Loose Ends
2002 – England – Hermione
The muggle realtor was late. Hermione checked her tempus charm again; 10:24. She was meant to get the keys and closing documents twenty minutes ago, unpack the minimal amount of boxes to set up her old room and set pictures of her family around, and then meet Draco for an early lunch at 11. She didn’t want to do it all with magic; she wanted to place each picture by hand, set her room up with care. If the realtor didn’t show up soon she would be lucky if she could unpack anything today at all.
Another few minutes went by before she heard a soft pop and the door opened from the inside, Draco stepping through with a silly grin that lit up his face.
“There you are!" He called out, "I thought you might still be here. You do know you could have opened the door yourself, Granger? We have reservations for that new place on Diagon Alley proper and I do not think they’ll hold it for very long. It’s opening weekend.” He jaunted up to her and swept a loc of hair out of her face before pressing a greeting kiss to her temple and wrapping his arm around her shoulder in a show of comfort. She was so very frazzled today.
“I didn’t want to have to explain why the door was open!”
“You could just confund her.”
She let out an exasperated sigh, shoving his shoulder playfully. “Far be it from me to want to go through one single interaction with this poor woman without scrambling her brain a bit.”. Rosie, the muggle realtor, had undoubtedly been subject to several small, gentle charms to assist in the process of repurchasing her childhood home. Rosie was the first realtor her parents approached when they put their detached home on the market, and Hermione, wishing to speed the process along, confunded her into believing that she wanted to purchase the property herself. After deciding that she was ready to reverse the obliviation spell, it was Rosie’s time to sell the home again, this time back to Hermione with only a minimal confundus tempered with a strange eagerness to get it done in record time. Hermione did feel slightly badly about it, but then, Rosie was an older single woman who could pick up and move without much hassle. Her three adult children were also used to her buying properties that came up for sale, helping her move was at least a once a decade event. Sometimes even twice.
She chuckled but started unpacking the boot of her car. It was just two boxes, everything shrunk down to fit easily. She could have foregone the car and boxes entirely, but she wanted to have everything in order and alert the neighbors that the family was coming back. She hoped it might be easier for her parents to settle in if the neighbors weren’t hounding them for details; she’d prefer to field those for them if she could.
Draco effected a dramatic countenance as he walked with easy grace behind her with the second box. “I wish you’d have let Tippy help us. Can we just drop these off and come back tomorrow? I’m quite hungry, best not to work too hard on an empty stomach you know.”
Hermione smirked; he was so impatient sometimes. Though she suspected (correctly) that he was putting on his dramatic airs to give her something to focus on other than the tasks in front of her. She was overly anxious about going to see her parents and wanted to get some things done before she did. The Australian Ministry had located Monica and Wendell Wilkins home on the Gold Coast, but they weren’t home. It apparently looked as though the home had been prepped for a lengthy vacancy, so she felt like now was the right time to start unwinding all the practical elements of getting her parents back. She would wait until the Aus ministry contacted her again to let her know they were home, and she would floo that very day - or the next morning if it was too late. She would catch them right off of a relaxing holiday and at first pretend to be the daughter of one of their friends from back home, and get them to let her inside. Then she would quietly stupefy them, apparate them separately via side along to the wizarding hospital in Sydney, and begin to unwind the obliviation spell under the care of medi-witches.
It was a looming prospect. It had been so long. She knew she could reverse the spell at first, but the longer she left them the less certain she was. She didn’t know the long-term efficacy of spell reversal for memory modification in muggles, since it wasn’t extensively studied (and by that, to her endless consternation, she concluded that it had in fact never been studied).
Of course, she had hoped she could go to them sooner. Naively, she didn’t even think that it would be a year – let alone six. But even after Harry defeated Voldemort at the final battle, things were unstable in the wizarding world.
The ministry was in shambles and Voldemort’s inner circle was not entirely eradicated. Instead, they’d gone to ground the moment he fell. Those who had been standing at his side upon his death disapparated, scattering to various safe houses. They continued to launch offensives against the weakened ministry; they targeted wizarding London and muggle London alike. Hermione seemed to be a constant target, so she had not felt it was safe to go to her parents for fear the dark wizards would follow her and harm her parents for the crime of being muggles that birthed her. So she'd stayed, and waited, and kept living as best she could. She helped rebuild the government - as much as a young 20s something could, but she wanted to help. It was in her nature. That helping spirit kept her in the news, which in turn kept the target on her back. She knew she should've been more bitter about that, but she actually felt grateful for it. She believed she was helping to flush out the dark stragglers.
Her relationship with Draco came about after the third straight year of failed attempts on her life. After a series of increasingly outlandish attempts to pin Hermione down, Death Eaters approached Draco tentatively. Rodolphus LeStrange was their point contact, and said he spoke for the Dark Lord's "ever loyal and growing recruits" that his pleas for amnesty and shows of support for the Golden Trio’s success had been just that – a show, and that he would be willing to work with them to get close to the Gilded Girl herself. They didn’t have a good reason to believe that he could, since he had never been close to the three in Hogwarts, but they were losing resources, time, and numbers.
Thankfully, Draco’s change of heart had been fervently genuine. He approached the Ministry directly with the information, and Hermione personally shortly thereafter. He wanted her to know he unequivocally stood with their victory and the fledgling Ministry’s ideals of inclusion- he saw firsthand how twisted and vile things could be under Voldemort and it rather soured the appeal of blood purity. That, and to find it had all been a ruse to ensure the immortality of a madman who wasn’t even a pureblood really sealed his decision to rethink his whole life.
One conversation with Hermione had turned into two, which turned into ten, that turned into pseudo dates, and then real ones, and before either of them realized it they were spending every free evening together debating the merits of astrological influences on arithmancy charts amongst other lofty ideals. Hermione had even slowly begun introducing him to muggle technology, history, and culture. She and Ron had split relatively amicably not long after they tried to give things a go; they just worked better as friends.
It had, however, been only within the last year – more accurately, last six months – that the sole remaining danger to Hermione had been caught, sentenced, and kissed by a dementor. The Dolohovs, Carrows, and LeStranges of the world, to say nothing of Greyback, could no longer hurt her. She was free to bring her parents back and she had been working tirelessly to ensure she could do it safely with the least amount of mental trauma to them. Draco encouraged her in her search for memory charm reversal studies and believed that it could be done successfully. He also helped her navigate the Australian ministry from abroad, securing international floo calls to contacts his family had maintained for decades.
That hurdle had been the last significant one to clear to ensure that there would be no manner of pushback on her for approaching two seemingly unrelated muggles. It was easily done and the sunny disposition of the Ministry counterparts in Australia were more than happy to locate her parents for her and ensure their ongoing health and well-being before she made the trip. She decided to reclaim her family home before retrieving them, giving them a soft place to land should they decide to return upon discovering their whole lives were actually a lie, if they could actually remember it.
Draco pulled her from her reverie, softly nudging her, “hey, this will all be all right, Granger. Also, the realtor has decided to grace us with her presence at last.” He nodded toward the opening door.
“I see that. It’s-” she cast a surreptitious tempus, “quarter til!” Hermione stomped her foot indignantly. “I no longer feel any which way about confunding this woman again. If you can’t abide a schedule you ought not to be a realtor!”
Draco snickered as he set the box on the counter, "You don't think anyone should do anything if they can't abide a schedule," he murmured more to himself than her. She huffed at Draco glared at the door as Rosie walked in, a perplexed look on her round face and her voice low with suspicion, “Hermione, so good to see you! I could have sworn we locked up yesterday after the final walk through...” Hermione gripped her wand in her bag and maybe, or maybe did not, cast a light confundus charm in Rosie’s direction. “Oh, thank you for meeting us here and letting us in,” she said, still scowling lightly in the older woman’s direction. The charm appeared to take hold as Rosie's features smoothed out.
“Absolutely, loves, absolutely. So happy to see this little place going to its old family. Was a right shock your parents were so eager to sell in the first place. I knew it was fate that you wanted to buy it for them! I couldn’t have parted with it for anyone else.” She looked around somewhat wistfully and Hermione closed her hand around her wand again, ready to usher Rosie along if she felt inclined to wax anymore poetical about the home. Hermione only said "Quite right, Rosie. Thank you for ensuring the process was smooth and expedient."
Rosie nodded in acknowledgment, “Of course. Happy to oblige. And, that should be everything. The locks are all new and these are the only keys to the exterior doors. I wish you both good luck with getting settled.”
Seeing that Rosie wasn’t going to overstay, Hermione relaxed somewhat, something that might have been a smile tugging on her lips. “Thank you Rosie, we appreciate that. I hope you have a lovely new adventure in Marlow.”
Rosie dropped an envelope with the keys into Hermione’s hand and made her way out the front door, not bothering to close it.
Turning to Draco Hermione pleaded, “I know we have reservations but can I please at least hang these in the front hall? I have missed seeing this house the way it used to be. I just want a little something familiar up there, just for me.”
“I swear on Salazar’s grave Granger if you make me miss lunch at Ermine’s opening I will hide all of your chocolate frogs for a month.”
Hermione gasped, mockingly deep affront on her features, “You would NEVER!” “I would and I shall. Let’s see these photos, then.”