The trials continue, while Magical Society goes about cleaning its own house. More than once, she is called to testify. More than once she waits to hear Malfoy give his side of the story. His recounts are faultless, tying in with what she knows, but does not say. Some stories are not hers to tell. His voice has a sonorous quality, but the content is bald and harsh. His facts are unforgiving, his fingers tap-tap to their own beat while he speaks, are still during the rebuttal and start again with the pitch and roll of his voice.
He turns his face aside at the death threats that are hurled at him, baring his teeth only once, when an accused references his Mother. She watches his knuckles whiten painfully against the rail he grips and witnesses the limits of his patience while his words spill out with more sibilance and venom. She notes that his eyes move more often than the rest of him. They avoid her at every turn until the end, when he affords her an ambivalent nod.
She follows him once, from the dock to the bank of three elevators, where one is ready and waiting. He steps to the back of the car and turns, apparently untroubled to find her on his heels, but not on board. She stands in the corridor, still, as if rooted to the spot. She knows she has faced worse things alone than Malfoy in an elevator car.
"Coming or not? He asks over her head, impatience masked, but barely.
"You wear a lot of black," she says, because he does. She thinks she has never seen him out of them and then blushes furiously because her mind wanders when she is not concentrating on concentrating.
"I know a lot of people who are dead," he replies, so very matter of fact. "And so do you."
She wasn't ready for it and she folds her lips inwards to bite at them rather than cry.
He closes the guard doors without another sound, slapping at the buttons with the heel of his hand before giving her his back. His head tips up, she watches as he grips the front of his hair while he disappears from sight.
-:-
At home, Hermione stands in front of her dresser in nothing but her underwear and nylons. The mirror shows her body more lushly rounded than she remembers it, although her hip bones are more sharply prominent than they should be. Behind her, the wardrobe door hangs open, displaying a rail with more black hanging from it than any other colour.
She fingers the one dark blue jersey dress with a print that might be leaves or just ovals in a paler tone, jumping half out of her skin when the clock radio bursts into life, letting her know about the congestion on the M25 around Windsor and problems on the Circle line. It's only later, when there is no mention of the Underground stoppage on the evening news, that she realises the Tube must have stopped, because someone she dimly knew had the worst day ever.
-:-
The Department of Mysteries is Hermione's new home, in so far that she spends more time there than anywhere else. In some areas, wizarding robes are eschewed for lab coats, silence is revered, along with science, rather than the posturing and pratting about that goes on in the rest of the building.
She has been fortunate enough to develop an idea that first came to her in the Library at Hogwarts – how to make the vast quantity of knowledge more accessible and digestible to the student body. A practical solution presented itself when she took up work at the Ministry. She accidently dropped a thesaurus in the Think Tank in the Department of Mysteries, and the entire book appeared to dissolve in under a minute. Prophecies immediately following the incidents used a lot of awfully long words.
The intern was supposed to be part of a cross-border graduation program. By all accounts, she was lucky to get her own assistant back after what happened. The brief time he was away seemed to have honed his thinking.
Hermione has an office in the main building for administrative purposes, since access to the Mysteries is restricted at all times to Authorised Personnel only, and her interaction is required from time to time. The name given to her and her colleagues are Unspeakables. It is meant to denote the fact that they do not speak about their work with anyone outside of their own distinct circle. Draco Malfoy is not one of them, but has obtained the use of the same name in reference to himself, in his own inimitable way.
His office is three floors up from hers, on the corner of the building so he has windows on two sides. She passes the closed door on her way back from the Department of Mysteries. She could swear she didn't even glance at his nameplate, but Milicent Fabray calls out on entering her own office next door that he had left for a working lunch and wouldn't be back this afternoon.
Hermione doesn't ask who his lunch companion is and in the morning doesn't have to, the lavatory is very informative. The current score by her count is 9 out of 10 prefer blonds, the less than perfect rating is because the intern did not leave a remark, it would have been difficult, from under a Tube train. Maintenance have stopped asking what she wants and just gives her a time by which they will have the job done.
-:-
In the sanctuary of a cul-de-sac in the heart of the Mysteries, her young assistant, Colwyn Perdot, a Ravenclaw from the class of '95, freshly returned from the wilds of Bulgaria, extracts a precise amount of fluid from a rectangular tank not unlike a domestic aquarium. Passing it into a stoppered test tube and holding it up to the light, he compares it to a colour chart, making concise notes on parchment snapped fast to a clipboard. In the far corner of the tank, a wizened brain the size of a monkey nut drifts idly with neural tails trailing behind it.
"What happened?"
"I thought it was a population crash but the pages per millilitre are steady and there is no sign of any brain fragmentation." His accent enforces the recognisable globalisation that the wizarding community has undergone in recent times. Colwyn is the product of a French father and Welsh mother, which makes watching him watch the International Quidditch tournaments a sport in its own right.
Hermione inspects the bottom of the tank. Instead of the gravel bed, all she can see looks like grey sludge. The humorous 'no fishing' ornament, normally in plain sight, is completed obscured.
She rests her fingertips against the glass and waits. After a time, the sludge stirs, resolving into thousands of individual mounds of grey matter. She can feel the temperature of the glass rise with the activity in the cloudy fluid.
"What are we feeding them today?"
"Arcane and Arcanalia, Magical Properties of the Highland Lochs and The Complete Works of Shakespeare."
A few brains detach from the tank bed, drifting to hover around where she touches the glass.
"Give me the first two. I want to check the last one."
The stack of books appear on the workbench beside her elbow.
"You can go," she says thoughtfully, watching the swarm of brains rising to collect around her contact. "I'll write it up." From time to time, what looks like a small electrical discharge is emitted from the neural tails of brains in contact with the glass. Welcome back. We know. Everything.
"I think they were sulking without you," comments the Ravenclaw.
"They are not supposed to be emotive in this state."
"I don't think feelings die when a body does."
Hermione does not say anything, but cannot agree more. Feelings she does not want to put a name claw at her throat. Her voice is wooden, when it comes.
"That will be all."
Leaving her hand in contact with tank she turns her face to her young colleague and offers a wan smile to take the sting from her words. The test tube he held, that was on the way to his lab coat pocket, diverts, and is left resting on the counter top. Turning away and back to the tank means that she misses the wistful expression on his face as he departs.
In leaving her, he misses the fact that brains continue to cluster around Hermione's contact with the tank. If one stood back, in the right light, the presentation and orientation of them provide shading across the expanding wall of contact, such that they take on the appearance of a human face.
When she is sure she is alone, she sniffs and clears her throat. With a wave of her wand, two of the books shred themselves to confetti and funnel into the tank fluid. The liquid clouds further immediately, the 'face' dissolves, light reflects from brains moving at breakneck speed to devour the new pages. The tank soon clears to its previous condition.
Watching the brains movement after the feeding frenzy reminds Hermione of a study she undertook as a Muggle, on Brownian motion, and equally of Ron. Their last morning together was the inane rambling meeting and unmeeting of minds that shared space results in. What came next, was the unpredicted draught, driving their respective particles apart.
-:-
At lunch, she destroys a salmon and cream cheese bagel in the canteen, leaving most of it on her plate and eating only the silvers of fish and a few crumbs stuck to her fingers. Witch Weekly letters page is its usual collection of falsehoods, rumours and titillating tidbits. She memorises every third word in every second article on the Letters page to get what she needs. Malfoy takes the seat opposite her uninvited, brooding under heavy brows and elegantly black, apart from where his skin shows as almost translucent white.
"You need to eat more."
She glares at him balefully. All he has brought with him is a Mars bar and a can of full fat Coke, neither of which have been touched.
"Not going out today?" She replies archly. She has a pile of parchment to annihilate back in her office before the avalanche of it smothers her desk entirely and no time for his games. He crosses one lithe leg over the other and balances his wand on his raised knee where it spins like a weather-vane, towards her.
"Heaven forbid I should feed before I fuck." His cultured tone belies the crudeness of his statement. The words worm their way under her clothes, making her skin prickle.
"What's your point?" She thinks of geisha girls as the table for a meal, of him taking sustenance from a naked body using nothing but his tongue and teeth. His cheeks hollow, almost as if he was swallowing a smile. She realises she was staring at his mouth. Her shoulders snap back, putting more distance between her, and him.
Shockingly fast he grasps her wrist, holding her tight, tighter, tightest, eventually grinding the bones against each other so that she pulls back, not because it hurts, not really, but because it is both alien and familiar.
"You're alive, but you don't feel it." He lets her tug against his grip, opening his fingers to allow her to slip through. She rubs the reddened skin absently, letting his words sink in and find their own level inside her.
His wand has clattered to the floor and he has let it roll between their feet. She feels the brush of air when he accios it back into his hand. He leaves the chocolate and cola. After a while, so does she.
-:-
When Hermione leaves for the evening, she counts the stories up until she finds his window with the light still on. She huddles in the coat that is a size too big for her now and buys fish and chips in a polystyrene tray to fill the walk home. The vinegar stabs at her tongue, there is more batter than fish, but it is hot, satisfies a need and is what she fancies. She sucks at her fingers when she is done, tonguing the grooves clean, thinking about Malfoy and his mouth.
At home she changes the bed; showers, believing it will help relax her and infuriates herself when it doesn't. She re-dresses more casually, certain that sleep is as distant as it ever was, swaps her heels for flats and light for dark. Work will keep her occupied shortly, she has only to wait.
Muggle TV spams her brain with nothing that holds her attention and the grease from supper repeats unpleasantly. She flicks through the book of Shakespeare by the flickering light of the TV, as much for distraction as entertainment, until a quote from Much Ado About Nothing has her up and out of her seat. "For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?"
There is no wine. She knows, although she checks the under counter fridge to be sure. She doesn't want a bottle, for fear she might do it justice.
Donning Ron's black leather bomber jacket, she stuffs her keys in one pocket and a twenty pound note in the other. A glance in the mirror shows her chin set stubbornly above wide determined eyes, there is work to be done after all.
-:-
Her Local is busy enough to pack the street outside the main doors, some patrons smoking, some not, all are loud and opinionated. Politics and light entertainment, the budget, the scandals, flicker in and out of her hearing. None of it makes any sense within the context in which she lives and works. The bouncers let her in without a second glance, just another Muggle or so she would have them believe.
Pubs have a specific scent, a flavour to the air all their own and this one is no different. It has as much impact as the blare of a car horn or the opening bars of a musical piece. She has never brought anyone here before, it has no memory for her other than exactly how it is now.
She orders a large glass of white wine, pays and leans her back against the bar, hugging the sweating glass to her cheek. The first taste is a gulp, the second and subsequent more ladylike, or at least she would like to think so. The chill liquid goes down as her shoulders go up.
His hair is startling enough in daylight, it is incandescent under Muggle lighting and she is not the only one noticing. Something about him keeps the vixens away though, perhaps that he dresses like an undertaker or loan shark. Perhaps now, because she is here.
Silence settles like silt between them. She didn't seek him out, this is her turf, closest to her home. She wouldn't expect to find him in a Muggle establishment anyway, but here he is. As with all of these places the light is best at the bar and neither of them have anything to hide, so that is where they stay.
"I didn't know you didn't drink." She says, stares at him endlessly stirring the thick black of his coffee. The dark liquid moves sluggishly against the white bone china, the spoon circles without a single scrape and his hand shifts barely at all.
"I didn't know you did." Everything he says sounds like an accusation. She cups the bottom of her wine glass, as if to hide the contents or how little is left. It's enough to make her not want it, except that she chose it and it's hers. She owns her choices, it's what she does.
"I'm not leaving with you," she says firmly.
"That's good then," his cheeks hollow again, although his eyes are pinned securely to the bowl of the silver spoon brought up and out of his coffee, just enough to eddy and ripple the smoothly swirling surface. "Because you don't have a surreptitious bone in your body."
"I haven't had the practice," she bites. She could have left it, but can't. It wouldn't look right.
He drinks in a smooth motion, from the way his fingers curl about the curve of the cup rather than the handle, to the mesmeric glide of his adam's apple, she watches him. His eyes narrow, but do not close and then they tighten at the edges, as if the beverage was still too sour despite the paper cases of a dozen sugar cubes scattered every which way, or he remembers something he'd rather not.
He must get a manicure regularly somewhere for his fingers to look like that. She never thought him vain before, perhaps he always has been, or has become that way. It would be one way to get the blood off them at least.
"No," he says deliberately replacing the cup dead centre to the saucer and adjusts the handle. "You haven't."
He peels one of her hands from her glass, stretching her arm towards him and turning her wrist to examine it and the faint bruising that appeared after her shower. His fingers are as pale as the skin where her veins run blue below the surface.
"I'm sorry. You make me forget myself."
She snatches it back when she realises he means to touch his lips to it. He tips his head far back, mouth parting to say something more and then nothing.
-:-
A/N: Brownian motion or pedesis describes the apparently random movement of dust particles in air, or pollen grains on water. It was instrumental in proving the theory that atoms and particles exist.
Geishas have been known to serve as human platters for food.
There is a version of 'Much Ado' available on DVD with David Tennant. Shakespeare has never looked better on a person.
