jarring and
disconsonant, it pulled across his face like a malformation. A Malfoymation. It was not something
she wanted to be responsible for. She could only really remember it being that pronounced when
he’d knelt between Lupin and Tonks’ bodies, when he’d told her about the ginger biscuits, and
again, much later, on the rooftop under colourful lights.

“My mother…” He breathed in deeply. “Is holding onto the one thing she has left, that allows her to
still feel like herself. She has lost her family, her home, her place in the world, her barings. All she
has are her principles, as she calls them, and me. I’ve told her I can’t be her anchor; not when what
she wants to fix herself to is…” He took a step forward. Serious. “You know that there was never
any question of going along with what she wanted. You know that, don’t you?”

She wished she hadn’t hesitated before saying, “Yes.” He caught it, of course.

So, she took the next step forward. Tentative. His eyes dropped to her feet again. Wavering.

Then he looked back up. Unwavering.

“I was born on that hill, Granger. And even after that, I remained blind till the night on the tower.
The first thing I ever saw was that old man flying over the railing, cold marble eyes looking right
back at me. I’ve learnt to walk during a war, learnt to speak while ensconced in a bubble, and I…
how could I – why would I want to undo all that? Even if there was some fucked up, insidious part
of me that wanted to dismantle everything that’s brought me here – which there isn’t, by the way –
it would be cauterised within seconds.”

Would I have ever been so free without first being marked, he had once asked.

She felt so tremendously at that moment. An ineffable feeling characterised by a ferocity so

weighted it should’ve brought her to her knees.

“I didn't think that you would revert to your old ways. Not even when I was angry.” She took two
more steps – one for believe and one for me. “But, Draco, I… will not let that rhetoric haunt my life
anymore. I won't hear it – not in my own home. And not… not from you.”

“You won’t hear it from me,” he said promptly. Simply. Six syllables.

She nodded, and turned her face slowly across the room. A pile of Ministry-marked envelopes and
colourful brochures sat on the bureau plat, and Rodion was asleep on a tall perch next to it. There
was a bottle of wine breathing on the shelf – much larger than a standard bottle, perhaps nine
glasses worth. The shell lamp was covered with a black cloth.

“Even if you weren’t the most surpassingly magical –”

She snapped her face back towards him. His eyebrows were like arrows. He breathed out in a rush,
his shoulders fell, his jaw clenched and loosened as glib and pithy Draco Malfoy juggled words
around in his mouth.
“Your prodigenous skills have no bearing on… on… my respect for you. You don’t have to worry
about — I’ve told you – I’m fucking sorry. You won't hear that from me, because I won't even
think it. I respect your parents. I… I’d regard any muggle stranger I encounter the same as a
magical one.”

“With unadulterated loathing then.”

Smiling after such a poorly deflective joke was a task, but she made an attempt. Neither of those
overtures were appreciated.

Seriously, where had the guilt come from? Where did it go? Maybe he was Prometheus, and his
guilt was the eagle that came by and ate away at his peace of mind whenever he managed to renew
it.

Those were at least eighty syllables he had given her. She still wanted more. She wanted the world,
the sun, the moon, the stars, and… a hug.
But, more than any of that, she wanted to wipe all the torment away.

“You’d mentioned dinner?” she threw wretchedly, “I’m starving.”

A few seconds of deliberative scrutiny, (and a few more and more and more), before he spoke.

“Yes, of course. Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Desperately.”

Draco wheeled around, back stiff. Hermione took a pew on the nearest armchair. He took an
excessively long time to pour the wine, and all the while, she kept her face averted, giving him as
much space and privacy as possible while being in the same room.

He returned with immaculate composure and two crystal goblets brimming with glimmery deep
brownish-purple liquid.

They sat across from each other, looking not at each other, and Draco said:

“There was a monk who lived in the Loire Valley, renowned for making the most spectacular red of
the region. You see the slight glimmer? Powdered leaves of a Niffler's Fancy. He only used grapes
that were picked by fairies, crushed by elves, and fermented in Wiggentree barrels. One summer,
during his annual French excursion, Brutus Malfoy paid a visit to the monk's vineyard and sampled
his fare. The next day, the monk was discovered bludgeoned to death; no trace of magic, no trace of
anything, besides his own oozing organs spilling out of his body. All his bottles and barrels had
been pilfered. Coincidentally, that same week, the cellars of Malfoy Manor underwent considerable
expansion, and the Malfoy signature wine was introduced; an exquisite vintage that only the men of
our fine line were allowed to savour.”

He paused.

“Calpurnius and Septimus were impenitent sots. They made their way through many bottles. My
father, on the other hand, insisted on treasuring them. Only for special occasions.”
For instance, perhaps, a glass to steady his nerves before he danced off to torture muggles and
murder children?

“When the Ministry tore through the Manor, they took them all. I imagine they now grace the
cellars of various bloated members of the Wizengamot. This bottle… I stole. Christmas of fifth
year.”

Then he took a long, hearty sip.

To your ill-health, Lucius Malfoy.

Hermione followed his example. The wine was initially bitter, but that was quickly softened by a
rush of plum and licorice. A bit jammy, a bit earthy. Rich with symbolism.

They drank in a silence that felt too harsh and unnatural to be sharing with him. It was a limpet that
held on even in the kitchen, while they dug into a fine spread courtesy of the Ivory Grotto.
Well into their second round of wine, Draco decided to bring up Theo, the significance of a leap
year, and the fact that they’d have to put in leave requests for the day. It was so appallingly
reminiscent of for Theo’s sake , that Hermione refused to engage on principle. She tried to pin him
down with the same hard glare that he used to flash, back in the day.

Finally, after another stretch of agonising quiet, while tucking into pudding, Draco dourly informed
her that he would be travelling the following week. Wine-ish hues were pushing up against his skin.
Hermione felt hot and light-headed.

“Where to?” she grumbled.

“A tour of castles, in a way. First, Lithuania, to review trade tariffs on succinite. We’ll be staying at
a small pilis on a shrouded island on Dubingiai Lake–”

“You mean the lair of the sorceress Antanina Butkus?!”

“Former lair. It’s now property of their Ministry, a museum and lodging house in one.”

Hermione clasped her goblet and skidded to the edge of her seat. “Will they have her collection of
amber amulets and figurines on display? Ooh, and the enchanted timepieces?”

“I suppose they might.”

“And after that?”

“We’ll head to the Iraq-Syria border, to the old Ziggurat of Ištaran, now the headquarters of the
regional coalition. It’ll be Britain’s first attempt to ease restrictions since 1700-something, spurred
by Syrian alchemists who have fashioned a cupronickel alembic that’s been elementally infused
with strengthening charms using proto-cuneiform pictographs.”

“Elementally? How? Were they infused while the metals were in liquid state, before the alloying
process? But then how did they get the pictographs to stick?”
“I don’t know. They’re very tight-lipped about it.”

“There has to be a museum in the Ziggurat, as well.”

He nodded. “With a fifteen-metre statue of Ištaran, made of gold and lapis lazuli, surrounded by
more snakes than Salazar.”

Their dishes were bare, and they flew into the sink to clean themselves.
Wine was the dark crown on the upturned domes of their goblets.

“Our final stop will be the island of Panah.”

“The last remaining offshoot of The Indus Valley Civilization!” Hermione blurted excitedly, “It's
home to the largest planoconvex story tablet, numerous copperplates with the Harappan script, and
hundreds of seals depicting now-extinct land and sea creatures! But as far as I’ve read, there’s no
notable castle on that island?”

Draco tapped his fingers slowly on the stem of his goblet. His little finger fell on the base, slid off
it, and traced its circumference.

“It’s a well-guarded secret. Back in the early twelfth century, the lands surrounding the island were
divided into many small kingdoms. And to the east, at the foot of Mount Abu, a battle broke out
when Ghurid forces attacked the smaller princely states. Seeing that, the High Priest of Panah
dispatched an army of warlocks to help weaken and ultimately defeat the invaders. The kings were
so grateful for his assistance, that they decided to build him a floating palace as a token of
appreciation. Thousands of expert craftsmen came together to build the Vijay Mahal – or Victory
Palace – deep in the Arabian sea. Obviously, once the Statute of Secrecy kicked in, everything was
hidden away. Now you require a special permit to visit, and you’re flown across on the back of an
occamy –”

“You can't fly on the back of an occamy!”

“It’s heavily sedated.”

“You can't fly on the back of a drugged occamy!!”

“That’s the only way you can, actually.”

“No! I mean it’s heinous, cruel, unethical and… just evil!”

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong with flying on a broom?”

Draco frowned. “Isn’t that something I should be asking you?”

“Spare me,” she fumed, “It's very cute that you treasure that memory of me as a first year
encountering my first broom, but I’ll have you know I am perfectly adept at flying when necessary.
I’ve flown on things much, much scarier than brooms.”

“Is that why you sit to the side during every quidditch match?” he asked lightly.
“No, I sit to the side because I don’t enjoy quidditch.”

“And why is it that you never go on a leisurely spin around that scrubby little hamlet you call
home?”

“Because there’s nothing leisurely about flying. It's a mode of transportation, to be used when
required. You won't find me jumping aboard the Knight Bus for an aimless jaunt –” [She would
create drip art with her sick] “–Or going on long leisurely drives –” [Death by central reservation]
“–Or killing time by hopping from floo to floo–”

“I could see you doing that, actually. I can picture you in a frightful, rambling state, scrambling in
and out of fireplaces –”

He stopped abruptly. His lips pressed together, eyes flickered to the side. Then he gulped his wine,
and just shut down. Like a wind-up toy that had run its course.

What the hell was his problem?!?!

She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for a bit – maybe he had stalled, as she so often did
while attempting to drive (or think) in a straight line. Nothing changed. So she emptied her goblet,
stood up, said, “Thank you for dinner,” and walked away.

The muted scrape of his chair only sounded when she had made considerable headway down the
hall. He clomped after her to the sitting room, and she did not look back, making a beeline towards
her bag. Her heart rolled into her throat when she bent to pick it up, her hair tickled her nose. She
brushed it aside, suffered a mild headrush as she straightened too quickly, and Oh.

He was standing so close , with barely an inch between their feet. Her heart stayed lodged in her
throat – ThumpThump ThumpThump – and her sight ventured upwards, catching on the crutch of
his joggers, his chest, his neck, and finally his face, where his eyes were waiting to greet hers. She
looked between each, back and forth, crystalline irises around the unfathomable depth of his pupils,
as his gaze lowered and settled on her mouth.

And then he – ever ever so slightly – swayed inwards.

Hermione tossed her bag aside and crashed into him. He inhaled, sharply and shakily, through his
nose, promptly folding his arms around her and cupping her bum. Their lips pressed hard against
each other, and she didn’t spare a moment before opening her mouth to taste him.
…Wine. A hint of cherries and sugar from the clafoutis they had eaten…
…The crisp sweet mellow addictive flavour of him…

On the tips of her toes, stretched along his body, fixed to the soft hair on the back of his head, she
let her weight rest against his chest so she could wind one leg around his. At the press of her pelvis,
he made a noise that turned her into absolute liquid.

Next moment, he had bent slightly at his knees, his hands gripped her bum with bruising force, and
she was lifted off the ground. Her legs wrapped around him easily, like a dance movement, with
gracefulness that she never imagined herself capable of.

She stroked his hair, the sides of his face, angled his head this way and that so she could kiss his
mouth, his jaw, his temple, his chin…
He had her seated on the back of the sofa, and sucked a weal into her neck.

He had her pressed against a wall, and ground into her. She interlocked her ankles tight to keep him
in place.

He was taking her… somewhere… she pushed her face into his collar and filled her lungs with
him.

He had her up against a door. Glowing chains rattled as they disappeared. He kissed her brutally as
the door flew back and they stumbled into his bedroom.

Her lungs emptied when he dropped her on his bed: An offering plunged into the sea. He scrabbled
at her clothes till she was bare, and dealt with his own with incredible haste and irreverence.
But once he had settled upon her, (heavy length sitting low on her stomach, upper body hovering
above her, held up by the elbows), he hesitated.

There were only a few tapers burning in his room; small saffron moons that warmed his golds,
threaded through his silvers, and enriched his flush. His fringe was falling towards her — she
brushed it aside – samite tassels between her fingers – only for it to settle right back into place. She
trailed her palms over the flexed, bunched muscles of his arms – smooth, so lean, and so taut . She
squeezed once, embarrassingly elated by how she made no impact on the firmness whatsoever ,
then carried on till she reached his shoulders. She drew her thumb over the curve where muscles
were most pronounced, fluttered her fingers across their width and around the back of his neck,
where she interlocked them. She looked into his eyes after that. They were dark with suppressed
intent, coursing slowly over her features.

She tugged him towards her, but when he kissed her, intent was nowhere to be found.

A medley of light presses brushed across her jaw and down her throat and sternum.

Pink tongue slowly circled around pink, puckered nipples.

And once he finally opened his mouth around her breast and sucked, she pinched her lips between
her teeth as her whole body lurched.
He pulled back and rubbed his fingers against her mouth, tugging till her lips were freed. He dipped
two of them inside, watching, waiting, while she swirled her tongue around them. He trailed those
wet fingers down her body and to the apex of her thighs — When he touched her she let her moan
erupt loud and unencumbered.

His circled her entrance more than he pushed inside. His mouth never left her chest, but never
pressed firmly against it either.

She was ready to scream by the time he moved back up and entered her.

He stretched above her like an awning, blocking the world, time, and all of creation. He grazed her
lips with his – once – and began moving so slowly.

So sosososo so slowly. Building brushstroke by brushstroke, layer upon layer of smooth, thin
washes.

Go–od . It was too much and it was divine. She closed her eyes.
Heat pool behind her eyelids and she quickly turned her face to the side so that it may seep out the
corner of her eyes and into her hair.

“Granger.”

— That gruff tone that only ever emerged close to the peak. She turned back to his red, tensed up
face, and he stared back with captivating desperation. Maybe the wet trail going down her temple
wasn’t visible, because he didn’t look at it.

“Are you close?”

“Yes. Don’t go any faster.”

She wanted it to build and build until she was writhing and sobbing, mindless with agony. Again,
he brushed his lips against hers, just barely, before sliding his tongue along the seam, gently licking
across the soft underside of her upper lip. He stayed there, poised over her lips, sharing her air…

And he didn’t go any faster.

Each drag and pull felt like a firestorm blazing down her trembling legs and up her quivering spine.
She closed her eyes again.

“The noises you make are going to finish me,” he choked against her cheek.

All she could manage to gasp was, “T–touch–”

One firm thrust and he shoved his forearm under her neck for better leverage, reaching down to
touch her.

When she came, it was also layer by layer, sweep after sweep.
Each lamina was pulled off. Her skin, flesh, muscles, and sinews were pulled off. It kept going and
going and going and the impact shuddered over her skeleton.

Draco rolled off her while her body was still humming, replacing his weight and warmth with
coldness. Her eyes stayed closed and they lay side by side, panting.

She was dizzy, still, when she sat up, casting bleary eyes around for her clothes, absently muttering
about needing the bathroom. Something landed on top of her head.

His shirt. She pulled it on, the soft cloth brushed over her face, swaddling her in the smell of his
skin and hints of his soap. She freed her hair while climbing out of bed, looking down as she stood
to watch the hem fall down to her thighs.

Once the wall had closed behind her, she lingered blankly in the space outside the bathroom.
And in the bathroom, she gazed vacantly at her reflection as she liked it best. His dark shirt
enhanced the bright red mark he’d left on her neck.

She walked out into an empty room. The lamps had been douted. All the light in the room was
being emitted by the tester hanging above his bed.

Those stars did light up then. She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back on her arms, staring up
at the myriad of glowing whites, yellows, pale purples, and pale blues. Occasionally, a shooting star
streaked from one corner to the other.

Was this what Draco saw that night on the hill? Then this entire display was really a collection of
lacerations and keloids; glowing encrusted scars as real as the ones on his arm and chest.

He returned with their goblets and the bottle of purloined wine, just in his joggers, carrying a huge
round box covered in powder blue velvet and gold. When he turned to close the door, she gasped.

“What?” He spun.

“Your back!” she cried with consternation, “My god, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise – I’m – sorry .”

Amusement settled over his features. “Not the first time, is it?”

“But never like this!”

He raised his eyebrows like that wasn’t true, but it absolutely was. She kept railing about it, despite
his various eye rolls, until he half-growled and allowed her to heal the scrapes. There were scars
aplenty in that room without them.

He poured the wine; goblets hovered within reach. He threw himself very heavily into bed for some
reason, and his wand jumped high in the air, clattered to the floor, and they heard it roll off
somewhere far under the bed.

“Smooth,” Hermione quipped, before she could stop herself.

“You can only say shit like that once you’ve stopped tripping over your own feet,” he said back,
also seemingly before he could stop himself.

Then they fell silent.

The box was opened to reveal chocolates – white and milky brown and dark. Hermione picked
one: Rich ganache exploded in her mouth. She stared at the scarlight reflected in her wine and
marvelled at the turn her day had taken.

“A mixture of lux and lumos ?” she broached softly.

“Mm. And a randomised locomotion spell for the shooting star.”

“You’re rather skilled at embedding charms, yourself.”

“Skilled, yes… but not alarmingly so.”

His mouth pulled up when she huffed, and she thought that – maybe – he was going to let her get
away with it.

Again, they sipped in silence.

I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.

After a while, she asked, “Were these chocolates pried away from the cold, dead hands of a darling
French nun who was also a famed chocolatier?”

His mouth pulled up again. She loved making that happen.

“It was a gift from a visiting French emissary.”

“Ah.”

“A gift for Kenny.”

“He didn’t want them?”

“He definitely wanted them.”

“So then?”

“He didn’t deserve them.”

“You took – you stole Kenny’s chocolates?”

“Yeah.”

“Erm!?”

“He called the emissary Marquis de Crapaud.”

Plying her with stolen goods was the theme of the evening, apparently. Hermione picked up another
chocolate – milky with an almond inside – and fell quiet.

After some more time passed, she felt the smart of electricity running up her side. He had turned to
her, eyes honed and chin lowered – she didn’t know when she’d figure out what to do with herself
when he watched her in that manner.

He gestured to her empty goblet and held up the bottle.

“Not too much,” she mumbled, “This stuff is strong.”

“That it is,” he agreed in a deep voice that made her stomach tighten.
He showed no reserve when refilling his own goblet.

For the fourth time, they lapsed into a stretch of silent sipping and scar gazing.

When it broke next, she was still nursing her wine and Draco was nearly through with his.

“I’ve been reading about atomic bonding,” he said unexpectedly.

The afterimage of quasi-stars lay sprinkled over his red-ravaged skin.

“I think that’s how it happened. I could break up my life, back then, into something resembling
atoms – four, let's say – with four nuclei. The Dark Lord, My parents, blood, and… fuck… I don’t
know. Sense of self ? How abysmally pathetic does that sound? And the orbiting electrons were –
were – fear.”
He stopped and stole the final sip from his goblet.
“Reluctance stemming from fear, reluctance stemming from a lack of conviction, Charity
Burbage’s annoying commitment to brevity, Niles and Waller, cars and televisions, strangers in
pubs, Andromeda and Tonks —— Music, my endless shortcomings, daisies on ratty robes, Father’s
whimpers, Mother’s impassivity, blood on our carpets, starry skies, sodding Raskolnikov. I can’t
tell you which atom any of those originally belonged to, because all their orbits locked together…
electrons were shared and exchanged… strong covalent bonds were formed… and here I am, the
resulting compound.”

Struck dumb by the complexity of that metaphor, Hermione simply stared.

(But in the back of her mind, a scene emerged: Someday in the future, on a summer afternoon when
the laburnum trees were flowering and gentle breezes wafted in from the open window, they’d be
sitting right where they were, but closer, and she would remind him of this moment and call him
twee and sentimental.)

Draco emptied the last of the wine into his goblet. Then he settled back against the pillows in a way
that was almost a declaration - I am going to talk now. Will you listen?

“Not a killer,” he ground out bitterly, “That’s such a laughable extreme. Killer. I’m not a fucking
duellist . I’m no good at attacking, dodging, parrying, or any other bullshit terminology they ascribe
to pure animalistic savagery in an attempt to glorify it. Somehow, I got away with doing as little of
it as I could. Switched sides, contributed fuck all, fought even less, and kept my mother out of
Azkaban. A laurel-wreathed victory for Draco Malfoy, hmm?”

No, he wasn’t a duellist. He challenged you to midnight duels, and didn’t show up. His hexes
missed their target. His crucios didn’t land. He surrendered to panic. He let you snatch away his
wand.

But what of it?

Hermione shook her head. “What you endure is just as important as how much you fight.”

A scoff. A glare at the dinky shooting scar streaking above.

“No, listen. War isn’t a monolith, is it? It’s made up of a million struggles, countless battlefields.
There was a war in Hogwarts, and a separate one in every magical neighbourhood where snatchers
prowled. Muggles were fighting for their lives and they didn’t even know it. Ministry workers
scrambled to sanitise their family history. The Order set about quashing raids, seeking safe passage,
and trying to infiltrate the Ministry. As for you… those moments you tried to come clean to
Dumbledore, the moment you lowered your wand, the moment you apparated into Andromeda’s
garden—”

She stopped till he looked at her; which he did, of course, but with unmistakable displeasure at
having been forced.

“The instances when you came in at just the right moment, every wound you healed, every bit of
information that averted an attack against small players and common people who had been
demoted to cattle… That was your war, Draco. And you won it.”

She maintained their shared gaze for as long as he allowed – which wasn’t very long at all.

The frown on his brow could’ve been another scar, and he leant back into the pillows and asked,
“What about your war then? Your war and Potter’s war, objectively the most important one.”

“My war?” She laughed. She didn’t know why, but she laughed. “I’m supposed to act like I lived
through a fairytale: One of three resourceful and intrepid teenagers who saved the world. Sure,
there was a magical sword in a lake, a dragon, a quest given by a wizened old wizard… But, Christ,
nothing has ever felt less like an adventure. It was a blur of slow, miserable days. A damp squib of
a war –”

“Eh?”

“Oh, right. That means something else, on the other side of town. A big, bloody letdown, in other
words. Anyway, tell me, what did I do? I had no inkling of the grand scheme of things. I sat in a
tent, hidden away, played a game of treasure hunt –”

“You mean the treasure hunt that brought The Dark Lord to heel? And you killed –”

“No.” Her assertion was vehement. It pushed her into an upright position. “I am not a killer either,
Draco. I didn’t want to – my intention wasn’t –”

“I know.”

“I’m not a duellist. I’m not…”

Scary, Ron had once called her. Dangerous, too. It was the way he and Harry looked at her when
she did things on the fly, out of desperation, as a last resort, a child with her back against the wall.
Dangerous was how Theo looked at her after she’d dropped that boulder, how mum and dad had
looked at her after –
Like everything else was scrubbed away and that’s who she really was; some vengeful, calculating,
dangerous —

“...I’m not a lot of things they tell me I’m supposed to be. I’m not a patron saint. Not a fucking
heroine. I don’t know what a heroine is supposed to think and feel like, but I am certainly not one. I
didn't march into battle like a trained footsoldier. I wasn’t part of any vanguard. I didn't manoeuvre,
plot, or plan operations like some sort of seasoned, decorated general with war wounds and grey
hair…
“You know, for a little while I felt foolish hope when Scrimgeour became Minister. He was a
seasoned, decorated general with the wounds and the hair. But then again, having a general at the
political helm is never good. Maybe his track would’ve run parallel to Pinochet? Hmm… no. Our
justice system doesn’t dilly-dally over incarceration…”

Where are you going? Get back to the point.

She gave herself a shake and let her muscles relax. Took a little baby sip of wine.

“I’m just… Mind over matter. My only fighting–” She rolled her eyes. “–talent is the ability to
reach for the right spells even when I want to run away screaming, even when I want to curl up on
the floor and give up. I just tried to make sense of what limited information I had and… survived. I
held my hair and ran from fiendfyre – all the way through. And it still got burnt.”

Another metaphor, there you go. He peeked at her from the corner of his eye, probably because
they had flown out of fiendfyre together. She’d clung to his back like the baby koalas she saw at
Australia Zoo, and that was when his war and her war had blazed together.

“I didn’t even care about what went on after,” she continued, “I ran off to Australia, sparing no
thought for the aftermath. I didn’t give a shit about how the Ministry would enact one of its biggest
clean up operations. I wasn’t bothered about crime and punishment, rebuilding and politics. How
heroic is that? I only cared about mum and dad and myself.”

“Obviously?” Draco drew out incredulously.

“It was selfish, and not just for what I left behind. I destroyed my parents’ lives, and then made
them put me back together. Of course, they did. They’re my parents, genetically incapable of
forsaking me, especially when I’m hurt. I took advantage of their love, and came away in a better
frame of mind.”

Pulsing silence. Her blurry vision turned his glowing scars into a Van Gogh.

“We got caught in something, Draco, and we scrambled out, blindly, stupidly, artlessly, however it
was. We – how’d you put it? – glorify it, call it a war. Tch. it was a bumbling skirmish, from start
to finish.”

“We didn’t get caught in it.” He picked up a dark, cocoa-coated chocolate. “We were pushed into
it.”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad, and their mum and dad, and their…
You know, generation after generation and the systems they put in place… fuck you up. But it’s
strange, isn’t it, that somehow, Harry is strong and compassionate. Theo is full of joy and kindness.
You served me your horrible father’s precious wine. Somehow, Neville is brave. Maybe if he had
been martyred, his grandmother would’ve finally been proud of him. Maybe if I had died instead of
Fred, there wouldn’t’ve been two irrevocably damaged families. Maybe…”

She blinked slowly a few times, not sure which direction of thoughts to follow.

Sweet chocolates. Robust wine. Bitter blood-letting.

The purest thing she’d ever seen was the resentful twist of his mouth. It was the knot that held the
universe in place, the navel of all time.
She loved him terribly for not being up to his task, for not adapting to the brutality of those times,
but cowering from them. He hid in bathrooms and cried. His murder attempts, even under extreme
duress, were feeble and unwilling – God, she utterly loved him for all of that.

Draco Malfoy’s instinctive lack of stomach for acts of extreme violence was a beautiful thing. You
could sit at a high bench and chalk it all up to self-preservation, you could bang your gavel and
declare him a coward, but what kind of warped bloodlust would censure him for it?
And there was his open admission to it all; the black-lettered acknowledgement: This thing of
darkness, of folly, of recreancy.

He rejected darkness. He strived to undo his folly. He rebelled against his recreancy, the best he
could. What kind of vainglorious bravado could look at all that and deem it not enough?

A sealed pithos rattled behind her pulmonary valve. Hermione was more in control than Pandora,
though; she decided what came out of it. She wouldn’t weep and thank him for his inherent
attributes. She wouldn’t tell him that she would’ve done everything differently, if she could. She
couldn’t reveal that bravery and pertinacity were things she put on, not things she brought out.

He thought she could show him the way, didn’t he? He thought he could dazzle her by a river and
casually ask her how to be good.

You think I have the answers, but I don’t. I’m such a fool, Draco… do you have any idea? I know
nothing about the world.

She finished her wine in one gulp, and floated the goblet to sit beside his, on the bedside table. She
clasped her hands together and stared at the braid of her knuckles.

“Back in third year, Harry, Ron, and I were fighting constantly. I was so furious, even considered
never speaking to them again. Along came Albus Dumbledore to let me know that Harry had a
lifetime’s worth of hardships ahead of him, and that I was going to prove to be of inestimable value
to him. This was just weeks before he sent us off to face a werewolf and dementors.” She breathed
a laugh. “I can’t help but feel that he knew what I was thinking…”

“Of course, he knew,” Draco spat, “Had a finger on every pulse, didn’t he? He was precipitating
every pulse.”
He mussed his fingers through his hair. A slight twitching around the corners of his mouth told her
he was building up to something…

“When I told Mother about the Vanishing Cabinet, she said, you’re just a boy, Draco. As though
that was the point – right then – when it occurred to her. She looked at me with sad, terrified eyes,
like I had done something to her . Can you believe that? Was I not just a boy when the first
whispers of my taking on Father’s position in the ranks began? Was I not just a boy , when I was
presented to The Dark Lord, the summer after his resurrection?”

With each just a boy, the mocking lilt that accompanied his imitation escalated.

His pithos had blown apart. He was speaking rapidly, as he did when candour was racing against
discernment.

“And what about when she sent me to frolic around with the Death Eater mob after the world cup
final? I fucking ran with my tail between my legs, didn’t I? How about those long breakfasts when
father and his cohorts stuffed me with lies about mmmuggleborns, and she sat quietly buttering her
crumpet. Was I not just a boy when she turned me against Andromeda and celebrated Sirius Black’s
death? That’s the fate of blood-traitors, she told the purported boy.

“If she hadn’t been constantly putting Father before me, she would have thought to hide me. We
have plenty of homes, all sitting pretty under countless enchantments and fidelius charms. Instead,
she stuck Snape on me — Snape who ended up doing the most and it wasn’t even for me. It fell
upon me to figure out how warped my own thinking was, to reach out to the woman she had made
me shun, who had every reason to shun me when I showed up unannounced, the spitting image of
Lucius Malfoy.
“What kind of mother would have me call Bellatrix aunt – letting her throw me around the room
while screaming at me to fortify my mind – when Andromeda existed? What kind of mother waits
till she has to ask ‘is my son alive,’ before finally making a definitive move? Like I couldn’t have
been killed any time before that. I would’ve been dead long, long before, if the Dark Lord hadn’t
completely forgotten about me. That’s what she had built me up for – an untimely death and the
honour of being deemed less than empty air.

“I’d asked Father once, Honour doesn’t age well, does it? Want to know what he said to that?”

“What?”

Her heart stuttered when he leaned in, but it was to whisper harshly into her ear – “Shut your
mouth, you insolent bit of bumfluff.” He moved back with a humourless laugh. “Said that while he
spun around in paranoid circles. Walls have ears, you know.”

Minutes ticked between them, sticky and heavy, forming a rickety tower.

Draco delivered his envoi:

“After all that, Mother is preserving her sanity by deciding my life is nothing but an act of
rebellion. When Pansy complained about the newsletters in her room, she told me – There are
better ways to secure a young woman’s attention. Yes, Mother, because I’m still just a boy and
fourteen, at that. Other times, it’s – This isn’t you, Draco . As if she has any idea…”
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

“If she thinks I’m bored enough to tailor my entire existence with the sole intention of spiting her…
That’s not fucking life, is it? That thing we call war wasn’t life. What… is life?”

It came out like a surprise, like he hadn’t expected the question to end that way.

Hermione shrugged helplessly.

[Life is circles.]

“Did your parents, who are genetically incapable of forsaking you, welcome you back into the fold
the moment you undid your spell?”

“Of course not,” she sighed, “It was painful and drawn out. We were physically in the same house,
but miles apart. My dad is… well, he’s a bit like Theo. He keeps his emotions simple, often to his
own impairment. He was easier. Mum…”

She wished she could get tipsier, somehow.

“...said to me, if I can’t forgive you, who can I forgive? At that time, I was so relieved that I didn’t
realise she was… resigning herself… or… making a decision… not actually letting go of hurt or
anger. And that’s all forgiveness really is, in its earliest stage – a decision. Everything else follows.
I can’t say for certain why they made that decision…”

“Maybe because they realised what you’d done made sense?” Draco supplied.

“Oh, no.” Again she laughed and she didn’t know why. “Definitely not that.”

“Maybe they felt guilty because they knew they had wronged you, too.”

“My parents never wronged me!”

She turned wide eyes to him, but he just abstractedly considered his scars. There was languidness
in his voice and pose now; the afterglow of catharsis. Why hadn’t it blessed her yet?

He said, “Parents should be able to tell when their child is struggling so hard, she can’t sleep. They
should see that she’s run herself to the bone, or been through something unimaginable. Hardened
adults can’t hide that sort of trauma, let alone a child.”

“Dad apologised,” Hermione mumbled, and something spun in her head. Something tautened in her
chest. No, there was more… “They put me on a pedestal from the moment I was born. I’ve been
their pride and joy. I don’t think they can see me any other way. So they made a decision for the
sake of our relationship, in spite of the anger and betrayal that they still feel. Sometimes love is a
bad, bad thing. It wont allow them to feel the extent of their resentment. But it’s a bloody boon to
me, it gave me back my parents.”

Burn in hell, Dumbledore. Dumbledore Dumble— Dum— Dum da da da dum. All you need is love,
love… Love is all you need.
[Love is a layered snare.]

“Then I suppose I must decide to forgive Mother.”

“Hadn’t you already?”

“I thought I had.”

“You don’t want to.”

“Not… yet.”

“Then don’t. Forgiveness has to be asked for –”

“She did ask.”

“But that’s not all she’s asked of you. Not just asked, but demanded.”

“My mother doesn't make demands. There are commands swaddled in her pleas. It’s a special
talent.”

Funny that she hadn’t realised that the twinkling lights above slowly switched hues. What had been
an assortment in the beginning appeared to have turned mostly blue… save for a few in the corner
that were yellow… but also gradually turning blue…

…and out of that blue, with a beguiling rasp in his voice, Draco said, “I’m done.”

What?

“Maybe mother will come to her senses after ten years or so; delayed dawnings are her modus
operandi. I refuse to break my head over it any longer.”

Hermione secretly pressed her hand to her heart, urging it to restart. Draco rubbed his jaw
thoughtfully and carried on.

“I’m finished with all that dung. Blood before reason, Malfoy before Draco, son before person, I’m
fucking… fucking done … with relics and stupid, crumbling structures of thought and old
architecture, familial integrity, Black this and Malfoy that, the Ignoble and Most Antwacky House
of Bilge – Good lord, who cares? How are they, with all their years, experiences, and resources,
spewing and believing and extolling that shit? All their years, experiences, and resources, and
they’ve failed to see — they haven’t realised — no wonder nobody ever told me —”

“What didn’t they tell you?” she whispered.

“That the world is so immensely vast.”

The world was immensely vast. Life was very long. And thanks to him, Hermione knew all about
the mystifying variability of time.
Scattered tangents streamlined to form a notion: Draco’s bravery was an undercurrent. A tincture
that was bound to other stronger flavours, and never sat distinctly on the palate.

There was a galaxy above that proved it. She got suddenly riveted by it as some blues turned to
purple and the shooting star – now almost white – emerged again.

Purple to white…

Ooh… A hint of yellow.

“Bah.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Coconut,” Draco growled.

He was holding a half-eaten chocolate and scowling heavily.

“You… don’t… like coconut?”

“It’s texturally disagreeable.”

“Why don’t you…”

He began looking around him a little frantically.

“...get rid of it?”

Something something fucking wand something.

“Your wand is under the bed, remember?”

Something something grrr something – while he bent over the side of the bed trying to see.

“Just do it wandlessly, Draco.”

Something something shut up –

So she vanished it for him with a deft flick of her index finger.

He popped up again, looking, impossibly , even redder in the face.

“Why didn’t you do it wandlessly?”

He didn’t respond, only glowered reproachfully at the offending chocolate box.

“Wandless vanishing is much easier than wandless leg-locking. Do your wandless abilities weaken
when you’re pissed?”

He frowned. She frowned.

“Did you lie, Draco?”

“What are you on about?”

“You told me you can perform a leg-locker curse wandlessly.”

“What?”

She saw the moment he remembered: His mouth thinned.

“ Why? Why would you lie? ”

“Why would you store so much trivial drivel in your head?” he countered indignantly, “This is
exactly why – You don’t know when to leave off. That humble act of yours – which you, for some
reason, think is the opposite of the hand in the air oooh oooh call on me professor, I know
everything dance you used to —– When the fuck did you get so comfortable hitting me?”

“I did not hit you. When did you become such a crybaby? Oh, right. So sorry, you always have
been.”

“—make me declaw a kitten — Stop it. I swear, Granger, I will toss you right out of the window.”

“Hah! Can’t manage wandless vanishment, wants to perform wandless defenestration!”

“I don’t need magic for that, you slip of a wench.”

He reached over the box, for her waist, and as always, it fit beautifully over the curve. Perfect, by
design.

“I can execute a perfect wandeless cushioning charm, you know,” she told him with a perfect
absence of humbleness, “And I will come right back and exact alarming revenge, so you mmmgh
.”

He stuffed a choccy in her mouth, the heathen. But it was filled with soft nougat, and also, he
smiled , so she forgave him.

They settled back comfortably again, celestial scars shone white and yellow, warm as yellow, and
Draco asked about her “enchanted pieces of chit”, which she did not appreciate, but updated him
anyway. He did not believe GAB was just gab , (“G stands for Granger, doesn’t it?”), laughed
uproariously when the truth was revealed, called her owlish when she glared, and asked her if she
thought she was blessing the world with the gift of the gab, which was a ridiculous assertion.

“Did you know Wayne Hopkin’s father owns Quick-Quotes Quill?” she said loudly, ignoring his
jabber, “He’s a most dreadful man.”

“You say that about eighty-five percent of the people you meet.”
“You say the same for ninety-eight percent of the people you meet.”

He smirked through her elaborate description of the avian crypt… until she bit into a white
chocolate, strawberry, and praline revelation.

Like a shot, he took hold of her wrist, and stole her sweet.

You arse, you thief, she wanted to castigate.

But his hot, sharp eyes were pinned to hers, and her fingers were resting on his wine-stained lower
lip. He sucked them into his mouth and slowly released them, one by one. He moved onto her
thumb and bit the tip. A kiss dropped right at the centre of her palm speared straight through her,
down to her toes, and curled them. He moved down to her wrist and mapped her veins with his
tongue.

Without looking away, without loosening his grip, he put away the box between them. He rose to
his knees and pulled – then wrapped his other hand around her elbow and pulled harder – drawing
her, likewise, to stand on her knees. His hands smoothed up her hips, gathering the bottom of his
shirt, and they skimmed up her silhouette while he lifted it. She raised her arms to let him clear it
off her head and draped them over his shoulders once he had.
Her pulse was a racing prestissimo. He carded her hair back with both hands, his thumbs swept
across her hairline, his eyes fell on his mark on her neck. Fingertips dug into her nape and travelled
down the length of her spine.

She kissed him.

Let’s run away, Draco. Let us go to that castle on the hills of Friedberg. Let us go to castles on
islands, in the desert, floating on the sea. Let us build our own castle in the air, Draco. Draco —
“Oh, Draco.” — Take me away from everyone who thinks they know me, thinks they know you.

“How do you want it this time?”

You and I, Draco. You and I — Let us go then. Let’s progress together somewhere fresh, somewhere
new.

Braced against his headboard, with his damp heat laid against her back as he slammed into her
from behind, she saw his glittering scars with her eyes closed.
She woke up in an empty bed, to the mortifying realisation that she had carried out a somnambulant
migration over the course of the night, and was sprawled near the edge of the side Draco had slept
on. She looked to the floor in a panic, afraid she might find him there.

It was half seven, the sun was semiconscious, stars and scars had been doused, and Hermione sat
up on that deliciously soft bed and stretched muscles that were both sore and soothed. Yawning, she
slid to the floor and touched her toes, shivering at the sharp tug up and between her legs. She
slipped back into Draco’s shirt and tapped open the entrance to the bathroom.
The actual bathroom door was cracked open just a tad – another implied invitation, she supposed.
So, with a titillating mental image of him soaking in the aquamarine pool, she pushed the door
open.

He was standing before the sink, tall and stark amid diffused billows of steam. A towel sat almost
dangerously low on his hips, and his skin, milky in the hazy light, glistened damply. His hair was
wet and slicked back.
…Draco de Milo was a beautifully carved man with splendid arms…

He looked at her over his shoulder and quirked a single brow.

Holy shit, she forgot how to breathe.

“Need something?” he drawled.

Yes. Guh. Yeah. Something.

He set down whatever he was holding – a jar of shaving cream? – and approached her prowlingly,
one corner of his mouth slowly curving up. She had drowned in his scent by the time he reached
her; his hands curled around her elbows, slid up her arms, gripped her shoulders –

He moved her back and slammed the door in her face.

Standard recovery time for such a slight was one eternity. Hermione returned to the bedroom in a
huff, and struggled into her own clothes.

An owl rapped at the window, bearing the thick Sunday edition of the Prophet. On that thirteenth of
February, there was nothing of consequence to report; NRBC made a donation to a high society
witches association, Britain and France had renegotiated loan repayment. Bosh, tosh, and guff.

Draco waltzed out of the bathroom and into his wardrobe – enter stage left, exit stage right – with
no consideration for her carefully crafted air of affront.

“I’ve to go,” she shouted.

“All right, bye,” he called back.

She waited.

He came back out in beige trousers and the wedgewood blue jumper, and affront perished like a
battleworn soldier in enemy territory, surrendering to her fate.
Mute and stupid she stood, while he tidied the bed, pushed his head out the door and whistled to
summon Rodion, fed Rodion, prised the papers out of her grip…

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked mumblingly.

“Aunt Andromeda’s.”

“Will you be there all day?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

“What is it?” he demanded, looking and sounding as he did.

“I don’t want to derail your plans.”

“Derail them,” he pressed, “Please.”

She frowned in confusion and scratched her arm. “You don’t want to spend the day with your
aunt?”

After a moment's pause, he posed a question of his own – “Tell me, does Potter let Teddy sit on his
shoulders?”

“...Yes?”

“I fucking knew it,” he gurned, falling into the nearby desk chair, “Of course, it’s Potter’s fault I
have to deal with sticky fingers tugging at my hair, pulling at my clothes, and an outburst of sheer
hysteria when I move away.”

“Why can’t you let the poor child sit on your shoulders?”

He made a terrible face. “I patiently listen to him gibber for hours about buhs and his confounded
twee-ouse and whatnot. That’s my limit.” He smoothed his expression and surveyed her closely for
a bit before asking, “Well? What are we doing today, Granger?”

She grinned like an idiot immidiately. “I thought we could go to the cinema. See a film the way it's
meant to be seen.”

“All right.”

“Maybe swing by the record shop and you can pick up some new CDs?”

“Sure.”

“I have to meet the Quick-Quotes team in a bit, so… I’ll come back around three?”

“Okay.”
But back home, something happened, a strange disruption during the beat of hot water against her
skin. It put her into a heedless, remote state of mind that held firm through the morning and into the
afternoon —

As she stood in an underground lab with giant bubbling cauldrons and dripping quills hanging from
a washing line, watching employees being bound to secrecy with solemn ceremony… Through the
entire briefing she conducted and the subsequent, thorough explanation of how GAB was
created…

As she walked down Starthistle street and found a very pink flyer announcing a special ‘Whisky
Weekend’... and as she, lying on her living room carpet, carefully erased each pulsing love heart
that decorated said flyer…

As she stooped over the papers, trying to pick a film…

(As she said a resounding no to the romantic drama, the cutesy Disney flick, and the pointless gore-
fest. As she decided the one involving a headless horseman would probably be more thematically
relatable.)

As she reached for Sleekeazy and spent an age on her hair…

Draco was born on that hill because it was the first still moment of his life.

Hermione thought she had been born when the sun rose at the end of Voldemort’s reign of terror.
She burst into the world and her piercing first cry was a deluge of fury, directed at the ruined boy
and unruined young man in front of her.

And that, really, was the gold standard for character assessment. For it was in the quiet moments,
when you were alone with your thoughts and consciousness, had the time to consider and the
freedom of choice, that you could tap into who you really are. Loud moments are corrosive.
Moments of crisis paralyse your sensibilities, and under pressure, you are governed by pure instinct
and adrenaline.
The real Ron was the one who sat in a bamboo forest and decided how he wanted to live. The real
Harry was the one who agreed to get help when he realised he was drowning.

The real Hermione was… Not inclined to venture into existentialism at that moment.

But this was the new kind of bravery she had uncovered last night, in the ruined boy and unruined
young man. It was ugly, it was gentle, and she loved it.

She stood before the mirror in a navy blue velvet dress that clung to her. Its deep scoop neck did a
lot to frame her clavicle, but, alas, very little to aid her unimpressive bosom. Her hair was a sheet of
smooth, rippling waves. Her lips were berry red, her cheeks were dusted with a shimmering
peachy-pink, her eyelashes were thicker and longer, and her feet were strapped into stilettos.
It was too much. She may as well burst into his flat holding up a banner that read, I am tricking you
into an early Valentine's date because apparently that matters to me now.
It was much too much. …She wasn’t going to change a thing.

She collected her coat and draped it over her arm. She collected herself (barely) and left.

Stepping into an empty room was a short-lived reprieve. She heard him approaching seconds after
she had wiped away a dash of soot from her leg. Blush rendered utterly unnecessary, she shifted her
arm to the side, so her coat wasn’t covering any part of her.

The clip of dragonhide boots got louder, her heart rate shot through the roof.

Draco came around the door frame and froze.

He was dressed the same as the morning, with the addition of a long coat and scarf, and he just
stood there at the threshold and openly stared – the slight part of his lips was the space between the
lines of a couplet.

After a long inspection of her face, he let his eyes freefall down her body, then rise like a geyser.

He wet his lips and, slow and deep, asked, “Is going to the cinema… an event?”

God.

“No,” she wheezed, “I just don’t get much wear out of these shoes, you know?”

His gaze dropped to her feet again, lingered, and lifted. A small smirk tugged at his mouth.

“Such a crying shame.”

God, oh god.

“Yes, well.”

She shook out her coat and busied herself with the highly preoccupying task of putting it on. Her
grip fumbled when she heard him approach. Just when she had the coat positioned behind her, he
had planted himself behind her too. A shiver wracked her frame when his fingers fluttered across
either side of her neck. He gathered all her hair in both hands, and lifted it.

Once she had shrugged on the coat, he laid it back down, smoothing it as he went.

Their proximity, when she turned, made her core tighten. The compatibility of their heights... The
way he tilted his head, smiling softly...

“We – We should—”

“We can disapparate straight from here,” he said.

Wouldn’t do to be spotted, looking the way they did. She reached out and folded her fingers over
the back of his hand.
“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

She brought them to the alley behind Curzon, quick to drop his hand, after.
Not even experiencing the revelation of magic could’ve prepared her for the surreality of standing
in a queue for tickets, with Draco Malfoy. They didn’t talk, but for one instance when Draco made
an inquiry into muggle methods of temperature control. Mostly, he just looked around and peered at
posters. There were couples everywhere .

Leaving him in front of a poster of a woman’s tummy and a rose, she cut between people to
complete his experience with the quintessential cinema staple of popcorn and coke. He eyed it all
with great suspicion when she returned.

“Is that complementary?” he asked iffily.

“No. I bought it. From there.” She said there like he knew what there was.

They shuffled towards Screen Two, someone brushed against Draco’s shoulder and it gave him
reason enough to scowl until they found their seats. The cinema darkened, the screen flickered to
life… and well. Hermione and Draco watched a film together.

It was riveting enough – creepy, atmospheric, with plenty of impressive visual effects, though not
the best dialogue. She half-watched the screen and half-watched it flashing over Draco’s face, that
was frowning and fixated. Their fingers often met in the popcorn tub. There was a couple in the
row before theirs, absolutely going at it.

Two hours later, they were out in the gusty open, blinking at the rusty hues of civil twilight,
polluted by the bright lights of civic life. Draco was disoriented. She understood the feeling, but
was at least familiar with it, so she held off the barrage of questions that she had waiting… that he
most likely was expecting. They stood at the corner for a bit, watching the shops and traffic while
the rest of the audience filled out.

Before the nebulous calm of the moment could be decimated by nerves, Hermione brought out The
Flyer Formerly Known to be Pink.

“The pub in my scrubby little hamlet is hosting some kind of a celebration of whisky, sponsored by
Celestial Distillery. I’m all for supporting Ogden’s biggest competitor… Would you be
interested?”

No response. She glanced up to find him glowering heavily into the distance.

“Just a suggestion,” she muttered, quickly peering down at the flyer again. Fuck, was there still a
heart hiding somewhere?

“I don’t mind.” Said by one who seriously minded.

“It’s okay, Draco.” She smiled graciously. “I’m not all that keen any–”

“I said all right.”

“Fine.”

She stuffed the stupid thing into her pocket and began marching down the pavement, in the
direction of the record shop.
A few steps down, he was by her side. A few more, and she felt something brush across her lower
back. The next step almost killed her, because his arm slid across her waist, his hand settled just
above her hip, and there it remained for the rest of their walk. It was fortunate that their route was
reasonably straightforward and that Draco soon recognised their surroundings, because she was
aware of nothing but the weight of his hand, and would likely have ambled on and on till she
arrived at White Hart Lane and dad’s soul would’ve astral projected across continents with happy
tears in his eyes.

For however many minutes, she quietly trailed after him in the shop. He dropped CD after CD into
a conjured basket…

(…Speaking of dad – she needed to ask him about his elaborate surround sound system. She could
figure out how to make it run with magic by next Christmas. And when he visited for stupid
Charlotte's wedding, she would have Draco play for him, so that he could give him the validation
he deserved.)

When they walked out, it was into a buzzing, bustling night. Hermione slipped her hand into the
crook of his arm while crossing the road, and there it stayed till they found a shadowed place for
disapparition.

Appearing into the quiet of Starthistle Hill felt a bit like stepping out of the cinema. The rough
cobbled street, the crackling lamps, the florist in sweeping green robes magically packing up his
shop, the arrhythmic duet of their footsteps…

From the outside, the pub didn’t promise much besides disrepute, backed up by the grimy opaque
windows, and the fact that it was called The Hole in the Heath . But the interior was surprisingly
cosy and salubrious, with polished wood surfaces, and large, funnel-like hanging lanterns holding
tight balls of fire. A single rose on each table was the only festive touch, Just a handful of patrons
were spread around, all looking inquisitively at the over-done-up newcomers.

Draco lightly cleared his throat. “Grab us a table near the back, I’ll fetch the drinks.”

“Yes, okay,” Hermione mumbled.

She began muttering spells for privacy as soon as she picked out a corner table. It had an L-shaped
bench that fit snugly against the wall. She took off her coat before settling, and folded it four times
over. She set it, and her bag on one side, then shifted it to the other, so that she could sit closer to
the corner, in case he sat close to the corner too…

A wide pillar blocked her view to the bar. Draco came around it after thirty-six slow foot taps,
carrying a tray piled with twelve glasses of varying sizes.

“What’s all this?” Hermione exclaimed.

“One of everything.”

He carelessly pushed the rose aside to make room for the tray.
She couldn’t make sense of it – all the colours, sizes, the garnishes...

“Are you trying to kill us?”

“Does it matter?” He removed his coat and scarf. “You know my track record.”

She laughed, loud with surprise. He grinned smugly, slid onto the bench, (decidedly close to the
corner), tugged his sleeves back – a bit, not too much —
Blue jumper, dancing eyes, warm lighting… that fit of pique from before was evidently no more.

Over a mint julep and a tumbler of neat liquor, they finally talked about the film.

She told him how films are made, the best she knew, and a very inexact history of western cinema
and the multitude of genres…
He told her a bit of obscure French folklore that his grandmother had once told him; about an evil
wizard who lived deep in the forest of Haguenau. He fashioned himself a hat of invisibility, and
went about killing people in the neighbouring villages – two of whom were the parents of a brave
young girl named Annette. And she, armed with a Time-Turner, had many adventures involving
justice and vengeance.

“That Katrina Van Tassel, though,” he said with sudden airiness, “I reckon she made up the whole
wild tale in her head. All of it. Looked a bit like Lovegood, didn’t she? Probably just as batty.”

Hermione giggled – hiccupped – and started on a whisky sour.

“Or you. Just as batty as you.”

She had to gulp down a mouthful of alcohol much too quickly.

“I’m batty?! As batty as Luna? Excuse you!”

“A more worrying sort of batty because you’re secretly batty.” He leaned towards her and his arm
settled over the back of the bench. “You let people believe you are prim, articulate, led by
rationality… but in your head, there is a hellscape of lunacy. A junk shop of jumbled eclectic
thoughts, errant ideas whizzing around like comets… Comets that you’ve undoubtedly given punny
or alliterative names.”

“You think you’re sane?” she sputtered, feeling very, very hot, “You hear music, all the time! You
see musically! A dull rainy day is a prelude for Draco Malfoy! You must have a Polish legionary
song going on in your head while you sharpen your verbal rondel daggers. You... literally dance to
your own tune. It explains your moodiness, explains why you sometimes throw absolute wobblers
over nothing, and why you sometimes display a degree of tolerance that’s almost preternatural.
You… you… rhyme electric with eccentric and show no remorse! You –”

“Say, Granger,” he intruded loudly, “What mischief did you get up to with your Time-Turner?”

“There was no mischief. Only the earnest pursuit of knowledge, and a heroic rescue mission.”
But after she’d had a few more sips, she told him that she had once turned back time so she could
sleep for twelve hours straight. And once, she, poor overworked thing that she was, had answered a
question incorrectly during arithmancy, so she redid the entire lesson.

Draco did not gloat. He did not put on a show of shock at the good girl breaking rules. He just
grinned and reached for one of the five remaining glasses.

Then there were three, Hermione claimed something fruity and left the other two for him.

She asked so he told her that Andromeda had hugged him when he’d landed in her garden, saying
thank Merlin , thank Merlin , while Lupin and Tonks pointed their wands.

“If I remember correctly, Lupin called you a sneering reprobate.”

He smiled weakly but she knew he felt a twist in his gut because she felt it too.

An announcement from behind the pillar warned them that the pub was closing in ten. They were
the only one’s left.

The last sip was Draco’s, and he went about it dramatically. While his head was tipped back, a drop
leaked out of the corner of his mouth and Hermione wiped it away with her thumb.

He stumbled as he struggled to perform complicated tasks like walking and putting on his coat
simultaneously, which was fair since he accounted for seven of their twelve. He stumbled again
while stepping out the door. A cold wind whipped past, scattering his already tousled hair.

“Tonight’s the night, Josephine!” Hermione said, spreading her arms wide to show him the night.

“Quoi?” he asked, tossing his scarf over his shoulder, “Pardon?”

“I can feel it!” She wagged her finger for emphasis. “Tonight I will finally see you fall on your
arse!”

He pushed her.

She let out a high-pitched yelp and reeled backwards, but before she could lose her footing, he
caught her and pulled her against him.

“You ab-so- lute– ”

He leaned back, lifted her off the ground – she yelped again — but then she was laughing,
whooping and laughing, as he swung her round and round and round.

They were both laughing as they staggered to regain balance, zig-zagging down the empty street.
So disoriented was she, that it took her a few mo’s to figure out they were headed the wrong way.

“Wherewegoin?”
“What’s that?”

“Where… are… we… going?”

“Food.”

Tripping into The Hungry Zouwu was another seismic shift. Bright lights, intense warming charms,
an overwhelming aroma. There was just one other person there – a man in a hitwizard uniform,
near the back. Hermione squinted her eyes. Her head spun. Draco’s arm tightened around her.

“What do you want?”

“Fried rice, half portion.” — Why was it so bright?

“Go sit down.”

She readily agreed.

There were two cute Zouwu-shaped bottles on the table, containing vinegar and soy sauce. With
great care and gentle prodding, Hermione put them in perfect alignment with one another.
A large, pale hand descended from above and scattered them. The owner of said hand collapsed on
the chair next to hers. She glared, jostled him with her shoulder and set the bottles right again. He
undid her work again.

“Stop it.”

He sniggered, and continued to snigger while that back and forth carried on, until his enthusiasm
caused the soy-Zouwu to tip over and crack in half. Dark black sauce bled onto the red tablecloth.

“Shit! Reparo, tergeo , shit!”

Draco kept sniggering on. She rammed into his shoulder again. He tried to reach for the bottles so
she slammed her hand down on his. He tried with his other hand and she caught it as well. He was
shackled to the table — someone cleared their throat and it was an unamused waiter holding a
takeaway bag. Draco the chameleon changed his colours, adopting the terrified guise of a hostage
with a gun pressed between his shoulder blades.

Huff. Hermione accepted the bag with a stiff thank you.

Being back in the cool cold cool night was nice. The hot bag swung against her legs. The quiet was
weightless. There were only two people in the whole immensely vast world.

A hand appeared on one side of her face. She blinked at it; large, pale, and hanging limp. It was
attached to an arm slung across her shoulders. She looked to the other side, and saw the most
perfect set of lips, so she kissed them.

They stopped walking. His tongue curled around hers, the hand by her face lifted and he ran the
back of his thumb over her cheek.

“Well?” he asked huskily when they broke apart.

“Huh?”

“I asked if you want a drink, Granger.”

She frowned. They began walking again.

“Pub’s closed.”

Draco reached distractedly into his pocket, and she cackled as they teetered to the side.

“Et voilà!” he crowed, producing a beautiful silver flask.

Hermione flatly refused. “No thank you. That is the devil’s flask.”

“No, Hermione. That is my flask.”

She gave him the look that big time Greek philosophers would have worn when having a
triumphant Q.E.D. moment.

“Wait, wait. Hold on a minute. I can’t believe we haven’t discussed this,” he said.

They neared the spot in the lobby where they had first kissed and

“The end of Inferno … those two blighters climbed down Lucifer’s legs... Did he shit them out?”

“Why do you think they’re called the bowels of hell, Draco?”

His arm stayed around her as they leaned against the back of the lift. He took a long swig from the
flask before holding it tauntingly in front of her mouth. She took a short swig and her face
crumpled at the burning bitterness.

He laughed ——— He tripped while walking, almost almost falling. Hermione pointed at him and
said “HA!!!” It echoed down the landing and she slapped her palm against her mouth. Draco
grinned.

Coats were shed in the hall, he went straight to the loo. Hermione kept the lamps dim and ridded
herself of her shoes with kicks worthy of a can-can dancer. One hit the wall and then the floor. The
other sailed through a stray vortex and into another dimension, where it clogged Ernie MacMillan
on the head.

By the time she finished laying the food out on the dining table, Draco was pulling back a chair.

And by the time Draco had demolished his plate of spring rolls, Hermione had hardly made any
progress with her rice. The drunk male capacity to inhale food defied all laws of magic and
science.

"Draco," she pronounced, brandishing the carton in her hand, "This is the most perfect meal in the
world."

"I doubt that," he scoffed.

"You know nothing."

She wobbled as she got to her feet and also as she made her way around the table to sit on his lap.
He looked extremely flummoxed by the move.

His thighs were warm. He smelled so good. God, he was handsome. What was she – Oh, yes.

"Perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked, and perfectly portioned for one person."

He stared at her for a bit, eyes glazed and face perfect, as he evaluated her statement.

"For one kitten, maybe."

"Here. Taste it." She pushed a spoonful into his mouth. "Delicious, isn't it?"

"It's... Okay." He chewed slowly.

"Okay?!"

"Yeah. Okay. Rice and veg. No big deal."

"You are always so wrong about everything."

"I prefer..." He hooked an arm around her waist to keep her steady and reached out to grab the box
of date wantons. "...these."

"Because they're sweet."

"Of course."

He bit into one, the delicate crunch punctuating his assertion. Hermione watched his mouth as his
teeth scraped his lower lip; a flash of white against pink.

"Someday you will be diabetic, terribly out of shape, and you'll lose all your teeth."

She couldn't look away from his mouth. He didn’t speak until he’d swallowed.

"I'll never be out of shape and my teeth are perfect."

"Sure, sure." She swiped her thumb along the dip under his lower lip.

Suddenly, he lunged, sinking his teeth - gently - into the side of her neck.

She squealed – "Draco!" – and felt him chuckle against her skin. He bit her again, just a touch
harder.

She set the rice on the table and pushed him back with her hands on his chest, trying to look stern
but she was helplessly giggling, and he grinned widely.
Her hands floated up to his shoulders along the sides of his neck, and into his hair. She carded her
fingers through his locks and his eyes closed. His right arm joined his left, circling her waist.

She carried on like that for some time, feeling his appreciative hum vibrate through her body and
soul. She loved his hair. Loved his voice. Just loved .
High on each side of his head, she gathered two tufts of hair and held them in place.

"What are you doing?"

His eyes had opened. Glazed liquid grey. She loved his eyes.

"No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns." Hermione regarded the
hair-horns speculatively. "But these look more like tiny, tufty little ponytails."

She looked back at him and his eyes had narrowed.

"Adorable," she added.

"Hands off my hair," he rumbled.

"No. I will write a play about you. Like this."

"How the fuck do you plan on writing while holding my hair?"

"Oh, you idiot. I mean you will be like this. Your hair. And you'll be tortured, mean, ambitious.
Like... Like... Faust and Scrooge in one. It shall be a dark and sorrowful play. Draco, The Dreary."

"And what purpose shall the ponytails serve?" he asked dryly.

"None at all. They'll just be."

"I see. A farcical touch. A bit of surrealism."

"Precisely."

"Absolutely masterful."

“Kafkaesque."

Finally, she let go, leaving his hair awfully rumpled and sticking up oddly. Her arms wound around
his neck and she smiled, looking into his eyes with a plea, hoping he understood that she was very,
very ready to be naked with him.

"You've made a mess of my hair, haven't you?" he muttered, voice low.

"Wouldn't be the first time," she whispered back, and wet her lips.

His eyes zoned in on the move.

"No," he agreed, "It wouldn't."

They came together simultaneously, meeting in a hard kiss that tore a whimper out of her.

He stroked down her hip and thigh, and back up, pushing up her dress and diligently sweeping his
palm over every inch of exposed skin. Then he slid an arm underneath her knees and stood, lifting
her up.

She dragged her mouth down his neck as he carried her across the hall. She wrote an H with her
tongue, pressed her teeth against the spot just under his ear. He hissed, pulled her closer to his chest
and tripped upon the solution to the Mystery of Hermione’s Disappearing Stiletto.

“Fuck!” he shouted as he staggered to remain upright, reeling, stumbling, pitching forward.

Hermione screamed and clawed at his shirt. He twisted so her head was tucked under his chin, then
there was a ringing THUD as his arm hit the footboard. They collapsed in a heap on her bed.

Hermione couldn’t breathe because he had landed on top of her. Once he’d rolled off her, she
couldn’t breathe because she was in hysterics. She turned to her side, clutching her stomach as she
guffawed. There were tears in her eyes. She was damn near convulsing.

She came to with heaving breaths, and checked on her companion —

He was sprawled most inelegantly, clutching his arm, and his face was screwed up with laughter
and pain.

“Fuck,” he gasped laughed choked groaned.

“Are – ah – are you hurt?”

“What do you think?”

She pulled in a few strong breaths before scrambling up and putting a leg over his hips, settling
astride him.

“Let me see,” she said, fumblingly unbuttoning his shirt.

She peeled it back as gently as she could. There was an angry red mark on his upper arm, visible
even in the relative darkness of the room. He sucked in a breath when she laid her hand on it.

“Shhh. Calmaro. Episkey. Placo.”

When she moved her hand the redness was gone. She stroked the spot a few more times, till the
unnatural heat dissipated.

“All right now?”

“Hmm.”

His thumbs drew circles just above her knees. Then slowly, his hands drifted up her thighs, with
strokes as gentle as hers had been.

His eyes shone like moons, his hair softly glowed. There was a beautiful openness in his
expression as he watched her, a small crooked smile playing around his mouth. The faint light that
came in from the wide open door brushed along his cheek in a way that reminded her of the
evening in the park.

It had been love then and it was love now. It would be love tomorrow, through each uncharted
layer, to whatever end.

He lifted one arm, stretched it towards her face… she bent till her face was nestled in his palm and
he could pull her mouth to his.
She kissed him with everything she had, with everything she thought she knew, with everything she
wanted to share. He wrapped his other arm tightly around her, pulling her flush against him before
rolling them over. He slipped off the bed to untie his boots; she propped herself up on her elbows
and waited for him to come back to her.

In one fluent move, he crawled up her body and kissed her. He hooked one of her legs over his hip
and pressed against her centre. She moaned and there was heat everywhere ——

It was among her most favourite places: Hareshaw Linn.

Water raced down thunderously. The rocks under her back were cold and hard, but the moss was
soft and exuded its gorgeous earthy scent. Draco was kissing her and kissing her bruisingly —
hands everywhere, on her breast, holding her leg in place —
He broke away to breathe – She opened her eyes and saw fern green and jade green and flickers of
deep olive green and emerald green —

“I am going to vanish your knickers now,” he said.

“You are not.”

“Says who?”

“Says I. I can bend people to my will, remember?”

“Because you have confundus eyes.”

“What? Well excuse me, Mr Mien of Persuasion!”

“Petrification via golden syrup and burnt butterscotch.”

“You called me Medusa, once.”

“Rightfully so.”

“You likened my hair to a clump of snakes”

“It can be, sometimes. But not often. On most days, it's the setaceous remnants of an over-
thickened Deflating Draught. But sometimes, you – Granger. Have I not told you what’ll happen if
you hit me? But sometimes, you are one diaphanous gown away from being a Botticellian muse.”

Kentish town to the Aussie coast. Do you like long walks on the beach? Seabreeze in her hair, on
the sand, half sunk a shattered visage lies. No one else around, not an animal, not a sound. It was
the edge of the earth.
“Did you hear about the Not-Little Prince’s journey through space?”

“How Not-Little is he?”

“Not little in the least. Big. Long. Girthy.”

“Away you three-inch – Ah no ha ha ha ha ha stop stop Draco ha ha ha I’m sorry!”

A murmur against her temple: “ The Not-Little Prince fell off the north star…”

A soft kiss on her lips: “And had the softest ever landing…”

Warm breath glided over her jaw: “He flew along the luminous oval arcs of Saturn's rings…”

A slow suck on the side of her neck: “And got caught in the eye of Jupiter’s storm…”

Finger and thumb traced her collar bones: “The razor’s edge…”

Tongue flicked into the hollow of her throat: “... And the nebula that formed where it fractured…”

Mouth mapped her torso: “Then he traversed the varied terrain of Venus… two gentle hills, a softly
shadowed valley between them, a smooth plane…”

Firm hands pulled her legs apart: “And at last, he reached…”

Reached where?

“Reached the blooming rose, of course.”

Hermione looked up at the turrets and spires of the place that had been her second home for —

Bertha Mason stared down from the dark tower. She lit a match. The flame burnt in her eyes and it
burnt everywhere. It was a blazing inferno swallowing everything. Fire, you fiend, it was fire and
so so so so hot —

Merlin, so hot and tight.

Burning hot and so good. So perfect, yes yes, just like that.

“God, Draco, you… you make me lose my mind —”

Hermione desperately needed to wee.

 Her face was smashed into a pillow, there was a hard shoulder jabbing uncomfortably into the side
of her breast. She was lying diagonally atop Draco, and they both were lying sideways across the
bed. On moving her legs, she discovered that everything down there was sticky.

Draco was out cold in a way she had never seen before. His mouth was slightly open, he was
actually snoring… very softly, but still. Snoring . How inexplicably precious. His trousers were
around his ankles; fetters made of cloth. Not wanting to disturb him, she vanished them – and his
pants – and giggled gleefully to herself.

After a few more charms, she slid off the bed and nearly toppled like a felled tree. Reality
whooshed around her, her whole body erupted in tremors.

Still drunk then.

In the hall, she slapped one arm over her eyes while waving the other about, noxing the hell out of
the place. She half ran to the bathroom

Had she blinked really slowly or fallen asleep right there on the loo?

She washed her hands with one eye open. Barely.

The walls led her back to the bedroom, where, free from restraints, Draco had turned to his side.
She lifted his arm and burrowed into his chest.

Chapter End Notes

1. “Out damned spot!”: Act V, Scene 1; Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

2. The Lair of Antanina Butkus (made up) is a nod to the very real Trakai Island Castle, on an
island in Lake Galvė, Lithuania. The Ziggurat of Ištaran (made up) is a nod to the Ziggurat of
Ur, from the Neo-Sumerian Empire, present-day Iraq. Ištaran was the Mesopotamian deity
associated with justice. The Vijay Mahal (made up) is a nod to The Lake Palace in Udaipur,
India. There was an actual battle at the foot of Mount Abu, called the Battle of Kayadara,
fought in 1178. The island of Panah is made up, but the Indus Valley Civilisation, of course,
was real. I’ve Nicolas Flamel-ed all of it. Because it's so much fun, Jan.
3. “I know simply that the sky…”: Summer In Algiers, by Albert Camus
4. All You Need Is Love by The Beatles
5. The film they watched was Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow
6. “No man means evil but the devil…”: Act V, Scene 2; The Merry Wives of Windsor, by
William Shakespeare
7. “On the sand, half sunk…”: Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ARTWORK:
Bitter Bloodletting, by softkombucha.
 Ninety-Seven
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

With two British Rail quality cheese and ham sandwiches in hand, Hermione relaxed her shoulders
and let the forceful wave of the floo carry her to shore. Cognisance stayed behind, floating in a box
of formaldehyde. The morning’s dose of revive potion was beginning to lose its effectiveness – she
could feel hints of a hangover.

Draco's bedroom door was wide open; the gaping, menacing opening of a dragon’s cave. Hermione
slipped in, and turned to close the door out of habit. When she turned back, Draco was standing
outside his slowly sealing wardrobe, with his wand pointed straight at her.

She raised her eyebrows.

“I am going to vanish every stitch of clothing you have on,” he said in what he imagined was a
portentous tone.

He seemed amusingly sure of that fact, so she told him, “No, you are not,” and sat on the edge of
his bed, unwrapping the sandwiches from purple serviettes. “You vanished my trousers, and I
vanished yours. We’re even, since you care a lot about that sort of thing.”

“We are not even,” he rumbled, “My trousers are worth a hundred of yours. So, tell me.”

She looked up. He took a few steps closer, aiming his wand at her trousers, then shirt, then open
robes.

“Where shall I start? I’m not picky.”

She looked away again.

“You are ridiculously picky. And you don’t want to start this game with me, Draco. You will lose.
Come eat your sandwich.”

No reaction. She checked her watch.

“Your portkey will activate in under forty minutes. You don’t have time for all this flimflam.”

Again, when she heard him shuffle, she looked up. Scowling with utmost petulance, he dragged
himself closer, to tower over her and look down his nose at her with perfect disdain.

“You’ll have to imperius me if you want me to eat that shitty sandwich. Was there nothing else you
could bring?”

“No!” she suddenly barked, temper snapping like an elastic band, “I picked up the first thing I got
my hands on! I didn’t have time to browse! I’ve been running around all morning, because the
potionware fraud case involves more people that we thought – a few cousins of Mundungus
Fletcher included – and I have to coordinate between the offices of four different barristers because
it’s just me today, since Kathy’s taken the day off because the REPTILEs are tomorrow, and
Takumi’s run off to Montrose to hunt for witnesses, and Barros is in a beastly mood because she
simply hates working with other people, and I just–”

Draco’s wand jumped up and vanished one of the sandwiches.

“What the hell!?” she rebuked.

He sauntered out of the room.

Before her long-distance cognition could digest any of that, he was back with a bowl of pasta salad.
He sat near her on the edge of the bed, showing off how replete it was with salmon, tomato, and
fresh rocket.

Hermione stared at the squishy-looking thing in her hand and — and it disappeared.

“You know how to conjure a fork, don’t you?” Draco asked acerbically.

She did know. She did do. There was enough in that bowl for one wizard and one kitten, after all.
To share. On Valentine’s Day. She shifted a bit closer to him.

He’d only lit the lamp on his desk, and it left a perfect yellow circle on the wall. All the curtains
were pulled back. Parky noontime light was a melange of Draco colours – grey and muted gold,
snow white, and a tinge of cold blue.

“I’ve been making my way through De Nullitate Magiae ,” she said, “And I can’t believe… it’s…
Draco, it’s what I’ve been looking for since I found out about the magical world. I’ve never
encountered such an intense meditation on the nature of magic. Why isn’t it required reading?”

Draco made a ‘it is what it is’ moue. “Would you care about the nature of magic if you thought that
nature is magic? That blood is magic – ostensibly – fraudulently . The air has magic. Magic is, and
that’s enough for those who come from it.”

“Science wouldn’t have got anywhere if people didn’t bother understanding the… well, nature of
nature as it were. How has nobody looked further into Mirabilis’ hypothesis that magic energy is a
combination of chemical, thermal, radiant, and elastic potential energy? He’s derived an actual
formula to determine how magic will interact with matter.”

“Maybe some Unspeakables are looking into it.”

“There was a book in the Hogwarts library about the healing rituals of the Ajwaka from South
Sudan, about the channelling of restorative energies – I’ll have to go back and find it, I should write
to McGonagall – but they aren’t they only ones, are they? The whole concept of channelling –
which is, of course, what we do with a wand as well – is taken for granted. I’ve always wondered
how separate and complex the magical system within us must be… like macroergic compounds, or
somesuch. As for the magic that exists outside, in nature…”

She petered out to breathe and eat. Draco picked up the thread –
“...Could be explored with the help of chemistry and atomic physics. With the insight of a botanist
too, I suppose, to study the inherent magical properties of plants, and – or how – certain
combinations bring out or even generate magical energy. But where will you find someone who’s
well-versed enough in those fields and knows and understands magic?”

She should have gone to uni for a B.Sc. and then to Friedberg to study theoretical magic, and gone
on to become an unspeakable who also worked to help elves, squibs, and muggleborns.

“We had a few books in the library at the Manor that took a deeper look into magic,” Draco went
on, “Though through a far darker lens than your delicate sensibilities may be comfortable with.”

“My sensibilities are made of far sterner stuff than yours.”

“Didn’t say I read them, did I?”

She swallowed her laugh with a mouthful of salad. “So they’re mouldering away in the Manor
now?”

“No. They are mouldering away in the Ministry’s depository.”

“How many books did they confiscate?”

“Nearly all. The few that remain are either here with me, or with my mother, or at my house at L'île
d'Émeraude.”

“L'île d'what?”

“A little hidden gem among the Channel Islands. My grandmother gifted it to me on my tenth
birthday.”

“You were gifted an island?” Hermione asked incredulously.

Draco was indifferent. “It’s small.”

She stowed that away for another time. At that moment, she was fascinated by the softness that
stole over him when he mentioned his grandmother for the second time in two days. He was gazing
into the bowl like it was a pensieve.

“Were you close with her? Your grandmother?”

“Yeah,” he replied almost like a sigh, “On the thirteenth of next month, it’ll be six years since she
passed.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged limply. “Dragon Pox is highly contagious and deadly. We were expecting it.”

He wouldn’t say more. He didn’t want to be asked to say more. Hermione, who’d eaten her fill,
banished her fork and stared blearily at a window sill, almost blindingly white on one side, and
purpled with shadows on the other.
After a beat or two, she said, “I hope you don’t mind if I keep the books for a bit longer. I haven’t
had much time to read, and I don’t want to speed through them.”

There was very little left in the bowl, but he dug around in it like he was looking for something. “I
wouldn’t expect even someone as incomprehensibly brilliant as you to be through with books like
those in a matter of days.”

She stared at him while he ate those last few bites. He did not appreciate it but she could not stop.
Once he had left with the bowl, she stared at the door.

A wheeling wave of dizziness came over her, with an odd feeling of calm, of ease , and she fell
backwards into his soft bed. Nothing had ever felt so comfortable.

He returned and sat right on the same spot, with his elbows on his knees. Hermione tilted her head
and stared at the curve of his back.

But she was unable to hold her head in that position for long.

“I’m tired,” she breathed, “I just want to sleep.”

“So sleep.”

“Can’t. I have to reprise my role as a human intra-departmental memo. And there’s a department
meeting later, and —” She gazed up at the tester. “Draco, light up the stars, please?”

He turned slightly, giving a few quick upward flicks with his wand, His scars lit up, and her feeling
of comfort deepened into something rich and profound. It permeated to the deepest darkest part of
her.

“There’s another meeting tomorrow, when Takumi comes back, to put the case together. I've to find
some time to discuss what Mr Weasley told me about facing the Wizengamot, with Ben and Bickie.
I got an owl from Hopkins this morning; the first batch of GAB’s are soaking in fixing draughts so
I’ve to stop by tomorrow after work to finalise the bindrune. He also told me that Healer
Smethwyck was thoroughly charmed by the dancing Veelas and has agreed to a limited trial run…
so now I have to muster the courage to ask Barros for permission to leave early on Thursday to
make it to the demonstration at Mungos.”

She breathed in and out slowly. She blinked even slower. Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.

“I hate Hopkins. He’s fixated on marketing. His product has got my stupid name on it, it’ll sell like
hotcakes, everyone will think it’s so… cool. But what if, after all this, GAB doesn’t make a
difference to Elves? I’ll… God. I’ll pitch myself off a building.”

Or she’d crawl back into his bed to die. It seemed like a nice place to breathe one’s last. Those soft
clouds of bright white sheets were a prelude to heaven… She would hear a fly buzz… And she
would go gentle into that good night.

“Your war still hasn’t ended, has it?” Draco remarked musingly. The light tone sat oddly over his
voice. “It’ll never end. You can say you don’t have to do everything, but you’ll still take on too
much. You’ll never be satisfied with sitting back and letting the Weasleys, Patils, Thomases, et
cetera work at their pace. You’ll want things done just right, to your impossible specifications.”

“Nonsense. I think they’re all doing wonderful work. I… I am the one who’s fallen behind.”

“How the fuck have you fallen behind? Ask the FSA, the Elf department, and your colleagues how
far behind you are. You’ve invented a new mode of communication and a magical laser.” He
paused to laugh scoffingly. “You need to actually stop in order to fall behind. But you? You don’t
relent for a second. You’re a universal constant, Granger. The earth's prograde motion. The Rock of
Gibraltar. You keep striving and striving and striving...”

And getting nowhere. Up the hill and back down again.

“Everyone is trying to better the world,” she muttered, “Even you. We’re all striving and striving.”

“But everyone else rests. They lose momentum. And they don’t think of that as a shortcoming, or
time lost. Even those other two wank— unremarkable members of your sacrosanct, golden trio–”

She didn’t have the energy to glare.

“Harry and Ron are aurors. That’s incontestably more gruelling and hands-on than what I do.”

But she knew what he meant. He looked over his shoulder briefly, to shoot her a scathing glance,
because he knew that she knew. There was a big difference between tending to bad branches and
tackling root rot.

She sighed.

“I know my life would’ve been much easier if I was simpler, and satisfied with putting out fires.”

“You’re going to be tired forever.” That odd, light tone settled over his inflection again. She
would’ve expected him to say something like that with an acidulous bite, but it came out almost
prosaically; like a casual observation during idle small talk. “You’ll be tired through every
thankless moment of your professional life. You’ll never be content.”

“I know.”

Thoughts formed at the back of her mind, and moved swiftly towards the forefront. Hermione
redirected them towards her mouth.

“Right after Voldemort fell… I mean, the very next day, I’d had a thought. …That the war was only
over once you'd survived its aftermath.”

“So your aftermath will never end?”

[The aftermath is a —]

“The aftermath is a layered thing.”

“How many layers does it have?”

“Too many.”

“And what’s behind the final layer? Utopia?”

“Doesn’t exist.”

The aftermath would stretch on forever, and she would be stuck fighting, fighting, fighting…

Hermione sat up, and twisted to the side so she was facing him. His elbows lifted off his knees as
he straightened and turned to her as well.

“Who wants to be content, Draco? Its sounds thoroughly staid, just a hair's breadth away from
complacent. I can be a perpetual malcontent and still be happy.”

She had no idea if that was true, and yet, bizarrely, she sounded so certain. He was frowning,
staring at her as he measured her certainty. She looked down at his mouth – how well she had
studied it, to know that he was about to give voice to something. She looked up at his eyes again
and found a startling overlay of gravitas. Her stomach swooped.

“You once told me that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” he said, low, grim, oddly accusatory,
“That maintaining inner peace is a balancing act.”

“Yes,” she agreed softly, “But I also said that work can –”

He wasn’t having it. “Where’s your balance, Granger?”

She didn’t know. Draco had stolen it. A legion of expectations had vanquished it. Blood supremacy
had shredded it. Bellatrix had battered it. Voldemort had murdered it. She’d never had it to begin
with. She’d been born without it.

That question was an uphill path, an exercise that demanded vigour and vitality, and a systematic
unpacking of burdens that she did not know how to let go of.

She had once unnerved him with her ruthlessly angelic look… maybe it would work again.

So she smiled, peeked up at him through her eyelashes, and said, “Last night was rather
restorative.”

He turned scarlet. As a pimpernel. As a fever. As a condemning letter ‘A’.

He immediately looked away, twisting his mouth downwards at the corners – an indication that he
was about to say something appallingly mean. His legs tensed like he was on his mark, ready to leg
it all the way to Dubingiai Lake, where he would drown himself.

Hermione closed her lips over the laugh that was threatening to burst out of her.

Admirably, he reigned in a lot of it. When his mouth opened, it wasn’t to spit vituperation. He
mumbled, “Do I want to know?”
She bit the insides of her cheeks for a few seconds. Even to her, the final hours of the night were
incohesive – but she did recall being spun. She recalled… yeesh… ponytails.

“You don’t remember anything?”

“I remember leaving the pub,” he replied gratingly with a clenched jaw, “And I think… there was a
restaurant…”

“Yes, we picked up some food. What do you think happened next?”

He didn’t like that question, and made it known by taking on the colouring of a cardinal’s ferraiolo.
“I assume we went back to your shoebox, shagged, and passed out.”

“Well, actually…” she said slowly, “We went back to the pub—”

(He stilled, bated breath and everything…)

“—and you climbed onto the bar and flashed your knick–”

“Shut your infernal gob!”

Laughter came hurtling out of her chest, loud and full, forcing her eyes shut with its verve. Reams
and reams of it came out, piling onto a conveyor belt, and it stemmed in fits and false starts, until at
last, a final tinkling chuckle marked the end. She opened her eyes.

Draco had reigned in most of his chagrin by then, and was sitting patiently with his arms elegantly
crossed on his lap, as though waiting for his bus to arrive.

“Finished?” he gibed.

“Quite,” she said, and nodded for good measure, “You were right. We went back to my lovely flat ,
ate, and… Yes.”

One eyebrow hitched up. “And it was… restorative?”

“Yeah. Well, yes. It always is. I mean… it feels very good, obviously, so… Obviously it…”

He was smirking. She’d let him turn the tables on her, the idiot that she was.

“Are you saying I need to regularly fuck you into a state of equilibrium?”

She choked on a laugh, flushing as he watched on with mounting amusement, because he was
completely and utterly irresistible when he was all lewd and ludic. She found herself leaning in
towards him.

“I’m afraid so.”

“What’s the dosage?”

Twice daily, for a lifetime.

But she only leaned in more. And he leaned in too. His eyes fell onto the collar of her shirt. Her
hand settled on his knee.
Suddenly, he lurched back. Huffed. Looked at his watch. Scowled.

“I’m sick of this fucking game.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“You are an evil, conniving, unrepentant cow.”

It was a simple reflex, to reach out to shove his shoulder. But he was so incredibly quick
sometimes. Before she knew it, her wrist was wrapped in an unyielding grip. She tried to make it
yield, and he pressed his thumb into the heel of her palm, locking it in place.

“Not this time, sorry.”

She wrinkled her nose at him but gave up the fight. His hand was warm. Her wrist was tired.

After a moment or so, he yielded on his own. His thumb slid up her thumb, and brushed against the
tip where there was a permanent indentation carved in by years of tightly gripping a quill. She
watched the journey in rapt fascination, marvelling at the way his hand swallowed hers.
His thumb moved back down, to the centre of her palm, and pressed the spot he had kissed two
nights ago.

She let out a quivering breath.

He moved diagonally downwards, stroking across her palm with even pressure.

How had she not realised how painfully cramped her hand was?

He repeated the motion over and over, gently massaging the muscle, coaxing it to relax. Her fingers
twitched in relief – it felt so good – and their skin, with each rub, intensified their shared pinkness.

Draco’s watch chimed. He let her hand drop.

She curled it into a loose fist as she watched him drape on his travelling cloak, collect his luggage,
and pick up his portkey – a spool of green and white ribbon.

“Block the floo before you leave,” he said.

“Of course. Enjoy your castles.”

The whole room blazed brilliantly as he vanished. Hermione fell into his bed again and closed her
eyes, waiting for flash blindness to run its course. Ease and comfort seeped back into her like a
satisfying stretch going shhhhh down her body.

The ghost of his touch lingered on her palm.

She felt… unshelled. It was a peculiar kind of susceptibility.

Draco saw the rift between the uncompromising clarity of her words, and the abstruse clutter of her
thoughts. He saw how deep that rift was, and that it was incrementally, steadily, widening. But he
also understood that all her growth – that corpse of hope – was a struggle to pull those two factions
together. He called it striving . He called her bloody-minded. (Yes, she was, rather.)

Not: Delusional. Not: Hypocritical. Not (the eternal thorn in her side): Idealistic.

That was because he understood how backbreaking it was to bridge seemingly insurmountable
gaps. He had his Before and his After; the Prodigal Son and the Reinvented Man, navigating the
clutter of his past and the clarity of his newfound beliefs —

Hermione’s watch chimed.

She stood up. She felt like sobbing.

“Silencio,” she whispered, “Nox.”

On Tuesday, the fifteenth of February, 2000, at nine-thirty in the morning, an envelope from the
Wizengamot Administration Services was delivered to Hermione’s desk via the Ministry’s internal
post.

The day had been off from the start. She had stepped out of a fireplace and immediately been
shoved to the side by a stray elbow, while the sound of someone shouting, “Step aside, please! Step
aside!” carried down the atrium.
She stood on her toes to peer over pushy-elbow-owner’s onerous shoulder, and saw a security
guard pace purposefully by, followed by five elves, each carrying more scrolls than they should.
The procession was rounded off by three strutting ICW officials, wearing badges that read
‘invigilator’.

Thanks to that parade, Barros, who had arrived uncommonly early, glared at Hermione for being
two minutes late.

Takumi’s train back to London had been delayed, so Hermione sat by herself handling work for
three, constantly referring to her notes because she didn’t remember a single thing from the day
before, besides the entr'acte in Draco’s bedroom.

And then the notice arrived. The supplicant Hermione Jean Granger was to get an audience with the
honourable Wizengamot on the twenty-fifth of February, 2000, at eleven-thirty a.m, in courtroom
twelve.
Twila Elliot had had to wait for months.

Clementia Shelbey was made to wait for years.

There were files rotting in old cabinets, that had been waiting their turn for decades.

Hermione Granger got a response in five working days, and was allotted a hearing date just ten
days away.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that elves had been waiting for centuries, she would have shredded the
parchment, put it back in the envelope and returned it to the sender.
Or, she would have failed to show up to the hearing.
Or, she would have shown up with an army of scorned and forgotten claimants, stormed the
Bastille, led an insurrection, felled the Ministry, and rebuilt the world from scratch.

If I may, said a Tiny Tartan-ish voice in her head, Perhaps we ought to focus on the ten days away
part.

The floodgates opened. Panic was a deluge. She had to voice out everything she wrote to force
herself to focus on the fatuous potionware shenanigans. Lunch took ten days to come around.

She burst into Ben’s office like a television copper – Get your trousers on, you’re nicked – but there
was only little Mit in the room.

“Hello!” Hermione greeted with maniacal enthusiasm, “How are you, Mit?”

“Mit is well,” said little Mit, “Mit is sharpening Bickie’s quills.”

“That’s lovely. Where are Bickie and Ben?”

“They is making senses,” Mit disclosed gravely.

“Making senses?”

“Yes. Senses. They is.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Mit.”

“They is going to houses to make senses. They is seeing House-Elves and writing names.”

Oh. Census. Sensational.

She mucked about on her way back down, kicking an imaginary pebble. She rolled it under her
shoe while eating lunch with Justin, who had a stack of ‘LUMPFEST 2000 – Come one, come all!’
flyers that he was throwing around at random.

She returned to an unempty office and, leaving a travel-weary Takumi to catch up with her notes,
went to stand in front of Madam Barros’ door with her fist raised in the standard position necessary
to perform the swift back-and-forth motion of knocking. She touched her knuckles to the wood, too
soft to make any sound.
It flew open, revealing Barros at her desk, looking up with the expected amount of irritation.

“What do you want?”

Hermione took a few steps in. The door slammed shut behind her.

“Good afternoon, Madam Barros. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“You are,” the woman sniped, “You read the bilge Finley’s team submitted, you know very well
that I have my hands full.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, I just–”

“What do you want?”

You, lying on a guillotine. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

“I got a letter from admin today.”

“I am a member of the honourable Wizengamot, Granger. You think I don’t know?”

Ask me where my balance is again, Draco. Go on.

The miserable old trout wrapped in layers of seafoam silk dismissed Hermione by dipping her quill
in an inkpot.

“Mr Weasley – Arthur Weasely, I mean – mentioned that you helped him quite a bit when he was
putting together his case for the Muggle Protection Act. I was hoping you could give me a few
pointers, too.”

“Please,” she added when Barros looked up irately.

“You wanted to submit it as an independent petitioner. Be independent.”

“But –”

“Arthur Weasley is not and has never been my employee, and I was not a member of the
Wizengamot when I aided him. You will already be looked at… in a certain light, because of your
position on my team, which is a fact that you are more than cognisant of, aren’t you, Hermione
Granger?”

Hermione Granger swallowed. Barros dipped her quill again.

“I have looked over your contract more times than I have wanted to. But at this stage, what you are
asking is akin to making an effort to influence a member of the Wizengamot.”

Good grief.

“Has Morita returned with a list of witnesses?” she asked while turning back to the sheafs on her
desk.

“Yes, Madam Barros,” Hermione said.

(The tonal undertow said, “You are detestable.” )

“Good. Send a reminder to everyone about the meeting at three.”

“Yes, Madam Barros.”

“Edwards will return to her desk tomorrow?”

“Yes, Madam Barros.”

“If we are able to finalise things today, and contingent on the fact that nothing goes terribly awry,
from tomorrow onwards, you may limit yourself to working half-days to prepare for your hearing.”

Hermione was stunned.

A razor sharp quill scratched across crisp parchment.

“I cannot thank–”

“Get back to work.”

The meeting at three dragged on for over two hours. Its impression was a smudged fingerprint.

The meeting at QQQ carried on for over two hours. A bindrune had been impressed onto the first
batch of GABs. An official registry had been ratified by the Ministry.

It was now nearing nine and Hermione was melting into a chair, while poking at a jacket potato that
she had picked up at Neil’s.

She hated her flat. It was a shoebox.

Later, she sent the same line to two separate ‘Gab-onyms’, as Hopkins had decided to call them.
Written, not verbal, because she didn’t feel like talking.

Theo’s response came first: Loud, exuberant, and congratulatory.

She thanked him and sat back, rubbing her eyes.

Draco’s voice sounded a bit afterwards, and she pretended he was sitting in his armchair.

“Are you in a panicked flap, or are you puffed up with indignation at the promptness of it all?”
Bit of both, she wrote back.

He had more questions, and she wished she hadn’t said anything at all, because she was coming
across as a monstrous bore, answering him in laconic, non-committal half-sentences.

She wanted to talk about anything else. She wanted him to tell her a bedtime story.

There was a pause.

He began telling her about the castle museum; an engrossing account of amber artefacts and the
drab bellends who had accompanied him on the tour.
Hermione listened and listened till he had to go to bed – it was near-midnight in Lithuania and he
had an early portkey to catch.

Her eyes were suddenly damp and she didn’t know why.

In the morning, there was something waiting for her –

Draco Malfoy: The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,

That ever Granger was born to set it right!

She pushed her face into the parchment and thought, nay, come, let's go together.

[Draco Malfoy: I’m going to transfigure Kenny into a saltbush seed and feed him to a wandering
wild ass that will travel across shifting sand dunes and shit him out in the middle of nowhere. In
that warm faecal womb, Kenny will sprout roots, grow into a small ugly shrub, forever stuck in this
blazing desert.

Draco Malfoy: I left the form on his desk, with a big fat red X where he had to sign. I took care of
everything, all he had to do was fucking sign. Useless cunt. Now we’re stuck in the British
consulate in Baghdad, not allowed to leave because he insulted the Iraqi official who had come to
help us. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
She asked where he was now. She asked if he was all right. She didn’t ask why he couldn’t skip
steps and transfigure Kenny directly into a shrub.

He didn’t respond.]

Half-days were for half-listening. Half-interactions during morning meetings. Half-advice, given
when solicited, went in one ear and out the other, (sorry, George). Half-days were all about half-
smiling at her colleagues when the clock struck noon, and breathing with half-relief on returning
home.

On the first half-day, she conjured a giant notice board in her study, right in front of the
bookshelves. A barricade before the story of her life in stories.

That’s not fucking life, is it?

No. She supposed it wasn’t. Not really.

That thing we call war wasn’t life.

Crazy little thing called war.

She pulled out parchments, papers, scraps, clippings, and notes from her binder, (and from her
drawers and from in between the books she had consulted), and began pinning them on the board.

Softly, to herself, she sang, “This thing called war, I just can't handle it. This thing called war, I
must get ‘round to it.”

Her voice quivered as she hopped from leg to the other, up and down the vast board – she swung,
she jived – she sang and she mapped out her argument.

At “Ready Freddie,” she fell silent.

[Draco Malfoy: Was forced to spend the night in a sodding chair in the consulate, wasn’t I? They
refused to have us at the Ziggurat. We’ve arrived at Panah now, and I’m going to fix Kenny to the
fin of the next ramora that shows up near the shore. With a permanent fucking sticking charm.

Draco Malfoy: Hotter than a salamander’s arsehole out here.]

On the second half-day, she was able to arrive at Mungo’s without needing to beg Barros for
permission.
They were in some kind of multipurpose hall on the lower ground floor, with a fairly sizable
audience in lime green robes. Hermione, garbed in formal dress robes with her hair pinned up, was
doing her bit as silent decoration. Hopkins, the showman, stood on a podium and conducted the
demonstration. Piper, Teels, and Hackett – still in white – gave the audience cues by clapping at
regular intervals.

In winding up, Hopkins tossed a quill in the air, and asked who among the audience would be
interested in ‘giving her a trial run’.

The first hand to shoot up into the air – and wave about enthusiastically – was Padma’s. Many
others followed.

They found each other a bit later, after the pageantry and hurly-burly had subsided. A GAB bobbed
merrily above Padma’s head. Together, they ventured into the courtyard, and settled on the same
bench as usual, with the same paper cups of coffee. It was wretchedly cold. The furthest thing from
a tropical island.

They watched the healers come and go, talking of mange and lumbago.

Some with clipboards, some with vials, some with floating quills and parchment.

(The quills were blue; dulled by the sunless day.)

“So we both have inventions of great significance in the market now,” Padma declared eventually.

Why wouldn’t she compare her life saving potion to Hermione’s fiddling little gizmo? That’s right.
Rub my face in it.

…Except it was Padma . Padma was not malicious.

Hermione forced herself to smile back.

“How’s the House-Elf campaign going?”

“I’ve got a hearing date.”

Padma reared back, mouth falling open in faux-affront. “And you kept that quiet?!”

“Just found out two days ago.”

“I’m finally getting into complex scanning spells next week,” Padma went on to reveal, “But even
they are so rudimentary. They can sense tissue damage, broken bones, blood where it shouldn’t be,
diseased organs… but nothing that will actually let me see what’s going on inside a body.”

“You need to channel those spells into an x-ray machine. Or… you need to be able to magically
manipulate magnetic fields and radio waves to get a resonance image,” Hermione weighed in half-
heartedly.

“Can that be done?”

She should have gone to uni for a B.Sc. and then to Friedberg to study theoretical magic, and
simultaneously completed a standard, five-year course in medicine, and gone on to become an
unspeakable who collaborated often with Mungo’s, and also worked to help elves, squibs, and
muggleborns.

“I suppose?” Hermione shrugged, “I figured out a spell for a basic, low power laser beam –”

“You just sit on things, don’t you?!”

“– book about magical particles that suggests we haven’t tapped the full potential of how they can
be channelled, so…”

“So presumably, it can be done.”

“Maybe.”

“And if anyone can figure it out, it’s us.”

Hermione huffed a laugh and shook her head.

“No. Just think.” Padma put down her cup and spread out her hands in front of her – envisioning a
hoarding or something. “Granger and Patil Make History! Develop first ever image of the magical
system of a human body!”

Hermione’s mouth turned up with genuine amusement. “Patil and Granger prove once and for all
that blood has absolutely nothing to do with magic.”

“Granger and Patil devise a brand new method of targeted healing, and look extremely fit while
doing it!”

That, at last, drew a full-toned chuckle out of her. She basked in that good humour, quietly, as a
gaggle of mediwizards approached the cart.

“Hey, is that Parvati?” Hermione piped up, spotting a flash of the woman – and a large bouquet of
dahlias – through the pillars that surrounded the courtyard.

“Probably.” Padma’s bombast was all gone. Hermione turned to her in surprise. “She comes to visit
Ethel Brown almost everyday.”

“Lavender’s mother?”

“Yeah. She tried to – She drank an entire vial of expired forgetfulness potion. It worked too well.
She’s in the Janus Thickey Ward now.”

“Oh my god.”

Padma made an odd little noise at the back of her throat. “It’s really sad. Mr Brown rarely visits.
And when he does, he just sits there and cries .”

When the mediwizards left, they got second cups of coffee. No more than two sips later, Padma’s
GAB glowed, and a joyless voice announced that Gerald Benson was having a seizure.
She was one with the thin mist within seconds.

[Draco Malfoy: Panic stations around here, over the rate of excise duty on margosa bark. It’s gone
on for bloody hours. If they don’t wrap it up in the next forty minutes, the palace will close and we
won't be able to go. I will offer Kenny as a human sacrifice to your doped up Occamy. Would you
like that, Granger? ]

Deep in Draco’s chair, she was an enthralled spectator and the notice board was putting up a
macabre production of a play she had never heard of.

Each hour or each day of each year of each century that elves had been enslaved turned into dead
weight and made home in her chest. She pulled up her knees to help her stay upright and tried to

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

[Draco Malfoy: Well. I suppose you’ll be pleased that the occamy didn’t get a chance to experience
the magnificence of my backside.

Draco Malfoy: They’ve laid out the grottiest buffet… Not that I expected any better from this
tumbledown doss-house. Fuck it, I’m heading out. I’m getting one decent meal out of this hellish
expedition — or die in the attempt.]

On the third half-day, she awoke from nightmares about bouquets and memories. White petals were
strewn around a bed of white clouds, and mum, pale white and still, lay upon it like Camille on Her
Deathbed.
Lifeless, glassy eyes flew open. Rattling and scratchy words emerged from her throat – clawing
their way out – bloodying her oesophagus —

“I remember, I remember… The house where I was born…”

Hermione threw on a coat over her pyjamas, rammed her feet into trainers, and raced downstairs.

The phone rang five times before it was answered.

“Hello?”

Hermione had to swallow three deep breaths before she could throw out a, “Mum.”

Mum was thrilled to hear from her. Mum let loose the usual barrage of quick-fire questions, and
Hermione responded with the usual cardboard-cutout platitudes. With her eyes closed. With her
back pressing into the corner of the box.

“I’ve told Vicky you’ll be bringing someone to the wedding, by the way.”

For fuck’s sake. “I haven’t asked anyone yet.”

“Hermione.”

“What?”

Mum let out an amused but frustrated sigh. “Bring Theo then.”

“Theo won’t be around.”

“Then bring Harry. Or better yet, bring Ginny. Maybe the horror will finally inspire your dad’s aunt
Beatrice to kick the bucket.”

Hermione forced out a laugh.

There was some commotion on the other end of the line. She heard mum say what is it, and dad’s
voice in the distance said, loudspeaker and hurry hurry – I’m doing it, Robert, hold on —

“Hi, dad,” Hermione said, and sank deeper into her corner.

“Dearest Boudica!” he exclaimed, “Battle on!”

“...Huh?”

“Sorry if you meant to break the news, sweetheart, but I just received a letter from Theo, and…
well, I’m a desperately proud dad, aren’t I?”

“What are you talking about?” mum demanded.

“Hermione’s petition got picked up! Isn’t that why you called?” dad carried on excitedly, “To give
us the happy tidings?”

Hermione, unfortunately, stumbled through an awkward, “Y–yes. Of–of course.”

There was a long silence.

“Really?” mum asked, in a horribly distant voice, “Is that why you said same old when I asked you
how work was?”
“I was going to tell you. Shortly.”

Another long, heavy silence. Then dad laughed bracingly.

“Well, anyhoo. Great stuff, my girl. Though I’m sure you’ve gone into mad preparation mode?
How does it work? What’s the process?”

She wanted to slam the receiver down and run.

“The Wizengamot has the petition and brief. I have to stand before them and present the case in
detail. Then they will vote.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? You are compelling and articulate – should be a doddle for you.”

“Hmm.”

Boudica was defeated, dad.

This little Hermione went to market, this little Hermione stayed home…

Dad laughed again. “Your mum and I are flying to Fiji tonight, for the weekend. The old
anniversary’s on Sunday.”

“Proto-proposal-versary,” Hermione muttered.

“Aha! Right you are!”

He dragged on the conversation for another ten minutes. Hermione didn’t hear mum’s voice again
till she said, “Bye”.

This little Hermione cried wee wee wee wee all the way home.

In the office, Michelangelo came and went, proclaiming, “Ancora imparo!”

She tried to get some input from Ben and Bickie, from Kathy and Takumi — what she got were
encouraging smiles, a vague reference to a case Kathy didn’t quite remember , and a long treatise
about the Goblin rights in Japan.

A little after noon, she carried a long yellow brick scroll from the study to the living room, and sat
at the dining table, facing the fireplace.

He wasn’t due to return till six-twenty – and even then, there was no guarantee that he would come
to her – but she couldn’t help herself, going as far as to order all his favourites from The Hungry
Zowou.
She thought his gabbings, (again, Hopkins’ idea), meant that he had her on his mind… or he knew
she was his best hope for an outlet for his frustration. It still meant he’d thought of her. Maybe he
was in need of some restoration.
The clock’s arm swung like Fred Trueman’s. Hours went by, and the weather swung, too. It rained,
sleeted, stopped, and rained again. Hermione wanted to put her all into what she was doing.
Hermione wanted to toss it aside and cut her chest open.

At six-thirty, the fire changed hue. The way she beamed when he came through it was disgraceful.
Like goddamn Penelope when Odysses revealed himself.

Homophrosyne, however, was lacking. While she all but gushed, “Welcome back!”, Draco made a
face of vehement displeasure.

“If Kenny had been the one I’d been charged to murder,” he raged harder than the tempest outside,
“The world would’ve been a very different place right now. Loathsome son of a motherfucker ate a
plate of fried prawns.”

Hermione put down her pen. “Okay?”

He threw his holdall onto a chair with ferocity. He unzipped it with aggression.

“He’s allergic. He was sick mid-portkey. All over my trousers, and — What are you looking for? I
obviously burnt that pair as soon as I could run into the nearest bathroom. These are conjured.” He
glowered down at the contents of his bag. “Someone has put a curse on my fucking trousers. I’m
losing them like a doomed bloodline loses sons.”

He pulled out a shirt, and then joggers — the latter got caught around the strap of his holdall and he
shook them free with such unhinged violence, that Hermione found herself dying to laugh. She
quickly hid her mouth behind her fist; if he saw, he’d positively explode.

Yet, as the circulatory nature of history proved, she was but a fool.

“Maybe you crossed a very powerful witch,” she decided to say.

The glare that he conferred upon her was indeed the sort you’d expect from legendary heroes of
grand, epic cycles.

“Your know-it-all status will be revoked if you don’t learn when to keep your blibbering mouth
shut.”

He was all bark, her Draco… but what a bark it was! Even when she was left in silence, his
resonance buzzed perpetually in her ears. Her ears would ring forever, she was sure. Chronic
tinnitus from Draco Malfoy.

How ridiculous that she had come to love even the difficult, churlish, irascible, inglorious parts of
him.
But there were days (and would be days) when she didn’t love them – when she bit back because
she was not all bark. He was learning to let her bite, sometimes.

The next thing to emerge from his holdall was a red paper bag. She smiled like a fool as she rose
from the table, and he, angry, agitated, and expectant, awaited her with his chin jutting out.

“This one’s from the museum gift shop,” he muttered, taking out a rectangular frame, but keeping it
faced away from her.

“Where Kenny toppled a pyramid of mugs.”

He affirmed that with a grunt, and handed the frame over.

At first, she thought it was an ink drawing or linocut of an ornamental tree with curling branches,
stylised leaves that twitched, fruit that shrunk and swelled, and flowers that bloomed and closed. At
the foot of the tree were, but of course, two cats, one black and one white, with spiky fur, enormous
eyes, and long whiskers.

Then she took a closer look.

“Is that paper?”

“Yeah,” Draco answered gruffly, “Lithuanian papercut art, or Karpiniai . It’s folded along the
middle before it’s cut, so you get a perfectly symmetrical image. Then it’s animated and it does
whatever the hell it wants.”

The black cat raced up the tree and settled on a branch. The white cat bristled. The spikes on its
back stood on end. Snowy followed Sooty up the tree, but Sooty leapt back down. Snowy followed
again, and the two ended up chasing each other round the tree…

Hermione made room between the Indonesian puppet and Chinese watercolour cat, and hung the
new addition between them.

“Perfect,” she murmured, rising to the balls of her feet, pulled up by some uncontrollable buoyancy,
“You really pick out the most –”

“Finding this one was dumb luck.”

She wheeled around and he was holding another rectangle, and again, it was turned away from her.

“While returning to Hotel Hellhole after dinner, I was kidnapped by a rabid pedlar. He was
relentless – I suppose he could tell I was a foreigner–”

“Really? How on earth did he guess?”

“He dragged me into a dingy alley, then into a slightly less dingy artist’s workshop, where a wizard
and two witches sat at floor desks, painting. The moment they saw me, they turned into rabid
pedlars too, and began pelting paintings at me – you see this, sir? You like it, sir? You like, you buy
– I’ve spent seven years living alongside the giant squid. They put its tentacles and suction cups to
shame.”
He broke off for a moment, impressing his scowl upon her.
“Anyhow. Here you go.”

It was a woodland scene, at sunrise or sunset. The sky was orange, dark grey clouds gathered at the
horizon, a river cut through the middle of the landscape, and around it was a gathering of five
women. Two sat by the river bed smoking a hookah. One was combing her long black hair. Two
were splashing about in the river.

“They make their own pigments by grinding stones and mixing them with water in clam shells,”
Draco divulged, “Their paint brushes are just about as thick and curved as your eyelashes.”

Not a single detail was left out. Each leaf on each tree, each blade of grass, each flowing wave,
each shadow under each bolder, each strand of hair on the women’s heads was marked with razor-
fine lines. Their clothes were covered with tiny patterns and their jewels shone with real gold.
The woman who had been combing her hair, began plaiting it. One of the smokers disappeared
behind the trees…

“Remarkable. Is there a story behind this? ……Draco?”

The room was empty.

She stuck her head out into the hall and heard water running in the bathroom.

The wall required a little more rearranging, so the painting could hang next to the illustration from
Inferno — because that’s what they had talked about when they had surveyed a wood such as this,
belonging to five women such as these.

She stepped back, staring at the sprawl on her wall with a strange sense of unreality. Here again,
Draco had, inadvertently, given her something she had been craving — real, visual proof of
development.

There were more things in the red paper bag, as well. A box of diamond shaped sweets covered in
silver foil, and a sack of potion-grade Baltic amber.

Before she completely dissolved, she forced herself to move back to the table, and cleared the
clutter away. In its place, she arranged their dinner, as carefully as she’d arranged the wall, from
left to right, in order of what he’d probably reach for first.

His brow rose when he returned, scrubbed and undone – at home, she thought, and quickly looked
away.

“I can’t believe how far my little gallery has come,” she mumbled, “Thank you.”

He exhaled in a certain way: An esoteric acknowledgement of gratitude.

For a while there were only knives and forks against plates, cartons being picked up and put down.
Draco was still very evidently disgruntled. Dare she say, even melancholy.

“Lumpfest is happening tomorrow — Yes, your expression betrays your feelings about the name,
no need to verbalise them. I’m planning to go around four. Would you like to come?”

“Can’t.” He was unable to rub the distaste from his expression. “Tomorrow’s Alexandria
Greengrass’ birthday, and she’s throwing the usual overblown tea party. My mother will be
attending and she has expressed a desire to...” (distaste redoubled,) “Talk.”

This little Hermione had stir-fried beef.

She chewed slowly and wound herself down. It wouldn’t be fair to keep flaring up everytime he
mentioned his mother.

“Will she stay with you?” …What a stupid question.

Draco frowned at her over a slightly drawn out rumination of his own.

“No. She’ll arrive around eleven tomorrow, we’ll… talk . Over tea. Then we’ll go to the Greengrass
estate and have more tea. She’ll take a portkey back to Brittany after the bash has been bashed.”

“Oh. All right.”

He performed a quick swerve, like he did better than most while flying. Twenty questions about
Hermione’s progress, of which there had been very little. She suddenly couldn’t speak full
sentences, couldn’t even look at him. But she felt him watching her closely all the while.

That round agitated her to such a degree that, once food was cleared up, she confessed a desire to
finish what she had been working on. He asked her to recommend something to read that “won’t
chuck me into a philosophical quandary, for Merlin’s sake.” She told him to find The Importance of
Being Earnest and Other Plays, and picked up her pen after he’d strode out the room.

A loud snap-and-fizzle startled Hermione. A piece of wood had split and released steam into the
fire.

Hours had passed. Her neck hurt, her eyes felt very dry, and beneath her pen a skeleton had taken
shape, with all the necessary bare-bones. It was disconcerting to realise that she had been focused
and consumed enough to accomplish that. Still anxious, oh definitely, but also enlivened… like
when she was working on crisis aid, and Draco had been sitting on his chair, reading Asterix
comics —

Tonight, he wasn’t on his chair. He was draped across the sofa, head on one armrest, crossed ankles
and black-socked feet on the other. His brow was pinched together as he read, and it made her
smile to think that he saw himself and Theo in Algernon and Jack.

How many spoony little smiles was he going to force out of her in one night?

He brought out the ugliest shade of her anger, boiled her blood, set her stomach tumbling, made her
sweat and laugh and cry and… made her smile like so and…

...And he calmed her. Somehow. Inexplicably.

Window panes rattled as icy draughts slammed into them. The fire crackled again. He turned a
page.

Look up, Draco. Look around. This could be life.

She wanted him with a sudden, all-consuming desperation. Not wanting him like wanting him —
well, that too, but — she just wanted him, in any capacity, however he chose to be.

“I’m going to bed,” she announced, once she had rolled up the scroll and pushed back her chair.
Her hair kept him from seeing the arrant longing on her face while she walked across the room.

The bathroom light intensified the anaemic pallor spread from the bottoms of her eyes to her jaw.
She splashed several rounds of hot water on her face and brushed her teeth. Pulled her fingers
through her hair.

She ventured into the bedroom and found him stretched on his back, once more engrossed in
reading. Heartstrings trembled like reed stems… She plucked the book away and put it aside, and
before he could carp about it, she flopped onto her stomach and set her arms and chin on his firm
chest. He blinked down at her, a little baffled, as if he’d never before had a Hermione half on top of
him.

One long, deep, sweet breath fluffed up her soul – whatever that was.

“My parents will be having brunch at a Fijian resort about now. They’re celebrating their
anniversary.”

Draco scrutinised her arms, loosely crossed and wan against the forest green of his shirt, with a
cryptic eye. He made her want to scratch them.

“How many years has it been?” he asked stolidly.

“It isn’t their wedding anniversary. It’s…” She sighed. “Draco, my dad is an excruciatingly
sentimental man. And before you say anything about apples and trees, I’ll have you know, he’s far
far worse than anything you can charge me with.”

He shifted his gaze, not by much, to her chin.

“This particular anniversary is to celebrate the day he proposed that he would propose… someday
in the future. They were still in uni then, sharing a flat with three other people. He fashioned a ring
out of archwire, stole flowers from a private garden, recited his favourite poem, and told her his
intentions.”

Draco was finally looking at her head on, lips tightly pursed. She grinned.

“Knut for your thoughts?”

He shook his head.

“Would you like to hear the poem? It’s one of the most beautiful verses ever written.”

He shrugged. Her upper body moved in tandem with his.

Hermione averted her face, because there was no way she could get her tongue round those words
without giving everything away. She looked at the edge of the bed – an arctic horizon.

A glowing grey-silver slanted font took shape in her mind. She spoke the words as they formed:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

In the breath she held after finishing, there was a stifled kiss. In that breath was delusive strength…
which would have, could have looked him in the eye and let it all have been a plea and a confession
—

“Well that’s entrapment,” Draco announced.

“Ex–cuse me?”

His aspect was grave, with slightly hooded eyes.

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams? Your mother could hardly say no to that, could
she? Sorry young man, I’m going to stomp all over your dreams, cheerio? I think not.”

“She didn’t want to say no!”

“You can’t know that.”

She waited for an evil little smirk to make an appearance. It didn’t. He maintained perfect
seriousness.

“Why didn’t she say no the second or third time then?”

“There were…?”

“Yes, there were two other instances. They celebrate three anniversaries, it’s ridiculous, a bit
nauseating – But why didn’t she say no, huh? Why did she have a child with him and remains, to
this day, married to him?”

“She couldn’t leave once she’d had you.”

“Of course, she could’ve. Divorced couples share custody of their children all the time.”

“But their children aren’t you, Hermione Granger.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“At any given moment, there need be at least two sets of eyes and four capable hands to mind a
terror like you.”

She pressed her fingers into his ribs. “In that case, I better invite someone else into my bed,
posthaste, since I must be too much for your two hands.”

“Oh, I’m up for the challenge,” he interjected loftily, and gestured down his body with his chin,
“You can check.”

“But is just one enough to –”

“Granger, I have a poem for you.”

She didn’t know how exactly her face reacted to that, but something about it affected the tiniest
crack in his facade.

“I wrote it myself.”

“Is it called Granger is My Queen?”

He swatted her bum. She may have – kind of – squeaked.

“Do you want to hear it or not?”

“My breath is bated, can’t you tell?”

He pushed into her hair, raking the strands back slowly. He picked up one lock, smoothed it
between two fingers and then wound it around one. Her head got all muzzy and swimmy.

“Shall I compare thee to a stack of hay? Thou art more bristly and more intemperate –”

“You are a prat!”

At last, he grinned. So sudden, so bright, and so short-lived, that her pretence of annoyance
disintegrated. He tucked her hair behind her ear, and gave the lobe a tug before dropping his hand.

“All right, all right. Here’s the real one. Are you ready?”

She glower-smiled. It felt like the daftest look she had ever worn.

He cleared his throat pompously, and began, “Roses are red –”

“Oh, please don’t.”

Draco managed a glower-sans-smile, and stayed resolutely mute till she looked heavenwards and
muttered an apology for her rude interruption.

Then once more, he declaimed, “Roses are red, I’m hard as a rock; Do me a favour, and sit on my
cock.”

Hermione dropped her face, groaning into his chest as it shook with his laughter.

All put-on solemnity had left his demeanour by the time she had collected herself enough to look
up. His eyes danced with amusement – and something anticipatory – that made her heart skip a
beat.

“I have a poem for you, too,” she told him.

His grin stretched wider. “Of course you do.”

“Would you like to hear it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Have at it then.”

She cleared her throat, like he had, and said, “Roses are red –”

“Very original.”

She glared, like he had, until he sighed and rolled his wrist in a do go on gesture.

She cleared her throat again, just because, and continued, “Roses are red, my knickers are lace; If
you don’t mind, I’d rather sit on your face.”

He burst into laughter, with his head pressing back into the pillow and his eyes squeezing shut. It
filled the room, a warm, deep, and rich sound, and drove away all the demons, the ghosts, the
Spectres, and the nightmare venders…

Calm descended, delicate like a flush, wispy like backlit smoke.

He studied her for a moment – Tread softly, please tread softly —

“All right,” he said slowly, “Sit on my face.”

What?

But he truly was dead serious now.

She baulked. It wasn’t as though Draco was a stranger to that part of her; it was the fact that the
position was… domineering, overwhelming, smothering —

His fingers wormed under her chin and took hold of her jaw in a firm grip like a tight helmet strap.
He pulled her face to his and kissed her.

If the Mien of Persuasion was powerful, his Kiss of Coercion… was… it was… she moaned into
his mouth as it carried her away . He should’ve gone into law – though perhaps diplomacy wasn’t
a bad line either. His kiss was weaponised blandishment. He could win anyone over with it. But
that would mean he would be going around kissing all sorts — She bit him for making her think of
something so horrible.
He pulled back, just for a few seconds, to murmur, “Sit on my face, Granger,” and in those seconds,
his hunger and intensity sent lust blazing through her body.

“I – I’ve never –”

“Nor have I,” he said and quickly kissed her again.

He fiddled with the band of her shorts, pushing, but getting nowhere. She reached down to help,
lifted her hips, performed a series of bicycle movements to get them – and her knickers – off her
legs.
His fingers trailed down her bum. He would soon find out that she was as keyed up as he was.

More than. Frenzied, even.

They broke apart. He brought up wet fingers and sucked them into his mouth. Bloody hell, her
insides throbbed. She scrambled to her knees, shuffled closer and up –

He stopped her with a hand on her stomach. A tug on her shirt and the message was received, loud
and clear — but soft and muffled, when her head was swaddled in cloth and hair, was a murmur:
Want you naked for this.

She couldn’t believe she was doing this. His beautiful face… and she was about to straddle it…
while he watched her with not even a shard of patience… like he wanted absolutely nothing
more…

He took over the moment she was astride him; grabbed her hips and pulled her down.

A humble request that she not be held responsible for the sounds coming out of her. She gripped the
headboard so tight there was real danger of her bending the iron out of shape.

There was something about the angle, about the freedom to arch and rock against him…
And he knew so well by now, where exactly inside her to rub. She looked down and saw his eyes
blown wide between her thighs.

Her back arched like a cat’s. Pressure bore down on her from all over everywhere .

She slanted back just enough, and he flicked the tip of his tongue back and forth and back and forth
over just the spot .

She probably came dangerously close to clipping his nose with her knee as she crumpled and fell to
the side in a heap of ragged breaths and exposed nerves. Her vision was white and pulsing with
random colours. Yellow beak and livid claw. Draco came into existence in patches.

It was time to bring his poem to life, and she strove to turn it into an epic. She moved above him,
weaving towards ecstasy, but then stopped moving completely, undoing each stitch. He groaned
and lurched like he enjoyed it; he grimaced and dug his fingers into her like he didn’t.
But when he’d flipped them over, he continued the pursuit – fast, slow, stop – and finally pulled out
completely and dragged his mouth down to her chest.
(They could go together, to each of their irrecoverable childhood homes, and find a patch in the
corner of their childhood gardens. They could dig shallow graves with bare hands and jagged nails,
and put to rest their former childhood selves.)

He stood by the edge of the bed while she writhed on her back, with her legs straight up against his
body. He held her ankles, her feet were on his shoulders – fast, slow, stop – she clenched hard
around him, and he hissed.
She wanted to touch herself — No. Just the tits — He stared at her hands squeezing her own
breasts unblinkingly. The fluttering in her core was unendurable – Her feet achieved a pointe finer
than anything she had managed during ballet lessons — Now. Fuck. Touch yourself — She touched
herself, harder and rougher than she ever had before – fast, fast, fast, faster –

She twisted like a cloth being wrung when he pushed into her for the final time. Then she was
gone.

They lay across the bed, forming a forty-five degree angle; her on her back, him on his stomach,
the footboard’s shadow was a tattoo across his shoulders. Both were breathing loudly. The chime in
her balcony was going off, ting-a-ling-ting, sweet-sounding, silver-toned.

“What are these sheets made of – Hessian?” Draco maffled with his face pressed into the bedding.

“Cotton. Good old common cotton.” She lifted her arms, interlocked her fingers and pulled
upwards. Her shoulder blade popped. “Too rough for you, princess?”

He sat up indignantly. She smiled.

“No, actually,” he blustered, “I was thinking of you. It's a crime to subject such softness to these
sheets.”

It wasn’t the obvious disparagement that got to her. It was the way he touched her calves. Gently,
sweeping. It left marks on her soul – whatever that was.
She kicked his hand away and shifted to righten herself on the bed.

He scrambled up after her.

“...Such silken smoothness, such delicate muliebrity, second only to your temper…”

“Stop that at once.”

Hermione’s head had hardly hit the pillow when he was on top of her, too knackered to hold up all
his weight and she loved that. Warm skin, sweat drying coolly —

“Shall I compare thee to a glob of clay?”

“Why would you?!”

He laughed at her; a sleepy, stertorous chuckle. He lowered his face, she thought he was going to
kiss her — instead, he rubbed his scratchy day-end stubble against her cheek. She hid her smile
behind his shoulder.
Before going for a run, Hermione slipped a post-it in the book of plays.

I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

When she returned, he was in the living room, reading the papers, just one cup of tea on the table.

When she came out after a shower, she stood in her dressing gown and watched him melt into
flames, departing to face a day filled with tea, aspersions, and purebloods.

When it was later – after hours of packing flesh on bare bones – she got ready to spend the rest of
her day participating in a celebration of muggleborns.

Her ponytail looked like a stack of hay. She shook her head and watched it swing spiritlessly.
Maybe she should stick some sunglasses on it and call it art. Contemporary conceptual pop art:
Help, I have Cousin Itt growing out of my head. Maybe she could tint it purple and call it Monet’s
final haystack. At least then she’d be contributing in some way.

Hermione’s crack of apparition was one of many in that part of Darwen. The enchantments around
the warehouse had to have been extended for the day; not just for the racket, but because the
grounds outside were dotted with moving sculptures and floating spotlights. Eerie, spindly,
Giacometti-like figures roamed around offering their hands to guests. Solid, semi-abstract, Moore-
like sculptures sat on pedestals, performing an unsynchronised robotic dance.

She stepped inside the headquarters and the mural blew her away. Seeing it in progress had not
prepared her for how massive it looked completed, and it was entirely unmoving. In a room full of
animated art, its staticness was statement in itself.

There were so many people around that she knew, so she avoided everyone’s eyes. That tactic
worked well for some time, (she looked at still lifes that weren't still, at op art panels that made her
nauseous), until she was pulled into an enthusiastic hug, punctuated with a lively, “Mon ché-ree!”

The French air had done wonders for Eddie Stafford. No longer ragged, he was now artistically
frowsy, in a tweed peacoat. Silver hoops hung from his ears.
Next to him, was the most glamorous person Hermione had ever seen. A willowy figure wrapped in
a form-fitting gown, a face full of dramatic makeup, long auburn waves, and a faux-phoenix feather
fan clutched in an elegant hand.
“Hermione, this is Marie Mélusine. Killer Queen of Pah-ree,” Eddie said.

“Chut!” Marie chided in a voice like warm brandy, “Don’t listen to him. Never listen to such a
beautiful man. Beautiful man is a dangerous man, tu vois?”

Oui. Beautiful men were annihilatory.

The three chatted for a while, remarking on the display around them, until Eddie was called away
by a curator of some relevance.

He had once flippantly described his paintings as homoerotic male nudes … but they were not
remotely erotic, and nor were they nudes. These were paintings of naked men, men laid
unforgivingly bare in tense poses. They were shy and shrinking, vulnerable, and when they drew up
the courage to look at their viewers it was with an entreaty: This is me and everything I am. Please
accept me. Please forgive my flaws.
But they didn’t actually speak a word. They were all voiceless.

Hermione was completely riveted by one in particular – a thin man with long limbs, sitting on a
wooden chair. His hands rested on his knees, his eyes and head were lowered, dark hair fell down
his furrowed brow.

“C'est moi.”

Hermione started and looked over her shoulder in surprise. Marie smiled while coming to stand
next to her.

“When Eddie said to me, I want to paint you, I wore all my jewels and black satin dress.” Hands
rose to mime the shape of an hourglass figure. “I was to be his Madame X. But he said to me, no no
no no. Take it off, all off. I want to paint you . So here is shy and quiet Roland, décorateur at
Boulangerie Fantaisiste, little mouse of Paris.”

On hearing his name, Roland looked up. His eyes were filled with tears.

“It is a powerful thing,” Marie added, “To be seen.”

A wedge in her throat as she surveyed what remained. Dean’s pastels, not unlike the one he had
made for her, had foregrounds that were motionless and backgrounds that were dizzyingly in
motion. There was magical graffiti, vivid cityscapes, warped cubist portraits cruelly brought to life.
Wendy had displayed highly detailed engravings of surrealistic landscapes. There was a little girl in
one, dressed like a butterfly, and she beckoned Hermione to come closer.

“Do you want to see my world?” she whispered.

She began running through wild undergrowth, across melting mountains, trees with eyes instead of
leaves, right up to the edge of a cliff – from which she leapt right off.

Hermione gasped and took a step back. The girl exploded into a hundred stars.

(What if Hermione had leapt off Theo’s peak and broken up into a hundred bluebell flames? Who
would’ve felt sorry enough to let them scar their ceiling?)
Suddenly, unbearably claustrophobic, she made her way across the warehouse, pushing past people,
ignoring a few attempted helloes . She burst out into the enclosure like she’d broken through the
surface of still waters.

It was loud, it was lively. Hermione’s eyes went straight to the lead guitarist on stage, shredding a
Les Paul Cherry Sunburst – the same as dad’s – playing a tornado of melody. A huge throng had
gathered before the band, waving their arms, jumping on the spot, cheering them on. White light
flashed and flickered from the sides. The frontman tossed back his long red hair.

The dull mauve sky was full of darkened clouds.

Under it, were rows of lanterns and multicoloured bunting. Busy food stalls were packed along the
circumference of the enclosure, sizzling with smoke and a multitude of aromas. People were
clustered around the few tall tables beside the crowded bar. At least half a dozen photographers,
Bozo included, prowled the area. One of those vagabonds spotted Hermione and lifted his
instrument. She turned away.

She walked along the stalls, smiling a polite refusal when she was urged to stop. All the while,
dad’s voice said, sweet child of mine, sweet love of mine.
At one end, there was a booth selling muggle sweets. She paused by the queue, not meaning
anything by it, but the moment she was spotted, a path was cleared and she was guided to the front
by a sweep of awed hands. She winced and thanked them profusely, then went on to fill her bag
with one of everything, including the last box of Jaffa Cakes. Ron loved them – he used to devour
them every time mum sent some.

Where do we go now? Where do we go? She got a drink from the bar; a beer, because the proprietor
was no longer interested in making special drinks for her.

She found a spot by the edge, where she stood slowly drinking, occasionally saying, “Hello, yes I
am well,” and turning her face away every time a photographer showed up.

The band played tribute to the big hitters of Rock: They painted a red door black, doused her in a
purple haze, and left her comfortably numb.

There is no pain you are receding…

She watched the artists come and go, talking of Michaelangelo.

Dusk stretched, rolled around, and settled. Someone doubled the number of lamps.

Hermione only moved when she saw Harry and Ron.

She handed Ron the Jaffa Cakes like she was Ollivander giving him his first wand. He fought a
Hundred Years' War with himself, then yelled, “Thanks,” over an energetic drum solo.

Harry stuck his hands in his pockets and peered into the distance.
Ron, with his posture and upper lip terribly stiff, asked, “So, what’s there to eat? What’s good?”

“How hungry are you?” Hermione asked in return.

Harry snorted.

Seeing them together, photographers went ballistic and people kept trying to jump into the frame.
At some point, they got separated. Hermione escaped with a paper plate of chicken satay.

Not too long of a wander later, she ran into Twila. And Millicent Bulstrode.

Hermione mumbled non-words and kept her eyes glued on her plate. It took Twila much too long to
notice the tension.

“Right,” she said stutteringly, “You both must’ve been in the same year at school.”

“Twila,” said Millicent, “Be a dear and go away.”

Hermione looked up, infuriated.

“Granger and I must have words, and it will be much more uncomfortable if there is an audience.”

While poor Twila complied, Hermione simmered down and studied the most physically aggressive
of her childhood bullies. As a teenager, Millicent used to keep her hair hanging around her face.
Her back was always hunched, her shoulders curved.
But now, she stood straight and tall, claiming the space she was entitled to. Her red and white frock
fluttered around her legs. Hair was smartly pulled back.

“All right,” she said when it was just the two of them, “I apologised once, but you pretended not to
hear, so I shall do it again. I’m sorry for how I behaved when we were children. I had insecurities
aplenty, and you in particular set them off, so I punished you for it.”

Hermione inhaled slowly and decided that she’d let Millicent bury her former childhood self.

“And the way I see it,” Millicent carried on, “If you have forgiven Draco enough to rub shoulders
with him –”

“Oh, Hermione’s rubbing a lot more than shoulders with him!”

Padma – and Tracey – were there, out of the blue, and Hermione sneered at their grins.

Padma was most definitely malicious.

“Is that so?” Millicent remarked with wide eyes, “Crikey! Well done, old chap. I will make sure to
shake his hand the next time we meet.”

That jocund couple’s tittering was becoming irritatingly familiar to Hermione. It would become
even more familiar over the course of the subsequent interaction. It filled all the many, many
uncomfortable pauses.
Hermione cleared her throat. “Tracey… Millicent . Did either of you make an appearance at
Alexandria Greengrass’ party?”

“Why would I be invited?” Tracey asked titteringly.

“I ceased attending those things once Theodore stopped showing up,” Millicent revealed, “He’s the
only one who made them sufferable.”

Titters.

“So, uh,” Hermione faked a cough, “How’s, er, Lady Clementia Wigglesworth?”

Millicent fanned herself with her hand. “She’s pushing up the crocuses in our garden.”

Titters.

The band kicked off Born To Be Wild.

Hermione cleared her throat again. Someone was going to offer her Strepsils.

“So… Millicent. How did you end up donating an office to the FSA?”

Millicent fanned herself, and rolled her eyes heavily. “It was my aunt’s flat. I was her least
favourite niece. You see, Hermione , aunty used to call me ninety-five percent squib. It was her
little joke. Oh, Millicent is a monkey with a wand. Oh, Millicent, dumpy squibby-witch, why send
her to Hogwarts at all? Oh, let's make Millicent Filtch’s apprentice. When she was making her will,
she left me that flat; so that I may have somewhere to get older and fatter, she said.”

Then she turned to the non-existent fifth person in their group and gave them a look of haughty
condescension.

“Sorry, aunty, if your bones are rattling. I am dancing on your grave.”

Padma and Hermione exchanged a worried glance. Tracey smiled like such behaviour was on
brand.

Some time after, Hermione caught a flash of her own personal Bat-Signal: A look of distress on
Harry Potter’s face. She made her excuses and wrestled her way to him, through a swarm of
‘journalists’ and photographers.

She conjured a bubble shield that pushed everyone out.

“Thank you, god ,” Harry heaved, picking up a satay from her plate, “Fucking vultures. I’m giving
you full permission to encase every single journalist here in any receptacle of your choosing.”

“Your boss has already warned me that I’m on very thin ice, Harry. Your permission doesn’t mean
anything.”

The bubble intensified musical vibrations, like they were standing inside a bass drum.

“At least make sure Ron pulls tonight. I’ve had it with him moping around the house.”
“You’re overestimating what I’m capable of.”

“Never. Set his loins on fire or something”

“Where is Ron?”

“Helping George. Trick decks and colourful hankies are very much in demand. But tell me, what
the hell were you talking to Bulstrode about?”

When she told him, he laughed.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop being surprised by whose company I suddenly find you in. Unexpected
Slytherins, quidditch superstars…”

Bitterness swelled out of nowhere. Maybe if he paid attention — She laughed the thought off and
leant into his side, and told him about the hearing date. He pressed back affectionately and told her
she was going to do brilliantly.

“By the way, the Auror office just put in an order for twenty privacy-spell equipped G.A.B.s. How
come you never mentioned those?”

They fell into that comfortable, acceptable silence that they always shared, watching people come
and go, talking of… Who fucking cares?

She let Dean into the bubble for a while. He was off his face, and wearing a red scarf and a very
snazzy, black and gold hussar jacket. After that, she let in Parvati and Seamus followed her in and
out, and Justin after that…

The frontman breaking into a song about ‘Dancing with himself’ was cue for everyone to dance
together. Parvati was front and centre, looking as happy as she used to when dancing with Lavender
in their dorm. While Hermione watched from behind a book.

“If Ginny was here she’d make you dance.”

“How sad is it that I’d happily put up with that if it meant having her here?”

“I miss watching you dance. Especially that one-legged jig with the finger snapping–”

“ Oi! Not a word more.”

An unknown woman tugged Ron into the thick.

“You're welcome,” Hermione said promptly, and Harry playfully scoffed.

The evening dwindled into another bonfire.

Harry had been lured away with dandelion and burdock, and some business involving a Game Boy
and a ‘final boss that only the Chosen One could defeat.’ Hermione was back in the company of
Eddie and Marie, listening to stories about Magical Pah-ree.

She missed France. The mountains of Provence. The bread and cheese that mum used to cut into
thick slabs while humming a songless tune.

The band brought out acoustic guitars and a floor tom, and sang a song about there being No Rain.
Unnecessary provocation, Hermione thought, looking up at the heavy and rumbly night sky.

She lay in bed, listening to those same rumbles, thinking about Draco, and how his mother
‘obliterated his composure’. Once translated from the original Dracoish, it could very well mean
she makes me fucking sad.

It was late, he was probably asleep… but what if he couldn’t sleep?

She couldn’t stop wondering.

Through the floo she went, in too-long pyjamas, with smoke-scented hair.

It was dark in the sitting room, dark beyond it, but Draco stood, a strong silhouette framed in the
light at the end of the hall. She walked up to him charily. Both his hands were braced against the
doorframe like he was trying to block her from entering his room.

“Were you sleeping?” she whispered.

“No.”

He was angry. Thrumming with displeasure. She tried to look reassuring and sort of… tottered
closer, indicating that she’d like to pass.

“What do you want?” he asked sharply, “I’m fucking spent, Granger.”

“So am I.” She rubbed her fingers together, rocked on her feet twice, then held up the little plastic
bag she was carrying. “I brought you an assortment of muggle sweets.”

He looked at it crabbily. After several seconds, with besetting reluctance, he accepted the bag and
let her through.

She climbed into his bed, and her soul – whatever that was – shivered with delight. She pushed her
face into a pillow, dug her heels into the mattress, pulled the duvet up to her chin. The quality of the
silence was divine. The sheer, devastating comfort she felt… My sweet lord.

Draco fell into his side, untwisting a Cadbury flake from its wrapper. A glass of firewhisky hovered
next to him.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m surprised you were able to peel yourself away from Potter,” he said brusquely, and bit into the
chocolate in much the same way.

“A game boy stole him away,” she sighed.

She waited for him to angrily ask what a Game boy was but he — Wait.

“You were there?”

“Very briefly.” He scowled. “Macmillan and Corner pounced on me and wouldn’t shut up about
their dodgy betting pool for the next quidditch season, so I left.”

That would do it.

Hermione’s eyes fluttered shut and fluttered open. They fluttered upwards to watch him take a sip
of whisky.

“How… was the tea party?”

“I didn’t go.”

What…?

“Why not?”

“My words weren’t getting across to Mother, so I had to give a more obvious signalling.”

“It didn’t go well… with her?”

He tapped phantom piano keys on his duvet covered leg. His jaw moved from side to side.

“We had a delightful time. She warned me that if I kept carrying on in such a manner, there was
very real danger of my father disowning me, and cutting me off without a knut. The only way
forward is to clean up my act, get away from London, and to channel my youthful excesses into
something more productive, like tending to the Manor.”

“What are you going to do?” Hermione murmured.

His head whipped in her direction with an incredulous glare. “Fuck all?”

“Hmm?”

Eyes opened, eyes closed, eyes opened.

“He can’t actually empty my vault. He can’t touch what my grandparents left me, he can't take
away my island. He can’t touch this flat; it’s in Theo’s name. He can’t take away my job. The only
Malfoy things I possess are books – which are generally the last things on Father’s mind – and that
monstrous sigil pendant on a dog chain that I will never wear, so good fucking riddance to that. But
even if he could take all those things, it wouldn’t matter.”
“But… you –”

“Oh, of course. Almost forgot… I also have an empty wine bottle that belongs to him. I’ll be sure
to owl it over the very day he gets out of prison,” Draco spat.

Then he threw back his drink and picked up a book. A thick spiral bound one, with a sap green tab.

She slipped out one hand from under the covers, and gently brushed a finger over his arm.

“Are you okay?”

“Fantastic.”

“Do you want to talk about–”

“I want to talk about exactly none of it. The disenchantment is well and truly complete, all right?
There’s no need to harp on about it.”

“...‘kay.”

Eyes closed. They stayed closed. Stayed closed. She peeled them open.

His eyes were fixed on one spot in the book. His knuckles were white from the force of his grip.

“You’ve moved onto Biology. Interesting.”

Didn’t seem like he agreed.

“Have you read about the human body yet? All the systems… cardiovascular, circulatory–”

“About blood, you mean?” he snapped.

Hermione hated Narcissa Malfoy. Maybe even more than her husband, at that point.

“All of them, Draco. Nervous, digestive, et al. Muggles have invented the most complex cameras
that lets you take pictures of them… through skin, flesh, bones and all that. Padma and I were
wondering… if we could find a way to see our magical system. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

He didn’t seem to think so.

“We could scan the soul – whatever that is. See what it’s about… how it can be torn into little
pieces and stowed away… or damaged – ”

She was cut off by her own loud yawn. It forced her eyes shut. Open ‘em, open ‘em quick.

“Do you expect me to volunteer my damaged soul for your examination?”

“Your soul isn’t damaged,” she reprehended, “Maybe mine is, though. I caused someone’s life to…
poof .”
“It’s about intentions, Granger. Yours were not murderous.”

“You didn’t intend to kill, either.”

“I did intend to, just couldn’t stomach a hands-on approach. I also have a Dark Mark, which is most
certainly soul-scarring.”

“You didn’t intend to kill. You did what you intended to do. And you had a Dark Mark. It’s a Faint
Mark now.”

A looooong suffering sigh.

Her eyes closed. Closed tight. Never opening again.

“What are you reading about?”

“I am trying to read about the Cretaceous age.”

“Are you in awe of the titanosaur? — Have you read Scamander’s essays about Dragons and
dinosaurs? I have a few, I’ll give ‘m…

We should go to the Natural History Museum to see skeletons and fossils — Luna offered to take
me to their other more scary sanctuary in the summer… we could make a weekend out of it.

Museum on Saturday, sanctuary on Sunday.

– Then we can… Pub. Dinner — My shoebox.”

When sleep-blindness lifted, she saw the round collar of his t-shirt. No surprise that she had
voyaged to his side again, lying sandwiched between his arms. She couldn’t tell the time, but she
guessed that it was just before six – that’s when her body clock usually stirred her.

Inchmeal and extremely carefully, she reeled her head back a bit. Out cold, Draco was; flushed of
complexion, smooth of expression. If he were to wake up now, he would scowl at her for staring, as
though seeing her face first thing in the morning was the pits. He would issue nonsensical threats
involving pillow cases, and pull her against him, banishing her face to the land under his chin.

She wanted that raw nakedness of the unbroken morning; to see and be seen.
 Five days. Five days till she had to stand before the Wizengamot and convince them to let her
change the world.

…Five minutes.

Just… five more minutes. Only five…

She watched him sleep. Outside, it was pouring.

Chapter End Notes

1. “Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.”: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark
Twain
2. I heard a Fly buzz—when I died, by Emily Dickinson + Do not go gentle into that good
night, by Dylan Thomas
3. “Get your trousers on, you’re nicked”: Jack Regan. (Robert Granger is a huge Sweeney fan)
4. “The time is out of joint…”: Act 1, Scene V; Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
5. Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen
6. Camille sur son lit de mort, Claud Monet
7. I Remember, I Remember, by Thomas Hood
8. Can’t show you exactly what Draco’s gifts looked like in motion, but here are some
references: Lithuanian Papercut art with cats and Indian Miniature painting of women in a
forest
9. “Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths…”: He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, by W.B.
Yeats
10. “I think that life is…”: Lady Windermere's Fan, by Oscar Wilde
11. Portrait of Madame X, John Singer Sargent
12. Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses, Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones, Purple
Haze by Jimi Hendrix, Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd, Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf,
Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol, No Rain by Blind Melon
13. Dean’s look is a complete rip-off of Hendrix, and one photoshoot in particular, outside
Ringo Starr’s Montagu Square flat that he had rented for some time in the 60’s.
 Ninety-Eight
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The play's the thing —

Scene 1

Extreme alarum. A macabre production going on in the study. Enter HERMIONE.

She was an unskilled player putting on an extempore performance, pacing before the notice board
with operatic fervency.

Rainy Sunday contributed shadows, and a soundtrack of relentless turbulence.

By Monday afternoon, when the sun made a brief, coy cameo before sinking, Hermione had
finalised the opening act. By midnight, she was sitting on the floor, downstage left, by the foot of
Draco’s armchair, holding the first draft of her script.

On Tuesday morning, a Sinister Owl played an off the cuff role. It rapped at the window, hooted a
telestic riddle, relinquished a mysterious package, and flew away.

Dad had sent her his walkman, a very small set of headphones, a tiny microphone, and blank tapes.
There was a note — “Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”
Anne Sexton.
Mum used to say that to her before every stupid assembly, every ballet recital, every time she
struggled with homework…

[Aside: Hermione took inspiration from Victorian melodramas while lamenting the extent of her
parents’ thoughtfulness. She put her gratitude into inadequate words. The letter, a prop, was carried
off stage.]

Scene 2

Tuesday afternoon. Enter HERMIONE, through the floo.

A weak rivulet of sunlight dribbled through her living room windows. She sat where it puddled and
ate a caprese sandwich, which Draco had thrown at her while she’d been charging down the
Ministry’s atrium. She read through her script fifteen times.

It took hours of stumbling, stuttering, mispronunciations, tripped sentences, and missed words
before she had achieved a coherent recording of the rigmarole…

…Only for her to realise that she had the most hideously annoying voice that had ever besmirched
this cacophonous earth. Her voice was a tapeworm among longitudinal waves. It was no wonder
people tuned her out when she spoke. The way she enunciated ‘furthermore’ was – yeah, all right,
Severus – insufferable .

She suffered through it, many times, altering the script, replacing all the ‘furthermores’ with ‘and
additionally’.

By two at night, she had completed the fourth recording.

Scene 3

Wednesday, just after noon. The study. A blatant lack of flourish.

It was a miserably crisp and clear day, light was as sharp as the air was cold. It was a day for long
walks, misty exhales, and styrofoam cups of tea… with cold and sharp company.

Hermione remained trapped in her Theatre of Tribulations. The lonely Phantom in her opera.

Her head and shoulders were on Draco’s chair, her feet were on her chair, she was sagging like a
hammock between the two. Three scrolls lay on her stomach.
Her mind refused to settle. It was alive and leaping, like those dreadful tentacled things swimming
in the Department of Mysteries.

1 day, 23 hours, and 25 minutes till the hearing.

She forced herself to sit upright. The scrolls tumbled to the floor and she did not retrieve them, for
she had lost the name of action. If she switched on the lamp it could be a spotlight, and the time
would be ripe for a soliloquy.

But she had neither inspiration nor zeal.

She wiggled her fingers and a small bluebell flame ignited above her palm. She brought it as close
to her eye as possible and tried to discern all its colours, as she had done countless times before.
With her gaze unfocused, she could imagine she was looking at undulating waves – Mentone beach
by the bright afternoon light. Electric blue, cerulean blue, sky blue, aqua blue, little flecks of
peacock blue, fleeting hints of navy blue, bright threads of pure white…

That juxtaposition of cool colours and fire-heat was the basis of her fascination with the spell. Fire
with water colours. A contradiction in the palm of her hand.

The flame of life inside her was not blue. It was incendio.

Once upon a time, it had been a tame yellow flicker in her heart – energy source for the Rankine
cycle that kept her going. But sometime around the moment she embarked on the Elvish Enterprise
of great pith and moment… or around the moment she first experienced the kiss that remade her…
or the moment she wondered where she began and the blue butterfly ended… that small flicker had
turned into an inferno. She was a hollow trunk filled with nothing but red-hot fire.

All at once, she felt with decimating totality, every scalded organ, bones that were ash, and
blistering flesh. She shuddered as pain ripped through her body…

…And passed.

Soft you now.

Dive back into the blue you now.

Her bluebell flame was a passive flame. A hot star, but a cool fire. It could be shaped and
contained, but never touched.

She blew at it gently. It jumped, then flared brighter.

Her bluebell flame couldn’t even dream of causing damage like incendio, let alone fiendfyre or
Greek fire.

The other Hermione, the one from antiquity, had lived a lukewarm life after the big war, by Greek
Tragedy standards. That sounded just fine to her; a lukewarm, bluebell flame life.

Although, who was to say that even Hacuba or Medea lived as calamitously as the plays claimed?

Entire pantheons of regular magic folk had been romanticised — no, mythicised, mythologised —
and made into so much more than they really were.
What would Athena have thought about being deemed the cleverest? Powerful, vengeful – as
potent in the fields of war and knowledge, turning women into spiders, when actually she was a
witch. A woman. As obsessed with her owls as Umbridge was with her kittens. Ištaran was so dotty
about his pet snakes.
Merlin the Great was overly particular about food. He had a bad knee, but ignored it, because it
wasn’t a real problem till it prevented him from functioning.

Years from now, future generations will be reading about Horace Slughorn, god of crystallised
pineapple.
Her laugh swept over the bluebell flame and made it dance.

Another wiggle of her fingers and it ceased to be.

1 day, 22 hours, 40 minutes.

She wandered to the desk and took out her GAB from the drawer. She had it silenced, to avoid
disruptions, and wisely so. It was nearly filled with gabbings from Theo.

Having no desire to subject anyone – herself included to her voice – she responded with the quill.

I’m going round the twist and back again. So, all is as expected.

Theodore Nott: You’ll do brilliantly, buddy. Your rounding and twisting always pays off. And I will
see you in five days and we will eat an entire cake, just the two of us.

She smiled weakly and vacantly at his words for several minutes.

1 day, 22 hours, 33 minutes, and the spirit was still unwilling.

Scribo ad Draco Malfoy.

The quill twitched in her grip — I’m climbing up the walls , she wrote.

She stood by the window, forehead against cold glass… Afeard – two eyes winking ‘gainst the
sun… seeing the inferno inside her… Fiery gules and carbuncle red.

1 day, 22 hours, 45 minutes. Make haste, cankerblossom.

1 day, 20 hours, 50 minutes.

There was a carbuncle red flash from her desk. Hark! Scrolls found the floor again as she rushed to
see what it was.

Draco Malfoy: Come over .

It was well past lunch time. What did he mean, come over? Come over where?

Exit.
 Scene 4

Sitting room in Draco’s flat, off Diagon Alley. The room was luxuriously and blandly furnished.
DRACO stood near the floo in work robes, holding an attaché case. Enter HERMIONE.

She almost walked into him.

“What’s going on? Has something happened?” she asked, looking him over, taking in his attire, his
hair, and the room.

“No.”

She glanced at his attaché case. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“I left,” he replied carelessly, “Kenny’s still recovering from food poisoning, I had nothing to do.”

“I see?”

He looked her over, to repay the favour. She knew that she looked like she felt. Would that dissuade
him from asking her if she needed her equanimity restored?
Although, she didn’t think it was possible to restore it at that point of no return. Oh, fair Draco, in
thy Orisons be all my sins remember'd.

He said, “Wait here.”

Exit.

1 day, 20 hours, 45 minutes, and she had no idea what he was up to, no idea why she was waiting,
why she had come at all, why she was suddenly so burnt out when she didn’t ever get burnt out.

43 minutes.

A procession of owls flew past the large wall, carrying an enormous package between them. What
was in it? One that was a woman… but, rest her soul, she's dead.

40 minutes.

37 minutes.

Enter DRACO, dressed in a different coat, scarf instead of tie, and in his hands —

Something soft smacked into Hermione’s face. Her vision was blacked out and her olfactory system
received incomparable benisons. She reached up and pulled Draco’s jacket off her face; the black
one he’d worn when they’d walked through Wistman’s Wood.

“Put it on,” he commanded, and she did.

Deliciously warm and scented, like the sensation of waking up in his arms. She had to roll up the
sleeves to unearth her hands, and it took her three turns to do up the zip because she was so addled.

When she was done, he held out his hand.

He held out his hand like Orpheus, ready to lead her out of hell.

She stared at it, palm up and steady, and she reached out with her hand, palm down, to touch only
the tips of her fingers to the tips of his. Hers were cold and his were warm. Their nerve endings
found each other. She drew her fingers down his fingers, then down his palm, till they met his
wrist, and her palm was pressed against his palm. Both were warm. His fingers folded over the
back of her hand.

Exeunt.

Scene 5

A wood. Rooks made a racket, startled by the sound of apparition.

It was suddenly so much colder, brighter, crisper. Hermione’s breath left her lungs in a thick cloud.
The ground was hard; mud, ice, dry leaves, blanched shrubbery, clumps of moss, and sprinklings of
chalk formed an uneven patchwork. All around were slim, tall oaks with branches spread wildly,
darkly. A bramble of spokes laid over the pale blue sky. Rooks were circling above. The contrast
stung her eyes.

“Where are we?” she wondered.

“Gopher Wood,” Draco said, “Deep up the arse of Wiltshire. Come on, this way.”

He set off down a non-path, as surefooted as a mountain goat and simply the most resplendent thing
to have ever been among those ancient trees. They walked a short distance with the ground
crunching and twigs snapping under their shoes. He stayed a few steps in front of her, and not once
did he look back.

“I used to fly around here in the summers,” he said, “When the ground is covered with bluebells.”

Hermione stopped. Something fluttered through her bones. He kept going…

She shook her head, and resumed walking.

Their breaths escalated and swelled. They walked past sharp shadows, gnarled fallen branches,
chunks of flint, a flock of hawfinches…

“Here,” he said lowly, and turned suddenly to the left, to the mouth of a deep holloway.
The land on the side rose high, and the trees that flanked it seemed to curve inwards, forming a
chute; a tunnel to El Dorado.

Time had stopped. The world had shrunk to a single point. Towards that point they walked…

Just walked; now side by side.

She looked up at branches interlocking, like lovers tangling their fingers, and she rubbed her arms –
the softness of his jacket. The fire inside her mellowed. The knot in her chest loosened, slightly.

After some time, a shadow wobbled over her. There was a strange fluttering sound from above
and… a creaking…? A squeaky… cackle?

Hermione looked up again. And screamed.

A wickedly grinning pixie, the colour of overripe currents, hovered high above them, holding a
thumping giant log —

She was shoved to the side, and landed against the wall of earth at the edge of the sunken lane.
There was a THUD – she whipped around to see Draco flat on the ground, staring up in abject
terror —

“Reducto!” she yelled, aiming her wand at the log, and Stupefy! she thought, slashing her arm up
towards the pixie.

Timber turned into fine dust and rained down all over Draco. The pixie cartwheeled through the air
on its way down, out cold. It was a Six-Toed Cinnabar Pixie, native to the North Wessex Downs.
The little scrotes were meant to be rare.

Before it had even landed, Hermione’s attention was back on Draco.

He still hadn’t got up, he was absolutely coated in dust, and he was gaping at her with a kind of
wide-eyed, slack-mouth disbelief that went beyond shock, or dumbfoundment.

“Are you all right?” she asked. But even she couldn’t peel herself off the edge of the holloway yet.
Her legs were shaky.

He blinked his eyes a few times, bringing them back to their usual circumference.

“Did you just –” He exhaled hard. “Did you just cast two completely separate spells
simultaneously?”

Her feet skidded from under her, like the ground had begun to move. She twisted awkwardly,
clutching at turf and regaining her balance till she could finally stand on her own. Then she stared
down at her hands, one with wand, and one without.

“I suppose I did,” she breathed.

Christ, she really had. She’d created two completely separate channels of magic, using two
completely unalike incantations.
“How long have you been able to do that?”

He started to rise, awkwardly as well, like he’d just come to learn that he had very long legs.

“I didn’t know I could.”

They shared a flabbergasted look.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“No.”

Just like that, he was scowling, looking down at the unconscious pixie. Hermione raised an
unstable hand and levitated it out of the holloway.

“What are you doing? Banish that fucking runty little devil!”

“There’s no need. It’s been stunned.”

“Stunners can fade,” he berated.

“Not mine.”

He huffed hard with frustration.

And that was when the idiot finally decided to whip out his wand, to syphon the dust off his
precious personage. Anger bubbled up her skin. She stormed up to him and grabbed his sleeve.

“What is wrong with you?”

“What?” he barked. His face said, Are you mad?

“What’s the point of having quick reflexes if you freeze when there’s danger?

“I reacted before you!”

“Why didn’t you draw your wand?”

“I fucking fell!”

“Why didn’t you roll out of the way?! You just lay there and put your arm over your head like you
were expecting a light spot of rain, not falling lumber!”

He yanked his sleeve free from her grip and walked off in that slow, proud lope favoured by young
kings.

“I’m going to revive the pixie before we leave!” she shouted at his back.

“Don’t be stupid,” he called back, crossly.

“I will do it!”

“Then you’ll be behaving stupidly.”

 For several steps, she stewed, picturing him sprawled with limbs awkwardly bent, blood pooling
under his head.

Then the surroundings embraced her again. The scent of his jacket. She stole a glance in his
direction and saw blood pooling under the skin of his cheeks.

“Thank you for pushing me out of the way,” she mumbled.

“Hmpf,” he replied. His nostrils flared slightly.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

At first, she didn’t see so much as feel – delicately charged waves of magic shimmying through the
air. Draco stopped just when she saw the faintest gleam of a magical barrier.

“Go on,” he nodded.

She stepped through.

Wow.

There was so much about the magical world that she didn’t know. So much magical terrain she
hadn’t explored. So many magical secrets that hadn’t been whispered in her ear.
The world was so immensely vast.

“I found this place the summer before fifth year,” Draco said, coming to a stop beside her.

The first summer after Voldemort’s resurrection. Had he found it before or after he’d been
presented?

“It's incredible.”

Frigid February was no more – with a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino – There was instead, the
affluence of late April, the merriment of May.
The oaks were full of leaves of the freshest, newest, ripest green, breathing with the vitality of
spring. Their branches were threaded with invasive leadwort with its pretty white and blue flowers.
At the foot of the trees were the thickest bunches of iridescent flutterby bushes. The sides of the
holloway were carpeted with magical candentis moss, glowing blue, and unbelievably tall stalks of
moondew, glowing white, and fairy helmet mushrooms, glowing lilac. Nested among them were
glow worms, and clusters of lace-cap hydrangeas.

The place must come alive when the sun went down.
“It’s a Ministry protected fairy reserve, though for some reason their protection doesn’t include
wards that prevent young boys on brooms from flying right in. I reckon they’ve forgotten all about
it.”

Hermione tore her eyes away from the vista. “Fairy?”

He smiled and gestured for her to keep moving.

The lane began curving downwards rather steeply. She was so desperate to take in every inch of her
surroundings that she walked extra-slowly, almost sideways, with short criss-crossing steps. Above,
branches still met, but now full of leaves and blooms – lovers' heads resting against one another.
They formed a sieve-like canopy that finely strained the sunlight.

Bit by bit, the end of the path came into view. There stood one of the largest oaks she had ever
seen. It was dead, in a sense, long purged of leaves… but oh so full of life. It was riddled with
peepholes – tiny windows – covered from root to twig with leadword and moss, and teeming with
tiny flittering, flickering, chittering fairies. There was another barrier in front of the tree, one that
definitely could not be crossed, so Hermione went up as close as she could.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of orbs of varying sizes, moving in and out the tree,
settling on the moss and inside flowers.

And the light they emitted… it was…

“Why are they blue?”

“Their diet consists solely of what’s around them,” Draco replied.

A hollow trunk filled with little flames of blue.

Lay her i’ the earth;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May… bluebells… spring!

She turned around. A slightly maniacal laugh surged out of her.

He had conjured two high back armchairs, posed them at an angle between facing each other and
facing the tree. He was comfortably settled on one, and was pouring some steaming hot liquid from
a flask into two mugs floating in front of him.
She melted into the second chair, and when a mug floated towards her, she cupped it between two
cold hands.

Hot chocolate. The thick, aromatic kind that she’d once had in a small bistro in Marseille, en route
to the airport.

She leaned back, looked at the teeming tree, and felt wholly content.

“If you are going to talk – which you are, because you always do – I urge you to put up a sound-
containing shield. This is a delicate environment, and you have a tendency to blare.”

She glared at him with an exorbitant amount of affection. “I can be cognisant of my surroundings.”

Usually. More or less. Definitely not when he was around.

Her attempt at surreptitiously casting the spell was foiled when it reacted with the surrounding
magic, and crackled as it spread. Draco’s lips twitched behind his mug.

The sun had dipped lower in the sky. It was somewhere behind them, slithering around trees and
pushing their shadows towards the fairy-home.

“Would it be okay if I went over the major points of my argument? I am slightly unsure about the
sequence.”

He adjusted his position so he was settled against the corner of his chair, and properly facing her.
His chin lowered attentively.

She smiled the most silent smile that had ever been smiled, and she began.

Looking at him… occasionally at sparks of blue, and sometimes at the richness within her mug…
counteracted the arduousness of the endeavour. She spoke as slowly as the landscape requested, as
deliberately as her endeavour deserved, as honestly as her intentions were.

“Don’t bring up muggle laws,” was all he said after she was through.

She bristled and wilted at the same time.

“Whyever not?”

“No matter how enlightened an audience you may be facing, the general opinion that muggles are
at an inherent… er, disadvantage, and functioning at a diminished capacity, will be prevalent.
Citing their laws will be seen as a joke by some and perhaps even a mild insult by others.”

She bristled, only. “What do magical faculties have to do with basic civil liberties?”

“That’s the other thing,” he went on calmly, “You’ll have false equivalence thrown at you before
you can even get past point three. Muggle slavery involved humans.”

“And then I will ask them why they expect all beings to comply with human laws if they are not
afforded human rights .”

“You can ask them that without citing muggle laws.”

“I am muggleborn, and I will talk about my experiences.”

“You absolutely should. Everything you have seen and felt as a muggle born . Not a muggle. Start
here, Granger. Get past this hurdle first.”
She could hear the rooks again, loud, and another kind of bird, sweeter and further away.

Fairies began pulling away from their tree in small clusters, plucking moss, flowers, and
mushrooms from the surrounding area.

“What about the rest of it?” she asked mutteringly, “Is it acceptable?”

Tread softly, please —

“Unambiguous, impeccably researched, devastatingly earnest, and brimming with the customary –
fatiguing – Granger brand of perfectionism.”

Her shoulders relaxed. She smiled.

“And tell me honestly… will that make a difference? Will I get through to them?”

He spent some time measuring his response, between long draws from his mug.

“Shacklebolt is a reasonably fair chap, isn’t he? So is Ogden. Your boss, Macmillan, the two
Shafiqs, and Stokke will care to listen and vote accordingly. But the rest of the Wizengamot is a
gamut of wizened arsemongers. With them, you have to take the politics of it all into
consideration… and the fact is – Skeeter’s agenda notwithstanding – the public at the moment, does
not want to see Hermione Granger fail.”

Ugh. Her smile twisted. “Why else did you think I wanted to pack as much as I could into this
contract, Draco? I have the Head Auror looking after me, and the Minister himself making sure the
whole Goblin fiasco remains the Ministry’s best kept secret.”

“Actually, the Ministry’s best kept secret is an army of heliopaths.”

“I thought it was the Minister’s personal Umgubular Slashkilter.”

He snorted.

Their mugs got refilled. He stretched out his legs, straight and long.

The sun must’ve kissed the horizon, for the sky was blushing red. The ruddy glow turned
everything purple. The tops of mushrooms turned into mirrors.

“What else does the public want?”

She sounded like a child when she asked that. A little lost, and a little scared, and absolutely
desperate for an answer.
A small quaver of a reaction passed over his profile. But he kept gazing distantly at the fairies.
Hermione followed his line of sight, where the sparks of blue had gathered at the base of the tree
and were slowly circling it, moving gradually upwards in a spiral. It was some kind of perfectly
synchronised, ritualistic dance.
“How general or specific are we talking? The public at large – that institution of hive mindlessness
– or the people a few degrees closer? A girl like you is simply drowning in expectations, you
know?”

“How about you give me a happy medium,” she said dryly.

“All right,” he agreed cheerfully, “They want you to go at them, those evil-doers and adversaries,
vicous as Enyo, stomping those dainty feet and vanquishing all.”

“I couldn’t even get everyone to sign my petition.”

“Then they’ll expect a sleight of hand… a drop of compelling potion.”He did not have the decency
to face her displeasure. “There’s always your usual method of setting people on fi–”

“Not usual!” Damn it, she blared. “It’s not something I do! It’s just..”

(Just what?)

“People simply fall victim to the universe’s mechanism, set in place to ensure that anyone who
crosses you spontaneously combusts,” Draco helpfully supplied.

“If that were true you wouldn’t have lived beyond twelve.”

He grinned. “I’m immune.”

“Impossible.”

“The universe gets muddled up when faced with all this symmetrical perfection.”

He finally looked her way, to wave a hand over his face. She could not hold in her laugh.

There was an outbreak of squeaky chatter. The fairies separated into groups, so that they could
slowly circle around each branch of their tree.

The bits of sky visible between the lovers’ tresses were violet and pink. Draco looked so soft
among those colours. Dangerous, beautiful man.

He leaned over the arm of his chair with a smirk.

“I’m sure the general consensus, even among your nearest and dearest, is that within ten years,
Barros will be long forgotten, a vague smudge on the public’s collective memory. She’ll be sitting
in a shed somewhere, straws in her hair, crying … And the most feared legal team in the
department will be led by Madam Granger.”

(Ooh, she really liked the way he said that, with an emphasising arch of a single brow.)

“Ten years after that, Shacklebolt will have been banished to some remote corner of Plymouth,
playing gobstones by himself and talking to seagulls. The Ministry will have entered a new era of
tyrannical equality, fire-powered efficiency, and practical portkeys, led by Minister Granger.”
She pressed her mouth together, trying to look disapproving while she shook her head. She set
aside her empty mug, and leaned over the arm of her chair, too.

“Will you have finally managed to get rid of Kenny in those twenty years?”

“Give me some credit, Granger. He’ll be gone by the end of this year.”

“Oh really?”

“He makes me write his reports, remember? I have been making a steady shift from diplomacy to
complete honesty.”

“I’d like to read one of those.”

“I can show you the most recent one.”

“Please do.”

His plan of action was so similar to the method she’d used to get rid of Stamp. They could, him and
her, empty the Ministry of all its bad eggs.

She had been right – the place was coming alive as the day gradually darkened. Within half an hour
or so, they would be sitting in a terrarium packed with bioluminescent flora, fauna, and fungi.

Flutterby leaves were so much more animated in the wild. They jumped and quivered hypnotically,
and shifted their hues rapidly.

“Do you remember when we spoke about Theogony? About how common witches and wizards had
been deified by history?”

“Yeah.”

Pretty, pretty flutterbies.

Hermione swallowed thickly and asked Draco the question that she had been too unsure to ask back
then —

“Years and years from now, what will I be the goddess of?”

She heard him breathe in slowly, then exhale with a low, thoughtful hmmm .

After a few seconds, he said, “You will be the goddess of cleverness, of course. Of good deeds and
practicality. Scholarship. Bad wordplay. Determination and competitiveness. Endless ambitions and
the drive to fulfil them by any means necessary.”

Hermione’s heart sunk to her knee. She didn’t think she could have hated his answer more.

“Musty books and horrid hair,” she mumbled, staring at her knee.

“Books, yes. Hair, no.”

Even that didn’t help much. It was still a haystack, wasn’t it?

“I don’t feel deified,” she confessed quietly, “I feel caricaturised.”

“That’s exactly what deification is. It’s a culmination of shallow perceptions, mixed in with those
pesky expectations from before.”

She looked up. He was watching her with cool consideration.

That’s not what I had meant at all, she wanted to shout , I don’t care about shallow perceptions.
She wanted something different and something more – always wanting more – from him.

“Perceptions are stupid,” she said to him.

“Very.”

“How are you perceived?”

He shrugged like he didn’t care. “Reformed in inverted commas.”

“Perceptions are very stupid, and ignorant.”

The hour was creeping toward the beginning of nautical twilight. Their terrarium was pulsing with
life, and she would have happily ignored it all and just gazed at the way he looked at that moment.

“You are the god of terrible poetry, excellent music, expert whinging, and sharp edges. You… are
the god of surprises. Of startling thoughtfulness, unexpected levity, sudden grins, astonishing inner
strength, jarring profundity, and – and – symmetrical perfection.”

Oh god, what the hell, that took a fucking turn. And she said it all without a jot of irony. Her voice
had been gentle… a little grave…

He was just staring with no expression.

She felt like she was going to explode.

“I don’t want to be Minister,” she rushed out in terror.

He swallowed slowly, and said, placidly, “That’s for the best. They’ll never make a striver like you
Minister.”

“If – if they do, it’ll only be after they suck the striving spirit right out of me.”

She just couldn’t hold his stare anymore. She turned back to the fairies; their spiralling dance was
almost complete. They winked bright and blue around the higher branches.

“It’s impossible to stop you from striving, so you will never be Minister.”

“That’s fine,” she muttered, “I told you. I don’t want to be Minister.”

Hermione’s disquietude petered away again in the period of silence that followed. Her eyes closed.

“What do you want to do?”

She peeled back her eyelids and met that same daunting stare.

“I want to learn more about Magic. I want to make scanning machinery with Padma. I want to
further develop GAB, and make magical video cameras, and projecting pensieves. I want to
organise cultural and educational events with LUMP, and help the FSA expand beyond London. I
want to pave the way for elves to empower themselves, I want to set up an NGO that will take
proper care of protected areas like this, like Feldelm’s settlement, that the Ministry happily
neglects. I want to start an organisation that can neutralise decades of environmental damage.
Someday, I want to help improve the Hogwarts curriculum. I want to… do. I don’t want to
govern.”

A pause.

“This aftermath of yours is more layered than a trifle.”

She laughed loudly with surprise, bowing her head at him for that one. God of unexpected levity,
indeed…

And sudden grins, like the one he was wearing.

“I know it’s impossible,” she ceded.

“Is it?”

“You’re the one who told me I can’t do everything.”

He paused again for a moment, moving his jaw slightly to the side as he thought.

“It isn’t possible the way you want to go about it. You can’t tick them off one by one, once they’ve
been brought to perfect fruition, done and dusted, onto the next one. But if you let things be messy,
are willing to put things off time and time again, and learn to dabble , then…”

“...Then?”

“You performed two powerful, vastly different spells simultaneously , and one of those was
without a wand.”

"Not the same thing.”

He sighed heavily. Wearily.

“Merlin. If you would just stop fucking obsessing over how much you’re doing, and focus instead
on what you can do and are doing, I swear to you Granger, in time – and much sooner than you
think – you’ll surpass even your own alpine expectations.”

He had stolen her voice. She opened her mouth and nothing came out. She looked at him like
someone from Eddie’s paintings – naked, pleading —

Her voice came back with such force that she couldn’t reign it in. Words burst through like they’d
been catapulted out of her throat.

“I want to be able to brainstorm and talk everything out… with… you, while I do what I do and
what I can do.” She looked up at the sky. “Talking to you is… it… helps me. So much.”

She could feel the weight of his stare on every square inch of herself.

“That’s feasible,” he drawled slowly.

With their dance concluded, fairies had drifted away from their home and come out for a wander.
They hovered under branches and luminous flowers like little Draco-made stars.

Beyond those branches, in uneven patches of indigo —

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,

And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

“We should leave. I don’t fancy finding out what prowls around here after dark.”

She rose with great difficulty. Gravity was particularly compelling that evening.

Draco looked at his chair, pulled out his wand…

He looked at Hermione, suppressed a smirk, and walked away…

Leaving her laughing to herself while she evanesco’d both their chairs, and mugs.

She walked ploddingly. Reluctance, gravity, and the upward climb teamed up to emerge as a tough
opponent.

It was hard to comprehend the beauty around her. She felt her lungs inflate with the onrush of
scenery …
Draco walked a little ahead of her again – Orpheus leading her back to hell – if he looked back,
would she get to stay here forever?

She came to an abrupt halt.

And she slowly – oh so very slowly – rotated, taking in each layer of her surroundings.

The mossy ground pulsating with its blue luminescence, moondew stalks so aptly named, gleaming
purple mushrooms, and dazzling glow worms inching their way from one to the other. Flutterby
bushes glimmering blue, purple, turquoise, like neon lights. The Tree of Life in the distance would
put the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree to shame. In fact, any of the trees around her would – all
thick with glowing moss, adorned with lucent leadwort. Flitterbies darted amongst them, startling
flashes of brilliant orange.
And then the fairies – tiny twinkling bluebells – flying free, wild, and any which way.

Circle complete, she was once more facing Draco. He was standing sideways, hands behind his
back, staring up at the fairies. He stole some light from everything, a little bit of every hue, and
outdid them all. His skin was moondewy, his eyes were gleaming gunmetal, his hair and clothes
were so utterly, burningly blue —

He was her bluebell flame, come to life.

Climb onto my palm, my love. Let me discern all your colours.

Sensing her stare, he looked over. She smiled beamingly at him, helplessly and enormously,
uncaring that he would be able to see the moisture gathering in her overbright eyes.

He did not smile back. He just gave her a long look that was sober, stern, and perhaps a little
critical, until she thought her vibrating heart would tunnel straight through her back.

He turned around. Hermione leapt ahead, overtook him, and spun to walk backwards.

“I can’t believe this is real,” she effused, “It’s so bloody, bloody, jaw-droppingly incredible.”

Draco hummed half-heartedly.

He was looking straight ahead, like eyes on the prize , like he couldn’t wait to get away. Weirdo.

“You don’t agree?”

“It’s impressive enough.” A most cavalier admission. “I’ve just seen it plenty of times.”

“Oh, right.” She grinned. “Draco Malfoy tires easily of nature and beauty.”

He glanced down at her then, with a wry lift to his brow.

Did he remember that night in the alcove: The beautiful night whose beauty he would not admit to?
No, he was not sentimental enough to preserve their moments like flowers pressed between the
pages of a beloved book.

Just a step away from the barrier, Hermione took one last, greedy gander, breathed in the eternal
spring air, before backing into the wintery wood.

Dark. Silent.

“We can apparate from here itself,” Draco muttered while her eyes adjusted.

[But why? After all, Dante and Virgil —]

“Let’s walk for a bit? After all, Dante and Virgil had to pass through a dark wood before entering
hell.”

He let out a humourless chuckle, but agreed.

So they walked through the dark holloway, so eerie now. Lovers’ fingers had turned into demonic
talons. Random twigs snapping and sudden hoots from nearby owls intensified the frightfulness.
Hermione wasn’t frightened in the least.

By the gradual evening out of the slope, she could tell that they were close to where she had wanted
to reach. She stopped, and stopped him with the briefest brush against his arm.

“Ready for hell?” he asked tartly.

“As ready as I’ll be.”

They reached for each other’s hands at the same time. Once her fingers found his, (both equally
cold), she raised her chin and intoned one loud and clear, “Rennervate!”

There was an eruption of loud rustling.

Draco groaned, “You stubborn idiot.”

Hermione’s laugh got swallowed by the sound of their apparition.

They appeared in the study. She had only been in here once, fleetingly. The floor-to-ceiling
bookcases called out to her, promising weeks of diversion and fascination. A sliding noise from the
right was Draco pulling open the drawer of one of the two desks. He took out a scroll and brought it
to her.

“Kenny’s report for the Panah excursion.”

Hermione smiled and reached to take — She pulled back, and first took off his jacket. They
exchanged items, and she said, “Thank you.”

She held the scroll tightly as she watched him go.

“Draco,” she called when he’d reached the door.

He looked askance over his shoulder.

“Thank you.’

His brow unwrinkled and he gave her another long look.

“Thank you,” she said again, slightly softer.

He nodded once, and walked on.

Hermione took a breath, then began reading his report.

In no time, she was chuckling in disbelief. It had the same tone of profound fed-up-ness that his
gabbings reflected, but the way he wrote was so unlike himself. There was an artificial, overrefined
pomposity and an effusion of wordiness that she would never associate with Draco.
Making it seem like Kenny wrote about himself in third person was a stroke of genius.

She finished with a snigger at his line about intrepidly battering a prawn, and looked up to find him
standing at the door.

“This reads like a brilliant farcical travelogue. It should be published. I can’t decide if I’ve done the
world a favour or a great disservice by introducing you to Wodehouse.”

He smiled thinly. He looked very, very tired. Maybe it was the effect of Hermione’s hideously
annoying voice.

“Well,” she said, trying to lower the register as much as possible, “I should get back to it.”

“Yeah.”

She left the scroll on his desk and shuffled towards the doorway – towards him – stopping once she
reached.

He frowned exhaustedly; not severe enough to worry her, but present enough for her to want to rub
it away. Instead, she wrapped her hand around his forearm. The left forearm. Right where the mark
was.

And she gave it a little squeeze.

With every step she took towards the fireplace, she felt a weight drop on her from somewhere high
above.

Exit.

Scene 6

Ruins of an ancient amphitheatre. Enter HERMIONE, despondently, through the floo.

Her home looked alien to her. The godawful clutter she had left behind was like the ragged
topography of an unexplored planet.
At the same time, it was so nauseatingly, detestably familiar.

1 day, 16 hours, 35 minutes.

She marched back into the study, to take her place on stage. Scrolls were on the floor, and she
picked them up and scratched out all references to abolition acts and labour laws.

Here was her list of things to do after the Elf Contract was passed:

1. Open that long-neglected bottle of gin.

2. Get a haircut.
3. Go away for a weekend. A holiday somewhere new and beautiful, with Draco.

Scene 7

Is it still a living room if you are dead?

Hermione was dead. On the inside, obviously.

It was three a.m.

8 hours, 30 minutes, and 0 seconds to go.

The Spectre of Time was plodding around aimlessly.

What art thou that usurp'st this time of night —

Of day?

Horrid, ambiguous hour.

She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t even lie in bed.

She was sprawled out on the blue and white rug, surrounded by blue walls, listening to her own
voice speaking in Bellsybabble.

She felt like she was lying on an abyssal plain, with Sisyphus’ boulder on her chest.

8 hours, 29 minutes, and 59 seconds.

58 seconds.

57 seconds.
 56 seconds.

55 seconds.

Curtains.

Chapter End Notes

1. Bluebell flame in Hermione’s palm = Yorick’s skull. Kind… of. There are also various
references to the 2 B / 0 2 B soliloquy, and other lines from the play. (Furthermo – And
additionally, going back to the way Hermione was fixated on a line from Prufrock in the
previous chapter, here’s another line from that poem: “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was
meant to be.”) (It’s a one-woman show. She is Hamlet and Ophelia.)
(This whole chapter is Draco’s fault. Sending deeply relatable quotes to a frenzied, sensitive
mind is very irresponsible behaviour.)
2. Description of scene 4 (kind… of) mirrors the description of scene 1 of The Importance of
Being Earnest.
3. The Six-Toed Cinnabar Pixie is an attractive mixture of a Cornish Pixie, a tree frog, and a
common marmoset. Sweet dreams!
4. “With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino”: Act 5, Scene 3; As You Like It, William
Shakespeare
5. “Here come real stars to fill the upper skies…”: Fireflies in the Garden, by Robert Frost

Not the unofficial title of this chapter, but I had Portrait (Out of the Blue) by Enya playing on
repeat while fixing this blighter up.
 Ninety-Nine

I wanted to be a mother angry with her daughter. I wanted to focus on what ifs and worst case
scenarios, but all I could think was – now, there’s a woman!

Mother, where?

In the mirror she saw only a girl, a kid, swaddled in a fluffy dressing gown, with skin pink from hot
water but slowly blanching from burgeoning terror and apprehension. Her lips were chapped, her
eyes were too large for her pinched face, and reddened from lack of sleep. Damp strands of her hair
stuck to her neck, her cheeks, and her forehead.

Hermione was four-years-old, crying in bed because mum had scolded her for being ‘inexcusably
rude’ to mean cousin Charlotte.

Her tummy hurt from crying. It wasn’t fair. Charlotte was always rude, too, but aunt Vicky never
scolded her.

The door opened and mum came in, holding up an iced fairy cake with butterfly sprinkles.
Hermione watched her reproachfully as she set it on the bedside table and climbed into the little
bed.

She put Hermione on her lap. She said, “Don’t cry, darling child,” and wiped her cheeks and
kissed them too.

She stroked Hermione’s hair, then tugged one specially springy lock down over her brow.

“There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was
good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was…?”

“’Orrid,” Hermione sniffled.

Her chest was no longer a cavity. The adamantine mass that had been expanding and thickening
was now a part of her, a tumorous extension, a parasitic growth. It had tunnelled into her ribcage,
causing cracks and structural damage, and wrapped tight around her heart.

That poor, fatigued muscle could only beat in irregular palpitations.

And her lungs? Throttled.

Drowning on dry land, and all that.

She slipped on dad’s Genesis t-shirt, shrinking it further so it fit snugly against her body. Over that,
came mum’s navy blue blouse, an old pair of tights from Hogwarts’ days, and her grandmother’s
skirt. She clipped on the watch from Theo, the jade necklace from Harry, and quill earrings from
Ginny. She dried her hair — God, how her hands were shaking — and pulled it back with a delicate
clip that used to be a clunky wardrobe: McGonagall had called her technique exceptional that day.
Her robes, formal and freshly pressed, still somehow looked limp on the slope of her shoulders. She
tucked a handkerchief into her pocket, belonging to Ron, that he had given to her when she had
been crying in a corner of Grimmauld Place, the summer before fifth year.

The first ever thing that Draco had given her was a slice of raspberry and vanilla cake. It had been
close to eight months since, and in that time, she had amassed a small treasure of gifts.
Yet here she stood, with nothing of his that she could keep close to her skin like a talisman. Nothing
small or unassuming enough to be a little lucky charm hiding in her pocket. She would not risk
shrinking beautiful works of art, or delicate antique books.

Well, her poor, fatigued heart belonged to him. Hopefully it would suffice.

The study was the aftermath of a violent scream, immediately after the last echo had faded, and you
were left staring at empty air, panting, in utter disbelief that such a barbaric sound had originated
from your throat. There was turbulence, still, in the air that warbled over the wreckage of her week.

She collected her satchel, and her yellow brick scroll, and closed the door behind her.

The dining table was a small, remote railway station in the earliest hours of the morning; inert and
sparsely littered with disparate travellers. The Prophet remained unrolled, the latest FSA newsletter
was unopened, and a cup of tea, half consumed, sat cooling. There was a small bunch of pink
cyclamens, with a card attached that read, ‘Pob lwc! Love, Ginny,’ and a letter professing parental
pride and affection. A charmed parchment bore words of genial encouragement, from Theodore
Nott and Padma Patil.

She sat before that assortment and stared at her lap, where her hands were embroiled in a ferocious
tussle, like two wild animals. Right grabbed left, left grabbed right, right circled left and dug in its
claws…
Hermione was fourteen, glaring at Barty Crouch as he made a ruthless promise to punish Winky.

“M-m-master… M-m-master, p-p-please…” Winky was weeping, and when Crouch mentioned
clothes, she shrieked and threw herself at his feet.

“But she was frightened!” Hermione railed, “Your elf’s scared of heights, and those wizards in
masks were levitating people! You can’t blame her for wanting to get out of their way!”

Crouch kicked his shiny shoes free from Winky’s grasping hands with utmost disgust.

“I have no use for a house-elf who disobeys me,” he spat icily. “I have no use for a servant who
forgets what is due to her master, and to her master’s reputation.”

Winky sobbed and howled and begged and pleaded —

The Ministry was the big top of an otherworldly circus; stripes of purple and blue, bronze stars,
green flames. Its workers were characters from a painting by Brueghel. She moved between them
like the circus mouse, with her head down and her arms around her waist.

Neither Kathy nor Takumi bothered her with the potionware case, letting her remain quietly bent
over her scroll. At ten past eleven, when she got to her feet, Takumi warmly wished her the best,
and Kathy took both her hands in hers and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

She wobbled out of the office.

They were there in the corridor, because at the end of the day, when the eleventh hour struck, they
always showed up for her.

Hermione was sixteen, panicking over the eight-to-nine… or maybe ten… questions that she had
more certainly botched up in her Transfiguration OWL exam.

Harry was sitting next to her absently patting her back but not listening at all, an expert at zoning
out when Hermione was having one of her impassioned expressions of personality.
From the next chair, Ron, (who had a considerably harder time ignoring her), erupted, “How many
times do I have to tell you it's bad enough having to do them once –”

“I’m not asking you to participate, am I?” Hermione countered a bit hysterically, “I’m not making
you sit here, am I?”

Ron gave her a very dirty look. But he didn’t move.

“Alright?” Ron asked cautiously when they met in the middle.

She nodded. Then smiled weakly and shrugged. They’d know what that meant.

“You’re rather subdued,” Harry grinned, “What, the occasion and venue call for a bit of put-on
decorum?”

“Don’t see Malfoy here to wish you luck.”

“Ron,” Harry groaned.

“What? All I’m saying is if you’re dating someone, you ought to show up –”

“It’s the middle of the work day –”

“We’re here.”

“Could you just tell Hermione she’s going to do brilliantly, as planned?”

Ron scowled. “Of course she’ll do brilliantly. She’s Hermione.”

He turned to her then, suddenly, scowl melting away. “You’ve been working towards this since
fourth year, yeah? You’ll be great.”

“Absolutely,” Harry seconded.

They walked her to the lifts, and patted her on the back, once each, just before she stepped in. The
grille slid shut and she waved at them with a trembling hand as it began to descend.

It was funny. When she’d stood in that same lift, wearing someone else’s body, standing behind
Umbridge and heading towards the cruellest trials she’d ever witnessed, she might actually have
felt less petrified than she felt now.

But there was no way to know, really.

That was the cruellest characteristic of negative emotions – you kept forgetting their devastating
intensity. Every time they visited, they left you in shambles.
The lift stopped at the atrium, where all the other circus performers disembarked, and those that
were outside waiting, kept waiting, for they wanted to go up. She alone sank to level nine.

Sinking… Descending… And soon she’ll be climbing down a staircase…

She was tired of hellish metaphors.

The lift shuddered when it stopped and she shuddered harder. The grille rattled as it opened and her
bones rattled louder.

She stepped out into the long, bleak, Tartarean corridor, and leaning against its black-tiled wall was
Draco.

Her mouth fell open, expelling some kind of strange wheezing sound. He pushed away from the
wall and looked at her dubiously.

“Are you going to be sick?”

The grey tie he had on was so close to the shade of his eyes. He was too bright – unfairly, much too
bright – to exist in such darkness.
Her heart – his heart – pulsed. She closed her mouth and shook her head.

He tilted to the left, putting all his weight on one leg. “Come on then.”

Was he Charon now? No —

No more hellish metaphors. Hell was inside her. It went where she went.

Her lungs had fallen limp like wet plastic bags. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn't breathe at all.
She couldn’t breathe.

They reached the staircase, starting in shadows and disappearing into darker shadows.

She looked at him and he looked at her. He really, really had no business being so bright. She
tightened her throat, trying to force out some words, or even one word, while he blandly watched
her struggle. Watched her strive.

He took pity on her, after a couple of seconds.

“Let them have it, Granger,” he said.

That set off a spark in her larynx.

“I am terrified,” she rasped.

He smiled a small smile, an almost warm smile.

It was the Christmas smile. The tipsy smile. The smile that came with bad puns, or when she wore
a pretty dress.

“Let them have it anyway.”

Hermione was nineteen, sitting in the Hogwarts library with Draco and Padma, with four days for
the NEWTs to begin.

They were systematically solving past Arithmancy Papers, and correcting each other's work as they
went. Hermione got Padma’s, Padma got Draco’s, and Draco got Hermione’s.

“We’re definitely all getting O’s,” Padma announced with great surety.

“Hopefully,” Hermione mumbled.

There was a doodle of an owl at the bottom of her parchment. Small, angry-looking, with steam
coming out of its overly fluffy ears.

When she glowered at Draco, he said, “Yes. Exactly.”

Oh god, the owl doodle. She could have slipped that in her pocket. Or one of the many, many bits
of parchment with his writing on them. Or the little Pyxis, emptied of the baklava it used to
contain.

“Can I have something of yours?” she blurted.

“Something of mine?”

“It’s really stupid, I know, but…” She couldn’t breathe. “...I have something from everyone… on
me, right now. My parents, Harry and Ron, Theo and Ginny. I’d like something of yours too. If
that’s all right with you.”

She thought she might have annoyed him, from the look that flashed on his face. But that passed
very quickly, and then he was frowning and rummaging in his pockets.

Give me a kiss. Kiss me. Push me against the wall and give me the air from your lungs.

He dipped a hand inside his robes and she thought he was actually removing his tie — But he
slipped off a tie bar so slim and silver that it had melted into the fabric... except for a small stone at
the end that looked worryingly like musgravite.

He placed it on her palm and she closed her fingers over it.
She couldn’t breathe. The ominous staircase beckoned. She pushed her shaking fist into her pocket
and bit down hard on her lip.

“Pretend they’re me.”

She turned back to him, forcing her teeth to let up.

“All of them,” he continued, “All the Wizened-Bollocks. Pretend they’re me and that I’ve pissed
you off in some way. Your delivery is at its most forceful and efficacious when you’re cutting me
down to size.”

She laughed, expelling air that she could not afford to lose.

She gasped, trying to pull it back in.

“I’ll… I’ll see you after,” she said to him.

And began climbing down the stairs.

She didn’t look back to check if he was still standing there, because she could just see that
sequence ending with her at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck. Besides, she knew the
name of the game now, and it was, One Step At A Time.

She went slowly; a breath with each step, and a thought every third step.

(Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.)

Here was her list of things to do after the Elf Contract was passed…

(Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.)

4. Go away for a weekend. A holiday somewhere new and beautiful, with Draco.

(Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.)

3. Get a haircut.

(Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.)

2. Open that long-neglected bottle of gin.

(Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.)

1. Tell him.

(Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.)

She was almost sure he wouldn’t run away.

If… If he did, she was almost sure he would come back.

In time.

Breathe.

Aurors, hitwizards, bailiffs, barristers and their ilk moved between the doors of the corridor of
courtrooms. She bypassed them all without paying mind to any – save for the decorated, heavily
barred doors near the beginning, housing the exclusive room from where the members of the
Wizened-Bollocks floo’d in.

Courtroom twelve, the last among them, was tightly sealed. As she approached, two guards
scurried out of the hole where Stringer sat, minding the Ministry's loot.

She stood before the large, closed doors of courtroom twelve, and the raging inferno inside her
began taking shapes of savage beasts with yawning mouths, desperate to consume her from within.
Lions, dragons, crocodiles, snakes…

Hermione was eleven, standing before the huge, oak doors of Hogwarts Castle for the very first
time.

The ornate brass handles were glinting under the light of a single lamp. The night was dark and
cold, and Hermione’s knees kept knocking together. Her hair was full of ivy leaves, and her head
was buzzing with every spell that she had mugged up from every textbook that she had read.

Next to her, her new friend Neville was struggling to keep hold of Trevor. His teeth were chattering
rapidly, to the same beat as Hermione’s pulse.

“Everyone here?” Hagrid bellowed, “You there, still got yer toad?”

“Yes,” Neville squeaked.

Hagrid raised his gigantic fist and knocked three times on the castle door.

She raised a smaller, narrower, trembling fist – the bluebell veins sticking out, the almost
translucent web of membrane between her knuckles stretched taut —

Hermione knocked three times. The door creaked as it opened.

 Hundred
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Courtroom twelve was smaller than the others. Still shaped the same though, framed by the same
rows of benches, and sheathed in the same dark tiles. Everything ill-lit by doomy, dancing torches.

Habit tugged Hermione towards the side benches. The stable beat of her footfalls faltered. She felt
woozy and caught out as she forced herself to walk to the centre of the courtroom, where instead of
the usual chain-draped chair, there was a black lectern. Her poor, fatigued heart had swollen
somehow, its thin walls smacked painfully against the mass in her chest with every emphatic pump.
She was sweating.

And she was, save for a couple of guards, entirely alone in the courtroom.

She placed the yellow brick scroll on the lectern's sloping top and it unfurled on its own when she
willed it to. She clicked her heels together three times and thought, put your ear down close to your
soul and listen hard.

…Whatever that was. (There was no place like home anymore.)

Her hand rested limply on the dark wood, twitching because of how hard her pulse was beating.
Slowly, it slid upwards, like it had slid up Draco’s palm before he had closed his fingers around it
and whisked her away to a beautiful fairyland.
They’d be together somewhere just as beautiful, very soon. A place near a waterbody; she’d like to
sit by a river, or a lake with him again. His piano piece would play softy in the background while
they talked about… Oh, Mirabilis’ book. They hadn’t really discussed it properly, had they?

Fuck. Get your head down, stupid girl.

She closed her eyes, opened them, and she could not believe where she was standing. Her
surroundings didn’t make sense at all. All her instincts were exhorting her to flee.

The door opened and she jumped right out of her skin.

She looked over her shoulder and watched as a group of four, all wearing the leaf-brown robes of
the maintenance staff, entered the courtroom. Behind them came Ben. He smiled reassuringly, and
she… Well, in a technical sense, that upward movement of her mouth could be called a smile.
Except it wasn’t one at all. All five settled on the bench running along the right side of the
courtroom.

Another creak of a door – the one behind the high bench.

She experienced a godawful, stomach-churning swell of nausea, and felt for sure that she was going
to explode or implode or crumble or melt or simply vanish or turn into stone or

Percy marched in first, offering Hermione a curt nod. Of all the Weasleys to have with her on this
day, she had to get the unfriendliest one.

Her hands met with a soft clap, latching onto each other in a terrified embrace.

Then they streamed in, them of plum distinction, in a line, silent, heads held high, members of a
cult rearing to perform human sacrifice —

She was going to cry.

Her hands sprung apart; one dived into her pocket and grasped Draco’s tie bar.

Pretend they’re me.

Impossible. Nobody could be him, besides him. Certainly not any one of those Wizened-bollocks.

Why hadn’t she kissed him, once, quickly, for luck? They’d been alone in that corridor…

How she wished she had kissed him.

Someone coughed asthmatically. It was Elphias Doge, the most wizened of all bollocks, the
personification of spoilt milk. Of course the special advisor would show up, and in a towering
plum wizard’s hat with a huge white feather, no less.

We’re off to see the Wizened – The wonderful Wizened Bollock —

Sixteen of them. Fourteen members, (of whom she’d need to win the favour of at least eleven), one
Minister for Magic, and one Chief Bollock.

As they settled in place, they also stretched, expanded… A panel of Titans… They would break
through the ceiling…
While at the same time, Hermione was shrinking. An ant – No, ants could carry up to fifty times
their weight. Hermione shrunk into a flea – No, fleas could leap up to a hundred times their own
height. She shrunk into a mightless mite —

“Good morning, Ms Granger,” Kingsley called out, “Are you ready to begin?”

Hermione gave a final stroke to the gem on the tie bar, and pulled her hand out of her pocket.

“Yes, Minister,” she replied, and her voice surprised her.

It was clear and perfectly modulated. She sounded composed. (She had theme music and the
chimes of Big Ben playing in her head.)

“Very well,” Kingsly declared, “The Honourable Wizengamot, convened here on the twenty-fifth of
February, to consider a petition requesting the instatement of a formal work contract in place of
binding magic to recruit the services of House-Elves. Lead petitioner, Hermione Jean Granger.”
Percy’s quill was flying across his parchment as usual. There was a slight tremor of commotion as a
multitude of scrolls materialised midair and fell before each plum bollock.

“Provided by the lead petitioner Granger: Additional documents outlining the stipulations of said
contract, as well as a list of supporting petitioners.”

There was a flurry as those scrolls were unrolled and examined with looks of great interest, as if
they hadn’t already been owled to each of them the moment the hearing date had been set.
Hermione finally allowed herself to glance at her boss. She was sitting to the extreme left, second
to last, between Royston Ewart and Griselda Marchbanks. Even she was reading like she hadn’t
poked and prodded —

Doge wheezed again, and this time with an accompanying whistle. It set Hermione’s teeth on edge.
It made her irrationally angry. It made her want to hex him and get arrested. She would make sure
she got put into the cell opposite Lucius Malfoy’s, and she would perform all sorts of wandless
magic on him for everything he put Draco through —

Kingsley cleared his throat. The cartilage in her knees turned to rubber.

Yet it was Ogden who spoke, with a gentle smile:

“Will this be the first of many displays of intractability that we may expect from you, Ms
Granger?”

A volley of chuckles went rollicking down the bollocking bench. Doge laughed like a squealing
tap. Hermione dutifully tittered along, looking again, a tad desperately, at Barros, only to find the
opposite of comfort in a wide upward pull of lips that wasn’t really a smile.

“Well, let's have it,” Ogden said once the last of the chuckles had subsided, “Please highlight your
reasons for raising this petition.”

Hermione applied a bit of pseudo-occlumency, blocking the edges of her vision and thoughts.

She didn’t pretend they were him. She honed in on the wall behind them and pretended plum was
blue. She was sitting on a high back chair, spring was in the air, chocolate on her tongue.

The inexplicable clarity of greyness.

She spoke sweepingly about how it felt to be a muggleborn – one who’d once made the top of a list
of muggleborns to be slaughtered – standing before the stalwart keepers of justice. She had come,
not only to advocate for elves, but to honour the memory of the brave martyr Dobby —

“The Ministry of Magic, at Mr Harry Potter’s request, built a monument in Dobby’s honour, at the
site where he was buried,” Ogden interjected loftily.

Jolly grand of the Ministry, that. T’was heartening to see how the Wizarding world had come so far
in such a short time, working to afford proper rights to squibs and werewolves. Now, Hermione
believed, it was time to expand their scope to include Elves, who were, unquestionably, the most
subjugated of all.
She didn’t consult her scroll; she didn’t need to. And once she had reached the pith of the contract,
she found her hands flying up to gesture for emphasis, and her chin rose while she met their eyes,
one by one, from left to right.

The magic that bound elves to their masters and/or mistresses was morally unsound and
categorically dark, she said.

And additionally, a spell of such potency should by no means be freely permissible. Had it been
possible to cast such a spell on human beings, the ICW would have counted it among the
unforgivables. It extended a level of control that rivalled the imperius curse, allowed the infliction
of abuse akin to the cruciatus curse, and its hold persisted beyond death, demanding fealty from
generation after generation to generation after generation, reducing the worth of a living being to
that of property…

The contract was a simple, magically binding agreement that set out an Elf’s employment
conditions, put in place via a procedure no more complicated than paying a visit to the Office for
House-Elf Relocation for a one-time registration, and an annual renewal that could be done via
post.

The Elf’s duties and responsibilities were detailed in Annexe 1 of the provided documents, and
they were by no means exhaustive or inflexible. Its elements were negotiable, to best suit the needs
of the employer and Elf in question.

The Elf’s rights were enlisted in Annexe 2. They were to be provided a safe and secure working
environment and comfortable accommodation. They were to get an hour off for each meal of the
day. Employers were legally required to grant one entire day off per week, which could be allotted
according to their needs. The Elf would be afforded lesser working hours on public holidays, and
sickness absence or statutory family-related leave when required.

The contract barred any and all punitive measures in cases of contract breaches and/or
misdemeanours. Any instance of abuse or neglect against an Elf was a punishable offence – penalty
for the same were to be determined by the Honourable Wizengamot.

The contract included a disciplinary and grievance policy, which mandated that all such matters
must be dealt with solely by the Office for House-Elf Relocation, and consequences might range
from temporary suspension to dissolution of the agreement, wherein the Elf would be required to
attend a remedial program run by the Elf representative at the Office for House-Elf Relocation.

Except in the cases of abuse or neglect, an Elf may not, either during or any time after the term of
their employment, without the prior written approval of their employer, use Confidential
Information for their own benefit, or for the benefit of anyone else, or directly or indirectly disclose
Confidential Information to any person.

Employment can not be terminated without giving two week’s notice to the Office for House-Elf
Relocation. If the reasons for termination are not found to be satisfactory, the employer must
deposit a fee of fifty galleons, to cover the cost of accommodating the Elf till they secure new
employment.

At the end of it all, she clasped her hands behind her back and looked up at the centre of the bench.
Kingsley’s face was unreadable as he stared back. Ogden avoided her eyes completely, turning
instead towards the benches on the side.

Looking plainly and directly at the man, Ogden asked, “Benjamin Snelling, head of the Office for
House-Elf Relocation. Are you present?”

Ben stood up. “I am, Chief Warlock.”

[Draco would have looked him dead in the eye and said, no, I am absent.]

“I see you have extended your support to this initiative,” Ogden carried on, “You believe it has
merit?”

Ben replied unflinchingly, “I most certainly do.”

“And you are willing to put in the additional work necessary to see this contract in practice?”

“I am more than willing.”

“How long have you been in charge of your office, Mr Snelling?”

“Close to seven years.”

“And in those seven years of interacting with house-elves, do you believe them capable of adhering
to a contract without the force of binding magic? Will they even be able to understand what it
means?”

“House-Elves are remarkably intelligent,” Ben replied smoothly, “In fact, I have employed an Elf
as my personal assistant, and she has full rights as a worker. It has done nothing but foster a
friendly and productive work environ–.”

“Clutterbuck!” Ogden barked unceremoniously.

A maintenance worker jumped to his feet while Ben reeled back in confusion.

“Sir?” piped the avid Clutterbuck.

“Call upon some of the Ministry’s house-elves, will you?”

“Yes, Chief Warlock.” He cleared his throat loudly and called out, “Maffle. Deenie.”

Hermione’s desire to flee returned with a vengeance. She could feel Ben’s apprehension like a
stinging hex, but she couldn’t face him. She couldn’t fully face the elves either, when they popped
into existence.

“Elves!” Ogden commissioned, “Do you know who this is?”

He pointed at Hermione. Both elves peered at her. She tried to smile even as she suffered jarring
flashbacks of their last interaction.

Maffle said, “Hermione Granger,” with the same amount of detestation as back then.
“That is correct. Now, Ms Hermione Granger has a proposition for you house-elves. She would like
to set you free–”

Hermione’s eyes fell shut one nanosecond before hell broke loose.

They wailed. They howled expostulations. Like Winky before Crouch, they fell to the floor. No,
they begged, No, please Hermione Granger, don’t do this to us! Please, Hermione Granger —

“Enough!” Clutterbuck roared, “Stop that at once!”

They stopped at once. Looking like it was tearing them apart to do so.

“It won’t be… like that,” Hermione mumbled distraughtly, looking at a spot between the elves and
Ogden, “The contract is also binding and it simply takes the place of an extremely questionable
spell –”

“But one has to be undone to instate the other, does it not? Which means the elves must be given
clothes.”

That word had the desired effect. Hermione closed her eyes again, waiting till Clutterbuck yelled at
them to stop.

“Are these house-elves wrong for objecting, Ms Granger? Why don’t you tell them why they are
wrong, and why they must denounce their masters?”

The beginnings of a wail was quelled with one sharp look from Clutterbuck.

The horrified elves looked at her. Ben looked at her. The Wizened-Bollocks and the Maintenance
Muppets looked at her.

She was certain her chest was actually going to blow up this time. Till the very end, she had tried so
hard to not speak for the elves, and now here she was, put on the spot with nothing to say; nothing
substantial, nothing comforting…

But you’re so good at instilling hope in lost causes.

“The initial roll out simply involves… adhering to the clauses of the contract… without the
dissolution of any… other… er…”

“But you do intend to free elves in the future, don’t you, Ms Granger?”

More howling. Another command to make it cease.

“Leave,” Ogden said to the elves. Once they had gone, he turned to Hermione with a malicious
grin. “Your intractability seems misplaced. It clearly isn’t appreciated by those you are claiming to
champion.”

Where had the stammering peacekeeper from Draco’s trial gone? Where was the avuncular
interrogator from Twila’s hearing?
“I dare say, Rita Skeeter may have been right. We might have a rebellion on our hands if we
forcefully free all our elves. Won't that be a terrible inconvenience, Ms Granger, so soon after that
unfortunate Goblin situation?”

Such pointed enunciation. Hermione couldn’t believe this. Couldn’t believe anything. Which was
so unbelievably stupidly short-sighted of her.

“It… won’t… be… like… that. All that will happen… is that the elves will be employed… rather
than enslaved… ”

“I have a few questions about your stance on punishment.”

“...Yes?”

He peered at his scroll with overemphasised contempt. “You wish to bar any and all punitive
measures in cases of contract breaches and/or misdemeanours. You want house-elves to suffer no
consequences for their misdeeds?”

“If… you… would… refer… to… to… the disciplinary and… grievance… policy.” Stop. Breathe.
Okay, go on. “The Office for House-Elf Relocation will ensure that… the necessary action… is…
taken.”

“But that’s no fun , is it?” He shoved the scroll away, crossed his arms, and stuck his neck out like a
vulture. “It’s so much more satisfying to inflict punishment personally, don’t you agree, Ms
Granger?”

“I… categorically… do not.”

“Are you sure? Because I was warned by a very dear friend, that if we dared to criticise your
initiative, you would set us aflame!”

It was over. All the scummiest people still crawling around freely had come together to demolish
her.

“You certainly saw it fit to punish Mr Phaedrus Greengrass for his supposed misstep.”

“I… did… no such… thing.”

“I was told there was even a witness.”

A sideways glance down the bench. Hermione didn’t dare follow. She stared down at one corner of
the lectern while Barros’ voice, plain – almost bored – spoke out.

“Phaedrus’ lighter malfunctioned. I examined Ms Granger’s wand, and thoroughly checked to see
if she may have had a second wand on her person.”

“But, Elena,” Ogden crooned, “Don’t you think that the talented Ms Granger would be rather
proficient at wandless magic?”

Still utterly bored, Barros replied, “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t employ her for her magical skills.”
“Kingsley?” Ogden tried, “You fought alongside Ms Granger–”

“There was only one instance of that.” Kingsley reported monotonously, “And Ms Granger made
full use of her wand.”

Ogden turned to Hermione, a smile twisting up the corners of his mouth.

She was burning. God, it hurt. Hurt so much.

“Well, perhaps I ought to simply ask the young lady in question.”

“If I may interject!”

Every head in the room swung towards the small, most terribly wizened Griselda Marchbanks. She
spoke in a harsh rasp, as anyone deemed worthy of friendship by Augusta Longbottom ought to.

“I was under the impression we were tending to a petition hearing, not a criminal trial!”

“And of Hermione Granger, no less!” Doge chipped in wheezingly.

A murmur of agreement fluttered up, circled the room, and settled back into silence.

Ogden’s little laugh was much too whimsical. “No no, not a trial at all! I was merely interested in
Ms Granger’s aversion to dispensing punishment onto house-elves, while showing such readiness
to inflict her vengeance on human beings.”

Edwina Lumbard disguised a snigger as a cough.

“Is it not interesting, my confreres? Why, Mr Cormac McLaggen, keeper of the Wigtown
Wanderers, told me that he, too, was a victim of Ms Granger’s vengeful nature when he expressed
his reservations about the contract. Isn’t that right?”

It felt like flying on a thestral she couldn’t see, towards a danger she didn’t know. Words came out
like bubbles. Transparent, hollow, weightless, and fragile.

“Mr McLaggen didn’t… offer any feedback on… the contract. He… simply shouted at me… and
insulted my… friends.”

“I see. He behaved out of line, and you decided he needed to be punished?”

I didn’t do anything to him. Say that. Say it. Fucking hell, why couldn’t she say it?

“You are so concerned about the wellbeing of house-elves. It is admirable. Shows a great
magnanimity of spirit. But why is it that you don’t afford humans the same level of respect?”

She wanted Draco to burst into the courtroom, shouting false equivalence, glowering like he had
during his trial, before carrying her away.

Ogden, smiling his widest so far, glanced at his fellows on either side of the bench.
“All of us here were so tickled by the treatment Dolores Umbridge underwent thanks to–”

“Do not speak of that loathly woman!” Marchbanks voiced sharply.

“Oh my! As you wish, my dear Griselda. Then perhaps I may speak of Madam Mabella
Edgecombe, formerly of the Department of Magical Transportation? She was once one of the
Ministry’s most diligent workers, until she resigned in protest in 1996. Her daughter, Marietta, was
grossly disfigured as a result of a cursed piece of parchment that she was tricked into signing – I
believe you can better explain the circumstances of how that came about, Ms Granger?”

There was such a buzzing in her ears. It was fire and vacuum and smoke. She shook her head.

“Madam Edgecombe asked that there be a proper investigation into the matter. The poor
traumatised girl didn’t remember much. But Dumbledore insisted that you, Ms Granger, were
unable to appear before the Ministry.”

“I wasn’t… able.” Dead lustreless bubbles. “I was in the hospital wing… recovering from a curse
that I got hit with while fighting… fighting Death Eaters. Just one floor above.”

She looked up. The ceiling was so high, so far away. She exhaled, loud and quivering. Everybody
would have heard it, for they all had fallen silent.

Ogden bypassed the discomfort with effortless poise and a chortle. “Who’s to say how many others
have suffered the consequences of Ms Granger’s unchecked wrath? Elena, perhaps you should
amend our dear intractable petitioners contract, to ensure there aren’t any further instances of
impassioned vigilantism.”

“I say!”

There was a collective jump.

From two seats to the left of Ogden, Junaid Shafiq had spoken.

“I do not understand why this meeting’s agenda is not being adhered to. Kingsley?”

Kingsley cleared his throat. “Yes. Indeed. We have gone entirely off-track. I believe it’s high time
we voted.”

Ogden shrugged uncaringly, like he had done what he had set out too. “Those in favour of instating
a work contract for house-elves?” he asked facetiously.

The first hand to shoot up – with a rather lot of enthusiasm – was on the extreme right. Elphias
Doge. Next to him, Ernest Hawkworth raised his hand too. And so did Brunhilde Stokke and Gavin
Lamont. Then, a string of no’s; Edwina Lumbard and Gallus Burke were not surprising. Basil
Macmillan shouldn’t have been either – theirs was a family of toerags. Junaid Shafiq and Zoya
Shafiq voted yes. Theobald MacDougal, Berniece Cecil, Griselda Marchbanks, Elena Barros – in
favour. Finally, just one person short of the total number needed, it ended with Royston Ewart’s
unraised hand.
Not that he mattered anyway, for both the Supreme Warlock and Minister for Magic kept their
hands lowered.

“Motion denied!” Ogden cheered. He looked to either side zestfully, at faces that were mostly stony
or uncomfortable.
To the one looking most uncomfortable, he said “Percy! Please ensure there are refreshments
waiting at our chambers!”

With that, he stood up.

Hermione spun around on one foot and scampered towards the door. She heard everyone else
slowly getting to their feet. She felt the detestable weight of all their stares – Ben’s the heaviest of
them all —

The moment she was out the door, Hermione ran. She dodged the aurors, hitwizards, bailiffs,
barristers and their ilk, and raced down the passageway like she had once before, in another body.
There had been dementors around her then, and she had felt less dead inside.

She hurtled up the stairs two at a time. She sprinted across the Atrium like Yaxley and his vengeful
entourage were hot on her tail.

“OI!” the guard at the golden gates yelled when she shot past him.

But she’d seen a lift open and she needed to be inside it. She almost flew straight into some-
fucking-one, only just managing to dig her heels into the ground in time. God, her heart had
shrivelled into a tiny nugget, working overtime and still failing to pump her fire-blood…

She pushed into the lift with eight other some-fucking-bodies, chattering among themselves about
their regular humdrum day — The lift’s bumpiness made her teeth rattle and it hurt —

She could hear the ticking of her watch, over everything.

Level two, and she was on the move again. Down the corridor, past the DDL, past the Improper
Use of Magic office, past doors closed and opened, and straight into the bathroom. She bolted into
a cubicle and bent over a toilet.
Nothing but clear bile came out.

Then she leant against the wall, hot palm against hot eyes.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick… … …

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she saw nothing.

She splashed cold water on her face; to steal some of its substance —

To cool Ms Granger’s vengeful nature.

It was nearly two. How had it been two and a half hours? That felt both too long and too short.

When she left the bathroom, it was somehow twenty past two.

Her shuffle back to the office was slow. A cloud of smog puffing down the streets of London. Who
would emerge from its smokey depths – Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde?

Kathy was in the foyer, so cautious, so pitying, it was past bearing. She took a step closer, like she
wanted to offer a hug. Hermione took a long step back. So she stopped. Grimaced.

“Madam Barros is expecting you,” she said softly, “Minister Shacklebolt as well.”

Hermione walked around her. For a second her eye got caught on Stamp’s former door. Ms
Granger’s vengeful nature.

She knocked.

“Come in.”

Barros had shed her plum robes, but not her affected boredom. She sat with her hands clasped,
straight-faced and beautiful, surrounded by books and important documents and framed accolades
— Hermione had never hated her more. Was that a vengeful feeling?

She didn’t acknowledge Kingsley, who was standing by the false window.

“Have a seat,” he urged gently, and still, she didn’t look at him.

Neither of them spoke for a series of long moments after Hermione had done his bidding. If they
were waiting for her to say something…

What could they possibly expect her to come out with?

The Dint Of Doom looked deeper than usual, owing to the nature of the false light filling the room.
Darker shadows pooled in hidden spaces.

“Hermione.” Kingsley said her name so sedately. It was his Ministerial voice, the Politician's tone,
designed to placate the witless public. “I’m so very sorry for what just happened.”

It took him long enough to realise that she had no intention of speaking at all. They were welcome
to call her childish. What further damage could that label do?

“I wanted to vote in your favour,” he tried again, “But unfortunately, Tiberius has convinced the
maintenance staff that the house-elves will most certainly launch a mutiny if we enforce a contract.
Why do you think they requested to be allowed representatives at the hearing? We can’t afford to
have them going on strike, you must understand…

“…I don’t know, and nor do I want to know what transpired between you and Greengrass or
McLaggen…
“...I’m afraid Tiberius is on the warpath…”

(Seeking vengeance was he?)

“...wanted to dig out original transcripts of the minutes of the Goblin Contract Renewal. I managed
to get to Cyprian Foss in time, those records have been destroyed…

“...tried to get Greengrass and the press involved, but obviously the rest of the Wizengamot
reminded him that it would be completely against the code of procedure. And I assure you,
disclosing the details of a closed hearing is still very much against the law…

“...Hermione…”

That was her name said in the Mournful Minister’s voice. The Penitent Politician’s tone. Someone
was pulling out all the stops.

He came a little closer, laying a dense shadow over her lap like a shawl of darkness.

“I will not let him go after you. I promise.”

After such a day, what was she to make of such a promise? He could have warned her. He could
have called the whole thing off.

No, she still would not speak, and would not look at him.
Would he think it was because he had scarcely spoken or looked at her during the hearing? Would
he think she was taking revenge?

Panic gripped her. She looked up at him.

Unreservedly mournful and penitent, he was.

A memo sailed into the room and nosedived right into his chest. He sighed as he unfolded it, and
again after he’d read it.

“I’m afraid I must go. There’s a delegation from –” He stopped. “I am sorry, Hermione.”

He left her alone with Barros and stifling aloofness, hostility, and everything else that made it
harder and harder to keep a hold on herself.

Hermione looked down at the hem of her grandmother’s skirt — That skirt could stand to be
shorter — at the hands folded over it. Her fingers, awkwardly twisted, reminded her of the branches
of ornamental corkscrew willows.

“When I was in my fifth year at Hogwarts – this was in 1969 – I tampered with a classmate’s
potion. We had a long-standing rivalry and I felt she needed to be taught a lesson. I was, perhaps, a
bit too thorough, and it wasn’t just that one classmate who suffered the consequences. This incident
was brought up when I was being interviewed for my position on the Wizengamot, almost thirty
years later”

How quaint. Yet Barros still made it into the club.

“Bureaucratic memory is shockingly long when it comes to transgressions, Hermione Granger. I
strongly recommend you commit that to your famously prodigious memory.”

Hermione’s words were not bubbles anymore. They were barely even vapour. “Rather selective,
though, their memory. Isn’t it? They found it very easy to forget all about the transgressions of
Death Eaters after the first war. They were welcomed into the Ministry, some even given
positions.”

“Yes.” Pronounced like, you don't say.

Hermione laughed; only a sound and nothing more. “Well, you did warn me that I was on a fool’s
errand. And now I have no chance of getting anything done as long as Ogden’s in charge.”

After a slight pause, Barros said, “You have to stack up a pile of accomplishments that outdo your
transgressions.”

Oh, fuck off. Fuck off to hell, you fucking feagued up hag.

Hadn’t she done that? Hadn’t they already indicated that she was well accomplished enough when
they wanted to employ her even without her NEWTs?

Anger and bitterness bubbled up —

The word vengeful flashed bright red like a warning signal.

Shit.

“I’d… like… to go… home.”

“No.”

Another measure of bile shot up her stomach, but got blocked by that ceaselessly thickening mass
in her chest. It pooled in her midsection; a lake of burning acid.

“You’ve been working half-days for over a week. There’s still plenty to get done for our case. Get
back to it.”

Hermione stood up.

Just when she’d reached the door: “Granger.”

She always did that, didn’t she? It was part of the frippery, her persona, bells and whistles, the
drama of being ooooh Elena Barros, barrister extraordinaire, the scary scary lady.

“This was not your failure,” Barros decreed, “You were articulate, concise, and I cannot find fault
with how you presented your argument.”

Hermione let the door close with a sharp slam behind her.
There was a cup of fucking green tea and two fucking chocolate biscuits on her desk. And there
were two sets of eyes watching her with a repugnant blend of sympathy and solicitude. Hermione
forced herself to nod – acknowledgement, gratitude, whatever. They were free to interpret it
however the hell they pleased.

Over the course of the rest of the day, she would vanish their offering in increments.

At least they realised that she was not to be questioned, comforted, or engaged with at all. They
asked her to recheck the inventory – which she had compiled in the first place, and knew to be free
of any errors. It was, without a question, non-work of the flimsiest order.

Hermione picked up a quill and pressed the final nail in her coffin. A small blob of ink on fresh
parchment: That right there was what consolidated her failure.
For it was her failure. She had failed herself, she’d failed Ben, her boss, her parents, and every
sincere signatory who had put their trust in her. Most importantly, she had failed Bickie. Failed the
memory of Dobby and the elf who’d died for her… whose name she still did not know. She had
failed every single elf who at this moment could’ve been suffering a lashing, a beating, lacerations
for breathing incorrectly…

Would they care about how articulately she had let them down?

(Hydrochloric acid for Acromantula venom. Bay leaves for Alihotsy leaves. Pomegranate juice for
Re'em blood...)

Such a drubbing. For what? A humbling reality check? Wake up, Hermione. Take stock Hermione.
Lose your religion, Hermione.

She'd only ever worshipped at the altars of hard work, sincerity, and diligence. One by one, every
sacred idol had fallen.

Gather ‘round burning virtues. Work till your final flare.

(Regular, dried grass for Goosegrass. Chalk for Dragon Horn powder. Marjoram for Spleenwart…)

(...Moss for Wartizome… Stained oak bark for Wiggentree bark…)

By five minutes to five o’clock, she was reduced to nothing but fire. Barbed wire. A legacy of
vengefulness.

She deposited a stack of parchment on Takumi’s desk and left. Barros could sack her. What did it
matter?

Even during her flight she was not given any grace. In the corridor, she happened upon Harry and
the uncommonly unpleasant auror Kemp.
Harry pushed everything he was holding into the other man’s hand, telling him, “I’ll join you in a
minute,” and strode towards Hermione.

She was cornered, again, by pity and worry, so much worse because he knew better than most how
the failure must’ve hit her. But not even he could understand the completeness of her current
undoing.

How quickly news percolated up this stratified underworld.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Everyone… knows?”

“Yeah.” His face crumpled sympathetically. “It’s…”

“On the grapevine.”

“Nothing confidential,” he added quickly, “Just that… well. Look, why don’t you go over to
Grimmauld place? Kreacher will fix you a drink and Ron and I will be home soon. We can order
some pizza – Ron’s been obsessed since Lumpfest – and we can, er, talk about stuff.”

She pulled her mouth up. “No, Harry. You… know me. I… need… to… go over… every… little…
detail of what… went wrong. Just… to… process… you know?”

He smiled in return, kind and caring, a little sad, and pulled her into a one-armed hug. She fought
hard against the urge to wriggle free and bolt towards the lift.

He released her and rubbed the back of his neck a few times, mulling over his next words.

“Take your time. Come by whenever you’re done. If you’d rather we came over, just send word,
alright? We’ll be at the Burrow on Sunday, of course, and Molly’ll make – Uh, I don’t know what
she’ll make, but it’ll definitely be good.”

“Could you… please let everyone know… that I’d… like some… space? To… sort… things out?”

“I can do that.”

“Harry. Everyone.”

He huffed a bit, before sighing. “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell everyone.”

“Thank you.”

She walked away, as measuredly as she could.

Three admin drones shared the lift with her, and they gawked while she examined the panel of
buttons. Maybe one of them was authorised to access Percy’s transcripts. Maybe they all were.
Maybe they all knew.

They disembarked on level six. Two other people got on, batons were passed, and they took on the
responsibility of gawking.
 The atrium guard gawked while she walked past the gates.

Her steps slowed slightly as she neared the obelisk.

If her name had been among those memorialised, her idols and ideals would’ve been etched into
permanence with her. She would have been spared the unmerciful scrutiny of hindsight… The
covert bloodbath that was the Aftermath…
Righteousness would never be blown aside to reveal vengefulness…

‘Cause who would speak ill of the slain golden member of the Golden Trio? So brave, so good.
Died too young, poor girl; but her glory will live everlastingly.

Chapter End Notes

Considering the manpower of the Ministry, and the population of the Magical World, doesn’t
“about fifty” Wizened-Bollocks seem excessive? But please don’t supply me with reasons
why it does make sense, or quips about farcical plutocracies because that will lead me to
reveal the true reason behind the truncation, which is that I don’t care to make up that many
names. Eet ees what eet ees.

FAQ: Couldn’t you have just numbered them without naming them?
A: No. They might’ve blurred into a plum mass for Harry, but Hermione would make note of
every single one, and which way they voted.

We have two new tags in town.

‘Garden State Of Mind’ was inspired by glassyonion.

‘The Love Song of Hermione J. Granger’ exists thanks to mcal, karma_cookie, and kdgangwa,
and their ability to pick out all the J. Alfred Prufrock references. I just love that the
atmosphere of this story, and the "drama of literary anguish" that supplements it, have been so
perfectly identified.
 Hundred and One
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Sometime in the mid-morning on Saturday, Hermione finally had a full-formed thought:

She had known from the very beginning that she was going to fail.

The blame fell squarely on the jitters – those jitters that had set up camp on her pulse when Draco
sent her the drafts of the Norwegian Charter, dutifully smarted with every high and low, and played
their part as always. Jitters that gave her the comfort of familiarity, but kept her on her toes. They
were supposed to be her friends, and they had betrayed her so terribly.

She had to have been the only one blind to the foolishness of her errand. People may have signed,
but not one of them actually believed she was going to succeed.

The sun and clouds were playing their own deceptive game. Each shift was magnified in her living
room, where all the lamps were doused and the curtains were half-drawn.

Hermione lay on the sofa and counted all the sharp lines that divided light from shadow.

With the weight of a millstone in her chest, being anything but horizontal was very difficult.

A dark smudge appeared outside one of the windows. Another owl. Fifth since the morning,
seventh since the evening before. Hermione had silenced her windows after the first appearance,
when the owl’s tapping had been horrendously out of beat with the ticking of her clock.
The front door was silenced too.
No sound could come in, no sound could escape out. Her very own echo chamber.

She could scream, if she wanted to… which she didn’t. She wasn’t even going to cry. There was no
threat of tears.

Idle tears. She knew not what they meant.

Falling idle.

Falling idols.

A fallen heroine, idealised from the moment she was born. A child prodigy, they alleged.
Deified when she became the Cleverest Witch.
Mythicised after that thing they called war had been won.
She remembered that event at the Ministry, where a bombastic idiot had tried to expound on the
meaning of glory. There’d been a line of photographers after, shouting at her…

Give us a smile, Ms Granger, C'maaan!

You are a witch – Give us magic. You are a muggleborn – Give us tenacity.
You are a friend – Give us loyalty. You are a girl – Give us tenderness.
You are a target – Give us fear. You are a victim – Give us rage.
You are a rebel – Give us defiance. You are an outsider – Give us bitterness.
You are a warrior – Give us valour. You are a hero – Give us rectitude.

…And don’t forget that smile, please!

Be good. Be ruthless. Be brave. Be conniving. Be compassionate. Be vengeful . Be driven. Be

patient. Be shrewd. Be perceptive. Be this character we’ve made you into, and we shall honour you
for it.

All the honour that had once been strewn in her path like poppies, had been swept away. It lined the
edge of pavements now, with debris and dust.

What was left once the dust had settled?

She had risen to the occasion. Always, always she…

She sank to her lowest. She suppressed herself, forgot herself, lost herself, and erased her own
history to meet their demands. She warred with herself more than she had warred with evil forces.

It seemed like that was a war she had lost.

Honour doesn’t age well, does it?

No, it doesn’t. And you know what, Draco? Nor does dignity. Nor does…

Sense of self? How abysmally pathetic does that sound?

The day fell. Evening fell. Darkness fell. She lit the lamp in the furthest corner of the room,
keeping the flame as low as possible.

Her head was reeling. She had spots in the corner of her vision, and she couldn’t tell if they were
black or white. For some time, she kept blinking, trying to figure it out.

Grandma would’ve suggested fixing herself a cup of tea.

She stood on shaky legs and her head spun even more. Her shoulders caved, body quaked; she
dragged her millstone across the room, stepping on the empty packet of crisps from the night
before…… And the dimness led her straight into a dining chair.
What the fuck for?!?! She dragged the chair – shoved it – it skated across the floor before falling.
How utterly it fell. A backward dive as it kicked its legs up in defeat.

Hermione walked on — Hermione tripped over her own feet. She veered to the side and banged her
shoulder and elbow on the kitchen door jamb.

The impact reverberated through her, making her bones ring and her hair stand on end. She
clenched her teeth, squeezed her eyes shut, and waited for death. She was ready for it. Please let it
come. She couldn’t bear… anything… anymore.

The pain kept on going and going. The fire inside her roared with joy. She took in great gulps of air
that stayed trapped in her throat.

To hell with tea.

She took out a packet of hobnobs from the cupboard and staggered back towards the sofa —
bouncing her uninjured arm off the door jamb on the way back, to balance out sensations.

There was a Malevich on the ceiling. A circle in one corner, above the lamp. Two long rectangles
on the other side, painted by lamplight coming in through the windows.

The owl-smudge was back. Hermione bit into a biscuit and watched it fruitlessly peck at the pane.

She sneezed.

The packet that had been resting on her stomach, fell to the floor. Hobnobs scattered all over the
deep blue carpet, forming a vast galaxy. The Bickie Way.

She threw aside her half eaten biscuit to join its fallen comrades.

God. Poor Bickie.

Hermione had wasted so much fucking time. Had she dived into the Ministry back when Kingsley
had offered, taken the direct path into law that he had opened for her, she might have actually got
something done in these past two years. Instead, she had packed her trunk like a wounded child,
and wormed her way into the embrace of stone walls and familiarity…
Seeking home, because there was no place like home anymore.

Deluded, she was, for thinking she could heal in a bubble, and the world would wait for her.

The most powerful legal authority had turned against her before she had even begun her first
initiative. It took less than two years for it to be okay for him to tear apart her character while his
other powerful friends watched on. What would happen after another two years had passed? How
was she supposed to accomplish any good, make any changes?

The world was fickle. The public – that institution of hive mindlessness – with the attention span of
a fruit fly – was constantly, gluttonously, rapaciously hungering for its next idol.

Excite us, inspire us, thrill us, or die doing it. Make no mistakes. Show no weakness.
Fall, and they’ll forget you. They’ll find someone else to build up. Someone more clever, more
dynamic, more beautiful…

What would become of Hermione?

She slapped her hands over her face, tucked in her elbows, pulled up her knees, and rocked like a
turtle stuck on its back.

She hadn’t fallen asleep. She was sure of it because she’d acknowledged every passing tick of the
clock.

Yet when she removed her hands, there was an ugly jaundiced glow in the room. The ceiling was
clear. Those two long rectangles were now stamped on the floor. She must have developed
cataracts, for she was seeing it all through a thick cobweb.

It was still breezy and cloudy outside. Little flashes of sun sounded like the dulcet notes of a
celesta. The melody frisked over the air. She sat up and watched light and dust and music flitter
weightlessly. Weak, soft… and soft… and slow and soft.

Sunday morning, brings the dawning

It's just a restless feeling by my side

She stood before a window, and through the gap between the drapes, she could see an owl,
burdened with the day’s paper, flapping its wings furiously. She watched till it gave up.

Early dawning, Sunday morning

It's just the wasted years so close behind

The kitchen window poured light into a sink chock-full of mugs and plates.
She put the kettle on. Its shiny metal surface was covered in scuffs from careless handling, and her
reflection warped as it spread across it; a pale, pinched, ghoulish face set in a cascade of frizz.

She turned away in disgust.

That… she … was not who the eleven year old girl standing before castle doors was meant to grow
up into. Hear ye, a tale of utmost tragedy: The little girl with a little curl grew up to be only horrid.

Water boiled and cooled. She set it to boil again.

Just as it began to bubble, she left the kitchen.

She collapsed back into the sofa, panting, desperately massaging her sternum — All her muscles
tightened of their own accord, forcing her into a foetal position.

Sunday morning and I'm falling

I've got a feeling I don't want to know

She was so tired. She was defeated. She wanted the fire to burn through her skin already and leave
behind a charred skeleton… or tarry remains… nothing but a pile of ash… anything but what she
was now.

In the Wizengamot’s docket book, listed under Hermione Granger, were all her sins, her
transgressions . Things that, as she had told Draco, she had done out of desperation, as a last
resort…

No matter how many times she cast a net to catch who or what was to blame, ultimately, she would
always end up ensnaring herself.

She stared at Sisyphus for however long it took for him to reach the top of his hill, losing track of
the clock’s ticking.

She stared at her pyjamas – they had small purple flowers on them – while the jaundiced morning
transitioned into a piss-yellow afternoon.

What she had done, effectively, was brand Marietta Edgecombe. The second time she’d taken
inspiration from the other side, after her nifty protean galleons.

She had branded a frightened sixteen year old, and now she was in love with someone who had
been branded as a frightened sixteen year old, and she’d seen the ramifications of bearing a mark,
and Marietta had had to wear hers on her face, just like Harry had to wear his scar, and oh god,
Umbridge was branding him a liar every night, and everyone was trying to kill him and all she
wanted to do was keep him safe, and he… and everyone else.. kept making it so difficult to do that,
and so she left Umbridge in the care of ferocious centaurs, to have her limbs torn off, or to be
subjected to the good old Saint Sebastian treatment —

“Ugh.”

She thumped her chest, hard and harder and hardest.

She watched Sisyphus make a go of it again.

With such glee Theo had recounted all those transgressions to her parents. With such awe and
admiration they had listened. All that, somehow, had led them to understand her better.

When, just a few weeks prior to that, they had asked her ‘how?’ over and over again. Not why or
what, but how had she managed to bring herself to do what she did to them…

All of the above, she should have said. That was how. That was who she had become.

Mum, dad… Let me introduce you to Ms Granger’s vengeful nature.

…Come to think of it, Sisyphus’ punishment was perfect for her. She should be made to roll the
boulder that she had dropped on Bellatrix up a hill for the rest of eternity. With the millstone in her
chest and the flames of Tartar burning inside her.

The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.

Shut up.

Well, look at that. She had arrived at the ultimate transgression. I am not a killer either, she had said
to Draco. I didn’t want to – my intention wasn’t –
Did anything else matter, when one moment there was a living, breathing human being, and the
next moment there wasn’t, all because of her.

She wasn’t really human, Granger. She hadn’t been for a while.

Draco, shut up.

The day fell. Evening was slowly falling. Hermione returned to the window and pulled aside the
drapes completely, to let vivid orange pulse through the glass. She lifted a hand and stared at the
way her skin soaked up the hue. She wiggled her fingers like they were dancing flames.

Then she closed her eyes and stayed in that juncture where she was finally burning evenly, as a
whole.

When she opened her eyes, darkness had fallen. She lit the lamp in the furthest corner of the room,
keeping the flame as low as possible.

A circle and two long rectangles formed on her ceiling.

Like Dracula in his coffin, she lay back on the sofa with her hands crossed over her chest. If she
had managed to make a Projective Pensieve, she could’ve watched a feature film of her
transgressions instead of those light-made shapes.

A slow build-up of O Fortuna in her head...

“Hermione?” dad gasped, “What – Hermione?”

He was on his feet a moment later, eyes wide with an untethered terror.

A loud CRACK sheared through the numbness. It was the sound of Grawp casually ripping trees
from the ground.

Hermione threw herself off the sofa, and tumbled bunglingly down the hall. A large gash had
splintered down the front door. What the fuck — She lifted the silencing charm…

“—call the aurors on you, you bloody crook!”

“Mind your own business,” snarled Draco’s voice, “What are you doing here anyway? I thought
your kind had been banished to the Isle of Drear.”

“Alright, sod the aurors! I’ll take care of you myself—”

Hermione wrenched the door open. The man across the hall – all limbs and tufty beard – was
scrambling to draw his wand. Draco, the combative git with the combat skills of a flobberworm,
still had his wand pointed towards Hermione’s door.

“What the hell is going on?!” she cried.

They both turned to her. Mr Beardo, self-righteously enraged, shouted, “This bloodless mooncalf is
trying to break into your home!”

She gaped at Draco, aghast, agog, and… oh, so many other things.

“What are you playing at???”

“You left me no choice!” he threw back, “I’ve been knocking for almost half an hour!”

“I… uh, was asleep!”

“Ms Granger, I will have the aurors here in two shakes–”

“Oh, put a sock in it. Use those two shakes to bring your tiny todger to completion.”

“Stop it, Draco!” Hermione looked at the Beardo supplicantly. “I am so sorry. Please, no aurors
necessary.”

“You know him?” Beardo grumbled.

“Unfortunately.”

Hermione glared at him. He curled his lip insolently, and the next thing she knew, he had moved
her aside and stepped into her flat.

He pushed the door closed, rather hard, and she, who was still clutching the handle, went flying
against it.

“Have you lost your mind?” she thundered, “You – You – I mean — Breaking my door???”

“As I said, I’ve been knocking for fucking ever,” he replied flatly. Then he paused, something
almost like abashment slithered across his face. “Were you actually asleep?”

Bugger his abashment.

“I silenced my door for a reason! I don’t want to be bothered…”

He strolled into the living room. A second later, the hall was blasted with bright yellow, as all the
lamps came on.

Mindless with terror, she scurried after him, screaming, “...BY PEOPLE BARGING IN.”

“– haven’t heard a peep from you in close to two days…”

He trailed off, taking in the wreckage. The toppled chair. The biscuits and empty packets strewn on
the floor. The broken quills, the puddles of dried ink, the piles, shreds, and crumpled balls of
parchment from her weeks of manic preparation. Her clothes from Friday haphazardly lying
wherever they had landed after she’d ripped them off her body. Her – oh god oh shit – her knickers
rolled up on the floor by his armchair…

His visage showed perfect composure; the slip-on kind that he was able to pull over on top of any
expression. Hermione’s panic was thick. She went to stand in front of him, to keep him from
exploring any further.

“Granger, what–”

“Why are you here?”

His eyes locked onto her.

…Which wasn’t any better, considering she was the personification of the room, and he had the
fucking effrontery to show up looking like himself.

“I’m here,” he said with infuriating patience, “because I didn’t know how else to contact you.”

He had to go, he had to go, he had to go, he had to go. He couldn’t see her like this. She could not
stand to be a part of his disenchantment.

“There are other ways to get in touch, if it’s so damn important!”

“What other ways?” He was still so maddeningly calm. “Your floo is blocked, again. You’ve been
ignoring my fucking gabbings, again, up to the point that I can’t send any more because your
parchment is filled to capacity. Rodion keeps coming back with any letter I post. Getting a hold of
you on a regular day is challenging as it is, but when you decide that you –”

“I WANT TO BE ALONE!”

Her volume and rage did not impress him.

“You’ve been alone long enough,” he flung back…

…right into her stomach, making her retch. If there’d been any food in her, it would have been all
over their feet.

“Get out of my flat!”

He gave her a haughty, albeit passively so, stare. “Not a chance, after what I’ve been through to get
into your flat. Being threatened by the snarling Hairy MacBoon across the hall was the least of it.
The sixth time Rodion came back, I assumed you were elsewhere, with other people, so I paid a
visit to Potter’s house, had an actual… exchange… with mo-Ron Beastly, and then accompanied
him to the Barn, and after that–”

“How terribly trying!” she railed, “You poor dear. Want to shag me on the regular but can’t tolerate
an exchange with my friend. And stop calling him names!”

It was that abrasive defence of Ron that managed to scrub away his placid veneer. Under it, was a
pronounced, bitterly irritated scowl. His eyes dropped to the hobnob galaxy, and travelled across
the wide spattering of biscuit-crumb-stardust.

Why was he tormenting her?

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Yes, I’ve eaten. Now please leave.”

He’d found his patience among the rubbish on her floor. He looked back at her, dripping with it.

“I know you are… upset –”

She exploded. It couldn’t be stopped — “UPSET? You think I’m upset?! I’m – just – Man alive! It
was never going to amount to anything was it? For all the blood, sweat, and tears I put into it, I was
never really going to be taken seriously. Not by the Wizengamot, not by anyone who supposedly
pledged their support… And you. What had you said? Unambiguous. ” Her face twisted. Her tone
turned derisory. “Impeccably researched. Earnest. Were you taking the mick? Laughing madly in
your head while you said all that? And – gah – None of that even matters when you think about the
way those elves looked at me. How Bickie will look at me if I ever can bring myself to face her
again. It was just a simple, tiny, baby step towards making their lives barely better, and it’s been
thoroughly obliterated, and you – you just — UPSET??”
His jaw had clenched tighter and tighter with each word she had said. When he spoke, it was
through clenched teeth. “At no point was I laughing at you. And while I understand that –”

“You do not understand. How could you possibly?”

(In the breath before the next tumble of words, she knew that she shouldn’t say what she was going
to. She didn’t want to say it. But the fact that he was there, witnessing her descent into the Slough
of Despond, completely unhinged her to the point that she felt psychotic.)

“This is how it feels when you’re a good person and you fail those who were counting on you, all
right? It’s crushing. Of course you haven’t a clue what that feels like, because you’re still making
your list and worried about your stupid slate, and maybe someday you might even get to the point
where you spare a passing thought for something outside of yourself, but as of now, you have no
right to just barge in here and tell me anything!”

A few awful tick tick ticks went by in silence. She was panting. He was glaring coldly.

She made the mistake of confronting his glare, and worse, looking past it. Suddenly, all she could
see was the grey of his eyes, of his eyes – Draco — and she was felled by a sharp pang of
wretched, hopeless sadness. She was on the verge of apologising, until —

“You poor dear,” he spat, “Want to change the world but can’t cope with one little setback.”

It felt like a slap.

“A… Little… Setback.”

“Yes,” he doubled down viciously, “Little. You’re acting like you’ve been banned from ever –”

“Get out of here, Draco.”

“No. You’re just going to have to learn to deal with –”

“Right now. Get OUT.”

“Just go sit down, Granger, and remind yourself that we have come a long way from our cave-
dwelling –”

“GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!!”

She threw one arm up and shouted the incantation to unblock the fireplace. A roaring pillar of fire
burst into the air, scorching up the wall and to the ceiling. There was a shattering sound as the bezel
and crystal of the watch above the mantel blew apart.

Draco leapt back with a startled cry.

“You fucking lunatic!”

“LEAVE!”

“FINE!” he bellowed, “Sit here by yourself in this squalor and marinate in your pathetic self-pity!”
He snatched up floo powder – from a well-charred urn – with such force that he sent it to the floor.

Another, louder shatter…

He was gone.

Tick, tick, tick. Broken, but still going.

Hermione raced to the closest window and with frantic, fumbling hands, pushed it open to
introduce her head to the brisk evening. As the cold blasted her, she stared down at the narrow path
below and wondered how ugly a stain she might leave on it.

“Mmmh!” she screamed inside her closed mouth and staggered back.

The window shut on its own, with a resounding slam. If it hadn’t been magically fortified, it would
have been the third shattering of the hour.

He was never going to speak to her again. All weekend his voice had been a phantom bug in her
ear, and now that’s all she’d have left of him.

How could she have said those things — When he had come to check on her —

She clawed at her chest with the pads of her fingers madly, thumped at it, rubbed it, jumped on the
spot trying to dislodge...
It needed to come out… The mass…
The millstone…
The suffocating weight breaking her back.

She was sprawled again on the sofa, when she should have been chasing after him to fall to his
feet.

There were so many to whom she owed an apology —

She slapped her hands over her face, tucked in her elbows, pulled up her knees, and rocked like a
turtle stuck on its back.

The hours would pass again. It would be Monday when she removed her hands. She would have to
get ready for work, have a hot shower, put on decent clothes. There was the potionware case – a
purpose. Things to do. All that would fix her. It always did.

She’d fall at Draco’s feet, first and foremost, for however long it took.

And then at Bickie’s feet, and her boss’ feet, and lie prostrate before Dobby’s grave, and beg mum
and dad for—
Nothing. Think of nothing. Tick tick tick – She had no idea what had become of Marietta — No –
tick tick tick tick —

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

She dragged her hands down her face. Blinded for a moment, she blinked as she sat up, till blue
adapted to the light. On the wall were two grim reproductions of Malevich's Black Square. She
looked over her shoulder at the clock.

Forty minutes had passed.

In the brightly lit room, she could see the Spectre of Time again, standing at one end of the salon
wall, grinning with intent and mischief.

She slumped and stared back, wondering how it made sense that a manifestation of Time threw no
shadow.

There was nothing marring the wall where the process of falling in love was shown through a
perfect arrangement of eclectic art. On the other side of the hall, lay her biography, spread across
bookshelves. In the next room was her bed, the life raft. Then, her balcony, with its chime and
plants.
Blue china teacups. Neatly stacked cassettes. A sideboard bar with one bottle of gin.
All entombed in a duck-egg blue mausoleum, all part of a pretence that objects made up a home.

Such a cosy little flat. It’s so you, Hermione, was the inevitable conclusion.

Yes, yes, very me.

Welcome to Hermione Granger’s Museum of Wishful Thinking. I am the curator and your guide.

A jolting SWOOSH whished through the numbness. She yelped and withdrew into the corner of
the sofa, curling up into a defensive ball.

Draco stumbled out of the fireplace and, for an instance, he looked just about as astounded as she
felt, as if he hadn’t expected to come through.

In the very next breath, he was back in control. He moved like a fairy godmother on steroids,
drawing quick curves and lines with his wand, unleashing a salvo of spells.
The scorched, black-streaked wall and ceiling were wiped clean. The broken clock and urn were
repaired. All the rubbish vanished from the floor, the fallen chair was set right, her clothes flew up,
folded themselves, and fell in a small pile on an armchair. The lamps were dimmed to a more
pleasant, smouldering glow. A fire was lit, triggering a startling wave of warmth that brought out
the coldness of the room like a revelation.

All through that, he didn’t look at her once. She did nothing but stare — And sucked in a sharp
breath when he appeared to make his way towards her.

He stopped at the coffee table, and only then did she notice the bag in his other hand.

From it, he retrieved two goblets, and one bottle of red wine to tip into them. Next, a familiar
takeaway box containing a half portion of fried rice, and finally, a cup with a single scoop of
Fortescue’s caramel apple ice cream.

He snatched up one goblet, and marched across the tiny room with long steps that made it tinier.
She followed his path like a wilting heliotropic weed. He perched lightly on the edge of the
sideboard; the sun between two black squares of night, glowering straight ahead at the opposite
wall… (Could he see the Spectre too?)... and he took an angry sip of wine.

He got visibly angrier as she continued to daftly stare at him.

Fire sang its hypnotic, guttural hymn. She could not tell if it sounded from the hearth or her heart.
The room continued to turn after she had turned. She picked up the goblet with hands quivering,
and brought it up to quivering lips. It burned as it went down her oesophagus, feeding the internal
flames.

It didn’t make a dent in the mass, the millstone, the suffocating weight…

They drank in silence, one glass, then another – bottle summoned to and fro.

Hermione, Draco, and Time: The three points of a scalene triangle.

Her inferno grew wilder with each sip. It engulfed the overgrown hedge that she had, for so long,
struggled to prune. Everything was aching – her bones hadn’t stopped ringing since…

When had she collided with the door jamb?

Blinking burned. Breathing burned. Thinking burned.

She put down the goblet and picked up the rice, and sighed as the first wave of its aroma reached
her. It was supposed to be comforting. Nothing was as it was supposed to be.

She turned her head, only a little, so she could see his shape through ropey, frizzy strands, and
asked, “Will you have some?”

Her voice was both heavy and squeaky. It made her think of rust.

“No.”

“Why? We can share.”

“Just eat, will you?”

Her stomach let out a loud, humiliating groan when the first morsel of food reached it. It curled
painfully for a moment, then gurgled with gratitude. Hermione closed her eyes and hoped to die
again.

She wanted to die like a ceiling caving in. Everybody, shields up! – And it would be like the sky
was falling, a sudden overwhelming burst of destruction… Followed by absolute quiet.

Not really absolute quiet, though. Just quiet for her. She’d be leaving that poor delicate flower of a
boy, who hated blood and couldn’t stomach violence, in absolute cacophony.

Life persisted. Food was kindling, after all.

She didn’t offer to share the ice cream, because the moment she picked it up, he summoned the
wine bottle.

Coolness and sweetness didn’t last long in her mouth.

After a long staring contest with the Spectre, maintained for seven hundred and seventy-five ticks,
Hermione went to the bathroom for the first time in… ? …A while.

She looked at water swirling down the sink while washing her hands, and while brushing her teeth
she turned her back to the mirror.
She held cold water against her face for six ticks before letting it fall with a splash.

In the hall, she stumbled over nothing again, wobbling till she found some support at the entrance
to the living room. Draco and the Spectre were, even now, stationed in their respective spots. The
former had the goblet just resting between his lips – the final stage of a sip. His throat rippled when
he swallowed.
As he lowered the goblet, he turned his head

and looked directly at her; forehead lined and mouth set in a tight purse.

The Spectre vanished. The ticking stopped. Gravity came bursting out its subterranean cradle and
poured itself into him. A blink of an eye later, Hermione was striding across the room.

His expression morphed from hostile to disapproving, settling on weary when she’d reached him
and plucked the goblet from his fingers. She placed it to the side; a short flutter erupted low in her
stomach as she avoided his gaze and looked instead at the neck of his black jumper, laid so
becomingly against his skin. She stepped in closer… and closer…
Till she had wrapped her arms around his waist.

He stiffened at once, arms snapping down straight at his sides. She pressed herself flush against
him, squeezing her arms a bit, tucking her head under his chin where it fit so perfectly, and tried to
compensate for his lack of participation.
That black jumper of his was so soft; like velvet against her cheek. The skin of his throat was
perfectly warm against her temple. His scent – sharp, woody, citrusy – did something indescribable
to her. It felt like a release, or a quenching, or…

He was there. He had come back, even after she had yelled and been so horrible.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice broke contemptibly on both words. “I’m so sorry. I needed to say that about
myself. Needed to remind myself. I didn’t mean what I said about you. I didn’t, at all. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Curt and flat.

She closed her eyes and flames danced behind her eyelids. Barbed wire went teeming down her
spine — It was hurting her. Ravaging her.

“I am sorry. T–truly. I didn’t want to say any of it. I swear, it's not what I think at all. You are a
good person, Draco. I’m the one who… I’m just… I am…”

It was like the tree falling in the forest thing: A meltdown was only truly a meltdown if there was
someone around to see it happen. She scrunched her face tightly, desperate to stay in control.

Draco moved. A harsh breath fell down the side of her face, and his hands settled on her waist.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, “It’s fine,” he said again, and one of his hands slid across to the small
of her back. The other settled between her shoulder blades. An impersonal, perfunctory return of
her embrace.

“It was really bad, Draco. I’m not just being… neurotic old Granger when I say that. I have been
banned… in a way, but I shouldn’t have – I should not have taken it out on you. I’m sorry. I’m
really really sorry.”

“It’s all right. Don't get in a flap over it.”

It was another one of those instances when he felt so much larger than he was, like he could so
easily fold himself around her, entirely around her, if he wanted.

Why didn’t he want to?

…Why would he want to?

But… Why couldn’t she have just one thing?

Didn’t she deserve that? Just… one… Him.

Please? If nothing else; just him.

“I’m sorry, Draco,” she whispered.

“Fuck’s sake, I said it’s fine,” he snapped.

He was beginning to fidget and shift back slightly, uncomfortable with how long their embrace had
lasted.
Please, oh please, just a little while longer. When his hands twitched against her back, she
discreetly rubbed her cheek against her jumper, trying to focus on the fact that his strong and wiry
arms, though reluctant, stayed around her. His chest was moving much too quickly from shallow
breaths, so she breathed slowly – slowly —

They could calm their breathing together, in tandem.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

He wasn’t catching on. If anything, he was breathing even quicker. Inhale. Sharp, woody, citrusy -
tinged with a slight smokiness from the floo. Hold. Was it from the floo, or was the smoke swirling
inside her? Where there was fire, there was smoke. So much of fire, so much smoke. Exhale. He
wasn’t breathing with her at all, not slow or steady. How much longer before he'd catch on? ...She
breathed even slower.

But then he said, “I love you,” and undid everything.

Hermione lurched back, thrown out of her burning, aching body, left as nothing but an ephemeral
being of air and light, a mere shimmer of existence, held in form by the loose circle of his arms. A
scream, a gasp, or some iteration of ‘ What’ formed in her voice box but didn’t make it out of her
mouth. It just sat there, frozen, like the rest of everything in existence that had come to a screeching
halt.

Draco’s eyes were lowered, hidden behind the shadow of his fair eyelashes. His eyebrows, denser,
darker, intermittently obscured by locks of silvery gold, were softly furrowed.
His hand lifted from her upper back, swept along her side, flitted across her shoulder and up her
neck. He stroked along her jaw, until he had her cheek cupped in his palm.

What did he say? Did he really… Or had she lost her mind so completely and desperately that…

His eyes lifted, looking right into hers. His pupils were large, set in a circle of shifting opalescence;
warm flecks from low lamps, cool flecks from the walls. There was such an astonishing, terrifying,
riveting, soul-stirring, beautiful seriousness in his aspect.

And thus, peering into her eyes, he murmured once again, “I love you,” and pressed his mouth to
hers, even before her gasp could form.

When it finally emerged, he swallowed it whole.

The pressure of his lips bundled her back into her body. She felt… him… and everything… she
felt… everything, everything that there was to feel, like a babel of sensations. It was a careful kiss,
almost meek; he plucked at her lower lip, lightly brushed against her upper lip. It jangled her entire
frame.

He pulled back, and when she made to follow, leaned away even further.

“What happened at the hearing?” he asked hoarsely.

The air was pulsating. Colours were clumping into blocks, the world was turning into a choropleth
map. He’d said – he’d really said —
She swayed into him. Her brain was spinning like a gyre, and the only – briefly – static visuals it
registered was his jumper… his skin…

She pressed her face into his neck and burst into tears.

“Granger? What—?”

He sounded alarmed. Immediately, he had her upper arms in a hard grip as he tried to peel her off
—

“No! No, please!” she wailed, grabbing fistfuls of his jumper, scrabbling at him like she was trying
to climb into him.

Her legs were shaking. They were shaking so terribly that she suddenly couldn’t hold herself up at
all. Her knees buckled and he caught her, his arms came firmly, tightly, wholly around her, and she
was lifted off the ground.

She sobbed raspingly, gulping sharp, woody, citrusy air…

They were moving. He was carrying her somewhere.

“Nox.”

It was pitch dark. It terrified her. She cried out when her axis tilted, gripping even tighter onto his
jumper — but he was only laying her down on her bed.

Panic struck again when he shifted away.

She pulled him back with blind desperation.

“N–n–no, please please, no.”

“What? What is it?”

There was a thud, followed by another thud.

The bed dipped as he dropped down beside her.

Please , she cried, please please. His arm burrowed under her, wrapped around her waist, and
pulled her tight against his body. His calf draped over hers. His other hand sank into her hair and
tucked her head under his chin.

Please.

It was so dark, she could see more than what was there —

Dad reached towards her and shrank back in one fluid move. Mum whimpered. Both her hands
were pressed against her mouth as she fixed a look of utter dismay on her daughter.
Dobby – brave dreamer, swaddled in everything Hermione had ever knitted. She was truly sick for
having hidden clothes in the common room like that.

What must the Aurors have found when they removed that rock? A mushy pancake of blood and
guts, sprinkled liberally with bits of bone?

Draco held her tight. His hand slid from the back of her head, soothingly down her spine —— She
had called him selfish.

“I’m sorry,” she wept, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry
I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry I’m sorry I’m sorry —”

“Shhhhh.”

He rubbed his palm up and down her back in a slow rhythm, like an oar cutting through placid
waves.

She was quaking and juddering uncontrollably. Resonances went deep inside her, striking up
ghastly visceral vibrations that drove fissures into the millstone.

“I tried,” she gasped, “I’m trying. I swear I’m trying. I’m sorry. I – I’m always trying —”

“I know.”

“It’s – It’s just so… so…”

“Debilitating.”

(Yes. Oh fuck. Debilitating. Thoroughly sapping.)

“I didn’t mean to — I’ve never — My intentions have always been — I’ve – I’ve only wanted to
help. I swear that’s all I’ve wanted. I don’t know what happened. How did things get so… I’m
not… I’m sorry… This isn’t…”

Breathing was getting impossible. She panted between chesty sobs, drawing in shallow puffs. The
millstone had begun to crumble. Chunks were breaking off and clogging up her trachea and
bronchi.

He was her iron lung.

Velvet softness in her fist. Palm gliding along her spine. An arm like a tether around her waist,
anchoring her to a warm and firm body…

His voice was just as warm and firm; as smooth as velvet —

“I began questioning people’s motivations even before I knew that they were called that. It was a
tendency that was greatly encouraged and carefully cultivated, so it only got stronger over the
years, and very quickly became second nature to me. But Granger?”

Her eyes had adjusted a bit. She tried to compose herself, tried to blink quicker than her tears fell,
so she could see the neck of his jumper and the skin of his throat.
What? — she might have whimpered or she might not have.

“It was so easy to break that habit, when it came to you. Only you.”

She wept with an abrupt surge in volume, and unbidden, rolled closer to muffle the sound against
his chest. His palm glided up and down her back — Warm velvet — His scent —

She shuddered and laid her lips against his throat.

“B–buh–but my actions. The things I’ve done that are so –” (...when she was bad she was…)
“Horrid.”

His palm paused for a moment in the middle of her back. One finger drew a small circle.

“All my ideas were stolen from you,” he intoned equably, “Or they were inspired by eavesdropping
on you. While researching ways to fix the cabinet, I paid most attention to the books that had your
prissy sign of approval. If you want to see what shape your actions would have taken if they were
in fact ill-intentioned and horrid, look no further. You can’t hope for a clearer picture of the
distinction. There’s even an actual coin involved, and it has two sides.”

She broke down heavily. Draco, Draco, Draco, she might have bawled, or she might not have.

“P–please d–don’t leave.”

“I won’t.”

With one shuddering sob, the millstone broke clean in half.

Fire ripped through her body – a surge, a flaming tsunami, a hissing, roaring, blaze –

There might have been music hiding behind the cries, but who could tell? Because her cries were
blaring, unbridled, ugly, animalistic, tearing out of her with the same burning brutality as the
flames that ate away at her insides —

She had never cried like that in her life.

Her eyes were squeezed tight and she watched the destruction of The Room of Unbidden Things –
of herself. She saw charred rings, livid red barbed wire, burning towers of old yellowed
newspapers, dead butterflies and bees, bluebell flames getting absorbed into red, scraps of burnt
tartan…

It hurt so much. It scorched up her throat.

And that was when the fire uncovered the pain that her deepest muscle fibres would remember
forever. Pain like fire, pain like every unfulfilled desire; pain like Dix's Verwundeter; pain like acid,
pain that's absolute and tacit; pain like pain like pain—

“I can’t — O–oh m–my— god — I can’t — I can’t —”

I can’t stop.
In the aftermath of a forest fire, the earth still quaked with devastation.

Steady, soft, hiccupping sniffles, small flames, and thick, streaming smoke persisted.

Her hair had been pushed up and away from her neck; the broad pad of his thumb traced her
hairline from the back of her ear to her nape… To the back of her ear… To her nape…

“Hermione?”

She shook her head and whimpered. She tugged at velvety softness as a fresh wave of sobs
overtook her.

“S–S–Sorr–”

“No, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

The arm wound around her waist tightened. The hand at her nape slid down her back… And up
again… And down…

She blinked hard. There before her, was the neck of his black jumper and the skin of his throat. She
stared at them till the smoke got too thick to see through.

It was dark. Pitch dark.

The dark terrified her.

She pulled in a gasping breath, and through the repulsive smell of burning, there was a palliative
hint of something sharp, woody, and citrusy.

Velvet under her cheek. A hand going up and down her back. The softest pressure on the top of her
head —
It was bright. Glaringly so.

Hermione moaned pathetically as she pressed her fingers against stinging eyes.

She sat up slowly, wincing when a gripe of pain twisted high in her stomach. Two pinprick-like
points stung at the backs of her eyes when she moved her hands away.

Bah. So bright .

She had to subject her eyes to further rubbing, interspersed with regulated bouts of forceful
blinking, before they were capable of performing their intended function.

It must have rained just a while ago. The sun’s beams were being scattered by the clean moisture in
the air, and reflecting off the wet floor of the balcony. The curtains before the doors were pulled
aside, as they had been since Friday morning.

Pain stabbed at her stomach.

Reaching into the drawer by her bed, she fished out the small vial of Doctor Plack’s Rapid Pain
Relieving Potion™. A sweet medley of berries coated her tongue and achingly sore throat.

That ache, and the one in her stomach, and the one hounding her optic nerves, all subsided.

She breathed in deeply. Her lungs stretched open like the wings of a swan.

The chime was a pleated skirt, swishing as it danced to the song of the morning breeze.

Gosh. Such crispness. Clean, scrubbed, earthy post-downpour air.

There was a crystalline quality to the light; it was almost too clear, like something carefully
gathered from the top of fresh snow. Like fine Swarovski dust. It gave sheets and curtains an
ethereal glow.

Hermione conjured a glass of water and guzzled it all in one go.

She caught her breath and refilled the glass, guzzling more than half in the next go.

The door opened. Draco took two steps into the room and stopped.
She was forced to reevaluate her definition of the word ‘ethereal’. Everything rapidly dulled as he
laid claim to all the brilliance in the room. Enveloped in that gorgeous light, he was a terrifically
rumpled Helios, with dishevelled sunlight hair, and a tired face. He loved her. His jumper was very
peculiarly wrinkled, like it had been haphazardly grabbed and pulled at. He loved her. He stood
stock-still and simply watched her for a very long moment.

Her heart, whole and strong, struck up a steady, thundering beat.

“How are you?” he asked.

The morning rasp of his voice curled around her like a warm, coarse blanket.
She wet her lips, marvelling at just how spectacularly the stubble on his jaw was glittering. He
loved her. She vanished her glass.

“I’m fine,” she warbled squeakily. “Ahem. Hem. I’m all right. Last night, I… er… might’ve lost
hold of my sense of proportion.”

She got a very blank look for that. Like, yeah, no shit, Granger.

“I think… It might have been building for a while, and everything just came to a head. I was also
very sleep deprived. I’m sorr–”

“Don’t.”

She stared at him, and he stared back, and he loved her, and the chime jingled sweetly.

“Do you want to talk about what happened on Friday?”

“Yes. But not right now. I will – I —”

She didn’t want to go there. She couldn’t even force herself to. He loved her and she didn’t want to
talk about anything else.

“Can I convince you to take a sick day?”

She shook her head. His mouth thinned with disfavour.

“I can’t avoid Bickie and Ben any longer. It isn’t right. What’s the time?”

“Seven-forty. I have to attend a breakfast meeting with the Austrian ambassador in twenty
minutes.”

“Okay.”

He swallowed thickly and made a sharp turn to the right, walking around to the other side of the
bed. He perched at the edge, bent slightly – there was a muted dragging noise as he pulled his shoes
closer.

The muscles of his back moved with such sinuous beauty. He loved her. Draco loved her. Oh my
god.
Hermione staggered out of bed, paying little mind to the light-headedness that rocked her world
when her feet hit the floor. She held onto the railing for dear life as she hobbled across to the other
side.

She stopped there, at the foot of the bed, keeping hold of the railing, while she watched him pull his
socks on.

“Thank you for staying with me,” she whispered.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t react in any way. He picked up a shoe and began deftly loosening
the laces.

He was in perfect alignment with the balcony doors, so that a lance of light ignited the fibres of his
jumper, and struck his hair and the back of his neck, turning them into white gold and ivory.

He was effulgent. Breathtaking.

If she were to paint a picture of all the ways in which the universe had lit him up and presented him
to her, she could have covered every square inch of every wall in her flat with images of him. She
remembered him in the moonlight and sunlight. Starlight and candlelight. Hazy as dawn and
sombre as dusk.

Belligerent, while a scorching sunrise blazed at the end of a battle.

Contrary, when swathed by mosaiced light in the music room.

Resentful under the flickering lamps of the Hogwarts library.

Raw and milky white on the astronomy tower.

Resplendent under the green-tinted gleam of an ancient woodland.

Mesmerising, while lamps painted him gold and snow drizzled silver.

Penitent on a rooftop, under a canopy of multicoloured fairy lights.

Open and unguarded by a river, under dusty winterlight.

Resolute, while disco lights flashed over him.

Silently weeping, a man of marble, wearing only moonbeams and shadows.

Candid and bitterly forthright under magic-spun stars.

A beam of calm. A blaze of turbulence. A spark of sudden laughter. The flash that stopped time.

Her bluebell flame, come to life.

Draco and the light. Their dazzling collaborations made up a series of big, bold spectacles that
forced her to stop. And just… stare.
Look at him.

Look at him.

Wasn’t she always?

“My memory is terrible,” she announced.

There was a significant standstill, during which she mentally slapped herself and he momentarily
fumbled with his laces.

“I mean, it’s good,” she ploughed on valiantly, “When it comes to retaining things I’ve read, or
heard during a lesson, or… or… random bits of information that – and here’s the rub – I can’t quite
remember where I picked up. I remember entire epic poems, and the entire periodic table – in fact,
I’ve turned the periodic table into an epic poem, maybe I’ll recite it for you someday. Dad said it
was ingenious; he even put it to music, and —”

Draco pushed his foot into the shoe and cut her off with a stilted announcement of his own, viz.,
“Granger, you are awake.”

“Er… Yes?”

“You’re aware of the fact?” he confirmed woodenly, as he did up his laces with the kind of focus
sailors reserved for their knots. “So you are knowingly subjecting me to this ridiculous
subconscious exposition?”

She let out a slow, tremorous exhale. “Sor– er, I got sidetracked. What I mean is, everyone has
always praised my memory, and it is rather excellent, but for some reason, I sometimes have a very
hard time remembering things from my own life.”

“Well done,” he drawled and picked up his other shoe, “You have discovered the inconstant nature
of human memory.”

“It isn’t just inconstant, it’s fitful.”

“Those two words aren’t different enough for you to bullshit your way into being profound.” He
began tackling the second set of laces.

“Things – really important events – vanish and I have no idea what they might have been and why I
didn’t retain them, while on the other hand, absolutely random moments get perfectly preserved.
There seems to be no logic to it, you know?”

“Was that water you were drinking earlier, or a double strength babbling brew?”

Her grip on the railing tightened so much that her knuckles cracked.

“I’ve been in love with you since that afternoon at Wistman’s Wood.”

At ‘in love with’, his face had snapped towards her, eyes wide and lips slowly parting. At
‘Wistman’s Wood’ , the shoe had slipped from his grasp, but he’d managed to hold onto the laces. It
hung an inch off the ground, swinging like a pendulum.
He looked thunderstruck; completely dumbfounded. Slightly dazed… and maybe… she thought,
perhaps… a little frightened.

“As – As I was saying, my memory is fitful, Draco. It gets more fitful and bizarre the further back I
go. And if I think of you...” She shook her head with a disbelieving laugh. “For so long you were
nothing more than a sneering blight in the periphery. A thorn in the side. But then… I see you… I
see you weaving in and out of the narrative, still thorny, driving me up the wall, pushing and
pulling with a maddening interplay of being challenging and complimentary, forcing your way into
prominence, giving me exactly what I need, proving to be the closest embodiment of a yearning
that I had kept hidden from myself my entire life – because even my subconscious knew that if I
dwelled on it, it would ruin me. God. And now here you are, bold and audacious, in the centre of it
all, surrounded by a beautiful circle of light —”

She clamped down on her tongue and stared up at the ceiling. Her pulse was positively pounding.
He was right; she really was babbling. There was a much, much simpler way to say this.

She lowered her head and saw that he hadn’t budged. He looked like he hadn’t even breathed since
she had started her confession.

“I love you,” she professed, “You are… wonderful. When I’m with you, the world stops.”

Still, he didn’t stir. That level of gobsmacked incredulity suggested that nothing had ever made less
sense to him. Her heart sputtered violently. It buzzed and bubbled, filled with charged iron
filings…

She let go of the railing.

Trembles coursed up her body, and trembling, she approached him. Trembling, she stood in front of
him as he stared up at her with bottomless astoundment. Her fingers trembled and rose, reaching
towards him… Settling like trembling butterflies on his cheeks…

And she had to wonder: Were her trembles so severe that they were passing onto him, or… Or was
he trembling, too?

She took his face in her hands.

His face in her hands — Good heavens, the most marvellous thing to have ever been held between
her palms. Skin soft under a thin layer of scruff, warm and turning warmer. She traced her thumbs
along the purplish rifts under his eyes, dug in by those long hours he’d stayed up holding and
comforting her. He shut his eyes.

She stroked her hands up his cheeks and temples, into the hair on the sides of his head, ruffling
already ruffled strands – so silky and absurdly luxurious – she closed her fists around them, and
kissed him.

She kissed him once. She kissed him twice. His shoe fell with a clomp. She kissed him for the third
time, and his hands came up to bracket her hips.

She kissed him with her lips parted, sliding her tongue along the seam of his mouth. He opened up
with a low groan, and then —
His arms wrapped tight around her, his legs parted, and he crushed her against himself. She was
tugging his hair as he kissed her like he was attempting to carve the feeling into her… wanting to
drive it into her fitful and inconstant memory… hoping to ingrain it into the very fabric of time…
He kissed her like it was something that had never been done before, and they needed to cover
every way of doing it. He kissed her like it was something vital and life sustaining — This is how
we breathe now.

The loose weave of their dreams tangled together beneath their feet.

But when he began tipping backwards, she pulled away, placing her hands firmly on his shoulders.

“Your meeting,” she reminded him throatily.

Somehow, he still looked to be in a state of shock. Red blossomed over his lips and bled across his
jaw. It puddled over his glorious cheekbones and crawled over the bridge of his nose.

She lightly kissed the corner of his mouth because she couldn’t help herself. She fluttered her lips
over his cheek and right up to his temple — He turned his face and pressed his mouth against the
side of her neck, then the corner of her jaw —
She hummed softly and rubbed her cheek against his, so very slowly, relishing the contrasting
textures — His breath tickled her ear.
He turned his head further, kissing along her jaw to her chin. She kissed his eyebrows, the spot
between them, and then lowered her face to nuzzle her nose against his. She kissed the other corner
of his mouth, and the other cheek —

He sighed and nestled his head into the curve between her neck and shoulder. She pushed her face
into his gossamer hair.

His eyes were closed when he lifted his head.

She brushed his fringe aside and pressed a long, lingering kiss on his forehead. Then a soft, slightly
quicker one. She slowly pulled back, and waited till he opened eyes.

They were glossy and so perfectly round as he looked at her. She watched his pupils shrink under
the light, set in a circle of shifting opalescence. Bright flecks from the light, cool flecks from the
walls, warm flecks from her hair.

“I'll see you at lunch,” she whispered, and withdrew from his arms.

She walked out of the room and into the bathroom, without fumbling, hesitating, or looking back.

With the door locked, she leaned back against it and pricked up her ears.

After a few minutes, she heard his footfalls travel across the hall. Then, very faintly, the sound of
him leaving through the floo.

It took her a few minutes more, to come out of the odd convergence of still feeling him everywhere
and feeling completely bereft.

Light glinted over brass fixtures and added polish to the beige tiles. The mirror was a fortune teller,
beckoning with a gleam in its eye, promising to reveal all sorts of hidden secrets.

Hermione thought she looked so different. It was like someone had taken her apart, piece by piece,
and carefully, lovingly rinsed each piece before putting her back together.

She looked like shit.

Eyes puffy and red, nose even redder, while the rest of her face was bloodless. Her lips looked like
they only had colour because Draco had put some there.

But there was time to prepare a face, to meet the faces that she’d meet.

She had been senselessly maligned, horrendously manipulated with just the perfect amount of truth
and complete lack of context. She’d been called a vengeful hypocrite, by an absolute cock on a path
of petty vengeance.
She’d had a hideous reaction to it – and to a task failed – and suffered an emotional breakdown a
long time in the making. A fragile thing she had been, just waiting for the final push to sink to the
bottom.

But there was time to gather the smithereens, to clean her flat, to scrape her pride off the floor.

There would be time to ring her parents and give them a blow-by-blow account of the ordeal.

And there would be time to murder and create.

I will not let him go after you, Kingsley had sworn.

As if she was going to let herself be gone after. As if, after everything, she was going to let her
downfall be orchestrated by a judicial fuckwit, a contemptible toff, and a sleazy, harebrained prick.

Not a fucking chance.

Since Ogden was so interested in her vengeful side, she was going to have to show him what it
truly was, here on the other side where fate was less fatal. She was going to sit with Bickie and help
her turn this thing into a proper Elf Movement. Ogden would get his mutiny. And the contract – the
original one, with all its benefits and stipulations – was going to be instituted, on a scale so large
that he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. It would make his head spin.

She would take her time with it, (for there was time). Time for one step at a time. Time to let things
be messy, and time to learn to dabble, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, visions, and
revisions…
 There would be time to disturb the hell out of the universe.

But the present hour – the resplendently bright right now – wasn’t the time.

At the present hour, her spirit felt so clean…

And only one thing mattered.

Chapter End Notes

And if you're frightened

You can be frightened
You can be, it's okay

1. Tears, Idle Tears, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

2. Sunday Morning by by Nico and The Velvet Underground
3. “You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.”: La Nausée, by Jean-Paul Sartre
4. The final scene in front of the bathroom mirror is, but of course, littered with references to
Prufrock. It is, arguably, the third most important mirror-soliloquy of the story.
 Hundred and Two
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

PART V

There was a woman in the mirror.

Dressed from head to toe in professional togs, her expression was undemonstrative… and yet she
appeared strangely distrait. Bewildered eyes and the gnawed indent on her lower lip betrayed a
certain callowness… some irresolution beneath that composure…
There was an unmade bed behind her, with the blanket trailing down to the floor. Books and empty
cups were piled high on the nightstand. Balled socks were scattered around.

“My bed,” Hermione said placidly. She glanced upwards and wished for a day when she’d live
under a more beautiful ceiling; something quietly remarkable, like the fan vaulting of St Mary
Aldermary —

Draco’s tie bar was cradled in her right hand. She stroked it with the fingers of her left, shrinking it,
just a little.

The woman in the mirror picked up a lock at the front of her hair, twisted it a couple of times, and
pinned it back with the tie bar. The gem caught the splendent glare streaming in from the balcony
doors. It gleamed and winked and twinkled. (He loved her.)

The woman smiled immensely . All at once. So prettily.

She took Hermione’s breath away.

The living room was lit from corner to dusty corner. A kind of eeriness distorted the light, like the
air was giving shape – rather badly – to something intangible. It looked like an echo sounded.
The shadows on the ceiling were faint, shapeless wisps. Like cobwebs.

Hermione pulled aside the curtains and opened both windows, letting cold, fresh breezes waft in
while she stuck her head out to look up at the sky. Radiant and wide… yet heavy with the promise
of another shower. The ground below was a dark jumper wet with tears.

She banished the dirty clothes to the washing bin, and the stuff on the dining table to the study.
Next, into the kitchen she went, and while the kettle worked itself into a shrieking paroxysm, she
stood in the absolute centre, with her wand aimed at the sink.

“Scourgify,” she pronounced, and at the same time, raised her arm and thought, accio black tea
bags.

The awful mess of dishes washed itself. A box soared into her hand. Wicked. She was going to talk
to Padma about this brand new ability of hers. After she spoke to Draco about it. (He loved her.)

It was time for the taking of a toast and tea.

Well, there was no toast, as she was out of bread. (Note to self: The larder needs restocking.)
Owl treats were piled high on one side of the dining table and she settled at the other, dipping
crumbly biscuits in her tea – for no more than two seconds each.

Over the course of that frugal breakfast, Hermione discovered that not even facing the ire of the
likes of McGonagall, Barros, Mum, Pince, Bellatrix, and goddamned Voldemort had prepared her
for the consequence of angering a whole lot of owls.
They were miniature furies with ruffled feathers, baleful hoots, and homicidal eyes. Their talons
left cursed runes on the table. They spilt treats everywhere. She mumbled heartfelt apologies. They
shat on the floor.

Now, at the centre of the table, was a pile of Prophets; two from Saturday, a thick Sunday edition,
and one for the current morning. All had something to say about her, with the same two
photographs relentlessly repeated – her race across the atrium immediately after the hearing, and
her shameful, shuffling trot towards the fireplaces at the end of the day.

Hermione Humiliated! Closed Hearing Goes Up in Flames!

Nothing but pure speculation. Attempts to get insights from various members of the Wizengamot
and Administrative Services, were foiled by ‘no comment,’ or ‘can’t say,’ or ‘classified
information.’

That had been Kingsley’s ploy then; to let Ogden sate his bloodlust in a controlled, confidential
environment.

The morning’s article was furbelowed with comments from Fawley (the younger), Greengrass, and
Augusta Longbottom. The first two made snide remarks about naive young muggleborns. The latter
said, ‘Step out of my path before I make you my path.’

Then there were letters. Commiserations. From mum and dad, from Mrs Weasley and Andromeda,
from Parvati and Dean. From Twila. From McGonagall. From Augusta Longbottom: Reinforce
your viciousness, young lady!

Anita had included an invitation to her book launch at Obscurus Books, on Saturday. It was called,
Conjuring Headlines: On the Misleading Magical Media and the Free Press Fallacy .
(In her letter, she’d expanded: I’d thought of titling it ‘The Daily Profit’, but that would have been
too easy. And I was strongly advised against it. By a bunch of fucking wimps.)

There was a panicked missive from Harry, telling her that he was trying to stop Malfoy, truly , but
there was nothing he could do, short of arresting him. It made Hermione laugh out loud that he’d
felt the need to re-send that to her. She imagined seeing him later that day, cowering with fear
behind Ron.

Her GAB was filled to the final inch. Besides a few thoughtful lines from Theo, Padma, Ron,
George, and Mr Weasley, it was all Draco, beginning with a simple, Are you all right?
To:
What happened? — Granger? — Do you want some alcohol that isn’t cheap rotgut? — You’ve
blocked your floo again? — Still not home? — Could you send one bloody word in response? —
You seriously won’t even accept a fucking letter? — How long do you intend to sulk? — Enough
now. Where the hell are you? — What was the point of fashioning an instant communication device
if you aren’t going to use it yourself? —

And so on. (He loved her.)

There were seven minutes till she was expected at work.

Floo powder in one hand, dad’s walkman tucked in the other, headphones covering her ears, she
observed a moment of silence in memory of who she had been the night before. Her skin and bones
were still her own. They were. She pulled on a cloak made of bravado and pretension. And she
pressed play.

The weighty notes of a synthesiser accompanied her ascent through the floo network. She
pretended she was being propelled by the swell.

She stumbled into the Ministry just as the percussion was beginning to set the tempo. Her pulse
when thumping along. Her stillness was that most pure agitation that preceded sudden motion. The
wail of an electric guitar swirled around her and little green explosions bloomed on either side,
spitting out dutiful workers. They all stared as they passed her.

Hermione took a step forward.

I want to break free

I want to break free

She walked briskly, passing those who’d passed her, and they took
the opportunity to stare once again. Those in front, looked back; those behind, tried to match her
pace — but they were sluggish, bloated from all the lies they had been fed. Daft rubberneckers. So
self satisfied, she didn't need them.

The guard’s neck twisted as he followed her journey past the gates.

Everybody clustered before the lifts. She could sense their eyeballs roving all over her back, sizing
her up. Defiantly, she pulled back her shoulders, chin up, and stared at the closed grille in front of
her.

She moved quickly to stand at the back of the first lift that arrived. Those that followed stared over
their hunched shoulders. She hoped the mean light would fall right on the gem, and the reflection
would blind them all. At each level, bits of chaff kept falling out, until there were just three others,
beside her, left when they landed on level two.

The corridor contained another hazy echo, strange but true, and she became the gale that swept it
away. She crossed paths with Darnell and a few other admin drones. Music masked their buzzing.

The cold catacomb that was their department, was unusually alive. People were racing from door to
door – overexcited bats. The receptionist said something; the standard good morning, Hermione
supposed. She heard only synthesisers, and smiled.

The lamps were lit in her little office. Kathy’s stuff was there, but she wasn’t. Hermione sat back in
her chair, closed her eyes, and sank into a dreamy instrumental interlude…

…For just about a minute… Until someone patted her arm.

Kathy hovered over her, brows ticked up with worry. Hermione pulled off her headphones and said,
“Hello.”
“Hi,” she murmured cautiously, “Alright?”

“Yup! Just…” She shrugged, grinning. “Queen is best listened to with eyes closed, you know?”

Kathy didn’t know what to make of that, or her. “Really, how are you?”

“I’m perfectly well!” Hermione chirped, “Oh, morning, Takumi!”

He stood at the door with his arms hanging limp by his sides, appearing very alarmed. “Good
morning? Hermione?”

It turned out, all the hubbub was because the Wizengamot had announced the dates for the
potionware case hearing. They were two weeks away, but everyone was acting like it was
tomorrow, and the whole case wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
Hermione dutifully completed all the tasks allotted to her, taking absolutely no initiative on her
own, because that meant less discussion and less cause for her colleagues to talk to her like she had
returned after a six month stint in the Janus Thickey ward.

Nothing she could do about the staring. They stared and stared. But it was with concern rather than
morbid curiosity, and that was Something. In a few hours, it would be time for lunch and…

The bowl on her desk hadn’t been filled with Glacier Mints in ages. She would have to remedy
that.

Halfway through some stodgy legal nonsense, a memo landed in her lap. She unfolded and
smoothed it out, and written in the most beautiful handwriting of all time were two words:
Finnigan’s roof.

Her spirits soared. She couldn’t do a jot of work after that, and bided her time by moving an
uninked quill around her parchment.

Forty minutes before lunch, she volunteered to collect some transcripts from the archival chambers.
It didn’t take long: The chap in charge had everything ready and waiting, as things always were for
Madam Barros, and Hermione signed his register while he stared at her.

That left her with time enough for a detour, and she stood once more in a lift with three others.
(Take the stairs, miss the stares.)
(She would’ve whispered that to Draco if he’d been with her.)
(He would have admonished her for it.)

She dropped down to level four, dashed to the Being Division, and knocked on the narrowest door.
It flew open rather explosively, and then there were skinny arms wrapped around her legs.

“Hermione is here! Bickie has been worrying muchly!”

Struck down by latent resonances, Hermione warbled, “I am so sorry for worrying you. And… I’m
sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Bickie blinked up at her with giant, befuddled eyes. “Hermione shouldn’t be sorry!”
“Yes, why are you apologising?” asked Ben from his desk.

Hermione eyed him woefully, with slimy shame coating her tongue.

“Sit down?” he gestured courteously towards her usual chair.

Bickie brewed her a tiny cup of floral tea and stood close by. Mit watched quietly from his desk.
Ben regarded her head-on, with uncompromising clarity, and spoke words of gratitude, pride, and
encouragement. He praised her conduct during the hearing. He was heartened by the fact that only
four members – not counting the two biggest bollocks – voted against them.

No judgement, no censure, not even disappointment… She was disarmed and incapable of refuting
anything he said.

A cuckoo clock above Bickie’s desk announced the lunch hour.

“Will you be joining us?” Ben asked.

“No, sorr– ahem. Not today.”

“I was hoping you’d refuse.”

That stung.

He caught on, and chuckled. “You see my dear, on Friday, I stuck around for a bit longer, hoping
you would show up.”

“I’m sorr–”

“Tch. None of that. But just as I was getting ready to leave, a rather agitated young man burst into
the office, looking for you. I don’t suppose your lunch plans involve him?”

“They do.” She flushed. (He loved her.)

“Go on then,” he said laughingly.

Go on. Keep going. Could she dare to rename failure? Call it a blip. A dash of seasoning. One little
setback.

She stood up and gathered her belongings. Ben tapped his nails on his desk, one after the other.

“We’re just getting started. Isn’t that right, Bickie?”

“Dobby never gave up and Bickie will also never give up!” the elf avouched.

Hermione smiled slowly. “God knows we’re just getting started.”

Outside the DDL, Harry was in fact cowering behind Ron.

“Hi, Hermione,” Ron deadpanned.

“I’m sorry,” Harry burbled over him, “I made it very clear to him – to Malfoy – like I’d told you I
would, that you weren’t to be bothered, but he’s so fucking…”

Ron sighed loudly, and moved out of the way.

“...when I came downstairs, he and Ron were having an all-out row, just shouting at each other, so
I… I tried to send you a gabbing and a letter… but short of whipping out my auror badge and
casting an incarcerous … I couldn’t do anything. I swear I tried to stop him. I swear, alright?”

Hermione, who’d begun to quiver with suppressed laughter, said, “I’m glad you didn’t arrest him.
And…” she held her breath a moment, “and I’m glad you didn’t stop him.”

Harry was greatly surprised, but Ron muttered, “Told you,” with unhappy vindication.

“Coming for lunch?” Harry peeked over the tops of his glasses. Disturbingly Dumbledoresque.

“No. Um...”

“Right,” and “’course,” said at the same time.

Somehow, when Arnold, Irvin, and Fiona stepped into the lift she was in, Hermione knew not to
expect Draco. She greeted them, directing extra warmth towards Fiona; surely enough to wipe
away all the less-than-charitable thoughts she’d had about her over the course of many months.
Other people were collected along the way. Hermione ignored their stares by making small talk.

“Has Mr Pendleton recovered from his illness?”

“What illness?” Fiona asked.

“I heard he’d been absent all of last week, due to food poisoning,” Hermione replied with a kind
smile.

Fiona made a face. “No?”

“That’s the irony of Kenneth Pendleton,” Irvin said, “Doesn’t work, but also doesn’t miss a day of
work. He was in his element last week, actually. A complete menace.”

“I’ll say,” Arnold seconded, “And to make matters worse, on Wednesday, Malfoy said he was going
to the bog and then just up and vanished, so everything fell on me –”

Hermione had reached her limit. She tuned them out, and just watched the dial as it moved steadily
towards the atrium…

“Good day,” she mumbled and took off.

She didn’t linger among the shops of Diagon. She clicked her heels, turned, and appeared, alone, on
Finnigan’s roof.
In the unsparing light, there was nothing otherworldly about the plain stone and concrete, the
rickety shed, the walls and towers of empty barrels. There was no criss-cross of lights separating
her from the swathes of desaturated watercolour washes above.

The wind came in a sudden sharp draught, then disappeared like it had never been.

I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost.

Hermione paced to the spot where they had once sat, and conjured two matching high back leather
armchairs. An influx of stupendous joy made her breath catch. She lifted her wand again and
nudged the armchairs closer, till she had fused them together.
A seat for two. Do they have a name for those? Why, yes, they are called loveseats.

She settled on one side — Quickly shuffled to the other side so that the tie bar in her hair would be
facing him — Crossed her ankles, clasped her hands and…

He appeared.

None of the morning’s fatigue remained. He was spruced up, clean shaven, cutting a fine, sharp
figure in his jet black coat. Another wind blew by, he tossed his hair back as he made his way
towards her, a bag from Neil’s was swinging by his side.

She beamed widely. Her heart was more than halfway out her chest.
He got closer and closer and she wondered if he’d kiss her in greeting. If he would call her
something sweet and loving. If he would tell her again…

…There he was, right before her. His eyes fell first on her hair, and his brow rose minutely. He
placed the bag in the middle of the loveseat.

He sat. He scowled.

“Are you allergic to comfortable furniture?” he demanded vituperatively.

“Huh?”

“Do you break out in hives if you come in contact with quality fabric?”

“There’s – There’s nothing wrong with this… seat!” she sputtered.

“It’s a violation of basic lounging rights. It’s corporal punishment. It’s as bad as relentless
flogging.”

“What rot!”

He drew out his wand. With a few taps and one curling ‘W’, he transfigured the leather into
something so plushy, it made her creation feel like worn rexine. Her face must have given
something away, because he suddenly got so smirky.

“Well?” she sneered, “Are you going to make any changes or not?”

It was a very poor show, making him even smirkier as he stowed away his wand. His eyes were
demonstrating the schiller effect as he took two wrapped sandwiches out of the bag, and offered her
the one labelled ‘caprese’.
She reached for it, but he kept holding on for a little longer, looking quizzically between the
sandwich and her face.

All that to posit: “It was never the lycopene, was it?”

She immediately turned away, refusing to corroborate such an assertion. However, her treacherous
cheeks flared up like ambulance sirens, announcing ‘it was you, it was you, always you.’

He looked extremely pleased with himself, and she found that not at all objectionable. She wanted
him to be pleased with himself, and with her, and with life in general. She wanted him to be
pleased, always.

“How bad has it been?” he asked in a casual-lunchtime-conversation tone.

Has what been?

Oh. That.

“The staring is getting tiresome,” she told him just as casually, “But everyone knows better than to
actually comment.”

“Did you meet your comrades-in-arms?”

“Yes. They were very understanding.”

“There’s nothing to understand.”

“How was the Austrian ambassador?”

“Punctual and well-mannered.”

“Unlike Kenny?”

“Unlike Kenny.”

Had there ever been a moment where she’d felt like this? Like right then – click – she had fallen
into position after rolling and shuffling and twisting around her rightful place in the universe.

Empty wrappers, crumpled into balls, were tossed back into the paper bag.

“Now, Granger, I was thinking.”

“Were you really?” she exclaimed, “Well done!”

…Which was so horrendously uninspired that not a single Draco-molecule bothered to act
perturbed.

He continued, “I haven’t spent a weekend on my little island in a while. It’s true that this isn't the
best season to go – too cold to swim, not much sun – and the maison de maitre is admittedly rather
humble, but the gardens have been spelled to always be in bloom, and the view, with the channel
and the sky and all that, is something to admire, if you’re an easily impressed, romanticising sort of
sop. All in all, very restorative.”

Nevermind that many of those adjectives were most assuredly misleading or unnecessarily
taunting. She adored him. It was physically painful to keep from launching herself at him.

“There's also a special, direct floo connection to the magical platform at Gare du Nord. Might
interest someone who hasn’t yet explored Wizarding Paris.”

“Could this person also make a quick dash to the South of France – Aix, to be precise — for twee
and sentimental reasons?”

His mouth twitched. “That can be arranged.”

“One of the muggle world's most interesting painters had his atelier there. It’s open to the public
now. Worth a visit.”

“I’m sure it is. Have you heard of the magical village of Bagliore?”

“Er, the oldest magical settlement in Italy? Tucked in a corner of Lazio, I believe, and had its
beginnings when a few factions of the Volsci made to establish an all-magical centre that aimed to
push back against Roman oppression. Later, both Cicero and Pliny the Elder settled there for a
while, and –”

“ Sì,” Draco cut in firmly, “It’s also known for its vast forested reserve that is full of the very rare,
very magical Sfolgorante Roses, and one of the largest fairy settlements in Europe. It’s very
difficult to get permission to enter the reserve, unless you happen to be well-heeled and well
connected.”

Hermione said, “Uh,” then “Oh,” and couldn’t manage anything more.

“Remember that wheedling wanker Bachvarov? He’s given me an open invitation to Bulgaria,
offered up his suite in Sofia’s best hotel, and is willing to organise a tour of the historical sites
spread across the Rhodope Mountains. Of course, you’ll make it very clear to him that you will not
be joining him for dinner, and if he calls you a rose, you will show him your thorns.”

“But…?”

“And obviously I can’t miss another chance to see that blasted palace floating on the Arabian Sea,
so Panah will be next on the agenda.”

“I don’t –”

“I saw an advertisement in the papers when I was there; the local Raftaar 6000 outclasses the
Firebolt in so many ways. I’ve been meaning to get my hands on one. Your precious occamies will
be spared.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Hermione had finally rediscovered her wits. They’d been flattened by her
cartwheeling heart. “How will we do so much in two days?”

“Not two days. Seven.”

“ Seven days?? A week??”

“That’s the consensus, according to most calendars.”

“Draco, I can’t take a whole week off!”

“Why not?”

“They’ll think I’m fleeing.”

“Who cares?”

“I do! I just can’t. Not now. It’ll seem like I’m…”

Draco leaned in, conveying full seriousness, and Hermione was riveted into silence.

“There’s absolutely nothing you could say to me to devalue the merit of fleeing,” he stated, “I’m
honestly desperate to make up for all the times I should have fled. Besides… This doesn’t even
count as fleeing, for fuck’s sake. You’ve never fled, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She had fled though, to Australia. Fled the ruins of war, left her friends to pick up their own pieces.
But it had done her good, hadn’t it? And now, she felt just as battered… Was that what her life
would be? An endless cycle – countless consecutive circles – of working to the bone, giving it her
all, and then running away somewhere pretty to recuperate —

Like an annual bloody holiday, you mean? Good heavens, she could be so unbelievably stupid
about the simplest things.

“You’ve been trapped in your surroundings, your routine, and, most dire of all, trapped in the mad
maelstrom of your own head. Get out for a bit, give yourself a break. Nothing here will change in a
week, you monumental dolt. Things will be just as desperately in need for you to fix.”

That wasn’t the point at all, but she didn’t want to argue about that. She wanted him to persuade her
a little more. She wanted… (just a few)… more words from him. But it seemed he was quite
finished making his case.

“What about you?” she beseeched, “You’ll take a break from travelling… to travel?”

He looked at her with profound pity. “Travelling without paperwork,” he pronounced slowly.
Insultingly slowly. “Without having to attend deadening meetings. Not having to talk to, look at, or
make excuses for a steamingly incompetent piece of shit. I’ll be free to take in the sights, good food
and good wine, with the prospect of spectacular sex every night.”

Before she knew it, his lapels were in her fists and her mouth was sewn to his. He tossed away the
bag between them, before drawing his arms around her and pressing her even closer against
himself. His touch flowed along her side, down her thigh. He draped her legs across his lap.

In between kisses, words were whispered —

“I have a new addition to my to-do list.”

“Oh? Under number two: Get rid of Kenny?”

“Above that.”

“Under number one: Ride a dragon?”

“No. Instead of that.”

“What is it?”

He tugged her hair just enough for her to reflexively tilt her head back. She closed her eyes when
he pressed his mouth to the dip beneath her jaw.

His voice was balmy. “Amended item number one on Draco Malfoy’s List of Things To Do:
Behold every boring stretch of landscape on this miserable floating rock… with Hermione
Granger.”

Her eyes flew open. The sky was so grey. So beautiful. So grey.

She kissed him with maximised fervour, pushing his shoulders till his back was against the armrest.
She was a bit all over, all at once; she’d found her way inside his coat and pulled at his shirt – fine
Sea Island cotton, charmed so she couldn’t rumple it – and her lips fell from his mouth to his jaw.

“I’ll think about it. But listen. The expenses.”

“Hmm.”

“I can’t imagine how much so many portkeys and hotel rooms will amount to.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Will you tell me how much, so we can split the cost? I don’t want you footing the entire thing.”

He groaned, not in a good way, and peeled her sufficiently off himself to bestow a proper look of
displeasure. “Look, you can beat your head against the wall over every actual and perceived
injustice in the world, but do not, for the love of all that is enchanted, agonise over an extremely
wealthy wizard spending his galleons.”

“But I don’t see why we can’t –”

“I won’t need to spend a knut for accommodation in France and Bulgaria. And I get a sizable
discount on portkeys, working for the department that I do.”

“All right, but I’m not exactly destitute! I can very well cough up –”

“Jabber jabber fiddlesticks,” he said in his horrendous falsetto.

She glared. “Listen, you –”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Shan’t.”

He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her in again.

After a while, he spoke against the skin just inside her collar, (words were so muffled that they
were barely audible, but the tone of annoyance was inexplicably amplified), – “Just fucking let me
take you on a holiday.”

Again they parted. Blood pounded in her ears as it flooded his cheeks. She was burning and he was
burning, and there had never been anything as burning hot as the two of them together.

“My cousin’s getting married in August. I need a date for her wedding.”

“Is that a condition?” he barked, “I have to put on a Prince Charming act to earn the privilege of…
taking you on a holiday?”

“Yes,” she said, and his eyebrows shot up.

“No,” she revised, and one eyebrow lowered while the other stayed up – a wry and questioning
look.
“Yes,” she said again, because she wanted the grin playing around his mouth to unfurl fully.

She laid a finger against the parenthesis on one corner of his lips.

“No act necessary,” she told him placatingly, “Charlotte is a bitch. I need you to look terribly
handsome, while being awfully unpleasant and unapproachable.”

“So just be myself then?”

“Amped up to a terrifying degree.”

He laughed, and of course , she kissed him again. Good god, fuck, she needed him. Desperately.
She slipped a hand down his torso in tiny increments, till her palm was pressed against his crotch.
He was so hard. She traced the shape of him and he groaned, in a very very good way that made her
shudder. She repeated the move a few times, till he was panting, and finally, she squeezed. His hips
lurched off the loveseat.

Suddenly, she wasn’t half-sprawled over him.

Suddenly, he was on his feet – his hand around her elbow, tugging her up —

They were running – running – across the rooftop.

She laughed dazedly, he grinned over his shoulder, flushed and aroused —

She tripped as she was bound to, over her perfectly stable block heels, but he was there again,
catching her before she could fall, pulling her someway – in front of him – turning her to face him
— he was kissing her just as her back hit a wall.
Not a wall, the door to the shed. The next minute, they were inside. It was a magically expanded
storage space, cool as an underground cellar, filled with even more barrels and casks. It was dark
but for thin beams of light that pierced through small holes in the walls and ceiling.

Draco walked her backwards, quickly, urgently — And he was a swinging suncatcher, now
glowing in a beam of light – now shrouded in shadows – and now again glowing —

He picked her up and sat her on a barrel. She pulled him between her legs and kept pulling and
yanking till she had his shirt untucked. Her ankles locked around his hips and he pressed against
her, undoing enough of her buttons to be able to push down the cups of her bra.

His hands on her breasts. Hers sliding down his stomach. His climbing up her inner thigh. Her teeth
on his neck. Her tights vanished. His trousers opened. Her knickers pulled aside.

He was pushing inside her with bone-melting slowness. She crooked a finger, drawing a tower of
barrels closer for her to prop her feet against for a better angle. He slid all the way in.

She let out a scratchy nnngh from somewhere deep in her chest, throwing her head back.

The pace, the force, spot on – He was grunting softly with each thrust, she was gasping at each
withdrawal. A high-tension cable was winding around them. A beam of light fell half on his
shoulder, half on her arm resting on it. She could feel another slanting across her face, lighting up
her eyelashes.

He seemed fixated by it, looking from one eye to the other. A deep line formed between his brows,
and, with a spill of inexplicable agitation over his features, words came tumbling out of his mouth
in a rush –

“Want to hear something completely wild?”

“What?” she breathed.

“You make the world spin faster.”

Then he was pulling her closer – moving steadily – burying his face in her hair and muttering
broken sentences —

“...fast enough to straighten its axis…

…whizzing about the solar system like a galactic billywig…
…You make the world’s vastness seem… fathomable…
…And I am finally… finally… in the presence of… beauty, truth…”

And rarity.

When the cable around them crackled, when a series of sparks were set off up her back and down
her limbs, when everything stilled and time stopped – she kept her eyes open, marvelling at the
goldy dust particles frozen in place. He was clutching onto her like she was the only stable thing in
existence, like he was in danger of being carried away by how dizzyingly fast his world was
spinning…
Maybe this was love’s inner sanctum; a magnificent, swirling-static, mind-bending paradox.

Silently, they straightened up their clothing. He grimaced as he collected his coat from the floor,
casting three or four cleaning charms before pulling it on. Hermione carefully extracted his tie bar
from the newly-amassed tangles in her hair and held it out on an open palm.
He looked at it transiently, tongue pushing against the inside of his cheek, before he dipped his
hand under his coat and retrieved another tie bar, identical to the first but for the green peridot at
the end.

He dropped it in her hand and walked right away, leaving her to grin idiotically at his back.

By the time she stepped out of the shed with pretty, improvised clips on both sides of her head, he
had already disapparated, and had, predictably, left the loveseat and rubbish filled bag for her to
vanish.

She found him on the pavement outside Quality Quidditch Supplies, looking phlegmatically
through the display window. They began walking towards the fireplace behind The Leaky
Cauldron, still silent, until they were waylaid by a deluge of children who came surging out of the
pub. Chattering, excited, looking around with awe, they were being chaperoned by Justin and some
woman. The Muggleborn Assimilation Committee at work.
Hermione did not panic. Draco pulled her in front of him, put his hands on her shoulders, and
steered her through the swarm. She couldn’t tell if it was to keep her steady or to shield himself.

They made it through and exhaled with shared relief. Draco’s grip loosened and slipped away,
while he grumbled about imp infestations. Keeping silent felt very stupid, after that.

“How was your meeting?” Hermione asked.

“Pointless,” he groused, “Boring. A discourse on bilateral relations over palmiers and coffee. But it
gave me time to plan out my report. This time I’m going to channel Jerry Cruncher.”

“The ICW will never accept that!”

Draco nodded, saying “They’ll think Kenny got plastered,” and stepped through the floo.

They strode down the atrium and he continued — “Wodehouse was fun for a bit, but I’m bloody
sick of the pomp, the similes, the affectation. After all, I am not a –”

“Mincing ponce. Yes,” she said dryly, “Jerry Cruncher is the perfect antidote. There’s hopes wot
this here wentur will yet be a blessing to you, Aggerawayter.”

She faltered, entirely chuffed by his sudden, loud laugh.

“Which reminds me, it’s high time I introduce you to Hemingway. He’s very blunt and unadorned; I
think you, and your, er, literary voice will relate. Of course, that doesn’t account for the sudden
Shakespearean dramatics of your tantrums, or the Wildean irony when you’re trying to be self-
deprecatory.”
He gave her a very sniffy, sideways look.

They stood close together in the lift, arms brushing. If people were staring, Hermione didn’t care.
Did both the gems in her hair catch the light?

On level five, Draco said, “Granger,” as he left, like it was just another Manic Monday.

There was a two hour meeting – a clash of barristerial egos – during which all those involved sat in
a room and talked over each other. After that, Hermione had to endure another hour-long session
with just her team and Barros. It was pointless and boring, and the absence of palmiers and coffee
was greatly rued.

She hung back after they’d been dismissed, much to Barros’ aggrievement.

“Just thought I’d remind you that I am on leave tomorrow.”

“Are you?” Barros carped.

“Yes. I booked it nearly a month ago, Madam Barros, and you signed your approval.”

Her boss made a disapproving face. After the owls, it was almost cute.

For the rest of the day, Hermione kept reliving the afternoon. On blank parchment that stayed
blank, she envisioned the innumerable stretches of landscape on this miserable, enormous, floating
rock…

[She made someone’s world spin faster. Not someone’s… Draco’s. She made Draco’s world spin
faster. She did that. Hermione.]

Sleep deprivation was gaining on her.

After work, through a swiftly escalating drizzle, she went to Mabel’s to pick up two large chocolate
cakes. A hot shower proved to be more soporific than reviving, she threw on… whatever… some
clothes, and put the tie bars back in her hair.

In such a state, with an armload of boxes, she walked into Draco and Theo’s dining room, and felt
certain that she was dreaming.
Bright orange streamers wrapped around every piece of furniture and lay between the food on the
table. The ceiling was half-covered with orange balloons, and George and Lee were ensuring that
the other half wouldn’t remain bereft for long.

She gave herself a little shake, creeping gingerly (heh) into the room, when out of the orange,
Draco stood before her, spitting rage.

“Make. Him. Stop.”

Hermione peeked around him. “George, stop.”

“No,” said George.

She shrugged and went to the table, conjuring pedestals for the cakes.

“That’s it???” her lover thundered.

“Yes,” she told him, “If you want to cross him, go ahead. I am not going to be your sacrificial
lamb.”

In time, as more people arrived, the ceiling became a canopy of salmon caviar. Streamers slithered
around like sea serpents. A purple and white Symphonic Spout stood proud in a corner, singing
some kind of dramatic chanson de geste about the Warlock's Hairy Heart.

“Aw, isn’t this sweet?” called a voice.

Hermione was among the first ones to hug him, and he said, “Hello, darling,” giving her an almost
paternal pat on her cheek.

“Welcome back, Theo.”

He grinned at her hair accessories; but blessedly, mercifully, thoughtfully, thank almighty Theo,
refrained from commenting.

Drinks and dinner. Each minute drove her deeper into a withdrawn and scatterbrained state. Her
yawns were getting so intense that they made her eyes water.

At midnight, when the sacred Leap Day officially commenced, candles were blown, cakes were
cut, and the Symphonic Spout burbled the birthday song. Theo swayed soulfully, like Pavarotti
himself was serenading him, and once it was over, he produced a vial and downed it with great
flourish.

“Felix Felicis! Tomorrow will be the perfect day!”

His audience caterwauled. Ron yelled, “You could’ve shared! My birthday’s the next fucking
day!”

But George told him to give up and that not even Felix could help him get lucky, and continued to
needle him and called him Ronniekins; so Ron retorted warningly that if he gave George an earful,
he’d be fucked. Angelina choked on whatever she had in her mouth, and insisted on serving Ron
another slice of cake…

In the midst of all that, Hermione mumbled farewell to Draco and Harry, waved to a few others
(none of whom were looking), and staggered home and crumbled into bed.
If Rita had intended for Hermione to look bad, she had failed.

The headline may have read Haggard Hermione Comes out of Hiding , but the photograph of her
striding down the atrium with headphones on was the farthest thing from haggard. She was a regal
queen from time past, marching to a twentieth century tune.

She would be sending a copy to dad, with a note that read: This Boudica will not succumb.

The weather was outrageously clear. Hermione stood on her hillock, looking down at the Burrow
and the many people scattered around it. Mrs Weasley was setting up a table for refreshments,
Angelina was flying laps around the quidditch hoops, George, Lee, Conrad, and a crew of
construction wizards were laying tracks in the front yard.

Seasons, days and nights, memories and junctures, all came together and became the ground
beneath her feet.

…Ollivander was back in front of her, wearing a small smile.

“How do you feel, Ms Granger?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you want to feel?”

“Like myself.”

She trudged down the slope.

Preparations took three hours. She had arrived with the intention of putting up a shield to keep the
elements at bay, but since nothing more than a cursory warming charm was necessary, she was
handed a diagram and tasked with actualising a ball pool with slides, and a small castle-shaped
climbing frame. Such childish whimsicalness was not her forte, so she idly conjured one colourful
ball at a time, until the LUMP gang arrived and took over.

She was minding her own business when George came around to moan about the trials and
tribulations of consolidating territory in France.

“We were looking at Paris, but now I’ve got my eye on the small hamlet close to the Palace of
Beauxbatons, for obvious reasons. But some of the professors are pally with Fleur, and she’s told
them unpleazant zings.”
And after further quips that made use of every French cliché known to an upstanding Englishman,
he said, “So. Oliver Wood. Close friend of mine.”

An abrupt turn and Hermione’s curiosity – and jitters – were piqued.

“Oliver has a lot of other close friends in very high places. He brings them around for a pint pretty
often. We all talk, and things happen. Things really happen sometimes, don’t they, Hermione?”

“What are you talking about?”

“One of his close friends is the scout for the Falcons, and his cousin is the assistant manager of the
Wigtown Wanderers. We all had a good natter the other day, and he decided his team didn’t need a
keeper for the reserve team’s reserve team.”

Hermione goggled at him. The best of the best Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes fireworks were going
off in her head.

“You… you got McLaggen fired from his psuedo-job?!”

George clapped her shoulder bracingly. “Nobody unearths old grudges like jolly Oli. And like I
said, things happen.”

He left her with a winsome grin.

She thought the sun shone even brighter.

By eleven, there was a roller coaster clambering far and wide over the uneven terrain of Devon,
with a six-seater cart shaped like a Ukrainian Ironbelly. An obstacle course stretched from the
hillock to the back garden, involving a Portable Swamp, a dungbomb cannon, screaming yo-yos
hanging from branches, an undulating rope bridge, self-propelling custard pies, and a sentient bed
of coals. To one side, there was a complicated formation for some hopscotch-and-gobstones fusion.
To the other, there was a dartboard with fire-tipped darts. As always, a jumble of mismatched chairs
were scattered all over the place.

By eleven-thirty, everything was being put to use.

Around twenty children between the ages of five and eleven, from Tonks Orphanage, were
frolicking in the kiddies’ area. Across the field, young adults were doing their version of the same,
led by the Pied Piper Theo Nott. He’d imported two additional friends for the occasion – Amanda
with rainbow-coloured hair, who was very jovial, and Joshua, a towering mountain of a man, who
engulfed Hermione’s hand in his two enormous ones.

She smiled when her lover made an appearance, laughed when Seamus got pelted by a stray custard
pie, beamed through a lovely reunion with Ginny…

But soon, a quidditch game was on, and that left her in the company of one odious dickhead –
Ernie – Ernie being profusely overbearing – Ernie trying to make up for his horrible uncle’s
horrible judgement, belching philosophy like a fourteen year old who had thumbed through
Kauffman’s conspectus of Existentialism one idle summer afternoon and decided she understood
everything.

Several lifetimes later, she wound up nibbling on mini pork pies with Astoria and Millicent,
listening bemusedly as the latter hatched up a plan to pull Joshua. Neither Hermione nor Astoria
were willing to contribute in any way.

“Ugh. Why am I asking you two?” Millicent rolled her eyes and fanned herself. “You both go for
scrawny, malaised looking blokes. But let me tell you, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a
big, strong boy like that turn into a total melt because you've shown him a tit.”

“A tit?” Hermione asked. “One?”

Astoria giggled.

“Yes. One single tit is all it takes, usually. Give them two and you’ll own their soul.”

She marched away, brimming with determination.

Finally.

Hermione smiled broadly at Astoria.

“Has she always been like this?”

Astoria nodded happily. “Growing up, every gathering, bar none, had an infamous Millicent
Moment during lulls in conversation. Usually with Theodore at the receiving end, and I strongly
suspect he played a bigger role than he let on. Once it was crumbs in my cleavage and another time,
Mrs Goyle laughs like a dying ass. My favourite was during Christmas at the Parkinson’s.
Pendulous sack.”

Hermione giggled along. Then she deftly directed conversation through general small talk, a little
here and there, the weather, school, exams… plans for the future… Was Astoria still interested in
pursuing law? She most definitely was; just confused about which kind to go for.

“Have you heard about the big potionware fraud scandal?” Hermione widened her eyes at the last
word, and waited for Astoria to nod ardently. “We’ve finally got a date from the Wizengamot. Well,
dates. All through the third week of March. It’s going to be a long affair, lots of charges. Our team
is handling the particulars and–” She paused, and bit her lip like she had been struck by a sudden
thought. “I can get you in, if you’re interested.”

“Could you really?” Astoria was on the balls of her feet at the prospect. “I’ve never watched a trial
before — Oh!” Suddenly back on her heels, she was dismayed. “But Madame Maxime was already
reluctant to allow me to come away today… I don’t know if she’ll…”

“Would it help if I sent you a formal invitation on parchment bearing the Ministry’s emblem?”

“That should do it!”

Her elation was so palpable that it helped Hermione feel better about herself.
Anon, she was sitting on a rocking chair, watching a modern interpretation of A Procession of
Flagellants: Bruised and beaten obstacle survivors with muddy faces, custard in their hair, and
smoking shoes. Whooooosh and wheeeeee as the Ironbelly went around the loop. Children’s
laughter in the background.

Theo broke off from the group playing gob-scotch, (chased away by loud cheating accusations),
and, after shoving her chair to send it rocking wildly, pulled one for himself.

“How’s your perfect day working out?”

“So far so good.”

They talked like they always had and always would. He knew it still wasn’t time to ask about the
hearing. She knew to quiz him on every aspect of the building of the Church of Theo.

“Must say,” he said, by and by, “I wasn’t expecting to see Millicent.”

“I told George to invite her. She’s very…”

“Isn’t she? Has she apologised for manhandling you?”

“Yes, in her own special way. Your new friends are lovely.”

“They’re happy, uncomplicated people. Amanda in particular. She likes tiny dogs and baking.
Nobody she knows has died. Her blooming great-great-grandparents are alive. Dribbling and
immobile, but enduring.”

“How refreshing.”

“I would’ve hated her if I’d met her here. But something about not being here... Ah, and by the
way, I’m not sleeping with her.”

“How refreshing.”

“Yet,” he emphasised with a waggle of his eyebrows, “But it definitely isn’t going to happen
tonight, not with Tori here.”

What would have happened if Luna had accepted her invitation? Russian literature, probably.

Theo guessed where her thoughts were, and snickered. “I knew she wouldn’t come. She’s in
Sweden again; has been there for the past two weeks. There’s been heavy snowfall and she has
found many promising Snorkack tracks.”

“How do you know all this?”

“We’ve been gabbing. Off and on.”

She looked at him uncertainly, torn between ten different reactions. He just grinned and set her
chair rocking again. Now she knew it wasn’t the time.
There was a ruckus as the quidditch players came plodding down the field. Her lover was fuming,
as sore a loser as ever, berating Dean about something.
Pink-cheeked with anger. Fitted flying gear. Windblown and a little sweaty. Hmmm. She wanted to
taste the cold and salt on his skin… to feel the tense muscles of his thighs…

Loud guffaws erupted, over which Dean yelled, “Glad to know you spend so much time thinking
about me, handsome!”

“I think about you less than I think about breathing,” Draco snarled, “Not thinking about you is the
most involuntary of all my involuntary actions.”

“You’ve slowly made him himself again, you know?” Theo divulged quietly, “He was so empty
after the whole jingbang. Cold and bitter, trying his damnedest to seem forbidding. You’ve brought
the moaning, ridiculous arsehole out into the world again. We thank you for that.”

Hermione laughed with joyous warmth in her chest. “He really is… astonishingly ridiculous
sometimes.”

“You won’t be laughing when he starts throwing his Theoforesaken puns at you.”

Pff. Draco’s puns were fantastic. Theo had no erkling of what good humour was.

The group drifted towards the refreshments. Draco pushed his hair back and ripped open the strap
of his gloves with his teeth.
…to feel the nip of those teeth… followed by a flick of the wicked tongue that hid behind them…

Hermione took a breath and turned back to Lord God.

“You knew a lot more than you let on, didn’t you?” she accused, “Back then.”

“Yeah,” he sighed without looking at her.

“And you told me you hadn’t a clue. You lied to me all year.”

He rubbed and rubbed his nose till it was red. “I wouldn’t call it lying.” …After ten seconds…
“Are you angry?”

“Perpetually,” she replied, “With you? Never.”

His eyes twinkled, and the next minute he was telling her it was time for them to ride the roller
coaster. Felix didn’t give her the chance to refuse. She went along on his recruiting mission,
starting with Draco, who was grouchily stuffing his face with sausage rolls. Felix couldn’t impel
him —

“I’m eating. While I’m sure you would love to be baptised by my sick, I’m not feeling very
benevolent at the moment.”
Harry and Ron were won over by the ‘we must reprise our glorious flight from Gringotts’
argument, while Dean and Ginny, feeling that they had unfairly missed out, also latched on.
Hermione tied back her hair, kept a firm grip on her wand, and settled by the Ironbelly’s (left)
wing.

It wasn’t as fast as she feared, nor as long as it looked. The single loop was smoothly completed. It
all fell rather flat, after going through the real thing.

She left her fellow passengers to their excited gibbering, and plodded around the grounds in search
of —

Hidden ’neath a low tree, her exacting lover had conjured his own chair. He sat with his ankle
crossed over his knee, sipping orange squash.
Grinning, she pulled an outward line with her wand, expanding his chair into another loveseat. She
perched on the edge as she let down her hair, and when she settled back, she felt his arm stretched
behind her shoulders.

She remembered his hand on Pansy’s hip, his head on Mandy’s lap, Mandy kissing his cheek, him
smirking as he dragged her away...

Hermione shifted closer, getting enveloped in that heady mixture of his cologne and sweat, and
pulled his glass towards herself to steal a sip.

He had much bottled up, her poor, stroppy lover.

MacMillan was the human equivalent of Hermione’s malicious alarm clock. Whatever Thomas
smoked to make himself so terminally cheerful needed to be banned. He’d never met anyone as
pretentious than that Wendy; why would anyone deliberately wear a red beret? His mother used a
powerful colour-changing spell on her dahlias that could turn George permanently orange. The
scene around them was ripe for an accident that could cause the unfortunate demise of so many
people…

Mr Ace Murder-Planner, wasn’t he? He wanted to start with “that forest troll from America”.
Hermione argued that Ernie ought to be the first to go. Finally, they settled on Seamus.

“What’s your problem with Joshua?” she asked. “He seems nice.”

“He’s a prick. What’s he doing, standing by the climbing frame? Probably a nonce, too.”

“Hush. He’s just friendly.”

Draco scoffed. “I’ve met plenty of people from his side of the pond and they all seem to know that
a handshake involves only one of your hands, and lasts no longer than two seconds.”

“So that’s the issue then? He infected you with his friendliness? Tarnished your fair hand?”

He gave her an extremely sour look. “No, because I don’t go around offering my entire arm to
strange, over-friendly men.”

The party faded away. The squash moved fluidly between them and they designed all manner of
lethal chain reactions.

Until, unexpectedly, Draco’s arm around her tightened and he gripped the ends of her hair.

Hermione froze. Ron was approaching.

He came to a stop on Draco’s side of the loveseat, slouching terribly, face blank in a very obviously
practised way. Hermione didn’t dare breathe.

“Malfoy,” he delivered stiffly, “Care for a wager?”

Draco twisted a strand of her hair. “What about?”

Ron pointed towards the darts area with his thumb. “A sickle on Seamus hitting a bull's eye.”

Draco snorted. For a dreadful moment, Hermione was sure he was going to call Ron a pauper.

But he said, “He’s more likely to miss the board, and blind someone.”

They watched Seamus pick up a fiery dart, aim with great fanfare, and throw. It landed somewhere
unimpressive; even Hermione understood enough to know it was far from bull’s-eye.

“Fucking wazzock,” Ron griped under his breath.

He fished out a sickle from his pocket and tossed it. Draco’s hand shot out to snatch it, mid-air.

“He’d been wittering on about being a crack shot. I should’ve known,” Ron continued, “He thinks
he’s way better at quidditch than he really is, too.”

“Thinks too highly of himself in general. Creep.” And then, for no reason at all, he decided to add,
“Yes, Granger, I know he’s another one of your darling pets,” as though she hadn’t just helped plot
his demise. “You think he’s a harmless ray of sunshine –”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“– but you don’t know how he leers at you when you turn your back.”

“Malfoy’s right. I used to think he’s a laugh, but I don’t anymore. The way he talks… isn’t on.”

Hermione lost all her bluster because the words Malfoy’s right had just come out of Ron’s mouth.
He went on to voluntarily speak to Draco once again —

“That shit concoction you’d mixed at the anniversary do…”

Draco raised his brows and kept playing with Hermione’s hair, but said nothing.

“Think you can knock out a few rounds tonight?”

“I could.”

“Alright. Cool.”
Ron lingered for a moment, waiting on a scribe to make note of all that had transpired, after which
he nodded jerkily and left.

With his departure came silence, and Hermione, though reeling, knew she had to say something.
Her lover was tense and waiting.

Here’s what she decided to go with: “Darts, wagers, and booze? How utterly manly that was.”

“You have a problem with manliness now?” he rejoined promptly.

She took a leaf out of the Book of Bulstrode and fanned herself. “I’m coming over all faint.”

“Shall I fetch Patil?” he huffed, “She’ll leave Tracey for you in a trice.”

Hermione’s hand fell. “No, she won't.”

“Tracey’s an idiot.”

“ No, she isn’t.”

“Anyone with even the foggiest approximation of eyesight and half a brain cell would leave her for
you.”

There was no point in pursing her lips or biting the insides of her cheeks, not when he was
watching her like, I see how pleased you are and I’m going to keep bringing you down to my level,
just you wait.

The afternoon pressed ahead. An official obstacle course race was held, and the winner was the one
with liquid luck in his veins. There were two more quidditch games, a gob-scotch league, and
another darts tournament.

When the sun began to go down, the party disbanded, leaving Hermione with less than an hour to
get ready for the next one.

She wore the last of Pat’s dresses. It was a strapless, thin, skin-tight stretch of white from her chest
to halfway down her thighs. A glamour covered up the absence of a brassiere, her hair had a
fleeting brush with Sleekeazy, and her stilettos were saturated with cushioning and stabilising
charms.

There was a woman in the mirror.

The drawing room of 12 Grimmauld Place was also unrecognisable, having been completely
cleared, save for some chairs lined against the walls. The lights were low and electric purple and
pink. A gramophone blared by the window overlooking the street, and next to it, a smoke machine
emitted a glittering fog. Present was the whole lot from the afternoon and more – more from
Hogwarts, more from the Auror department.
The hall was packed with expert texpert choking smokers, and Hermione cast a few additional
locking charms on her bedroom, for good measure. In the study a little further down, Seamus had
his set up, and it was bustling.

She neared the bar (yes, hello, hi, good to see you) , and there she spotted Harry in one corner,
merrily puffing on a spliff. Theo’s voice spoke into her ear:

“Gillyweed and bouncing bulb leaves and nothing else, don’t worry. Completely non-addictive. It’s
just going to make him silly. A bit giggly. Poor sod deserves to unwind, too, doesn't he?”

Beer in hand, she went back to the hall with him where Astoria was waiting, and slowly sipped
while talking to them, and kept sipping while talking to others, and carried it with her towards the
drawing room, halting at the threshold, where a snarl of people had formed.

— Draco stumbled out of it, and…

Stopped dead in front of her. She said hi. He just slowly wet his lower lip.
They went their separate ways —

Music boomed. Held in time, in a world of tears I slowly drown…

She had a vision of mum and Aunt Malorie dancing to that song, years and years ago before
everything went topsy-turvy. Dean the Dancing Queen spotted her and energetically beckoned. She
put on a visage of over-the-top shock and pointed to herself, making him laugh and gesture even
more wildly.

She joined him. She danced. It was no

Tragedy.

Songs flowed into each other,

until, a call came from somewhere and everywhere: “MALFOY’S MIXING DRINKS, C’MON
FILL YOUR BOOTS!”

Mass emigration.
Hermione allowed herself to be a bit trigger-happy with (mild) stinging hexes so she would find her
way to the front.
A long table had been conjured before the bar, covered with shot glasses from end to end. Draco
stood at the head, smiling slightly, and his eyelashes fanned over high cheekbones that were flushed
pink. She’d seen him do this once before, but this time his audience was large and loud in its
appreciation. He was basking in it. He raised his wand in a flamboyant combative position – her
lover in full showman mode – and sent bottles flying.

They moved in weaving patterns, liquor fell from great heights, and when he flicked his wand
sharply, all the glasses rose as one and found a hand to nestle into.

“Cheers!” “Prost!” “Sláinte!” “To Weasley – May you live long and get your end away!”

— Draco grinned while she pulled a face at the vile liquid going down her throat. —
A vociferous demand for another round had her lover preening. Anthony climbed on a chair and
made a telescope with his hands, following the movements of the bottles like a lookout in a crow's
nest.

She wasn’t sure how she ended up back in the other room, dancing with tears in her eyes, ( weeping
for the memory of a life gone by ) — but again the music was unceremoniously cut off.

On the dot, a low rumble made the windows rattle. It began to rain.

Theo let out a jubilant, “AHA!”

Hermione found a chair as a tea trolley bearing a tiered cake wheeled itself in. She didn’t have it in
her to get involved in the cutting and singing, and cheering and cackling over – as she learned a
few seconds later when Ron rushed out – George smashing a slice on his head.

Something wasn’t right though, because here was Harry, telling her to hurry, and chasing after Ron.
She followed, being even more liberal with her stinging hex when some drunk twat tried to grab
her.
She skittered up the stairs and saw Harry standing statue-like outside Ron’s open door…

Ron was sitting in his dark room, at the edge of his bed, face in hands, sobbing.

She rushed past Harry, casting a quick muffling charm to soften the racket seeping from below.

“What’s the matter?” she probed, “Hey, what is it?”

Punch-drunk Harry plopped down on Ron’s other side. He opened his mouth to say nothing.

“George… cake… in my hair,” Ron snuffled.

Harry and Hermione shared a silent ‘seriously?!’

“That’s… er, I can clean it up in a jiffy, Ron.”

“No, you don’t understand,” he snivelled, “It started when I was five. They – Fred and George –
always… the first slice… my head. But he didn’t last year, obviously — I thought… Fred’s gone…
and he… George…”

After that, all she could make out was Fred and gone over and over again. She patted his back, and
vanished the crumbs and icing in his hair.

Quite abruptly, he stopped and stared ahead. First he muttered, “Okay, okay” and after that, looking
lost, asked, “Now what?”

Hermione conjured a handkerchief to gently mop his face. She met his blankness with a tentative
smile, and further conjured three shot glasses filled with cold water.

Ignoring their confusion, she floated two towards Harry and Ron, and raising her own, she said,
“To a new decade.”

Slowly, they both relaxed and half-chuckled disbelievingly.

“To a new decade,” they echoed.

Another few breaths later, wary and subdued, Ron asked, “Do you reckon we could do this at the
end… at the start of every decade?”

“Mate,” Harry nudged him genially, “we’ll do this every year.”

“Thrice a year,” Hermione chipped in.

That drew a smile out of him, the full, creasing sort, but he was also too drunk and too open to hide
a tinge of sadness. The longer he looked at her, the sadder he seemed to get.

“We would have been terrible together.”

Well, okay then? Hermione nodded gravely at his revelation. Harry gazed longingly at the door.

“Y’know, when Malfoy showed up, poking his stupid pointy nose into – bleh. Arsehole was raving.
I told him… you pasty wanker, Hermione asked to be left alone… to which he said... and you
listened?” Ron turned away and laughed bitterly, before facing her once more. “You can bring him.
Tomorrow. For dinner. At the Burrow”

“Thanks,” she said softly.

“Remember when he made your teeth grow huge?”

“O- kay ,” Harry interposed, standing up, “We’re not going to sit in the dark and talk about Malfoy.
Let’s get us proper slices of cake, yeah?”

George was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and as soon as the three touched down on the
landing, he had Ron in a half-embrace-half-headlock. “Have a drink with me, little brother.”

Hermione had cake. She had a shot of something filled with powdered Fizzing Whizbees that lifted
her half a foot off the ground for three seconds. She had another shot of it because Theo made her.
She was out of her mind when Ginny asked – “What the hell happened at the hearing?” so she
threw up her hands and said, “The wizened bollocks crossed the wrong woman!”
Ginny cheered and a bunch of idiots who knew nothing about anything also cheered. They
whooped when Theo bounded through the room with Astoria on his back, and vanished into the
floo with her.

She was dancing again. More free, more fluid than ever before…

Do you believe in life after love?

— For a moment, the crowd parted and she locked eyes with him. Her lover looked freer too;
deliciously, roughly undone, a pink and blue duotone, gaze honed on her —

She was surrounded by people and Ginny spun her around to laugh at Harry, who, with his hands
jammed in his pocket, was reluctantly shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Be right back,” she shouted and nobody heard. Their ears were full of love me love me, pretend
that you love me.

A kind of restlessness was sweeping her away from the galvanic lighting, the dingy smoky hallway,
and straight out the front door.

Outside was a different world. Silent night, unholy respite. Her teeth chattered the moment the cold
hit her overheated body. The rain had ebbed into a damp mist. The pavement and street shone
wetly, stippled with lamplight. She stood on the stairs, cast a drying charm on the railing, and leant
against it with her arms crossed tight. The face of her watch glowed like a little moon. It was
quarter to two.

All the unsolved equations and unanswered questions of her life found voice at that inconvenient
hour. She shivered and wondered – What is happening? Where shall I go?

The door opened and Draco stepped out. The sound of it closing behind him echoed slightly – the
snap that broke a hypnotic spell.
Or put her in one. She went up to him in a trance.
He caught her around the waist and had her pressed against the door in one movement.

He tasted of whisky and sugar. Their kiss was wild and open-mouthed from the onset. Feverish and
desperate. Sloppy and frenetic. She sought out the exquisite vee of his pelvis through his trousers,
then slid her hands around to his bum. He fondled her breasts. A groan passed between them.

“No bra again?”

Her head hit the door. “No.”

He swore, hot against her clavicle, and kissed up her neck. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I have a room. Inside.”

“Show me.”

He pressed his erection against her centre and a burning pulse rocketed up her body.

He said something.

“Yes,” she agreed, and oh god he rubbed – “Yesssss. Yes.”

He could undress her right there. He could leave her lips all bruised and bloody, press teeth marks
all over her skin, deep purple handprints on her breasts. He could bring the whole house down by
fucking her against the door.
He could do whatever he wanted… to her, with her, anything. He could eat her alive.

“Granger.”

“What?”

“Room. Now.”
She pulled back. “Oka—.”

He kissed her again. Thumbs flicking glamoured nipples. Hips rutting against hers. She thought she
might seep right through her flimsy dress.

She pushed him back. He looked like he'd gone berserk.

She took his hand and pulled him back inside.

Nothing could deter her, certainly not the people in the hall. They were the red sea. She didn’t care
about the hoots and ooooh’s and wolf whistles that followed them. She led Draco to her bedroom –
unlocked, opened, and relocked it. Warded and silenced it.

Silence. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...

She whirled around and he’d already half-unbuttoned his shirt. So she forced herself to stay still till
he’d thrown it off. Then she threw herself at him, reaching at once for his trouser button – it came
right off and rolled away somewhere. She twined her tongue around his.

He touched her everywhere like he was frisking her for concealed weapons.

“Where is the zip?” he nearly growled.

“No zip.” She pushed down his pants and took him in hand, delirious with the way her core was
clenching clenching clenching clenching. “Just pull it off.”

“It’s fucking painted on you.”

“It stretches —”

He gathered her dress in tight fists, she lifted her arms to let him yank it over her head. Her hair
crackled with static. He wasted no more time dropping her underwear down to her ankles, and they
both kicked away the last scrap of their clothing before falling into bed.
She pushed him onto his back and laid Blushing Berry prints all over his blushing jaw and neck.
She dragged her mouth along the path laid out by his scars… up until he sighed so poetically that
she paused at his abdomen and looked up. His head, that had been thrown back, slowly lifted. And
he flashed her the most dreamy, luscious half-grin.

“You are astonishingly ridiculous sometimes,” she said. (Words voiced softly… but he now knew
exactly what they were meant to be.)

“You are ridiculous,” he rebutted in a low, scratchy timbre, “You are completely ridiculously
ungovernable –”

“I am governed by Tiny Tartan Hermione.”

“I’m sorry? By whom?!”

She licked the spot just above his naval, followed by the gentlest scrape with her teeth.

His head fell back again.

She let her chest graze against his upper thighs, traced his pelvis with her mouth as she had done
with her hands. But just as she reached the prize – her breath scarcely falling on his member – he
pulled her up. All the way up. She exhaled in a rush as her palms landed on either side of his head,
placing her chest perfectly above his mouth.

Soon enough, her arms were shaking, her back arching. He kneaded her bum, letting his hands slide
teasingly low but never all the way. She pulled back with a whine, trying to crawl down his body
again, but he rolled them over… moved tortuously down her body to sling her legs over his
shoulders...
He didn’t bother with any of the usual slow licks and build up. With his mouth pressed against her,
he…… devoured her. Ate her alive.

Her vision was all black spots and dancing colours. She was floating half a foot in the air again.

“No,” she called out in a little ephemeral whimper, “Ssstop. Not like this.”

Frantic moving and manoeuvring: He sat up straight and pulled her into the circle of his limbs. She
sank slowly onto his lap, taking him in… legs winding around him… hands cupping his neck…

There it was again, that – click – of falling into her rightful place.

—“Gah.”
He slowly pushed up and she pressed down and everything blurred.—

Loneliness had been the cartilage in her joints. It had been embedded in the hypodermis of her skin,
and she had let it seep out of her pores and harden into a shell over her entire body. It regulated her
flight-or-fight response, it tinged all her senses, it led her perception, it muddled her rationality, left
her coveting and cowering and clawing...

She rocked against him, bare chest against bare chest, eyes closed and balance free-wheeling. He
was wrapped around her, he was inside her, he was under her, and looming before her. He kissed
her, breathed for her, his taste mingled with hers, their scents combined; cologne and shampoo,
mist and sweat…
She felt him in her heartbeat, across and under her skin, in the mysterious depths of her soul. She
opened her eyes and he was looking at her – seeing her. She ran her fingers down the side of his
face, pressed her forehead against his, and stared into wonderous grey.

“Draco,” she whispered, hoping he’d understand.

“Hermione,” he murmured back.

Her eyes fell shut again.

How was this feeling even possible? It was too much. It was everything. She couldn’t stand it. She
never wanted to be without it.

She was rocking intensely , grinding against his pelvis, gasping – gasping – gasping – gasping into
the curve of his neck —
She was an open bracket with no closure. Infinity. Pure convulsing energy vibrating over a fragile
surface that glimmered with every colour in the known universe.

Bubble, she mouthed into his shoulder, melting into him.

He was gliding his hands up and down her back, giving her shape again.

Without any kind of warning, he flipped her over his arms. She landed on her back, pulling in a
lungful — He was on top of her, pushing back inside her — another buildup bloomed even before
the first had retreated —
For a minute, air solidified in her windpipe like she was drowning.

“Fuck,” Draco rumbled.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck –” he chanted, absolutely hammering into her.

She could only hold on while her whole body buzzed burned reverberated shimmered blossomed
tightened coiled

She might have actually passed out for a bit.

“Hmmmm,” she breathed with perfect satisfaction, trailing her fingers up his shoulder blades.

“Can’t move.”

“Don’t you dare fall asleep like this.”

He could. She wouldn’t mind being crushed grievously.

After some time passed, he lifted his head and stared at her with hooded eyes. Post-coital lustre
made him glow. His head was haloed by a colourful blur.

“I’m not finished with you yet,” he told her.

And he rolled to the side, pulling her with him, keeping her flush against himself. Not a molecule
of air was allowed between them, not a pascal of pressure was lost. He kissed her, pulled her leg
over his hip, and — She was definitely not finished with him either.

Desire tangled with satiation. Comfort with want. She was lightheaded from it all.

But it was quiet as they lay there looking – seeing each other. So soft, the feel of his fingers at the
base of her spine. So gentle, the way she drew non-shapes on his chest.

Quietly, softly, gently she spoke: “You and me... We’re… Us. …Yes?”

“Yeah,” he whispered, “We are.”

She awoke just as she had fallen asleep: On her stomach, hair everywhere, the lovely weight of
Draco’s arm across her back.

Christ. Her head. It pounded as she wriggled out from under him and rolled over. She’d had to
spend several minutes hugging herself while her insides roiled. Her eyes and throat belonged in the
Sahara.

She checked her watch. It was fucking five past eight.

She turned to her out-cold lover, and – he was so spectacularly alluring when — Five past eight .

She brushed his hair back. “Wake up, Draco.”

“Mmmghh.” His face scrunched up.

“It’s past eight o’clock. Draco.”

“MMMGH.” He turned over.

“You’ll be late for work.”

“Fuck off.” He pulled the covers over his head.

“Draco, it’s –”

“Just shut… your voice.”

What a prat. Fine then.

She grabbed her clothes and plodded into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She’d
intended to simply brush her teeth and use the loo, but the shower looked too tempting. It made her
feel a bit more alive. She transfigured her dress into something longer and looser and threw it back
on.

When she emerged, the bed was made and Draco was gone.

Scowling, she wrestled her hair into a bun of some fashion and put on her shoes.

Kreacher had already tended to the hall. It was pristine. The drawing room was not.
A number of badly conjured beds were haphazardly arranged around the space, with a variety of
people snoring silently under a charm. Auror Desmond was the only one sprawled on the bare
floor. The curtains were drawn and dark, the smoke machine coughed up random clouds, and there
was rubbish strewn everywhere. A small table and four chairs sat in front of the fireplace, hosting a
pot of tea, some vials of revive potion, and Harry, dressed in his work clothes. Ginny was standing
in front of the fireplace in oversized pyjamas.

“Leaving already?” Hermione asked her, while pacing intently towards the teapot.

“Promised mum I’d spend the day with her. We will be cooking,” she moaned miserably, “Godric.
And by the way, your boyfriend is a beast in the morning.”

Hermione’s stomach swooped. She forgot how to walk like a human, kicked a leg out sharply, and
hit an empty beer bottle that went rolling tinkle-tinkle-tinkle down the room.

Ginny chortled. Hermione bit her tongue. If she didn't bite her tongue, she might have said
boyfriend – just that one word – to see if it tasted like him. Or she might have said, he was a beast
last night too, which would have given Harry a brain haemorrhage.

After Ginny had left, Hermione downed one vial of potion, (Where had they got it from? It did
nothing), and got hold of an eminently strong cup of tea.

Eventually, Ron lumbered in, having troubled himself enough to throw on robes over an old t-shirt
and joggers. His hair was matted and eyes bloodshot. He fell into a chair and reached for a vial.

“Why'd you let people use my bathroom?” he whinged at Harry.

Harry spared him an annoyed look. “What am I, the loo sentry?”

“Someone wrote love is a lie on the mirror and I can’t get it off,” he huffed. Then he turned to
Hermione hopefully. “Think you can have a look?”

“Can’t.” She checked her watch and downed her tea, “Duty calls.”

She moved to the fireplace and stopped suddenly when Fizzing Whizbees tried to climb back up
her throat.

“Bye,” she bid morosely.

Harry said, “Later, Hermione.”

Ron said, “What kind of tool spells ‘is’ with a zed?”

Her time at home was fleeting. She changed, fixed up her hair with the help of certain clips, had a
legitimate revive potion, collected her satchel, and still managed to reach the Ministry in time. She
waited for Draco by the fireplaces, determined to have a better start to her day.

He came along within minutes, with a gazelle-like hop out of the flames, giving a brief shake to
charcoal robes that were draped fitly over a thyme-green shirt and charcoal tie, exuding the old,
habitual perfection that made him such an apt fit for his department.

She fell into step with him. “You look less pugnacious.”
“You don't.” As pat as that.

“Ron’s invited you to his birthday dinner at the burrow today.”

“Okay.”

“Okay you accept the invitation, or okay you’ve heard and made note of my sentence?”

“Okay, I accept the invitation,” he parrotted, with needless exasperation.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I bothering you by speaking again?” she sniped.

He shot her a snooty glance. “No more than usual. But Granger, your voice, first thing in the
morning, is akin to someone sticking a wand into my ear and sending a string of crucios straight to
my brain.”

She stopped walking.

The memory of hearing her own voice on tape came back with a vengeance, therefore, right then
and there, she vowed to never ever ever speak to him again. She stayed quiet in the lift, and when
he said, “Granger,” she didn’t wish him a good day.

During lunch, they shared a table and a packet of crisps, but she spoke not a word. He, in turn,
gleefully alternated between laughing at her and mimicking her chin-raised-slow-chewing tactic,
killing any semblance of dignity that she had hoped to emanate.

In the early evening, in his sitting room, mute as fishes, she gave him A Moveable Feast .

(The post-it inside read: You're one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it. It's a
great gift.)

He remained overtly amused by her resolution; something about the lift of his brow suggested he
was almost charmed by it. What’s more, he was wearing the Wedgewood blue jumper, a stratagem
that outmanoeuvred her so thoroughly that she was even angrier.

He accepted the book with a crooked smile, lowering his chin and accompanying it with a smooth,
“Thank you.”

He was playing dirty pool, and she might have been defeated if she hadn’t had many years of
practice keeping up the silent treatment while weathering the uncaring attitude of its target.

She pivoted, marching back to whence she had arrived – but some… one grabbed the back of her
top and pulled her back; back against his warm, firm body, while his arms wrapped tight around her
middle.

He spoke in a rough undertone that caressed the side of her face and made her shiver. “Okay,
you’ve proved your point. Your silence is even more grating.”

She looked over her shoulder to glare woundedly (hamming it up a touch), and was confronted with
a playful smirk, an endearing tuck and angling of his head, and a lock of hair falling across his
forehead.
Without thinking, she tilted her face up. He obligingly lowered his and brushed his lips against
hers.

There was a knot in her stomach.

There was a Nott in the room.

“Ahem.”

Hermione and Draco whipped their heads towards the sitting room doors.

There Theo stood, see-sawing his wand between both hands and grinning like he’d slugged another
dose of Felix Felicis. Though fatuously overdone, his aspect was (much like Draco’s had been), one
of fond amusement, but with an added layer of entertainment, like he had happened upon a dog
chasing its own tail.

“Did I interrupt something?” he asked cheerfully.

Hermione tried to flounce off.

She could not flounce off, because Draco wouldn’t release her. Nor did he step back. He simply
shifted so he was beside her rather than behind. They flounced through the floo together.

Fifty percent of the gathering was on less than top form. One yawn triggered ten, eyes were often
rubbed, temples frequently massaged. Mrs Weasley’s tacit reproof was at odds with the
mawkishness brought on by having her lot together again.

Charlie and Marius had arrived via Portkey, followed by Bill (but not Fleur). Apparently the two
had gone through with their temporary shift to France the week before.

Ron’s birthday dinner party, though still relatively small, was sufficient to require relocating to the
back garden. Hermione shambled outside by herself.

(Once again, a family reunion had served as a reminder of what an upstanding – and handsome! –
young man Draco was. She felt no remorse leaving him alone with Mrs Weasley, and remained
unmoved by the sheer panic in his eyes. Perhaps after such an experience, he would no longer feel
the need to complain about her voice.)

Waving carelessly at those who were laying the table, she made her way up to the boundary wall. In
the distance, twilight silhouettes of George, Theo, and Lee were preparing for the usual post-dinner
fireworks show.

She raised her wand high and whispered incantations like an old secret – “Protego Totalum…
Repello frigus…”
With nothing better to do, they were moving on a daily basis. Sometimes just a few miles away, and
sometimes to the other side of the country. The process of packing up and setting up camp was
ingrained in her muscle memory.

...I've got some real estate here in my bag...

Her bag jostled against her leg when Ginny nudged her. Hermione asked how her day of cooking
had been.

“I prepared the carrots,” she replied, looping her arm through Hermione’s and tugging her back
towards the table, “They are excellent carrots. Please eat and praise the carrots.”

As the last to arrive, Andromeda was rewarded with the good fortune of having everyone witness
how utterly trounced she looked, holding onto a screaming Teddy, whose hair was tar-black and
standing on end. At once, Harry ran to him with his arms raised. At the same time, Draco shrank
away and locked his arms behind his back.

They finally settled to eat. Hermione made sure to ardently praise the carrots, and thereafter, she
was a silent captive, realising how much she had missed Mrs Weasley’s cooking, and only
resurfaced to let out a few exclamations of shock when Harry made an unexpected announcement –

“I’m going to Wales.”

“Diff ’eeken?” Ron posed. His mother clicked her tongue.

“Next weekend.” Harry carefully gathered parsnips on his fork. “And I’ll stay put.”

(That was when the exclamations came in.)

“Till August,” he went on, making furrows in brown sauce, “There’s an academy at Bangor that
specialises in defensive spells, and Robards wants me to train the new recruits for a while.”

The vastness of the world came crashing down on her. She became aware of every acre between
England and Wales. And New York. Sweden. Switzerland.

They’d been clustered together; children of conflict, cloistered in a castle of curiosities. A

dandelion on a tall stalk. It was no wonder that the winds of change would disperse them.

A quintessential Molly Weasley apple cake was cut up and distributed. Most of the guests (sixty-six
percent) drifted to one end of the table to huddle around the wireless, for a quidditch match
happening in some far-flung corner of the vast world.

Draco was standing, arms crossed and leaning forward just a smidge, as the commentator described
an ongoing Thumbelina Shuffle (or something like that).
She had once heard him say that he wanted to travel. Then, that he wanted to travel with a sense of
purpose. Now, he wanted to travel with her.

“Safe to say it is something now?”

Hermione started terribly – blushed horrifically – and laughed bashfully while Andromeda made
herself comfortable in the chair next to her.

“Thank you for your letter,” she mumbled instead of attempting to address what was asked.

Someone scored and everybody groaned. Hermione and Andromeda tucked into their pudding.

“You have an uphill battle ahead of you, Hermione. Such endeavours take shamefully long to come
to fruition. Remus’ name and legacy is the only reason Lupin’s law passed so quickly.”

“I tried to use Dobby’s name and legacy,” Hermione sighed, “but he still isn’t considered a hero.
Only ever an elf.”

“If there’s any way in which I can help, please do not hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you.”

Andromeda smiled, revealing her dimple. The grey in her hair gleamed, falling softly to her
shoulders.

“Er, actually,” Hermione broached, “Could you recommend a good hairdresser?”

That question led them down a rather long trajectory that wound around spas, dress robes, hidden
gem perfumeries, and ended with a burst of sound, light, and colour.

The firework display had chess pieces performing acrobatic tricks. Too bright for fatigued eyes.
Hermione looked away for a moment, casting a glance around —

She found Draco looking right at her, hues flashing across his skin. She frowned questioningly, and
he just blinked… and looked up again. So she did too, with her blood singing.

Once the show wrapped up, just the Weasley clan and its extension remained. Mrs Weasley had
reclaimed the wireless and the Witching Hour was on. (Today we’re talking recipes, romance, and
recipes for romance!) Everyone else was busy with their own dealings – smoking, talking, playing
cards…

Hermione, Harry, Ron, and Ginny had collected in one corner.

“I only really have to go to the Academy once a week,” Harry admitted, “The rest of the time, I’ll
just… fly around the mountains, I suppose. I dunno. I’ll spy on Gin’s training, look at the greenery,
the sheep, eat a lot of cawl…”

Ginny, who was sitting on the arm of his chair, smiled and took his hand in hers.
“Tell them, Harry.”

“Yeah,” Harry breathed, “Alright. See, Asher says I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. Says the
next six months could be crucial, and I need to take a step back. I’m upping my sessions to four
times a week.”

A moment of startlement, succeeded by a shocked grin shared between Hermione and Ron, ended
with both of them clamouring to voice their support. She squeezed his other hand. Ron patted his
knee.

By half past nine, more than fifty percent of the gathering was desperate to retire, and that desire
was expeditiously acted upon.

In her living room, Hermione could still see an echo.

Rat-a-tat-tat on the window. She saw that as well.

Two owls awaited her, and the first, Rodion, outpaced even his owner’s glowering capabilities.

“Sorry,” she said, but he took off the second she untied his load. The other owl was a stranger and
bore her no ill-will. It delivered a peculiar, bright green envelope.

Within the next twenty minutes, she was in bed, swaddled in fresh sheets, with Stella curled up on
the next pillow. Draco had sent back the book of Wilde’s plays, and the scrap of parchment within
read: It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia Granger lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong
men climb trees and pull them up after them.

But that was not all. There was also a bookmark – a strip of pale gold covered in an array of
watercolour flowers.

The only echo she was concerned with was internal, jouncing across four chambers.

She opened the tome at her bedside, slowly flipping ancient pages, till she could gently lay the
bookmark at Caput IIX: De occultando secreta nature & artis.
His book, his bookmark. His girlfriend.

God.

Laughing to herself, she slid open the mysterious green envelope.

Dear Ms Granger,

On behalf of the American Being Welfare Association and the Global Foundation for Creature
Conservation conference organizing committee, I am honored to invite you to speak at an upcoming
panel discussion on Being Rights and Autonomy, scheduled for the 11th of March (Saturday) from
11:00 am, at The Scamander Institute of Magizoological Studies.
 The event aims to discuss the social standing and basic individual liberty of all creatures currently
classified as ‘Beings’, and to create awareness, encourage open discussion, and facilitate change.

I understand that such a last minute invitation might be difficult to accept, but your efforts to
promote elvish rights, as well as a commendatory recommendation from Rolf Scamander, has
convinced me that your voice will be a critical addition to the discourse. Please let me know by the
6th of March (Monday) whether or not you will be interested in speaking. Thank you in advance for
your consideration, and I very much look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Kirk Thorburn
Chairman,
American Being Welfare Association

Chapter End Notes

[Please allow Hermione her (more empowering, less psychotic) version of the ‘Patrick
Bateman Walking on Sunshine’ scene.]

1. “the taking of a toast and tea” – You guessed it.

2. I Want to Break Free by Queen
3. “I like this day; I like that sky of steel”: from Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
4. A Procession of Flagellants, Francisco Goya
5. Tragedy by Bee Gees, Dancing With Tears in My Eyes by Ultravox, Believe by Cher,
Lovefool by The Cardigans
6. “Yet through the silence something throbs…”: from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-
Exupéry
7. “You're one of those guys…”: from The Girl in Blue, by P. G. Wodehouse
8. "I've got some real estate here in my bag": America by Simon & Garfunkel
9. “It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia…”: from Right Ho, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse

I can finally reveal the song that has fuelled their lurve arc post Chapter You-Decide :
Delirious Love by Neil Diamond
 Hundred and Three
Chapter Notes

This chapter features the final ‘Morning Run Interlude’ of the story. Theme for that scene is
Embryonic Journey by Jefferson Airplane. Just pure instrumental gorgeousness.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

She imagined a chalk outline on the rug where she had lain dead. Police tape surrounded it,
numbered evidence markers were scattered around – this was where the yellow brick scroll had
unravelled, and here was an abandoned cup of tea, also here and here and here, while here paced
the Spectre…

Her voice had been wiped off the cursed cassette. It was currently spinning in the stereo going
shhhhhhhhh.

One life-altering confession, two boisterous parties, three regular days in the office, and well, what
do you know. Mundanity had set in again.

The evening's Prophet was on her lap, containing another short, speculative piece about her, riddled
with shots from the same old firing squad.

She had tried so hard not to read it.

When she’d arrived back home – earlier than usual since Barros had stomped off for a meeting –
she had tucked the papers under a cushion before going on to change her clothes, chuck a
parchment into the fireplace, make a trip to the shops, put the tape in the stereo…

And she’d read it. Every word of it.

There was a picture, too. Alongside the Girl on a Sofa series, she now had a Striver in the Atrium
collection.

A few pages down, there was an article about the FSA’s recent push for the removal of certain
provisos from the Ministry's work contracts, that barred squibs from applying for administrative
and clerical jobs. Inevitably, it was full of arseholes spewing the same noxious rhetoric: ‘Squibs
have had their own place in our society for centuries! Why are they suddenly coming after our jobs
and livelihood?’

Depressing.

A red-sleeved arm emerged through the floo, depositing a bag of Chinese food on the hearth.
When the arm was out of arm’s way, Hermione put her foot through the fire.

She wanted to resurrect a Dutch master from the Golden Age to immortalise the scene she walked
into. Neutral colours, a yellowy glow from an ugly lamp, and Draco reading A Moveable Feast. He
was sheathed in soft loungewear, legs stretched out before him, one hand holding the book, the
other on standby to turn the page, and he was completely absorbed, with his head bowed and only
slightly tilted...

“Come here, Hermione! Have a look at this.”

She jolted internally. There were two other people in the room – Theo and George – standing over a
heap of she-knew-not-what, piled upon the bureau plat.

“Plans for Weasleys' Wizarding Wonderland,” Theo explained with violent enthusiasm, “Look!” He
pushed a photograph under her nose. “Our Sea Serpent cart is ready! The track is also mostly
ready! It’s designed to look like the waves of the sea! See? Sea!”

The cart had a sea serpent head… of some kind; snub-snouted and missing all its scales and spikes.
There was a narrow pod behind it, with a single row of six seats. Then came the serpent's tail,
disproportionately long and thin. It looked very much like… Should she say something?

“Who designed this?” she asked.

“I did!” Theo replied happily, “Somehow my sketches ended up looking rather nice, so I had the
lads bring them to life…”

He beamed and George beamed. She had to tell them.

She cleared her throat. “It's rather, erm, sperm-shaped, isn’t it?”

“What.”

“Right. You probably aren’t familiar, but that’s what a sperm cell looks like –”

Draco’s snort of laughter rang loud. She peeped over her shoulder and was met with a grin that
exhibited immeasurable pride.

And even louder, from the other side: “I beg your eternal fucking pardon?!”

Theo’s jaw was hanging loose. George’s eyebrows had risen so high, they were close to leaving the
vicinity of his person entirely. He would soon have eyebrow-antennas. No, but they dropped
severely. Quick as lightning, he moved and — thwack! — with the practised arm of a beater,
smacked Theo with a thick roll of parchment.

“Hey!” Theo cried.

“You absolute idiot!”

“Hey!”
“Forget the Sea Serpent! Let’s call it the Spunket Junket, shall we? Maybe we can add a few
swinging ball sacks, a cock-slide, a fanny-shaped tunnel of love and call the whole thing The Wet
Dreamland?”

“It isn’t… What? Sperm???” Theo sputtered.

“You sex-crazed dog!” George thundered.

Hermione saw Draco leave the room and tottered after him.

The second time in their study, (the first time when it wasn’t Theo’s makeshift bedroom) inspired
just as much envy as before.
While Draco wandered towards one of the desks, she feasted her eyes on the floor-to-ceiling
bookcases. The wall that had been previously hidden behind a curtain was revealed to be made
entirely of glass with a charmed pine forest view. Before it, was an arrangement of Theo's chaise
lounge, two armchairs, and a round table.

“Got sperm on your mind, Granger?”

Hermione jumped — “No!” — When had he crept up on her? — Before she could bring up biology
textbooks, he muted all her protests with his mouth, thrusting his tongue past her lips without so
much as a hello, may I? – She welcomed him with gusto anyway, quivering at the spark shooting
down her stomach —

Her arms were full of things, aargh.

She stepped back and he stepped back with her. She stepped back some more. He looked menacing,
and she stepped back even further, towards the round table, where she dumped the food and her
bag.

He moved on in the interim – swaggered off towards one of the bookcases, and pulled open its
glass doors.

“These might interest you,” he called, completely not flustered at all.

Hermione, completely flustered, went to go look at his books.

Gemistos Plethon’s monograph on Natural Magic. A three volume biography of Djedi of Djed-
Sneferu. Isaac Fawkes’ Encyclopaedia of Charms. La Voisin’s secret book of deadly potions.
Draco’s hand on her bum.

At first, he only traced the back pockets of her jeans, but very soon, he’d spread his fingers out and
squeezed. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was blithely looking at the books. His
hand slipped between her legs.

Hermione took a step to the side. So did he.

She took another. He stayed put.

The Alchemy of Comte de Saint Germain. The Legend of Aradia. Paracelsus on Healing. Had he
read them all? What little fragments of his life were in those pages?

She opened her mouth and he said, “No.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t even bother. No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask! Or if I was –”

He hooked a finger into one of her belt loops and tugged her back to his side.

“– going to ask anything at all!”

He sniggered at her garbled delivery. “You were going to bat your eyelashes and say, tell me your
biography, Draco, in that ridiculously solemn and lilting tone that you’ve deluded yourself into
believing is endearing –”

“Oh, please. Quit projecting your manipulative tendencies on me.”

“I refuse to participate in such a –”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to, anyway.”

For a few minutes they returned to quiet browsing, Hermione still flustered, Draco still not, his
finger keeping her fixed in place…

Till he let go and flittered a featherlight touch over thick-and-thin spines.

“There is some merit to your theory, I suppose. When I get booted out of the Malfoy club…” He
gestured down the bookcases. “There goes a chunk from my life.”

“So you’re absolutely sure it’ll happen?” she murmured.

“Bound to. They’re being awfully slow about it, I tendered my resignation so long ago.”

How baldly he said it, like it really was some silly club membership.

Did he remember that on this day three years ago, they had nearly collided, him and her, on the
sixth floor? She thought he’d looked like a bloodless Inferius.

“Have you been able to put it in order a bit more?”

He turned around, leaned back against the bookcase, and spanned his sight across the room. “Put
what in order?”

“The trajectory. The… thoughts… that allowed your previous beliefs to…” (How had he put it?)
“…fall by the wayside.”
He stiffened and frowned. His teeth slid across his lower lip. “Not particularly. Probably because I
had to hide them under multiple layers of occlumency. The Azkaban Donjon level of fortification.
Why are you asking?”

She had no idea why.

No, she knew exactly why. He had surmounted an existential crisis and she wanted to know how.

“How did you stop fighting your own thoughts?” she murmured.

His frown deepened. “There was already a war going on, do you imagine I had any desire to start
another one with myself? One crucio is enough to develop an aversion to torture, wouldn’t you
agree?”

“Definitely.”

“They were my thoughts. Mine to have, to let run rampant, to get all muddled up like the wonderful
variety of blood that mixed on our floors, mine to examine, mine to –”

“Roll up a slope?”

His left hand clenched for a moment. The flashing of his eyes and a little side-to-side movement of
his jaw told her he was quashing a very nasty retort.

“I wish you’d stop trying to turn me into a tragic Sisyphean figure,” he ground out, “Every part of
my life but those thoughts were a struggle. They were a source of great satisfaction when Lord
Corpseface was telling me what a sad excuse for a pureblood I was.”

Lord Corpseface. She liked that. Made him sound like a naff comic book villain.

“They were a compulsion, like flying to that pub was. Like reading about and talking to muggles.
Like picking at a scab. A little painful, but enjoyable. Definitely addictive.”

“Scarring.”

“One of my better ones.”

Maybe? She had come to love all his scars equally. But she didn’t think he wanted to hear that. He
wanted recognition for the one that mattered the most to him.

“Nothing like the transmuting properties of fire.” She could say that again and again and again.

He let out a short, sterile laugh, and with it, his anger leaked out. “You know that moment when
things are so grim – so deathly grim – As in, how is this real, how has my life come to this … And
suddenly you’re fucking cackling?”

Did she ever. Hermione nodded.

“I was staring into a television and feeling like a piffling, watery mirror image of Iago, and he
asked, What may you be? Are you of good or evil? Chaps thought I’d gone mad.”
No longer frowning, but so pale, he had a faraway look in his eyes – the kind that gave rise to a
very particular impulse in her. One that she could finally act on. She slipped her hand into his. Both
were slightly cold.

“Good,” she said quietly, in case he still needed an answer.

He peered down at the point of contact and said nothing, long enough for her to feel more than a
little self-conscious. She withdrew, turned and walked away, back to her bag from which she took
out bottles of gin and tonic water.

“Didn’t have your fill of alcohol on Weasley’s birthday?” he asked with very convincing
nonchalance.

“This is important,” she mumbled.

“I see.” She could hear him crossing one ankle over the other as he leaned even more. “It’s on
Hermione Granger’s List of Things To Do When Recovering from a Setback.”

One must imagine Draco Malfoy smirking.

She tapped her wand agitatedly against the tabletop, a little calming exercise before she performed
a diagonal swish and downward flick to conjure a pair of perfectly serviceable glasses —

“Oh, don’t.” She didn’t have to imagine his sneer. She could feel it.

He left the room and returned with two highball glasses, etched with intricate motifs.

His hands found her bum again, while she poured out their drinks. He chuckled darkly at her eep of
surprise.

Maybe he was only trying to force normalcy again, but that didn’t matter to her. Proximity meant
that she wanted to increase it, so she pressed back and he pressed forward, dipping his head to
breathe words into her ear: “Only one of us is a little woman here, put more than a drop in mine, for
pity’s sake.”
She kept close when she turned and his hands slid from her bum to her hips and she smiled up at
him, pushing a glass into his chest. They had their first sips like that, standing close, a moment
divided into two and so much stronger for it.

“Stop ogling each other.”

Theo blundered in like a juggernaut, feet stomping, teeth gnashing, and threw himself onto the
chaise with an arm thrown across his eyes. “You’ve ruined my life, Hermione,” he bemoaned.

“A drink will fix it up,” she promised, slipping around Draco, who didn’t seem to care that she
conjured Theo’s glass.

“All my drawings have been incendio’d , I hope you’re happy.” He snatched away the glass and
took an unseemly gulp. “I also have to foot Dean’s portkey to New York.”

“How terrible. That’ll be sure to drain your vault,” Hermione said, settling on an armchair.
He pouted and straightened his back with a slight shimmy, very reminiscent of a cat wiggling its
bottom as it prepared to pounce – and sure enough, he launched into one of his long, loooong, rants
about absolutely nothing.
Try as she might to pay attention, the only phrases that stuck were, ‘it was supposed to be sea
creatures, not semen’ and ‘it's not my fault mermaids have tits’ and ‘he said my squid looked like a
tangle of pubic hair’. Sitting across from her, Draco was gazing at the faux-forest, expressly not
giving a damn.

The first round went by in that manner. Once the second was poured, Theo bounded in a different
direction.

“Narcissa wrote to me again, by the way.”

Draco’s attention was instantly on him.

“Lucius is asking… er, I should say demanding… raising hell and jangling his shackles… to see
me.”

“Do not go,” Draco ordered.

Theo scoffed. “Don’t plan to. You are the only Malfoy who’s allowed to bully me, my sweet
dragon.”

[What would the faux-forest look like at dawn… when you’d wake up naked on the floor, wrapped
around a naked body, both draped in a downy blanket, books strewn around…]

Hermione let them carry on about Lucius Malfoy’s once demanding nature being humbled by the
inability to resort to the usual bribery. Draco’s mouth was twisted downwards as he let out that
same cruel laugh that used to follow her down Hogwarts’ corridors. There was no way he was truly
so cavalier about it all.

“Draco? Can I ask you —” He glowered, “— ah, erm, the question that I am about to ask you right
now, at once, straight up, after this lengthy introductory preamble, and that question is, will you
ever go visit your father again?”

He regarded her cooly over a sip, while Theo rolled around guffawing.

“2006,” he clipped impassively, “Seven years after my last visit. I’d like to see what impact the
most magical of all numbers has on our constitutions. I may even revisit the Manor, if I haven’t
been barred from entering by then.”

“It will have mouldered quite nicely by then,” Hermione mused, “Your sprauncy manor left to ruin
like Fedelm’s settlement.”

He was amused by that. “Mother’s made sure it’s being cleaned and maintained, Granger. The
mouldering is…” He took a few seconds to search for the right word, then unveiled it with a
flippant wave of his hand, “institutional. Think of it as a civilisation slowly declining…”

Calling his awful family a civilisation. Hermione struggled not to vomit.

“Mmhmm,” Theo agreed with a mouthful of gin. He lifted a finger in a pretentious MacMillan
manner as he swallowed. “Exactly what it is. Like the crumbling of an empire –”

An empire!

“–The Nott mouldering began much earlier, since father didn’t bother to curry favour like Lucius
did.” He smiled at Draco. “Rather satisfying to watch it happen, isn’t it… once you’ve decided
your name is just a name?”

Draco nodded sagely. “A Nott by any other name would smell as whiffy.”

“Tcha!”

Theo snapped out his wand, conjured a golf ball sized quaffle, and hurled it at Draco. It hit his knee
and rolled off to a corner of the room. An extremely outraged Draco summoned it and threw it
back. With his expert aim, he clonked Theo right on the head . Theo wailed like Myrtle, and
chucked it again, catching Draco’s chest.
It was fast looking like things would get out of control, judging by the colour spilling down Draco’s
neck. Hermione vanished the ball from his hand before any further damage could be done. His
glare spoke of deep betrayal, and he conjured a new one to throw at her. She rolled her eyes and put
up a shield charm between them, strong enough to melt his magic away. His whole face was red,
and he conjured another, larger ball and turned back to Theo, but Hermione quickly put a shield
between them, too.

“You have no chance of getting past these,” she said unnecessarily, because she hadn’t seen him get
all huffy over her magical superiority in such a long time. Nostalgia, (and maybe the fact that she
was mad about him), had her thinking it was so adorable.

They broke to eat, on conjured plates that sulky Draco sniffed at but did nothing about. He wasn’t
moved by her smile, nor by the fact that she had brought all his favourites.

If it wasn’t for Theo, she would have sat on his lap and fed him again, until he was properly
mollified.

But good comfort food was its own kind of magic. Before long, an easy, lazy comradery was back
in place, with much laughter over the past two days, childhood misadventures, the best of Binns,
Hogwarts highlights, New York and France, panel discussions and future trips to Alton Towers.

There was a third round, and then a fourth that was prepared by Draco, and thus stronger than the
previous three combined.

Halfway through, after a brief lull during which Theo hummed a truly horrendous rendition of
Vivaldi’s Spring and Hermione toed off her shoes and curled up in her chair, Draco pointed at her
with a very inquisitional air.

“All right. What happened that day?”

Theo promptly shut up. Hermione’s blood ran cold.

“What? I…” She swallowed, bauking at how uncompromising Draco looked. “Not… now.”

“Now.”

“I really can’t… just yet. I don’t… want… to get into –”

“Tough shit.”

“Later,” she pleaded, “I’ll… Later.”

His lip curled unpleasantly. “It’s already later.”

“Let it be,” Theo muttered.

Draco ignored him. “Granger. You can either spit it out or let it slowly keep poisoning you until…”

Until she burned from the inside again.

“It’s all right, darling,” Theo soothed, even while glaring at Draco, “You don’t have to.”

She suddenly found that she did have to. Fear of any potential, compounded, burning agony
loosened her tongue.
So she told them everything, from start to finish. Gin was decent fuel, but her voice kept
getting quieter and quieter. Barely a vapour.
(Her skin and bones were still her own. They were.)

Air was compressing around her.

She knew Draco was watching her penetratingly, possibly anticipating another eruption. Looking at
him directly was out of the question; it would initiate exactly what he was afraid of. She focused on
Theo, who was taking every pause as an opportunity to abuse Ogden.

In the silence following her account, she wished he would start humming again. Instead, after a
long period of discomfiture, there came a jingling from somewhere outside, that made him grimace
regretfully.

Minutes later, he stood with a bag on his back and a bluegreen scarf around his neck, holding a bird
whistle between two fingers.

“When will your next visit be?” Hermione asked mutedly.

“End of the month,” he said, and pulled her into a firm embrace. “I’ll be here through the first week
of April, minding the shop because George doesn’t want to be around for… you know… the
birthday.”

Just as the bird whistle began glowing, he raised his wand and blasted Draco in the face with cold
water. Draco pirouetted, roaring wrathfully, but no rage-driven frenzy could make him quick
enough to act before Theo vanished.
It had been for her benefit, and though she was laughing half-heartedly, Hermione felt bad. She
conjured the softest cloth she could manage and dabbed Draco’s scowling face.

“Could I stay?”

His yes was half a question, muttered with an edge of lingering fury. She took it as it was, because
she did not want to leave.

They trudged to his bedroom and he watched her when she dropped her bag on his bed, rummaging
around in it for no reason other than her discomfort and the pressing danger of tears.

“Would you like to have a bath?”

In her surprise, Hermione nodded a bit too vigorously. His single raised brow was a statement that
he kept repeating by walking backwards to open the passageway.

The eternal afternoon in his bathroom was white-gold, diffusing through his hair. She clasped her
hands and waited while three golden taps filled the pool with water and snow-white foam, much
quicker than they appeared to run. Thick, musk-and-bergamot scented steam rose in hazy tufts.

He turned to leave – she caught him by the elbow.

They stripped in tandem, briskly, every breath echoing across the vast tiled chamber. She twisted
her hair into a high bun. He stepped into the pool first, and held out his hand to help her in. The
water was a little too hot, initially. She eased in – one step at a time – till she was submerged to the
chin, oddly shivering from the heat as it worked on the band of tension wrapped around her neck.
She blew a tiny channel through the foam, which instantly filled up with more foam.
There was a ledge running along one side, where Draco had settled. His head was tipped back
against the edge of the pool, exposing his beautiful throat. Hermione sidled up next to him, nudging
nearer and nearer till their legs met. She laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

She couldn’t believe where she was and there was nowhere else she could imagine being. This was
a shrine of scented warmth and peace.

She rubbed her cheek against the ball of his shoulder… Wound her calf around his calf…

His first touch was just a sweep along her side. The second was a gentle palming of her breasts, one
at a time. The third, a tweak of each nipple. She hummed shakily when he slid down her stomach…
between her legs… teasing slowly along her slit enough times for her breath to pick up and her face
to burrow itself in his neck. She brushed her knuckles down his torso and took him in hand, teasing
similar strokes along the underside.

But even once he’d plunged a finger inside her, even after she’d reached down with her other hand
to draw tight circles in a matching rhythm, even after he’d plunged two fingers inside her, her body
wasn’t winding up as it should.
Release came as a mild but pleasant tingle down her thighs; a gentle easing off. She sighed with
contentment, delicately pulled his fingers out of her, and nuzzled up to him.
A few moments of silence later, he rasped, “Did…?”

“Mm?” She smiled, even though he couldn’t see.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah.”

After another moment: “Would you… please.”

Oh, she’d left him hanging, hadn’t she, with her grip loose around the base of his shaft. He breathed
in hard and shuddered when she tightened her fingers again. She pumped at the pace she knew he
liked best, occasionally pulling back to swipe her thumb over the head, making his hips jump. She
kissed his neck, up and down, tugged his earlobe with her teeth, sucked on the spot at the base of
his throat that made him grunt softly. He lifted his shoulder, nudging her face up for a kiss… A
distracted one… More about closeness and touching than kissing.
Short moans buzzed against her lips and bounced around the bathroom.

Afterwards, he gave his wand a slothful wave, clearing the water of froth and… other sea serpent
like substances, leaving it crystal clear and glittering. His body, aflush from heat and satiation, laid
against jewel-like aquamarine mosaic, was pure opulence. Glistening, sleek, sculpted… Ah, he
truly deserved an artist for a lover.

She kicked away from the edge and floated on her back for a while. How surreal it felt to be so
weightless —
— just drifting —
— to the sweet sound of shifting ripples.
Her hair came loose and spread all around. The concave ceiling was webbed with reflections of
light playing on water.

She straightened in the middle of the pool. Darkened strands clung to her skin in thick, wavy ropes.

Draco hadn’t moved. His arms were stretched out along the rim, and he looked, looked, looked,
looked at her.

They stepped out, heavy and sodden, splashing loudly upon tiles that dried within an instant, and
drifted back into his room cocooned in fluffy white towels. She was given a t-shirt and silk boxers
to wear, and he pulled on a pair of joggers and nothing more.

She dried her hair. He put out all the lamps and lit up the tester.

Lying on her back, warm duvet melting over her like butter, she thought about how she could go to
sleep now. She could gather up everything that had been shaken asunder by reliving the hearing,
pile it all in one corner of the newly renovated Room of Unbidden Things, and close her eyes.

But under that twinkling canopy, feeling his watchful gaze that she yet again couldn’t meet head-
on, (as he lay close beside her, on his side), sleeping felt like the most foolish thing she could do.
“That’s why I was so distraught,” she admitted, “Ogden said the perfect amount of truth to –”

“It’s no longer the truth when it’s skewed so far out of shape.”

Stars turned into blotches.

“You said it yourself, you were a child doing what you could to survive. As someone who’s mixed
and mingled with the dark lot, I can say with complete surety that your brand of vengeance is
child’s – kitten’s play. You see injustice where nobody else would. You feel sympathy for those who
in no way deserve it. You happily revive homicidal pixies.”

“I know… my heart.” Ugh. What a thing to say. She cringed. “I – I mean, I know that I am a good
person. I had an easier time than…” She stopped and tried again. “I found it relatively easy to brush
away the influence of Voldemort’s horcruxes. The cup tried to tempt me with great knowledge
when I was destroying it, and I suppose I was tempted, yes… but in retrospect, it was barely a
moment of weakness. I’m not the grasping Faustian caricature it tried to make me believe I am. I’m
not selfish, or greedy, or morally bankrupt. I just wonder if, somewhere along the line, I have been
irrevocably…” She grimaced but could find no other word, “muddied.”

“If you’ve been muddied, it's because of Ogden’s mud-slinging,” Draco declared flatly, “It’s like
that thing you’d said about deification–”

He cut himself off. She frowned at a yellow star.

“What?”

“You say too many things. You make things out of too many things. Now I’m making things out of
things.”

“I can’t help it.”

A heavy sigh stirred her hair. “You know full well that being both lionised or vilified is fucking
meaningless.”

(Being understood was meant to be an inherently limited phenomenon, but Draco cracked open her
skull sometimes. Or… she had let him look in. Or…)

“I worry about my capacity for cruelty,” she whispered.

“Everyone has capacity for some rubbish or the other.” Frustration in his voice now. “I swear you
aren’t special in that regard at all. Put anyone in the situation you were in, and see what they get up
to. Fight back and you’re vengeful. Run away and you’re a traitor. Keep your head down and
you’re a coward. People who call you whatever, do so from their pedestals of comfort and have no
idea what it means to be cornered. You know what’s objectively cruel? Throwing it all back in your
face as a personal defect. Forget all that, will you? And stop forcing me to quote your own words
back at you, or I might reverse my amended stance on your bigheadedness. We got caught in
something. We scrambled out. It’s done. You get to be who you really are now, tiring us all with
your galvanising, bloody-minded determination.”
It made the stars spin, all the things he remembered…
Him and her things. Their words, their conversations, their shared phrases.

He seemed to have taken her silence as tacit opposition; it turned his frustration into hard-boiled
irritation.

“Isn’t the fact that you’re tying yourself up in knots over this telling enough?”

“I can’t just ignore the parts of myself that make me uncomfortable.”

“Snape used to say something like that. Merlin, he was such a maudlin drunk, it was embarrassing.
I was stuck in a cellar with him and a dozen bottles of mediocre wine, and every evening, it was the
same old bullshit.” He cleared his throat and continued in an uncanny Snapevoice, “ You can't run
from the past, no matter how hard you try. You have to face it. Well all right, Sev, but after a point
you're just a feckless cunt with your back to the future.”

It was entirely involuntary, that she turned to face him then. It brought their faces very close
together. His expression was sedate and intense; he was treating this matter with the seriousness
that she needed him to. He peered into her eyes and she lowered them, because she had no control
over what he’d find in them.

“Balance, remember?” she quavered, “Look forward and look back. We have to do a bit of both,
Draco.”

“We don’t have to struggle to achieve that sort of balance, Hermione. There are plenty of idle
minds raring to do it for us. They’ll spin yarns about valour when it suits them, and make
accusations of violence and vengeance just as easily. They’ll weigh our morals like they have all
authority to. It’s trite and shallow and has nothing to do with us.”

She stared at him until his brow puckered with curiosity. “How are you so sorted about all this?”

“We’ve already talked about it. Been over it. I’ve been grappling with this stuff for years, haven’t
I? Everything fell into place sometime between my last blood-boiling encounter with Mother,” he
breathed out, closed his eyes and shook his head for a second, “and our conversation about…
everything… During which you seem to have twattled on about a lot of things you don’t truly
believe. How does it feel to be so full of shit?”

“Shut up.” She cracked like a thin layer of ice over a deep lake, breaking into jagged fragments.

“Stop flapping around and allow yourself a few sparing moments of unbiassed introspection. By
that I mean free from other people’s biases.”

She had. So many times.

[Up in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales was a creek called ‘Repentance’, and it plunged
down from a height of a hundred metres, at the blazing, unfathomable speed of thought.]
A peculiar formality overtook his manner, like he was delivering a prologue: “There are things that
I can’t get rid off and nor do I want to. Regrets, scars, lessons learnt, truths uncovered… but.”

He swallowed. His tongue darted out – a little lick of worry. He was anxious, but he was still going
to give her perfect honesty… any second now.
She had never known anything to go both ways with such symmetry. For all the times he baffled
her, there were moments such as these, when he let her read him.

He said, “Everyone can keep harping on about me in whatever outdated context they desire, but I
cannot count those years of existence as anything to do with me. It isn’t self-absolution, all right? I
know... I know who I was. The point is, even if I hadn’t been, and my parents hadn’t been who they
are, or if I’d had brains enough to think for myself sooner… which most likely wouldn’t have
happened if I hadn’t gone through — Hmph. Look… the times were dictated by Dark and Dumble
Private Limited. By the time I finally understood, and I tried, there was no chance for me to forge
my own path. So, I say turn those years out, hang them, banish them, excommunicate them. Things
are finally up to me now.”

Yes. Exactly. She knew all that. She’d thought it before and accepted it. About him, and Harry and
Ron, and herself…

Why was it so difficult to internalise?

“How do I turn them out if they’re thrown back in my face every time I try to do anything? I’m so
scared that by fighting for my right to exist in this world, I’ve made it impossible to change
anything about it.”

“You’ll find another way.”

Of course she would. What choice did she have? But… “How?”

“You’ll figure it out. Start with that panel discussion.”

“Right. Lecturing a room full of like-minded people will accomplish a lot.”

“Like-minded people need a leader, or that’s all they do. They sit in rooms and talk.”

“Just waiting for someone to step forward and lend some direction, are they?”

“Yeah. Be it for elf emancipation, or muggleborn elimination.”

“Pff.” She touched his bare chest with the tips of her fingers. The shadow of her hand looked like
the Whomping Willow. “If you ever draw that parallel again, I will eliminate you.”

He smiled. It went all the way up to his eyes and warmed her cheeks. “Can’t believe I’m ill-fated
enough to have fallen into both your thralls. Doomed to run myself ragged, aren’t I?”

“I’m nicer.” She tried to huff.

“You just threatened to eliminate me. And Lord Corpseface isn’t the one who caused me to develop
alarm clock induced psychosis. I will say this, though – Had he looked like you, renouncing his
ideology might actually have been the piteous, poetic struggle that you daydream about.”

She laughed chokingly, which really meant I love you, and walked her fingers up his pectoral, one
step at a time.

She flattened her palm over his heart.

“Tell me, O Maestro, what do these new, staid rhythms of life sound like to you?”

His eyes were dancing in the best way. “There’s no music to them. They’re the metre.”

“Like the ticking of a metronome?” Like the ticking of your heart.

“Sure.”

“What would the overarching theme music of Draco Malfoy’s life be?”

A degree of pain pinched his expression. “Merlin, you’re soppy.”

“I’m no musician, but maybe something that starts like Sonata Pathétique and dovetails into a
dramatic symphony?”

“You’re right.”

A little pocket of joy ballooned in her chest.

“You are no musician.”

It deflated.

From his heart, she migrated to his stomach, feeling it gently rise and fall, one breath at a time.

She counted eleven inhales and ten exhales before he spoke again:

“How about we discuss the fact that I’m the reason Ogden has launched a smear campaign against
you?”

“What?” — He was studying her, lips pressed tight, like this was something he had been holding
onto for some time. — “No!” she pressed hotly, “It’s because of Greengrass and, I suspect, Rita
Skeeter, and fucking Cormac McLaggen.”

“Yes, the whole ordeal with McLaggen –”

“Would have gone sour anyway, because he still wouldn’t have signed, and made up an excuse to
meet again, for dinner or something.” She stopped because his nostrils flared. “Nobody has any
business vilifying you, either,” she mumbled, “I won't stand for it.”
There was so much more waiting to burst out of her. Absurd avowals. Nobody was allowed to say
anything even vaguely untoward about him. She’d hex anyone who looked at him funny, so quick,
so thoroughly, that nobody would know where it came from. If someone threatened him at
wandpoint, she’d do so, so much worse than dropping a boulder on them.

She was completely mad . Vengeful and mad. And he blinked and breathed and proved that he was
worth all manner of madness.

“I wouldn’t have done anything differently,” she said instead, “No, actually, if I’d known what a
piece of shit Ogden turned out to be, I would have liked to properly earn his scorn. I’ve had an
outburst against that scumbag McLaggen brewing for years.”

He didn’t laugh like she’d hoped. Didn’t even smile or smirk, but the grimness faded from his face.

For the time it took for the light of his shooting star to travel slowly from his chin to his temple, he
silently scrutinised her.

“I’ve submitted my leave request,” he said.

And air was compressing around her once more, forcefully shrinking her.

“You’ll go alone?” Her voice was so small.

She was so small. The smallest thing in the room, on that massive bed, and he was a proper man –
tall, broad shouldered, and sturdy –

“No, dimwit. You’re coming as well.”

“I… haven’t… decided.”

Again, he just looked at her. She wanted to shake him while asking What is it? Just say what you’re
thinking —

He laid his hand on the side of her face and pushed her hair back, palm flush against her jaw. His
thumb swiped over her cheekbone, just under her eye — Oh no, it was wet.

“I’m on to you, Granger,” he said, making soft semi-circles on her cheek that were wreaking havoc
on her pulse. “I may be an incurable coward, but you have holes – no, not holes – you have fucking
craters in your proactiveness.”

“And you’ll… what? Throw me across them? Push me to do things?”

“I believe I can galvanise you into action.” His hand slipped around the back of her neck and
gripped it firmly.

Oh? was a formation on her lips. It was soundless.

“Worked out for me so far, hasn’t it?”

He kissed her. Slow but hard. Soft mouth moving with insistence. A languidly deepening kiss. It
was warm. It was weighty. It sank through her despondency like a stone.
A final, lingering press and he retreated. Her heart filled her entire rib cage. Her eyes were
brimming over... God, he must’ve become so sick of her crying.

She turned over quickly and began a graceless shuffle to her usual side of the bed. His arm shot out
and wrapped around her, arresting her escape. He dragged her back and slotted her against his body.
[A perfect fit, flawless alignment, like his palm along her jaw, or her forehead against the curve
where his neck met his shoulder.] His knees pressed into the backs of hers. His chest was warm
against her spine. He slipped his hand inside her shirt – his shirt – settling long fingers over her
ribs. He started gently stroking the sensitive skin under her breasts.

His voice was like warm gravel, and it fell on the back of her neck.

“You’ve been with the Ministry for six months, and goblins are being paid more, the ICW has a
relief fund, squibs have their own foundation, Britain’s largest broom manufacturer was forced to
change company policy – which led to multiple other companies doing the same out of sheer terror.
A new mode of communication is set to replace those irksome memos, house-elves are being
mentioned in the papers everyday, and the high and mighty Chief Warlock went scrounging around
in the dirt to find ammunition against you. You can keep saying that it wasn’t all your doing… but
would any of that have happened without you?”

Her tears fell onto his pillow. He kissed her shoulder and stayed there, lips just placed on the spot,
steady breaths fusing into fabric.

They fell asleep like two interlocked crescents in the middle of his bed.

One week since the day of no deliverance, and one thudding step at a time was her morning run.

The sky was pearlescent, trees were readying themselves for birds that were soon to return, the
patchy lawn thrummed with a promise of vivid blossoming. The pulse of nature was quickening —
Such was the long-drawn heralding of spring.

Hermione stopped, massaging a painful side stitch. She panted loudly, her legs were shaking, and
she wandered laggardly, languidly onto the lawn.

Life is merciless.
Pedestal-sitters meted out penalties indiscriminately for any action, be it self-serving or in the
service of others. The choice was between contending with their punishment, or punishing herself
out of fear of their retribution.

Harry, the bravest and most selfless person she had ever known, was finally putting himself first.
So why couldn’t – why shouldn’t she take just one week for herself?

Maybe it was good that the worst had happened when she’d been immature and scatty enough to let
catastrophic reality get displaced, sometimes even eclipsed, by her own frivolous woes. Because
ultimately, the years flew by, didn't they?
All the medical professionals in her family often talked about the resilience of children – their
hearts were stronger, their wounds healed faster, they recovered sooner. As circles and layers
continued to stack up, those violent episodes of her life would become smaller and smaller… Like
the fact that she barely ever thought about three-headed dogs and Dementors, Basilisks and
Dolohov. Like the cut she got on her knee when she was four, that turned into a scab, then a scar,
and now existed only as an anecdote.

In two hundred days she would turn twenty-one, a full decade older than when she first stepped
into Magic. Ten years. A hundred and twenty months. Five hundred and twenty-two weeks. Three
thousand six hundred and fifty-four days. How many steps between that first step into Diagon
Alley and this step now? And this next one? And this?

Life is very long.

She was not as young as before, but she was still young.

Back on stone, she stared straight ahead and the path before her bifurcated. Trifurcated.
Quadfurcated.

She had pictured herself in a fedora, exploring ancient ruins. She had imagined herself roaming
through enchanted libraries, or bent over a giant cauldron in Unspeakable blue robes, or marching
through the Ministry in robes of plum, steeped in the glow of something momentous and
significant…

She never foresaw being so lost in the raptures of love. Never dared to envision a young man
wanting to whisk her away on a magical trip for two.

She took off again, at a high-speed sprint. Her ears whistled. The cold stung her dry lips.

Seasons were turning and Time wasn’t a Spectre. It was a Wave being propelled by the winds of
her whims. Perhaps it was best to loosen her limbs, close her eyes, and let the current carry her
where she was meant to go...
 …And so she sat in the same chair as a week before, in that same office full of false light,
surrounded by books and important documents and framed accolades…

Hermione pushed her leave request across the stately desk. Barros considered it with heavy
reproval.

“What of your fanciful ambitions for elvish liberation?” she jeered, “Are you abandoning them?”

“I’m not resigning, Madam Barros. I’m booking a week off. And since I am giving you adequate
notice, I don’t see any reason for you to deny me, as I’ve only taken one day off before… not
including the time you suspended me.”

“And those half days?”

“Are less in number than the days I have worked overtime.”

The tightness on her face – a clenched jaw and lined forehead – indicated that she was about to
bring out the big guns, i.e., the full name.

“One poor outcome and you think you deserve to go on holiday, Hermione Granger?”

Tee-hee.

“Yes.” Hermione waited for more storm clouds to gather before adding, “I’m sure Kingsley would
agree.”

Dark eyes widened. They were bubbling with venom.

Watching Barros savagely pick up her quill gave rise to such an unfettered surge of power, it felt
like a rush of magic from head to toe.

The Dint of Doom was every bit as full of shadows as it had been last week. Hermione stared into
the abyss and found herself fighting a smile.

Chapter End Notes

There was supposed to be another scene at the end that I tried my best to include, but it just
wasn’t sitting right. Please picture Hermione skipping down to lunch, wearing the smile she
had been fighting, to tell her lover the good news.
 Hundred and Four
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

It was fairly early on a Saturday morning and Starthistle Owlery, the cramped and smelly pit where
colours came to die, was busier than usual. There was only one opening, at the tip of the conical
roof, which was ringed by rows of hanging perches.

T’was raining feathers and severe appraisals from up high.

Hermione rolled her neck as she stood in queue with a whole lot of things to dispatch, while people
around her grumbled or tapped their feet impatiently. Up ahead, the Owlman carried on his duty
with the vigour of a garden snail.

Constantly having to make this excursion was getting tiresome. Once she received the first cheque
from QQQ, she would consider getting an owl. It could be a gift for herself if she managed to —
No.
No conditions. She would get herself an owl. A darling female owl that she would name Sonia, and
then Draco would leave her over that last straw of backbreaking sentimentalism.

Half an hour and many additional stops later, she was out in fresh air and ashy sunlight, walking on
her toes and carefully stepping on every third cobblestone as she moved towards the edge of her
scrubby little hamlet.
— 1 – 2 – 3 — 1– 2 – 3 — 1 – 2 – 3 — 1– 2 – 3 —
Two bulging shopping bags (with muggle-repelling charms) floated on either side of her.

She passed from one world to the other with a jeté, suitably subdued for the public eye. Soon, she
was ensconced in a phone box and, with the last of her small change in hand, she made a call.

“Hello?”

Mum’s brisk articulation softened into warm effusions the moment Hermione said it back. The
ensuing rush of words could almost have been a hug.

“Robert’s out playing cricket with some new mates of his,” she went on, “I can call him back, the
club’s fairly close by, if you remember. You nearly killed an old man right outside.”

“Lies. Slander. I stopped the car a good metre away. And how does dad keep finding new mates?”

“He met them at a Foo Fighters concert a week ago.”

Hermione chuckled. “Let him be. He can read the long letter you’ll receive sometime tomorrow. I
called because… I really wanted to hear your voice.”

Mum sighed, heavy like downward motion. “How are you, dear girl?”
“I’m okay,” she replied. That was met with another sigh, so she swiftly appended, “Draco will be
accompanying me to Charlotte’s wedding.”

“Well. I am very happy to hear that.”

“We’re also going away for a week, from the eighteenth to the twenty-sixth.”

“Where?” mum asked, in the tone that someone would say, oooh.

“Various places. Starting with Draco’s own little – he calls it little – island on the channel. Er,
sorry? Yes, he owns an island. We’ll wander into France for a day, visit magical settlements in Italy
and Bulgaria, and wrap it up with another island – not Draco’s – somewhere in the Arabian Sea.”

“That sounds fabulous! Don’t forget to take your camera, and please, actually use it.”

“I will.”

Mum tittered with excitement, and then she fell silent. For the following few seconds, that silence
prevailed, till Hermione mumbled —

“May I tell you what happened?”

“Of course,” mum rushed out.

She twisted the phone cord around her fingers while relaying the whole ordeal again. It was easier
this time, and not being able to see mum’s face kept her from getting blubbery.

“I’m so sorry.” Mum suddenly sounded like she had a cold. “I can’t believe he had the gall to speak
to you like that. Then again, it isn’t surprising at all. Oh darling, you’ve come up against so much
of the world’s cruelty, all kinds of it, again and again. How I – I wish I could make it easier for you.
Protect you… But that’s such a meaningless thing to say after all the things that I have failed to –”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that.” Hermione spoke over her, twisting the cord even further.
“About what I’ve been through, what I’ve done, and who I am… and if reconciling the three is
even possible. But I’ve been made to understand that I haven’t been allowed to be who I am yet…
and now’s the time to… to… be.”

“To be…?”

“Just be. I don’t know how, though. One minute I’m convinced I can take on anything… and in the
next, I feel like a bloodied, mangled thing and I – I – Mum, I just can’t seem to settle.”

“I used to say something similar when I was your age, and your lovely grandma would tell me, silly
green girl, you haven’t even lived yet.” Mum hummed sadly. “I cannot say that to you.”

“But I haven’t lived yet. I’ve just struggled to… not die.”

Now mum’s voice was shaky. “You are not mangled, my Hermione. You are whole and bold and
breathtaking. If you ever feel less than that, you grab one of those portkey things and come see
your mummy.”

The cord was so tight around her fingers, they’d turned completely white-red. “I love you, mum.”
“And I love you. More than anything and everything.”

For a while they sat with that. Those emotions. Absolute quiet on both ends of the line.

Hermione was once again the one to break it: “I’ve made an enemy of the magical equivalent of the
Lord High Chancellor. Except, worse.”

“You have indeed,” mum agreed gently, “What will you do now?”

She released the cord and watched it writhe and thrash like a giant snake as it settled back into
form.

“I will be intractable,” she said.

Mum’s exhale rolled out slow and sweet as molasses. Hermione could picture her expression
perfectly in that moment. She had seen it constantly, growing up. Sometimes, she felt it over her
own face, during late afternoons when a beam of sunlight broke through clouds and spread over
fresh grass.

“Do you remember that poem we used to recite when I’d drive you to school?”

Hermione smiled and leaned back against the wall. “We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather
the ripe gold ears…”

“...Unless we have first been sowers, And watered the furrows with tears.”

On her way back home, she strolled down the cobbled path with her feet flat, and felt, against all
odds, perfectly settled. Mum’s voice followed her —

It is not just as we take it,

This mystical world of ours,
Life’s field will yield as we make it
A harvest of thorns or of flowers.

(She stopped at the florist’s and picked up bunches and bunches of blooms. White snowdrops and
yellow daffodils and purple iris, with sprigs of pittosporum in between.)

What began with the very basic exercise of putting away the shopping, led to her turning the
kitchen inside out and scouring every nook and cranny. Thus charged up, she went about giving the
whole flat the same treatment, and it consumed her entire morning.

She used simultaneous spells as much as she could; trying various combinations and soon figuring
out that transfiguration was entirely out of the question. It simply could not be done by halves. She
couldn’t perform both spells wandlessly either. All charms and simple enchantments that she
attempted seemed to work as long as the magical exertion was balanced; for example, a scouring
charm paired perfectly with a drying charm. Vanishing dust off window sills while directing a
broom across the floor was easy-peasy. She could conjure a basic shield and cast a warming charm
at the same time. She could keep a bluebell flame burning and make her clothes fold mid-air as
they sailed into the wardrobe.

Basically, it was just like multitasking. Hermione was not ambidextrous, but she could write neatly
in a straight line without looking once at her parchment – while reading something slightly
different from what she was writing. She could chop, peel, dice, what have you, with great
precision, while casting wandless spells on a cauldron.
Now she could summon fire and ice at the same time and be Hermione, Hermione, Quite contrary.

(How does her garden grow? Poorly. The herbs were showing signs of neglect.)

By noon, everything was gleaming and flowers decorated all flat surfaces. She had fluffed up her
pillows and changed the bedding. She had enlarged the window in the study and turned the desk
around to face it. In the living room, she had changed the colour of the tablecloth from white to
navy blue, put armchairs where the sofa had been and vice-versa.

A home reborn. Ceilings free from shadows. She sat back with satisfaction – and a cheese and
tomato sandwich – and admired it.

Afternoon was dull and sluggish, but across Diagon, much commotion had been stirred by the
overnight appearance of large posters. Hermione wasn’t able to see them initially, as they were
obscured by shopkeepers going up against some very persistent sticking charms, but a little further
down, she saw. She saw, and she stopped. She stopped, stunned.

The same two posters were repeated over and over. The first lot depicted the entire Ministry
through faceless figures in plum, dark blue, light blue, red, and black robes, standing under
glittering letters that read, BEWARE THE BUREAUTWATS. The second had recognisable faces
brutally caricaturised with long decaying fangs and insidious red eyes. Those ones said, ROTTEN
PLUMS LOSE THEIR APPEAL! DOWN WITH THE WIZENGAMOT! Both had the LUMP
stamp proudly blazoned at the bottom.

There was a flash of light. Hermione whipped around.

Bozo.

People were stopping in their tracks.

Brilliant. Fantastic. Marvellous.

She moved quickly and didn’t stop even after she had rounded the corner into Horizont, not till she
was halfway down the lane and standing before a pink door.

Behind it was an egregiously colourful interior – pink walls, terrazzo floor tiles, mint green leather
chairs and pink-framed mirrors, blue magazine racks and white cupboards. A man in a pink apron
and long golden hair bounded towards her, singing her name and pushing her into a chair.

She blinked at him through the mirror as he stood behind her, combing slender fingers through her
mane. He had to be part veela or something.
“Such a thick, goooorgeous head of hair, Mer lin,” he drawled, “ Please don’t make me cut it off.”

“No,” Hermione said, a bit dazedly as he smiled, “Just a trim, please. And perhaps make it a little
less haystack-shaped.”

“It is not haystack-shaped. What fool told you that?”

With a few waves of his wand, her hair first got soaked, then coated in suds, then cleaned off. He
drew out a pair of shiny scissors with a flourish, and got to work.

Hermione forced herself to relax, to stop thinking about the evening’s paper that would surely have
large photographs of her, and tomorrow's paper that would indubitably name her as the mastermind
behind the posters, and day-after’s paper that would —
Flute music played soothingly in the background. The man behind her moved with indescribable
grace. Her hair vanished as soon as it was snipped off, thanks to a charm imbued in the scissors as a
precaution against potential polyjuice abuse.

“How do you style it, lovey?”

She had a bad feeling her answer would upset him. She did not want to upset him.

“I use a lot of conditioner, and dry it with my wand. Sometimes I comb a dollop of Sleakeazy
through it.”

Sure enough: “Good grief, noooo! A crime against such hair! Please, no. Sleakeazy’s oooold news
now. Worse than dragon dung, isn’t it? Takes aaaages to get right, doesn’t it?”

“Right.”

In the end, he coated her strands with three different potions and one thick balm, and dried them
with his wand using the same charm as she always did. Hair fell down her back all flowy and shiny
like she had never, not once accomplished on her own.
He had taken some of the weight off with soft layers, but kept the length more or less the same.
Amid loose curls that tightened slightly at the ends, were two perfect spirals sprouting from the
base of her head. She really had inherited dad’s hair exactly.
Dad’s eyes stared back at her. In mum’s face.

She gave the veela-man her thanks and money, and he handed her a pink paper bag containing one
large bottle of the new and improved Silky Selkie’s Instant Frizz-Banishing Decoction™ and a
wiggenwood comb.

Glamorous hair, glamour over her face, her journey to the apparition point was without event. A
twirl brought her to the old wizarding settlement of Falmouth.

Everything was suddenly open. Buildings were more spaced out, air felt lighter.

Hermione had no notion of where exactly she was, in muggle terms – but she had come to these
parts once, fourteen years ago, with mum and dad and Jack and Malorie; a trip to Gylly beach and
Pendennis castle…
Lost in those musings, she walked past some houses and arrived at the shopping area. The
architecture was quaintly Tudor; two parallel rows of boutiques with cross gables, thatched roofs,
and diamond-shaped window panes.

She dropped her glamour and stepped into Witchy Wear: Robes, Cloaks, and More.

It was run by a pair of sisters, whose combined enthusiasm over dressing Hermione completely
overwhelmed her insistence that she was there only for one set of dress robes that weren’t too long
and didn’t reek of death.
Reams of fabric, pins and a measuring tape swirled around her. The witches chittered gushingly, a
huge mirror boomed with oleaginous compliments… Of course she ended up buying two.

The first set had been her choice – peridot green with musgravite grey-purple hems. They fit snugly
to her hips before flaring out, had elbow-length split sleeves, a high neck, and lots of tiny silver
buttons going down the front. The other azure blue ones she had been arm-twisted into purchasing,
by delicately embroidered les fleurs du mal.

Next stop was four doors down. She dithered a bit before entering, because there was something
unnerving about a building without windows and a heavy-looking black door. But this shop and its
wares had been strongly vouched for by Andromeda, and Hermione was keen.
She had scarcely brushed her fingertips over the knocker when the door opened on its own with an
over-the-top creak.

It was dark inside. The door slammed shut behind her and vanished. Hermione gripped her wand.
Panic rose as her eyes struggled to adjust and slowly came to terms with a low flame floating above
a table in the middle of a medium-sized room. A hazy, tawny lustre waltzed with deep dark
shadows. All four walls were fitted with floor to ceiling shelves that were packed with innumerable
bottles of all sizes.

“...Enchanté…"

She jumped ten feet in the air. The husky, sultry whisper seemed to come from everywhere, all at
once, and continued to echo.

“Who’s there?” She moved tentatively towards the table —

“’Ermione Granger?”

Suddenly, the room was full of light. She scrambled back, blinking. A small corner of one of the
shelves swung open, through which emerged the furthest thing from the French siren Hermione
was expecting.

“Garmegiddyaunt!” was the overexcited, unintelligible exclamation out of a sturdily built woman
with a very red face. Her robes were loose, her bun was tight, and she took Hermione’s hand
avidly.

“Name’s Tamsin!”

“Pleasure to meet –”

“Tell me ’ow’s it that you’re in my shop?!”

“Well, Andromeda Tonks –”

“Ah, Andromeda! ’Aven’t ’adder round in some time, but she’s been a customer for years!” She
beamed at Hermione with crystal blue eyes. “What can Tamsin do for’ee?”

Hermione hedged, “I’m not sure what I’m looking for, honestly. I only wear perfume on special
occasions. I have one that smells of peonies and wild berries.”

“That’s not right. Too light an’ sweet. You need somethin’ layered. There’s lots of options ’ere.”
She gestured around at all the bottles in every possible shade and hue. “Our family ’as belong to
scent makin’ for years, an’ doin a fitty job of it. But… if someone’s willin’ to spend a snippet more,
Tamsin brews them a signature perfume!”

As previously established, Hermione was keen.

A cauldron, no bigger than a sugar pot, was placed over the flame at the table and filled with water.
Positioning herself on the opposite side, Hermione clasped her hands behind her back and bent
closer.

“What’re your scents? Soaps, shampoos, an’ such things.”

“I usually use an orange blossom soap.”

“Orange! ’Zactly!” Tamsin nodded approvingly. She flicked her wand and a vial sailed off a shelf
and deposited six drops in the cauldron. It changed colour and began to bubble, but let out no
smoke or odour. “Fresh, zesty, but earthy. What else?”

“My shampoo is…” Hermione flushed helplessly, “floral.”

“What flower?”

“I don’t know,” she smiled.

“Well, ’ang it then. Flowers are for simpler maids. ’Ere’s some cognac for a punch, an’ for the
colour of those ansum eyes.” A golden bottle flew off the shelves and drizzled into the cauldron.
“Vanilla for sweetness.” Three drops from a tiny black bottle.
“A bit of me special warm spice mix – ginger, cinnamon, cloves.” A shaker drizzled dark brown
dust.
“Just a touch of Damask rose, for ’im who put that red on’ee cheeks!”

Hermione laughed, flushing even more as a bottle splashed the smallest drop into the mix.

“Now, some of Tamsin’s secret oils – travelled far to get ’old of —”

A loud GURGLE as three bottles in shades of green contributed a drop each into the cauldron.
Tasmin stirred the mixture, drew a triangle with her wand, and a small cloud shot out and flew
straight into Hermione’s face.

“Keep your nose abroad!”

Hermione breathed it in and breathed out an, “Oh.” All those notes put together were just…
“Essence of ’Ermione,” Tamsin grinned, emptying the cauldron into a small glass bottle with a
silver stopper.

It cost Hermione seventeen galleons. She felt an unnerving combination of panic and self-
righteousness over spending so much on something so tiny, but she did it anyway.

She returned home, and for the following couple of hours, she tried to work on her oration for the
panel discussion. Unfortunately, her willpower hadn’t made it back yet. Turning her desk to face
the window had been a terrible mistake. And everytime she forced herself to look down at the
blank parchment, her hair would swing forward, and she would run it between her fingers like a
silly simpering twittish dolt.

So she just sat back and found shapes in the sky that looked like nothing recognisable, and thought
about ornamental clouds composing an evening love song. And waited.

Waited till her watch buzzed with a reminder.

She paced before her wardrobe and picked out a frock, (maroon, knee length, long sleeved, because
history could be rewritten by victors). She played up her eyes, unearthed earrings she hadn’t worn
in years…

She thought about clouds again, looking out of the glass wall in Draco’s sitting room, while he
seemingly wasn’t ready yet. She left her coat and scarf on a chair, and moved closer to see what lay
below…
But there was only sky.
Even with her nose pressed against the pane… Just sky. As far as she could see… Sky.

A Moveable Feast lay nearby, with a bookmark near the end. How did he feel, reading about
travelling lovers, evenings out, books and nights warm in bed…

When he finally showed up, in sky-shades of white, blue, and grey, she grinned sky-wide. She
would never get over the way he reacted when she made an effort, and she suddenly understood
why it was so incredibly gratifying. His surprise didn’t feel like, is that really you? It was more, I
absolutely was not expecting you, but… yes, that’s you. There you are.

Then surprise contorted into a frown, like, something looks different but I can’t figure out what.

“I got my hair cut,” she mumbled.

The frown melted away. They met in the middle of the room.

“Looks okay?”

“Yeah, it looks o–” He cocked an eyebrow, and dipped his face closer.
“New perfume,” she said feebly.

He buried his face in her neck and breathed in fully. His hands perched on her hips. He pressed a
heady kiss behind her ear. On her jaw.

“We’ll be late.”

“How sad,” whispered against her cheek.

Somehow her head had tipped back to allow him to mouth down to her clavicle – hands clutched
her shoulders – they moved forward – backwards – the corner of something was digging into her
side – don’t care – she grabbed his hips, pressing closer – the tip of his wand dragged against her
thigh – her tights —— She grabbed his wrist.

“No. No.” She breathed a few times and stepped back, shaking her head at him. “We’d better
leave.”

She could hear him panting after her, projecting for the audience, keeping it going while she pulled
on her coat…

“Feeling powerful, then? Got the poor sod all heated up, let's stick him out in the cold now?”

She flouted that nonsense with a flap of her scarf. “Stupid woman must’ve put something in the
perfume. Those mysterious, dodgy oils. They’re probably – definitely illegal! Does Andromeda
know?”

“There’s nothing dodgy in the fucking perfume.”

“But one sniff and you just…”

“Not sure how you haven’t caught on yet,” he fulminated as he sullenly patted down his clothes and
hair, “but anytime you give a clear indication that you’re up for it, I will take you up on it.”

She stood with her hands hanging by her sides as he stalked out of the room.

He was cheered up by the posters that were as yet stuck firm across Diagon, despite continued
slogging by shopkeepers, Bureautwats (more cross about being forced to work on a Saturday than
about being called names), and even a few Unspeakables. Everyone looked cold and tired,
spectators were aplenty, and exclamations were being volleyed over their heads: I swear to Godric,
I’ll set the whole place on fire, and Where’s the buggering sticking charm dissolving brew?

In the slowly creeping twilight, it was becoming evident that the posters would glow in the dark.

Draco snickered and Hermione kept her head down.

They stopped before the only facade with a different poster gracing its front window. A flashing
advertisement – Conjuring Headlines! – and a photograph of Anita looking thoughtfully serious or
seriously thoughtful, holding a book with a cover that was, most unimaginatively, designed to look
like the front page of a newspaper.
The handful of times Hermione had been inside Obscurus Books, it had always been chaotic and
jumbled, exactly how you’d imagine a famously ‘eccentric’ publishing house to look. That
evening, rickety book cases had been swapped for rows of chairs, (at least thirty – mostly
occupied), and a raised platform. That platform was where Anita was standing, in a black dress that
drowned her, smoking from a long cigarette holder and reading an excerpt from her book.

They were late anyway.

Hermione and Draco slipped into the back row – her, hunched and stooped, and him, straight-
backed and unbothered.

“...complete lack of independent reporting, largely due to the fact that most funding channels
originate in the vaults of the influential, has brought us to the point where our primary source of
news and information is nothing but a mouthpiece for…”

To Hermione’s right, candlelight tripped over a swish of shimmery fabric.

“Hi!” was breathed right into her ear.

“Hi, Parvati,” Hermione whispered back, “You look beautiful.”

“So do you. Hair looks brill!”

“Thanks.”

“...codes of Journalistic ethics that could set some basic standards in place…”

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“I gave my notice yesterday! In one week, I will no longer be working for the arsey Prophet!”

“Good on you.”

“...under the guise of ‘protecting national interests’, the Ministry wields far too much…”

“Anita and Mr Co– I mean Marvin have acquired the rooms just one storey up! There’s still loads
to get done, but The Weekly Sentinel has an office now, and will hit the racks in May. I’m head of
marketing, can you believe it? Head of!!”

“That’s wonderful.”

Hermione lifted her chin and squinted her eyes, hoping it would remind Parvati of how
unapproachable she used to look during lessons.
“...more clear than ever during the dark days when our Ministry had been taken over. The Daily
Prophet published nothing but the most dangerous lies…”

“Anita told me that she simply needs to speak to you today. Like, it’s really, really important. Make
sure you talk to her, alright?”

“I will.”

“...way these lies are constructed – not always with outright sensationalism – rather, they’re more
often bolstered with subtle turns of phrases and careful doublespeak…”

“So it’s true then? You and Draco Malfoy are actually together?”

Hermione nodded stiffly.

“Like, together?”

“Yes.”

“Godric. What a world we live in!”

She barely heard four words out of Anita after that, but got about six thousand from Parvati.

For the next portion of the evening, the chairs were vanished. Trays of nibbles and flutes of
sparkling wine made rounds, held by elves who went out of their way to stay out of her way. Draco
had to physically move to fetch their drinks, which, judging by his demeanour, was the most
daunting thing he’d been tasked with since the Vanishing Cabinet.

She had no idea what to do besides sipping and looking around stupidly.

“How long must we stay?” Draco muttered.

“I suppose an hour would be proper?”

Quite unexpectedly, she spotted Dean and Wendy in one corner, appearing just as lost, so she
tugged on Draco’s sleeve and rushed towards them.

They both had GABs floating by their heads. Colourful ones, as they’d painted the backs of the
parchments. Dean’s was abstract and yellow and red, clashing loudly with his bright blue jacket .
Relief loosened his posture on seeing Hermione and Draco approach.

“We’re last minute invitees,” he informed them in a stage whisper, “Anita appreciated the posters
and wants us on as part-time illustrators. Did you like them, by the way?”

Hermione levelled a glare at him. “You will get me fired.”

“Nah. You don’t even feature. My original sketch had you front and centre, as Liberty leading the
people…”
Hermione made a face. Second time he’d brought up that image and she was weary of an artist’s
fixations. She had a bad feeling she was going to see it someday.
Well… as long as her tits weren’t out. That wasn’t the kind of liberty she was ready for yet.

“What did you use to stick them?” Draco asked eagerly.

“Industrial adhesive. Water, temperature, and chemical resistant. Topped up with that tamper-proof
charm you’d put on the DA parchment, Hermione.” Dean chortled. “Those twats will be busy for a
good long while.”

Time was measured in sparkling wine. After one flute, Anita burst in on them and dragged
Hermione away.

She was taken across the room, and presented before a group of ten.

“Here, you lot,” Anita announced, “meet the woman of every fucking hour. Hermione, this is
Marvin Cole, my co-conspirator. You already know Parvati. This is Suki Choi, goddess among
editors. This is Ivan White, professor of modern magical history. This is Rumpelstiltskin, an expert
in nomenclature. This is Old Mother Hubbard, she went to the cupboard…”

Hermione may have gone a bit foggy. She nodded graciously when she was praised and spoke
when spoken to.

“Hermione’s going to have a monthly column in the Sentinel,” Anita claimed, just out of nowhere.

“I – I am?” Hermione quailed.

Smoke leaked out of her mouth as she replied. “Of course you fucking are. You have a lot to say,
don’t you?”

“But I am contractually prohibited from publicly criticising the Ministry.”

“Quit.”

Hermione stared at the limp curl of ash hanging off the end of Anita’s cigarette. “I plan to. I will. I
just need to nab a couple of qualifications first.”

“Bletch.” Anita rolled her eyes. “Fine. Write whatever the hell you want, as long as it's something
that fucking matters and you bring in your usual flair. Think of a good catchy name for it and let me
know, ASAP. Short. Pithy. My gab-onym’s A. Storstrand.”

She left her there, alone with all those strange people, who began needling her with countless
questions about the Wizengamot…

Whereupon, Cole offered her his elbow and led her away, sweeping past titbits of extreme
pontification, to the most unfrequented corner of the room. There sat a man deep in his dotage,
sipping dark honey mead. He wore bright white woven robes with a colourful pattern along the
lapels. His wrinkles were like the beds of ancient rivers, his hair was a hoary cloud, and his hand,
when Hermione shook it, felt like nothing more than brittle bones encased in papyrus.
He was Professor Emmanuel, Cole’s great grand uncle, decorated pedagogue at the College of
Magic in Axum. His voice reminded her of the lowest note of a cello. With him she sat for another
two flutes. His field was charms and they spoke about Zosimos, Ousanas, and ancient spells dating
back to the Solomonic Dynasty. He praised the GAB for its “revolutionary combination of magic,”
and promised her access to the College library whenever she chose to visit… as long as she
promised to conduct a workshop on Advanced Practical Charms for his students.

Eventually, he seemed to tire, his eyes began to droop in the middle of sentences. Hermione
thanked him profusely, vowed to write, and excused herself.

Buoyed beyond measure by that exchange, she sought out the only person who could make her
happier.

He was still with Dean and Wendy, and someone else – a bloke they called Boily and she didn’t ask
why. They were discussing quidditch, to no surprise.

“Tell him to put his bags of money where his big mouth is!” Dean demanded of her while pointing
at a rankled Draco.

“Sure,” she responded dryly, “He’s absolutely going to listen to what I have to say about
quidditch.”

At which Dean exclaimed, “Hermione knows nothing about sports!” and everyone laughed.

All very unnecessary, since she’d already taken a potshot at herself.

“Come over to the headquarters sometime,” he said once the laughter petered out, “We’re
brainstorming new events, could really use your input.”

“What’ve you got in mind?”

He shrugged. “Film screenings, book clubs, lectures and discussions. I dunno.”

She smiled and agreed — And half a flute later, she was ready to leave.

Not even the glowing fangs on Ogden and Co, nor the blinding fluorescent robes of the
Bureautwats could ruin her mood. She felt invigorated, charged up, like all the tiny bubbles she had
imbibed were still fizzing inside her.

The whole planet was astir. People were flocking to pubs and restaurants, and a woman sat under a
lamp post, playing a charming tune on a clarsach. Lee was stalking outside Wheezes on a pair of
ginormous stilts, throwing sweets down at the masses. Weekend pedlars had claimed large portions
of the pavements, their stalls colourful and intriguing — Oh, there was the ancient witch who sold
charmed amulets and trinkets —

Hermione’s frock fluttered when Draco directed her towards the other side of the street.

“Where are we going?”

“Fortescue’s pepper imp hot chocolate won't be available after this month,” he replied.

Excellent, because she wanted to talk. Needed to let out all that excessive, bubbly, gobby energy.
She told him about her upcoming role as a columnist. Told him all about her chat with Emmanuel.
Told him about Friedberg.

They neared Finnigan’s and its petty proprietor stood outside, smoking with Michael and Anthony.
Predictably, Draco pulled her closer when she offered them a small smile and a wave. Two of them
waved back. One turned away.

Outside the parlour, Bozo attacked with another flash . She didn’t even have to look his way to melt
his camera lens, and stepped into the parlour just as a stream of oaths erupted from behind.

“I would like to go,” she said as they took their place in the short queue. She looked up at Draco
and there was not even the slightest trace of boredom, like she knew there wouldn’t be. Her heart
still skipped a beat, just for the hell of it.

“When?”

“2004. I have a three year plan.”

“Only three?”

“Yes. But even that’s not concrete. Things get messy, you know? Sometimes you must put things
off, sometimes you must dabble…”

He pinched her side, smirking cheekily.

Then it was their turn, and they walked back out with hot cups held in cold hands. They crossed the
street again. Bozo had made himself scarce.

“So,” she continued, “I’m going to make something happen for the elves. Even if it's only stringent
punishment for elf abuse… even if it's just a day off. Something. I’m going to earn the title of
junior barrister, make decent headway on the scanning machines, and finally, I’m going to take the
REPTILES.”

With a gentle shove, she removed them from the path of a group of plastered merrymakers.

“And after you’ve secured those REPTILES? You’ll go galavanting around the world, visiting
institutions of higher learning? What about your job?”

She peered at him superciliously. “I can’t be bothered with a job, Draco. I have work to do.”

He laughed, so boyish and enamouring, that her stupid heart skipped a beat again.

Passing through the narrow side alley leading to his building was a quiet affair.

The Lane of Trepidation, she could call it. It was here that she’d felt panic. Felt dread. Felt anguish
. Here she had crackled with rage. Here she had stood rain-soaked and impuissant.

The moment they were out, she grabbed Draco’s arm and towed him towards the park. He let out
an indignant grunt. His boots skidded exaggeratedly.

“You can just tell me where you want to go, instead of pulling me around like a dog on a leash!” he,
like a dog on a leash, barked.

Hermione released him. “Pshaw. Keep your hair on. Or shall I tell Professor Emmanuel that you
can offer his students a course on drama?”

The same trees, the same lamps. Everything was quiet but them, as they noisily made their way
down that same old path.

“I nearly spilt my chocolate!”

“Nearly. But you didn’t. There’s a ghost at Hogwarts who will tell you that nearly is a very
important adverb.”

“Ho ho. Very funny. There’s a poltergeist around there as well, who should serve as a lesson against
being pushy and peeving.”

“Actually, he got away with everything, didn’t he?”

Draco narked on but Hermione didn’t mind. She led him deeper into the park, where a certain
bench had long awaited their return.

[For another conversation. For the kiss it was owed.]

“Sit,” she told him, and once he had complied (after the expected show of reluctance), she handed
him her cup.

She took a breath and lifted her arms. Flagro Cymatilis , she thought, and “Nox,” she said, aiming
her wand at the nearest lamp. It went out at the same time as a bluebell flame appeared above her
other hand. She threw it up, whipping her wand upwards — “Wingardium Leviosa,” she intoned,
and Calor Obvolvo, she thought, directing the flame towards the unlit lamp while her other arm
moved in sweeping motions.

They were encased in a shell of warmth and blue light. She despatched a few more spells –
disillusionment, muffling, privacy – in case Bozo was sniffing around.

Draco had gone very still while he watched. She dropped her arms and laughed, bouncing on the
spot like an excited child.

“I’ve been practising.”

“Practising,” he repeated blankly.

She bounded over to sit next to him – in the middle of the bench – and took back her cup.

She could smell chocolate. She could smell him.

“I think I’ve got a good hang of it now, with simple spells or those that come easily to me–”

“Are there any that don’t?”

“Er, yes. I’m not great at certain hexes and I had trouble with the patronus charm, at first.”

He nodded sardonically. “You were saying?”

“I was saying, I need to be comfortable with the spells and I need my wand. Can’t manage both
spells wandlessly, even if they’re two versions of the same spell. Like, for instance, I can’t even
summon two different things wandlessly. I think it has something to do with balancing the magic.”

“Maybe. Wands focalise magic, which means you expend less of it. So when you’re performing
two spells at once, more magic is channelled by your wandless arm, while the wand makes up for
the insufficiency in the other.”

Yes, that made sense.

Firm against her shoulder was his shoulder; the shoulder that she had leaned on and cried on and
kissed and bitten and smiled into. The shoulder that had borne the whole gamut of her emotions.
She stared across the park and nudged his knee with her knee.

“I finally finished De Nullitate Magiae last night. What a book. And – and… Draco. Okay, listen.
While I still largely do submit to the importance of incantations, I’ve realised that it's a bit more
complicated than you think. Intent matters a lot –”

“I never denied that. I disagreed with your assertion that incantations were simply accoutrements.”

“Yes yes. What I mean is, intent has incredible transformative powers that go far beyond just the
ability to perform a spell or dictate its potency. There is a point where those two meet, and it isn’t
conveniently in the middle… I think we can figure it out, between the two of us. Would you mind if
I hijacked your study for a few hours tomorrow morning?”

There was a bit of a pause before he said, “What if I refuse?”

“Then you’ll be a massive git. Won't be long, don’t worry. I have to be at the Burrow in the
afternoon, to see Ginny off.” She nudged his knee again. “Will you come?”

“As long as it won’t be long,” he mimicked.

“Ugh. Stop doing that with your voice, it makes you sound freshly castrated.”

He choked.

“Anyway, I really need to plan what I’m going to say at the panel –”

“Do you realise how miserable you’d be if I were to get castrated?”

“What? You aren’t actually going to –”

“Next time you show up all wide-eyed and dripping, begging for restoration –”

“Begging?! Drip— Oh, shut up. To get back to the point –”

“Yes, dripping. Absolutely dripping. You deny it?” He was fucking murmuring into her ear now.
“Hermione, my kitten, I could have you dripping in minutes. Then I’d clean you right up, carefully,
meticulously, and show you how far from castra—”

“Stop it.”

He laughed, shaking against her, infecting her till she was laughing too, despite how her face was
flaming. She leaned away so she could watch him go through all stages of laughter.

“Okay. To get back to the point,” she reiterated primly and settled back along his side, “After
reading page after page about magic being innate and physiological, I’m more aggravated than
ever. I’m going to make a thing out of this now, Draco, so you’d better brace yourself: We have
sanctified this very basic ability of ours. Brought the gods down to earth but made a religion out of
magic. Pure magical blood – So sacrosanct!” She rolled her eyes. “Self-important ancestral
balderdash, parroted to keep the existing power structures in place. Family magic sounds like some
real Habsburg horseshit, doesn’t it? What had you called it? The Ignoble and…?”

“Most Antwacky House of Bilge.”

“Yes. That. The Sacred Twenty-Eight. Hah. Instead of studying the magical impact of environment
and time of day, we’ve turned procedures into rituals. A grand show, but not even trying to
understand how a lunar eclipse affects magical potential energy is akin to believing that it's caused
by a demon devouring the moon. Even things as perverse as murder and torture are exalted as the
Dark Arts. This world…” Oof, she’d said all that in one breath, “...This world is in desperate need
of a scientific temperament.”

“Science hasn’t done away with muggle religion, has it?”

“Of course not. There’s no way to make every single person on earth think rationally. Opiate of the
masses and all that.” She paused. Hedged, sipped, thought. “Do you remember when you said that
we’re at a huge advantage and it would be a shame to waste it?”

“Yeah.”

“Religion hasn’t relinquished its hold on people, but faith is largely accepted as the abstract concept
it's meant to be. Magic is not abstract. It’s very real, and frankly, on a day to day basis, simply
functional. Eat, sleep, walk, accio, scourgify – it's all the same to us. You know what I compared
performing simultaneous magic to? Multi-tasking. I wasn’t marvelling at the fact that I’m wielding
some divine, supernatural power. I’d honed a skill. I used it to clean my flat. To wash clothes and
empty bins.”

“Thank fucking Salazar that you cleaned that abominable pigsty. Anyhow, is it not necessary to
take into consideration the fact that magic isn’t only functional? It can be used for day-to-day
activities, but it can also boil a lake or flatten a mountain.”

“Well, yes. We can do great things with it, like we can do great things with any other of our
faculties. Like riding a unicycle, or learning to play a very complicated piano piece. Like…
literacy. I can use it to write a memo or a manuscript.”

“Those are such vapid comparisons.”

“They are not! I know magic is incredibly powerful! Obviously I know that. But do you know that
muggles have used physics and chemistry to create the most devastating weaponry?”

“Sure, and they –”

“The fact that magic is powerful shouldn’t put it beyond study or examination! Shouldn’t make it
sacred. The fire you pureblood Olympians had kept for yourselves and we muggleborns somehow
stole! It’s still a naturally occurring phenomena that can be understood, and should be dug into!
That’s the only way to eradicate blood prejudices, to abolish the nonsensical narrative of lineal and
familial superiority. Obviously I’m not going to go around tracing the family tree of every
muggleborn or halfblood to see how whatever mutation came about —
“Oh, that’s another thing. We need to change the terminology, change this blood-centric language
we use when we talk about magic. Maybe everyone will get on board with that once I’ve…
“Gah. I need to figure out what’s going on inside us. I… need those scanning machines. And for
that I need to understand how muggle medical imaging works. I’ll have to go back to the library,
definitely take Padma along — Not Hogwarts, by the way. British Library. Muggle. Would you like
to come? I can make you a fake membership card, but we’ll still have to use confundus charms,
can't be helped. All their records are on computers now — Oh! I’ll teach you how to work one of
those! I’m no expert by any means, but dad taught me — I can show you how I researched for the
crisis aid bill and learnt about lasers for your CD player. God, the Ministry needs something like
computers, desperately. Those cabinet graveyards, those unfathomable archival chambers… so
clunky, just like their thinking —
“The world outside is moving towards the twenty-first century, and here I am trying to take on the
mantle of Magical Galileo. Maybe I should stand in the middle of the atrium and shout, the earth
revolves around the sun, you idiots! Magic isn’t sacred fairy-dust floating in your blood! Not like
they can shun me or lock me up, can they?”

Her voice echoed within the dome of her magic.

There was an intense, ringing silence after that.

“No. They can’t do that.”

He said that with a strange, throaty sort of graveness. She twisted to have a look, and found
graveness stretching over his profile too. It jarred her, because she still remembered his laughter.

Bother. How long had he been that way? She had talked the hind leg off a donkey and the humour
out of Draco.

“Shall we head in?” she asked sheepishly.

He twisted in her direction too, appearing even graver face-to-face. He wasn’t frowning, though. It
was a cryptic seriousness that could mean so much or nothing at all.

He replied after five seconds had passed. “Okay.”

She sat up, wand in hand, and banished their empty cups while putting out the bluebell flame. She
relit the lamp while dispersing her wards. It was even more seamless this time; a veritable dance of
magic.
But she could scarcely take any joy in it, because while the cast of warmth melted away, agitation
formed a cast of its own over Draco. Cold sliced in ruthlessly, and she was at a loss, fumbling while
putting her wand away.

“Is everything all right?”

He huffed like she had said something awfully rude. His eyes were too bright, coated with a gloss
that scattered lamplight into a cluster of stars. She was Galileo indeed, observing a hitherto
undiscovered stellar system.

“Draco?”

He gripped her scarf and tugged — and met her midway in a kiss.

Her stomach flipped and burned.

He tasted like chocolate and peppermint and himself, reminding her of other nights…
She gasped when his cooler fingers touched the warm skin of her neck, his hot tongue slipped into
her mouth and soothed the shock of it. His hands moved to her cheeks, taking a firm hold of her
face and tilting it upwards. He kissed her so completely and so thoroughly…

She melted .

Sometime later, she pulled back and stared blearily at his lips. Roughed up and parted. Panting in
quick puffs.

“What?” she whispered, though she couldn’t remember what for.

He dragged his thumb across her mouth, tugging slightly at the corner. She looked up and saw that
his eyes were open, too; hooded, dark, and looking back. They fluttered shut as he leaned in to kiss
her again.

Her heart skipped a beat and another and another and another and one more and it didn’t stop
skipping.

She woke up in an empty room, alone in a massive bed. Even Rodion wasn’t in his cage. Curtains
were heavy across the windows, giving no indication of the time. The clock read quarter past
seven.

Morning would’ve been unrolling outside, but inside there was a sunset: Orange from the small
lamp on the desk, blue from the chains criss-crossing the door.

Chains? She’d been locked in?

Hermione was not awake enough to deal with this.

She slipped out of bed, wincing as naked skin endured the loss of softness and warmth. Draco’s
jumper was hanging off his desk chair. She put it on.

An amalgamated cincinno–vinculum was among the most complicated locking charms, and while
she had never actually attempted to disengage it, she had studied the theory back when she and the
other two musketeers were plotting to break into the Ministry.

Should she, or shouldn’t she? Darling, you got to let me know.

Bathed in taunting blue light, she knew she would. He couldn’t just lock her in. She rubbed the last
bit of sleep out of her eyes.
It took fifteen whole minutes. She had to loosen and syphon away threads of magic as fine as the
hair near Draco’s nape. Scores of those threads bound together to make one link. Scores of links
made one chain. And there were four chains.

She felt drained afterwards. Desperate for a cup of tea.

The hall was blue-lit… because the door to the sitting room was also chained up.

Hermione wanted to scream. Was this his idea of a game? A little seven a.m. lark? A reality check
for her silly quip about Galileo? Her feet were unfortunately bare, leading to a sadly unimpressive
stomp, but the feeling was all there.

Just inches from the door, she heard a voice.

No, voices. Two of them. One was indubitably Draco. The other… sounded feminine.
Hermione wanted to scream again, while vomiting and hammering her fists against the door, or
bringing down the building with a Bombarda Maxima — Wait, the other voice sounded vaguely
familiar.

She raced back into the bedroom, to her bag. With no time to rummage, she summoned an
extendable ear. She turned away, staggered — (she was a terrible actress) — turned back, and
summoned a vial of sleeping draught as well.

She didn’t venture too far in the hall, standing by the wall between Draco’s bedroom and study. The
extendible ear wriggled like a repulsive fleshy earthworm towards the gap under the sitting room
door.

She pinched her lips between her teeth. Loud and clear as a bell, Narcissa Malfoy’s voice sounded
in her ear:

“—of you. How could you think otherwise? Of course I want you to live well and be successful and
I understand the need to adapt. Even your father –”

“I’m begging you,” came Draco’s slow, barely-keeping-it-together drawl, “ Stop using him as an
example.”

Despite the barriers between them, Hermione could feel how thick the subsequent lull was. She
could imagine the glares being exchanged.

“You told me it wasn’t anything serious.” Narcissa seemed to be speaking through gritted teeth.

“No. I told you I wasn’t sure what it was.”

“And now you know.”

“Yes.”

The sound of a teacup being placed on a saucer.

“Then I should meet her.”

A scuffling, dragging noise.

“Absolutely not.” That was Draco’s I’m not budging tone. His jaw must’ve been so tightly
clenched.

“Why on earth not? If this is serious then –”

“Are you forgetting the circumstances of your last encounter? When you were so eager to hand her
over to the Da–Corpseface? You’re married to a man who’s tried to kill her, and would probably
happily do so again, if given the chance.”

“Your father, you mean?” A dry intonation.

“The phrase ‘no son of mine’ has been thrown around quite a bit, wouldn’t you say?” A scathing
riposte.

“I am capable of withholding any mentions of your father ,” Narcissa said witheringly.

“I don’t care. You’ll still look down on her. She’s dealt with more than enough of being looked
down on, and I will not have anyone –” He inhaled roughly. “I am not going to be the one to put her
in a situation where she’s being regarded with contempt.”

“Oh, will she wilt under a stern look? Is the great and strong Hermione Granger truly that feeble?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Draco rumbled, “She can withstand a whole lot, as you have
witnessed. I’m saying that she shouldn’t have to put up with any of it. And as far as I am able, I’m
going to ensure that she doesn’t.”

Hermione fisted the end of his jumper so tightly.

“You once looked down on her, too,” Narcissa pointed out.

That brought out Draco’s coldest inflection, one that if Hermione ever heard directed at herself
again, she… would never recover.

“There are a lot of things I do differently now.”

Lady Narcissa de Bleurgh was not intimidated, releasing an impossibly dignified noise of
impatience. “This is ridiculous. Don’t forget who you are talking to. I know how to conduct
myself.”

“Do you? You are a very expressive woman, Mother. And speaking as someone who has inherited
your tendency to make cutting remarks, you simply can’t help yourself. You’ve spent every
interaction we’ve had over the past month telling me I need to choose better associations –”
“Well, what do you expect!” A sudden burst of fervour. “This has gone far beyond an association,
hasn’t it? I have accepted that making certain overtures of friendship are an unavoidable necessity,
but there is a line that you must – ”

“My line is an ironclad circle around Granger and me.”

Hermione fell back against the wall. Her breath, her heartbeat, her whole chest fell silent.

Silence in the sitting room as well.

Everything started up again, all at once: Like a gong that had been struck.

“Draco.” A desperate whisper. “Your father will not abide by this.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I’ve ever cared less about. I’d be more interested in the opinion of
Rodolphus’ vile nose hair clippers.”

“What about my opinion?”

“Have I not made my feelings on that clear, too?”

“Please hear what I am saying. This is for your own good. It’s one thing to stir the cauldron for a bit
of fun, but what if you make a mistake that haunts you for the rest of your life? Is this worth
throwing away all that you’ve been blessed with? Your birthright?”

“I don’t know if we agree on what constitutes a blessing.”

“Please, my lamb. I’ve seen this time and time again. Hot-blooded recklessness might tell you that
turning your back on family for a dalliance is worth it, but trust me… trust me… it never is. Draco,
everything I’ve ever done is for you –”

He laughed. Strangled from the weight of the past – the Before – that family had strapped onto his
back. A laugh full of rancour and so much hurt. Hermione didn’t even have to listen closely to hear
it all.

“I can’t have this conversation again. But I’d like to request you to kindly stop doing things for me.
I’ll be doing things for myself now.”

Rustling of heavy fabric. Narcissa might have abandoned her seat and moved nearer to Draco.

“You once said your blood didn’t care about you. That is not true. That will never be true. You are a
Black and a Malfoy. That alone makes you –”

Footsteps. Loud and striding.

“Being a Black didn’t do Aunt Bella much good,” Draco spat. “Do you remember who did her in,
by the way? None of your cousins are around either. And all that’s left of the high-born Malfoy
stock are a prisoner and a traitor. So don’t feed me any more shi– nonsense about family and
corpuscular superiority. A corpuscle – that’s the scientific term for a blood particle. I’ve read a lot
about what blood really is, about what everything really is, and you’ve got it all wrong. Someday,
Hermione will discover the truth about where magic comes from, but I already know for certain
that it is not what you taught me.”

Thick, thick, thick silence.

Then Narcissa came out with the most tired and meaningless jibe to put someone younger in place.

“Do you have any idea how childish and truculent you sound?”

Lightning-quick was her son’s response, “Probably as old and hidebound as you sound.”

“Draco!”

“The world outside is moving towards the twenty-first century, Mother. It’s high time you shoved
your putrefied beliefs down the devil’s gullet. I’ve found more meaningful philosophy scrawled on
the grimy bathroom walls of muggle pubs. I spent a lot of time in one of those… never told you
that, did I?”

Thick, thick er silence.

A sob. Narcissa was crying. And it didn’t matter who she was – hers were the sobs of an anguished
mum, and those were never easy to stomach.

“I miss you. Lucius misses you.” (A scoff. A set of delicate steps.) “ He does. Have you forgotten
how much he doted on you? How much you adored him? You are his boy. He’s angry, he’s
miserable, broken and alone, but more than anything, he aches for his son. We both do. We just
want our son back.”

But he was no longer anyone’s boy, and so he flatly declared, “You aren’t getting him back. You
can take me as I am now, or… nothing.”

There was a muffled whimper. Then silence. Then a series of rustles. Clumsy nails scraping against
porcelain. “Expurgo.” The hum of a portkey.

Hermione tugged back the extendable ear and dived into the bedroom.

She put chains on the door, stripped, clambered into bed, knocked back the sleeping draught,
vanished the empty vial and the ear, and squeezed her eyes shut.

She woke up in an empty room, alone in a massive bed. Rodion was asleep in his cage, head tucked
under a wing. Curtains were dark across the windows, surrounded by an outline of light. The clock
read quarter to nine.

The small lamp on the desk was unlit. The door was free of chains. Hermione put on Draco’s
jumper.

She spent fifteen whole minutes in front of his bathroom mirror, practising a convincing look of
surprise. After many poor attempts, all she’d accomplished were inadvertent impressions of The
Scream and The Desperate Man.
She brushed her teeth and shook out her still impeccable hair.

The sitting room door was ajar. Hermione cautiously stepped in… and she had no need to deploy a
feigned expression of surprise; the sight of Draco sitting on the sofa with a huge chocolate cake on
the seat next to him, gave rise to a genuine one.

“Good morning,” he grumped and stuck a fork into the cake.

Oh no. Despondency had turned her lover into Bruce Bogtrotter.

“What is happening?” she breathed.

“Mother brought me a cake.”

She intensified her bewilderment by puckering her brow, (very subtle and expertly executed).

“Brought? Not sent? She hopped over on a Sunday morning to bring you cake and…?”

Draco chewed while giving her a nettled look. “Obviously she didn’t come all the way just for
that.” He pointed his fork towards the centre table, then stuck it back into the cake.

On the table lay the Prophet with an unconscionably large photograph of Hermione and Draco
kissing on the park bench for a considerable amount of time, before disapparating together.
Hermione Granger continues to make a show of herself with the latest in her long string of men.

As much as she wanted to closely examine how they looked while kissing, how their lips melded,
how his hands framed her face, how hers clutched his waist…

She turned away.

“What did she say?”

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” Draco droned and had more cake.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That means I’m fucking tired.”

“You made me talk about the hearing.”

“Completely different.” He stabbed the cake viciously. “I’m not caught in an existential broomspin.
There’s nothing festering inside me. I know that I am in the right.”

She moved towards the other end of the sofa. Draco’s arm shot out. He grabbed her jumper – his
jumper – and pulled her onto his lap. She toppled heavily, right hand slapping against his chest. He
didn’t flinch; just curled an arm around her and tugged her close.
Her pulse burred and her hand stayed on his chest as she made peace with gravity.

“Are you okay?”

(Hopefully, he wouldn’t get all snarly over the tenderness with which she spoke.

…No such luck.)

“It was nothing new. I’m fine.”

She looked down at the hair falling over her shoulders and picked up one strand. “You can talk to
me, you know.”

He paused mid-bite. She toyed with a perfectly formed curl.

“About your mother, about what was said. Anything. I know I reacted poorly the last time you tried
to, but that was because I thought… I mean, I had no idea where things stood with us. I was angry
and, well, afraid.” Her cheeks warmed. “That won’t happen again. You should know that at no
point will I think that you share her views, no matter what you say. Okay? I’d just… like to… erm,
to help you. And maybe talking about it will make you feel better and –”

“Merlin, Granger, button it. You’re worse than Theo when you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.” She tugged her hair. “I’m just saying you can talk to me, if you want.”

“I’ve already talked to you about my mother, and I’ve nothing more to add. I’m generally not fond
of bleating on and on about the same thing over and over again. But all right. If I ever feel the urge
to relive an argument that I wish I hadn’t had to endure in the first place, I’ll come to you. With a
bottle of overly sweet wine and a stack of Witch Weeklies.”

Hermione sighed, and watched him fork up another morsel of cake.

When he brought it up, she opened her mouth expectantly.

He spared her a sharp glance, the arm around her flexed, and he said, “Piss off.”

She tried for a second time with a helpful, audible aah, to which he said, “Keep that up and you’ll
find yourself with a mouthful of something else entirely.”

She wanted to ask him when she’d ever objected to that, (she certainly hadn’t last night), but knew
it would send them hurtling down a trajectory that would not be conducive to the gentle sort of
comfort she wished to provide.
She conjured a fork of her own and helped herself to some deliciously rich, delightfully moist dark
chocolate cake.

Take that, Narcissa. I’m going to have your son and eat his cake, too.
Draco said, “Dig your fork in there one more time and I’ll –”

“Throw you out the window,” she completed singingly.

And vanished his fork.

He glowered but there was no real anger there at all; mostly confusion really, because she was
undoubtedly looking at him with a terrifying amount of adoration. She hovered some cake near his
mouth. When he opened it, she shoved the fork straight into her own, laughing as she chewed.

She gave him the next bit. He grimaced as he chewed.

“What’s wrong?”

A light shudder overcame him as he swallowed with difficulty. “I think I’ve had enough.”

Hermione smiled and vanished the second fork. She levitated the cake onto the table, then placed
both hands on his broad, perfect shoulders.

“Congratulations. You are not Bruce Bogtrotter. …Character from a children’s book,” she
explained quickly before he could raise the usual complaint. Her voice was quivering with
affection. “He ate an entire eighteen inch chocolate cake in one sitting. But I will not lend that book
to you, because I know you will call me Matilda for the next… well, I tremble at the thought of
how long.”

His eyes were icicle-sharp and questioning. There was a faint line between his brows. She moved
her arms to properly wrap around his neck and kissed him. How could she not?

And how could she resist when he turned it into something deeper?

Chocolate and him. Again. So often, chocolate. Always, always him.

She opened up for him and let him grip her hair and tilt her head whichever way he chose. Let him
take what he needed, as roughly as he wanted, so that he could see that when she did something for
him, it was for him. Her blood was boiling and pounding — Did he see that between them, in spite
of their overwhelming them-ness, this love business could be so amazing and easy?

She withdrew with a soft look that told him so, in case he’d missed it.

He stared back with glazed eyes and she couldn’t tell what he’d heard.

She turned, settled against his body, and summoned the Prophet, flicking it open to the sports page
because that’s how he liked to start his day. He took hold of one side of the paper, granting her a
free hand to lay over his that was resting casually on her leg.

He was warm as a cloak, and solid as a wall against her back. Curved around her like she was a
puddle of water cupped in the palm of his hand. Face close to hers as he read, breath skimming past
her hair… steady… sweeping… Reminding her of being half-asleep in dad’s car while it was
raining outside… and the windscreen wiper moved… steady… sweeping…
 …Reminding her of sunrise on Mentone Beach… of pulling her hair loose and feeling the wind
weave through it… While marvelling at time and tide and the things they brought to shore…

She traced the veins on the back of his hand, carrying his blood to his heart. Blue forked paths, they
were; like the diverging path in front of her, and the infinite paths stretching behind her.

Had she been able to write poetry rather than just think about poetry, she would have murmured
odic lines about bluebell light and passive strength, hard-fought humility and masked uncertainty,
loud belligerence and unswerving support… thy fearful symmetry …

…With everything he was, he should’ve been surrounded by velvet rope barriers and protective
glass…

…He was.

She had just been allowed through.

My line is an ironclad circle around Granger and me.

Of all the circles life had drawn around her…

Chapter End Notes

1. “We must not hope to be mowers…”: Perseverance, by Goethe.

2. “Ornamental clouds”: Evening Love Song, by Rainer Maria Rilke
3. Liberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix
4. What I imagine the “charming tune on a clarsach” was: The Chanter’s Song
5. Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash
6. The Scream, Edvard Munch and The Desperate Man, Gustave Courbet
7. “thy fearful symmetry”: The Tyger, by William Blake

The unofficial title of this chapter is ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again —’
Did you think I was going to get through this story without infecting the playlist with
Tubthumping?
 Hundred and Five
Chapter Notes

Hey. How’s tricks?

So I had to kick it up to one-oh-seven. I need things to taper out in a certain way. The second
part will be posted soonish, after a few more rounds of sandblasting.

This is the absolute final chapter count. Cross my little heart.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

At eleven, they ventured into his study. Reading and discussion ensued as intended — except when
he pinned her against a bookcase, leading to a stumbling tussle all around the room that reached its
logical conclusion on his desk.

At half past one, his unbuttoned shirttails tickled her legs as she paced before the faux-forest and
tried to organise her thoughts out loud…
Only to stop mid-sentence when she turned around and found him happily naked, surrounded by
books… a vision that rattled her into compulsively stripping…

It was four-thirty when they left for the Burrow.

Spring always seemed to arrive at the orchard before anywhere else. The ground was soft and
plump little sparrows hopped around, pecking at seeds that Mrs Weasley had scattered earlier. New
leaves had emerged at the very tops of the trees. Had inspiration truly become so scarce that
Hermione had to mirror the seasons?
Her arm was looped through Ginny’s as she gave yet another recital of that ill-fated Friday. From
its position behind them, the sun made them chase their own shadows. Then, she leaned back
against the trunk of an apple tree, while Ginny sat on the wonky swing hanging from a low branch,
rocking back and forth with her feet fixed in place, talking about the five matches she had to play
before she could be introduced into the official Harpy lineup.

At six, red hair met blue light warping at infinite angles, turning Ginny’s departure Purple.

At six-thirty, Hermione returned home.

Seven now, and she was meant to be working on her speech.

Instead, she made a giant Dagaz rune out of reference notes. It all felt sickeningly similar to the
theatricality of preparing for the hearing and her soul raised strong objections that were completely
hollow but also overwhelmingly apodictic,

leaving her paralysed,

staring out the window,

dreaming of catalysing a Wizarding Kulturkampf.

A Magical Renaissance.

She saw books running in imposing volumes like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, filled
with revolutionary findings drawn out of ancient texts and fundamental theory, supplemented with
real images of internal magical systems, compounds, transverse sections of magical plants,
evolutionary tracings that showed where magical creatures met their non-magical brethren…

Magical creatures like pixies. From deep in the back of her mind, Draco groaned, you stubborn
idiot.

Hermione pulled open her drawer and said, “ Incepte.” Quill and parchment floated out. “Scribo ad
A. Storstrand. I’ve thought of a name for my column. What do you think of Renervate?”

About five minutes later, Anita’s voice blared, “I like it. Done.”

Renervate, by Hermione Jean Granger. She would make do with that until she had multiple
volumes under her name. Maybe she’d write a memoir someday… if ever her accomplishments
touched even the edge of the forest of Fedelm Beetlerot’s brilliance…

With her left hand, she lifted the entire paper-rune into the air and with her wand, she set it spinning
like a dervish – frantic, fevered, and fervent. Magic was a golden current passing through her
cells… Molecules generating a burst of energy and propelling it through her system…

She let everything fall and re-activated her GAB to say, “Hi,” to Padma.

Padma said, “Hi,” back.

“Are you busy?”

“Not particularly. I just got back home from a shift. Why?”

“Could you come over?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”
“Is something wrong?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

True to her word, unerringly punctual, Padma arrived fifteen minutes later. Add to that –
completely unapologetic about being in polka-dotted pyjamas and carrying a bottle of brandy.

“Gift from a grateful patient,” she detailed, “I was determined to drink tonight, so if you want me
around, you’ll have to drink with me.”

A reasonable compromise. They sat on the sofa, (felt very weird to be facing the other side of the
room), and Hermione painted a picture of her Renaissance. It was no high-period masterpiece with
perfect balance and intellectual sophistication; it was one of those horrific early depictions of baby
Jesus that looked like a blend of a Pogrebin and a very old man. Thankfully, Padma seemed to
follow along.

Hermione concluded, “I could get us access to machines at the Treliske Hospital – my aunt used to
work there – but it’ll take some time. The situation with Aunt Malorie is, er, complicated, and I
can’t just ask her for favours.”

Padma raised her palm and nodded with profound understanding, (for if ever there existed a
universal experience, it was difficult aunts). “But until then, we can get what we need from muggle
libraries?”

“I hope so. The sooner we figure this out, the better. We need to be able to finally pinpoint where
and what magic is, so that we can –”

“See where each magical malady is focused!”

“– shove it in all the Prig Luds’ faces!”

A look was shared, the acknowledgement of an unspoken understanding: We are in this for entirely
different reasons. No matter. Onward!

Padma shook her head. “In whose faces?”

“Prig Luds,” Hermione told her solemnly. “I’ve decided I will no longer call them Purebloods. Pure
tripe. Fuck ’em.”

At a later point, Hermione ran out of the room and returned with her jottings from the morning. At
another, Padma dashed back to her flat and returned with a medical textbook, (last revised in 1892),
full of badly drawn diagrams.

They hopped from genetics to macroergic compounds to energy and musculature. Hermione listed
the many, varied blood tests she’d had all through childhood that had shown no anomaly. She’d had
x-rays. A scan of her stomach when she was twelve, owing to some mysterious aches that turned
out to be simple indigestion and anxiety.
“If it's not about blood then what of blood magic?” Padma asked after the last of the brandy had
been poured. She rolled onto the floor and sprawled out.

“Misnomer.” Hermione raised her glass to dear Miss Nomer who had grabbed the wrong end of her
stick. “No. No, actually, it's malicious disinformation. Blood being incorporated in magic is simply
a component, not the magical thing in itself. But using fundamental biology to prop up bigotry and
oppression is one of the oldest tricks in the book.”

“And it sounds cool,” Padma noted, “ Bloooood magic.”

Hermione blew a raspberry. “Oh, they so love to sound cool.”

“So you’re saying blood is blood and magic is magic.”

“And never the twain shall meet, till Earth and Sky stand presently at — Sorry. Er, right. So. No
matter how hard they try to attribute magic to their pure blood, it still boils down to intent. Take
Harry, for instance. His protection came from his mum’s sacrifice – intent – not her muggleborn
blood. Dumbledore cast the charm, and the protective magic acknowledged his aunt’s muggle
blood. Sirius was able to give Grimmauld Place to Harry and the purest bitch Bellatrix’s blood
counted for nothing. There’s something there… to do with the power of words and names… ties
that go beyond blood, the pertinence of incantations… I don’t know where to start…”

“Destination, determination, deliberation,” Padma mumbled.

“You have blood pacts, which are just stupid and symbolic and you may as well spit on your hands
and shake them. There are no magical consequences. Sign your name, or make a damn unbreakable
vow if you want it to mean something. Sometimes blood is used to physically weaken… It’s about
power. Wasn’t the magicness of blood that opened the cave that Harry and Dumbledore —”
Hermione shuddered. “I’m going to lend you Doctor Mirabilis’ book. Let's see what you get out of
it.”

Oh dear, she’d lent another of Draco’s books without asking. Well, he hadn’t really minded the last
time.
She stretched her legs across the sofa.

“Some creatures have magical blood,” Padma provided, “We use them in potions.”

“We use the blood of non-magical creatures in potions, too. I think that’s purely down to chemical
properties. We talked about chemistry and potions –”

“Did we?”

“Not us. But you read Draco’s book, didn’t you? There’s no sacred formula to any potion. It’s a
cultural and regional thing – It’s about individual properties and how ingredients interact. And I
don’t know of a single modern potion that calls for human blood. Well, there was Voldemort’s
resurrection soup. I read up as much as I could find in the Hogwarts library, and seems like that
whole affair was about symbolism and power. Taking the blood of your enemy by force, weakening
him. He thought it would bypass Harry’s mum’s sacrifice, but that didn’t work, did it? Could very
well have taken his spleen or a lock of his hair.”
It was in Voldemort’s spine-chilling rasp that she remembered the following words: …Of the
wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction...

“Horcruxes,” she said, ignoring Padma’s revulsed moan, “and ghosts. Think of them.”

“Must I?”

“You must. They prove that magic is bound to the… er, psyche or something. Theo called it a
million different things, from core essence to where your magic resides… to heart and simply you.
But in any case, it’s something far more intrinsic than blood. It’s the last imprint that’s left of a
person, this magical soul.”

“And – ugh – horcruxes?”

“Don’t you think there’s something to be said about the fact that they’re made using a killing curse
that doesn’t wound, doesn’t spill any blood. You aren’t required to contribute any of your own
either. Blood is entirely immaterial.”

“Doesn’t your Prig Lud boyfriend have some dark, foul book about such ghastly things?”

“The Ministry took away all his dark, foul books.”

Once Hermione had secured a higher position and she didn’t need Barros’ permission to access the
depository, she would get them all back. …Or at least, she’d go in and make copies of every single
one.

Eventually they got so high and sank so low, they were laughing hysterically at the drawings of
genitalia in the medical textbook. Padma demanded to know how Hermione could possibly find
horrible dangling appendages attractive. Hermione tried to explain to her that they didn’t really
dangle when it mattered.

It was past eleven when Padma crawled home through the fireplace.

Hermione was left to ponder about things not dangling. Things with an exquisite, gentle upward
curve…

They’d been apart for hours now, surely he must miss her.

Maybe he was reading shirtless in bed right now. Maybe he was sitting starkers in the study. The
bottom of her stomach spasmed.
He was a Romanesque structure , all clean lines and semicircular arches — The straight taper from
his shoulders to his waist. The sharp cut of his pelvis juxtaposed with the firm curve of his bum.
The straight divots and arcing scars on his chest. The way he hissed when she’d take him in hand.
Hard and smooth, heavy and warm
 it so happened that her GAB suddenly appeared by her side just then, and she
watched the quill follow her careful enunciation –

“Scribo ad Draco Malfoy. What are you wearing?”

Some minutes passed.

“What?”

Not very edifying. However… “I suppose it doesn’t matter. You look good in everything.”

He was being very slow about responding.

“Just so effortlessly attractive. Striking.”

He didn’t thank her.

The floo came alive, though, just moments later. Hermione tipped her head over the arm of the
sofa, looking at upside-down Draco in joggers and a t-shirt. Perfectly respectable. (He looked so
good.)

He blinked disorientedly around the room, until she demanded his attention. “Helloooo.”

His head dropped and immediately, he appeared absurdly put out. Snooty, pointy, top-drawer
disdain. (She wanted his hands on her tits.)

“What…” he couldn’t seem to go beyond that, and simply gestured towards her.

“Padma came by with brandy.” (His teeth nipping her inner thigh.)

He scowled handsomely. (His tongue slo-o-o-wly dipping inside her.)

“You got drunk with Patil?”

“Yeah. … Ugh, we just drank, how could you even think – I would never – You!! You can’t just
stand there looking all fit and casting aspersions!”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Shit, there’s nothing worse than being sober around a drunkenly
babbling bird.”

“Don’t be an arse. You may be fit, but nobody is fit enough to get away with casual sexism.” He
sniffed obnoxiously and glared, therefore she had to add – “You are so obnoxious. But so fit.”

“Why are you saying fit like you’re spitting out a glob of toothpaste?”

“Fit.”

“All right. What is it?”

“What’s what?”

“You’ve drowned whatever little smidgen of subtlety you possessed in alcohol. It’s plain to see that
you want something.”
She sat up. Her balance wavered. “I don’t want anything!”

There he was, suddenly smirking. “What are you after, Hermione?”

“I’m flirting with you!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “That’s what we do, right? We get drunk and
forget we aren’t supposed to flirt with each other?”

He snorted. “Save it for when we’re both drunk, please . Your way of going about it is unendurable
to the sober constitution.”

She left.
He followed.

“Where are you off to?”

“Bed.”

She stumbled. (Way of the world.)

He steadied her.
She pushed him away.

“Why are you following me?”

“That’s what we do, right? I gallantly save you from falling on your arse and you sleep with me in
gratitude.”

“Get lost.”

He pursued her down the hall, engaged her in a brutally uneven game of strength involving the
bedroom door, chased her round and round the armchair six times and three times around the
mirror. She barely managed to avoid being caged against the balcony doors, threw her dressing
gown straight into his face to buy herself some time… time that she squandered by nearly tripping
again .

They ended up in a stand-off on either side of the bed: Her not at the top of her game and him all
long-limbed and agile.

“Are you really so hammered that you think you can get around me?” he asked lightly.

“I run every morning, Draco. I’m not exactly out of shape.”

“That you aren’t.” He grinned. “You’re positively ffffit.”

She pointed at him warningly. “You watch it.”

She feigned going to her left, he darted around the footboard, and she promptly redirected and
hopped onto the bed. The bed promptly decided to assume the character of quicksand. She had to
fight against sheets intent on wrapping around her ankles as she galumphed across it. Of course
Draco rebounded.

He caught her just as she leapt off the side. She made some sort of squealing noise as she was lifted
off the ground and he swung her from side to side like a sack of potatoes. She kicked her legs
wildly in an attempt to free herself, but he only gripped her tighter. Then he chucked her down on
the mattress. She landed on her stomach, hair completely obscuring her vision, and tried to blindly
scrabble to the other side — He dropped on top of her, pressing down with a fair share of his
weight.

“Why did you want to know what I was wearing?” he demanded raggedly in her ear.

“Because I was imagining you naked,” she replied, strangled and wheezy.

That was the right answer. “Insatiable,” he muttered and pressed his hips against her bum. They
didn’t say much after that.

On Monday morning, Hermione’s grand watershed moment was officially filed away, off with it,
another one for the cavernous archival chambers if you please. With the potionware hearings fast
approaching, level two turned into Piccadilly Circus and she was once again awarded the role of
human intra-departmental memo.
Someone in admin needed to get around to distributing some GABs double-quick; if not for the
sake of efficiency, then out of compassion for Hermione’s poor fingers. Barros had cursed every
piece of parchment coming her way to give her painful paper cuts. Some kind of bureautwatic
bitchcraft or wizened-bollocking.

In the evening, she prepared for the panel discussion in earnest. She was adapting her original
proposal – tweaking it, polishing it, and supplementing it…

The next day went by the same way, except that she had roped in Bickie as an accomplice.

On the day after, however, the arrival of one single owl wrecked her momentum: It brought the
cheque from QQQ.

See, she knew sales were booming. She knew everybody wanted to get their hands on a GAB, she
knew companies were buying them in bulk, she knew the aurors paid extra for special privacy
charms. Yet somehow, in that quick and rational head of hers, all those sales hadn’t translated into
the cheque she currently held with shaking hands.

Honestly… What the hell. She’d basically stitched that contraption together overnight, and now she
could have not only Sonia, but Dunya and Dmitri too. She could have a different ‘signature
perfume’ for each day of the week. More dress robes – silk ones. She could visit her parents every
weekend for the rest of the month.

She bore the day’s paper cuts in silence. Each slice contributed to her penance.

Hoping that the floo-fire would spontaneously develop the ability to selectively scald and focus that
endowment on her right pocket didn’t work out. She returned home in a daze.

Draco was in his armchair.

“Needed a book,” he explained, attributing her state to his unexpected presence.

(He was reading The Sun Also Rises. She knew he’d like Hemmingway.)

On noticing her unease persist, he closed the book and leaned forward.

“What’s the matter?”

Wordlessly, she drew the cheque out of her pocket and handed it to him. He studied it impassively.
Not an eyelid was batted because he was Draco Minted Malfoy and it was tuppence to him.

“That’s a considerable sum for us common people, in case you’re wondering,” she said pitchily.

He put the cheque down by the book. “And?”

“And all I did was put a load of spells together – I shouldn’t be given that. I wanted the elves at
Mungo’s to get some respite, which they have, and that’s enough for me. I don’t want galleons!”

Draco looked on with a great deal of worry, like, once again, he was expecting a breakdown.

“I just… hate… ”

“I understand,” he said quietly and cautiously. “It’s gratuitous.”

She did her best to contort her mouth into a reassuring smile. “Exactly.”

“The fruits of one’s labour – who wants that?”

“...What?”

He shook his head grimly. “Fair monetary compensation? Oh no. For shame. The horror. ”

She left.
He followed.

“You invented a product. It’s a rousing success. Useful. The sales have earned you a profit. Good
lord, you’ve become a part of the consumerist machinery! Yes! Run, Granger! Run faster! Just…
Run. Like the wind. Don’t let evil takings take you – ”

She slammed the study door in his face. Locked it, to drive the point home.
Stupid smarmy smug little toff. She paced around the room like a delirious prisoner, seething and
seething.

He didn’t get it. The problem wasn’t the money on its own. The problem was that women like
Twila, Hattie, and Jade had forced themselves to work for a sexual predator for years… to earn less
than a fifth of what she’d been handed for one sleepless night. And there was plenty more to come.

She would give it to them. The entire amount would be donated to the FSA.

She stopped in front of the window and remembered something else:

Groves that shone with silver frost, and the tragic impossibility of remuneration for Elvish labour.
The only solution she’d been able to think of back then was starting an independent fund for that
purpose. She could do that now. A secret independent fund because sales would drop the moment
people found out…

When she returned to the living room, Draco was not reading. He was —

“Stop laughing at me!”

He didn’t. “Your contraption rendered a solid chunk of owl post obsolete and you’re surprised it’s
making you money?”

“No! My god. I was just taken aback –”

“Taken aback means the same thing as surprised.”

“– people feel things and express them! It’s not my fault you can only arrange your features into
that infamous look of constipated woe, and only know how to express anger and surliness.”

His look was one of unencumbered delight, expressing glee and frivolity.

She left. For the kitchen.

Didn’t follow her there, did he?

She poured enough water in the kettle for one cup of tea, then went on to feel blind rage at herself
for adding in more for him.

He accepted the cup with an indulgence that suggested he was doing her a favour.

They sat in silence. Draco smiled with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity had been
tickled. It was pushing her into that terrible, itchy dilemma where she both wanted to speak a lot
and never say a word again.

Hermione had chosen the path of silence before. It didn’t work.

“Will you come on Saturday? For the discussion?” she demanded.

“Are you inviting me?” He even lowered his chin saucily and everything. The Mien of
Provocation.

The invitation had been tacit when she first told him about it, and he knew that. She refused to give
him more.

“Will you come or not?”

“Well, I don’t have a choice, since I’ve invited Anniken and she will expect to see me there.”

Who in the unholy bleeding fuck was Anniken? She felt her face explode with heat and Draco’s
grin got asininely large.

“She’s an ICW delegate from Norway. Her husband is Lorens Gundersen, the brains behind their
House-Elf charter.”

Oh.

The immediate tempering of her ire was startling and not particularly convenient.

Draco had a cheerful sip of tea.

“There’s one more thing I need to discuss with you. You know my island previously belonged to
my grandmother, and she had the house built many years before I was born. As you can expect with
any traditional, magical home, there are elves present. Two of them. They’re bloody ancient,
ludicrously attached to the old place – and me, if you’ll believe it. I can’t begin to tell you the
calamity you’ll unfold if you attempt to turn them out.”

What was he trying to do? Alternate between emotional hot and cold compression? She was on fire
again.

“I won’t turn them out! What do you think I am? But I will talk to them.”

He sighed lamentingly. “And their cries shall be heard across the channel, waves of agony that
ripple –”

“Do you think I’ve learnt nothing? I’m not going to bring up clothes… or anything upsetting!” Oh,
she needed to wipe the grin off his face. “Will they call me mudblood?”

It worked. He blanched.

“Why the fuck would they call you that?”

“Well, an elf from the other side of your family did, so I was wondering.”

“They will be nothing but perfectly cordial towards you.”

She felt bitterly satisfied all through the next bout of silence. Now he was the one looking itchy and
torn.

Draco was only slightly better at keeping his mouth shut than she was.
“I’ve booked all our hotel rooms, by the way. I think you’ll be pleased.” He said that gruffly, not
looking at her, nor very pleased himself.

She would have assumed he was trying to cleanse their palates — well, he definitely was trying to
do that — but it felt like more, because he had spots of pink on his cheeks. She thought, with the
way he was making a point of it, that it mattered. That he might’ve specially chosen those rooms,
like he chose art for her wall.

That thought was a soothing cold compress.

“I’m sure I will be,” she murmured.

A Ministry owl pecked at the window, bringing a sack full of correspondence for Kenny that Draco
was ordered to respond to. His shoulders sagged as he shuffled to leave, and Hermione kindly
offered him a smile of sympathy and reconciliation.

But he, of course, couldn’t let well enough be. With one foot in the fireplace, he looked over his
shoulder with an unexpected gleam.

“If you burn, vanish, or disintegrate the cheque, I’ll know it's because you want to stay comfortably
poor, and make me pay for everything we might do together.”

…Thus leaving her completely apoplectic, not simply for obvious reasons, but because he’d been
shameless enough to let the words comfortably poor come out of his outrageously privileged
mouth.

Very soon after – just a few minutes after – she was not angry at all.

She was gooey. So weak in the knees that she had to sit down.

At the corner of her desk was a book, and in the book was a piece of parchment, and on the
parchment was written: Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

It was Friday evening. How was it Friday evening?

But it was, and Hermione was in the kitchen at Grimmauld place, tucking into a fine meal. Harry’s
last before he left for Wales.

He was relaxed and quick to laugh, so he laughed through the crests and troughs of her emotions,
(that showed great amplitude and wavelength), telling her it was just until August, Hermione and
you were at Hogwarts for longer, Hermione.

All that was, ultimately, short-lived. The rest of their conversation was dominated by Ron, who was
reeling from an actual broom chase involving unicorn poachers earlier in the day.

“They tried to throw their sack of contraband between themselves while zigzagging through the
thicket!” he crowed as he simulated their movements with his fork and knife. “Threw it over my
head! Well, I showed them why I made Gryffindor keeper, didn’t I? They’ll be sitting in their cells,
singing Weasley is our King for years to come!”

Harry shot a secretive wink at Hermione and sang, “Weasley foiled the poaching ring.”

She grinned, shook her head, and added, “He did not let them steal a thing.”

And together: “That's why aurors all sing–”

“Yeah, alright, alright. That’s enough.” Ron was beaming .

Later in the drawing room, Hermione and Ron sat up long after Harry had retired. (He’d chosen
broom over portkey and decided it was probably wise to be well-rested.)

“I’m so glad he’s finally going easy on himself,” she sighed from the sofa, as she looked over
Ron’s case report for spelling errors.

He nodded ardently and signed his name at the bottom of the parchment. “I’m just happy I don’t
have to be the responsible one around here anymore. Really cramped my style, y’know?”

She shot him a smile but remembered the way Mr Weasley had once hotly chastised her for having
a dismissive attitude towards savings. She knew, for all of Ron’s laziness and complacency, there
were certain irresponsibilities he would never allow himself.

Tomorrow she had to address an audience of… god knew how many.
Hermione’s five year tryst with Sleekeazy had come to an end. Silky Selkie’s was an absolute
dream come true. With just two pumps lightly rubbed into her hair, her new comb glided through it
like it was water. The result wasn’t nearly as flawless as the professional job had been, but there
wasn’t even a hint of frizz.
Standing before her mirror in a dressing gown, she slid tie-bar-clips into her hair and tried not to
make her movements too mannered and coquettish, just because there happened to be a very
attractive man sitting on her bed, observing her. She felt his stare as she dabbed colour on her lips
and eyelids, as she clumsily flicked her mascara wand, and as she spritzed a little perfume on her
neck.

She definitely knew he was watching when she removed the gown and stepped into new dress robes
that perfectly matched the clips. He was making her fumble while she tried to do up the many many
buttons.

After messing up the fourth time, she felt an irrepressible need to fill the silence, just so she could
stop feeling like the comic in a circus pantomime.

“I’ve been thinking of opening with some alliteration. Less hackneyed than a joke, but still
amusing, you know? Something like, Enlivening Efforts for Elvish Equality. What do you think?”

“I think that’s more like illiteration.”

“Your wordplay is fraudplay,” she muttered, and unbuttoned another mistake.

“For fuck’s sake!” he erupted.

All of a sudden, he was in front of her, batting her hands away and reaching for the buttons.

She stilled and fell quiet.

He worked with deft precision, long fingers flowing unwaveringly, like he was practising scales.
Their eyes met when he did up the top most one. She wanted to kiss him and —

She could. So she did. Rose on her toes and kissed him, close-lipped but firm.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” he replied smoothly. “Imbecile.”

She laughed. His lopsided smile was scampish. His hands lingered between her breasts.

“Let’s head out,” she said, and stepped away to slip on her heels.

She led him out of the room in a way that might have led to ‘dog on a leash’ fussing, had he not
found something else to fuss about.

“Do we really have to suffer that musty little lift? Why can’t we apparate from your flat?”

“Modifying wards is grounds for eviction.”

“Pathetic.”

“You are.”

“It smells like a combination of Flint’s sweat-soaked quidditch shirt and Goyle’s unwashed socks.”

“It’s barely two minutes,” she admonished, continuing to haul him down the landing, “At Hogwarts
you had to climb up and down thousands of steps…”

“We aren’t in blasted Hogwarts anymore.”

The grille closed. The perfectly odourless lift jangled downwards.

The moment they made their noisy appearance on the banks of River Bure – at the exact spot where
she had stood alone, so long and not at all long ago – a heron shot out of the grass with a grating
cry.

Heavy clouds were packed densely across the sky till they melted into a violaceous haze near the
horizon, where the windmill spun along with the whims of the winds. Those soft winds rustled and
rattled through tall stalks of dry, wheat-like grass, and skimmed like an idle hand over the surface
of grey waters.

She slipped her arm through his and leant her head on his shoulder.

My River runs to thee—

Blue Sea! Wilt welcome me?

There were supposed to be otters around these parts. Maybe if they stayed silent for long enough,
one would show up.

…Six mild but chilly sweeps of air…

“What are we doing?” Draco wanted to know.

She whispered into the next breeze: “I want to look at the windmill.”

“You want to look at a stupid big fan?”

“Yes. Before I face a room full of stu – full of big fans.”

She had a sudden, vivifying stroke of inspiration. She set her chin on his shoulder and looked
pointedly at him; at his frowning, severely disparaging profile.

“You have no idea how badly I want to chuck you into the river for that one.”

“Out of windows, into rivers… Why are you so obsessed with throwing me around?” she inquired,
looking pointedly at him.

“It’s fun. Besides, you never seem to object when it’s on a bed.”
“I think it’s because physical strength is the only advantage you have over me,” she said, staring at
him.

His mouth quivered upwards. “Look at your big fan, Granger.”

(Yes!!)

“I am,” she drew out with relish.

He shut his eyes with self-censuring dismay and profound regret.

Cloaks were shed three steps into the warm enclosure of the Scamander Institute. The flowers had
multiplied: Buttercups, sweet peas, cornflowers, and sunflowers freckled over dense lawns.
Hermione walked leisurely while Draco looked on with a very quintessential combination of
distaste and curiosity.

They didn’t make it as far as the giant suitcase. Right beside the hyperbolised sculpture of Newt
Scamander, there was an enormous archway with blazing green flames falling downwards from its
frame. A veil of fire.
Right outside it, the demiguise sat, bright as snow in daylight. It had a black earthenware vase in its
arms, which it held out towards Hermione and she stared at dumbly.

Draco stepped around her and pronounced, “Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger,” into the mouth
of the vase. His voice echoed like he had shouted into a deep well, and two name tags came flying
out.

“What’s that?” Hermione mumbled.

“A basic portal. It's common to have them at the entrance of private functions like this one.”

On the other side of the flaming curtain was a vast assembly hall, with oak-panelled walls, moss
green carpet, and row after row of tufted brown seats. Hermione began to count them, but stopped
as nausea rolled in her stomach. They faced a semi-circular stage that had seven chairs and one
podium. The latter made her doubly nauseous.

Above them was glass, and through it she could see the sky, colourful smoke, and the handle of a
suitcase. They were at the very top of the building.

“I can’t do this.”

“Too late to back out now.”

She gave him a pained, helpless, exasperated look. He hadn’t even the decency to temper that with
a smidgeon of sympathy. Instead he peered over her head.

“Better be ready for Luna, at any rate.”

Luna appeared in swathes of Bobbinet lace and heavily stylised doxy appliqués. Her earrings
looked like acorns. Her hair was full of wood sorrel.

“What do you think?” she asked with mellifluous pleasantness and no further elucidation on what it
was that she was seeking an opinion on.

Hermione blinked and grinned. Draco sighed exhaustedly.

“We only finished putting the final touches last week,” Luna continued, “This is the first event
we’re hosting. It's all thanks to Theo’s generous donation, of course. I’ll be sure to send him lots of
photographs. They’ll make him happy.”

Ah. The hall then. Hermione was duly complimentary. Draco offered a vague noise that could be
construed as agreement.

Luna had more yet to say, about snow-covered forests and heavy tracks; fur and crumpled horn bits
that hinted tantalisingly towards the fantastic beast that had left them.

Hermione was reminded of Harry in sixth year, staring at his Marauder’s Map. She’d be damned if
the Snorkack wasn’t another Moby-Dick-like metaphor, and she could stroke her non-existent
goatee and chalk it up to nine-year-old Luna looking for the mother she lost.
Dead mums glued Theo and her to their respective singularities. To each other.

Dead mums and difficult aunts, boorish uncles and bad dads; all looming over posterity like ancient
marble sculptures. Room 23 of the British Museum —— Where was Luna going?

Her abrupt departure marked the beginning of a prolonged interlude during which there wasn’t a
single instance when Hermione’s hand wasn’t shaking someone else’s, or someone wasn’t tapping
her shoulder, or she wasn’t being made to nod or smile. There was Flitwick, a guest of the day’s
Human-Goblin Relations expert. And now, Hagrid in his woolly dress robes, crushing her like a
plastic water bottle. Foss from the GLO, and assorted Being Division employees. Kirk Thorburn,
with slicked back hair and more teeth than human function necessitated, along with a dozen other
people from the American Being Welfare Association. Rolf Scamander and another dozen from the
Scamander Institute. Her fellow panellists. Augusta Longbottom. McGonagall and Mandrake. Ben
and Bickie.

Forget full sentences, she wasn’t even saying proper words. “Oh – er – ni – hel – tha – ye – I —”

When she finally got a moment, she found that the hall was fast filling up.

She wanted to run. Should she run?

A man was wandering around with an indecently large camera. Its flashlight was like the headlight
of a steam engine, hurtling towards her at top speed.

“That’s Horatio Robles,” Draco muttered in her ear, “Global Magical Press.”

“You know him?” she squeaked.

“Seen him around during ICW sessions. Looks like you’ll be making international news.”
“Is that supposed to ease my mind???”

“Ogden won’t be happy.”

No. He wouldn’t be happy at all.

She peered at Draco while he peered at the swelling audience.

“Is that your doing?”

“What?” He coolly half-turned away from her.

“Did you invite him?”

She grabbed his arm. He shook her off — “You’re being summoned.”

“Huh?”

“Ms Granger! This way, please!”

Thorburn was a storm that uprooted her and tossed her onto the stage.

Hermione was dying. Had she just waited a little while, she could have had her words published in
The Weekly Sentinel, and she wouldn’t be standing before what looked like a good seventy percent
of the entire magical population of the world.

And you call me dramatic? the Draco who lived in her head drawled.

Robles’ camera flashed and she was blind. Blind and dying. Her seat was near the corner – she was
to be the second to last speaker. …Which was a relief but also prolonged torture.

If she leaned to the side slightly, she could see Draco sitting at the centre of the third row, behind
special guests and notables. He was fixated on Thorburn, who at that moment, was making
introductory remarks. She clasped her hands together and curled her toes.

First in line was a werewolf from Latvia, his accent thick and his face heavily scarred. After him, a
witch who’d spent five years living among a tribe of giants deep in the Dinaric Alps. Then,
Flitwick’s friend, the human-goblin Relations expert. Then, a Romanian healer, who specialised in
the treatment of vampires. Then, a witch from the Congaree Bottomlands, who worked closely with
hags.

“Please welcome our next speaker, Hermione Granger, who is deader than a doornail. As green as
her robes in more ways than one. Decades younger than the rest of our esteemed panel of speakers,
not even a year out of school! Look at her approach, with her bad posture and skinny ankles!”

She was shaking. Wobble-walking. Melting under stage lights. Responding to Toothy Thorburn's
smile with a closed-lip one…
The podium was light brown. Birch brown. The audience below was humming and whispering…

Hermione looked at the centre of the third row.

There was only Draco — his grey eyes on her, mouth in a straight line, brow slightly lowered,
meaning interest. They were by the river, under a cloudy sky. The harsh cry of a heron in the
distance.

They were sitting in high back armchairs, facing each other, and he said, Let’s hear your speech,
Granger.

Wind blew. Windmill turned. She made her speech.

Only to him.

Thunder rumbled.

No, it was an applause.

The audience was clapping – Draco, too. Her vision swam for a moment. She felt dizzy and
gripped the edge of the podium.

“I’d now like to –”

Her voice got drowned out.

“I’D NOW LIKE TO–!” The applause abruptly ceased. Jesus. “I’d – I’d like to invite my associate
Bickie to give an elf’s perspective on the matter.”

The hush persisted as Hermione stepped back and Bickie hopped on the stage. The elf was enviably
bright and confident; her pinafore was red and her percher hat was decorated with wildflowers. She
conjured a step ladder and stood straight, while Hermione walked back to her seat like she no
longer had bendable knees.

There was a tense and bewildered undercurrent to the silence while Bickie spoke. Had anyone ever
let beings have a say at an event like this? Besides werewolves and part-veelas, of course, who
were more human than otherwise.

Seconds roared as they raced by. Hermione held her breath and leant to the side, hoping she could
somehow catch Draco’s —

He was looking at her. Her breath rushed out. She bit her lip uncertainly: Was that all right?

He smiled.
Slowly.

The last one on the podium was a woman of Delacourean beauty, with silver hair and turquoise
robes. Hermione strained over the arm of her chair, only to find Draco fully focused on the
gorgeous speaker. Fourth year Hermione made an angry, alacritous reappearance… Till the woman
said something about the unwarranted sexualisation of veelas, and she remembered herself.

The actual discussion part of the event commenced afterwards. Panellists exchanged ideas and
poked holes in each other’s stances. There were cultural differences aplenty, everyone was hell-bent
on proving the humanity of their respective beings —

“I don’t think that matters,” Hermione asserted fiercely, “We aren’t trying to prove beings deserve
to live with dignity, are we? We are here to figure out ways to make it so they can!”

The vampire healer promptly backed her up. The discussion got even more heated.

Eventually, the audience was given the chance to ask questions. Hermione was called upon a dozen
times. Lovely Ben and Madam Mandrake engaged with Bicky. Hagrid got into a perfervid
exchange with the giant-cohabitor, insisting that it would be perfectly safe for humans and giants to
live side by side.

“Me brother Grawp’s the gentlest soul yeh’ll ever meet! He won’ hurt a fly! Jus’ ask Hermione!”

Hermione laughed nervously and offered non-committal words of semi-agreement.

Tea was served afterwards, in an adjoining room: Decagon-shaped, with engaged columns on the
walls and dragons painted on the spaces in between.
Much like before, Hermione got caught in one conversation after the other, half congratulatory, half
disingenuous, and had to flit round and round the room. (Validate your speech, validate your
stance, validate your existence.) Her face hurt from forcing smiles. (Give us a smile, Ms Granger,
C'maaan!) Everytime she got hold of a cup of tea, it turned cold before she could have a sip. She
didn’t even have the opportunity – or rather, the presence of mind – to put warming charms on
them.

She needed a fucking minute of reprieve. She needed…

“Please excuse me ,” she said firmly to so-and-so, and made a determined beeline towards the
Chinese Fireball.

“Hermione,” Draco greeted elegantly, “Meet Lorens and Anniken Gundersen.”

She was fair-haired, dignified, and considerably older; a fact that Hermione was still pathetic
enough to be greatly comforted by. Her husband was very tall and very bald, with a full beard.

“Yor speech vas inspirational,” he gushed, rolling his r’s and lilting upwards at the end of every
sentence. “I am delighted to meet yu.”
“Thank you!” Hermione replied, just as gushy. “I cannot begin to tell you how valuable your
charter has been to my efforts…”

They were such a breath of fresh air. Very soon, Hermione was beckoning to Bickie from across the
room.

But for all their enthusiasm, the Gundersens were furtive – holding something back.

“I cannot tell everything here,” Lorens divulged conspiratorially, “Ve are de Foundation for de
Rehabilitation and Emancipation of Elves –”

F.R.E.E.. Well, congratu-fucking-lations.

“– and ve vould love if yu both vill join us for dinner tonight in our house and meet other
members.”

Anniken added, “I will make you portkeys to bring you back to England. It is no problem.”

All parties agreed with (as Draco would later insist) equally rounded eyes.

She was again wrenched away by Thorburn, into another whirlwind of hobnobbing, up to the point
that she was seeing double. She sought out Luna for assistance, who pointed out a door by the
talons of the Hebridean Black, leading into an ivy-lined passageway at the end of which was a
yellow-tiled safe haven…

…And a fwooper perched on a towel rail, feathers fluffed and minding its own business. Hermione
went into a cubicle, tended to her business, and then hung around with the bird for a while, glad for
its silent company. Cute little tuft of candy floss. A perfect embodiment of such a surreal day.

Which was to wrap up with dinner in Oslo, apparently.

When daylight stood to collect its cloak and hat, the congregation finally began to filter out.
Hermione detached herself from a clump of assorted experts and looked left and right and left and
further left and right —

Draco was by the Longhorn’s wing. She hurried towards him, flooded with the same sensations
she’d had when sitting vigil outside a tent. It didn’t make sense to feel that way. He surveyed her
dispassionately and she turned away to watch the knot forming at the exit.
He put his hand on the small of her back, pushed slightly… and abruptly stiffened.

“Why are you trembling?” He sounded appalled.

“Can we just…? Wait? For a bit?”

“...All right.”

They were the last to move back into the assembly hall, and the last to step through the archway.
Hermione felt like an overstimulated animal as she fastened the clasp of her cloak; her pupils must
have been blown wide and her hair completely bushy again. The Sung dynasty cat on her wall.
Her-meow-ne, said the Draco in her head, Her-meow-ne Her-meow-ne Her-meow-ne —

The Gundersens and Bickie were just outside the Institute’s enchantments, gathered around a large
silver salver. Its low frequency humming was hypnotic. She reached out and touched it, staring at
blue until it swallowed her.

She was spat out sideways in the middle of a large office, so poorly lit that its components were
mere shapes and shadows. The Gundersens ushered them all out into a narrow landing, where a
well-mannered hatstand offered its arm for their cloaks. It was a very old house by the looks of it.
Dark and creaking.
In the opposite corner, there was a towering three-metre-tall statue of a troll with matted grey hair,
and it waited for just the right moment – when their backs were turned – to let out a stream of shrill
Norwegian.

Hermione, Draco, and Bickie cried out in alarm.

“Dat is my father,” said Lorens.

“Your father?”

“Ja. Before he died, he said ‘portraits are boring’ and asked artist to imbue his personality into…”
He pointed. “Dat.”

Old Troll Gundersen cackled on and on as the group shuffled across the landing into a drawing
room.

There, Hermione stood rooted at the threshold.

Fifteen people within, sporting a vast variety of ethnicities and colouring. There were also six
house-elves milling around, conversing and sipping from glasses.
The room was a timber box, cosy and warm, with low rafters across the ceiling and forest scenes
carved into the top plate. Isn't it good Norwegian wood?

Wooden chairs. Sheepskin rugs. A cast iron fireplace.

She couldn’t make sense of the fact that she was on foreign soil, amongst an eclectic gathering of
mad ’uns, just like her. And while she stayed trapped in a mental deadlock, Draco went on ahead,
flashing his charming diplomat’s smile, shaking someone’s hand… Bickie was introducing herself
to some of the elves…

Lorens touched her arm. “May I get yu a drink?”

Grateful agreement led her to a cupboard decorated with rosemaling, and earned her a glass of
warm mead.

He stepped away, and she was momentarily terrified she was going to be left alone to make bad
first impressions galore, but then he looked over his shoulder expectantly and she hurried after
him.

She was introduced to everyone, human and elf, and they all knew about her recent attempt and
failure – keeping apprised of elvish affairs was their business after all. She was made to fish out the
original draft of the contract, and it was passed from person to person quicker than a bad cold.

(In the background, Troll Gundersen was singing a folk song.)

A while later, Hermione was deposited on a chair near the fireplace, in the company of one Hasip
Demir from Turkey and an August Gagnon from Canada. And Alfie the elf.

One of her ears was uncomfortably hot.

“Most of us hold positions in our respective governments,” Gagnon was saying, “trying to push
pro-elf bills from the inside and not getting anywhere. Only Lorens has had some success so far.
When we heard about your initiative, well. You can imagine our anticipation.”

It was just so wonderful to learn that she’d let down even more people than she’d thought. She
swallowed, pretending to push back her hair so she could press cool fingers against her ear.

“Are your jobs the reason for all the secrecy?” she asked.

“For sure! If they found out, we’d be strongly urged to resign from our positions at best, or
defamed for harbouring seditious ideas at worst.”

“I must disagree,” Demir said, “At worst they will come after the entire foundation and completely
dismantle us. For this, even enemy nations will unite.”

“All elves will be cruelly punished,” Alfie the elfie added tremulously.

Hermione listened keenly as they laid out their goals and a rough timeline that they had not been
able to adhere to, all leading to their ultimate objective: Giving elves the power to break their own
shackles.

“I’ve been researching that spell for years,” she said, “There seems to be no consolidated opinion
on its origin, even tracing the etymology of various versions of its incantation hasn’t shed any light,
beyond it having Ancient Greek roots. The ceremonial bestowing of clothes is the only way to undo
the binding.”

Gagnon agreed. “Between our gathering, we have scoured as many protohistoric records of magic
that we could get our hands on. It appears that some version of this spell existed long before written
accounts. Jarli over there,” he pointed at a tall, formidably serious looking man, “is a descendant of
one of the oldest families from the Pilbara. He has spoken to elders across the region, to no avail.”

“But even if we find the root of the spell, how will elves break someone else’s magic?” Hermione
asked.

“Elvish magic is strong,” he replied, “It outlasts human magic by a considerable stretch. They are
already able to bypass apparition wards and toe the lines of Gamp's Laws. Unfortunately, but
unsurprisingly, there has been close to no research on it. Mariama,” now he pointed at a slender
woman in bright blue robes and a turban, “from Senegal, has been studying yumboes. They share
many elvish characteristics, but are able to resist any attempts at enslavement. They can inflict
serious damage if you try.”

“Yumboes is not even friendly with elves,” Alfie the elfie sniffed. “They is unpleasant always.
Nasty things.”

“Even if we could force them to cooperate, we wouldn’t,” Demir supplemented. “That would be
against our principles.”

Hermione raised her eyebrows at him.

“But we have good news as well,” he continued, “I have been awarded membership to the great
Library of Pergamum –”

“Really?!”

“Yes. After ten months and many interviews, the council of warlocks has accepted me. We now
have access to long forgotten folios and ancient runic manuscripts that have never been translated
and — Ms Granger, you are looking very fascinated by all this.”

“I am! Of course I am!”

“Then it will please you to know that I am permitted to bring one guest a month to the library, for
no more than three hours. If you would like –”

“I’m free tomorrow!”

All three of her companions reared back for some reason. Probably because Hermione had shot
ahead to the edge of her seat.

“Oh! Tomorrow…” Demir hedged.

Gagnon guffawed. “Surely you can make time for our enthusiastic new fellow, effendi.”

Demir granted that he could and it was decided they would indeed go tomorrow afternoon, (one
p.m. local time, ten a.m. BST.) Their hostess was consulted, and she readily agreed to supply
portkeys.

It was time to eat. Wood creaked beneath varied footfalls as the whole group shuffled across the
landing to the dining room.

(“Håper det smaker!” Troll Gundersen bellowed.)

Around a large round table they sat, tucking into a spread of smoked salmon, brown cheese, and a
hearty stew. Hermione’s vision was swimming again, so she took a few moments to just eat some
big bites and stare at Draco, all the way across the table, very deep in conversation with a wizard
from Poland.

When she was ready to engage again, she realised she was sitting next to the very imposing Jarli.
She cleared her throat and offered a greeting. He grunted one in return. She floundered a bit and he
let her. She told him her parents lived in Australia and he said “okay.” She told him they had
travelled along the east coast and spoken with an aboriginal woman, and he just barely rolled his
eyes and said, “I see.”
But Hermione did not give up. She relayed that entire conversation. She nibbled on cheese and
plied him with question after question about ancestral magic. She asked him about the painting on
her wall. She asked him about yams and the Dreaming. With each question, his answers got more
detailed and involved. By the end, he was even smiling faintly. She was sure she had exceeded his
expectations, at the very least.

The table was cleared and Draco quirked his brow at her. She nodded, once. They met Anniken at
the threshold, only to realise that Bickie was still tucked into a chair, surrounded by elves and
people. She simply waved in farewell, distractedly.

( “Ha det bra,” Troll Gundersen called.)

Anniken walked Hermione and Draco back to the office, now well-lit, cluttered and cosy. She
asked Hermione if she was ready to be an official member of F.R.E.E.. Had there ever been a more
eager declaration of acceptance? Draco used his eyebrows to indicate that there hadn’t.

She was made to fill in a form and sign a binding parchment that would swear her to secrecy – and
she did so after a precautionary wandless, non-verbal revelio . She was handed a membership card
and a badge.

Anniken said, “We have been slowly submitting educational essays to small journals and are
working to reach a broader audience, but it is difficult. We have also set up a fund for battered and
abused elves, or those who have been aban–”

“Ooh, do you accept donations?”

At her side, Draco performed an assortment of unapparent movements to let her know that he was
inwardly laughing. She paid him no mind.

“Of course. I will tell our treasurer to owl you.”

Anniken then picked out a cracked glass bauble from a box by her desk, and inflicted a series of
spells on it, ending with a portus.

“Being a part of the ICW allows me to create portkeys unmonitored, though I am supposed to
register them.” She added with a light cough, “I think for this good cause, a little corruption is
okay.”

“Can’t call it corruption when it isn’t self-serving!” Hermione interjected promptly, “You are
simply making the most of your position.”

Anniken smiled. “Ah, that’s how I will phrase it from now.”

A lurch and a flash of light ended in pitch blackness, the sound of flowing water, and cold wind.

While Hermione’s vision took its time adjusting to the dark, there came another kind of unexpected
clarity. Or rather, a new and precarious notion that if the circumstances were just so, she was
capable of making a good first impression. And maybe just maybe maybe maybe, among the right
crowd, she could even be easy to like.

Preparing to apparate home, she reached for Draco’s hand and squeezed tenaciously till she felt his
fingertips press matching indents on the back of hers.

She abandoned her shoes in the hall. He went to the bathroom. She went into her study.

It was very quiet. The flames inside glass lamps were perfect cat-eyes and perfectly still.

…Whose life had she tripped and fallen into?

She walked up to the desk and looked at the book she was currently reading. Cheirokmeta, ready to
make space for this day’s experiences between its pages. A Moveable Feast was next to it, and in it
was Draco’s memory of the beginning of Them — right beside her memory of reading while
standing in the middle of her room at three in the morning, so that she wouldn’t fall asleep and
wake her parents with her screaming.

She pulled open a drawer and placed her new membership card inside. Opened another one to put
the badge. She stared without blinking till her eyes stung.

SPEW. LUMP. FREE.

She finally blinked when Draco came and stood behind her. She tipped backwards and he held her
in place like a bookend.

“Well, well. Things are looking up.”

“Heh.” She gently touched the SPEW badge. “Another one of my ideas that you stole, isn’t it?”

“Stole? No. Carried forward. Expanded. Mine were part two. I surmised that you Gryffindors were
so busy spewing because of Potter’s intolerable stench, so I –”

“Shut up.”

“It sullied the entire Hogwarts castle and now it permeates through all levels of the Ministry –”

She left.
He followed.

In the bedroom, quietude was softened by gentle chiming. Hermione lit only the bedside lamp, then
stood before the mirror in half-light and pulled the clips out of her hair. Draco sat on the armchair
and took off his shoes and socks. She dabbed at her face with Madam Primpernelle's Magic Make-
up Melting Solution™. He came bare-chested to undo her buttons.

Oh, whose life had she tripped and fallen into?

“I’m going to the Library of Pergamum tomorrow morning,” she said, breathless with wonder,
“Can you believe it? Demir is taking me as his guest.”

“I’m going to Warsaw tomorrow morning,” Draco said, focused on her chest.
“Why?”

“I have been invited. By Adamczyk. The man I was speaking to tonight.”

“It looked like you had a very serious discussion going on.”

Draco sighed. “He was a senior delegate. Retired two months after I started. He was…” Draco
sighed again. “I told you I had a rough start.”

“Yes.”

He looked up and promptly down again. “Many of the delegates had a lot of opinions about Lucius
Malfoy’s son – though, of course, they’d had no qualms accepting Lucius Malfoy’s gold year after
year and letting him influence policy and magical security management. Anyhow, Adamczyk had
had a similar upbringing to mine, before adopting the radical practice of independent thought. He
was kind enough to throw in an occasional pleasant greeting amid all the scowls and sneers.”

Hermione’s breath hitched and she stared up at his lowered eyelids. He could moan on and on
about breakfast and bedsheets, but stuff like that he kept bottled up?!
The paper cuts he bore in silence.

“He’s looking into indoctrination, the fostering of blood prejudices in young children, and what it
takes to break free of it all. He’s asked me to be a case study or something, as someone who’s
denounced all that… Prig Lud rot. He says he’s hoping to develop a program for schools and —”

She knew her face had gone completely soft. He caught sight of it and tightened his jaw and
averted his gaze again.

He abruptly changed course, speaking slowly and in a tone of contrived levity that he could never
pull off. “Incidentally, don’t be alarmed if your next Quick-Quotes cheque is substantially heftier.
The ICW is distributing GABs among the top brass. Like the Aurors, they’re requesting special
privacy charms, and on top of that, a separate bindrune, so it’s going to cost a whole lot more.”

She really couldn’t even begin to care about that.

His fingers dipped inside the loose legs of her french knickers and he pulled her closer – only then
did she realise that he had stripped her down to that one item of clothing. He began walking her
backwards.

“Wait,” she said.

Light was falling diagonally across his face, from his right temple to the left corner of his jaw. One
eye was light silver, the other was dark gunmetal.

She thought she had seen him like that, once before. Many, many, many moons ago. She could not
remember when. But she remembered each and every time she’d been hit with the staggering,
jarring realisation that came next…

Holy shit, this was Draco Malfoy.

She trailed a featherlight touch down his chest and watched a patch of goose pimples erupt in its
wake. Desire simmered in her gut as she imagined the texture against her tongue. But she looked
back into his eyes and whispered: “Thank you for making tonight happen. For inviting the
Gundersens.”

He opened his mouth… to say you’re welcome (imbecile) or something to that effect. She quickly
overrode it.

“Thank you for calling Robles, too – or paying him to be there or whatever it is you did. Thank you
for sitting exactly where you sat. For understanding that I — I mean, for not leaving me alone after
the hearing. For taking me to the fairies before. I was losing my mind last month… the last two
months, really. Just unravelling. Turning and turning in the widening gyre, being all,” she breathed
a laugh, “scrambly-rambly. And you were there, like an anchor on my raft-bed. Thank you for
being there. Thank you for showing up on Christmas… and, uh, for bringing me into Crisis Aid.”

She must have turned into a towering troll rambling in Norwegian, with the way he was eyeing her.
So she knew she could finally say what she’d been waiting to say all week.

“When it comes down to it, you are the reason it happened. You set it all up. Just like you’re the
reason a niche discussion about Being Rights will become international news. Maybe someday,
you’ll be the reason a whole generation of children learns to think for themselves.”

She put both hands on his shoulders. Windmills turned and rivers ran like impossibly long scrolls.
Both the Thames and the Bure emptied into the North Sea.

“On the last evening at Hogwarts, you told me you felt eviscerated or turned inside-out. But really,
you were just like the rest of us, Draco; melted into something unrecognisable by violence and fire.
And… And I am completely in awe of the person you’ve remade yourself into.”

He was kissing her. How was that suddenly happening?

Her eyes widened in surprise as she breathed in sharply — His eyes were shut so tight it looked
painful.

But of course she got absorbed into him.

Something seemed to be stitching together. It was the rift between his Before and After.

He broke away and they stood panting. The chime tinkled and jangled and he ran the backs of his
fingers down her cheek and neck while looking at her like…
like…
Like she didn’t have to worry about validating her existence, if she didn’t want to. He could do it
for her.

“Lie down,” he whispered.

She did, awkwardly, a little out of kilter, and grabbed the headboard to pull herself up the bed.
Draco paused in the middle of lowering his trousers to close his hands over her elbows.

“You like a challenge, don’t you?” he asked darkly. Lamplight was behind him, surrounding him
with a deceptive golden nimbus. “Don’t let go.”
“What?”

“The grille. Don’t let go.”

Once naked, he hovered above her, watching her keenly while thumbing her nipples. She squirmed,
groaning low; his hands floated down to pull off her knickers.

For ages, he tormented her, gliding his mouth over her skin, brushing warmly over every inch of it,
while his eyes stayed steadfastly fixed on hers. She strained and twitched, made all kinds of sounds,
fought madly against every possible instinct to keep her fingers gripped around the grille, even
when he, looking from underneath his eyelashes, moved his hand between her legs.

…Until he stopped everything.

She pinched her lips between her teeth and stared at him.

“That,” he said, sitting up on his knees. “That little hum from the back of your throat.”

His fingers were wet and slick from her and he pumped himself a few times.

“It’s fucking … F. F major.”

He choked up at the end as he pushed ahead. She was fluttering around him even before he had
fully entered her — and he slid in slowly – eyes closed – suffering a full body shudder —

“That’ll be the opening note,” he rasped, buried to the hilt.

His elbows settled beside her arms that were flanking her head, thus locking them in place.

Her fingers were going to break off. Her entire stomach was quivering.

“Opening note?” she breathed.

“Of the nocturne composed of all the ways in which you’ve said my name.”

He kissed her soundly, moving in shallow thrusts through the rippling pleasure building between
them. She moaned, pushed open her legs wider, and he pulled back, just a little —

“I only have the very basics in place right now,” he murmured, “Obviously, it will have to be the
most dreadfully complicated piece." He kissed her, rushed. "Needlessly layered, not even the
remotest hint of a steady tempo." Another quick kiss. "The very soul of organised chaos.”

And he kissed her again, softer this time, gently sucking her lower lip.

“G-sharp, G for the very peculiar emphasis you put on both syllables of my name when you’re
trying to make a Point.”

More shallow thrusts. A lick along the seam of her lips.

“The highest F-sharp with a press of the sustain pedal, for that detestable shrill tone when you’re
nagging me to do something”
Everything was burning hot. Air was packed so tight around them. His breath was hot, and so was
hers and he kissed her again – with a bite –

“Two toneless D- flats when you’re angry.”

He groaned into the next kiss when she lifted her hip to deepen his thrusts. Her arms and legs were
on fire.

“A charming E and C-sharp when you’re aiming to chastise but are actually amused.”

He stopped moving and she pulsated around him. It looked like his eyes rolled back for a second
there. She thought he was going to kiss her again but instead saw the taut line of his throat as he
reached up to kiss her forehead. Right in the middle, where the little curl used to sit. She closed her
eyes.

“C-sharp melodic minor,” he whispered down her cheek, “when it's in the middle of a laugh.”

His mouth brushed against hers and she opened her eyes, looking right into shining dark grey.

“A slow lilt from E-flat to B minor at the nightclub, when you said my name and then just fucking
left.”

And you followed.

He ground against her. Still shallow, but also hard and fast. Every muscle in her body began to
contract.

“God. Oh god. Draco.”

“Fuck. The A-sharp, G of desperation. One of my favourites. They’re all my fucking –”

“I need to touch you. Please please please let me touch you.”

He kissed her roughly. She tried to move with him, to increase the friction, but he had her utterly
pinned. Utterly pinned and kissing her —

“Turn on your side,” he ordered scratchily.

He pulled out of her, moved off her and she almost screamed. She was combusting and her body
was scarcely cooperating. Her arms ached when she released the grille. Her legs involuntarily
twisted together as she turned — he pulled them apart, and dragged one back over his body as he
nestled behind her.

He reentered her and the angle was incredible. He went deep with each stroke, fucking her
thoroughly.

She was so so so nearly – Just —

She reached back to grab his hair. Twisted her head to try and kiss him but only gasped against the
corner of his mouth.
He pried her grip off his hair, interlocked their fingers, and splayed their hands against her body. He
made her squeeze her own breast, rubbed her palm against her own nipple, and guided her
downwards till they reached between her thighs —
 “The final notes. Come on. Granger. Hermione. Let’s hear what they sound like.”

He kept his hand over hers while she worked her fingers… and took over when she… couldn’t…
anymore. She was arching away from him but also pressing into him and everything inside her
seemed to get smaller and smaller.

Until everything was HUGE.

And it kept getting bigger and brighter and unspeakably beautiful. She let out the desired notes. All
rhythm was lost as he desperately, wildly sought his own relief.

She had teared up. “I love you,” she mumbled. It got lost in the chime’s song.

Neither moved, for quite some time. Then movement happened little by little. Pulling out. A set of
spells. Her leg sliding off him. Curling and shifting. Pushing her hair out of the way.

“You can see the windmills in Guernsey from my island.” His words were half-garbled from half-
sleep. “Through the telescope in the loft.”

She wriggled until his grip loosened and turned within the confines of his arms to face him.
Sleepy Draco was adorable. His eyes were barely open, and they closed even before she had
comfortably settled.

“Tell me I spoke well today.”

“Y’spoke well.”

“Are you lying?”

“Well ’m in bed.”

Huff.

His laugh was an exhale, his smile was small and bracketed, and his eyes stayed shut firm.

She watched the smile gradually melt away. She watched his eyelashes twitch minutely. His
forehead furrowed slightly then smoothened, till nothing remained on his face but utter ease. His
breathing slowed and deepened and deepened and slowed.

Chapter End Notes

And now that Mr Work-In-Progress is here to follow Hermione through the quagmire, we can
all get ready to finally put our feet up.

There are two lines in this chapter that I’d been waiting to write foreverrrrrr.

1. “never the twain shall meet…”: The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling
2. “smiled with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity had been tickled”: Les
Misérables, Victor Hugo
3. “Never (to) go on trips with anyone you do not love.”: A Moveable Feast, Ernest
Hemingway
4. My River runs to thee, Emily Dickinson
5. Norwegian Wood by The Beatles
6. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”: The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

Additionally:

1. Hermions is doing the opposite of Quixotic “Tilting at Windmills” here. Just your garden
variety subversion. (Draco is her hot, posh, anti-everyman Sancho Panza. It makes sense in
my head, alright?)

2. I never thought this portion would end up being doubly meaningful, but fuck anyone who
uses biology to perpetuate hate.

3. One of the theme songs for those scrambly-rambly months is the absolute masterpiece Here
by Pavement.

(In case you need a refresher, Hermione and Draco discussed potions in chapter 87 and a bit in
chapter 70. Hermione and Theo talked about the soul in chapter 22.)

(There are actually a couple of parallels between this chapter and chapter 87. If that was a
mirage, this is an oasis.)

I am so terribly sorry I haven’t been able to reply to your comments. I love you for taking the
time to tell me what this interminable profusion of words has meant to you. Your words mean
just as much to me, you know. I keep them close and carry them with me and read them often.

If this story has spoken to you in any way – even a little psst whisper whisper – you can be
sure that I wrote it for you.

There’ve been queries/concerns and I’ll address a few right here:

1. Will Hermione tell Draco that she eavesdropped on overheard his conversation with
Narcissa? — She’ll probably just blurt it out one fine day, nbd. And they will have a fight
about it. A big one, like in chapter 94, except Draco will be the one raging. They will work it
out.
2. cgreene has been anxious for ages, “because I know that boys who say I love you can also
break your heart” — They can, and often do. Being the overthinker that she is, Hermione is
definitely going to worry about it from time to time. And she has had, and will continue to
have, many troubles that go far beyond him. But perhaps you’ve noticed a certain mellowing
post chapter 101? Has it mellowed you, too?

3. Will he ever tell her about the Pansy incident? — It will take a perfect combination of
alcohol and bare tits.

4. Will she ever tell him about the morning assembly incident? — It will take a perfectly
executed Mien of Persuasion and a thick post-orgasm fog.

5. Will Justin do graffiti all over the Ministry’s toilets? — Absolutely. Actually, he’ll sneak
ᘻ
ᒪᑘ ᕵ in and let them go feral with spray paint. (He’ll sneak them in for a different reason in
the next chapter.) (Thanks for the stylised lettering, Soignee.)

6. Seamus is the worst — Isn’t he? That flavour of bloke is far too common and just Cormac
was not adequate representation.

7. Will Hermione run into Pete again? — Maybe one day she’ll take Draco to see the house
she grew up in, and maybe Pete will be visiting his parents. He’ll make a comment about the
girl he once knew having blossomed into a beautiful woman. Draco will glare lots.
Similarly, I think Draco will take Hermione to the pub he used to haunt, and meet Niles and
Waller again.
He’ll take her to his hill, and she’ll tell him about the hillock near the Burrow. They have lots
of big and little moments ahead.

8. Will Hermione ever see the Lovegood garden in spring? — Yes. And it will be beautiful.

9. Theo and Luna? — That’s a tough one. Look, Luna isn’t a seer. That 5 year thing is wishful
thinking. Maybe they’ll be the sort of couple that’s on and off through the next decade –
always in love but never in sync. Not in an unhealthy way. Kind of just… ‘life is shambolic
but I know I’ve always got you’. Or maybe they actually will get married at 25. I leave it up to
you.

Two mo’ to go. I promise.

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!