Shielded

The next morning, Malfoy walked into the kitchen looking groggy and discombobulated two hours after Hermione had already gotten up.

“Slept well?” Hermione asked brightly. Malfoy flushed but ignored her, returning to his original seat at the dining table from where he had glared at her the night before. Hermione shrugged off the lack of response, and turned back to her breakfast preparations.

She was determined to stay on good terms with Malfoy for as long as possible, and to avoid a repeat of the strange episode from his room, she had gotten dressed as soon as she had woken up, pulling on her most comfortable jeans and jumper before letting her hair fall down along her back. She double and triple checked that her clothing choices were at the height of propriety. Whatever had set him off would not be a threat today. What a prude, she thought with some amusement. That seeing her in shorts and a t-shirt would offend him so much seemed positively Darcy-esque. 

In fact, she reflected, chancing a glance at her guest before looking away quickly when she noticed his gaze was still locked on her, he was the improper one this morning. His rumpled shirt seemed to be a little too short, and with his slouched pose, a sliver of stomach was visible above the waist of his pajama bottoms. His hair was tousled, and his neckline was wider now, showing more of the Azkaban tattoo that was printed on his collarbone. Overall he looked very… tousled. Yummy.

Hermione started at this thought. Yummy? Well that wasn’t appropriate at all. The poor guy had been tossed around without any stability or companionship for years. He had told her yesterday he didn’t like her. Part of his brain was still semi-possessed by the madman he had been forced to serve. Ogling him was not a suitable endeavor at all. She quickly distracted herself with some cheery humming, focusing on the task of loading tuna salad on the mayonnaise-smeared bread slices she had been working on before layering on some cheese to the top. His fervor in tracking down food yesterday gave her the impression he was in want of comfortable, calorically dense meals, so Hermione had decided that their breakfast was going to be tuna toasties. She put them in the oven, then looked around, trying to find a new way to busy herself.

The silence was growing a bit strained. Finally, unable to find anything else to do with herself, she turned to Malfoy.

“Do you have everything you need –” “How did you learn to –” they both started saying at the same time before simultaneously stopping, and then both simultaneously adding the obligatory “Go ahead,” “No, you go ahead,” that always followed these situations.

“I was just going to ask if you had everything you needed before we hit the road?” Hermione bulldozed ahead, lest this back and forth continue.

Malfoy smiled slightly. Had she seen him smile yet? “I believe I do, thank you. Although I would appreciate a cup of tea before we head out if possible?”

“Oh, yes, my apologies! Let me prepare you one. What were you saying before I interrupted you?” She checked the water level before flipping the switch under her electric kettle.

“I was going to ask how you learned to cook. You’re very good, and no offense intended, but you always seemed a bit too… scattered by other obligations to learn how to cook.”

Hermione laughed at this. “No offense taken! I can understand your reasoning. But it was actually because of these scattered obligations that I got into cooking. The mix of menial and experimental was very appealing – I’m sure you’d relate to some extent with your skill at potions – and helped ground me when things were too much of a whirlwind up here.” She gestured around her head. “As to how… well it was a mix. Mrs. Weasley always loved having us in the kitchen with her, so I had learned a lot of the basics when I was there, and then while I was at Muggle university a guilty pleasure of mine became cooking channels. Not to mention that living alone, I either had to get with the program or sink a lot of money I didn’t have into takeaway. So it was kind of a perfect storm,” she concluded somewhat lamely.

Malfoy nodded slowly, absorbing this information. “You think it’s similar to potion making?”

“Very,” Hermione smiled, then added with a wink, “and potentially more magical.”

Malfoy scoffed at this, but when Hermione turned back to retrieve the sandwiches and finish breakfast assembly, their silence was more pleasant than strained.

Like yesterday, when she finally served the food, Malfoy immediately began scarfing it all down. Hermione, anticipating this, had prepared double what she thought would be strictly necessary, and her instincts were proven correct. He ate all of the toasts she hadn’t set aside for herself, half the veggie slices, and two boiled eggs in the time it took her to finish her own breakfast. She then set out the tea he requested earlier, before making to get up with intent to clear up the dishes.

“No, let me,” Malfoy spoke up unexpectedly, knocking into the table and almost upsetting his cup of tea in his rush to stand up.

“Oh,” said Hermione, startled. “No need! You finish your tea, I can clear up.”

“No, no, I’ll do it.” Malfoy strode around the table purposefully before grabbing the plates from her and laying them in the sink. Without another word, he grabbed the sponge, wet it, placed a dollop of soap in the middle, and began scrubbing the dishes, lathering the soap methodically. After covering all the dishes, he turned the sink back on, rinsed the dishes off, and began placing them in the dish rack. He was oddly particular about placing the cups far at the front and the plates in the way back, leaving a large gap between them. Hermione watched with bemusement as he began wiping them down with a towel before returning them in the same isolated positions. Where had he even learned to do this? With a shrug, she turned back to her cooking ingredients, and began putting them back to their required spots. 

They peacefully finished up their respective tasks before sitting back down to drink their tea. Hermione stared out her window. They had kept the curtains drawn at risk of the pursuers returning during the night, but Hermione could see over the top of the rod that it was an uncharacteristically sunny day for late October, with only a slight drizzle left from last night’s storms. Maybe the previous downpour had emptied the clouds more than anticipated. She sipped her tea, contemplating the weather, when Malfoy interrupted her reverie,

“So, where are we off to today?”

“Ah, good question!” Hermione went to retrieve that folder that Kingsley had left on the coffee table last night, and sat back down before flipping it open. In the left pocket, there was a large envelope which, when she glanced inside, she saw was filled with 20 pound notes. That’s the cash then. In the right pocket, she saw another folder with CONFIDENTIAL stamped across the front, a folded up map, and a piece of paper. She retrieved the paper and unfolded it.

“Our lucky first destination is… Wales! Wales? That’s awfully vague.” She flipped the paper over to see if there was any more information. “Nope, that’s all we get. Wales.” 

“Is Wales far by car?”

“Not too bad. I’m pretty sure the border is like 3 hours from here, so it depends on how far into the country we want to get,” said Hermione thoughtfully. She had been to Wales as a child to see Cardiff, but that wouldn’t be helpful here, as they were meant to avoid cities. Should they just pull over in a random village on the way?

“Have you been to Wales?” she asked Malfoy distractedly.

He looked at her funny. “Yes, but only to the wizarding parts. I don’t think we want to deliberately go somewhere where magic is used.”

“Oh, duh, good point,” responded Hermione, looking down the rest of the list.

“They’re all like this!” she scoffed. “From Wales we’re meant to cross to Norfolk, back to Cheshire, Yorkshire, and then Cumbria before finally getting to Scotland. We’re just zig zagging up the UK!” She paused for a moment. “Someone must have just opened up a map and decided the least efficient way to move north that didn’t require doubling back. I expected us to at least get the villages we’re meant to stop in, if not specific hotels and inns. Might as well just drive willy-nilly as we deem fit for all the guidance this gives us.”

She looked at him in incredulity, waiting for him to share in her ire, but he just gave a bored shrug of his shoulders, clearly uninterested in sharing his thoughts on the matter. She waited a moment longer to be sure, before adding,

“Well, there’s nothing for it. Let’s just hit the road in the next hour, and we’ll decide when we reach Wales what direction we’re inspired to take. I guess spontaneity is a goal in this effort after all.”

Malfoy nodded his assent to this plan before gulping the rest of his tea, washing the cup in the sink, and heading upstairs, presumably to get ready. Hermione took a few more moments to absorb the final moments of peace before doing the same. For some reason, she felt that this trip was about to be more momentous than she could ever prepare for.

—

It took them about another hour before Draco found himself in the passenger seat of the car he had taken here with Kingsley, hiding under the invisibility cloak, listening to Granger sing along to some strange Muggle radio program which had started playing as they pulled out of her road.

“Mmmbop, ba duba dop

Ba du bop, ba duba dop

Ba du bop, ba duba dop

Ba du, oh yeaaaa…”

Draco rolled his eyes, relishing the freedom to show his emotions while he was still invisible. This may be the most repetitive refrain he’d ever heard in his life. Is this what all Muggle music was like?

He turned to look at Granger openly, who had begun drumming the operational wheel that was used to maneuver the car to the beat of her scatting. Seeing her ridiculously cheery demeanor, he became more convinced that his reaction to her last night had been a fluke. The shock of realizing she wasn’t the somber, drained spinster he had expected had disarmed him enough to give him all sorts of fanciful musings about the reality of her appearance, he thought, recalling with some consternation his internal soliloquies about her eyes and overall vibrancy. Perhaps it was this mindset which had primed him to be overly affected by her appearance when she had come to see him. 

After all, with the clarity that the new day offered, he found the bubbly temperament that Granger had adopted as more overwhelming than invigorating. Her excitability first thing in the morning had already been enough to give him a headache, and his favorite part of their breakfast had been when each of them had been doing their own quiet tasks around each other. Not that the “around each other” bit was important, Draco chided himself. It was her silence that had pleased him.

He continued contemplating this line of thought as they drove through and out of London. Granger kept singing as the radio switched from one song to the next, and when some men interrupted the songs to talk to one another, she pulled out her Muggle communication device. After tapping on the screen of it, the device, which Draco until that point had thought was meant solely for the Muggle equivalent of making Floo calls, started broadcasting its own music. 

Draco eyed her fussing around with some misgiving, watching as she laid the device between them before attaching a plastic rope from the radio to the device. Was that meant to be a sort of security belt for it, like what they had to fasten across themselves? Draco nearly jumped out of his seat in surprise when the music, which had until then been a tinny whine from the device, began blaring out of the car.

“Ah, sorry, sorry!” shouted Hermione over the noise, quickly messing with the device until the sound was playing at a reasonable volume again. “I never know whether the car’s volume overrides the phone’s volume or not.”

Draco, who only barely understood what she meant, decided he had nothing to add to that, so he stayed quiet, although he kept glancing at the plastic rope in case it got the idea to override anything else. Granger didn’t seem to mind his silence as she began tapping around on the device again, before laying it down between them. This time he could see that the screen showed a thick vertical line with a small moving triangle pointed toward the top of the device. Below the line it said 2 hr 18 min, and above the line it showed a small arrow pointing left with Eastern Ave/A48 written next to it. This he could work with.

“Does this mean we have 2 hours and 18 minutes before we reach Wales?” asked Draco, interrupting Granger crooning about it being a wonderful world.

“Approximately, yes. I have it set up right now to direct us to Cardiff, but I was thinking that as we approached Bristol, I’d turn it off and we could just start driving in the general direction of eastern Wales until we find somewhere with lodgings that we could stay. That way we don’t get so far into the country that driving to Norwich the next day becomes unbearable.”

“How does it know the amount of time it’ll take?”

“Oh, a variety of clever algorithms are able to consider things like the speed limits, traffic, and road types to calculate the estimate,” explained Hermione. “It’s actually quite accurate. If we don’t make stops, it wouldn’t surprise me if we actually arrived at,” she glanced down, “13:43. Or roughly that time at least.”

“And does the triangle tell you the direction to head in? Is it like a compass?”

“Kind of. It actually represents us, and the tip of the triangle points in the direction one needs to head along the road. It then moves along this representative version of the road to let you know what turns to take, if and when they come up.”

“So how does it know where you want to go?”

“Well, the simplest explanation is that you tell it. Kind of like with Floo powder, when you have to announce where you want to end up, with phones you can type in your desired destination. It then finds the most efficient routes to get there, you choose one, and then head on your way.”

Draco contemplated this momentarily before sitting back in his seat further, now comparing the depictions on the device to their surroundings with more interest. After a few more songs, Granger stopped her singing to say, “I think you’re alright to take the cloak off now, if you’d like. We’re far enough out of London that I expect you’re safe.”

Draco looked around to see rolling fields that indeed looked uninhabited enough for him to reveal himself, and pulled off the invisibility cloak. He stuffed it under his seat, thinking for the umpteenth time how lucky Potter had been for having a cloak of this quality at his disposal during his time at Hogwarts. It explained how he managed to get away with as much as he did. He noticed from his periphery that Granger had stopped singing, and was instead trying to surreptitiously glance at him.

“What?” he asked, somewhat self-consciously running his hands over his hair.

“It’s just hard getting used to you in Muggle clothes,” Granger admitted with a small smile.

“You’re telling me,” Draco concurred. “This material,” he said, trying to pull the legs of his trousers down to loosen them from around his crotch, “is so stiff, I can hardly see how Muggles can bear it.”

Granger laughed. “The more you wear them, the more they’ll loosen up and fit to you. Denim is notorious for being stiff at the start, but it lasts forever, so it’s very popular for casual wear.”

“I hope it happens sooner rather than later, otherwise sitting for long stretches of time will become quite unbearable.”

“Yeah, it’s not unusual for people to travel in more comfortable clothes and then change into jeans at their destination. Some people never get used to them. Did you see other clothing options in the suitcase?”

“Well, yes, there are about 5 pairs of trousers, but I always remembered you wearing this material, so I thought these would give us the most cohesive look. I didn’t want to dress significantly more formal than necessary since that had the potential to draw attention to me.”

“That’s probably wise,” admitted Granger, before giving him another of her sidelong glances. “What do you mean you always remembered me wearing jeans?”

Draco was silent for a beat, unsure how to respond. “Well, when I saw you outside of Hogwarts, you were typically wearing them.”

“You saw me outside of Hogwarts?”

He felt a bit wary. This was treading dangerous waters that he wasn’t sure he was up to discussing. “Sure, a couple of times. We ran into each other at Flourish and Blotts once when you had your parents with you, so I presume you had entered from Muggle London and had to wear these then. You also had them on at the Quidditch World Cup I remember, though I still don’t understand why. And then you were also in jeans when…” at this point, he faltered, unsure how to continue. None of those memories were particularly happy ones, but this was by far the worst.

“When I was at Malfoy Manor,” Granger finished with a sad smile, not looking at him. “I remember now.”

“Well, you obviously had other things… preoccupying you then,” added Draco lamely. “I’m not even entirely sure why I specifically remembered your choice of trousers.” That was a lie. He remembered every detail of Granger on his drawing room floor, down to the most minute aspects.

“Random details do always get highlighted during strenuous episodes,” Granger responded a bit too brightly, still looking away. “I remember that one of the legs of the settee in the drawing room had been replaced with a pile of books, and I thought it was so odd that the Malfoys of all people had opted for such a ramshackle solution instead of repairing or replacing the settee entirely. It’s actually an evolutionary defense the brain adopted for periods of high strain,” she prattled on, clearly trying to direct the conversation into happier topics. “There is a hormone called adrenaline – I’m unsure if it’s something wizards are familiar with – but it essentially allows for you to navigate dangerous situations quickly, and to achieve this, it has the effect of increasing your attention to specific details. When the memories of the moment are then linked together with the emotional charge, which makes the memory storage process more efficient, all those details are stored as well, even if they aren’t particularly relevant.”

“Ah.”

“In fact,” she charged on, “that isn’t just for dangerous moments. Most moments where your adrenaline hikes up, you’ll have random parts stick with you. For me, I remember the color of quill I had written my first Transfiguration final with, and the feeling of Victor stepping on my toes at the Yule Ball. I’m sure you have details from exciting Quidditch matches that stand out to you, even though they weren’t that applicable to actually playing Quidditch,” she said, clearly trying to draw him back now that they were on safer grounds.

Draco scrunched his nose up in a way he knew his mother would have disapproved of. “Krum stepped on your toes? Why doesn’t that surprise me. For what it’s worth, no one could tell, you looked utterly besotted dancing with him.”

Granger blushed. “I think I was just so caught up in the moment. I was 14, had been asked to a big dance with a famous, attractive Quidditch player after all the ridicule Ron and Harry had put me through, and had spent so long on my appearance that I think I was just riding the high of being, well… desirable? I dunno, but despite the toe steps, I think it was the excitement and elation of having come out on top that you’re probably remembering.”

Draco smirked. “Why Granger, gloating at the downfall of your enemies? Glorying in the attention being paid to you? How utterly Slytherin.” He ignored the irrational pang he felt in his stomach at her calling Krum attractive.

“Stop it, Ron and Harry weren’t my enemies! They had just been unable to see me as anything but one of the lads, and they finally did then. I was simply… appreciating their moment of epiphany,” corrected Granger primly, although her eyes danced with mirth.

“I was expecting more opposition to being called a Slytherin than that,” Draco quipped, unsure when the conversation had turned playful.

“Oh, you Malfoys and your antiquated ways,” she joked, waving a hand dismissively. “Teddy Tonks is in Slytherin and Harry’s older son is now desperate to get in as well, not to mention that the Sorting Hat had considered putting me in there. We’re past Slytherin-bad-Gryffindor-good ways of thinking.”

“You? In Slytherin?? But you’re Muggleborn! Muggleborns are never in Slytherin!”

She shot him a wry look. “Convention does not a rule make. And you can’t seriously believe Muggleborns are never sorted into Slytherin? What, Muggle parentage means a person can’t be cunning and ambitious? Take one look at Muggle society and you’ll see how wrong that conclusion is. There are plenty of examples of Muggleborns being sorted into Slytherin, but many from the time when Voldemort attended and after chose to keep it a secret for what I hope are obvious reasons, and many from before have been forgotten. Now, granted, there weren’t many of them, but I wouldn’t have been the first had the Hat gone in that direction.”

Draco looked at her, completely dumbfounded. Had his father known this? The rest of the Slytherin pureblood society? Somehow he doubted it.

They fell into a companionable, contemplative silence, occasionally commenting on the scenery. Draco was beginning to appreciate travel by car – like flying with a broom, it gave you the opportunity to see the landscape, but unlike a broom, you see your immediate surroundings rather than the overall topography. It was interesting, being able to see what was growing in a specific field, and what kind of companions they had on the road. He had never realized how many people owned cows. Suddenly, Granger slightly tensed up, looking at him from the corner of her eye. He glanced back at her warily, then looked around. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“What’s wrong?”

“Eh… we’re passing Swindon right now,” she said testily. He looked at her blankly. “That’s almost directly due north from Malfoy Manor by like half an hour.”

He laughed dryly. “Ah.” Of course she would look nervous. Was this the closest she’s been since her last… visit?

She lifted one hand from the steering apparatus and began fidgeting with her hair. “When’s the last time you’ve been home?”

Strange that their thoughts had gone in similar directions. Or maybe not – they both had significant ties to the odious estate.

“I haven’t gone back since my house arrest was lifted,” he responded. “I was quite done with the memories the place held so I left as soon as I could, and then for the last year I’ve been on the run anyway, so I hadn’t had much of a chance to return even if I had wanted to.”

She nodded at this slowly. “Where did you stay when you left?”

“I just kind of bounced between friends and acquaintances. A lot of us have… subpar memories in our respective estates, so we’d migrate from one place to the other once the host was overwhelmed with the associations. They’d been cycling around already while I was under house arrest, so I joined them.”

“And who’s ‘them’?”

“Theo, Zabini, Pansy, and Gregory.”

“I thought Parkinson and Goyle were married?”

“They are, and Theo is actually also married, but to a German pureblood, and they’re estranged. It was just that Pansy and Gregory didn’t have any intentions of being left out, not to mention they shared the aforementioned disinclination to remain in their respective estates for long periods, so they thought they’d join while deciding where they wanted to plant their roots permanently.”

“See, that’s one of the many cons of having a generational abode. The second your ancestors back a bigoted agenda, the hassle of freeing yourself after becomes that much more complicated.”

Draco barked out a startled laugh. “I guess that’s true. I have no idea what I’ll do with the Malfoy Manor once all this is done.”

Granger looked at him contemplatively. “Does your mother still live there?”

“She moved out when my father died, and only came back for my last month of house arrest. We… weren’t on the best of terms at the time. I cut ties with my father right before his death, and she did not approve. We’re slowly rebuilding our relationship.”

“I imagine they had to love each other very much for them to stick together through all they did.”

“That’s the thing – I don’t believe they did. They loved each other well enough, but I think it was duty that was the basis for their connection, not love. She felt the dishonor to my familial duty more acutely than she faulted me for my actions against my father as a person.”

“And how did you wrong your father, if I may ask?”

“I made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that I wouldn’t have children. That the line ended with me.”

She scoffed. “Oh horror, an individual who saw the pain children can be put through doesn’t want to have children for the sake of upholding a lineage of prejudice and violence. Whatever shall we do.”

“You jest, but it really was quite the revolutionary move,” he said, a bit thrown by her blase attitude toward something so monumental.

She smiled slightly at this. “Oh, I can imagine. You put your foot down against generations of pressure. I know it sounds silly to me, as an outsider who never had these kinds of familial expectations, that this was a big ordeal, but I know that it required quite a bit of bravery on your end. So good job.”

Draco, who felt flummoxed at being called brave, had nothing to say to this, and lapsed into silence.

“But it sounds like you don’t intend to go back to the Manor?” she prompted, picking up the previous line of conversation.

“I’m not sure. Part of me never wants to see it again, another part of me wants to repurpose it, another part of me wants to move back in so I can confront all my demons and such.” He tried to say this last piece as indifferently as possible, but he could still feel Granger’s sympathetic gaze aimed at him.

Surprisingly, she didn’t give her opinion on the dilemma. Draco felt somewhat miffed. Miss Know-It-All has to give her two cents on every matter in the world except for this? It wasn’t like he’s been particularly chatty about this predicament over the past few years, and he wasn’t sure why he was being so open now, but didn’t she deign his conundrum worthy of at least a little bit of high-handed lecturing? Maybe she didn’t realize how unique of a position she was in as Draco’s confidante.

Ignorant to his musings, she spoke up again. “A pro pro of nothing, but I brought all the books on the neuroscience of memory and on Occlumency I had. I was thinking we could work together on researching the shield – you, as a Legilimens, could investigate the magical side, me the biological – and hopefully while we’re whiling away our days in the countryside, we can at least make progress on figuring out how to lift the shield.”

Draco was a bit shocked by this pronouncement. So far, none of the researchers had treated him as anything more than an experimental subject. In fact, they had seemed suspicious of him knowing too much, and had always glanced at him mistrustfully as they gathered together to murmur their theories and findings to each other. While initially irritating, he ultimately accepted his role, and tried to be minimally sarcastic while answering their questions. After all, if it meant they would get the shield out of his brain, he would happily act the guinea pig.

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll use the information in my own dastardly plans?”

She laughed loudly at this. “I’m sorry Malfoy, but for all the front you put up, you are not the type to deliberately manipulate others’ minds for your own purposes. I remember what a wreck you were sixth year. No, your dastardly plans are more along the lines of not having progeny and contemplating tearing down your family home. From what I’ve heard, you’re a skilled Legilimens, and I know you’re clever. So I’d prefer having you working with me and double our chances of finding a solution than have you sit around observing the proceedings.”

Draco, who has now been complimented by Granger twice in this single conversation, was completely discombobulated again, and to his chagrin, felt the back of his neck heat.

“Just so you know, your fellow researchers shared nothing with me, so I’m probably coming into this with less information than you are,” he said somewhat belligerently. Why did she manage to disarm him so much? Had he just not socialized enough over the past decade? That’s very likely, he reflected.

“That’s alright. I’d rather we start with blank pages than with any biases or preconceived notions. Improves the odds of us being able to catch details everyone else might have missed.”

“You do realize that the others have been conducting research on me for the past year? Do you really think you can find the solution in less than two weeks?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Of course not. But I don’t want to show up ignorant. Not to mention,” she sneered, but he saw a slight blush on her cheeks, “a lot of the traditional mind Healers I expect were hired to work with you were the ones who opposed the methodologies I introduced. So there is a bit of a personal vendetta element to this as well.”

Draco instantly felt lighter. “Ah, why didn’t you say so! I love a good revenge plot. In that case, lead the way, captain. I am at your disposal.”

She rolled her eyes at this, but seemed happy with his response, and switched topics to begin babbling about a carrot farm that her grandmother had had, which she had she been reminded of by a produce stand on the side of the road, and did he know that the commonly held belief that carrots improve your vision was in fact a myth that was started during WWII to keep radar technology a secret? Draco, who had never heard such nonsense about carrots and didn’t know what radar technology was, sat back in his seat contentedly and listened.