Typewriters don't speak.
They don't speak, they don't titter, and they certainly don't do anything except squat down on a desk and look intimidating. Nonetheless, the typewriter sneers at Hermione, scoffing a curt snap! at each letter, snorting its scornful ding when she emerges onto the next line, coughing thirstily when it's time for a new sheet. Stupid, stupid, stupid! is all Hermione writes at first, again and again in bold, unfeeling print. It makes her feel no better, so she moves onto new words, like childish, manipulative, foolish, deceitful, real, faux, sneaky contrivances, pitiful, miserable, empty, monster, hard-hearted, lonely, confused. The list goes on, until it's so unbearably sweet and tragic it resembles a letter a wife sends to her war hero.
Balled-up scraps litter the floor of the bedroom, the least salvaged of them shredded irreversibly and hastily scribbled out. When Hermione crawls into bed, the joints in her fingers ache, but they do nothing for the hurricane in her head. She goes to bed, but only for moments, waking back up sweating and breathless. How can she sleep after all she said? When she closes her eyes, she sees the hope in Tom's eyes, replaced swiftly by disappointment, fury, the sheen of...
Trick! her instincts bellow. Another one of his ploys to get to you.
When they'd finally arrived at the mansion, Tom hadn't even waited for the car to stop, unlocking the door and hauling himself out when it had barely slowed down, as if he couldn't get away from her fast enough, as if he'd rather face a concussion than share the same air for another second. But how does she fix it? Can something like that be fixed at all? She tells herself she said those nasty things because it's better for the both of them. Tom hates her, she hates him, and when they part, they part bitter enemies determined never to cross paths again. She's off the hook. He's out of her life.
Hermione's breaths slow into her damp pillow, shooing away the last of conscious thought.
The first strange thing Hermione notices is that all of the windows are wide open.
It's the dead of night. She walks out of her bedroom and down the floor, moving so slowly and soundlessly she wonders briefly if she's transformed into a phantom over the night. There's a summer lightning storm outside and it flashes strawberry-yellow, illuminating the vast hallway she stands in and making the velvet drapes whip with a gust of ferocious wind. The second strange thing are the sharpened claws dragging over the floorboards, rasping hoarsely as they draw closer...
She watches the claws, heart lurching terrifically when their curled tips peel up wood and slash across the curtain closest to her, a split-second before ribboning her chest. Pain flowers under her skin like a poison blossom and she falls. And the lightning flashes. And there's Tom.
He stands on the other end of the hallway, hands tucked in the pockets of another ivory-white suit, gazing out one of the windows with his chin propped on his fist. Oh, he's dashing, and the smile he sports is wry. A moment later he looks up, surprised to see her. "What's wrong, baby?" he says, and his voice echoes all around the mansion, sliding down the banisters and oozing out of the melting walls. She shudders. "You look a fright."
"The claws were here again." She lets go of her chest, where they tore her open like an envelope, and gestures sadly to the blood. "They won't leave my dreams alone."
"Dreams?" Tom repeats curiously, staring at his red hands and long nails, filed into fine, sharp points. His expression grows feral. "But I thought this was a nightmare."
"Maybe." She eyes him and feels hungry when he prowls toward her, in that lazy, self-confident gait of his. He pulls her to her feet and puts his mouth on hers, smoking it like a cigarette. She sneaks her hands under his cream vest for a swipe of skin. She wants to devour, to feast on his tongue.
"Don't forget to try," he whispers. Outside the windows, the sky flashes electric raspberry-blue. The floors shudder and groan, about to give. "Don't forget a thing."
"Eat me," she says in reply. "Don't leave a bone behind."
He laughs and she laughs, and the mansion laughs, and the pipe-organ squeals as it explodes, blowing off their faces...
And Hermione wakes up.
She finds the same canopy she always wake up to, still above her, and she scrabbles a hand over the pounding organ in her chest. Not again, she thinks, rubbing her exhausted eyes. This is the fourth nightmare of the night. It can't be any later than three-thirty in the morning.
Sighing, she sits up and swings her feet over the side of the bed, searching in the dark for the lamp. She finds it and pulls the cord, pupils shrinking to adapt to the light. She stares around the bedroom she has recently been able to call hers and doesn't see one sign of claws, just tiny white balls everywhere. What the…? Oh right, she remembers, eyes landing on her cynical typewriter. The writing. The fight.
She remembers the time Tom read the entire Wuthering Heights book to her when she was sick, how she was only awake to hear the first two pages.
Suddenly determined, Hermione stands and finds a robe, throwing it on over her pajamas and fastening it as she walks down the hall. None of the windows are flung open like they were in her dream and she's glad, because she feels disturbed enough. She realizes she doesn't know where Tom's bedroom is, she's only been to his studio and she doubts even he is there at this hour.
She stops, looks around, and realizes she's completely lost.
"Damn it," she mutters. Perhaps Kreacher stayed behind and will find her?
The thought alone sends her walking again, at a faster, brisker pace.
Hermione passes through winding hallways inlaid with marble flooring and ceilings far too high above her head. She tries every doorknob she finds, but most of them are locked and the ones that aren't only lead to empty recreation rooms, like a piano room or the indoor pool. She huffs, frustrated.
"Looking for something?" a voice asks.
She turns around slowly and regards Tom, leaning against the threshold of an open door she tried jiggling the handle of to no avail two minutes ago. He isn't smirking or taunting or any of things Tom Riddle normally is. Hermione takes a deep breath.
"Yes, I-" She hesitates, fiddling with the knot of her sash. "Can I speak to you for a moment?"
Where Tom would usually say, I thought you were already doing a fine job of that, he only nods and steps back. Hermione barely takes in his bedroom as she enters, the larger part of her focus divided on its owner. The lights are all on inside, dim and yellow, and the sheets on the bed are untouched. Maybe I'm not the only one having trouble with sleep, she thinks.
Distracting her from her thoughts, Tom shuts the door, moving past her to sit down in a rocking chair on the opposite side of the room. For once, the distance between them doesn't put Hermione at ease – it just makes everything that happened last night seem more real, and worse.
"I'm sorry if I woke you," she says, although it's obvious he hasn't slept much more than she has. Tom says nothing, doesn't even look at her. Hermione flushes. "But I...I had a bad dream," she goes on timidly. "I guess it was an old habit to come here."
"Oh?" Tom's tone belies no interest.
"Yes." She makes herself smile, although the motion hurts her stiff cheeks. Copying what he said two nights ago, she asks, "Do you remember the time I came to your dorm at Wool's, demanding you let me sleep there for the night?"
Waiting, she watches Tom as he scratches gouges into the wooden armrest with a fingernail for an endless minute, before finally nodding.
"Well," she says, on a sharp exhale of relief, "I can't help comparing that time to now. There I was – what? Twelve? – and still too chicken to sleep by myself after a bad dream. So down I went to the second floor, to your room, and I knocked on your door…"
"Get out of here, Hermione, before you get us both in trouble," Tom hisses.
"But I can't sleep," Hermione says in frustration, fisting the blanket she's brought and shaking it at him. "Why can't I sleep with you? You always come to my room whenever you want."
"It's different."
"No, it's not!"
Tom rolls his eyes. "Of course it is. I can do whatever I want. Now go to your room."
"Just because you're a year older than me doesn't mean you can boss me around, you idiot."
He narrows his eyes at her. She narrows hers right back.
"Fine." Tom shoves open the door and jerks his chin at his dorm, looking irritated. Hermione grins. "Get in here," he commands, "but be quiet."
"Thanks." She jumps up before she passes him, struggling to reach the height of his new thirteen-year old body, but after a few hops manages to place a kiss on his cheek. He smirks a little and shuts the door behind them.
"So what do you want to do?" she says excitedly, laying down her blanket next to his messed up one and smoothing out the wrinkles. She didn't bother bringing her pillow, so they'll have to share, but secretly she planned for that. "We can read a book or play sticks or-"
"I am going to sleep," Tom interrupts importantly. He smacks himself down in the bed beside her, jostling the cheap mattress and her neatly made sheet. She scowls at him. "You can do whatever you want so long as you're quiet."
"Bore," she accuses.
His black eyes slant in the semi-dark, either with pride or sleep. "I am not."
"Are too."
"Don't be childish, Hermione," he tells her imperiously. "Now I'm going to sleep. When I wake up, you better be gone or else Mrs. Cole will throw the both of us out of the orphanage and it'll be no one's fault but your own."
He turns over, tugs up the blanket to shield his eyes from the streetlight coming in through the window, and ignores her.
Hermione sits for a minute or two, deflated, and she peeks over at Tom to see if he'll reconsider the game proposal. But he's fast asleep, pretty pink lips pouted out and girl lashes clustered like dream braids. She sighs and crawls over, snuggling up against his back. His chest goes up and down slowly under their thin cotton blankets. She puts her arm around him in a half-hug and admires his beauty for a private moment, relishing that he's all hers. Because although he may say otherwise and kiss stupid blondes behind Mrs. Cole's back, she knows he belongs to her. He loves her the most. She's the only girl he ever really loves.
"Why're you staring at me?" grumbles Tom, startling her.
"I thought you were sleeping," she accuses in an angry whisper. He snickers.
"Well, you were wrong, weren't you?"
"Go to bed, Tom."
"Only if you do too." And he flips around, slipping his arm around her just as she's done to him. He yawns and his fingers play at the bottom of her back underneath the nightgown, inching higher. "Do you need me to rub your back or can you fall asleep on your own?"
"No, I'm not a little kid anymore," she snaps, and he shrugs.
After a moment, she adds, "But could you rub my back? It's nice."
He grins.
"You were really sweet," Hermione says softly. "When you wanted to be."
A neat collection of wood shavings sits by Tom's hand. With a flick of his wrist, he sweeps them to the ground. "Your point?" he demands, raising his head and looking at her for the first time since she set foot in the room. She doesn't flinch from his gaze, hard and cold as the child who only ever spared a smile for her. Maybe he hadn't cared for her in the way she wanted him to…but he did care for her in his own way, in the only way he knew how. She'd had parents to teach her how to love for a little while, but Tom? A stern matron, a grey orphanage, a cloudy past. All he knew – all he does know is how to get what he wants through whatever means necessary.
Hermione should have taught him to care the proper way, but she'd been so young, so scared... Older and wiser, she might still have had chance at helping Tom, if not for last night when he reached out to her and she threw it back in his face out of spite. For so long, she's told herself that he is the twisted one, preying on her as a helpless child, torturing her for sport. It was not her in the wrong, but him.
Bitterness planted all those misconceptions in her mind. Now, she brushes them away like old cobwebs, tentatively making room for something else.
"I want my friend back," she says.
Tom laughs at her, lips twisted in an ugly sneer. "Why the sudden change of heart?" he mocks. "I thought you hated me. Or do your words not mean much anymore?"
Hermione ignores his attempt to provoke her. "Listen to me, Tom, please." She crosses the room and he stiffens when she plants her hands on the chair armrests, putting her face in his. "I meant what I said last night, when I said it," she says, "but I've been thinking and… I don't want things to end like this. I don't want you to go through the rest of your life thinking no one's ever...cared about you, because it's not true. I used to." Her voice drops, to hide the roughness. "At least, once."
Tom looks away from her, jaw taut. "You're lying."
"Don't tell me that," she hisses, with such ferocity he looks at her in surprise. "You aren't my jurisdiction, you never were supposed to be. You were meant to be my friend, someone who cared, listened – not someone who controlled me-" She breaks off, catching a breath. "That's not what I wanted to tell you though. I…I don't want to fight. I just-"
Tom gazes at her as she searches for words, frustrated. "You want to be friends?" he finishes.
"Yes!"
"No."
As Hermione stares at him, he drops his gaze and says in a low, gritty tone she's never heard from him before, "You can't honestly expect that of me, Hermione. You must know friendship is something I haven't had in mind for you since I was eleven. Honestly, that you could even entertain that thought-"
"But I can," she interrupts, cupping his cheek. The suddenness of the movement and unexpected touch are so unprecedented that Tom and Hermione's eyes widen in shock – how funny to think that once upon a time they touched often as they breathed. And unless her senses deceive her, Tom's eyes darken.
Determined not to be deterred, she presses, "I want this. For once in your life, Tom, give someone else what they want. Give me what I want."
Tom doesn't answer at first. His eyes drop to the hand holding his face so gently, eyelashes brushing her index finger, almost caressing it. It would be so easy to kiss him, Hermione thinks, but stays still, waiting. If he agrees, he's got a chance. If he agrees, she has a chance at teaching the beast how to look beyond his own motives and gain.
Come on, Tom.
"I could just make you," he finally says, so softly she barely hears him. Hermione's heart misses a beat. "I could make you stay..." A little, twisted smile moves his lips. "I could make you mine."
"...I know." She searches his face, seeing the indecision there, the temptation to simply take what he wants instead of working for it. "But what you could do and what you ought to do are very different things."
"What should I do?" he asks, arching a brow.
"You should consider this your last chance," Hermione says firmly. "You should walk me to my room and lie with me in bed..." She swallows thickly, glancing down. "To keep the nightmares away. We'll just sleep, because it will be enough to be near each other, and when we wake up we'll have the whole day to laugh and get on each other's nerves and do whatever the hell it is friends are...are supposed to do." She squeezes his hand, which she grabbed onto somewhere during her speech. "Ok?"
Tom is looking at her strangely. "You're serious?"
"Utterly."
"And if I can't do that?"
She shakes her head, adamant. "Oh no, you'll do it. I'll make sure you do."
He stares at her for a moment - confounded, she thinks, or maybe just suspicious - before he finally seems to relent. Haltingly, he says, "So I...walk you to your room, you say?"
"Yes." Hermione stands back when Tom gets up, stuffing her hands in her robe pockets while she watches him. Wondering if she's making the stupidest mistake she possibly could by doing this. "Then," she adds, trying to lighten the mood, "we go to bed because you're such a grouch when you're sleepy."
"Oh, because you're pure sunshine in the morning, huh?" he scoffs back.
She grins. "Of course I am."
They go back to her bedroom, going in to find she left all the lights on and an avalanche of balled-up papers littering the floor. Tom raises both brows at the mess and Hermione flushes, explaining, "I've been using the typewriter."
"I see." He bends down, plucking up a ball and opening it. "Nothing is-"
"Don't read that!" Hermione bats it out of his hand, where it rejoins its rejected friends at their feet. Tom's lips curl at the corners and she clears her throat, clearing a path toward the bed. "I just do it to pass the time," she says sternly. "It's nothing serious."
"Of course," he agrees, but there's a suspicious glint in his eye.
Hermione undoes her robe and casts it aside, smoothing her pajamas before carefully climbing into bed. There are over twenty-seven pillows, but she throws most of them aside and puts her head on the one that feels least like a rock. Tom watches her for a moment before moving to the bed stand and switching off the light. Once they're plunged into darkness, Hermione's chest constricts with anxiety before the bed shifts as he climbs in beside her. A mental map of Tom's body the last time she was in such close quarters with it draws up in her head: his legs are slightly longer now and his body is thicker from the diet of a handsomely-fed young man, although still willowy as a birch tree. She feels the heat of his hand as it pauses over her waist, then moves down and finds her hand, closing around it.
She releases a tense breath, glad it's dark so he can't see her.
Hermione has just closed her eyes when Tom shifts, making the bed creak as he resettles his head beside hers – or at least that's where she estimates he is, judging by the even breaths on her hair. "Are you sleeping?" he asks quietly.
"No." She turns her face toward his voice. "I'm wide awake."
"What were the dreams about?" he says.
"I don't really remember."
"And the truth?"
She hesitates, but only for a second. "I keep dreaming that your house is haunted."
The bed tremors with laughter.
"Don't laugh at me," she says, scowling, but she's laughing too. "It's scary!"
"It's ridiculous." He does stop snickering, however, and asks, "Wide awake, you say?"
"Wide awake."
"I could read you a story, to help you sleep," he finally says. "If you'd like."
"Um... sure. Alright."
"Ok, I'll just… I'll be right back."
Tom shoves back the sheets, sitting up and throwing his legs over the side of the bed. He doesn't leave though, his hand hesitating to let go of hers. Hermione understand his wariness. Half of this feels like a dream to her, too, as if she'll wake up and none of it will have ever happened outside her head. "I'll wait here," she whispers into the silence, as reassuringly as she can.
She imagines Tom nods as he gets up, footsteps padding across the room before the door quietly opens and shuts. She imagines him pacing to the library down the hall, searching the shelves for a book he remembers they used to read together, trying to decide what to make of their situation, shoving his hands through his hair like he always does when he gets frustrated, comparing this and that book and putting them back, one at a time…
The next thing she knows, she's out like a light.
The blinding daylight is the first thing Hermione wakes up to. She opens her eyes and cringes, squeezing them shut again against the screaming sunlight. Ugh. Who opened the blinds? She starts to sit up, then freezes when somebody mutters and fidgets beside her. Looking over to her right, she finds Tom, with a pillow smashed over his head with one arm – he must have put it there earlier to ward off the on-slaughter of light – and his mouth drooping open, a tiny ongoing snore rumbling in his throat. A book, Collected Poems of John Keats, sits on the bed stand next to the lamp. She blinks, realizing she fell asleep before he even came back last night.
Did last night actually happen?
Before Hermione can even let herself regret it, or think all of the pros and cons through thoroughly, it occurs to her that Tom is a light sleeper. It's a random thought, dug up by the déja-vu of seeing him drooling on a pillow, but it instantly stops any of her doubts in their tracks. For a moment, she studies him.
Tom's nose is half-buried in the pillow, his eyes squeezed shut and black brows furrowed not as if he's peaceful, but thinking hard about something distressing. The skin of his forehead has the tiniest wrinkle, bunching between his eyes and into the bridge of his nose, which smoothes out into high cheekbones and a tiny beauty mark near the corner of his jaw. His mouth, hanging open for the world to see, makes her want to laugh out loud and kiss him at once.
Abruptly, Hermione rolls away, taking a sharp breath to clear her head. This has to work. They will be friends. Friends. She'll tuck away her desire for him in a secret, tiny place where no one can find it, and show him what real, selfless, unlimited caring looks like. She can prove to them both that the past can be corrected. The past isn't what she always thought it was. She can make him better, and therefore, make herself better.
She looks back at Tom, a longing reverberating in her chest so deeply it feels like a gong. Then she heaves herself to her feet and starts to get ready.
"Hermione! Come here, quick," Winky commands, beckoning the young woman into the warm hearth of the kitchen. The warring scents of rich fondues and homemade baguettes engulf Hermione as soon as she steps inside, waving to Dobby, who is busy instructing two new hires how to prepare the pot roast. Winky rests her hip against the sinks – her station, presumably – and waits impatiently until Hermione stands next to her.
"I've got news," she says. "Good news."
Hermione's eyes widen. "You got me the job-?" she begins, but before she can finish, Winky is shaking her head vehemently, correcting, "No, no, but I do have an interview for you. The family I talked about before, they want a new maid, and I told them you're looking for work and have plenty of experience cleaning for families – so you'll just have to fib a little, but I'm sure that will be no problem. You're a bright girl, aren't ch'ya? Anyway, they're expecting you later today."
"Of course, um, alright, yes." Hermione bobs her head furiously. Hungrily, she asks, "Who is the family? Do they have children? Tell me about them."
"It's a normal-sized family, and they're a merry bunch," Winky reports. "Their surname is Bones. There's George Bones, his wife Amelia, and their four children (although they're all grown-up and married now). But Mrs. Bones' niece, Susan, lives with them, and she's about sixteen, I think. They're devout Christians, so prepare to exercise your faith there… They're well off though, since both the Bones work for the government, so you'll make good gravy."
"Gravy?" Hermione repeats vacantly.
"Easy money," Winky translates, with a perky wink. Her cheeks are flushed and she's a little more cheerful than usual, which means she's had her fair share of liquor today. Hermione pretends not to notice the stench of whiskey on her breath.
"And they live in Manchester," she tacks on, recalling what Winky told her before. "How far is that from here? Which bureau is it in?"
"Which bureau?" Winky laughs loudly, like she said something funny, and Hermione frowns at her. Composing herself, the maid pats her hand sympathetically. "Sorry, Hermione, I forget you're not from around here sometimes, even with that funny accent of yours. Manchester is in another state, hon, in Massachusetts." She frowns, ticking off the numbers on her fingers. "That's about…say…three and a half, four hours away by car."
Her jaw drops. "Four hours?"
"At the most," Winky assures, patting her hand comfortingly. Someone shouts at her to get going on the dishes. Scowling, she shouts back at them to mind your own damn business! Turning back to Hermione with an apologetic sigh, she says, "It's probably time you go. Head out around noon and have one of Mr. Voldemort's private drivers take you up; no sense in wasting money on a train ticket when you have a whole cabbie service at your beck and call right here, huh?"
"Right," Hermione agrees, but she barely hears her. She leaves the kitchen, feeling dazed and dizzy, faintly astounded. I've got an interview. The job has good pay, kind people that will put a roof over my head, and it's…four hours away from here. She tells herself she's only disappointed because she likes New York so much: the restless city, the sight of new people everyday, the strangely beautiful buildings, some of them so bleak they look like they're made out of metal, but others hundreds of years old, made of granite and wrought with breathtaking architecture and fierce gargoyles that look over you as if they're watching your back… but that's only a small part of it, in truth.
Because while half of her is raving about her new job position, the other thinks, what about Tom?
She shakes the thought away. There will be time for visits. If an opportunity presents itself to her, she should take advantage of it, especially after all this time. Besides, she always knew this wouldn't last forever. She can't live off Tom's money for the rest of her life – nor does she want to.
Putting on a smile, Hermione feels quite excited by this new development. She goes upstairs to change.
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
The car bumps over a fork in the road, jostling the book out of Hermione's hands to the floor. She squeaks and scrambles for it, snatching it up before the mud from her rain boots can ruin it. The half-bent pages of Ode to a Nightingale stare up at her, but there's no time to finish them as the driver announces they've arrived at their destination.
Lifting her head, Hermione peers out of the window at the quaint country home that is the Bones residence. Whereas in New York it had been raining when she left, here in Manhattan it's cool and limpid. They passed endless fields of green, and through one or two old-fashioned towns from the colonial days during the long drive (an approximate three hours and twenty-nine minutes), but Hermione spent most of it entrenched in the book she and Tom were meant to read last night. Tom gave it to her before she left, ducking into the open door of the car in the boisterous rain to tell her to keep busy during the trip.
She's still surprised he didn't put up a fight when she told him about the interview. She'd half-thought he would try to keep her from going.
But he hadn't. Why?
Am I disappointed that he didn't? Hermione admits to herself, that maybe – maybe – she was disappointed before, but now that she is here and sitting in the Bones' living room, awaiting her interview, how could she be? Paranoid, she glances down at her outfit and weeds a tiny spec off the seamless dress. It's short-sleeved with a respectably open collar and a jaunty skirt. She gazes past it and turns beet-red at the horrific sight of her boots. They're covered in mud! Blast!
Muttering to herself, she rises and starts searching for the loo. She goes back to the entrance hall, where the kind butler received her, and spies one beyond a door. As she passes it, voices murmur from within, and she realizes the door is barely open. She hurries past it, but freezes when a woman sharply cries, "Susan!"
"Well, it's true. You heard what that woman said-"
"It's our Christian duty not to assume opinions about others before we can judge them ourselves."
"I know, Ant Amelia." Susan sounds exasperated. "But isn't it also a sin to union before marriage? And worse, to conceive a child!"
"No one ever said anything about that," Mrs. Bones warily replies after a beat.
Realizing she is probably hearing a conversation she shouldn't, Hermione starts to edge back the way she came, but stops at the next exclamation.
"…probably stole from her last employer," Susan is fuming when she tunes back in. Her eyes widen. "You know about people like that, you know what that little tramp is here for. She wants to steal from us, too."
"Well, what am I supposed to do?"
"Tell her we found somebody else."
"Only ungodly women lie."
"Then tell her to get the hell off our property."
"Susan, mind your tone when you speak to me." But the reprimand is half-hearted, an empty threat next to Mrs. Bones' next speculation. "What a shame to fall so hard, to be so diverted from His guidance. If only we could save her…"
"There's no saving trash," replies Susan firmly. "Did you see her when she came in? Looks like she came off a barn. She probably tore her dress right off some poor woman's back before she got here – you can smell the dirt on her, the greedy desperation of a poor, slimy little Satan lover-"
"Excuse me." Hermione meets the shocked gazes of the women, staring at her in astonishment. The shorter, younger one, glances over her, and her nostrils flare in disgust at the sight of her dirty boots. Hermione looks back and forth between the two of them, swallowing. "I apologize, I thought this was the bathroom," she says stiffly. "Have I interrupted something?"
"No, nothing, dear," begins Mrs. Bones hastily, but Susan cuts her off, facing Hermione with squared shoulders and a set jaw.
"The position is no longer available, Ms. Granger," she states. "We're sorry we made you come out all this way for nothing."
Hermione clenches her jaw. "I don't understand. I thought I was invited here for an interview-"
"Yes, well you thought wrong," Susan interrupts, cheeks flushing an ugly red. "We thought you were somebody else. As I said before, we apologize."
Hermione opens her mouth to make a retort, but stops when she sees Mrs. Bones looking at her with unmistakable pity in her eyes - and there's not only pity, but thinly-veiled contempt. Why? she thinks, desperate to find out what she did wrong.I didn't do anything to these people, I didn't do anything at all. What happened?
She doesn't know, but whatever has been done to make them hate her so much can't be fixed.
"Of course," she finally says after a minute. "I understand completely."
"You do-?" Susan begins, surprised, but Mrs. Bones quickly interjects.
"Thank you for being so understanding, Ms. Granger," she says with a wide smile, stepping forward as if to shake her hand, but just making a shooing motion at her instead. "God bless you, and let our Savior provide you with a safe ride back home, darling." And not let you crawl back here, the rest of her too-large smile seems to say.
On her way out, Hermione stops only to collect her hat from the living room, holding her shoulders straight as she walks back to the car waiting for her at the mouth of the smooth driveway. The eyes of Mrs. Bones and her niece are like burning sunbeams on the back of her head. In the car, she raises the divider and watches the rolling countryside that seemed so cheery an hour ago, seeming to mock her with its bright perfection. There's a terrible burning in her chest and throat, like someone smeared rubbing alcohol on her internal organs. Bewilderment fills her head, but quick to replace it is anger, then hurt.
She takes one deep breath, then another.
You heard what that woman said.
It can't be anyone else. Winky knows she's an orphan, she knows where she comes from. Hermione had confided in her, she'd trusted her – and what did she get for trusting a drunk? Betrayal. Repulsion and hatred from rich snobs she doesn't even know. You can smell the dirt on her, they'd said. The dirt! A laugh bubbles out of her, choked off by a snort. Stupid, stupid, Hermione, she imagines Susan Bones saying. When will you learn? She'd been so pleasantly surprised by Winky's apparent generosity when the maid offered to help her that she'd forgotten to question her motives, had forgotten the real world isn't as nice as it appears to be. Hermione curls up on the seat, trying to deny the hurt. What did Winky tell them? She decides that she'd rather not know, recalling the terrible things she heard the Bones saying about her.
She just wants to go back to New York and forget all about this. The whole trip has been a waste of time, a big lousy disappointment.
Maybe it's better if she just stays with Tom for a while.