May 2009
The Leaky Cauldron was already crammed when Hermione made her way from the apparition point in the alley to the center of the pub where her friends were crowded around a long, gleaming wood table. Hermione was meeting Ginny here for a quick drink after their friends' pickup Quidditch match before the two went shopping in London.
Hermione squeezed onto a bench between Ginny and George Weasley. Ginny had clearly cast a freshening charm over herself and changed from her Quidditch robes into a Muggle t-shirt and denims, but George's face still gleamed with sweat from the match.
"My only love!" George exclaimed, wrapping his arms around Hermione's shoulders and pulling her into a sweaty hug.
"George Weasley, get off me right now! You smell like a locker room."
"You know I only wear my best cologne for you, dearest," George winked and sipped his firewhisky.
"Where's Angelina this afternoon?"
"She's filling in for Lee at the shop – you know his son was born last week?"
Hermione shook her head. "No, I hadn't heard!"
"Yeah – Angelina and me, we gave his mum a nice set of baby bottles. Didn't tell her that they'd turn his poo bright orange, so I'm currently not allowed to visit. She wasn't too pleased with the nappies either."
"Oh George, not the ones that –" Ginny interrupted.
"They're meant to be helpful!" protested George.
"They shout, 'Mummy, I've shat myself!' Do you know how many lie-downs those bloody nappies ruined for me?"
George stood up, mock-offended. "Since no one appreciates my saintlike generosity, I'd best go relieve Angie."
"Apologize to Lee's wife, you nutter!" yelled Ginny after him as he left.
Harry, still in his Gryffindor Quidditch jersey, was to Ginny's left. He was chatting with Ron and using his arms to tell a story about the Tornadoes' new seeker, who'd apparently sustained a grave injury during the team's first match.
"'Mione!" Ron exclaimed when he noticed her. They both got up from their stools to lean over the table and exchange cheek kisses. "How have you been feeling?"
This is how nearly every conversation with nearly every person she encountered had started since she'd woken last summer.
"Fine," she said, wrinkling her nose a bit at his ripe scent. "I'm just going to grab a drink, can I get–"
"I got it! Butterbeer, right?" Ron smiled at her.
"Sure, Ron. Thanks."
Ron and Hermione had not worked as a couple. The kisses they'd shared after the final battle had quickly turned awkward. Handling her curse-induced illness had taken up most of Hermione's effort, and she found she didn't want to spend what little energy she had on being the kind of girlfriend that Ron seemed to want.
He had such faith that she would get better. Ron almost seemed to think it was a matter of personal constitution, as if she could will herself to be better. After Voldemort's defeat, Ron was flattered by all the press attention he received and eager to grab his new life with both hands, to make a name for himself. He received an offer to play professional Quidditch in Spain and took it, promising he'd stay in touch. Initially, they had both tried, but Hermione found they didn't have much to write about in their letters and they seemed to quietly fade from one another's lives for a time.
A few years ago, an injury had retired him from professional Quidditch and he now coached for the Chudley Cannons. Ron was truly living his dream, and he and Hermione were content in each other's lives as good friends – not as close as they'd been during their Hogwarts days, but a constant fixture for one another. But he still tended to, well, tend to Hermione a bit more than she was comfortable with.
As Ron got up to fetch more drinks, Harry turned to Hermione.
"So how's the bookshop?"
Hermione shrugged. "Honestly, not much has changed. Hogwarts is still in session, so business probably won't pick up until the summer. I did talk Martin into opening up a Muggle section, but now he's given me free rein to stock it and I have no idea which direction to go in."
"You should stock those novels about the wizards and the – what are they called, hobbies? – you and Harry are always going on about! Wizards would find those hysterical."
"I'm not sure the wizarding world is ready for Tolkein's version of them, Gin. Although I don't think stocking fiction is necessarily a bad idea, the best start may not be something that people will poke fun at. But I can't decide whether I should go for more scientific books, to try and get a cross-disciplinary thing going, or maybe biographies of influential Muggles…." Hermione trailed off as she noticed her friends' eyes start to glaze over. "Anyway, I'm still thinking about it."
"And you've been there, what, six months now?" Ginny asked.
"Yeah. Flourish and Blotts is nice, but I'm starting to think a bit more about what's next."
Ginny got excited. "Are you going back to the ministry, then?" She nudged Harry and gave him a look.
Ron came back and levitated a butterbeer in front of Hermione and a gillywater in front of Ginny. She smiled at him in thanks.
"No, I don't think so," Hermione shook her head uncomfortably. She didn't want to get into this in front of Ron or Harry.
After her eighth year, Hermione had taken a job at the Ministry of Magic in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Fresh off her 11 N.E.W.T.s, she intended to use her newfound fame to overturn many of the bigoted laws against non-wizard part-humans and usher in a new era of cooperation and understanding between wizards and sentient magical creatures. But she hadn't bargained on barely having the energy to show up at work, and though she tried her hardest, she was not a politician. The ministry was too set in its ways. Especially so soon after the war, trying to increase rights for the giants who had fought for Voldemort or undo restrictions on werewolves after the terror of Fenrir Greyback was just not politically popular.
A few years later, she'd transferred to a position in the Ministry archives. It was an interesting job, though a lot of the time she felt like a combination of glorified file clerk and school librarian. But it afforded her the whole wealth of Ministry knowledge to research her own curse. Not that it had done her much good, in the end.
Hermione changed the subject. "Harry, did you ever figure out what was going on with that lady and the strangling figs?"
"Oh gods, that was awful," Harry started. "Turns out it wasn't dark magic at all, though. The house was sentient."
"What, like it could talk?" Ron asked.
Harry made a face. "More like… it could think. Kind of like Hogwarts and the Room of Requirement. Way more common in ancient buildings, but I don't think even the older aurors had ever seen something in a building under two hundred years old before."
"Really? I had my Galleons on ghost or poltergeist," Ginny said, sipping her butterbeer.
Ron shook his head. "Nah, from what Harry said I could tell it wasn't a poltergeist. Remember that disgusting one from home? The one we said had spattergroit?"
"Anyway," Harry interrupted, "the poor woman was finally able to get out of her room once we talked the house into letting her go. Apparently the house was angry with her."
Ginny finished her gillywater. "What on earth for?"
"I guess she'd planted jacarandas all around the reflecting pool. The house did not appreciate the effect that the tropical climate was having on the bees, so it locked her in the dungeon with the figs until she let us suspend her weather charms," explained Harry. "Caused a minor hurricane around the pool when the temperature changed, but once the old bat was out, she repaired it."
"What's a bloody jacaranda?" asked Ron.
"A tropical tree," Hermione volunteered.
"Of course you know that," said Ginny. "Ready to head to lunch?"
Hermione nodded, and she and Ginny waved at the boys as they headed to the alley to make their way into Muggle London.
"We need those support charms extended yesterday!"
"Draco, the guys worked sixteen hours yesterday," Greg started calmly. "It's complex spellcasting and requires –"
"I'm paying them well enough, you think I care about their stamina? Get it done."
Draco stomped into his office and threw a locking charm behind him that banged the door shut. A moment later he heard the lock click open and Greg's footsteps entering his office.
It wasn't really an office. Draco used one of the completed rooms for the new ward as his onsite workspace when supervising the crew. The ceiling hadn't been installed, so it was just open walls around a long metal table, both of which were covered in parchments. A few chairs were scattered around the table.
"Merlin's ballsack, Draco, you have some of the best architectural spellcasters working their arses off for you out there, on a Saturday no less. If you don't start treating them with some respect, they'll walk." Greg's voice was even, but his tone was firm.
"I don't give a niffler's arse, Goyle."
Draco collapsed into a metal folding chair, a scowl on his face. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, throwing a piece of parchment on the table in front of him. Greg didn't speak for another moment.
"Mate, you have to slow down. You're working too hard, and you're working everyone else too hard."
The room was silent.
"What's that?" Greg gestured at the parchment. Draco charmed the parchment into a crane, then set it on fire. The smell of burning paper filled the small room.
"Their latest rejection. It doesn't matter. They said we couldn't have the extra physical therapy space, and you lot finished the cushioning charms on that last week."
"So they're still overruling the potions lab?"
Draco didn't respond. He stared into the distance for a moment, not really seeing. Suddenly, he stood.
"I'm going over there right now."
"Drake, I think Blaise said to –"
"Fuck what Blaise said."
Draco stormed out of the office and headed for the stairwells.
"We approved your extra beds, Mister Malfoy, and the room for that therapy you said you wanted, but the building simply cannot support –"
"First of all, magiphysical therapy is a necessary part of healing from curses and demands its own space and resources. Which you know, because I have presented such research to you in this very room. And second, how the hell do you know what the building can support? Are you the architect? Do you have expertise in the magical and spatial limitations of bewitched postwar Muggle buildings?" Draco glared at the sour-faced witch in violently purple robes seated calmly at the table with the other members of the hospital board. She reminded him of that cow Dolores Umbridge, and she clearly wasn't pleased to have him interrupt their board meeting.
Another wizard jumped in. "Sit down, Mister Malfoy. We're just asking that you stick to the original plan."
"Yes, Draco, we've given you nearly total freedom since we approved this project," another witch jumped in.
"Total freedom?" Draco was furious now. "I have had to fight you every –" He took a deep breath. "Look. You say you've given me total freedom. Why stop now? This could be the foremost curse healing facility in the entire wizarding world if you would just…" His hand curled into a fist at his side. His jaw ached with the force of his teeth grinding together.
"It's one extra floor," he spoke very slowly, as if he were a parent trying not to lose it on a child who insisted upon throwing mud pies while wearing their Easter robes. "Yes, it is a large space. I will grant you that."
His voice dipped lower and a note of menace entered it as he continued. "The potions space is non-negotiable. I am certain my team can make sure it's properly supported, that the expansion charms will hold. But I will have it."
The witch in purple shifted in her seat. "We'd like to use that space to expand our selection of private rooms for our more… exclusive patient clientele. It's a valuable funding source."
Draco blinked at her. No one spoke as Draco tried to contain the rage that threatened to explode from him. He clenched both his fists, feeling his fingernails dig into his palms. The tension in his neck only tightened the vise around his skull and his temple throbbed.
He walked slowly over to the table and stood right in front of the board and met each of their eyes in turn.
"I am going to say this once. My wife wanted this ward completed two years ago. The way I see it, we have never not been behind schedule," he spat, then took a steadying breath.
"You grant me the potions laboratory, at my specifications," he spoke through gritted teeth, "and I will finish this job by the end of the summer. And I will personally lay the groundwork to ensure the safety of your new celebrity beds."
A smile spread across the witch's face. "Done."
Draco nodded once, then turned and walked out of the conference room, down all four flights of stairs, and out the front door of the hospital building, a roar building in his ears.
"Do you mind if we stop by Quality Quidditch supplies first? I need new broom polish."
Hermione nodded, and they turned to go further into Diagon Alley. Ginny was unusually quiet as they walked.
"Spit it out, Gin."
Ginny sighed. "Okay, I know you hate when we ask this. But how are you, really? I know you had your healer visit this week, but you never said…"
Hermione shook her head. Someday the day would come when her friends stopped tiptoeing around her, stopped worrying about her health, stopped hovering. But today was not that day.
"Ginny, I promise I'm fine. Every checkup since I woke up last year has been the same. Nothing has changed. It's like… it's like it never happened."
"Okay, good," Ginny responded, then a moment later, "Sorry."
The two witches passed the Owl Post and Hermione stopped in front of it and just looked at its facade.
Ginny stood next to Hermione, shoulder-to-shoulder. "Mail it, Hermione. You'll feel better."
"I know. I want to, I do."
"Then why haven't you?" Ginny asked, looking at Hermione kindly.
"I don't know. I mean, I always have it with me." Hermione took a small, ordinary-looking parchment envelope out of her beaded bag. The letter was addressed to "Personnel Services, St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries" in plain black ink. "But every time I go to mail it, I … I can't."
"I don't know why not. It's anonymous."
The space in Hermione's chest that had felt the burning when she'd nearly died last year felt cold for a moment. She held the letter in her hands and stared down at it.
"It says you're grateful, Hermione. I think I'd want to get something like that if I lost someone I loved. Wouldn't you?"
"Of course, Ginny, but does it not seem strange to you? Sending a thank-you note for your life? For your magic? It just seems so… inadequate." Tears pricked Hermione's eyes.
"I mean yeah, but… don't you feel worse not sending it?" Ginny looked concerned.
"Yes, but…" Hermione trailed off. Her shoulders roses and fell in a small shrug.
Ginny sighed. "It's been over a year, Hermione. Just mail it and move on. I'm sure they have."
The address on the envelope blurred as Hermione stared at it. Finally, she cleared her throat and nodded. "You're right. Of course, you're right. It's time."
Ginny hugged Hermione around the shoulders and walked her into the Owl Post. She stayed at the back of the shop as Hermione approached the counter and waited her turn. Hermione shot Ginny several anxious glances, and Ginny returned each one with an encouraging smile or nod. When it was Hermione's turn, she handed over the letter and the requisite number of Sickles, and a moment later a tawny owl flew out of a window at the back of the shop, clutching the envelope carefully in its talons.
Hermione watched it leave, then turned to Ginny with a tremulous expression. Ginny let out a raucous, "Wooo! Let's hear it for Hermione Granger everyone! She just mailed a very important letter!" People turned to look at them oddly while Ginny clapped obnoxiously. Hermione turned bright red and grabbed Ginny by the upper arm to lead her out of the shop.
"Honestly, Ginny," muttered Hermione.
"Oh shut it, you just did an incredible thing. You know what you deserve?"
"A stiff drink?" Hermione let out a slightly breathless laugh.
"Absolutely. Let's get French 75s with our lunch, eh?"
Hermione wiped a stray tear away with her fingertips, then nodded.
They chatted about Ginny and Harry's boys as they made their way to the Quidditch shop – James was about to turn five, and Harry had bought him a better toy broom for his birthday. Hermione picked up a faster Snitch for him while they were at the shop, then they made their way out of Diagon Alley and into Muggle London.
Tarte Aux Pommes, the bistro where they were headed, wasn't far from Diagon Alley. Hermione had discovered it when she was a regular visitor to St. Mungo's; it was situated on the block just before the hospital. A bank of windows trimmed in white curtains, some pulled aside to allow their diners to take advantage of the indirect sun, showed off round wood tables with iron legs flanked by comfortable wicker chairs. As Ginny and Hermione entered, they were greeted by the smells of frying ham, caramelized sugar, and creamy cafe au lait. The hostess gestured for them to take a seat anywhere, and Hermione made her way to her favorite table in front of the window on the left side of the restaurant. It was the only window seat without a view of the hospital.
They ordered – drinks for both, risotto cakes with roasted squash and lardons for Hermione and a croque madame for Ginny – and once they were settled with their beverages, Hermione turned to her friend.
"I didn't want to say anything at the Leaky because nothing's final, but –"
Ginny jumped in her seat, looking interested.
Hermione hesitated. "I applied to this temporal research fellowship at the magical university in Rome, and I got accepted. I'm still thinking about it, but if I decide to go, I'd head there in September and spend a year apprenticing under Mariella Voltaggio."
"Rome?" Ginny gasped.
"I know, but Maria Voltaggio is a legend. She's who the ministry hired to replenish their stock of time-turners a few years ago, and she's done incredible work on temporally-affective potions. Her research on potion-assisted paradox avoidance alone… And she studies the impact of time travel on object permanence – why, for example, could I use the time turner in third year and there be two of me in the same time, but when wizards have gone backwards in time to before their own birth, do they suddenly shoot back to their present once they are born? It's a fascinating area of study. I've been taking Muggle physics and advanced mathematics courses at Imperial College. Between that and trying to catch up on the latest developments in applied and theoretical arithmancy, I'm not sure how I can possibly be ready by September."
"... You lost me," Ginny laughed. "I'm sorry, you know I always get lost as soon as you mention the time turner. But Italy? For a whole year?"
Hermione smiled and nodded. "Yeah, I think so."
Ginny paused. "So what's to think about? I mean you know I insist that you not abandon me, but this is clearly the perfect opportunity for you."
"Yeah," Hermione thought for a moment. "I should be happy, right?"
"Other than because you have me for a best friend, you mean?" Ginny gave Hermione a broad grin, but then turned serious. "What do you mean?"
At that moment the server arrived with their meals, and Hermione took a moment to collect her thoughts as she closed her mouth around a forkful of pesto risotto. "I'm alive," she said a little thickly. "I'm alive because some healer who I don't even know is dead. So I'm supposed to be happy, right? I'm almost obligated to be." A sound like scoff escaped her.
Ginny groaned with pleasure and wiped a bit of yolk from the side of her mouth. "Sorry, that is just always so good. Hermione, you don't have to be happy. I mean, Harry's the Chosen One, the savior of wizardkind, and even he has the occasional bad day."
"I just feel like I'm supposed to be doing something important with my life now. I always thought I would. When we were in school, when I wasn't thinking about defeating Voldemort or keeping Harry alive, I imagined being Minister for Magic or Headmistress of Hogwarts or even being an Auror, but then I was sick and I never… things just didn't turn out the way I had planned. And now I have this second chance, and I feel like what I'm doing isn't enough."
Ginny cocked her head. "Is this about the bookshop? Because if anyone deserves a few months surrounded by the things they love the most, I promise it's you."
A cube of roasted squash found its way into Hermione's mouth without her consciously putting it there and she chewed it without really tasting it.
"I will admit there is something humbling about being 'The Golden Girl' and working in a bookshop, but no, it's not that. I needed the quiet time to gather my bearings. It's surprised me how much work it's taken to just get used to not being sick."
Hermione drained her cocktail. "But now that I am well, I think I feel a bit lost. My old aspirations don't fit me anymore. My old life doesn't fit me." Hermione looked out the window at a robin bobbing on the sidewalk, searching for crumbs. "Maybe something in Italy will fit."
Ginny put her fork down and looked Hermione full in the face. "You fit here, Hermione. You will always belong with me and Harry." She smiled. "But I can see what you mean. Everything has changed and maybe going to Italy will bring you some clarity. You can quite literally take some time for yourself."
"You can't take time, it's intangible," Hermione furrowed her brow at Ginny.
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Oh my gods, you have no sense of humor about your work whatsoever."
They ordered another round of cocktails – this time a fizzy lemon concoction with gin and a hint of hibiscus – and spent the rest of their lunch talking about George and Lee's new Muggle-inspired bowling alley that was due to open in a few weeks.
After they paid the check and as Hermione stepped out of the door, she felt someone bump into her shoulder. The dull thud against her scapula seemed to continue inward to her chest, and she felt a hum behind her heart, as if dozens of bees were waking from a slumber to make their first flights on the primal quest for nectar. She took a deep breath and caught a light scent of honey and pine, and turned toward the force that had brushed against her, an automatic apology on her lips. A tall, broad-shouldered man with blond hair and a determined gait was walking away from her. He gestured over his shoulder with his chin as if to acknowledge the intrusion into her personal space, but did not meet her eyes. Hermione recognized the profile of Draco Malfoy and blinked rapidly, then shook her head, the buzzing sensation fading from her chest.
Ginny caught the far-away expression on Hermione's face. "Are you all right?"
Hermione took another breath. "I think so. Whatever that was, it didn't hurt."