We arrived at my apartment with a small pop, startling Crookshanks out of a nap. He stretched his back, digging his claws into the arm of my favorite chair, and stood up with an irritated look on his face.
"Sorry, Crooks," I apologized, gathering him in my arms and snuggling him. "Where were you last night? Stalking around the courtyard?" He ignored my question and peeked over my shoulder at Mrs. Malfoy. I tightened my grip, afraid he might attack her like he attacked Peter Pettigrew.
Mrs. Malfoy was oblivious to the whole interaction. She hung her robe alongside several others on my coat rack and made a beeline for the stacks of books that were overrunning the room. "You have quite a collection," she said, brushing her fingers along the spines. I stared as she slid a book out of the middle of a stack to skim a few pages, then levitated the stack to put it back in exactly the same place. She pulled out another book and brushed a hand reverently across the front before opening it. A minute passed like that, as if she'd completely forgotten why we were here. Right then, I saw a lot of myself in her, and I couldn't quite put my finger on how I felt about that. Crookshanks hopped out of my slackened arms and toppled the tallest stack in the room.
"Crookshanks, no!" I cried, reaching out too late to stop the cascade of books across the wooden floor.
Mrs. Malfoy jerked at the noise, then watched my huge cat push one of the fallen books toward her with his squashed nose. He lay down upon it, looking at her expectantly.
"What in the world!" she exclaimed, reaching out for the book. It had seemed like he wanted her to read it, but now he wouldn't budge. "Perhaps if I pay the toll first," she surmised, giving his ears a hearty scratch and brushing his long coat. That must've done the trick. He stood up and settled down nearby instead, leaving the book free for her to pick up.
"May I borrow this?" she asked, holding it up for me to see. It was one of my books that speculated on possible sources of magic. It wasn't rare or dear to me, so I had no reason to decline.
I gestured for her to take it, not trusting my voice. I was dumbfounded by the exchange. My cat was a traitor and Mrs. Malfoy was in my apartment rooting through my books. All of a sudden it was too much.
"Let's go. Phoebe is expecting us," I said, chucking my robe on the chair and opening the door.
"Right, of course," she said, hurrying over and banishing the book to some other place, perhaps her own library.
I tapped my wand on my sweater to remove the cat hair Crookshanks had so generously shed on my clothes, then hid it away. Mrs. Malfoy followed me out of my apartment and down the hall. I had a first floor room, which Crookshanks loved since he could come and go through the window, so it didn't take long to leave the building and cross over to the east side of the courtyard where Phoebe lived. There were four buildings around the quad, in various states of disrepair.
"You really live here?" she asked, eying our surroundings with distaste.
"Not all of us can afford mansions," I replied, trying not to be offended. Every apartment in these crummy buildings held more warmth and joy than all the rooms in her fancy house.
"With your status among us, you could live practically anywhere you want," she told me. "You're a war hero."
"I want to earn what I have," I retorted. "But I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand that."
She shook her head. "I think you underestimate the value of what you did for people. Stopping a powerful wiz—ah, murderer—isn't a trivial matter. You have earned so much more than what you ask for." She had to limit herself to muggle terms when we reached Phoebe's building where regular people were coming and going. She shied away from them whenever they got too close, which seemed a bit excessive to me.
I held the door open for her, figuring she wouldn't want to touch it. "I don't want to be paid back for doing the right thing. It cheapens it."
"How does that cheapen it? Don't you think people would feel good knowing they gave something back in return? Wouldn't you want to do something nice for someone who saved you?"
I frowned, unable to see any flaws in her argument, but still convinced that my way was more noble. We fell silent as we reached Phoebe's door.
"I had intended to go over our cover story on the way here," Mrs. Malfoy said quietly. "But I must admit I got rather sidetracked."
"We'll be fine," I assured her. "Phoebe is brilliant at what she does, but she never notices when I fib."
She nodded once, checked that her wand was concealed at her side, and knocked quietly on the door.
Phoebe opened the door with a big smile. "Come in, come in. Now stop right there!" The petite young woman shifted like a rockslide to block my path. "Okay, sit here, just don't get near my computer. I have a lot of programs running and I don't want you to mess them up." She gave me a good-natured glare and added, "Again."
Before I knew it, she had crammed Mrs. Malfoy and I together into her tiny couch, stuffed a mug of tea in each of our hands, and sat upon a kitchen chair in front of us.
"There," she said, looking satisfied. "What can I do for you?"
I smiled as I saw Mrs. Malfoy struggling to regain her poise after that whirlwind. I had the advantage here, accustomed to Phoebe's bossy and energetic welcomes.
"Thank you for agreeing to see us, Miss...?" the prim and proper witch began, trying to sit up straight in the sagging couch.
"It's just Phoebe," my neighbor replied.
"Very well, Phoebe. My name is Narcissa Malfoy. I assist in the management of a small non-profit organization," she explained, launching into our cover story. I listened to her repeat the tale I'd concocted, lying so convincingly that I wondered if she ever told the truth about anything. I watched her for any sign of deception, but her elegant gestures matched every expression, and her lips quirked with a smile at all the right moments.
"And you're working on this project too, Hermione?" Phoebe asked, looking at me.
I'd been staring too long and lost track of the conversation. Luckily, I could play back what my ears had just heard, after a fashion.
"Yes," I said with only a moment's delay. "It's something fulfilling to do with my free time."
"As if the work you do for minorities isn't fulfilling enough," she said, laughing. I'd previously told her the muggle-safe version of what I did at the ministry.
"And as if I have any free time," I joked with her, hiding my discomfort. My work really should've been fulfilling, but it didn't stimulate my mind enough.
"I swear, you workaholics put us all to shame. But I'm totally on board with this. If you think this non-profit is legit, Hermione, I'm in."
"Excellent," Mrs. Malfoy said, reminding me of yesterday when I'd voiced my interest. This time, sitting right next to her, I could feel her relief by the way her body relaxed, leg pressing against mine. Now there's one true thing I know about her, I thought to myself. She's deeply invested in this project. She must be up to something. I tore my eyes away from her again when Phoebe got down to business.
"Okay, Narcissa—can I call you Narcissa? I'm not big on last names. Who wants to be tied to their asshole family forever?"
"I can relate," Mrs. Malfoy replied dryly, making me snort in amusement at the unexpected comment.
Phoebe grinned. "A kindred spirit. Anyway, I can do this for you pretty quickly. How far back in time do you want me to search?"
"Just this year is fine," I said and handed her my parchment with our keywords. "Here's a list of words to search for."
"Wow, you have some fancy paper. Okay, only posts within 1998, that's a reasonable time range. I'm sure you've already tried a search engine, but even Google's new PageRank algorithm can only do so much, right? So I'll write a script to scrape Usenet and other common message boards and chatrooms for posts with your keywords. After that, I can compare..."
Mrs. Malfoy sipped her tea, nodding blankly as she listened. I took a sip of mine as well, trying to follow along but having no better luck understanding. Phoebe described in detail how she would analyze the results and give us a table of word frequencies with correlations, but all the strange words—Usenet and scraping and what the hell was a Google?—had my mind in a jumble.
"Will you be able to print the results for us?" Mrs. Malfoy asked, remembering the word I'd used for it earlier. "I'm afraid I'm not especially good with computers."
"Sure, no problem. I have some clients who barely know how to turn the damn things on!" Phoebe shook her head. "Unbelievable. But yeah, I'll print it for you. Do you need anything else, or is that my only deliverable?"
I added a crucial point. "Can you put the results on a map of Great Britain? We're especially concerned with how weather in local regions affects people's moods."
"A map?" Phoebe repeated, scratching her head. "Well, maybe. If I can uncover people's IP addresses and try to trace them..." She mumbled quietly, deep in thought, then resurfaced. "Surely some of them can be mapped. It's tricky, but lucky for you I'm awesome."
Mrs. Malfoy tried to hide a smile at that. "How do you charge your clients, Phoebe?"
"Depends. I charge long jobs by the hour. But a simple job like this would be fixed-rate. Let's say fifty pounds total."
"Nonsense. Your services are quite important to our venture. One hundred pounds," Mrs. Malfoy declared.
"It's for a good cause. Sixty," Phoebe countered.
I snorted with laughter. "This negotiation is completely backwards." Not only that, but I'm sure the pureblood witch beside me had no idea how many pounds this kind of work was worth.
She looked at me, as if realizing this as well. "What do you recommend, Ms. Granger?"
"Seventy?" I compromised. Admittedly, I had no idea either.
Phoebe clapped her hands. "Sold! I'll have everything for you by tomorrow."
"That quickly?" Mrs. Malfoy asked.
"Unless something goes terribly wrong, sure. The data-mining itself won't take long at all. I've got a high-speed connection, not one of those 56K modems anymore. Making the data presentable is the time-consuming part."
"We'll let you get to it, then," Mrs. Malfoy said, trying again to sit up as the end of our meeting approached. "Your payment will be ready when we return tomorrow."
"Let me get you my business card so you'll have my contact info if you need it," Phoebe said, taking our teacups and walking away in search of her cards.
I stood up, using the arm of the couch to push myself up from its depths. Without my weight, Mrs. Malfoy's side sagged down even further. She struggled to get out of the couch until I had pity on her and reached out my hand to help her to her feet. She was lighter than I expected, and I ended up pulling her against me quite by accident.
"Um," I said, heart racing as we stood chest to chest. I hadn't realized how nice she smelled, like some unknown spice.
"Hmm," she replied, frozen in place with her hand on my waist. Without her heels, she would've been almost exactly my height. Quite a change from always reaching up to hug Ron, or dance with Krum back in the day.
I took a hasty step back. My throat was too dry to speak, even if I had thought of something appropriate to say. Being close to her felt very different from seeing her at a safe distance.
Phoebe rescued us from the awkward moment. "Aha!" she exclaimed. "Found one!" She rushed back over to us and handed a slightly rumpled business card to Mrs. Malfoy, who snapped out of her reverie in time to accept it graciously.
"Thank you, Phoebe," she said. "Same time tomorrow?"
"See you then," my neighbor agreed. "Feel free to come by sooner, Hermione."
I waved and walked out with Mrs. Malfoy, keeping my limbs close to me so I wouldn't brush against her.
When we were out of earshot of anyone in the hall, I tried to break the ice. "You were pretty convincing back there. I couldn't tell you were lying, even though I knew you were."
"The key to selling a lie," she confided, "is to convince yourself it's true."
"I suppose I should be glad you're lying for our side now."
"Perhaps we would find it easier to work together if your idea of 'sides' were a little more nuanced," she replied. Without waiting for me to respond, she asked, "Shall we reconvene here tomorrow at ten?"
My brow furrowed. "Aren't we both going back to the ministry now?"
"Yes, but until we have those results, the project is on hold. We can return to our respective jobs."
"Right," I said. "Separately. Oh, my satchel is still in your office. And I wanted to read that project file."
"I'll send a messenger. Good day." She slipped into a hidden nook by a stairway and vanished, back to the ministry presumably.
Her abrupt departure left me feeling off balance. Not wanting to think about her a moment longer, I walked straight back to my apartment, threw my robe back on, and apparated to the ministry. Before I knew it, I was back at my desk faced with the same mundane questions I faced every day. I summoned a file I'd been sifting through yesterday, looking for systemic problems in recent legal cases where magical creatures had lost.
Lethargy overtook me as soon as I started reading, even though only a minute ago I'd been fine. I leaned on my desk, supporting myself with my elbows, trying hard to focus. My mind refused to cooperate, flailing like an animal in a trap. I kept thinking about the dementors, wondering where they were going and whether they were capable of making plans.
"Hermione Granger?"
I jumped in my chair, looking up at the door. A wizard I didn't recognize held out my satchel and a flower. Herbology wasn't my strong suit, but it seemed to be a daffodil.
"Delivery from Narcissa Malfoy, of all people," he announced, holding out both items as if they were contaminated.
"Thank—thank you," I said, twirling the daffodil in my fingers as he tipped his hat and left. I'd completely forgotten to expect the messenger, but the flower was doubly unexpected. Was it a symbol of something? I knew flowers had meanings, but I hadn't the faintest clue about this one. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed it.
The moment I did so, the flower transformed into a file—the Project 404 file. When I set it down, it turned back into a daffodil. A smile spread across my face. Clever witch. She sent a classified file in style. I bit my lip and looked between it and the file I had been reading. Once again, I had to put my work first and set aside the thing I was more interested in. If this became a daily struggle, I might not last long.
I entirely skipped lunch in order to finish work an hour early, a common practice among ministry workers without public-facing jobs. I was looking forward to another nice evening reading the project file by the fire, but before leaving the ministry I went up a few floors to go see Neville Longbottom. The entire DA had stayed in touch after the war, so I knew he worked as an auror now. I found him at his desk at the headquarters, filling out a report.
"Neville, how are you doing?" I asked as I approached him.
"Good, Hermione! Just got back from a weird encounter with a witch who kept threatening to turn everybody into toads. Way to live up to a stereotype, eh? Almost got me, too!"
His hands caught my eye as he set his quill down. "Almost?" I asked, pointing to his fingers, which had noticeable webbing between them.
"Oh, drat!" he exclaimed. "The spell must've grazed me. I should go get this fixed. Wait, did you need something?"
"Nothing important," I replied and showed him the flower. "Just a quick question, do daffodils have a meaning?"
"They do!" Neville replied eagerly. "A lot of meanings, in fact. Most often it's stuff like 'regard' and 'new beginnings.' There's some more obscure ones too, like 'female ambition' and of course 'vanity.' I don't have to tell you the story of Narcissus."
I tensed. "Excuse me?"
"Narcissus is the genus of daffodils. From the Greek myth?"
"Right, I know the one," I said, relaxing again as the surprise faded. The flower was Narcissa Malfoy's namesake. It made perfect sense that she chose it, even if only for that reason. But she seemed like the type to have layers of meaning in everything she did. So which was it, new beginnings? How banal. Female ambition, perhaps.
"Thanks for the information," I said, giving him a smile. "Good luck with your toad problem, and best wishes to Hannah and the baby." I really was quite happy for him. He deserved good things after everything he'd been through.
"Good to see you. Let's have another DA meetup soon and catch up," he replied, waving as he hurried off to find someone who could make his hands 100% human again. I chuckled and left for home.
When I arrived at my apartment, I was greeted by a scream and a clatter.
"Hermione, you scared me! What are you doing here?!" Ron asked, clutching his chest. "Trying to give me a heart attack?"
"What am I doing here?" I asked, trying not to feel angry that he was in my home without asking.
"I mean, so early. I wanted to surprise you."
"Looks like I surprised you instead," I said, looking down at a pan of lasagna that he'd dropped on the floor by his feet. Luckily it had landed bottom-side down. He picked it back up and carried it to the woodstove.
"I'm making you dinner," he explained, setting the pan on the hot cast iron and adjusting the temperature with a hint of magic.
"That's nice of you," I said, feeling my stomach turning to lead. Not because of his cooking—he was alright with a few recipes, actually, after getting some lessons from his mum. But the dinner, the surprise, the hints Mr. Weasley dropped... it added up.
With the food cooking, Ron turned to me, took my robe to hang it up, and seemed like he was about to give me a "welcome home" kiss. I hugged him and kept my face turned away, feeling like a terrible girlfriend. This was not the easy, comfortable relationship I'd signed up for, but it was also quite reasonable for Ron to expect things to move forward.
"You feel tense," he observed. "What's up?
"I'm sorry," I apologized, searching for an explanation. "I spent the morning with Narcissa and I'm a bit wound up right now."
"Malfoy again? She needs to leave you the hell alone." He spotted the flower in my hand. "What's this? Do you have a secret admirer I should worry about?"
I blushed. "It's from Narcissa, not an admirer."
"Why would that hag give you a pretty flower?" he asked in disbelief.
"She's not a hag. And it's for work."
"First endless scrolls, now flowers. Well, let's have a seat and open the wine I brought. I don't want to hear about her all night, even if you and her are working together."
"You and she," I automatically corrected, wondering when I started thinking of her as Narcissa instead of Mrs. Malfoy. It was the flower's fault, really. Now that I associated her with it, her given name came to mind first. And Phoebe's fault, too. I decided to keep calling her by her last name in person, to avoid being too familiar.
I cleared my mind and sat across from Ron at my small kitchen table. He'd pulled it away from the wall and covered it with a red tablecloth and two candles. He poured wine into two pretty goblets—he really came prepared. I only took the slightest of sips from mine, though. I didn't much like the way alcohol affected my brain.
"How was your day?" I asked, attempting to bring a sense of normalcy to the evening.
"Pretty boring. We had to escort an Azkaban prisoner to St. Mungo's. He was docile as a lamb. Crazy, too. Kept muttering to himself."
"Being locked away for so long with dementors can have that effect," I said. Narcissa was right to worry about them. I suppose the ministry hoped if they ignored the problem, it would go away. But things are rarely that easy.
"Even with them gone, that island gives me the creeps," Ron revealed, then proceeded to tell me the long, drawn-out story of today's prisoner transfer.
"We planned on flying there from the closest apparition point, because we could make good time and the weather was..."
I nodded, trying to listen as the minutes went by. The daffodil lay on the table next to my plate. I fidgeted with it while he continued.
"...but as it turned out, you can't fly there directly. Unplottable islands, I tell ya." He shook his head. "So instead..."
I resisted the urge to smack my forehead. He'd spent ten minutes telling me about the reasoning for a plan that they didn't end up following. But I couldn't tell him to skip ahead—I'd tried that before. His memory is apparently much more dependent on chronological order than mine. It was a relief when dinner finished cooking, so I had something else to occupy me.
"How are the house elves and other creatures doing?" he asked when he eventually finished his story.
"Still struggling," I replied, cutting a noodle into tiny ribbons. "They keep getting the short end of the stick in business deals."
"Wizards—" Ron started with a mouth full of lasagna, then remembered his manners and swallowed first. He wasn't completely hopeless. "Wizards need to stop taking advantage of them."
"They ought to," I agreed. "But they have no incentive to. And you know courts, they always interpret contracts to the letter. As they rightly should! It's just so much for newcomers to learn." I stroked my chin. "Hmm. Maybe I should offer lessons for magical creatures, a whole series on contract law. It's a fascinating topic."
"Can't say I see how," Ron replied.
My work had seemed lifeless this afternoon, but on hearing that, a little bit of the old spark came back. "Contracts are the lifeblood of the economy, you know. Two parties agreeing to a net-positive exchange of value—it keeps the world turning. Trade helps prevent war, because why fight and risk destroying everything when you could trade for what you want?"
He stared blankly for a moment before shrugging and saying, "That's my Hermione, making the world a better place."
My fist clenched on my fork. That's all he got out of it? His Hermione, doing what she does? Maybe I wasn't explaining well enough.
"Do you see?" I asked, gesturing with an outstretched hand. "If people can agree on things, and trust each other to keep their agreements, that's the foundation for... society itself, really! I can see how the details would be boring, all the case law and technicalities, but do you see how it all works together to let us live and work in peace? Contracts might be one of humanity's greatest inventions."
He held my hand, stopping its increasingly agitated motions. "Gosh, Hermione. I guess so. You sound really sure, anyway. There is something I like about it. I mean, about people agreeing on things that are, er, positive."
"Net-positive. A win-win outcome."
"Right," he confirmed, getting out of his chair and reaching into his pocket.
Oh, no, I thought. Though I'd known all day that this might happen, I hadn't mentally prepared myself at all.
"Hermione..." he began, then turned as a knock sounded on my door.
I leaped out of my chair and threw the door open, not caring who might be there. I'd have welcomed a vacuum cleaner salesman if it meant I could get out of this situation.
"Hey, Hermione," Phoebe said, waving a piece of paper. "Thought you might like a sneak preview of my results."
"Phoebe! It is so good to see you!" I said, ushering her into my apartment. I caught Ron putting a small ring box back into his pocket.
She stopped just inside the door when she spotted Ron and our candlelit dinner. "Oh, shit. I've interrupted you. I'm sorry, I would've called first, but I don't have your number."
"Wait, don't go," I said, catching her arm before she could leave. "My boyfriend and I were almost done eating. You could join us for dessert."
She stepped back. "Your boyfriend. Right. I don't want to intrude. It can wait until tomorrow."
I couldn't stop her from darting back out the door, leaving me alone with Ron again. I squared my shoulders, getting ready to face the music, then heard Ron clearing the table.
"Is dinner over?" I asked, turning to face him.
"Apparently," he mumbled, looking almost sick. He mangled a sheet of the plastic wrap I'd once shown him how to use, covering the leftover lasagna and putting it in my mini fridge. "I should go, I'm sure you want to hear about those results."
I couldn't believe my good luck. He was about to pop the question, but he must've lost his nerve. Maybe everything could just stay like it was. A second later, my guilt came flooding back. He shouldn't have to stay in limbo.
"Ron," I said, tugging at a lose thread on my sleeve, "I should—"
"It's been a long day. Maybe I'll turn in early," he said, charming the plates to wash themselves and taking away the goblets and candles and tablecloth. "Have a good night, Hermione. I'll see you... sometime."
He disapparated loudly, leaving me with my head hanging. Again I thought of how perfectly justified he was in wanting to get married like Harry and Ginny and all the other couples we knew. Why couldn't I just follow that script? Maybe I'd warm up to the idea over time.
I picked up the daffodil from the table, gazing at it for a moment before sniffing it to turn it back into the project file. I opened it to the beginning and started pacing, but there wasn't enough room to think. My feet led me out the door and down the hall, where I escaped into the courtyard with a sigh and tucked the file under my arm. The evening air felt cool and refreshing. Crookshanks saw me and trotted over, weaving around my ankles and flopping onto his side.
"Hey, big guy," I said, feeling my tension slipping away. I stroked him for a few moments, then wandered away and started reading the compiled reports of the three researchers.
Each of them started out a similar way, everything going fine. Dementors weren't that hard to track, apparently, but they moved quickly. The researchers had followed the trail south from Hogwarts through the Scottish highlands, avoiding areas with muggles in case they needed to openly use magic to fight dementors. Right up to the end of each report, nothing seemed amiss. Knowing that they subsequently vanished—or worse—made their innocent observations about ridgelines and green scenery seem ominous. How did they not see any sign of what was coming for them?
I shivered, looking up from the last page of the file and realizing night had fallen around me. I hurried back to my apartment and locked the door behind me, then had to laugh at myself for getting spooked for no reason. Tomorrow I'd see whatever Phoebe had for us, and Narcissa and I would figure out where the dementors had gone, and then my life would go back to normal. That was all I wanted.
