For those who've also been keeping up with the sudden burst of crazy-fast updates on Revenir, I want to assure you, that will in no way compromise the weekly update schedule for Daughter of Slytherin.


Chapter Six

She wasn't entirely sure how she accomplished it, but somehow Hermione managed to hold herself together as they exited Malfoy Manor, as they Apparated back to her Muggle home—her with the use of her father's wand, and Thorfinn finally having drawn his own from within the folds of his cloak—and she shut herself up in the bathroom.

Even as she stood beneath the steady spray of the shower and scrubbed at her hair and body with pleasantly scented soaps and hair care products, she was only able to turn over in her head everything she'd recalled with a sort of dazed numbness. Yes, she supposed, this was definitely a form of shock.

Wrapping her wet hair in a towel and tightly belting her coziest thick cotton bathrobe around herself—she wanted to be relaxed and in comfort before she dressed and headed back to Malfoy Manor for whatever answers the Most Noble and Ancient Houses of Black and Malfoy might have for her—she shoved her feet in her fuzzy slippers and started down the staircase. It didn't even occur to her to be mindful of the floppy bunny ears on her comfy footwear until Thorfinn reacted to the spectacle.

She found him in the kitchen, not that she was very surprised, with his head in the refrigerator. Folding her arms under her breasts, she leaned against the doorframe. How odd that their conversation that had occurred in this very room only late last night felt as though it had taken place in another life time.

Huh. She supposed that, in a sense, it had.

"We literally just came from eating brunch," she said, wondering when she had put on the coffee she smelled in the air—obviously that had to be her doing, as Thorfinn Rowle was more likely to destroy a Muggle coffeemaker trying to understand how it functioned than he was to figure out the mechanics of it without instruction. She by no means assumed he was an idiot; she simply didn't trust him around items with delicate pieces or dainty buttons that could crack if pressed a bit too enthusiastically. Her mind must be more muddled than she realized today if she had completely glossed over setting up the pot that was currently brewing, not that she imagined anyone in the world would blame her for being a bit out of sorts just now.

"Yes, well, you told me to make myself comfortable, and food makes me very comfortable." He slapped a hand against the side of the fridge. "Does this thing have to be so cold? I feel like I'm going to freeze my tits off."

Her brows pulled together as she sighed. She reminded herself that like most raised as pure-blood idealists, he likely hadn't paid much attention in Muggle Studies and, unlike her, didn't have the benefit of being so versed in both worlds by happenstance of his upbringing. It probably never even occurred to him to wonder how Muggles kept their food from spoiling when they couldn't use stasis charms on their pantry cupboards.

"It does, yeah, Frosty Nips. Keeps the food fresh longer."

Mirroring her expression, he stood up. God, he made her refrigerator seem short. She had to stand on her toes to reach the items on top of it. Bastard.

"So, what happens to the food if it stops working?" He sounded honestly aghast at the notion that anything edible should be left to some unknown fate.

She shrugged. "Depends on the reason that it stops working. If the power goes out, keep the doors shut and hope nothing spoils before it comes back up. If the refrigerator breaks down completely, get a new one."

He returned to his search of the shelves, finally coming out with the prepackaged kielbasa she didn't realize she was hoping he wouldn't find until she saw him holding it. That was dinner for two nights for her and no doubt he'd gobble it up as a snack.

"Thorfinn, no."

"How does one cook this?" he asked with a curious frown, clearly not hearing her as he turned the package over in his hands. "Oh! Cooking instructions right on the back! That's so clever."

She pinched between her brows in a gesture of exhaustion. Honestly, she wasn't certain if she should ignore that he'd just praised a Muggle convention or spend the energy it would take to feel surprised by it.

The next thing she knew, he was puttering about her kitchen looking for cookware that best fit the description advised in those aforementioned instructions. "I swear, it's like Death Eaters need to be housebroken," she muttered under her breath.

Thorfinn glanced at her over his shoulder as he brought the appropriate pan over to the stove. "Do you suggest boiling or pan frying?"

Her shoulders slumped. That was when he once more looked at her, his eyes moving over her in a head-to-toe sweep. "You're wearing rabbits on your feet."

Dropping her gaze to her slippers, she lifted one leg. Hermione watched those big, floppy ears bounce side to side as she wiggled her foot in the air. This would be why she never packed these things in her trunk for Hogwarts—as deliciously comfy as they were, it was hard to be taken seriously when your footwear called to mind fluffy, twitchy-nosed forest creatures.

She ignored the sound of his snickering as he went back to preparing his post-brunch snack. This was the man her father had thought she might eventually grow out of 'not even liking?'

Oh, she would love to go back a thousand years and kick him right in the bollocks for that idea!

Now that she thought on it, Thorfinn Rowle's presence in her kitchen twice in less than 24 hours was probably precisely why, even in a daze, she'd decided she needed more caffeine than that delicate little demitasse cup of coffee she'd had at the Malfoys' had afforded her.


"What's that you've got there?"

She didn't glance up at the sound of Thorfinn's voice as he entered the living room. Apparently finished devouring what was likely the first meal he'd ever made for himself, he'd come to find her—not that she'd gone very far. She still hadn't even gone up to get dressed, only having unwound the towel from her hair and hanging it over the staircase railing.

A mirthless grin curving her lips as she sat stiffly in the center of the couch, she ran her hands over the cover of the photo album in her lap. "When I . . . when I recalled what was done to me, I saw my moth—I saw Dahlia Granger hand me a book. Well, that book is long gone, now, but when I remembered that, I knew what it meant. I knew what I was seeing. Stupid enchantment filled my head with memories of a life that never was. I must've looked back on the photographs in here a hundred times while I was growing up. There was never a flicker to tell me anything was wrong, or any ripple of something being off, nothing to suggest there was something about the photos inside that should tell me . . . . anything. And as I sit here holding this, I realize it's because the magic was not in the images . . . it was in my head."

Sighing heavily through his nostrils, he rounded the sofa and eased himself down to sit beside her. Proving her correct in her earlier assertion that he wasn't an idiot, he said, "You're afraid to open it because you don't know what you expect to see in there. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true. You expect to open it and find yourself missing from photographs you've seen yourself in the last near-eleven years, and what you can't expect is how that's going to make you feel."

She gave a determined pout, her lower lip trembling a little. "You're right. Of course, you're right, you're the only person in the world who actually gets what this is like." A lump was forming in her throat as she tightened her fingers around the edges of the album cover. "I think that's why our fathers decided that if one of us was going to go through this, then we both had to. So we would have someone who understood."

"Says you. I think my father was so determined to marry me off to a British pure-blood noble and just tired enough of my shit that he was all, 'good riddance,' when I went into that bronze sleep."

Meeting his gaze, she couldn't help but snicker, even fully aware that lightening the mood and getting a laugh out of her was his intent. "That's not true. Well, maybe the marrying you off bit, but . . . I was there, after you went to sleep. I saw—"

"Don't you dare sit there and tell me that man got emotional," he said, shaking a finger in her face. "Even try it, and I'll know you're full of rubbish. My father was not one for letting on that he even had feelings. Should've seen the time he dropped a log on his foot. Mum had to put a sticking charm on him just to pin him down so the healer could treat him."

Her brightened expression sobered a bit as she waited for him to lower his hand. "I was going to say that I saw his eyes. He was stoic, oh, yes, but there was a sadness there that hadn't been before you'd left him."

Thorfinn squared his jaw as he darted his gaze all over the place. "I don't think I can picture that." He snapped his attention back to lock on her face and she knew there was no imagining the watery sheen in his blue eyes. "I didn't let him see, but . . . but God, I was so scared that day."

"I know you didn't. Put on a good show." She swallowed hard, nodding. "We both did. I was scared, too."

"You were?"

Again, she nodded, smiling sadly. "How couldn't I be? I was terrified. At the last minute, I told my father I didn't want to go." And of course her voice broke a bit on that last word.

"You acted so hard about it all!" His teeth sank into his bottom lip a moment as he simply stared at her. "I thought, what is my father doing, expecting me to grow up and marry this girl who's so much braver than me? She is going to run all over me."

The witch couldn't help but laugh. "It's not brave to do something if you've got no fear of it, but . . . ." She forced out a harsh breath, fighting to keep herself collected before she could go on. "I wasn't truly scared until after you went to sleep. It was so hard not crying."

"After I went to sleep? Really?" A smirk played on his lips. "So you did like me then?"

Hermione uttered an affronted gasp. "I . . . I did not, I still hated you, I just didn't want to be on my own."

His eyes narrowed in a teasing look. "No, no. You liked me, admit it!"

"I'll admit no such thing, sir!"

"Which can only be said if there's something to admit, madam."

Laughing in spite of herself, the witch shook her head. "Thank you."

He braced an elbow on his knee and dropped his chin down against his palm. "Caught on, did you?"

"Trying not to let things get too moody or serious? Yeah. Starting to think that might be your strong suit."

"You're welcome." With his free hand, he reached over and tapped the cover of the album she clutched so tightly. "You know, you don't have to do this. You don't have to look. No one would blame you if you decided not to."

"I know, but . . . ." Again, she shook her head. "I feel like I need to. This is really happening, and I need to do whatever I can to make everything feel . . . solid, I suppose. Maybe there's even a chance things like this—confirming what of my past was true and what was some false recollection—will help me unearth my real memories."

Nodding, he sat up, sinking back into the couch pillows behind him. He only watched her as she deliberated for a few heartbeats—she may have said she needed to do this, but the willpower to actually go through with opening that cover and thumbing through those images as another matter.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slow, Hermione gave herself a shake. Finally, she felt braced enough, and she eased open the cover. A miserable sound escaped her as she turned to the first image she recalled of her parents with her as a baby. There they were, happy, smiling as she recalled, but no tiny infant was nestled between them.

The ice skating rink where William Granger had taken a snapshot of Dahlia tugging a 4 year old Hermione along by her hand? Only Dahlia was caught, mid-motion gliding across the ice. Again and again, page after page, pictures where she now recognized the image of her had only been superimposed by the enchantment on her mind's eye.

After what seemed far too long, she reached the last third of the album, when she was 8—after she'd actually become part of their lives. And suddenly, there she was, honestly in the photos. Dahlia and William Granger beamed in each shot, but seeing those bright smiles only made the growing ache in her chest sharper.

"Do you think it was all an act?"

Oh, he did not like the sound of her talking through the tears crowding her throat. He scowled, trying to ignore the sudden feeling of protectiveness creeping over him. "Was what all an act?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but had to close it and start again. "The smiles, the looks of pride . . . . That they actually loved me?" Wiping at her cheeks, she wasn't at all surprised when the back of her hand came away damp. "I mean, I think they did. I felt like they did. But it could've all been an act. And them not being here? I thought I was protecting them, removing myself from their memories and sending them away, where they'd be safe. Really, I was only returning them to the life they had before I came along."

He was not prepared for the weight of her chestnut eyes so filled with tears as she turned to face him directly. "Do you suppose they're happier without me?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he said in an exasperated whisper. Pulling the album from her hands, he circled her with his arms and guided her to rest her head in the hollow of his shoulder. "I know it hurts, but for whatever it's worth, they protected you, they raised you, doted on you, yeah?"

Sniffling, she nodded, not hating the warm press of him beneath her cheek.

"Then I'm sure they loved you. All that's not something you do if you're only caring for someone out of obligation."

She knew he was right. Harry's childhood was a testament to the sort of upbringing bare-minimum childrearing obligations led to. It always left her marveling that he'd not grown up to be a more bitter person.

"Again, you're right."

There was a smile in his voice as he said, "You know what? I think I rather enjoy hearing that."

Hermione shook her head, holding in a laugh. Good Lord, he really was keeping her grounded by not letting her wallow for too many moments at a clip—a bit like letting pressure seep out in small spurts, so a more explosive reaction was staved off. Maybe like this, the weight of all these revelations wouldn't crush her. Maybe like this, chipping away at her shock and letting her feelings out bit by bit and then distracting her, allowing the new information to settle in her mind before chipping away again, she could make it through this rather literal identity crisis with her sanity, and her personality, intact.

"I'd hex you for being a smart arse," she said, fighting a grin, "but I left my wand upstairs. Wait."

Putting her hand on his chest, she pushed herself to sit up and looked at him. She already had realized the answer earlier, herself, but she needed to ask, anyway; she needed clarification and to know she'd guessed correctly. "What did any of this have to do with you breaking my old wand?"

Thorfinn held her gaze steadily, acutely aware of the press of her hand against him. "One of the things said about your father's wand that's actually true is that he somehow crafted into it the ability to go dormant, and that it would only 'wake' when it came into the possession of one deemed worthy of its power. He always intended to pass it on to you when he died. But, as long as there was another wand bound to your magic, the weapon would've stayed sleeping."

So, the snakewood wand was truly hers, now. "That makes a strange amount of sense," she responded, pouting thoughtfully.

Silence threaded the room, and she noticed his gaze had fallen to lock on her lips. Worse, she also noticed that she didn't hate the way his fixed attention made the delicate skin tingle. Even trying to remind herself that this wasn't a thing that should happen, at least not now—not only given the roller coaster of the last half-day, but given that she was only clad in that bathrobe!—she found herself leaning toward him.

Hermione thought perhaps he'd pull away and chuckle at her, teasingly tell her 'see? You do like me,' but he didn't. Instead, he was drifting forward to meet her. The first brush of his mouth against hers was soft, delicate, and somehow still took her breath away.

Leaning back enough to look at her, he searched her gaze with his own. Thorfinn reached up, cupping a hand against her cheek. He drew her close once more, his mouth crashing against hers.

Her fingers curled into the fabric of his robes as his tongue plunged between her lips. She welcomed the hungry, almost rough exploration, caressing his tongue with her own while she moved closer to him.

He broke the kiss, dragging his mouth along her cheek and down to the side of her throat. The arm around her tightened, pulling her nearer, still, as he nipped at her earlobe, sending a sweet, tingly little jolt through her.

She nearly gave into the impulse to climb into his lap, but then she felt the fingers of his free hand tug at the neck of her bathrobe. And that was when her current state of undress came crashing down over her. She wasn't even wearing knickers, and with the, ahem, easy access of wizard robes, it wouldn't be too far outside the realm of possibility for this to go too far too fast.

"Thorfinn, stop." Hermione pulled away, her breathing a little rough, and braced her palms against his chest.

Those blue eyes snapped open, a bit hazy. He shook his head at her. "Should I be apologizing?"

"No, no. I did sort of instigate this, so no." She shook her head right back, folding her arms around herself. "It's not that. That was . . . nice, and I'm certainly not sorry it happened, but it's just too soon. Besides, you remember what Draco probably said to his parents before we left?"

He laughed, recalling having to drag her away from going to pummel the little shit. "Yeah?"

The witch smirked, tipping closer to him, once more. "Hell will freeze over before I let Draco Malfoy be right." She dropped a quick kiss on his lips before rising from the couch. "I'll get dressed, and then we go back to the Manor."

"All right." Thorfinn sat back, folding his hands behind his head. "But if you think I'm going to wait too long before you and I revisit what just happened, you're a mad woman."

Hermione laughed as she turned on her heel and started toward the staircase. She didn't dare glance back at him—at his dense, muscly stature lounging on her couch like that—because she knew if she did, it would only make her more sharply cognizant of how her body was screaming at her for not letting them get any further just now.


Draco grinned as the apparent couple entered the Manor doors early that evening. Though he didn't say anything to Rowle—he wasn't precisely 'afraid' of Thorfinn Rowle, but he was always mindful that the man could probably crush his throat with one hand and very little effort if he so chose, that and he probably hadn't forgiven Draco for that nasty business of Voldemort using him to break the memory charm Hermione'd placed on Rowle during the War—he pivoted on his heel to trail after Hermione.

She didn't wait for him to speak, though she slowed her pace to walk beside him. "Tell me something, did your parents ever let on about who I really was when we were growing up?"

"Not really." He shrugged. "But I did find it odd that they told me to mind you, but not let on that I was doing it. No one was to know I was looking out for you."

"Explains why you were always such an arse—you played your role well."

"It's funny, but I hadn't realized until last night when they told me the truth that my parents never used the word Mudblood when talking about you, in fact, I don't remember ever hearing either of them use it at all. Picked that up from my friends at school."

That was a shock to her system, for certain, but now that she recalled . . . . Even when they'd been dragged by the Snatchers to Malfoy Manor during the War, neither Narcissa nor Lucius had said that word. Bellatrix certainly had, and so, too, had Fenrir Greyback, but not the Malfoys. That confirmed for her the notion she'd guessed at earlier—that there were two camps of those loyal to the memory of her father, those who followed the bitter man who'd died lonely and hateful, and those who knew of the man he'd been before all his loss had torn his heart asunder.

That, however, was yet another thing she would leave until the appropriate moment to verify. All the assumptions in the world meant absolutely nothing if they were wrong.

Draco breathed out a laugh at her visible astonishment and shook his head. "And it also explains why I was there to tell Potter and Weasel-bee to make sure the Death Eaters didn't see you when all hell broke loose during the World Cup, yeah?"

"It's so strange that how out of character that was for you never occurred to me. You seemed to hate me so much, doing anything that meant protecting me should've stood out to me."

Draco nodded, shrugging again. "Remember second year? Did you, by chance, find a page in your bag about the Basilisk?"

"That was your doing?"

"At my father's instruction. I never thought much of it. It was that day at Flourish and Blotts, he told me to go find a book that had the information on how to protect oneself from its gaze, but not to be obvious about it. So I just took the page I needed, but when the fight broke out, I missed the chance to pass it along to you." He frowned. "Now that I think on it, the timing of my father and Weasel-bee, Sr. getting into that row was probably meant as a distraction so I could put the page in your bag then, but I didn't realize at the time. Waited until you left your bag unattended in the library one day."

"I always wondered where that page had come from." Her eyes narrowed lethally and she shook her head, remembering the ragged edge of the page. "I can't believe you defiled a book."

Now that he'd gotten a good amount of sleep, he was back to his smug, smarmy self. "So, speaking of large serpents and defilement," he started in a quiet voice, "did you take so long getting back here because you and Rowle were playing 'hide the Basilisk'?"

She stopped mid-stride and turned her head to glare up at him.


"Ow! That—that was uncalled for!"

Narcissa and Lucius looked up at the sound of Draco bellowing out in the main hall. Thorfinn, who'd just crossed the threshold of the study, turned his attention back over his shoulder.

Into the room Hermione stepped, moving past Thorfinn, even as his curious gaze followed her. Draco hobbled in behind her, spitting out silent curses as he made his way to the nearest seat and folded into it.

Thorfinn nodded to the other young man. "Got you in the bollocks, did she?"

His grey eyes narrowing, Draco said from between clenched teeth, "What do you think?"

"Well," Thorfinn offered, shrugging, "it's sort of her specialty."

Hermione ignored them both as she approached the elder Malfoys. Lucius was seated behind the desk and Narcissa was settled in the most ladylike way into the cushy sofa nearest her husband's position. "Before any of this goes any further, I have been thinking about how to proceed publicly."

Lucius exchanged a look with Narcissa as she sat up a bit straighter. "We are listening."

"Well, Harry and the Weasleys are all vacationing abroad right now, and I realized something as I considered writing to Harry just to let him know we needed to talk when he got back home. Which was what took so long," she tacked on, casting an baleful glance back at Draco. "But I realized that perhaps, for the time being, who I really am should be kept quiet—as in no one outside this room is to know anything at all has changed about me. If anyone else knows who I am, they're to go on thinking I don't recall, just yet. If that's possible, I mean."

Lucius nodded. "It is."

"Good. The second thing, the thing I need to do . . . ." She drew in a deep breath and let it out slow, nodding to herself before going on. "I need to find proof of the type of man my father really had been before he sent me into that sleep. I don't think Dumbledore would've been so quick to enforce those locks on my memory if not for the fact that he, like most of Wizarding Britain, believed Godric Gryffindor was the hero of the story, if there was one, and the only way for me not to 'turn out like Salazar'—the only way to ensure that I'd fight against Voldemort—was to keep me ignorant of who I am. I want to prove to everyone that my father was not the monster Godric Gryffindor's version of history painted him to be."