Without Hermione, Draco and Theo were confined to the cottage and grounds. Narcissa paced out the boundary with them, familiar with the cordon of her refuge. She had been released from Azkaban partly on medical grounds but her parole conditions were very similar to the wizards'. Jettisoning the high maintenance prisoners had been the Ministry's first cost-cutting measure.
"You will like it here, my dragon." She said fondly, not releasing her grip on her son's hand lest he vanish. Narcissa had nightmares of shadows dragging him into the dark. She couldn't quite believe he was here. Her sister had assured her the Mu...ggle-born would bring Draco to her but the hope had seemed so feeble it had been painful to contemplate. "You too, Theo. We can go boating on the river and there's a private little bay. Swimming helps."
Narcissa didn't expound on the marvellous cleansing and uplifting feeling she experienced floating unfettered in the sea. The cove was sheltered; a Bubble-Head charm and a Muggle wetsuit meant she could drift unconcerned. If the weather was bad or the water cold, it didn't matter. She was safe in the sheltered cove. Once upon a time, Malfoy Manor had given her the same sense of security. No longer.
On Saturday, the Black sisters had gone into Perpignan to buy necessities. They had avoided the centre commerciaux, the shopping malls, as Narcissa couldn't face the crowds or the noise. The smaller stores in the older parts of the medieval city with street signs in Catalan were more enticing. Muggles did not gawk at two middle aged women who spoke French like Parisians courtesy of their governess. Narcissa drank the anonymity like wine.
"I have proper clothes for the two of you. Everything is pret-a-porter, alas. Muggles do have tailors but with you so thin..." Narcissa scolded herself for babbling. To still her tongue, she took the boys into the cottage to their rooms and simply showed them their wardrobes rather than nattering like a magpie. Miss Granger had done her best, she supposed, but no child of hers would be seen in public in what looked like hand-me-down pyjamas.
"You needn't fuss, ma'am." Theo found himself slipping into the old form of address clumsily. He appreciated Madam Malfoy's kindness, truly. However, her brittleness was exhausting and when she left him so he could change, he collapsed onto the bed. It squeaked. He shifted cautiously, rolling into a dip formed by many previous occupants. Granger's bed had been far more welcoming.
He lay there turning that sentiment over in his mind. Theo loathed surprises. Having a tendril of affection curl around him at thought of snuggling into the fuzzy blankets and downy comforters caught him off guard. The explicit linkage between Granger and bed and welcome was disconcerting. Unwilling to shove the train of thought off its rails, he allowed it to chug along to the next station. Granger in bed.
She'd given them her bedroom and slept in the small spare. He'd peeked into her boudoir, curious at her change of plans. The two other rooms on the top floor of her home had been slightly larger than his cell; more than half, less than twice. Theo hadn't stepped inside as it was rude enough he had opened the door but he had been grateful to have the master's suite. Granger was kind.
Granger was warm. That observation brought him back to beds in more general terms. Granger looked cuddly in her soft flannels with her hair fluffing in defiant curls. Theo imagined running his hands through those tresses. Her hair would probably trap him like Medusa's serpents. A neglected part of him seemed intent on turning itself to stone. He sat up and hurriedly shut the bedroom door. The act of which quelled his paltry ardour.
At least Azkaban hadn't left him an eunuch. Theo undressed to put on some of the new clothes as an excuse to examine himself in the standing mirror. He could see every one of his ribs. His legs looked like sticks jutting up from over-large feet. He'd never been robust but now whatever physical allure he'd possessed was gone. A waif begging for alms.
As the last heir of Nott, he had obligations. Which seemed all so irrelevant. A compliant witch he didn't detest from a pure family, as many sons as he could manage to trick Fate into giving him and a life less dissolute than his resources so he could pass on a respectable holding. Not much, when considered while staring at oneself, yet too far to reach. Theo dressed and went to find Draco.
The blond was sitting naked on the floor of what had probably been the nursery judging from the bunnies on the wall. Clothes were scattered around him, some turned inside out, some simply thrown in a fit of temper. Theo sat down beside his friend and put his arms around him. Draco choked back angry tears, frustrated at himself.
"You look good in green." The platitude set the scene as banal. If one wished to throw one's garments about the room then as a young man of quality, one could. Theo had a fairly shrewd idea of what had brought on this fit; he had after all stared at himself in the mirror for minutes. "Granger recognised us. Hadn't seen us in years. Both scrawny, both in prison drab with shorn heads." He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his scalp. "We haven't changed all that much."
"I want to." Draco's chest heaved. "I see me and I see worthless." He swallowed on a tight throat. Theo's hand made slow circles over his back. He was suddenly exhausted. "I don't blame her for leaving."
"She'll be back. She brought her cat." Theo felt the shudders convulse his friend and held him closer fearing something had broken in Draco. It took him a moment to realise he was laughing. Not loudly but repeatedly. "If you're having hysterics, I will slap you. I never got to slap Pansy when she performed a tantrum. I don't want to miss my chance now."
"Not having vapours." He wheezed around the paroxysm of amusement. Granger had left her cat ipso facto she would return. All he and Theo needed to do to continue basking in her heat was to stick close to Crookshanks, who liked warm places and seconds at every meal. They could do that. Everything would be fine. "Here, kitty kitty."
"If you are quite finished, I suggest you put on some trousers." Such dignity as he had, he aired. Theo was pleased to see Draco waking up. Manic, yes, but not shambling like an inferius. "Your mother might think my intentions were improper."
"Wouldn't mind." Draco muttered, straightening to ease a cramp across his ribs. He hadn't laughed in forever. He was still tired. Seeing his mother an echo of herself, a crumpled sketch of the witch she had been and knowing he'd helped to reduce her to that state was a scourge. She needed him to be strong for her but he was weak, hollow bones close to snapping.
"Neither of us could get it up." They had been friends since they could toddle. There had only ever been one secret between them. Theo rummaged through the heap of clothes, finding a pair of boxers. He handed them over so Draco would get dressed before he caught cold.
"True." The scion of the House of Malfoy agreed, almost wryly. He didn't have much to offer anyone right now. But because his mother would fret if she saw him like this, Draco got up to clad himself in canvas trousers and a turtleneck. Both were navy blue, the coordination more by luck than choice. He ran his hands down the Muggle shirt. Softer than he expected. Theo's shirt, long sleeved like his own, was also smooth.
"No robes." Theo observed, feeling underdressed. Draco nodded but he wasn't thinking about the difference in attire. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against the brunet's. With his palms on Theo's chest, he felt his intake of breath then his gradual response; neither timid nor presumptuous. The kiss continued by mutual consent, deepening into a proper snog that left them both breathless and dizzy.
Actually quite dizzy as they both found when they broke for air. The wizards sat on Draco's bed as the room spun, sharing an embarrassed smile. The kiss was no thing of shame but their depleted stamina did bruise pride somewhat. Theo put his hand on his friend's and let Draco tug him down prone beside him. The bed was too narrow for much beyond lying, which was fine as they both nodded off.
Hours later, the crack of an Apparition woke them in time to hear Granger use some very unladylike language as she pulled herself out of the rosemary hedge. Theo sat up slowly, anticipating disorientation then rose to go downstairs. The manacle on his wrist seemed lighter now the witch had returned. He noted Draco fiddling with his own shackle and nodded. The binding wasn't as stable as it should have been if it was reacting to their custodian's proximity.
Hermione sat at the kitchen table and downed another blood replenishing potion. Andromeda had an obsessively well stocked medicine chest as well as a full pantry so she provided the witch with a plate of cold meats and cheese. When she set the meal down, she took a firm grip on the younger woman's right arm and turned her palm over to inspect the cross hatching of newly healed wounds.
"So it worked, then?" Andromeda wanted to say something else but screaming obscenities didn't seem appropriate. Whoever was in charge, it never changed. The Ministry always wanted blood. She'd seen it in the wars, in the interbellum with its corruption, and now in the reformation. "How many did they make you do?"
"Six." Hermione answered, eating brie left handed. "One to demonstrate the ritual, one more to be sure, then one each on four differing vaults to see how the rites meshed with the differing protections." She had been confident in the theory. Seeing the blood magic done in practice had settled the rest of doubts. "The Swiss wanted to try more but Ulrik insisted we'd done enough."
"Who is Ulrik?" Theo inquired at the blush on the witch's wan face. Images of a robust wizard skiing through mountain passes, tanned face flushed with good heath coalesced in his mind. He didn't honestly think Granger had snuck off pour l'amour but the pink of her cheeks suggested something more than business.
"He's a ward-scribe at Gringotts." She explained. "He came over from the London branch to smooth things with the Chur goblins." Quite a bit of the old oil had been required to get a human into the chthonic ancient vaults the goblins had maintained since the Bronze age. Hermione had been relieved to emerge like Orpheus, and had said as much to Ulrik, which had led into an erudite but disquieting conversation on psychopomps.
"A goblin?" He asked to be entirely clear on the matter. Enfeebled pariah though he was, he refused to feel bettered by a hob. Hermione, with a mouthful of prosciutto, nodded. Once she had chewed and swallowed, she replied verbally.
"I went to Gringotts before I resigned. My department handled all the diplomatic relations with the goblins, not something they were happy about, so I had an excuse." She hesitated then decided if she were in Theo's position, she would want to know what her custodian was doing in her name. "I called in the blood debt owed to me."
"You broke into the bank." Draco had come downstairs in Theo's wake and had spent the interim contemplating whether cheese would agree with him. He had just decided brie was a flaunting minx that would make him pay for enjoying her favours when 'blood debt' grabbed his ear. "You owe them."
"That's what they said." The witch agreed with weary cheerfulness. "Got quite shirty about it too. Until I made a case for it being Tom Riddle's fault, which nicely absolved them and me of culpability. There've been some nasty allegations about goblins covertly aiding Death Eaters escaping from Britain. Having an excuse to wash their hands of the horcruxes suited them." Hermione could understand the goblins' perspective. "Which meant we could consider Griphook's agreement with Ron, Harry and I separate from the bloody cup."
"You need a long spoon to sup with a goblin." Theo cautioned, not liking where this was going.
"That's the devil, and actually I've found Ulrik and his cadre quite affable. This helps." Hermione raised her left arm but didn't bare the scar. She watched Draco carefully as she'd known she'd have to mention his aunt carving her up in his presence eventually. He went so still he could have been petrified. Her voice was gentle. "I am proud of it. Yes, it hurt. More than anything I've ever felt before or since. But she didn't break me. Bellatrix taught me my own strength."
"I did nothing." Draco cowered from her and would've fled except his legs seemed cemented to the floor. Hermione walked over to him, putting a hand to his cheek with aching gentleness.
"That's all you could've done." She said quietly. "You kept silent when you could've identified us. You knew it was Harry. You'd recognise him in the dark Stupefied." Hermione tilted his chin up so their eyes met. She wanted him to hear this in his soul. "Believe me, Draco, you helped us."
"Could've done more." He murmured, transfixed by her gaze. How could he never have noticed her power? Granger had devoured books, been mocked incessantly for it, but the knowledge had filled her like an elixir.
"Bellatrix would've gutted you and without you alive your mother would never have lied to Riddle about Harry." Hermione had thought a lot about 'might have been' and 'if only'. One of the many lessons war had taught her was there were no absolutes. Perfection in what had damn near been a civil war was impossible; striving for it or berating herself over failing to achieve the unobtainable would maim her. So she had told herself to be happy with a 'E'. She'd survived intact. That was definitely better than a Pass.
"So sure of yourself." Bitterness welled up, spewing out with his words.
"I've had time to pick myself up and put myself back together. Live, relax, move on. I wasn't shut up in a cell to atone for my father's sins." She glanced aside to Theo, implacably silent, and spoke to them both. "You shouldn't have gone to prison. House arrest, community service, some mortifying show of repentance, all of the above. Not to Azkaban. I'd raze the damn place if I could."
"I would hold your cloak." Theo asserted. Her outrage validated his own sense of grievance. He had never asked to be Marked. His filial loyalty had damned him to the same fate as his father. Many of the young heirs had been press-ganged to ensure the obedience of their parents, some only days before the final battle.
"I expect there'll be quite a queue." Hermione smiled. She patted Draco's cheek then stepped away from him. "I picked up some nutrient potions and liquid vitamins. Get them down you." Not willing to leave the matter of Gringotts by the wayside, she continued. "I'll explain everything while we sit in the garden. We could all do with some sun."
It was twenty degrees Celsius with a cloudless sky so with the drystone walls blocking the wind, the cottage's tiny lawn was warm enough for basking. Andromeda, Narcissa, Teddy and Crookshanks joined them with lemon tea, a pantry picnic and enough candied cherries to make the little boy happily sticky. Hermione made up for her missed lunch as she explained.
Griphook had made a deal to get them into Gringotts in exchange for the sword; a deal he had revised under duress as they were being crushed by the cursed contents of the Lestrange vault. He had assumed the trio would betray him. A natural bias based on the shared history of goblin and wizard, but utterly wrong in her case.
"They believed you?" Narcissa asked politely, mindful of her sister's threat of eviction.
"Not at first." Hermione conceded. "I insisted. One of the haznik'ha, sorry, that's one of the supervisors, came to see what the fuss was about. I think he thought I was being stroppy to prove a point so he tried to call my bluff." Her Gobbledegook was good enough that she had understood his unflattering assessment of her character. "The goblins have their own veritaserum, much stronger than we use. It puts the drinker in a state of perfect clarity, no mental illusions, no self-deceptions. I drank it."
"Gryffindors." Theo and Draco said with simultaneous eye rolls.
"Well, of course." She smirked at them. "Besides, the prospect of truly knowing myself was worth embarrassing myself when I temporarily lost my verbal filters." The experience had been as mortifying as it had been enlightening. Hermione still winced at her compliments to Ulrik on his 'agile, seductive hands' and her curiosity what they might feel like on her skin. That had convinced the supervisor the Fragarach potion was working correctly at least. "I never thought of reneging on the deal. Griphook broke faith with me, which is a very serious matter among goblins."
Which she knew from her own research for History of Magic. The debt was made worse because Griphook had died before he could settle it, leaving the stain on his family. In their culture, such a breach of contract could disgrace an entire lineage. No goblin would accept the word of someone who was kin to a liar. Falsehood was worse than murder, as murder in essentials was only theft.
"Obsessive little buggers, aren't they?" Andromeda remarked as she intercepted her grandson, who was intent on cuddling the orange kitty. Crookshanks ran off into the rosemary to avoid the four year old. She diverted the boy with another cherry, which he delightedly smeared over his face as his hair turned bright red.
"It was enough to convince them I could be trusted, which is a rare thing for a wanded." Being an outsider to wizarding culture helped too. She didn't come with centuries of baggage. "When the Ministry passed the IMP, I read all the citations and codicils. Including tracking down the originals of the fosterage legislation in Norman French, which I am prepared to bet an enormous amount of money that no one read through properly."
"How enormous an amount?" Theo would be the first to admit he wasn't at his best or cleverest but he could follow Granger's trail. Fosterage included a considerable variety of relationships and agreements. Anything from guest-right to formal adoptions.
"Not counting the residual balance in a vault so the interest covers your travel permissions, the return of goblin artefacts, and the destruction of Dark objects etcetera, about fifty million Galleons." Hermione supplied placidly, spreading brie on a slice of crusty bread. She smiled at the silence from the pure-bloods. As a Muggle-born she could readily think in billions. The sum thus far liberated was a lot of money but not astronomical. To her, anyway.
"How?" Narcissa asked, putting down her glass with a rigidly steady hand. The clever Muggle had performed a trick her husband would've envied. The Malfoys before the war had been lavishly wealthy. Few families could rival them. Compared to what Miss Granger had liberated, the Malfoys looked like the Weasleys.
"The fosterage laws cover betrothals, including those for orphaned heiresses. Courtesy of centuries of inflation, I qualify." Had she drafted the legislation, she would've checked the amounts cited in the original documents and included an indexed conversion into modern currency. That had not been done. "There are hundreds of unclaimed vaults from extinct families, all accruing interest. Today I opened six of them."
Blood magic was tightly regulated by the Ministry as it was old and powerful. Marriage rites sealed by blood had fallen out of fashion due to the gruesome consequences of adultery, though were never made illegal. The Norman ritual for plighting troth had been forgotten. Hermione had made note of it years before simply because it was one of the binding spells a witch could use without parental oversight, a rarity at the time. As the daughter of well-to-do dentists, she could marry herself into the old families just enough to unseal the blood wards on the vaults.
The magic discharge from the millennium old Waerwic treasury had melted the foot thick iron door to slag then transmuted it to treacle. She and the goblins had redoubled their caution after that lesson. Repeating the rite was exhausting for the magic was generated, controlled, and released solely from her without the focus of a wand. While the curse-breakers and assayers had inspected the newly open vault, she had sat down against a stalagmite waiting for the giddiness to pass.
"You will devalue the currency." Theo weighed fifty million Galleons against what he knew of the Nott holdings and ran some quick mental Arithmancy. Easily done, with a contributing factor that large in the confines of magical Britain. A menhir into a paddling pool.
"Old grudges aside, the goblins don't want to bring the wizarding world to its knees. They're invested too closely." Hermione had thought about the effect flooding the country would have, and while toppling the Ministry in a gilt-edged coup would be satisfying it wouldn't improve the lot of the populace. "Which brings us to the happy fact that I am Muggle-born. I have a legal identity on both sides of the divide, and Muggles have stock exchanges."
"We have a stock exchange." Narcissa observed with a touch of frost. Miss Granger's selachian grin conveyed there were orders of magnitudes of difference between magical and Muggle in this instance.
"The FTSE 100, the Financial Times Stock Exchange, is a share index of one hundred companies from the London Stock Exchange. Their market cap is more than a trillion pounds." She paused to gloat a little as the pure-bloods boggled. "Our plan is to transfer the money to the Muggle world and invest it. The goblins are in their element there. I'll use my share of the interest to slowly buy the Ministry's debts and force some financial accountability."
"That's why you needed Ted's papers." Andromeda realised. She had given Hermione her late husband's Muggle documents on the understanding she would put them to good use. The widow hadn't asked for any more details as the loss of her family was still raw.
"I set up Swiss bank accounts for myself, Ted and my parents under their English names. Those accounts will become the basis for various companies and trading entities." Her father had dabbled on the stock market so fortunately she wasn't a complete novice with the legal hoops. "The goblins know what they're doing but they couldn't access it unless they used a proxy, which given the wizarding habit of trying to cheat them they were unwilling to risk until I showed up." She quoted something Ulrik had said to her. "Trust is the most precious coin."