February 15, 2004 - morning
When Cho stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen, Theo was there to greet her with a mug of tea and plate of dry toast. Her morning sickness had persisted into the second trimester, and he was concerned by how thin she was.
"Rough night?" he asked with sympathy. She had locked herself in the bedroom upon their return from Diagon Alley. While Theo easily could have unlocked the door with magic, he respected his wife's desire to fight her demons on her own. Looking at Cho now, he realized the only reason he hadn't been woken by her nightmares was because she hadn't slept at all. As exhausted as she looked, however, there was a diamond-hard edge to her this morning.
"My night was both rough and enlightening. Thank you ever so much for that." Her voice was sharp enough to cut.
"I regret taking you to Diagon Alley. I had no intention of distressing you," he apologized stiffly.
Her expression softened and she cupped a cool hand to her cheek. "Don't be sorry, Theo. The acquisition of knowledge is never painless. What I learned last night was worth any amount of distress."
Then she removed her hand and crossed her arms defensively in front of her. "I assume wizards have a spell to cause people to lose their memory?"
Theo flinched, but still nodded in confirmation. He would tell her the truth about that, at least. Unlike Malfoy, who seemed utterly unperturbed by deceiving Granger, Theo hated lying to his wife. It didn't implicate the Vow or hurt his wrist, but it made his stomach twist with guilt.
"Is it reversible?" she demanded.
"Not at present," he answered, technically truthful given the current state of wizarding law.
Cho looked at him sharply. "Is a cure being developed? Might that change?"
"It might," he said, responding to her second question and sidestepping the first. The cure to this problem was political reform, not medical research. "I hope it will."
She swallowed hard and addressed her next question to the refrigerator, not meeting his eyes. "Are there wizards who prey upon women in this world? Use them and take their memories away?"
"In years past, yes," he admitted in a hoarse tone. As a newly-inducted Death Eater, he had gone on some of those raids during his school holidays, before and during seventh year. Most of those Muggle women had been killed, because it was easier to murder someone than to Obliviate them, but he saw no need to share that with Cho. He did not want to add survivor's guilt to the already toxic mix of emotions she carried.
"It's not in the past, though. Not entirely," she insisted, pinning him with her dark gaze. "Zabini was out at the clubs, looking for victims."
"Maybe," Theo conceded. "But he's dead now."
"And that's good." Briefly, a smile curved her pale lips. Then it disappeared. "But what about your blond friend?"
"Malfoy?" he blurted.
"If that's his real name," Cho said with disgust.
"He's not like that." Theo was quick to defend Draco. Over the last several months, he had come to consider him a friend.
"No?" Cho asked skeptically. "He was quick enough to cast a malevolent spell on me. It also seemed as though he enjoyed doing it. Who knows what he's doing to Hermione behind closed doors?"
"Nothing she doesn't fully consent to and enjoy," Theo said firmly. "Trust me, he is quite literally incapable of doing anything to harm her."
"She doesn't even know his real name, let alone that he's a wizard." Cho shook her head, frowning in thought. She uncrossed her arms to take a bite of toast. Inwardly, Theo cheered that she was eating.
Watching her as she nibbled, Theo suspected that she was trying to come up with a way to circumvent Draco's curse. He hoped not - as intelligent as Cho was, she didn't remember how magic worked and her attempt to get around the spell was certain to backfire.
"Granger's a smart girl, Cho," he gently tried to warn her off, stroking lightly down her back. "She can take care of herself."
She leaned into his hand, but looked at him, unblinking. "As am I, and as can I."
(x) (x) (x)
Hermione loved lazy weekend lie-ins with her boyfriend. The sex was slow and languid, a perfect counterpoint to their urgent roughness in the night. It was a time for both of them to soothingly stroke over bruised skin and to kiss each other's scratches and love bites better.
She was a fastidious person, who enjoyed her showers on a daily basis, but a more animalistic part of her liked it when she smelt like Draco, when the insides of her thighs were sticky because of him, and reveled in the sensation of the rough stubble on his chin rubbing against her more sensitive skin. There was a distinct pleasure in staying in that natural state for an hour or so on a Saturday or Sunday, rather than having to rush into the bathroom to get ready for work or uni.
On weekdays, his father expected him in the office before eight, sometimes earlier for a meeting, and her own academic load had not lightened with pregnancy. None of the components of her blood-replenishing serum were teratogens, but she still was being circumspect about her laboratory time to minimize the risk of exposure to any harmful chemicals used by other graduate students. But as her lab work had tailed off, her academic writing and teaching assistant duties had picked up. So it was a delightful luxury to just lie in bed on this Sunday morning, tangled up in the sheets, with one of Draco's hands warm on her rounded belly while his other played with her hair. Hermione felt protected, even cherished.
"So, what are your plans for this dreary February day? Once I decide to let you out of bed that is," he queried in a soft, intimate murmur.
"Visiting an art gallery with Katie and Justin. Cho may come, too."
"Mmmm," he hummed against her shoulder. "Anything I'd like?"
"Probably not," she shook her head. On their visits to the Tate, her boyfriend had made his disdain for most contemporary art clear. "It's a student exhibition. All modern sculpture and photography."
He snorted softly. "More pretension than talent then, I imagine. Not quite your scene, is it?"
That was true. Her preferences, like his, ran to the more traditional where art was concerned. But Dennis Creevey was one of the students whose work was being featured, and she wanted to meet him while he was down from Leeds.
"Not quite," Hermione agreed. "Justin knows one of the artists." That wasn't a lie, she told herself, it just wasn't the whole truth.
"Is this another misguided attempt to expose my son to culture early on?" Malcolm asked jokingly, apparently accepting her explanation.
"Another misguided attempt?" she echoed. "And how can you be so sure it's a boy I'm carrying? We won't find out for another couple weeks."
"Boys run in my family," he stated with confidence, planting a soft kiss on one shoulder. "So much so that I would give you excellent odds if you'd like to make a friendly wager to the contrary?"
"No, I don't think so," Hermione demurred. "I feel like it's a boy, too."
"And you are hardly ever wrong," Malcolm said, before kissing her other shoulder. "As for your first question, I was referring to that infantilized perversion of Mozart I caught you playing to the sprog last week." He tapped lightly against her abdomen as he teased her.
"There are studies showing that listening to classic music in the womb enhances the development of key neurological connections in the brain," Hermione advised with a sniff, hiding her smile.
"I don't think you have to worry about our child being intelligent, love," he said, changing his tapping to a soothing circular motion. "But if you enjoy classical music, my grandmother had a large collection of albums I can bring back."
"Back from where?" she asked.
"I'll probably run down to Wiltshire today, while you're out with the girls. My mum thinks it's time for me to tell my father about you."
"Would you like me to accompany you to the lion's den?" she offered, responding to the faint note of tension in his voice.
"Absolutely not," he said decisively, his arm tightening around her. "On the unlikely chance my mother is wrong and I find myself disinherited and banned from the house, I'd rather not have you there as a witness."
"But wouldn't it be better if we both went, so your father could meet me?" Hermione persisted, flipping over to face him.
Draco shook his head. "I'm more likely to gain his acceptance if I go alone. There are some . . . cultural differences you can't possibly understand."
Hermione stiffened in his arms. "Oh? Snobbery isn't that complicated."
"That's not what I meant," Malcolm said, nuzzling against her neck. "It's not about social class. It's - things like the expression you just used. My father would find that terribly offensive."
"Really?" Hermione asked. "But lions are fierce and majestic - the kings of the jungle."
"My father detests lions. Thinks they're stupid, lazy brutes. Now, if you bravely volunteered to come with me to the serpent's lair, he would be flattered."
"Your family is odd," she muttered.
Playfully, he pinched her bum, laughing as she squealed. "Even more so than you can imagine, princess."
(x) (x) (x)
"Rather morbid, aren't they?" Katie asked rhetorically, peering over Hermione's shoulder at the photographs of cemeteries and headstones shot in stark black and white. Unconsciously, she snuggled her sleeping son a bit closer in his sling. Hermione smiled at the sight. Peter was a bald baby with his father's bone structure and incongruously chubby cheeks. Katie joked that looking at him was a preview of what Mark would look like in fifty years.
"Morbid, but beautifully shot," Hermione agreed. "The contrast is breathtaking."
"Why do they all show the graves of people who died on May 2, 1998? Did something happen on that date?" Katie asked in puzzlement.
"Not that I know of," Hermione shrugged. There was something naggingly familiar about that date, but her research on the computer and among the library's microfiche had not revealed anything especially noteworthy. There had been an odd display of northern lights in the remote Scottish highlands that some gullible locals blamed on aliens in the tabloid press, but no massive accident or terrorist attack.
Her gaze hovered on a photo of two familiar graves. "Cho, it's the cemetery at Godric's Hollow," she pointed with excitement.
Cho had been very quiet at the gallery, keeping her distance from Hermione, Katie, and even Justin. Hermione assumed the other woman was in a snit with her for some reason, as often was the case. She reddened as she realized Cho's judgmental gaze now was locked on her wrist, slightly chafed from the prior night, rather than the photo of the Potters' graves.
"Admiring my bracelet?" she asked in a challenging voice. "Malcolm got me a new charm for Valentine's Day." She turned her wrist to show off the platinum otter with dark topaz eyes, also purposefully displaying a thumbprint-shaped bruise.
"How can let him abuse you like that?" Cho hissed.
"If I choose to give my boyfriend kinky sex as well as decadent chocolates for Valentine's Day, I don't see what basis you have to object," Hermione hissed back. "It's not abuse, and it's certainly not your concern."
"You don't even know who he is or what he's capable of," Cho warned in a low voice.
"And you do?" scoffed Hermione. "I'm the one who lives with him!"
"Listen to me, Hermione, please!" Cho's voice rose with her distress. "Malcolm is a w-wanker," she choked out.
Hermione's eyebrows rose at Cho's unexpected crudity. While she sometimes accused her boyfriend of being just that, it wasn't anyone else's place to say so. Before she could tell Cho as much, a slightly nasal masculine tenor interrupted.
"Hermione?" he asked. "Hermione Granger?"
She turned away from Cho to acknowledge the greeting and suppressed a sigh at another stranger who somehow knew her.
He held out his hand. "I'm Dennis Creevey."
Her eyes widened in surprise. The entire point of attending the student exhibition had been to meet Colin's younger brother. But she had been scanning the crowd for a slightly built, mousy-haired university student. Sweet but slightly hyperactive, running around in his brother's footsteps, swapping two old-fashioned cameras between them. That was the ghost her wisps of memories had created.
The young man holding out his hand was whipcord thin and only a few inches taller than her own height, but otherwise nothing like what she remembered. Dennis was dressed all in black, from his turtleneck sweater to his vintage trainers, his hair spiky and dyed to an equally inky color. He was wearing heavy-framed black glasses that he probably did not need to correct his vision and carrying himself with a carefully cultivated insouciance.
A faintly defensive expression crossed his face at her scrutiny. "Pardon me," he bit out, "I thought you were someone I went to school with."
"I am," she said hurriedly, before he could turn on his heel and stalk away. "I am Hermione Granger. You're just not how I remembered."
A sudden grin replaced what she suspected was a habitual sneer, transforming Dennis into someone more compatible with her memories of an overly enthusiastic schoolboy. "You remember me?"
"Just little bits and pieces," she hastened to say.
"Still, that's bloody amazing! Do you remember my brother Colin?" he asked in an eager voice.
"Just that you were always together, and always taking pictures," Hermione said.
Dennis smiled, more than a bit sadly. "Yeah, that's what my parents say. Right little paparazzi, we were. I have some of Colin's photos here - have you seen them?"
Before she could respond, Katie approached with wide eyes and a faintly troubled expression, Cho trailed behind her, looking disgruntled. "Hermione," Katie said, "I need you to come look at these photos over here. There's something really odd about them."
"Whatever d'ya mean by that?" Dennis asked, eying Katie's ballet flats and cashmere twin set with disfavor. "They aren't banal, but it's a bit rude to describe them as odd."
"Oh, you must be the photographer!" Katie exclaimed. "I wasn't referring to how they were shot, and I didn't mean to be rude, but several of your photos show a castle in the Scottish highlands in ruins."
"Yeah? What about it?" Dennis demanded, not entirely mollified.
"I've been there, with my partner, only about five years ago. The castle was still intact!" Katie explained, wide-eyed.
"Are you sure it's the same castle, Katie?" Hermione asked.
"Fairly certain, but I wanted you to take a look. You've seen the picture with me and Mark."
Dennis was now looking at her more closely. "Katie? Not Katie Bell, any chance?"
"Yes, that's me. Plus one," she said pleasantly, with a little gesture at the sling.
"Hermione, did you come here with anyone else?" he asked with some urgency.
"Yes, with Cho Chang." Hermione was quick to correct herself, but not fast enough to avoid Cho's glare. "And Justin's around here, somewhere."
"Over there, flirting with the bartender," Katie pointed him out.
"Justin Finch-Fletchley?" Dennis asked, with increasing enthusiasm.
"Do you know him?" Katie asked.
"Do you know us?" Hermione added.
"I know your names - all of your names," he replied, bouncing slightly with excitement. "And if there's somewhere we can go that's a little more private, I have some more pictures I think you'd be very interested to see."
(x) (x) (x)
As soon as Draco arrived at the Manor's Apparition point for family members, the ornately carved oaken front doors swung open to welcome him to his ancestral home. That was ordinary and only to be expected. His mother intercepting him as soon as he set foot in the foyer, however, was neither. Normally, he would be escorted by a house-elf to her presence, usually in the drawing room or conservatory.
Narcissa embraced him and smiled in a conspiratorial fashion. "Your father is waiting for you in his study."
Draco drew back in alarm. The prospect of a meeting with Lucius in his study no longer made his stomach flip in fear, as it did when he was younger, but it still was not something he looked forward to.
"Silly boy," his mother lightly reprimanded. "Your father is in an excellent mood today. I think you'll find him quite receptive to your mésalliance with Miss Granger."
Resolutely, Draco refused to think about what his mother might have done to engender his father's goodwill. Taking his silence as consent, Narcissa pushed him towards the study door. "Go on, then, and I'll see you both at lunch."
Lucius was seated behind his massive desk, reviewing ledgers and looking every inch the lord of the manor. He looked up and smiled at his son before standing and crossing to the sideboard. "Join me for a drink?"
"Sure." Even though it was before noon, and even though his father was in a mellow mood, Draco suspected he would need some alcohol in his system before this conversation finished.
Lucius took a seat on the long couch facing the fireplace, glass in hand, and gestured for Draco to join him. Once he did, his father levitated a tumbler of Firewhiskey on the rocks into his waiting hand.
"What is our family's motto, Draco?" he asked, as soon as they both were settled against the dark green leather cushions.
"Sanctimonia vincet semper," Draco responded, that answer - and underlying philosophy- having been drilled into him since boyhood. "Purity always will conquer."
"And that of the Black family?" Lucius inquired.
"Toujours pur," Draco stated, his French accent flawless.
"Indeed," his father agreed. "The Blacks were 'always pure.' Do you appreciate the distinction?"
Draco was quick on the uptake. "The Black family motto seems to express a more rigid view. Of course, they no longer exist in the male line."
"The Blacks always were a bit more idealistic - perhaps one could even say fanatical - when it came to blood purity. While this family is, shall I say, more results-oriented." Lucius regarded him over the rim of his glass, with the grey eyes Draco had inherited, exactly the same in their shade, shape, and calculating coolness. "The purity of our blood will always overcome any inferior blood - filter it out, if necessary."
After a bracing swallow of whiskey, his father continued. "We have never had a family tapestry, like the Blacks, to record the existence of our bastards. And if an illegitimate child were accepted as a Malfoy, despite the unfortunate circumstances of his birth or blood status - well, our blood will tell."
"Have there been Malfoy bastards in the past, father?" Draco was honestly curious - this was not something that his parents or the ancestral portraits ever had shared before.
Lucius chuckled. "Depending on who you ask, some would say all Malfoy men are bastards. But none of us have been borne out of wedlock since before the time of Lucius I." His namesake had planned to sully the bloodline irrevocably, setting aside a pureblood witch for a public marriage to his Muggle mistress, the so-called "Virgin Queen" of England, until his wife had cursed them both.
Draco blinked at the implication that his family's bloodline was not pure from the days of Merlin, as he always had been taught, but held his tongue. His father was in a good mood at present, but that could shift on a Knut.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Lucius continued. "Since the Battle of Hogwarts, there has been only one child born among all of the traditional Slytherin families. Your mother has convinced me that we need to find someone other than Astoria to carry and bear your heir."
Draco nodded. "I had reached that conclusion myself, father."
"Oh?" Lucius arched an eyebrow. "Your mother did mention that you might have some refinements to suggest to my plan."
"What is your plan, father?" Draco asked.
Lucius drew a folded sheet of parchment from his pocket. Draco took it, swiftly read it, and burst out laughing. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
