Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).
***
From the journal of Hermione Granger
(undated – probably first week of October 1998)
When I close my eyes, I see the flow of currency in the ether. The numbers glide through the electric darkness across international borders, zeroes and ones at the cellular level, as I well know. On glowing screens continents away, great blocks of them move from hand to hand. This is magic. Actually, it's an exchange of promises, which is nearly the same thing: the alchemical minuet of money.
Like radioactivity, you can't see it, but it can kill you. It is the sinews of war, and the chief engine of human misery. And I am one of the myrmidons shoring up the walls, a sentry on the Great Wall of China, to keep that flow well within its channels, so that no unauthorized pipelines open up to divert it to other hands.
Nigel Black is rather fond of talking about money. He waxes poetic about market forces and the invisible hand. He smirks sidelong while doing so, and that's for my benefit even if technically I'm beneath his notice.
My fingers twitch thinking about the slim wooden rod that doesn't register on the security checks at the entrance. I made a sleeve holster for it, since I'm no longer comfortable if it's not within easy reach. In the loops of the holster, its well-worn handle nestles against the inside of my left wrist. In a heartbeat, I can slide my right hand into my left sleeve and be better armed than anyone in this building. Fortunately for Nigel, I am law-abiding both in this world and in my own.
Nigel talks about horse racing and the stock market and watching tennis at Wimbledon. He wants me to know that he commands more of that invisible stuff than most anyone in this room. He can reach out into the atmosphere and transmute skeins of that energy into solid goods at will. He's too genteel, of course, to say, I could buy you and sell you a thousand times over. Because the Right Sort don't do that.
At times like this, I resist the rude urge to stretch my fingers out in front of me and watch his pale eyes boggle as bolts of energy leap from fingertip to fingertip. I am too discreet to do that, and much too well-brought-up to say, I could kill you or take over your will or turn you inside out screaming in agony. Because the Right Sort don't do that.
If I close my eyes in these meetings, I hear his voice, which is so not of my world that it sounds unreal. I don't know his people, or his sort of people, because we simply never crossed paths; I've only ever seen them on television. (Or across the Great Hall at boarding school, but that's another story.) Regrettably, I have lost my cloak of invisibility—the metaphorical one—and I am being watched. Nigel's people have dealt in power for generations and he recognizes it even if it's not of a kind he knows. And he's intrigued by someone who isn't interested in what he has to offer.
Traditionally, that's the stuff of poetry (see unrequited passion), but frankly Nigel is rather a pest. He's intrigued by the exotic, so rather than leave it alone and find someone from his own world, he's pursuing the obvious alien who isn't interested in him. Unfortunately, he has nothing to offer me, and like his doppelganger in my world, he's too spoiled to comprehend that the world is not constructed for the purpose of giving him what he wants. No, let me be fair. Draco Malfoy has gotten a fair introduction to what he isn't going to get. In fact, the fates have seen fit to grind his face in it. Nigel Black, on the other hand, is still happily ensconced in a cocoon of hereditary privilege.
It's most distracting, because I never meant this job to be anything more than a sideline. I love the anonymity on this side of the border, but I'm coming to realize that it's temporary at best. I can visit here, but I can't live here. Even my pied-a-terre in the suburbs, the house in which I was reared by my professional-class parents, is an outpost of the other world. The notice-me-not is borrowed from Spinner's End, the nested perimeter defenses from Malfoy Manor. The upstairs rooms have heavy shielding to permit me to use electronics. Otherwise, inside that ring of magical energy, it would be as impossible to use the computer or the telephone as it is at Hogwarts or Diagon Alley.
Dean and I regularly go to lunch and eat Indian food and talk about crossing back over, but we both know that we can't live there. Dean's been tempted, because he's actually had some success selling his work, even without art school behind him. But we can't live as if we were one of them, because we aren't. Even if we pretend, our children will out us. Regardless of what Dolores Umbridge would like you to believe, magic breeds true—if anything, it seems to strengthen with out-crossing—and in the offspring of matches between Muggles and magicals, it behaves very much like a dominant trait.
Which, as it happens, was the subject of our conversation this week. Dean and I had lunch because I had news to give him. We found his father.
Not alive, unfortunately. But he turned up in a memory in the first wave of memory collection from the captured Death Eaters. Rodolphus Lestrange, as it happens, who's unavailable for further comment because he was one of the first to go mad when the Dementors returned to Azkaban fortress.
Mr. Thomas was apparently a wizard of some attainment, but he turned down an offer to join the Death Eaters. That's the reason he abruptly left his wife and son: for their own safety. Lestrange was the messenger who brought the offer, and also the assassin who followed up on the refusal. Interesting. Mr. Thomas must have been quite something for Voldemort to have sent the husband of Bellatrix to recruit him. And for once, I actually asked permission before I lifted something from the archives. I talked with Boudicca Derwent about it, because Dean is going to be called as a witness for the trials and he will find out anyway when he hears that his blood status has been changed from muggle-born to half-blood. Not that I hope any of that matters in the brave new postwar world, but it goes to prove that the Death Eaters may have been wizards but they were not database wizards.
I told Dean that he could tell his mother the truth, because it would probably help her to know what really happened, even if it's been more than eighteen years. Nothing's worse than having someone disappear without a trace and without a reason. And disappearance was a Death Eater specialty. We're still tracking those down. But that's another story.
***
Neville is sitting on the couch in his front room at Hogwarts, petting Crookshanks, while Hermione labors over the NEWTs revision schedules. She looks up from time to time to watch him. Her cat has made himself thoroughly at home in Neville's rooms, much to her satisfaction. She'd been afraid that it would be an unhappy exile, and here the rascal has settled in quite comfortably. Neville looks sleepy and content, running his fingers through the thick orange fur, and Hermione ruthlessly suppresses the thought that it would be nice to have those fingers running through her hair.
Their eyes meet, and inexplicably Neville blushes.
"He likes you," she says.
"Better than Trevor did," Neville says, scratching Crookshanks behind the ears. She can hear the purring from where she sits on the floor, working at the low table. She reaches up and strokes the furry flank, her fingers momentarily sliding from the fur to the corduroy covering Neville's thigh. "I suppose it helps to be warm-blooded," he adds.
"Crookshanks seems to think so," she says. "He seems to find you quite satisfactorily warm." Indeed, the big cat has nestled into Neville's lap with no apparent plans to budge, although his previous travels are marked by loose orange hairs which show well against the dark-brown ridges of the corduroy trousers. Rather an autumnal theme, she thinks, orange and brown. Neville half-closes his eyes and leans forward to wrap one arm around the furry bulk. Crookshanks yawns, stretches a little, then settles back between Neville's belly and his encircling forearm.
In imitation, she stretches herself a little, realizing that she's feeling stiff from the hours at work over the schedules. Ten subjects, everything but Care of Magical Creatures and Divination. Crookshanks opens one eye and looks at her.
"Yes, I ought to follow your good example and stretch more often," she says to Crookshanks, leaning back to face him. Abruptly she realizes that this looks quite equivocal: she's leaned her head back against the inside of Neville's knee, and his fingertips are now trailing in her hair, not inches from her face.
"It must be a good life to be a cat," he says. "Particularly this cat." He's looking at her, smiling a sleepy half-smile as he cuddles Crookshanks.
"That great orange beast," Ron used to call him. Neville seems to have a somewhat more favorable opinion of Crookshanks, and vice versa.
And she has the all but irresistible urge to take those fingertips and kiss them.
Which she might have done, had a drawling tenor voice not cut in, "Longbottom, you are spoiling that beast." Draco walked in, his dressing gown loose around him, nodded to her in acknowledgment, seated himself next to Neville, then rubbed Crookshanks on the top of the head. "You are a great spoiled monster, aren't you?" he said, leaning against Neville's arm.
He was taking rather too familiar a tone with her cat. It would be absurd to say that aloud, of course. Crookshanks didn't seem particularly put out by Draco's attentions, squeezing his eyes shut and leaning into the caressing hand. Hermione flinches, thinking about the nasty things he's done for years and worrying that her cat trusts him rather too much, from the look of it.
What else she can't say aloud that he is taking the wrong tone with Neville, as well, and sitting far too close.
She fans out the schedules on the table and waves her wand over them to produce the duplicates. Draco leans forward to look over her shoulder. His long hair actually brushes against her face. She stiffens. He traces the column of subjects with his index finger on the topmost parchment.
"Granger, this is amazing. Is this how you organized …" (there's a pause that may correspond to one of Neville's looks) "… Potter and Weasley?"
"Yes," she says. "Do you object to being organized?" She doesn't begrudge him the schedule, since she's doing them for everyone, but there's going to be a discussion later with Neville; she didn't have the sense to veto his tacit assumption that Draco would be included in the study group.
"No, I hear and obey," he says, but the light mocking tone implies trouble to come. Nothing for it but to nip it in the bud. She turns to challenge him, and his face is inches from hers. She's only ever seen it that close in her parents' bathroom mirror, when she was examining her own Polyjuiced features. The grey eyes do have little flecks of blue and green in them, and the brows and lashes are in fact startlingly blond.
She's momentarily fascinated to find herself reacting as she did to the reflection in the mirror: tracing details with her eyes, and not breaking eye contact. This plainly disconcerts him, but he doesn't back away. There are three little freckles on his nose, which she didn't notice before, and the planes of his cheekbones aren't quite as pronounced as she remembers. Is it the lighting or has he gained some weight since May?
He licks his lips nervously, and abruptly his face flushes pink. He sits back and looks at her with an expression she's never seen before. She turns and looks at him curiously. That's the effect of having walked around in his skin, she thinks; he strikes her as not quite real. If he were real, he would have broken eye contact by now. She oughtn't to be staring, either, but can't resist; her eyes rove in curiosity, comparing him to the borrowed body whose vital signs she catalogued months ago. From the way that his dressing gown drapes from his shoulders and knees, over the short nightshirt, he appears to have put on some weight since she tried on his skin and weighed herself on the bathroom scale in the other world. Maybe five kilograms or so.
He shifts on the couch, and abruptly she's aware that she's looking at his bare knees and the shadow of the nightshirt on his pale thighs—and from this position it might very well look as if she's ogling things she oughtn't. She turns back to look at the calendar, mostly to hide the flare of heat in her own face. She remembers the moment in the first flying lesson and a similar moment of awareness. Under our clothes we're all naked.
She is not going to think about that. She's going to think about revision schedules. She takes out her calendar, consults the timelines for each of the subjects, and starts blocking out her free time… well, the free time she's going to steal using the time turner.
She's not going to think about him leaning against Neville like that, under cover of petting her cat, who's traitorously purring at having two humans petting him. She is going to think about where she can squeeze in the time to revise Arithmancy properly. There's something simultaneously feline and childish about the way Draco has just insinuated himself into Neville's personal space, and she's quite sure that she doesn't approve. Not that she has a say in the matter.
Behind her, she feels Neville shift. She glances over her shoulder; he's moved away from Draco just enough to open up a space between them without dislodging Crookshanks from his lap.
She's not going to pretend to compete; how can she? In any case, she has work to do. She stands, takes one set of copies and hands it to Draco, saying, "Here's your set of the NEWTs revision schedules. If there are any changes, I'll mark them on my copy and they'll show up on all the other copies. Everything but Care of Magical Creatures and Divination. If you're doing either of those, you're on your own."
Neville adds, "Luna's revising Care of Magical Creatures, and Lavender and Parvati are doing Divination."
She doesn't really want to look at Neville, either, given that he's implicitly including Draco. It's one thing to do the flying lessons; he behaves himself there, at least, because he knows that she doesn't have to do it. NEWTs revision, on the other hand, is something she cares about.
She hands Neville his set of revision schedules, trying not to look at him, and leaves the room. As the door closes behind her, she hears Neville say, "You were doing that on purpose." The rest of the conversation is muffled by the heavy wooden door. Not that she cares, but at least Neville noticed that.
***
She's fairly sure that she can do ten NEWTs: everything except for Divination and Care of Magical Creatures. Defense, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions and Herbology—she'll be doing those along with Harry, Ron, Luna and Neville. Then she'll be doing Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, History of Magic, and Muggle Studies. Maybe Astronomy. It's only the first week of October, so there are five months in which to make up any deficiencies.
It's another set of time loops to manage, but as yet there are plenty of unoccupied rooms in her parents' house.
Even as she's revising for NEWTs from the officially approved texts, she's developed some fairly severe doubts about the History of Magic curriculum. She has a whole list of questions she'd never seen addressed: how did the house elves come to be bound to individual families? Where did the Dementors come from, and how are they controlled by the Ministry? (Or maybe she should ask, how did the Ministry once control them, because she has the evidence of her own eyes to tell her that there are Dementors out there now that answer to nobody.)
Where did the great wizarding fortunes come from? Where did the Potters, Blacks, and Malfoys make their money? She does recognize that questions about money are as impolite in the wizarding world as in the Muggle one. Percy mentioned the Chattox and Device fortune as an exception—it sounds like an industrial fortune, very specifically—and he mentioned Lancashire as their base of operations, which makes sense for technology transfer since it's the Muggle industrial north. Exactly how did engineering ideas travel from the Muggle world to the wizarding world? She'd like to find Emily, that girl in the portrait, and ask her about how that worked. It sounded as if there were a considerable lag. A hundred years, she said, for art and culture.
Emily had mentioned she had a portrait at Hogwarts in a common room. A House Quidditch team portrait, specifically. Hermione has checked the Hogwarts yearbooks for the 1900s and 1910s and hasn't turned up an Emily Longbottom. Well, all that proves is that whoever she is, she isn't in the paternal line. Unfortunately, Emily appears to have been a very popular name for that generation of Hogwarts witches. She found two Emilys in Ravenclaw (one of them is a Lovegood), three in Hufflepuff (Abbot, Nott, and Flitwick), two in Slytherin (a Rosier and a Chattox), and one in Gryffindor (with a surname she doesn't recognize). Of these eight girls named Emily, four are Quidditch players, which doesn't narrow things at all. Emily in the portrait mentioned playing against someone named Malfoy. Yes, there's an Apollonius Paracelsus Malfoy listed as Reserve Seeker for Slytherin. Class of 1911. She had to stifle a giggle at the given names.
Neville comes in as she's reviewing her notes as she sits at the low table in his front room, that now serves them as a common room. "What are you laughing about?"
She says, "I was doing some research and I think I found Malfoy's great-grandfather in the Hogwarts yearbook. Apollonius Paracelsus, if you can believe it. Could his parents have been any more insistent that yes, he's a real wizard? Of course, I shouldn't laugh. I was named after a character from Shakespeare."
"So what were you working on?"
"A tangent from History of Magic. Something Percy Weasley told me about. I shouldn't get sidetracked, though, because it won't be on the NEWTs. I've been working on the revision roster. Which NEWTs are you taking?"
"Well, the four the Aurors want, plus Herbology and Muggle Studies. Maybe some of the theory courses too, but I haven't decided."
She checks off in the column headed 'Neville': Charms, Transfiguration, Defense, Potions, Herbology, Muggle Studies. She puts an asterisk in the cell for Herbology, since Neville is the best in their year. Adds a star next to his name for Defense, too; he's good at thinking on his feet. "Harry's doing all of those. He told me that Ron's doing everything but Muggle Studies. Luna's the only one doing Care of Magical Creatures. I think she's going to be coming to Hogwarts to meet with Hagrid, so maybe the three of us can do a study group together for the other subjects."
Neville looks over her shoulder. "You don't have a column for Draco."
She makes a face. "I had no idea that you'd want to study with him." Or that any of us want him around, but that's too rude to say aloud.
"He's doing Potions and Herbology, at a minimum. And all of the theory courses except for Muggle Studies." He leans over her shoulder to run his fingertip down the column for courses: "Divination, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, History of Magic, and Astronomy."
"What about Charms, Transfiguration, Defense?"
Neville gives her a speaking look.
"Sorry. I forgot. Well, we could pencil him in if he recovers. I'm not sure I'd want to revise with him for Defense—well, practically, I might. I bet he knows some dirty things that aren't on the syllabus, but I'm sure the examiners take points off for Unforgivables." She looks at him. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"It will be good for him." Neville frowns when he sees her expression. "Hermione, you're the one who's always arguing for fairness."
She's suddenly angry. "This is the person who called me 'mudblood.' And stood by while I was tortured. And who's just been an unforgivable wanker every year we've been in school." She realizes she sounds like Ron. What she can't add, at least not aloud, because it sounds even more childish: and the person who's taking all your time lately. She isn't jealous of stupid Malfoy, because that would mean she's making a claim on Neville's time, and she'd only be doing that if she were interested. Which she isn't, except maybe in theory—by firelight, perhaps, or if he were interested too, or if his Gran would approve. But I wasn't on the list. And it's not as if she has lots of time of her own lately. As it is, she's just barely keeping the sleep-to-work ratio large enough to keep McGonagall at bay.
She bites her lip, because the tears are welling up. She absolutely hates these mood swings. She supposes she ought to be grateful that she's not screaming and yelling and cutting loose with Unforgivable Curses in public, like a crazed war veteran out of a Hollywood film.
Neville sits down next to her. "Hermione," he says. "I know he was all of that. And you've always wanted to be fair to everyone. And he has been on good behavior lately." Surely it's her imagination; is he so close that she can feel the blaze of heat from his body? Her heart is pounding and her face is hot; no, this not physical heat from anywhere in the room, but lust that feels like white-hot steel.
She takes a deep breath. "All right. He's in. As long as he continues to behave." She closes off the grid with a vicious slash of her quill. "I don't suppose I care if he hates me, as long as he keeps it to himself." She looks at the list. "He'd better behave himself around Luna, too. If he calls her Loony, he's out."
Once she's back in her own room and her heart rate has slowed to normal, she realizes with horror that she lost the argument. She was so dazed by lust that she didn't even make an argument.
Worse, there may have been far more mere name-calling between Draco and Luna. Who knows what he might have done to her when she was a prisoner at the Manor? Neville is a boy, so maybe that possibility didn't occur to him. Certainly, he's an innocent. And just because no such incident has turned up in the Pensieve depositions doesn't mean that it didn't happen.
She will not have a repetition of the appalling experience with Madam Rosmerta. She will not permit her own carelessness to bring on flashbacks for someone else, nor will she let Neville in his innocence and forgetfulness do any more damage.
She resolves to have a talk with Luna, in private, even if it means a visit to the Burrow.
***