Hermione was really glad that Lucius was so busy at work. That way he didn't know just how much she was sleeping. It wasn't really a surprise. She had been through a rough start of their marriage and had to prepare for a lot of exams. And then there was the fact that she was pregnant.

But she still didn't want Lucius to know. Reaching her own limits made her feel weak and weak was the last thing she wanted to be in the eyes of her husband.

She stood up every morning with him, They had breakfast together, and then she waited for Lucius to leave, reading a little, so that she could crawl back to bed.

She wasn't physically fully mature yet and had gone through a lot, Hermione reminded herself yet it was still hard to accept that she couldn't do everything, at least not at once.

The break she had until that semester started was rather short as Hermione got more and more energetic, she realized that a chunk of the castle was in ruins and someone should take care of it.

Ready to return to the living, she didn't waste any time. She set a dozen Puffskeins loose to feed off the dust in the damaged part where not even the House Elves dared to go. Hermione wasn't entirely convinced that realizing creatures that lived on dirt was a good idea, but she figured that if they got too plentiful, Shirona would take care of them.

She had also managed to vaguely inform herself of their financial situation. Hermione needed to know her budget before going into restoration-work.

Way too soon, she got the results of her exams. She flood to Tokyo to pick them up and have a chat with her professor. Having to look him in the eyes while he handed her the sheets with the results made the entire situation so much more stressful.

Hermione was so tense she felt almost numb. With horror, she looked at the sheet. Tears threatened to fall from her eyes. Her throat was dry and constricted. Yamaguchi-sensei's words were muted. Nothing he said quite reached her. All she could see were the numbers written on the sheet in front of her. Those were easily the worst grades she had ever received in her entire life.

Once Yamaguchi-sensei had finally stopped talking, she bowed downward and rushed out of his office. Hermione didn't want to be seen by anybody. Hiding her face behind her bushy hair, she ran out of the building.

Strong wind was blowing the cold rain into her face, but Hermione didn't care. Keeping her head down, she slowly walked away. She had wanted to go faster but the wind was so strong that she could barely fight against it.

There weren't many people outside and those who were, had trouble not being lifted off the ground by the strong winds. Hermione was the only one without an umbrella. Within seconds she was drenched, but she didn't care. Being dripping wet, no one could see her tears. It felt like an eternity and at the same time like no time had passed at all.

Finally arriving at the public fireplace, she flood to the bank. Hermione effortlessly found the way to Lucius' office. His secretary just pointed at the door without looking up.

Hermione was already inside his office when she realized that he might be in a meeting and that she should have knocked.

Lucius was leaning back in his office chair and just looked at her with a raised brow. Blushing she realized that her clothes were dripping and that she had left a puddle on the floor.

"I forgot about typhoon season."

With a flick of his wand, he dried her clothes. "May I see your results?"

Biting her lip, she handed him that sheet of paper. Hermione studied his face as he read over it. She scanned his features for something, any kind of reaction that would tell her about his thoughts.

"About Biophysics…"

Hermione drew blood from her lip. It had been the very last of her exams which meant that she had prioritized all the other subjects because she had less time for them. By the time only Biophysics was left, she had been mentally drained and the subject was rather dry which made it hard to focus.

43%. Hermione had never in her life performed so poorly. She had barely passed. She just wanted to quit. Maybe she just wasn't cut out for this. But she also didn't want to give up. She could try again next year even if only to prove herself that she could do it.

"I barely passed," Hermione said, not daring to look up at him. "Am I bothering you?"

"Nonsense, I had a feeling that you might need some support and I have cleared my schedule."

"Am I that predictable?"

Lucius chuckled. "Gryffindors tend to not have much of a filter. Come here."

She slowly walked around the desk and sat down on his lap. Hermione placed her head on his chest and Lucius swung his arm around her.

"I have to say, I am quite impressed."

Hermione huffed. "You with your perfect score."

He cupped her cheeks and made her look him in the eyes. "As someone with 10 Outstanding and having led Slytherin to win the House Cup, I know how hard it was to get there. You have archived a lot in a very limited time. It is good enough to continue your studies and you received a hundred points in math."

Hermione blushed. She had been so anxious about math because she didn't have enough time to double-check her results, but it turned out that she hadn't made any mistakes the first time after all.

Despite that, she had no desire to repeat this experience. Her marriage was stressful enough, she didn't need to add anxiety from being unprepared for her exams. She never wanted to go unprepared into anything ever again. She had been short of a heart attack.

Lucius left work early so they could have lunch together. Returning to the castle, she thought it would be a good idea to check on the Puffskeins, she set loose.

Lucius tugged along. He couldn't say that this was something he wanted to do, but it would raise awkward questions if his wife fell into a hole. He was more shocked that despite everything, he didn't actually want to throw her down there.

"I thought we should renovate the castle over the year," she said.

"We?"

"It would be better to hire a professional. I mean, if we were in England I could paint the walls and stuff, but I think it is better to let a professional take care of the structural issues."

For a moment he had thought that she was cutting away from the very limited amount of time they had to breathe.

It still stank, but it wasn't as horrible as it had been a few days ago. It was also a lot less dusty. The two of them were standing in a relatively intact hallway watching a tiny Puffskein.

The tiny thing was rolling over the floor collecting the dust around it. The more dust the creature collected, the bigger it got. And the bigger the creature was, the more dust it could collect with its long tongue.

Once the Puffskein and reached fist size, they could literally watch it grow. Both of them were fascinated by the way the creature cleaned the room. As it reached the size of a football, Hermione began wondering who big they could get.

The now knee-high creature greedily collected all the dust from the ground. Why hadn't she done that earlier?

The Puffskein kept growing and growing. There was a round man-high creature in the room looking for more dirt, but there wasn't any in its close proximity.

With a big bang, the creature exploded into a myriad of little ones. The force of the explosion has thrown them in all directions. Hermione found one in her hair and clothes. The tiny Puffskeins immediately started licking the dead skin cells of her, growing in size.

Hermione shook her clothes, hoping she left them all behind in the unused wing of the castle. Lucius looked at her.

"Once they've eaten their way through most of the dust they'll switch to sexual reproduction." Hermione hoped that that would be soon because she had no idea what to do with all the Puffskeins.


Sitting on the engawa terrace, she swung her legs back and forth. Kiki had brought them tea and sweets and they were enjoying the view over the garden.

Hermione found big purple grapes in a paperback. The white paperback had splashes on it which made it even more suspicious.

"I thought most of the produce is grown here on the estate."

Lucius took a grape out of the bag and began peeling the thick skin away. "In Japan grapes are grown with paper around them to protect the delicate fruits from the diseases the wetness brings."

She looked at her husband skeptically. "How do you know that?"

"You think I am a liar?"

"No, I just thought that a Lord Malfoy has no interest in peasants and their techniques."

"Wiltshire has a note-worthy wine industry and as I said, I was raised by a Japanese witch.

He chewed on the fruit and spit the seeds away from the engawa. Hermione followed his example. They spend the afternoon, just sitting there, and drinking tea.

It felt good to have for once not a million things to do. Every now and then, she heard a very distant low sound. It was more like a vibration than something she had actually heard. Hermione flinched ever so slightly every time, hoping that it wasn't the Puffskeins.


"I have something for you," Lucius said, handing her a gift-wrapping paper wrapped gift. "For my lovely wife."

"You didn't have to." Blushing, she opened his gift.

"I know but I wanted to give you something for a successful start at university."

He had given her a beautifully crafted wooden box to hold her writing utensils. Opening it, she found a smaller leather pouch on one side and a proper quill out of a peacock feather and a glass quill next to it on the other side of the box. The box was big enough to hold her calligraphy brushes as well.

Slowly, opening the leather pouch, she found a set of pens. They were all black with silver details and the Malfoy-crest was engraved in all of them- The set consisted of a sharppen, a ballpen, and two fountain pens with varying tip thicknesses. As the leather pouch wasn't as long as the quills, there was plenty of room at the end of the box to hold ink, leads, and an eraser.

She couldn't hold back her tears. This was such a thoughtful gift. Hermione swung her arms around him, kissing Lucius with earnestness. "Thank you."

"You should go."

Hermione packed her pencil case into her handbag and Susu handed her another bag filled with bento boxes.


It was time for her to attend her first lectures, No, she wasn't ready for it. It wasn't the content of her lecture that worried her, but the other students. So far, Hermione had very little success in making friends. It was so difficult as an adult, not that she was particularly good at it as a kid.

She couldn't just sit down next to some random person and hang out with them for the rest of the year. But how does one get together without starting an underground dueling club or having a friend with enough siblings to never feel lonely?

Hermione sat down in the last row of the lecture hall, hoping to not draw too much attention. She couldn't name a single thing, but she just looked very different from the other students. Hermione had always had very special hair, but she felt so much more self-aware among those seemingly homogenous Japanese people.

She was more at ease when the professor finally started talking and she got to unpack her new stationery. She couldn't help but smile. This was such a beautiful pencil case and that Lucius actually thought about her and what she liked and needed.

Flipping the box to the side, Hermione noticed the dedication for the first time.

For my brilliant wife, Hermione Jean Malfoy,

September 1st, 1998

Lucius Malfoy

As she took her first notes, she got to admire her handwriting with the new fountain pen. She liked how elegant the pitch-black ink looked and how well it matched the casing of the fountain pen.

At the end of the lecture, she took her time to collect her belongings. On the way to the next room, she was intercepted by one of her co-students.

"Good Morning, I am Ide Yuta, Where are you from?" he asked her in English.

Hermione blinked a couple of times. For some reason, she was weirdly overwhelmed by the situation.

"I'm Hermione Gra-, em, Malfoy. I'm from England," she replied in Japanese.

"Oh, your Japanese is good."

Hermione blushed. They went to the next lecture together. It was nice to have someone to just chat with. It certainly wasn't harming her Japanese. Grateful for the extra lunch, Hermione offered it to Yuta and they ate together.