And this used to look half-full,
Now some days it looks half-empty.
And some days it feels like nothing,
It always used to feel like plenty.
"Good Cop/Bad Cop" – Everything But the Girl
The last months of summer passed in a series of steady marches, each day, by way of the swelteringly hot London streets.
Hermione's case load remained stagnant, her newest client still being Ms. Crombe.
Mary Forsythe had worsened over the interceding weeks, requiring the bulk of her care and attention. She was frequently called to the Forsythe's home, and had, in the latest instance, had to contact St. Aubert's directly.
Martin had raised a mighty objection, but his heart wasn't truly in it, for as soon as the healers were attending to his wife he deflated, at rest for perhaps the first time in weeks. It was his only respite from his wife's belligerent barrages and worrying dissociated states. The old wizard was proud, and truly loved his wife a great deal, but it was evident that he was wearing himself weary as a caretaker.
The true tragedy of Luenfeldter's was in the paradoxical growth and strengthening of the sufferer's magical power at the expense of their mental faculties. Mrs. Forsythe was beginning to lash out even when she wasn't in a cogent state—not always avoiding harm to herself or her husband. Ultimately, Hermione knew from her research, the state of affairs would likely lead to one or both of their deaths.
There were stories of large-scale destruction caused by Luenfeldter's patients recorded in the literature going back for several hundred years. Before the unifying cause had been identified as mental decline, it was thought that warlocks and sorceresses had a tendency towards ending their lives in a state of madness, usually accompanied by tales of their great and terrifying power.
The truth was at once more benign and more frightening. Often, magical fluctuations would begin to manifest around the clock, even in the witch or wizard's sleeping state. Once they lost control over themselves in sleep, death was soon to follow, for the unlucky person and sometimes family members or anyone else in range of a deadly magical blast.
Hermione hoped that Martin could someday forgive her—she had ultimately filed her opinion that Mary be moved to the permanent care ward at St. Auberts, where each patient was self-contained in a private room with magic-resistant walls.
She had placed the report in the department head's inbox only that very morning.
Veering from her usual trip to her clients first thing, she had made a special detour to manage her way into the office far earlier than usual. By nine Mary Forsythe's fate was sealed, and hopefully the life of Martin, and possibly their neighbors, might be spared. Hermione expected that her visits to Martin would be far less frequent now, limited to groceries and well-being checks. He likely would spend all his available time in the ward with his wife.
Late August mornings like this were often accompanied by an oppressive haze. Consequently, when she had had cause to journey to Diagon Alley after her sad errand delivering Mary Forsythe's fate for a box of Hannah Weasley's famous pastries she had felt a flush of joy to see the Hogwarts students rushing about, gathering their new supplies. It had been busy—but with the same sort of electric and vitalizing energy she always felt at the prospect of Hogwarts.
As an adult, she could have made it her mission to visit the old castle and its inhabitants, though she rarely had cause or went out of her way to do so.
Facing her old Head of House had become increasingly uncomfortable.
The aging headmistress had become far more expressive in her twilight years. Hermione wasn't a coward, or opposed to controversy, but she found it hurtful when Headmistress McGonagall's perspicacious eye and cutting wit were directed toward her and her life path.
Where was Hermione's brilliant career? The write-ups that she was surely owed in the papers? Wasn't she supposed to be the "brightest witch of her age?" Certainly, a muggle university education and then settling for an entry level position as a Ministry bureaucrat was aiming low? Did she have any thoughts of running for office? Perhaps challenging Barnam Aethelfromm? No? Was she quite certain?
...
Oh dear. What a pity.
Hermione had purposefully avoided the professor for years. She could hear what the professor was good enough to leave unspoken: "And you had so much potential, too."
In the immediate aftermath of the war there had been galas, award ceremonies, bloviated speeches and milquetoast apologies for not taking the threat that Voldemort posed seriously. Each year was marked in May with a procession of planned Ministry banquets and memorials. As the years went on she found herself attending less and less, until she had abdicated the duty entirely while studying in Australia.
Once back home she simply never resumed going. The invitations were received without her ever issuing a response.
Even the Potters and the Weasleys had stopped urging her attendance.
It had become such a farce that she now entertained Harry and Ron's prolonged complaints after the May festivities. This most recent year had apparently been Harry's last straw as well.
After being trotted out like a prize horse for the umpteenth time, Harry had left the event feeling used, and had told her and Ron so quite explicitly when they had ventured out to a pub one evening a week or so after the fact.
Hermione smiled to herself, in spite of the regretful line of memory she was drawn into. It had been the last time she'd gotten to see her boys.
Well... perhaps that wasn't entirely true, she reflected. Though she hadn't seen him this morning, every so often she would get to see her redheaded friend if she picked up a baker's dozen kouign amanns to share with her clients and coworkers. Sometimes he had time to chat, but more often than not he'd simply smile brightly at her and fulfill her order. There was nothing more he could do when the small storefront was crowded arm-to-arm with hungry witches and wizards, and Hermione didn't hold it against him, but it felt like seeing someone she'd known in a past life.
It seemed inconceivable that their lives were so divergent and incongruent in adulthood.
Those three little eleven-year-olds. Scrawny and bedraggled in Harry's case, lanky with a smudge on his nose in Ron's. And herself. Little Hermione. Nothing but hair and insatiable curiosity.
What would they have thought if they could see themselves now?
No answer was forthcoming. She tried to balance the large rectangular box on her arm as her overfull bags of groceries swung freely around her torso.
She was close to Waldweirness now. She'd left after delivering her official opinion on Mary's residency in order to collect her daily provisions. The sun was comfortably above the modern muggle skyline now, and it beat down upon the streets of London with murderous intent.
Hermione stopped and backed up against a building, allowing the pedestrians she was walking with to pass around her. The bags she set on a small stoop beside her, along with the baked goods, while she fanned her saturated midsection with her cotton shirt. The material was clinging to her back and armpits. After an attempt, in vain, to make the material billow out around her, she eased her slim wand out of her back waistband, and with her hand held behind her shoulder blades, cast a few well-placed non-verbal cooling charms.
Thus, relieved from the burden of the extreme heat, she again shouldered her belongings and soldiered on.
The first few of her daily stops went off without a hitch. She then had a daily wellness check with a younger client. A wizard who had been homeschooled by his family, otherwise she may have known him at Hogwarts.
He was a troubled youth, some five years younger than herself. She suspected that had he been sectioned in a muggle hospital, he might be diagnosed with some kind of psychotic disorder.
Christopher—for that was what he was called—was in a perennially disorganized state, and rarely left his Ministry housing. She visited him twice a week; a trip which usually entailed begging Christopher to please eat something, and surreptitiously tidying his rooms with wide-scale cleaning and disinfecting charms.
Christopher scarcely spoke a word to Hermione but would mumble under his breath to the room in general. His speech was often devoid of intonation and his face was an invariable mask of dissociative stupor.
She did find that he was fond of French pastries, and that getting him to eat with the aid of a croissant was far easier than tempting him with more nutritious fare.
On this particular trip, however, she'd been served a surprise. It was as she was preparing to leave that the young man had gently taken her sleeve between two pinched fingertips.
"Yes, Christopher? Is there anything else you need today?" Hermione had gently settled a hand on his shoulder, which he quickly shrugged off. His eyes were held fast on the pinched fabric between his digits.
"It's lonely." He intoned to her shirt.
Hermione was taken aback. Christopher had never expressed himself or his feelings aloud to her before, or any of the other Ministry workers.
"Oh Christopher," she sighed softly.
"I can come back later, if you like? Maybe you'd like to play Exploding Snap or Gobstones or—" Hermione tried to catch his gaze, peering up at his face which was as still as stone.
"It's looooonely," he moaned again, softly, allowing the fabric to fall from his grasp. His hands sought the hem of his red shirt and twisted it in fraught silence. He then turned on his heel and retreated back into the house, not content to speak to Hermione any further.
She sighed once more and left, closing the door behind her with a gentle click. The wards she set around the perimeter as she left. They would alert her if Christopher left. He was free to come and go as he pleased but he frequently got lost whenever he did venture into the greater streets of Waldweirness, and there had been a few worrisome nights where she and an auror had been obliged to hunt down the young wizard.
Her final stop for the day was to be Ms. Crombe's new residence. She hustled over immediately after leaving Christopher's.
Her bags were considerably lightened from when she had first started out, and now there were but two pastries remaining in the large orange box, but she still managed all of the items with a certain degree of difficulty. Being a small witch had its disadvantages.
Balancing the sweets on one arm while the bags dangled off of her forearm, she slowly managed to stabilize enough to rap against the door.
She wasn't left waiting more than a few moments. A distrustful Nora greeted her before long with a deeply distressed scowl.
"Evening, Nora! Mind if I step in for a moment?" Her overture did little to soften the other witch, who continued to deepen her frown.
"Do I have a choice?"
Affecting a purely professional tone, Hermione did her best to remain neutral. "Naturally, but I do have some paperwork here for permanent housing that I think you may be interested in," Hermione saw the other woman begin to consider her options. "and I brought those crisps you wanted,"
Nora opened the door and walked swiftly back to the kitchen at the end of the house, not bothering to close the door behind her or to see if Hermione entered.
The community liaison decided to take it in stride rather than to take offense, following her older charge into the depths of the house and setting about unpacking her bag on the small folding table the house was furnished with.
Nora had folded herself into one of the chairs, staring intently at a cold mug of tea that Hermione assumed must have been left over from breakfast. She decided to put on the kettle and then began putting away chicken cutlets in the icebox.
There were scant dishes in the small kitchen, it was only appointed for one unless someone from her department requisitioned otherwise. She withdrew the single plate from the sink and scourgified it before tapping it with her wand.
"Gemino." Now there were two. Each plate received a kouign amann.
Nora remained silent as Hermione played mother and set before her a steaming mug of tea, the sugar bowl, and a sticky confection.
"Cream?"
"No, I take it black."
Hermione retreated and doctored her own drink.
"Thank you."
Surprised, the younger woman glanced up and nodded in acknowledgement.
This wasn't her first trip to visit Nora. She'd been working her case now for some two months, visiting weekly with updates and muggle food and trying, but not quite succeeding, at getting the other woman to open up.
Though Hermione had learned long ago that she shouldn't wade into the despair of her clients, Nora fascinated her. There was something of the woman that recalled a time of mystery and adventure. Something about being in the woman's presence made her feel young again—like in those first years at Hogwarts. Bewitched by intrigue and weary of a deeper, more malevolent plot.
Not that she feared Nora, oh no. Nora was a disagreeable yet submissive witch. She offered nothing in the way of a fight, but made sure to get her verbal licks in, nonetheless. She would follow a directive but wouldn't allow the one doing the ordering to get away without knowing her opinion on the matter.
The thought made Hermione smile with fondness. She found she quite liked Nora, really. But there was something. Something which tickled the back of her brain. Sounded the alarm. Something was not as it seemed with the woman, without a doubt.
"You said you had paperwork for me?" Nora pressed. She was tearing pieces of the caramelized bottom off of the pastry, causing buttery flakes to explode in all directions.
"I do, yes." Hermione fished an arm shoulder-deep into her purple drawstring bag, feeling around at the bottom until she encountered the leather portfolio. "We'll need to go over them together, I think—It's necessary for me to sign as a witness while these are taken to be verified.
"For me to know your case history will help a lot, Nora. Particularly if I should need to defend anything."
The reaction was immediate.
"Well, what would need defending? You said that before too—"
Hermione held her hands up and frowned somewhat repressively, "Yes, yes, I did. Please don't mistake me here, because—hold on, please listen, Nora—Nora!" Hermione put down another protest.
"Please don't mistake me—but I don't think you've been entirely honest with me. I don't necessarily assume it's because you've done anything horrific or are hiding from the law—but if these go to be magically notarised with false information; there would be consequences."
Nora was now sobbing in her seat, her hands rubbing in vain at her tearstained cheeks.
"At least -hic- at least with the muggles I could use my name!
"But you knooooow already, don't you. You know all about me, I'm sure!" Nora was now staring at Hermione eerily, her features horrorstricken. "Well do it then! Tell everyone—expose me,"
"HEY!" Hermione shouted, rising from the table, her voice triumphing over Nora's. "That's enough—no one's talking about exposing anyone here! I have no idea who you are. All I know is that you took an awfully long time choosing a name earlier, and that you felt you had to hide in the muggle system for thirty-odd years."
Nora's sobbing had resumed in the interim, this time in the form of relief. "Oh! Don't tell—please don't tell, Ms. Granger, please!"
Hermione sat with a huff and no little annoyance. "What am I not supposed to be telling, and to whom?"
Nora only sobbed harder.
"Oh go on, Nora—have some tea, I promise this to be a civilised conversation." Hermione said, rubbing her hands over her face with mounting frustration.
"Please, don't be cruel."
Hermione looked up soberly, trying to catch the other witch's black eyes. "It's not my intention to be cruel, I'm sorry. I've meant everything I've said sincerely, I have no wish to see you homeless or in any sort of danger. I don't know what you've been through, that's true—but I don't mean you any harm. I swear it."
It was not her intention, or at least she hadn't thought it had been, but her magic soared with her words and sealed them with conviction. The truth of her statement had been of sufficient magnitude to allow her to swear upon it.
The ease with which the magic took hold was somewhat terrifying. Thank Merlin I didn't swear to do anything, instead. It wasn't quite a vow, a vow being an order of magnitude more powerful (and consequential), but it was an awesome display in its own right.
Nora sniffed incredulously, "I felt that... I felt that—you really don't. You're not here to... to put me out?"
"No, not at all!" Hermione insisted, busying herself with conjuring handkerchiefs for the woman sitting opposite from her. She pushed a full stack across the table, grateful when Ms. Crombe made quick use of them.
Hermione returned her attention to the portfolio she had pulled moments earlier from her bag, allowing Nora time to compose herself. She pulled out a stack of parchments awaiting Nora's information and a self-inking quill.
"I don't want this to feel like an inquisition for you Nora, you don't have to tell me details about your life, but you're going to have to give me honest answers for the sake of the questionnaire."
Nora nodded morosely.
The first field required Nora's name, which, Hermione decided, she would ultimately leave until last. It was the piece of information she was most concerned would trigger the anti-fraud warding.
"Let's just start with the census information, shall we? Date of birth?"
"November fourteenth, 1930."
"So you graduated from Hogwarts in... '47? Did you go to Hogwarts?"
"'48. I was too young to begin in '41."
Hermione looked up, her face alight with curiosity, "What was your house?"
Nora let out an irritated harrumph. "Well, I could take a whack at what your house was..." she relented at Hermione's even stare. "Ravenclaw, alright? I was in Ravenclaw."
"Huh," Hermione commented as she recorded the answer, "somehow I might have expected Slytherin."
Rather than be offended by the remark Nora seemed to drift far off into a fond memory. "I wasn't good enough to be a Slytherin."
"What would make you say a silly thing like that?" Hermione burst out with a chuckle.
"The very best go to Slytherin," Nora reaffirmed with a wistful, faraway look.
"Funny, I've had my trouble with them in the past." Hermione muttered. While she didn't want to offend Nora, she also felt none too charitably toward the house that had mocked, belittled, and degraded her during her time at Hogwarts.
Nora snorted and threw her hands into the air, "Well, who hasn't? No, girl, the very very best go to Slytherin. The very best, and the very worst." There was a pause, Hermione said nothing.
Finally, Nora seemed to grow tired of the silence. "Think, girl. Think when I was there. Who else?"
"Voldemort," Hermione breathed.
"Yes." Nora sniffed. "Yes. Him. Don't you think for a second that your Slytherins could have been worse than... than him. And even then, even then! The best of the best, I think, go to Slytherin." It was as passionate a speech as Hermione had ever heard Nora deliver in her short time of knowing the woman.
"—maybe there's something. Something that corrupts the poor babies that go to that house..." Nora mused, mostly to herself. Tears again gathered at the corners of her eyes. Hermione decided that was her cue to move on.
"You don't have to talk about Tom Riddle with me, Nora."
"His name? You know his name?" Ms. Crombe seemed taken aback. "No one's called him Tom in years..."
"I know a bit about him Nora, but he's not really that interesting to me at the moment." Hermione glanced back down at her writing, trying to find her place.
"Not interesting!" Nora gave a surprisingly high-pitched giggle. "That's certainly new, he'd have hated that. Oh yes!" She tittered again.
Hermione shared a conspiratorial grin with the older woman. "Oh, I can think of plenty of things about me that he hated."
"You say that like you knew him too." Nora gave her a searching look, for a moment seemingly distrustful again.
Hermione tapped her quill, making a few dots of ink mistakenly appear at the margins of the parchment underneath the nib. "In a manner of speaking, you could say. I was familiar with him; I know people who knew him personally. I would have bet all of my galleons that he even knew who I was..." Hermione paused in thought. "Yes... yes! I'm almost certain. I guess you could say we were known to each other."
It was an odd conversation to have with one of her elderly clients, but she hadn't yet run across one that had been at Hogwarts at the same time as Tom Riddle. Most of the people she worked with were well into their hundreds.
"What's your wand composition, Nora?"
Nora bit at her lip. "It doesn't matter if I don't have it anymore, does it."
This was taking far longer than she had anticipated. Hermione breathed deeply and set her quill down, taking a careful bite of flakey pastry before she said something that came off as impatient. She sipped her milky tea to wash it down. "And why haven't you your wand?" she finally ventured.
Nora shrugged one shoulder evasively. "Gave it away, didn't I?"
"Gave it away? To whom?" Hermione gasped, her face a picture of incredulity.
"Well, I'd stopped using it by then, hadn't I?" the old woman retorted, retreating into one of her normal snits.
"But Nora, why?" Hermione begged.
Nora looked desperately uncomfortable now. Her hands were grasping at one another and her eyes darted about the room. "Didn't need it by then, it was better for him to have it."
Hermione looked concerned. "Were you experiencing trouble with your magic?"
The silver haired woman sighed. "In a manner of speaking. I guess you could say that—that it rather stopped working for me, and then... and then it was better to pass that along. Anything that I could do just to pass it on..."
Nora wasn't making much sense, Hermione reflected. Her grief was palpable, and it made the younger witch wonder whether it wasn't something deeper. Something more like bereavement.
Her attention was brought back to Nora when she gasped for breath. "—and it's gone now. It'll be gone forever. Gone with the... gone with the -hic- best." This time Nora had decided to make use of the handkerchiefs Hermione had previously conjured and was dabbing fiercely at her drowning black eyes with one.
"I just need the composition of the wand registered to you at eleven, Nora. Do you remember?" Hermione left the particulars for the moment, trying to simply answer the question immediately at hand.
Nora shook her head viciously. "It was never registered to me. I inherited it. It was an heirloom. I'm not sure of its exact measurements. I can't even guess at the wood—it had a little..." and Nora motioned with her fingers in a small curly-Q figure, ascending in the air. "A little corkscrew at the end."
Nora paused to sip at her cooling tea. "There were family legends of course. One of my uncles was convinced that it was the Elder wand—I thought that was silly,"
Hermione had to strain mightily not to fidget in her seat. Naturally, she reminded herself, purebloods would casually refer to legends like the Deathly Hallows. Nothing unusual in that.
"I researched it, of course. When I got to Hogwarts. But the wood from my wand looked nothing like elder wood." Nora shook her head. "Stupid of him, really, to have thought that a wand we'd been passing down through the family could have been a wand that needed to be won by its master." She smirked unpleasantly.
"The other family legend mentioned that the core may have been sphinx hair—but I can't confirm the veracity of that."
"I'll just put 'none registered.' It seems the only safe bet." Hermione murmured in response, scratching the words onto the parchment.
"Were you ever employed in the magical world, after you left school?"
"I was meant to be married off to a Frenchman." Nora said softly, "I wasn't interested in living on the continent, so I ran away after graduating.
"I'd only been to one muggle city before, besides London of course. So, when I apparated from Hogsmeade I could only think of one place: Birmingham. My parents had taken me there once, there's a small wizarding district somewhere near the centre of town. I only remembered how big and red the place was."
Nora took a nibble of kouign amann before continuing. "All the muggles seemed so busy. The city was, by wizarding standards," she gestured with her hands apart, "enormous. And impressive. And I thought," she swallowed, "I thought I could lose myself there. And that no one would find me.
"I took a job in town, washing and repairing clothes. I could take them to where I was staying and use my magic to clean or repair the clothes better than the muggle women could." Nora shrugged. "I made a reasonable wage, but it didn't matter after long."
"No?"
"No. No, girl. 'Cause I caught the itch." Nora was again looking overwhelmed with emotion. "I fell in love."
Tears were streaming softly down Nora's cheeks now, but instead of sobbing out loud, these she allowed to pass without marking them. It seemed she was too far into the past to realize.
"He was hard on his shirts, he was." She said with a small chuckle. "I got clients through referral, and sometimes I'd have the mill workers bringing me giant sacks of clothes to mend: socks to darn and the like, you know?
"I had to learn a lot, some of my skills were taught to me when I was being groomed into a nice young pureblooded lady, but my parents always assumed that they'd marry me into a house rich enough to have a few house-elves... my wand helped me to get the fabric as clean as could be, but my needle skills—those I had to teach myself. I had to learn myself how to knit, how to hem."
She coughed violently into a handkerchief before clearing her throat. "He met me through his sister—she was helping me, had gotten me a part time position as a sewist in her shop. But she didn't have time to help him with his mending 'cause she'd her own husband and boys to care for by then." Nora's face lit with remembrance. "I loved those boys. I can't be sure where they are now...
"He didn't court me too long. I guess we were a mite impatient. We married within the year, and we moved towns to a smaller borough nearer to his family.
"My family found out of course. Marriage for a witch entails a magical vow. My name and marital status were updated on my paperwork at the ministry, which triggered a notice to my parents. I suppose they had reported me missing."
Nora's hands twisted fretfully at her abused napkin, "After that they disowned me outright. And Toby, he," She sniffed, "he couldn't understand why they cut me off, see? He thought it were because of him, and I guess it sort of was... And he never got to meet them, but he got the impression then that they were looking down on him. He didn't like that."
Toby.
Hermione was absolutely certain now that her brain was itching a spot in her memory, but she couldn't for the life of her suss out what. The story of Nora's wand—rather the physical description of it—also stuck out to her. She felt quite certain she had seen a wand not unlike the curly-Q design that Nora had described to her, but whenever she tried to match faces to wands, particularly from during the War, the shrouds of misty recollection prevented her from seeing clearly the dark visage she knew must be associated with the wand in question.
It was with extreme frustration that she realized the more she strained to remember, the more she began to remember instead all of the wands that certainly were not the one in question. She felt that she'd seen the wand... but also, she felt that she hadn't seen it often, perhaps only for a fleeting wave... but who was it who used their wand so infrequently?
"—was ok for the first few years. Toby was a specialist in Birmingham: he made the parts for those big, loud muggle machines. Cokeworth wasn't like Birmingham though. Our industry there was more textiles and dyes, and Birmingham—that was all steel. I didn't get near enough work in Cokeworth. Every woman there could do what I did. The town back then produced most of the cloth and ultramarine dye for the country and employed the most seamstresses.
"I never learned to work those sewing machines the muggle women used." Nora sneered, "my magic interfered with it somehow, I think. The hem would be wonky, or the plug would blow. I wasn't able to keep a job. And Toby, he said, he said that were okay. That we'd be okay. But I still wanted to help out. Some women still wanted hand-knit clothes for their families, and there weren't none of that for sale in Cokeworth, back then. Most of the women started going to work in the factories so they didn't have time to knit for their own. So, I thought—well I can make these and sell them." Nora smiled at the memory.
"Couldn't afford the yarn of course: but the muggles didn't notice a bale of wool missing from the lorry here and there: I guess they assumed it fell off somewhere along the way."
"What do you mean? About the wool going missing?" Hermione pressed; her curiosity piqued.
"Well, I had to spin my own yarn, didn't I? Toby would go to work, and I'd sneak into town, shrink a bale of wool, and while he was gone, I'd use my magic to work on several spindles at once. I didn't even have to do it myself mostly, I could knit, while the wool would spin by charm.
"Toby never seemed to realize how I finished the sweaters so fast or got the materials. He didn't ask questions back then."
"He didn't know you were a witch?" Hermione had all but given up on the pretense of recording these answers, so enraptured was she by the older witch's story.
"Not then, no. We married..." Nora paused to silently count back on her fingers, "We married in '51, I think? He didn't know for almost ten years." Her words sounded dark, even to Hermione's ears.
"But you didn't work, ever, in the magical world?" Hermione asked again, quill poised above the parchment.
"No, never."
Hermione recorded the answer and then filled in a few more lines regarding Nora's skills as a sewist, spinner, and knitter. She managed the lines regarding her marital status, with the aid of Nora's story telling.
"I understand this might be a sensitive question, but what is your current marital status, Nora?" Hermione asked, her voice gentle. Predictably, Nora clammed up again, and Hermione took the opportunity to freshen up their cups of tea and to pull a bag of McCoy's crisps out of her bag.
For a few moments there was silence. Nora had appreciatively pushed her small plate across the table for Hermione to furnish with crisps, the kouign amanns now having been polished off by both of the ladies present. The quiet was punctuated with the soft sounds of the two women meditatively munching on fried potatoes and sipping at their refreshed cups of tea.
Finally, Nora sighed. Her slight fingers flexed around the porcelain of her teacup (which Hermione had only just noticed was not one of the Ministry issued cups, but must have been one of Nora's own—for it was a collectible from the Queen's 1953 coronation).
"I believe I'm divorced."
"You believe, or...?"
"I think I am, yes. The muggles helped me. One of the few things they were actually helpful with," she muttered with evident resentment. "But they assured me the paperwork was finalized when they helped me with housing."
"Is your ex-husband deceased?"
Nora shrugged, a reproachful contracting of her shoulders. "I wouldn't know. 'E was a fucking souse, probably fell into the stream and drowned face-down."
Hermione's face must have reflected her curiosity for Nora continued a moment later, "I was in the muggle system to get away from him. So, I'm not certain what happened to him after. I know he went away for a few years."
"When was that?"
"The early eighties, I think? Maybe the late seventies? There were a few times, and I'd call the constable to come, but he'd say his hands were tied—until one day they said that things had changed, and they finally were able to take Toby into custody."
Nora stirred her tea thoughtfully, "I couldn't keep the house. Toby weren't working anymore by then— he'd gotten laid off almost a decade earlier, but he were on the dole so we managed to stay in our home... But I couldn't stay there after... too many memories.
"The muggles would only help me if they thought I'd lost the house... so I told them I had. But I'd just warded it, warded it so only me and my son could use it. I charmed the house with muggle repellants, but I couldn't bear to go back anymore," Nora was weeping again. "They said if I was facing homelessness they could help—so that's how I made it look. And then they found me a place and that's where I was. For thirty years..." Nora moaned, "Safe for thirty years and then Poof! Just like our Ministry: just like magic. Said they'd lost the records, or some nonsense..." she sniffled. "Absolute imbeciles!"
"So, you took your son and you two moved?"
Surprisingly, Nora had begun sobbing in earnest again, though Hermione couldn't fathom why. If talking about the abuse, the loss of her home and her parents hadn't moved Nora to grieve in such a way, this was certainly an order of magnitude above that.
"Noooo," Nora moaned. "No, I never saw him -hic- again."
"I'm afraid I'm confused Nora: you charmed the house so he could use it, but you yourself never returned to the house?"
Nora shook her head. "He was away... his last year at Hogwarts. And the summer before," Nora's gaze was thousands of miles away, at once both lost and weary. "The summer before, I told him..." the rest of Nora's words were lost in her near-convulsive grief.
Hermione was growing worried that the woman might go into cardiac arrest. Her distress only mounted as she tried over and over to tell Hermione the details. After a few moments, Hermione rested her hand on top of Nora's pale vein-crossed one and held fast, offering the only comfort she felt she could.
To her utter surprise, Nora squeezed back gratefully while she caught her breath. "My boy, my idiot beautiful boy, he..." she hiccoughed noisily, "He went with him! With fucking Tom, and—"
Hermione almost couldn't hear her client now. Her blood had all of the sudden run cold. Slowly the equation she had sought to solve began to tally up.
"—and I said 'Don't you ever come back here, after you got that... That thing on your arm, on the arm I made for you, carried in my body for nine months—''
"Ms. Crombe," Hermione interrupted with a stilted whisper. "Ms. Crombe, to my knowledge there's only..." Hermione had to gather her thoughts and try again, "I only knew of one half-blooded Death Eater."
Nora's black eyes, which had seemed to Hermione so familiar upon meeting, widened with alarm.
"You knew? You knew my boy?"
Hermione steeled herself. "That would depend, wouldn't it? Your son... was your son Severus Snape?"
It's wrong to feel this way,
I know it's wrong, I know it's bad
To only see what isn't there,
To want and want and never have.
But you know there's more to me now, don't you?
You'll always cover for me, won't you?
Won't you?
"Good Cop Bad Cop" (reprise) – Everything But the Girl