Shards of Nuance

Hermione had never even considered working as a bartender. Her parents would probably have had a fit or two - or three or four - if they knew. It was in a muggle fishing village on the northernmost end of the Orkney Islands that she found herself bartending four nights a week. The town and its inhabitants smelled always of gutted fish, and the men who graced the bar during her shifts bore fresh stains from the docks every day. Few women regularly accompanied them; once a week a group of older women who had grown up together in the town came by to spend the entire evening carousing amongst themselves, clearly relishing the sullen glances the men threw them when they roared in laughter. She eventually took over its management since the man who owned it was a regular drunkard and knew he was running the business into the ground. After he got over his failed ambition to bed her, he decided she was uncommonly capable and deputized her, to the relief of the bar’s few, desperate employees.

In her evenings, she earned a muggle university degree in economics through distance study, mostly so she could procure massive amounts of literature through its library mail service. The librarian at the university knew her almost as well as Madam Pince had, by name if not by face. She reluctantly continued her research with Flitwick and Slughorn by owl and occasional visits in a dark pub in the wizarding community nearby, her only consistent connection with her former life. She started experimenting with properties associated with converting magical energy from one spell to another while the spell was in action, a discovery incidental to the research the professors did not find interesting enough to pursue. Besides being amusing, it also provided her with a side gig inventing new potions and altering existing ones for customers who wished to remain unidentified. She altered love potions to become effective on magical creatures, luck potions to mimic the imperius curse, magical fertilizers to change the cellular makeup of growing plants, Polyjuice to change the user’s voice in addition to their appearance. She let her disillusionment drive her into a grey area, aiding questionable characters with questionable motives, and that was enough involvement with the wizarding world for her now. She toyed a few times with using her discoveries to work on a way to reverse the obliviate spell she’d cast on her parents. She abandoned the idea each time because she didn’t know how she could possibly explain to them what had happened to her, to everyone, and why she’d done what she’d done. She feared they would be even more estranged if they remembered her and realized she wasn’t who they thought they knew.

Every now and then, an owl from wizarding London arrived for her carrying news, requests, or just prattle from one of her friends or McGonagall. She replied curtly, assuring them she was well and always disoriented the owl before she sent it back so they could not trace her. About a year after she’d left, she begrudgingly visited the Burrow to stand with Harry at his and Ginny’s wedding. She stayed long enough for the photos and one drink, disappearing before Ron could get her alone to talk. Because the Daily Prophet opined about her presence as much as it did about the actual wedding, she resolved to not return for the foreseeable future.

It was almost her 21st birthday – so she would be 22, she reminded herself – when a fisherman new to the area broke the unspoken agreement she so far had with the townspeople. She was wiping glasses behind the bar, adding pithy comments about new soccer club in Scotland, when he cocked his head at her with an uninhibited smile.

“C’mon, Hermione. How’d a pretty lass like you end up in this town? It’s a dead end, and you seem pretty smart. What’s the story? Whatcha running from?”

“It’s the dead fish,” one of her least favorite regulars slurred. “The smell really gets her going.”

There was laughter all around, which increased when she popped him with her rag, leaving a red welt on his cheek.

“Well?” The first man prompted.

She decided to tell them the truth. “Well, there was a big fight between two powerful groups where I lived. It went on for a long time, years. In the end, a whole bunch of people on both sides died.”

“Which side were you on?”

“The side that won. We fancied ourselves the Good Guys, paragons of the Light, and we acted like we were everyone’s salvation.”

“Paragons,” one guy snorted. “Posh.” This earned him an eye roll from the young woman.

“But weren’t you?” The first man said. “If your people won, and people stopped dyin’ and getting’ hurt…”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing. People didn’t stop hurting each other. The violence didn’t end. It just became different. And it came from everyone – not just the bad guys. I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. So here I am.”

“You picked a shit place to come. Must not be quite as smart as you seem.” The smartass again.

The first man wondered aloud. “Where was this? Wouldn’t we have heard of it if it was such a big deal?”

“No.” Hermione paused. “No, it was really insular. None of us were really as important as we seemed to ourselves.”

They mercifully accepted that, and life continued uneventfully for some time more.

**

All sorts of nameless people came through her bar on their way somewhere, or on the way to nowhere – Hermione never pried. Some wanted to spill their story to a safe listener, and she was pretty good at being that for them. Some wanted to say nothing; she served them in solidarity. Two years made her rather fond of the townspeople, and she developed a sense of protectiveness for them that had been laying latent, exhausted from the war with Voldemort. Her seriousness was her most defining characteristic to him, and they came to view her as the tavern’s benevolent ruler.

One Tuesday night, after the garrulous group of women left, she was changing a few taps when she noticed a new customer at the far end of the bar by the wall. Conventionally attractive long black hair was remarkable enough in these parts, as was a woman alone in this bar. Hermione slung her rag over her shoulder and went dutifully to her.

“What’ll you have?” she said casually.

A deep, heavy voice sent a rigid shiver up Hermione’s spine before she knew why. “Whiskey double.” None other than Bellatrix Lestrange lifted her head to make eye contact.

“On the rocks?” Hermione’s voice wavered, but she didn’t allow her face to betray her surprise and anxiety.

“No.”

Hermione poured a double shot of the only whiskey they had, willing her hand not to tremble as she placed it in front of the woman. She cursed herself for not having recognized the distinctive curly, black hair and fled to the other end of the bar to serve another customer.

Neither of them gave any indication of recognition, except that Hermione’s magic spun in a slow, gold funnel upwards around her. Her ears and cheeks burned while wondering if Lestrange could see it, and she almost missed the observation that she could neither see nor feel any of the violent, silvery-red raw magic that she associated with the woman. When she dared to look at the dark witch again, the woman was gone, payment left on the table next to the empty glass.

It bothered Hermione. Bloody Bellatrix Lestrange had waltzed right out of her past into her muggle bar, said nothing, did not even acknowledge her, and left without any explanation as to her presence whatsoever. It bothered Hermione that she was here in the islands and not in London. It bothered her that she was in the muggle world and not in a wizarding town. It bothered her that she looked exactly the same as she had two years ago before the Wizengamot. It bothered her that the woman’s eyes were hollow, and that she radiated none of her infamous magic. She almost wrote to McGonagall, then almost to Shacklebolt. She drafted a letter to Andromeda Tonks but burned it as soon as she finished it. A few days of agitation ended with her resolving to put the dark witch from her mind and carry on. However, the fates, which it took Hermione a long time to deign to believe in, would not have it that way.

Two weeks later, a riotous thunderstorm forced the boats off the water and the dockhands inside early for the day. The bar was the only truly dry place in town, so it was stuffed full of people all afternoon and all night. The owner boasted about how well his new roofing was performing in the rain. Hermione, of course, would never tell him that she had placed a waterproofing charm on it just before the downpour started.

She hardly ever payed attention to those coming in the door until they arrived at the counter, but that day she did not miss the slim figure with those distinctive curls plastered to her face by the rain. Lestrange did not leave her coat at the door, and its hem spread thick splatters of water across the floor on her way to the bar.

“Hey, lady! Fix your coat. Someone’s gonna slip on that and die, and it’s not gonna be my fault.” The owner lifted his drunken voice.

Lestrange gave him a withering look from which he shrank. He did not pursue the matter further as she settled into the far seat against the wall.

Hermione took a deep breath, exhaled to steady herself, and approached the woman. Lestrange’s hair was sopping, and Hermione could see that the shirt under her coat was soaked, clinging to her body. She was wiping water off her face and trying to dry her hands on her pants to no avail.

“Whiskey double?” asked Hermione, trying to pretend she wasn’t watching the woman shiver.

“Yes.” Lestrange’s teeth chattered even though they were clenched tightly.

The former Death Eater looked pathetic, Hermione thought. She wondered how long she’d spent in the rain and why she hadn’t used a water repelling charm, or just a drying charm after the fact. The Ministry’s trace for the rehabilitated Death Eaters couldn’t be so strict as to discourage simple, personal spells like those. Restricting their ability to use magic like that was basically keeping them from using magic at all. Why go through all the effort of a trace if - ?

That’s it. Hermione sucked in her breath and frowned. The Ministry said they “pruned” her magic. They cut it out. She can’t perform magic anymore, and she has no wand. She’s freezing. She felt like some old wound opened in her body.

It shouldn’t have mattered; most people in the world spent their whole lives dealing with cold, wet clothing without spells to comfort them. Most people also weren’t murderers and serial torturers. Surely if anyone deserved to be cold and helpless, it was the woman in front of her. She told herself all these things and more, but it wasn't enough. She couldn't name what came over her, but when she placed the glass down in front of the dark-haired witch, she also laid her arm flat on the table. Her wand was concealed under her forearm and palm, the very tip steadied between two fingers pointing at the woman’s torso. Lestrange’s eyes widened at the implications of the gesture and then widened even more as a warming charm left Hermione’s wand and rushed over her. Hermione opened her mouth as if to say something but then sheathed her wand and went back to work for other customers.

“Can I get another?” Lestrange croaked hesitantly when Hermione was in her general vicinity again.

Hermione poured it silently in front of her with her eyes still averted, then said, “It’s on the house.”

After a bit, Lestrange left money for the first drink and let herself back out into the night.

Hermione did not love that she felt sorry for the woman, but then again she was not proud of most of things since the war.

**

It was less surprising when Lestrange returned the next week. Hermione brought her drink and pretended not to notice when the woman muttered a thank you. The men were a little rowdy that night and there were a lot of things that demanded her vigilance and heavy hand. She had long since made herself unattainable, so she simply fielded crass comments with grace and sarcasm. Most of the other women were not so lucky.

She’d stopped serving Janek early in the evening and threatened to throw him out if he became any more of a nuisance. Sullen, he began scouring the bar for some sort of amusement. His gaze landed on Lestrange sitting quietly at the counter. He made some comment to the guys around him, who began to egg him on with jeers and slaps on the back. He swaggered over to her, inserted himself between her and the next chair, and leaned on the bar expectantly.

“Hey lady. Wha’s your name?” He slurred.

“Go away,” was the unphased reply. The dark-haired woman’s gaze was fixated on her middle finger running along the rim of her glass. Hermione instinctively moved closer to them, sensing something teetering.

“C’mon baby. Pretty ladies like you don’t come into this bar without a strong man taking care of ‘em.” He leaned in. His friends giggled.

“Fuck off.”

“Leave her alone, Janek.” Hermione warned.

He lifted his hand to touch her waist, but that was all she needed. In a flash, he was pinned against the wall, faced smushed at a painful angle. He cried out in pain as she twisted his arm unnaturally around his own back. One hand squeezing the base of his skull hard enough to leave marks on his skin, she let out a deadly whisper that most in the room strained to hear. “I said to fuck off.”

Then she released him and returned to her seat. He stumbled away with a small amount of blood scuffed across the already purpling cheek that had been pressed to the wall.

Hermione gestured to the men he’d been sitting with. “Go. All of you. Get him out of here.”

They rushed to leave. A few minutes of whispers passed before the room regained its normal dull roar. Hermione carried a tray of clean glasses to the counter to dry next to Lestrange.

“What’re you gonna do, Granger?” Lestrange drawled. It was the first time that either of them had acknowledged the other’s identity. “You gonna report me to the Ministry?”

All the thoughts that flicked through Hermione's mind made her feel like she took a long time to respond, but the other woman didn’t notice much of a lag. “No. Serves him right. He’s a menace. Someone needed to do it.”

Lestrange chortled, and her lips cracked into a real, live smile. “Well, happy to help then.”

Hermione smirked while keeping her attention on wiping glasses. “Another drink?”

“I’ll pass tonight.” Lestrange threw some coins down on the counter and rose from her seat. “Keep the change, Granger.”

“If you come back,” Hermione’s voice stopped her. “Just call me Hermione.”

Lestrange snorted again. “Well. Then. Bellatrix.” She extended her hand across the bar.

Incredulous, Hermione took it. A spasm traveled up her arm, but the hand remained warm, firm, and almost comforting. Then it was over. Lestrange – no, Bellatrix – wrapped herself in her coat and walked out.