Chapter 9
Hermione’s room in the Manor was different from her childhood room, but she tried to keep it similar enough. Narcissa had asked Hermione what she wanted, what colors she liked, and the result was nearly perfect. Instead of white, painted wood, Narcissa had opted for bright, natural maple. It was pale and light, and it complimented the lavender and silver accents. A silver desk lamp, a Muggle one, and silver drawer pulls on the dresser, and a lavender linens set. Lucius had moved a bookcase into the room, too, and Hermione had taken her time in the library deciding which volumes she wanted close at hand in addition to the ones she’d brought from home. The twinkle lights from home were put up around the bed, weaving through the canopy of light mesh that fell over the top. Crookshanks’ cat tree had been grown and expanded, a treat from Lucius who strangely took a liking to the half-kneazle, and was pushed against the wall by the window so he could climb to the very top and peer over the room.
It wasn’t the same, but it was just familiar enough to ease that ache of loss.
And Narcissa and Lucius took to having another teenager in their home like ducks to water. Every night, before bed, Narcissa sent up a cup of tea for the girl, and they made sure to check in with her before she went to sleep for the night in case she was missing her parents.
Suddenly, her missing Christmas Eve dinner made more sense. She’d wanted one last holiday with her parents, uninterrupted and untarnished.
It made a morbid kind of sense, but no one at the Manor could fault her for it. Hermione’s first day at the Manor was spent in her room, mostly crying and drinking tea, but grief was complicated. While December 26th had started with Hermione’s painful sobs, December 27th was spent staring out the window in an almost catatonic state. And December 28th started with both Theo and Draco nearly choking on eggs when Hermione left her room early in the morning. Her hair was tied up in a bun, messy and slept in, with shorter curls sticking out every which way. Her face wasn’t washed or made up, and she had a blemish on her cheek, like the starts of a pimple coming in. Her eyes were red, yes, but bright and they were ringed with purple. She was wearing an oversized sweatshirt, something with a red and white logo on the front, and a pair of flannel pants that seemed too long, with frayed hems that got caught under Hermione’s feet. To top the whole thing off, she was wearing fuzzy, matted-down slippers and carrying her beast of a cat in her arms.
It was domestic in a strange way, messy and unappealing and it should have been- not ugly, but just not pretty. I should not have bloomed affection in their chests, deeper and more powerful than before, and yet, it did. She was pretty, even when she was disheveled and in the throes of grief, and neither one of the boys knew what to do with her. Least of all when she gave a half-wave with the few fingers she could spare from under Crookshanks’ front paws.
“Hello,” she said cheerfully, with a full smile. “Good morning, boys.”
“Good morning,” Draco repeated, robotic and stunned.
“You look… well,” Theo remarked, shooting Draco a bewildered look. “For someone who is functionally an orphan.”
Draco gasped and chucked the only thing in his hand - a teaspoon - at Theo. One of Hermione’s eyebrows quirked up and she let out a surprised laugh.
“I suppose I’m making the most of a bad situation. Do you have a dish I can use for Crookshanks? His bowl was broken in my trunk.”
Draco nodded and got up, disappearing through a little door to where Hermione imagined the kitchen was. For having spent much of her summer at the Manor, she really only ever saw Draco and Theo’s rooms, the Library, and the main sitting room. She hadn’t really explored the entire house yet.
Theo gave her a small smile. If she was going to act normally, then so was he. “Did you forget your cushioning charms when you were packing?” he joked, giving her a disapproving look. “What a disappointment.”
“No, actually,” Hermione sighed. “I cushioned it. But the books got knocked over and I guess it toppled my shoe rack and it was too much weight even for a cushioning charm.”
“Shoe rack?”
Hermione huffed and shifted Crookshanks in her arms, trying to find a slightly more comfortable way to hold him. “I have a very limited Capacius Extremis on my trunk, so I could get all of my things in there before I left yesterday. I only just got to the bottom of it, unpacking and all that.”
“I’m sorry,” Theo said, all sticky sweet and tilted head and wild eyes. “You have a limited extension charm on your trunk? Those are illegal!”
“And tricky to get right,” Hermione said. “But here we are.”
She wandered closer to the table and leaned over Theo’s plate. She cocked her hip to carry more of her cat’s weight and free up one hand so she could grab a piece of toast from his plate and shove the corner in her mouth, hoisting Crookshanks as she did so. Theo swatted playfully at her hand, and she wrinkled her nose and swallowed before she stuck her tongue out at him.
“Here you go,” Draco said, pushing the door from the kitchen open. He held out a little plate, something the size of a teacup saucer but without the raised ring in the middle where a teacup might sit. “It’s from an old set of China, my parents will never miss it.”
“Thank you,” Hermione said, taking it from him with a smile. And then she turned and made her way back upstairs without another word, her pajama pants sitting dangerously low on her hips as she walked away from the boys.
Both of them stared, and both of them thought what it might be like to have a witch like that walk around their house for the rest of their lives.
Days became brighter. Hermione couldn’t deny the sadness that lingered, but Lucius had sat her down and told her stories of Muggles in the first war who had been held as prisoners, tortured and bartered with, and some outright murdered to prove a point. He didn’t sugarcoat it. He didn’t lie to her to spare her feelings or her imagination. It was helpful to hear those stories, to hear how she might have saved her parents from a fate worse than death. From a fate worse than a new start. Even the possibility of those realities becoming their stories was enough to reassure Hermione.
Narcissa, too, had done her part. Hermione’s parents weren’t young, but they weren’t old either. Her mother was 41, her father was 44. Hermione had planted the idea in their minds they wanted to travel, that Australia and New Zealand and Nigeria and South Africa and Mexico and Brazil were all on their list for vacation spots. She filled them with excitement and hope, with desire for charity work and meaningful connections with the world. Narcissa had found their hotel in Australia, looking for the names Hermione had given her parents, and sent a global nonprofit their way with strong recommendations. The Wilkens were going to be traveling the world, fulfilling their greatest wish according to Hermione’s spellwork, while providing vital dental care for impoverished youth.
That made the act of wiping their memories palatable. It made the days easier. It allowed Hermione the forgiveness she needed to wake up and get out of bed every morning.
By the time Hermione was supposed to leave for the Burrow on December 31st, she was feeling much better, more like herself. It helped that both Theo and Draco had been gentle with her, but still teasing and argumentative. Their gifts for the holiday, too, had helped.
Theo and Draco had gotten her books on arcane magic, Blood magic, Dark magic, and every other subject they could think of. New quills of ostrich and eagle and hippogriff feathers. Fine, rich parchments.
Lucius and Narcissa had gotten her a new wardrobe - silk blouses, thick, woolen sweaters, fine slacks and skirts, and linen dresses. Alongside that, Lucius had gotten her a cuffed bracelet from the Malfoy vaults, one that matched Draco’s signet ring and Theo’s chain necklace. It was a key through the wards of the Manor, a permanent representation of her new residence.
Because that’s exactly what the Manor was. As far as the Malfoys were concerned, there was nowhere more fitting for Hermione. They certainly weren’t going to tell the Ministry what had happened and see her put in a government-run orphanage, or worse, Azkaban. No, they would cover her tracks, and in due time, they would provide her with a cover story to use with her other friends.
~~~
Theo and Draco said their goodbyes to Hermione in the Library, watching as she disappeared in a green flame. She was going to stay two nights at the Burrow as planned, but was coming back before they were due back at Hogwarts. She didn’t seem too excited about it really, but it would raise too many questions if she backed out now. And though it was going to be hard to pretend she was fine - that she’d come from her parents’ house and they were both waiting or her to return, if anyone could do it, it was Hermione. And they needed Harry and Ron to be stupid a little bit longer, they needed them to be distracted with the Tournament long enough they could figure out what the Death Eaters were up to.
Coincidentally, her being gone made for a perfect opportunity to do more work on the potions book Draco got. It seemed a little silly, because really they would never outdo Hermione when it came to academics, but they wanted to stand a chance with her. They wanted to have something more impressive than a translated ingredients list.
They wanted to know which of the potions was most likely.
“Why do you think there’s a Death Eater at Hogwarts?” Theo asked. “Really, think about it. Why put a Death Eater at the school this year when there’s not only so many professors there to catch on, but also so much attention internationally for the Tournament.”
“He has to be a part of the plan,” Draco said. “Is there anything in these potions they can only get at Hogwarts?”
Theo scanned the total list they had made, making little noises in the back of his throat. “Most of this stuff you could buy at Mulpeppers or Coffin House in Knockturn.”
Draco held out a hand, and Theo passed the paper over to Draco. The blonde took his turn with the list, humming in agreement. And then he tapped the paper with his finger. “What about these things?”
“What things?”
“These ones here,” Draco held out the paper, pointing to a list of three things near the bottom of the list. “Flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy, bone of the father.”
Theo grabbed for the book and flicked through it, looking for the original recipe. To call it a recipe at all was generous - it was a footnote, a paragraph of needed ingredients and a preferred cauldron size and material. “All three are mentioned here, but there’s no steps. Simply says to combine the bone of the father, the flesh of the servant, and the blood of the enemy with a body in a cauldron of appropriate size, thickened pewter. There’s another annotation to another writing of the time, but we don’t have it.”
Draco narrowed his eyes a little. Potions without steps or methodologies were dangerous because they had inherent effects, Natural results from Natural magic and ingredients. Flesh, blood, and bone were all elements of Blood magicks. Without anything further to go on, they couldn’t possibly determine what would happen when these things were combined. What kind of state Veldemort would be in. Even in regular potion making, when they used Natural elements like blood in Amortentia, it was paired with specific steps and other ingredients. Its effects were predictable and tempered by methodology.
“I’m not sure how they would get a bone from Voldemort’s father, but the blood of the enemy has to refer to Potter, right?” Draco asked, sitting back and crossing his arms. “So maybe flesh of the servant is referring to the Death Eater they have at Hogwarts.”
“How could they get Potter’s blood, though?” Theo asked. “The trials maybe? He already broke an arm in the challenge with the dragons.”
“Maybe they’re going to arrange some kind of accident during one of the trials,” Draco said. “It would give the professors an excuse to treat Potter, and then the Death Eaters could get the blood that way.”
Theo shrugged. It was possible, and it made the most sense given all the circumstances. It was too coincidental - Death Eaters planning to resurrect their old leader, one of their own hidden in plain sight at Hogwarts, and Potter had slipped into the Tournament, though no one knew how it was possible.
“And!” Draco added. “Remember that Unforgivables lesson? Moody was obsessed with Potter, he was pawing all over him with the last part on the Avada Kedavra.”
“I can’t wait to tell Mya,” Theo said, smiling dopily. Draco watched him with interest, not one shred of jealousy igniting in his chest. He’d been on the right side of Theo’s dopey smiles before and there was nothing better, but he was feeling a similar way about the situation. Draco wanted Hermione to come home and call them clever. He wanted her to see them as smart and strategic. And frankly, he wanted Hermione to see Theodore as smart and capable, to see Draco himself as someone worthy of her time.
“You think she’s going to be impressed?”
Theo turned his smile to Draco and wiggled his eyebrows. “Trying to angle for a kiss, huh?”
~~~
Hermione picked at her New Years dinner. It was easier to keep the thought of her parents, looking dazed as they asked her their names, out of her head when she was at the Manor. When Theo and Draco were there to distract her with some new book or thoughtful conversation or debate, when Lucius was always first to pull her into a hug, when Narcissa was always just starting a kettle of tea with a smile for her.
“You good, ‘Moine?” Hermione almost didn’t look up at the use of her nickname, so lost in her thoughts, but Harry was leaned so far over the table between them his hair was almost flopping over Hermione’s plate. It was actually a surprise to see Harry there, given how much he and Ron had been fighting this year, but they had made up. And Harry had nowhere else to be but the Weasley’s for the Yule holidays.
“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. “Sorry, just lost in thought I suppose.”
“How are your parents, dear?” Molly asked with a kind smile. “Did you have a nice holiday?”
Tears sprung to Hermione’s eyes, but she grabbed for her goblet of water to hide her face in, and only when she was sure she wouldn’t cry did she look back up at Molly with a smile.
“They’ve been well!” she forced cheer into her voice. An image of Lucius sprang to mind, working in his study, and Narcissa reading in the sitting room. “My fathers been spending the holiday season reading. My mother, too. They don’t get much time for their books when they’re working and they don’t take appointments during the holidays, so.”
It was a white lie - a twisted tale that confused Hermione’s parents for the Malfoys, but it worked.
“That’s nice, dear,” Molly said with a smile. And then Hermione was forgotten all together and the Weasley’s went back to their supper.