Excerpt from ' Protocol for employees of the Division of Obscurial Elimination, 3rd Edition':
Locating and neutralizing threats
5. Should the Obscurial lash out and for any reason whatsoever pass during the observation trial, the employees are obligated to notify the Ministry at the earliest convenience.
5.1 Employees must specify what exactly led up to the Obscurial's death and analyze if there was anything they could have done to prevent it.
5.2 If any Muggle or employee gets hurt if the Obscurial dies, this may result in a prison sentence.
5.2.1 The severity and longevity of the prison sentence may depend on what foreseeable signs were overlooked by the employee, and how many people were hurt or killed.
There was a kind of perverted joy, a gloating bliss found in proving herself right. Maybe Hermione knew that this competitive nature of hers was way out of place here, with Anette in the backseat and Malfoy sulking just a smidge enough for her to notice it.
It should not matter to her whether Malfoy finally approved of her, but it did. After all, there was not much else left for Hermione to care about.
Two hours had passed since Theo had spoken those divine words, stamping a wax seal onto Hermione's fulfillment and luring an angel's chorus from the heavens.
"Alright, I'll help you."
Eat shit, Malfoy.
They had left with Anette soon after. As Hermione had taken a while to finally send off her resignation letter through Theo's mail chute, she only heard the low murmuring of the men in the living room in the background.
The pristine envelope lay heavy in her hand. The letter was brief, straight to the point. A formidable abdication of a position that once promise her gold, stability, a name, a future. Now she had little more left than her moody not-work-partner with a crippling nicotine addiction, their cooky reclusive old schoolmate and a little girl with a deadly beast slumbering behind her ribs.
Hermione chucked the envelope down the chute, where it immediately disintegrated with a magical swoop. Behind followed a small package with the copies of their badges, and their different sets of keys. She was sure they would reply with a demand for any small insignificant thing she'd forgotten, but it wouldn't matter.
She listened to the magical crackling in the air fade away. And the magnitude of what it meant manifested in a freezing cold icicle behind her chest.
It was melting away already as she returned to the living room. Malfoy still looked uncomfortable, crossed arms and meeting her gaze just barely. There was a sort of recognition in his eyes; a solemn nod to her plan and its formidable working out. And there was a trademark spark of reluctance, like he'd handed her the trophy, but chipped off the paint just beforehand.
She couldn't find it within herself to care, and offered him a smile instead. He didn't take it.
And for a few seconds, as she stood in the door, Hermione realized, they didn't even know where to go now. There was no reason to up and leave; they could even stay at Theo's for a night or two, his own offer. A solution soon came from Anette as she looked up at them, cheeks squished underneath her fists and her elbows on her knees, her large eyes full with an airy sort of curiosity.
Hermione waved her wand just as she spoke, just catching the end of her sentence.
"Hva skal v- we do now?"
"What do you want to do?" Theo replied. She looked at him almost surprised, as if she didn't expect that he would speak to her.
Malfoy perked up then. He shared a short glance with Hermione, mouthing 'clothing'. She nodded fiercely.
"Anette, your birthday was a few days ago – what do you think, should we go get you some gifts? I have a lot of birthdays to catch up on," he spoke, and her face lit up, a toothy smile stretching her cheeks.
By the time they were halfway to Tromsø, Malfoy's stinky cloud of aversion had disappeared. Hermione knew now not to poke at him when he was in these moods; they always ended up passing. He'd still be insufferable, but at least with a somewhat entertaining snarky remark at the ready.
It was risky, driving Anette around so much. They knew little, but just enough to be certain, that physically moving an Obscurus around too much could agitate it further. But alas, they could not go birthday shopping for her without her input. Neither of them knew what vices nine-year-old girls liked to indulge in.
Hermione comforted herself with a rather weak excuse that so far, Anette was not showing any signs of distress – even though she didn't even know what those would look like.
As if she'd noticed her own presence in Hermione's thoughts, Anette piped up in the back.
"What about school? Can I stop going?"
Oh.
Neither of them had really thought about this before, and the realization made them turn towards each other wide-eyed. She'd gone to a normal elementary school until now; impossible now that she was legally dead.
Anette looked at them both in the rearview mirror with begging doe eyes. Malfoy twisted in his seat to face her. "You don't have to go. It's like a vacation, you know?"
Hermione shook her sleeve until her wand appeared, waving it discreetly to lift the translation spell.
"She absolutely has to, we can't just neglect her education!" she hissed at him, and he groaned.
"They learn what, two plus two? The ABC's? And how do you want her to keep going to school then?" he replied mockingly, and Hermione pursed her lips in thought. Frowning and squinting at the country road stretched into the horizon ahead.
"I'm going to homeschool her."
He laughed sharply. "Homeschooling. You're serious?"
"Yes! There'll be lots of time to fill every day, and it won't hurt to do something educational. It'll be beneficial. It's a good activity. Just let me do it."
He put his hand to his mouth, rubbing the smile away. "Okay, sure."
Hermione waved her wand again to reactivate the translation spell. In the rearview mirror she saw Anette reading the book from Theo again, completely undisturbed by the foreign conversation that had taken place in the front seats, just like in Theo's living room.
"Hey, Anette? What would you think if we did a bit of school every day? It won't be much," she spoke with a sweet voice, and Anette looked up. And began to pout slowly as the words sank in.
"Do I haaaave to?" she asked, stretching her words in a child-like tone of "I will accept my fate but not without making sure everyone knows how much I hate it".
"Yes, Granger, does she have to?" Malfoy asked, raising an eyebrow at Hermione, a crooked grin lifting his lips. She narrowed her eyes at the road.
"Yes, you have to."
And the conversation was over.
"'Mione, can we get this movie?"
Anette's excited voice tugged at Hermione's side where she stood, picking up different school books for third grade. When she looked down, Anette held up a DVD of the movie "Matilda" with a vibrant smile. Hermione pursed her lips and then squatted down to her height, taking the DVD from her and reading the back.
They were in Tromsø, in the biggest mall available this high up North, not only for birthday gifts, but also clothing, toiletries, and generally anything to turn their hut into a child friendly home.
After all, she would have to be kept occupied almost day round now. And they had to substitute somehow for the utter lack of peers.
The movie was oddly fitting, she thought; A young girl using her supernatural powers to settle scores with the mean people who surrounded her. The issue was; they had no TV, DVD player, or other cable.
Hermione stood up, DVD in hand, looking around the large aisle of books. "I thought you were with your uncle. Where is he?" she asked, and Anette grabbed her hand to pull her through the aisle, looping around to another one with more books. Malfoy stood in front of the children's books selection, turning over drawing books and inspecting their contents.
His mood was surprisingly good now. Hermione had also noticed something else, ever since the homeschooling conversation. This, and every single of Malfoy's responses to whatever the girl asked – Sure, Why not, Yes, Of course – had clued Hermione into something very useful.
He was an utter and complete sucker for Anette.
Malfoy had not noticed them yet, and so Hermione turned to Anette, still hanging on her hand. Almost telling her to do her best to pout at her uncle if he dared say no, until she realized that she didn't need to be told to do that.
"Malfoy, I have a proposition to make," she chirped and skidded to a halt in front of him. He glanced at her before turning his attention back to the pile of colouring books in their overflowing cart.
"That's a terrible opener for a business deal. What is it?" he asked, dropping one last book into the cart and then turning towards them with full attention. Hermione held out the DVD to him.
"Anette asked to get this, and it gave me an idea."
He took the DVD from her with hesitation, flipping it over to read the back with drawn eyebrows.
"You need a Muggle TV for this. I don't know if you've noticed–"
"Yes, yes, I know, we don't have one. But, I thought, if we had one, it'd be great to keep her occupied for long stretches of time. And if we get cable, she can even watch local shows. Make her feel at home."
He listened to her proposition with a skeptical purse to his lips. And as Hermione suspected, he did the lethal mistake of glancing down towards Anette.
"Please? Can we get a TV?" she asked with a cotton candy voice, and she could practically see his barriers crumble. His shoulders sagged. And his hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Bloody hell. Okay. Fine. You pick it out though, I know nothing about TV's," he murmured, pointing at Hermione. There was a glorious swell in her chest, and she almost jumped in place. She looked down at Anette, who met her with a smile bright enough to light the place, and she knew that this combination of Hermione's logical argument and Anette's hold over Malfoy's decision-making, would prove to be very useful from now on; very useful indeed.
Halfway through their shopping trip, they remembered their plan to gain intel on Malfoy's alter ego; the elusive Onkle Nikolai, and what they could possibly find out about him.
Hermione returned with the file only half an hour later. Tromsø's police station was the most well-equipped of the entire region and so with her trusty badge, fluttering eyelashes and a rather dazed, older policeman behind the counter, she got ahold of Nikolai's missing person's file in record time.
Tromsø's inner city streets were cobbled and coated with rain that came down in wet snowflakes. The sky was grey and hung with clouds ready to burst with more snow, if the temperature dared drop lower. The mall they'd found was just on the edge of what could be considered the city centre, luckily with a large car park to accompany, and a grocery store connected to it. When Hermione arrived, she found Malfoy at the back of their car, inconspicuously shrinking everything to fit it into the small trunk.
Anette was sat in the backseat, the door wide open and her legs dangling out of the opening, hunched over a new book. She quite reminded Hermione of herself at that age; always content somewhere in a corner, no care for the world around her as long as she had a book in hand.
"Found everything?" she asked as soon as she was in earshot. Malfoy emerged from the trunk.
"Yes, we've just got to get groceries. You?" he asked, leaning back to ponder his organization skills. Hermione came to stand beside him and saw that he'd managed to leave half of the space free for groceries. Books, clothes, boxes of toys, bottles of toiletries and so much more, all shrunk down to fist size and neatly stacked on top of each other.
Images of Ron's room saving system flashed before her eyes. Cupboards full of half stacked cans and pans and bottles and tins in utter disarray. He'd never had a care for how much an efficient arrangement system could save one space. Malfoy seemed perfectly adept at it.
"Got it, too. They were surprised there was even anything about him in their system."
"And?" he asked, closing the trunk and beckoning Anette to close her book and follow them. The car clicked shut as they began walking towards the grocery store.
"Not much. He disappeared–" Hermione looked around to make sure Anette was still engrossed in her book – which she was, blindly stumbling along behind them, unable to tear her eyes from the pages – and she leaned in closer to him still, her voice falling to a whisper.
"He disappeared in '95, aged 24, hasn't been seen since. Police never did much since he was last seen on a solo holiday in Turkey and he might just have decided to start a new life. The only family he had was his older brother Lars, Anette's father. From what I understand, he's going to be considered legally dead in two years."
Malfoy nodded along as she spoke, and he straightened up again as they crossed through the sliding glass doors.
The grocery store was even emptier than the mall; Hermione only saw an old woman pushing her cart with exertion, two giggling teenagers who went back and forth through the aisle of alcohol – where Malfoy picked up a bottle of whiskey – and a hurried man with no cart or basket walking around with a black hoodie hiding his face as it was bowed to the ground every time they crossed paths.
Anette chose, predictably, mostly candy and other snacks appearing to be kid-friendly, but utterly unhealthy in reality.
"Do you ever cook for yourself? This is devastating," Malfoy teased her at the checkout when she piled boxes of barely differing instant meals on the till. He picked one up and turned it around to show her the picture of a plate with promising looking meatballs and potatoes. "Fjordland your best friend now?"
Hermione sniffed in mock offense. "Not everyone can make perfect home-made meals every day."
"I haven't seen you cook even once–"
They continued bickering all throughout payment, loading the car and only stopped when Anette piped up as they drove out of the suburbs of Tromsø.
"I'm hungry!" she announced.
Malfoy procured a bag of licorice looking bites coated in white powder with a name Hermione wouldn't even attempt to pronounce and on Hermione's insistence, they began to look for a petrol station along the route to eat something actually substantial – she was hungry too, she soon noticed.
Rescue came in the form of a tiny rest stop half an hour later with a sign outside that read something neither of them could understand, but Anette let them know, meant that there was definitely food inside.
The tavern was nestled snug into a small path that diverged from the main road, the roof a large slope adorned with icicles and warm light coming from within. A round woman with a red headband and pink cheeks took their orders, and they sat in one of the booths that overlooked the small car park, and the sea on the other side of the main road. There were few other tenants, all quietly existing in the various corners of the restaurant, and their food arrived soon, savoury and steaming.
They ate in comfortable silence. Anette balanced her new book against her glass of water – almost Coke, if not for Hermione intervening – and Hermione excused herself to the restroom halfway through.
Patting her wet hands on her trousers for lack of any towels inside the dank restroom, she bumped into the hooded form of a man rushing past her towards the male bathrooms.
Hermione stood in the narrow hallway, looking back at where the door had closed behind him. Her heart was racing for some reason.
Her head heated up. Her brain went into overload. And soon, she whisked back towards the front, heart pounding and hands wet again, but this time with perspiration. She lifted the translation spell before she was in earshot, and she slid into the booth, trying her best to appear undisturbed. Malfoy immediately noticed her change in behaviour, fork stuck between his lips and cheeks full, eyes attentive.
"We're being followed," she whispered. If somehow possible, his eyes got even wider. He swallowed his bite without chewing.
"How do you know?" he croaked around the bite in his throat, and Hermione shushed him. Grabbing her purse, throwing enough money onto the tabletop to cover everything, and then Anette's hand.
"We need to leave. Now," she said, and left no room for discussion, pulling a confused Anette out of the booth with her. Malfoy looked around, checking the room for whatever caused her change in behaviour, but followed.
Within a minute, they were back on the street, the accelerator pushed to the floor. Malfoy was hissing under his breath from the minute the doors were closed and locked, asking what the fuck is happening.
"There was a man in the grocery store. He wore all black and I never saw him pick up anything. He crossed me as I left the bathroom," she panted, changing the gears quickly to push the speed limit.
"And you didn't tell me?" Malfoy spat, and there was a whimper from the backseat. And then they remembered the destructive force inside of Anette, and how easily it was triggered.
They shared a glance. And he twisted in his seat, towards Anette, all glassy eyes and quick breaths.
Hermione waved her wand right as he began talking.
"Everything's okay, Anette. There's nothing to worry about. We just… remembered that we, uh, forgot to turn off the lights at home."
They both cringed at his lame excuse.
"You see, if the lights burn too long, they could, uh, burst, and we'd have to buy new ones, and we don't want that."
Despite his ridiculous explanation, Anette's face soon returned to its normal, pink-cheeked shade, and with a few more soothing reassurances – "We'll have a sleepover at Theo's house, isn't that fun? You can, uh- eat chocolate before bed, too!" - she was soon back to reading her book.
Hermione lifted the spell again.
"I didn't tell you because it was just some guy, there was no reason for me to think he was following us –"
"Wait, what exactly was he wearing?" he interrupted her. Hermione just now noticed how tight she'd been gripping the steering wheel, but she still didn't let go. The uneven road made the car bump with every pothole.
"Black hoodie with some white stuff on the hem, dark blue jeans, black shoes, I think, Caucasian, around your height?"
He leaned back into his seat with a low exhale.
"I saw him in the toy store too."
The silence was telling. Hermione's fingers dug into the leather of the steering wheel, and she bit the inside of her cheek till she drew iron taste, thick on her tongue. Checking the rearview mirror for any car behind them every few seconds. Then the words came, squeezed out between her teeth.
"See, you didn't tell me about that either –"
"I get it, okay, I get it! What do we do know? Who was it? Where do we go?" he spoke with a normal tone, as if they were talking of the weather; the tensed clicking in his jaw told a different story. Hermione glanced at Anette behind them, but she was undisturbed.
"I don't know," she conceded. Thoughts swirling in her head, none of it making sense. They'd been getting along so well, everything had worked out, and now this –
"I knew something would go wrong," he forced out, and his voice was a smidge too low, a smidge too frustrated. Hermione took a shuddering breath. The road behind them was empty, but it made no difference.
"I thought you said the Ministry would take at least a day until they'd come looking. At least. What do we do now?" he kept rambling, and the concealed smoothness of his voice made her shiver. And she made the mistake of looking over at him, and being met with steel cold slates of a raging thunder in his eyes.
"Stop freaking out," she gritted out.
"I'm perfectly fine, Granger! You know, I think I know why they came looking now already. Because clearly, your resignation is something that would demand such quick action. You are their bloody star employee anyway, no? Won't Rita Skeeter come bloody prodding around too soon? And –"
Hermione finally cast a Muffliato on Anette.
"Malfoy, would you stop acting like this is my fault when they would have come looking this soon either way!" she finally snapped, and the car jerked slightly. She straightened it out again, leaving no time for Malfoy to whine about it.
"You agreed to all of what we did, and I had no way of predicting that they'd come this soon! Now stop freaking out, there's no one behind us and Theo promised that we could stay at his for the night once they come looking!"
She heaved, holding onto the wheel for support now, air chasing through her lungs. She refused to look at him, and only lifted her foot slightly from the sputtering pedal.
"Fine."
Was all he said. This made Hermione glare at him. He looked like a pouting child, arms crossed in front of his chest and an icy glare directed straight out onto the street. Clearly doing his best not to glance her way.
"Would it really kill you to say for once that I'm right?" she hissed, and he curled his nose, turning his head towards the window.
"Yes."
Hermione turned on the radio with vigour, and it filled the car until they arrived in Jøvik.
Theo came running onto his porch as their car tore up the rural pathway that led to his house. Hermione whipped it around to the back, out of the dirt road and out of eyesight, and he shot around the corner as they stepped out.
"What is it? Is the Ministry already looking for you?" he asked, and Hermione nodded. Malfoy opened the backseat door and began convincing Anette to put down her book.
"We got followed out of Tromsø. I didn't see him behind us on the road, but right now, we can't go back to the house. Can we stay here for the night?" she spoke, and Theo nodded, staring at Anette as she followed Malfoy, book in one hand, his hand in the other.
"Have you heard anything back from them yet?" Malfoy asked as he opened the trunk and began rummaging through everything they'd need for the night. Theo came to stand beside them, looking at their shrunken groceries.
"You can put all your cold stuff into my fridge. I prepared two rooms upstairs for you. They replied an hour later with two letters addressed to you and me," Theo said, procuring two opened envelopes from his pocket. Hermione pulled out the letter for her, eyes flitting across the words.
It was a standard response letter to a resignation, but also, instructions to show up at the Ministry with all of the Ministry's belongings still in her possessions; the basic charmed maps to find her way around, and her wand so Roberts could lift the tracking spell that was on it. As she'd predicted. A feeble attempt to get her back to the Ministry and convince her to keep working for them, and more so, shake lose all of the doubts regarding her position that she'd clearly developed in the past week.
Malfoy was right. She was their star employee. It had always been her cases to grace the newspaper headlines; her picture underneath. She was the only employee who'd stuck out this long. Her leaving was going to cause a ripple of confusion, and maybe, doubt.
And, they were after all, still interfering her correspondence with Harry. Who had not yet replied to the woe is me letter she'd sent off last night before they'd gone to… get Anette.
And then Theo's letter, saying that he was to collect evidence of any foul play from the safehouse – whatever foul play there could have possibly been – and be prepared for someone from the Ministry to come and interview him about what he knew.
"They came pretty quick then, huh?" Theo said, taking a puzzle box and several books, as well as abundle of clothes from Malfoy. Anette was skipping around in the snow, shuffling her feet closely as she formed a circle in the crunching white.
"Way too quick. They must be really mad that you resigned," Malfoy closed the trunk with a huff, facing away from her but turning his head just barely acknowledging her. That subdued accusation again; that if it weren't for her status, they would have not come so early. But then again, they hadn't been followed after the diner, so it couldn't have been so serious. Right?
Hermione sighed.
"Just means that if – when – they find nothing, there's even less of a chance that they'll come back again. Trust me, I've done follow-ups like this before. They get no attention from the higher-ups."
This didn't appease Malfoy, nor her. Without another glance at her, he took Anette by her hand and they disappeared around the corner of the house, leaving Hermione to conceal the car.
They spent the rest of the evening upstairs. The first floor of Theo's house was much like their own; three bedrooms, one large bathroom, and several more rooms that they only glanced at the shut doors of, before Theo ushered them into the last room in the far back.
It was stuffy, thick carpets much like their own, heavy with dust and oblivion. One wall was lined with books; no shelves, simply books in piles so high, they touched the ceiling. There was a single king-sized bed; Theo had showed them the other room with a single bed, and left it to them to decide who slept where. But they couldn't move out of the room without alerting him, so his concealment spells wouldn't be disturbed. After all, the man who'd followed them could drop by any minute now.
This kept Hermione lost in her thoughts.
The orange glow of the sunset had long given way to the dark, spotless night sky. Malfoy was on the bed, pointedly ignoring Hermione for the past few hours, deeply engrossed into a book he'd taken from his suitcase. Theo had forced them to leave his suitcase and Hermione's purse in the car. Hermione was sat on the ground, doing a puzzle of Snow White with Anette, or rather, watching her do it.
The wait was excruciating. Her running worries, unlatched and unhinged, flew wild. So many things made no sense; why hadn't the man arrested them then and there? He'd obviously seen Anette with them, so they must have known that they faked her death. And he followed them into several stores, to a diner way out of town; but then they managed to lose him so easily. And now they had to wait; for anyone, anything. Whenever the Ministry decided to come to Jøvik and tear apart their house, interrogate Theo, and leave them again.
Hermione predicted that they'd come a day after her resignation, and not within hours. She had no idea what to expect now anymore. Every car that drove through the main street made them perk up; Malfoy's view from the window was perfect, and she looked to him first for any sign of danger. But every time, he sank bank into the pillows and returned to his book, looking a bit more constipated. Not being able to do anything about it was even worse. Because if the Ministry arrived right this second, all they could do was wait it out.
Hermione looked up at the muffled steps drumming up the stairs and down the hallway towards the bedroom. The door opened a smidge and Theo peeked his head in, wand raised.
"Everything okay in here?"
Malfoy didn't even react. Hermione blinked at Theo, the grasps of sleep fighting against the adrenaline of the last 24 hours. And nodded.
And then Anette yawned, her hands raised high above her head.
"I'm tired!" she announced.
Hermione glanced at her wristwatch; of course, it was almost nine. Today had been exhausting.
"You want to go to bed?" Hermione asked, and Anette nodded, rubbing her eyes with tiny fists. Hermione looked up at Malfoy, and he'd begun to move off the bed at the young girls words. There'd been a quiet agreement that he was going to take the single, and the girls were taking the king, until Hermione realized that they'd never asked Anette about that.
"Anette, is it okay if we sleep together here? You can sleep alone, too," she said, and the last sentence slipped out on accident. Anette regarded her with round eyes, clear, crystal blue water in her irises.
"I can choose?"
Hermione glanced at Malfoy standing by the door, furrowed eyebrows, and Theo behind him, just watching the exchange happen.
"Yes, of course. We'll do whatever you want."
Anette avoided her eyes then. Fiddling with the hem of her new shirt, and staring at the half finished puzzle. Hermione ducked her head to catch her gaze.
"Would you like to sleep alone?" she asked, and Anete's hesitant eyes met hers.
"Is that okay?" she whispered, full of hope, and Hermione's heart melted.
She was too afraid to ask for what she really wanted.
"Of course. Let's go to bed, okay?"
The men moved out of the way wordlessly as Hermione walked Anette to the other room, helped her dress into her pajamas, and wished her a good night.
She was better with kids than she'd thought, Hermione realized with glee when the bedroom door clicked shut softly behind her. And she returned to the other room.
"Granger, if that was your clever attempt to get into bed with me, it was very uninspired. I'd have expected more from you."
Malfoy's languid words greeted her as soon as she opened the door. And her good mood was almost immediately overshadowed again.
"Oh, shut up, will you? It's not like that," she snapped. He was back on the bed, book in his lap and an utterly insufferable grin on his lips. That's what it was going to take to put him in a good mood? Embarrass herself?
Because truly, until he'd said it, she hadn't realized what Anette sleeping alone actually meant; they were going to have to share a bed. An objectively horrible circumstance.
"It's essential to listen to her needs and respect them if we want to build any kind of trusting relationship with her, which I think, would be of great interest to you. And she's spent literally all day with us, I don't blame her for needing a break," she spoke as she broke up the puzzle and put the pieces back into the box.
"You make befriending her sound absolutely riveting. And I've spent all week with you, don't I get a break too?"
Hermione lobbed a heavy book across the room at him and he swatted it away easily. It bounced on the bed.
"Stop being insufferable. Gloating doesn't suit you," she mumbled, rummaging through her coat pockets to finally retrieve Nikolai Knudsen's file; they couldn't possibly look at it with Anette still present.
"I think it suits me fabulously. Look."
Hermione ducked her head, shielding the view of him with her short curls as he sat up on the bed, turned towards her.
"I'm not looking. I'll make you sleep on the floor."
"I thought you were going to sleep on the floor–"
"Just shut up. Here," she flung the file at him and he caught it out of the air. His good mood was such a contrast to earlier, after they'd arrived, and she wondered if she should be worried. But nothing she would question.
Hermione joined him on the duvet as he spread out all of the file's sparse contents on the bed.
Born in 1970, younger brother of Lars Knudsen (born in 1966), studied at the Arctic University of Norway, and disappeared while on a holiday to Turkey in 1995, never to be heard of again.
Most interestingly, there were handsome pictures included. He was barely older than Malfoy in them; and yet, they looked strikingly similar. Same pale blonde hair, light eyes, similar curve of the nose, slope of the lips, angle of the jaw. Hermione could not blame Anette at all for confusing them; at most, maybe, it was odd that she so readily believed Malfoy was her uncle even though said uncle would be 33 today. Ten years Malfoy's senior.
"Stop staring at me, Granger," Malfoy mumbled then, reading through a police report from '95. Hermione dropped the picture she'd been holding up into the air as she compared their features.
"Are you sure you're not related?" she replied, and pushed the picture towards him. He stared at it for a few seconds, and his hand raised up to sweep through his hair self-consciously.
"I've been taught the Malfoy family tree since I could talk. We have absolutely no relations in Scandinavia," he said, and turned his attention back to the police report. Hermione let it go with a sigh.
"Granger, this tracking spell – it only works on people that are alive, right?"
It had been silent for the last half hour they'd wasted looking through boring reports from the Norwegian and Turkish government. Nikolai had disappeared without a trace, and so there was little interesting information to find. They'd begun brainstorming why the man in the diner didn't follow them, and why he hadn't already shown up at Theo's.
"Yes, only live people. Why?" she mumbled, listening with only half an ear, until she caught on. And when she looked up, he'd already performed the spell. His eyes were tracking the string, invisible to her, out of the window. Hermione's eyebrows shot up high into her forehead.
"He's alive?"
"Might be thousands of miles away, but yes," Malfoy mumbled, staring at the windowsill, where she saw nothing but a thick layer of dust.
Well, at least they knew something.
And by the time they went to bed – at the far end of each bedside, trying to ignore that the other existed, thank you very much – they had already slipped back into an amiable companionship. A push and pull, made entirely unpredictable by Malfoy's swinging moods, and Hermione's growing ability to handle them for the better or worse.
"Night," he said as he turned off the bedside lamp, and plunged the room into a haunting oasis of shadows, contorted and warped by the faint moonlight outside, that crept up the walls and displayed odd shapes.
"Night."
"Don't get handsy."
She kicked her legs backwards, striking him.
"Keep dreaming."
He hmphed, but offered no other snarky remark, except a low chuckle. As stillness descended upon the room, Hermione became increasingly aware of every breath he took, his every small move, the combined warmth of their bodies under the duvet and how hot she felt – despite all this, she still managed to fall asleep with a smile playing around her lips.
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