Hello and welcome to my first attempt at fanfic. This piece is my attempt at one of my favorite guilty pleasure cliches, the dreaded Granger Family Reunion. Shall we see where it goes?
Hermione appararted into her kitchen after an exhausting day of work at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, where she found her boyfriend speaking on the phone.
"A reunion, you say? What's the date?" He was standing in front of the calendar that Hermione had hung on the wall with care, each month depicting a different Renoir painting. She'd have to talk to him about stretching out her phone cord. "July 14th? That's Bastille Day. Those damn English, never respecting your holidays." Draco let out a chuckle, and Hermione could hear a throaty laugh come from the phone. A joke about the English and that laugh could only mean Draco was talking to her mother.
"In Bath? We'd love to come. And Hermione just got in. Here, I'm sure she'd love to talk with you." Draco passed Hermione the phone without so much as a by your leave. She liked this about him sometimes, the sure confident way that he moved through the world. Other times it was irritating. Especially when she knew what this phone call was about.
"Hello darling," her mother said. Hélène had lived in England for all of Hermione's life, and some time before that, but she still retained a soft French accent. "Are you just getting home from work?"
"Getting home later every day, it seems. We're quite busy."
"I can only imagine. Well, my darling, I would love to spend some time catching up with you but your father and I are about to eat dinner, so I will make this quick. The Grangers are having a reunion in the summer, and we'd love for you and Draco to go. It's been too long since the last time we all got together."
Unspoken were the facts- not accusations, Hélène was never that cruel- that they had missed the last Granger family reunion because her parents had been memory charmed in Australia. Hermione sighed. There was no way to escape this with good grace.
"Of course we'll go," Hermione said, mentally kicking herself. "Did you already tell Draco the details?"
"He told me that he had written them all down."
"Then you better repeat them to me," Hermione said dryly. "He lies."
Helen gave another of her throaty laughs. "Of course he does. Your father is getting quite impatient to eat- I will send them to you in a letter. I love you, my darling."
"Love you too Mom," Hermione said, and replaced the phone on the cradle.
"I don't lie that much," Draco protested, his lean frame draped by the refrigerator.
"Then what was it that you told my mom? You were writing them down?"
Draco shrugged. "I was going to. On the calendar. But you get mad at me when I do it without your permission, so I had to ask first. It's telling the truth of the future."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Why are you here again? And why are you answering my phone?"
"Because you call me on it when you remember you'll be running late?" Draco said, studying his nails. Hermione threw her hands up in the air in frustration.
"It's almost like you live here."
"Almost. If you'd let me help out with your mortgage I would actually be living here. Now, Thai or fish and chips for dinner?"
After dinner, after Draco had called out the order for Thai and apparated away to pick it up and Hermione had shed her Ministry robes and changed into jeans and a soft, warm sweater, Draco leaned over and kissed Hermione tendlerly.
"It's going to be okay, you know. The reunion."
Hermione stabbed at her basil fried rice with chopsticks with more fury than was perhaps healthy. She sighed deeply. It wasn't fair to hold onto this anger and resentment she felt to her family.
"I know. It's just- my dad's family is difficult. My aunts and uncles are all a group of snobs. It's all about how much money you have and who you're acquainted with and what you do- or don't do. They've never forgiven my mom for working, you know. Even when I was away at school. And my cousins have learned from the rest of the family. Miranda's alright, but Imogene's the worst. There's this way of speaking that she uses where the most innocent, polite comment is an uncalled for insult."
"So they're like the muggle version of purebloods."
"Almost exactly the muggle version of purebloods, actually."
"Then you're lucky you've got the king of snobs to help you."
"Oh God help me," Hermione groaned. Draco just beamed.
"We'll make sure that they could never look down on you."
Draco had taken charge of impressing Hermione's family. He insisted on also booking a hotel room for Hermione's parents, which Hermione couldn't even find fault with because it made her parents so happy. Hermione let him continue, knowing that whatever he had done would be impractical and expensive, but not finding it in her heart to take over the planning. But then one Saturday morning, heading back to her house after a brisk run, there was a truck parked in front of her house. There was a flashy sports car parked on the truck. And Draco was standing in the driveway, casually waiting with his hands stuck in his pockets.
"What is this, Draco?" Hermione asked, wiping the sweat off her face and feeling like she wasn't certain she wanted to know.
"A car. A Murciélago, in fact."
"I've never heard of a Murciélago," Hermione said cautiously. Draco grinned widely at her.
"It's made by some bloke named Lamborghini. Blaise said he makes the best cars."
"You bought a Lamborghini." Hermione's voice was faint. Draco nodded, pleased with himself.
"I didn't realize how expensive cars are. It makes me respect the Weasleys a bit more. This thing cost me a pile of gold. Thirty eight thousand galleons, can you believe that?"
Hermione could. She considered explaining to Draco the difference in cost between a Ford and a Lamborghini, but found she didn't have the energy to argue. Instead she tried a different tact.
"Draco, neither of us can drive."
The truck at finished lowering the car onto the street in front of the house- Hermione's tidy home of two bedrooms and a small garden, now made gaudy and tacky by the car sitting outside it that cost more than her house was worth. The man driving the truck left the cab to have Draco sign for the car. He did so with a flourish and wide smile.
"Hermione, if muggles do it, how hard can it be?"
Draco got his answer when Hermione's dad, thrilled by the thought of getting to use a Lamborghini, volunteered to teach Draco to drive. Hermione agreed with the caveat that they not use the Bat, as she had begun to call it. Draco pouted and protested until his first driving lesson, where Hermione utilized a few well-hidden spells to stop Draco from plowing straight into a line of parked cars. After that he was much more careful. By the time the reunion had arrived he was able to drive without jerking the car straight from a stop. He was very proud of that development and he pouted immensely when Hermione insisted that wasn't enough skill to drive the car all the way to Bath.
"Hermione, the whole point of buying the Murciélago was to show it off," Draco said with the air of someone explaining a very simple concept to an upset child.
"You can show it off next reunion, when you can actually drive the thing," Hermione retorted.
She was getting quite nervous about seeing her family again. The last time she had seen her family she had been thirteen. Her cousin Imogene had asked her many careful probing questions about her school, then had smiled and said that it must be nice to go to school away from all the attention and pressure that a place like Eton give off. She could not defend her reputation or her school's excellence, and that was infuriating. It was even more annoying because only Uncle Phillip had attended Eton, and only for a year. But that brief brush with prestige had spoiled the whole family's mind.
Draco was nervous as well, though he'd never confess it. He was used to walking through the world where people knew him, for better or for worse. He had come to interact with muggles on a regular basis, and he was now acquaintances with her good friends and friends with her acquaintances. But he was not used to spending long periods of time with large groups of muggle who would be asking personal and possibly sensitive questions. And he didn't care for Hermione's attempts to practice his responses.
"I'll just be the muggle equivalent of a potioner. It's that simple."
"No, it's not Draco," Hermione countered, running her hands through her hair. "There's no equivalent. It's not a simple one to one comparison. If we say you're a chemist, the person who dispatches medicine, then they'll both mock you for choosing a middle class career and ask you what to take for all their symptoms. If we say you're in pharmaceutical sales, then they'll ask the same questions, plus more about the clients. And if we say you're in the business side or the R and D side-"
"R and D?" Draco asked, bored with the conversation already.
"Research and Development. Don't change the subject. If we say you're in R and D, then they'll want to know for what company, so we have to decide the story and do the research."
"Hermione, it's fine. I'll take care of it."
He would only say that it was fine, that he'd take care of it for days, until one morning he was awake and reading the newspaper as Hermione came into the kitchen. This was unusual. Draco split his time between studying for his potions mastery and running his company MalTech, and he made sure that both of those occupations happened in the afternoon.
"Have you seen the news today?"Draco handed her the newspaper as she entered the room and smirked. The Telegraph. The business section of the Telegraph. Hermione took it, fearing the result.
MalTech Pledged to Invest Millions in Malaria Research, the headline blared.
"You did this in five days?"
"It's been in the work since I founded MalTech," Draco shrugged. "But we were never sure if it would work. I just fast tracked it a bit. And it did."
Hermione had a hard time speaking. No matter her own upper class background, no matter how long she had been with Draco, it still shocked her sometimes the casual way he was able to freely spend more money than she'd see in the rest of her life. But that was not an issue she could deal with right now. Instead she focused on scanning the article.
"Why malaria?"
Draco shrugged. "All the other companies are off chasing these expensive drugs that will help a relatively small amount of people. A cure for malaria could save millions of lives."
His voice was so careful that Hermione's annoyance melted. She should have known. Draco had been seeking redemption for years. She wrapped her arms around him.
"This could be huge, Draco."
"It could," Draco said, serious and focused for once. He looked up at her and flashed a quick smile. "And, of course, now you get to introduce your family to your wealthy, successful businessman boyfriend."
"Well, I think it's a brilliant idea." She kissed him deeply. He wrapped his arms around her waist and returned her kiss.
"Of course it's brilliant," Draco smirked. "I thought of it. So what's my reward?"
Hermione laughed. "I think you know." Draco's smirk widened, and he began to unreel the silk robe that Hermione had worn to breakfast.
"My favorite reward," he murmured, and buried his face in her neck.
a/n: Thank you for reading!