The next morning, after returning home from the Manor, she set about trying to narrow down their list of places to search for Evelyn, and hopefully Narcissa. Unfortunately, there wasn't much "narrowing" of the evidence to be had. Besides one reference in another letter to Evelyn asking if Narcissa was missing her and Richard's accents yet, there was nothing that could accurately help her pinpoint a location. And given Narcissa's stately accent, anyone outside of the upper echelons of the elite would have an accent that would sound off to Narcissa's ears.
While they'd spent the rest of the night coming through letters, they hadn't been able to find much else there that seemed helpful or relevant. Malfoy, however, had noticed one thing that seemed important. Despite the familiarity with which Evelyn and Narcissa seemed to have in their letters, there was nothing of any actual substance to them. Wherever they'd met, their relationship had not been fostered through correspondence. It was obvious that they had met in person and that the cornerstone of their relationship had been face-to-face contact.
But where on Earth would Narcissa Malfoy have met someone who preferred to correspond on A4 with a biro than parchment?
All Hermione had to find them was that Evelyn and Richard lived somewhere roughly an hour outside of Edinburgh, and the hospital they would prefer to be at was slightly closer. That helped narrow the list of Royal Infirmaries that they'd hoped to visit down somewhat. A check of a rather interesting tome on the history of royal patronage of hospitals provided her with a list of twenty-one in England, ten in Scotland, and one in Wales.
While a few of the hospitals had closed in recent years, or had become known by other names, Hermione wasn't sure exactly when the letter from Evelyn had been written. It wouldn't do her much good to discount an infirmary that was closed now if the letter was from twenty years earlier when the infirmary was still operating.
What came next was one of Hermione's favorite parts of investigating. She sat down at her long kitchen table with a large map of England and Scotland, a set of colored pencils, and a caliper compass. Knowing that the Hall's home was somewhere a little more than an hour outside of Edinburgh, she measured out roughly the distance that one could be expected to drive in ninety minutes or so. Colored pencil in hand, she would measure with the compass and shade in that area, drawing a key in the map's corner to assign colors to particular infirmaries.
Over the span of the next few hours, she calculated the average speed limit of the roads surrounding the cities and towns with a Royal Infirmary, until she had a rough idea of the driving radius of each. With confidence, she was able to remove the one in Wales and nearly all of those in England. But that still left her with a list of one in England— in Newcastle Upon Tyne— and all the ones in Scotland. In fairness, however, a list of eleven was far more manageable than a list of thirty-two.
But that was the simple part, done.
Now she had narrowed down possible hospitals that still left her with having to check coastal communities as far north as Aberdeen all the way down to Newcastle, and from Greenock all the way down to Ayr. While knowing that they lived on the coast continued to help narrow down the list, it was still an incredibly daunting task.
But at least she didn't have to do it alone.
Sitting in a drawing room in Malfoy Manor would never feel quite comfortable, but she was surprised by how quickly she was becoming accustomed to it. Even disregarding her less than savory personal history with the home—if one could go so far as to call a palatial manor a home—the overt formality still rankled somewhat.
She'd woken up fairly early to start work on the map, and had finished shortly after dinner. She'd taken a risk by flooing over to the Manor unannounced, but Malfoy had given her permission to come back if it was part of her search.
What she hadn't expected was the heavy warding on the floo. It kept her just on the edge of the hearth, and she was unable to move fully into the room. Past the mantle, she could see the long expanse of the foyer, the marbled floor, and the grand sweeping staircase. There was something disconcerting about standing in the flames, unable to fully move forward or backward, while she waited for some sign of life in the dark house.
He'd told her that he would be staying in the manor and closer to his mother's things while they looked. It was only nine o'clock. Surely he was home?
"Is Master knowing young Miss is here?" came a voice from the other side of the fireplace, startling her slightly.
"Oh, er, no. Is he in? The young Master?" she asked hesitantly, the words unfamiliar on her tongue.
"He be eating his pudding. Would Miss be liking a pudding?" Mipsy asked, walking fully into her line of sight and opening the grate to the floo, allowing her to step forward.
"Oh, no, Mipsy. Thank you, but that surely isn't necessary. Could you take me to him?"
Mipsy reached out to wrap an astonishingly firm hand around her wrist, and popped her into a warm, dark sitting room somewhere in the manor. Malfoy was sat at a small, round table, a slim, leather-bound journal open before him. On the table sat a tumbler of whisky and a small sticky toffee pudding. Despite herself, the smell of the dates and caramel in the small room, heady in the thick, warm air, made her stomach grumble loud enough to startle both of them.
"Merlin, Granger, did you eat anything today?" he asked, seemingly unsurprised to see her appear in his house without warning, as he looked warily at her midsection.
"No, actually. I haven't. I just wanted to show you what I found today."
"I'd love to hear it," he said genuinely, sweeping a long, pale hand toward the empty chair across from him. "Mipsy, could you get her something to eat?"
"Oh, that isn't—" she started to say as she moved toward the empty chair.
"Of course, Master!" Mipsy said before she could finish her sentence, popping from the room.
She turned to look at him fully as she sat down, any words she was about to say leaving her mind at the sight of his quirked eyebrow and slight smirk.
"Thank you, I suppose," she said, suddenly feeling a bit out of sorts.
"Don't thank me. Thank Mipsy when she's back with your dinner. You can tell me what you found after you eat," he said as he took a sip of his whisky and pushed his pudding away.
"Wouldn't you rather hear now?" Hermione asked, surprised he wasn't immediately barraging him with questions.
"Well, of course. But I'm assuming based on the fact that you didn't immediately start talking when you flooed in that it isn't something so time sensitive that we can do anything about it tonight. I'm impatient, but I'm not irrational. I'm sure whatever news you bring will keep until Mipsy comes back with your food. Besides, it's the pinnacle of bad breeding to talk with your mouth full, so it can wait until after you've eaten."
As she relaxed into the chair, she realized how tired she was. She'd been leaning over her dining table since she'd woken up, and her neck and shoulders were killing her. Despite the chair's high, seemingly hard wooden back, it was clear that generations of the Malfoy family had layered it in cushioning charms and it was a well-received reprieve to her neck.
"So while we wait, I'll tell you what I found," he said, lightly tapping the soft leather journal he'd placed on the table in front of him when she'd entered. "I was going back through the desk, and I found a series of her journals there. They start when she was a child, around the time she went off to Hogwarts. I think I'm really starting to realize that I didn't know my own mother half as well as I thought I did. It's an odd feeling, I can tell you that much."
A pang of sympathy ran through her. She could definitely empathize with the feeling of feeling as if your parents were strangers.
"For instance, of course I know that I have an Aunt Andromeda. I've met her, these last few years. But she wasn't around when I was a child, for obvious reasons. I always heard about my Aunt Bella, and you know how that went during the war. But from what I'm seeing in these journals, my mother and Andromeda were much, much closer as children than my mother was to Bellatrix. And I just... had absolutely no idea. As far as I know, my mother still hasn't reached out to her since the war."
Another soft crack of apparition broke the silence that descended after those words, and Mipsy placed a steaming steak and kidney pie before her.
"Please enjoy, Miss!" she said, before retreating to wherever house-elves go when not called for.
"Thank you, Mipsy," Hermione called, although she was uncertain as to whether or not the elf could hear her. Draco gestured toward her plate as he slid his small dish of pudding back towards himself.
"Eat. We can talk more after you've tamed the manticore that it sounds like has taken up residence in your torso."
They ate in what almost felt like a companionable silence. She hadn't realized quite how hungry she was until she had her fork in hand, and it was only the knowledge that she was eating her dinner across from Draco Malfoy, somewhere deep in Malfoy Manor, that kept her from making the sort of mess of her meal that would put Ron to shame.
While she ate, trying to count the number of chews on each bite to try to seem measured rather than completely out of control now that she had food in hand. The room was dark, in the sense that all the furniture appeared heavy and dark- warm toned woods and leather. The walls were covered in bookshelves, floor to ceiling, and a spiral staircase near one wall led to a second-floor landing with more shelving. A long leather couch before a roaring fireplace, a full length portrait of Morgana in the style of Frederick Sandys over the mantle. The table they sat at, small and round, with well-worn leather softened by years of use inlaid in the top. A chandelier hung in the middle of the room, candles blazing.
"It's my study," Malfoy said, breaking the silence. "It's the Heir's Library. One of the few rooms in this house I feel I can find any peace in. It's keyed to my status as heir. No one is allowed in without my express permission, so it was a safe haven for me during the war."
She looked around the room again, his words stirring inside of her. He'd let Mipsy bring her here. She was under no illusions that if he hadn't wanted her here, Mipsy would've left her waiting while she alerted him to her presence. While too dark and a tad too masculine for her tastes, she could see why this room brought him comfort. There was something warm and welcoming about the space, especially when bathed in the warm candle and firelight.
She finished her pie in an embarrassingly short time, despite her attempts to pace herself. As she set down her fork, he stood, walking to a globe of the old world beside the sofa. A flick of his wrist in the air above it lifted the lid with a soft click, and he pushed it the rest of the way open.
"Can I get you something to drink?" he asked, setting his own glass down beside it. "Some port, sherry, scotch?"
"Scotch, if you please," she said, the petty part of her determined to prove a point after she had embarrassed herself the night before.
He poured them each a couple fingers of whatever he had in the globe—and honestly, who actually had a liquor cabinet shaped like a bloody globe—summoning ice from somewhere, and returned to his seat across from her.
He at least at the grace to wait for her to take her first sip before asking, "What was it you found today?"
She placed the glass back down on the leather-topped table, wondering idly if there was a spell to keep condensation from leaving marks. She'd have to ask him later.
"I cross-referenced a list of all the Royal Infirmaries with a map of the UK. Using what we know about the Halls's approximate distance from Edinburgh, I was able to eliminate close to half of them. That still leaves us with eleven potential infirmaries that they lived close to that are near enough to the coast to be potential matches. We'll have to do an awful lot of searching to find them."
He nodded, knocking back half his drink at once.
"Do you think that's our most productive step forward, then? The Halls?"
She took a brief moment to think before nodding. "I think so. We have little to go on at this point. You said your mother and Andromeda still aren't talking. If she knew anything, I'm sure Harry would know about it. Her grandson is his godson, so they speak relatively frequently. She must know your mother is missing. We have little else to go on, and we could also continue to read her journals while we search for the Halls—that might turn up something else."
He nodded back, eyes dropping to look down into his glass as he raised it again. "How do you suppose we move forward, then? You said you've narrowed down the parts of the coastline that they could live on, but something tells me it's not exactly a small area."
"It's not," she admitted with a sigh. Something told her he wouldn't like this next bit. "I think our best course of action would be to hire a car and drive the coast. We start on one side, search our way up, and then go down the other."
"You want to do what?" he asked, almost missing the table as he dropped his glass back onto the table in front of him.
Holding back a smile, Hermione took a moment to take a sip of her drink. She should've expected this, really.
"I said, 'We should hire a car.' We'll start in Ayr, then drive up to Greenock. We'll check in all the towns we go through for anyone living there named Evelyn or Richard Hall. We can ditch the car in Greenock, apparate to Aberdeen, and then repeat down to Newcastle, which is where the only infirmary on our list in England is. What are you questioning?"
Malfoy shook his head, and she could tell that he was holding himself back from rolling his eyes. "If we can apparate from Greenock to Aberdeen, why on Merlin's green would we be hiring a muggle vehicle?"
"Malfoy, it's not like every muggle town or village is going to show up on a map with the specificity needed to apparate there. Most muggles who don't live in cities don't live in neat, tidy little enclaves. People can live miles from their neighbors. Plus, it'll make it far easier to make sure that we miss nothing. What if we pop from town to town, and they live in a village halfway in between? Are you afraid of riding in a car?"
"No! I'm not afraid," he retorted, still looking far from agreeable. "I just don't know that it's the most expedient way to get there. It's been five days since I talked to Potter. I'm just afraid that this sounds like a massive waste of time when there are quicker ways to get around."
"Malfoy," she said, once again forcing herself not to reach across the table to grasp his hand. "I don't know about you, but I certainly don't think that I'm capable of apparating continuously up the coast for days on end. This really will be faster. Drive up from place to place, park the car, check pubs, churches and similar places in the smaller town where people tend to know each other, or find a phone register in the larger cities. If it doesn't look right, we move on. I can drive a lot further while tired than I can apparate, that's for sure."
He stared at her across the table, face inscrutable. If not for the look in his eyes, she would almost think that he was looking through her.
"Do you even know how to drive a muggle vehicle?"
"It's a motor car, Malfoy. I'm sure you're posh enough to be familiar with the concept of a carriage. It's a carriage pulled by a motor, not a horse or thestral. And yes, my dad taught me how to drive one between sixth and seventh year. I have a license and everything."
He sighed and rubbed his hands together, lightly worrying the signet ring on his left hand. "When do we have to leave?"
She tried to tamp down a look of victory, but his eye roll told her she hadn't been entirely successful. "We can leave as soon as we get packed and ready to go. We can buy food and such on the road—stop into pubs or run into a grocer if we need to. Should be fairly easy to find an inn if we need to stopover anywhere. You should put together a week's worth of clothing, I think. That should be more than enough. Something comfortable, you'll be sitting in the car a fair amount. And some shoes you won't mind walking in. Ones that can bear a bit of sand or mud."
"Yes, Miss!" a voice called, as she heard the telltale sound of elf apparition from the room.
"Was that Mipsy?" she asked, heart racing. She hadn't even noticed the small elf anywhere in the room with them.
"Of course not. It would be unseemly for me to have a female elf as my valet. It was her brother, Marky," he said with a sarcastic drawl, as if she somehow should have known. "He'll have my things ready shortly. Don't you need to go home and pack?"
She fought the urge to sigh, knowing that he would be eager to get going as soon as possible. Merlin, if she could ever find someone half as devoted to her as Draco Malfoy was to his mother, she'd be set for life. Knocking back the rest of her drink, she stood and strode toward the floo to head home and pack.
"I'll be here first thing in the morning," she called as she grabbed a handful of floo powder.
"I'll be waiting for you, I'm sure."
A/N: Sorry this took so long! School has been absolutely kicking my butt, and I wasn't sure how this chapter was going to fall together. I'll be travelling for the holidays, so fingers crossed I can get a fair amount of work done on this story while I'm gone.
Please let me know what you think!