Author's Note: Well, it's a nice long chapter! I think there's a fair bit going on here. I won't say too much more right now. I'm thoroughly enjoying my vacation. All the reviews coming in help make it even better. I think the next chapter of The Professor will be ready to go tomorrow or the next day. I'm also working on the epilogue for Law and Marriage and the next chapter of Exhausted. I think I may have made a mistake and put the students coming home from Hogwarts for Easter down in two different chapters; not a major plot point in either case, but...oops? I'm sorry.

Chapter 38: Society

Hermione had hated leave Draco alone on Saturday at what should have been as much his victory as hers but he'd waved her off and told her that she needed to be present when the joke shop opened. Besides, the weather was starting to turn fine and he hadn't played football in months. He imagined a few of the fellows he'd played with the previous fall would be around today.

And so it was that Hermione went to the joke shop in one of her better looking sets of robes and was there before the doors opened. There were posters on the window with an owl leaving droppings on a letter and a distraught person looking aggrieved. Another poster showed a man waiting days for an owl to return with a letter from his girlfriend—day and night flashing repeatedly on the poster until the owl came back.

"I feel a little bad for the owls in all this," she told Lee, gesturing to all the signage.

"Oh, I don't imagine the owl post will go out of business. People will still need their daily paper and what-have-you, but we had to do something to show that there are problems and we have the solution." He gave a cheeky grin.

A display was set up with boxes and boxes of the mirror and there was a magical barrier set up a little ways inside the door—George wanted to open the door, make his announcement, and then let people in to spend all their money. The new shop assistant Tiffany had only just been told about the mirrors this morning. George handed Lee and Hermione each a mirror and explained what he wanted them to do after his initial announcement. He rubbed his hands together, looking more gleeful than Hermione had seen him in ages.

He opened the doors with a flick of his wand and stood behind the barrier, casting a Sonorus charm on your himself. Lee slipped past to join the throng, and Hermione took a position on George's left. "Thank you, everyone, for coming. I was just thinking the other day, and do you know what really chafes me?"

"Having to listen to a boring speech when you want to buy fireworks?" a teenaged voice called out from somewhere in the back of the crowd.

George didn't miss a beat. "That's right. Having to wait." He glanced around for the speaker and, not finding one, picked a young man in the crowd at random. "How long did it take for your last letter from your girlfriend to arrive by owl?"

"I…don't have a girlfriend."

"What? A good looking fellow like you?" George motioned to a woman in the audience. "Isn't he handsome, love?"

She looked him over and turned back to the front. "I prefer redheads."

"Doesn't everybody?" George said, grinning. He tried to move the presentation along. "How much better would it be, if, when you had to be away from the people you cared about, you could talk to them in real time, over a distance? You and I could talk and you could admire all my pretty red hair," George told her with a wink, preening a bit with his hair to look the part.

Hermione rolled her eyes at George. "We can already do that with Floo calls, or are you still in the 1700s before the network was stable enough for that?"

"Oh no, Hermione, I'm living in the future, and the future is now. Just wait 'til I tell you all about—" There was a muffled sound coming from George's pocket and he frowned. "Could you folks excuse me a moment? Won't take but a moment." He felt in his pockets and pulled out a handheld compact mirror and opened opened it. As he pressed the button to open it, Lee's voice came out loud and clear over the murmurs of the crowd.

"George, mate, you're dying out there. Just go ahead and tell them what you've got to tell them already and get on with it."

"We had this discussion already, I'm doing the announcement my way."

"Fine, it's your funeral," Lee said. He turned to his neighbor in the crowd and shrugged. "Some people. You just can't do anything with them, am I right?"

And that was when his neighbor in the crowd said, "Hey! It's Weasley's face in his mirror!" and people tried to gather in closer around Lee until he was in danger of being squashed.

George grinned. "That's right. Real time communication without having to be tied down to a fireplace. You can see and hear the people you want to talk to from anywhere."

Hermione did her best to sound natural with George's script. "Oh thank Merlin. If I had to kneel at another fireplace to call your mother and tell her why you weren't going to make home for dinner, my knees would give out."

"Well, I'm not making it home for dinner tonight, because we're going to stay open until midnight." He started to talk in more detail about what the mirrors could do and how easy they were to work.

The brunette tapped her foot as his description went on, and looked at her wrist as though checking the time. Right on queue, she pulled out her own mirror and called George on it. "I think they've heard enough. Better let them in now."

"Right you are, Hermione," George said into the mirror. He snapped it shut. "Now, I'm going to lower the barrier, but I'd like an orderly line. If you're interested in the mirrors, please come see Lee in the front there, myself, or the lovely Hermione and we'll get you set up. If you're here for any of the other products, please see Tiffany—wave to them Tiffany—and she'll get you checked out." With a flourish, he lowered the barrier and the sale began.

Despite George's claim that they'd all be working 'til midnight, they did each take a couple of hours break on a rotation. A second and third crowd of people came in later in the day after having heard about the mirrors from the first crowd. Around ten o'clock, Hermione had to call it a night, though George and Lee had taken a potion to give them a little extra energy and were determined to hold out 'til midnight. Whenever someone purchased a mirror, the mirror address—like a phone number in the Muggle world—had to be set up with the purchase so that they could actually start using it to contact people.

Hermione left the store with the mirror George had given her in the morning, and one for Draco, to be given to him, "In a few months when the Ministry finally decided to let him start doing real work again," as George had put it. To be sure that Caffrey and Burke didn't find it and deem it a violation of his parole however, Hermione was going to keep the mirror at her flat for the time being. She set her things down, kicked off her shoes, and hardly looked around her flat for a moment before crossing the hall and going to see Draco.

He was waiting up for her, the telly on but not paying much attention to it. He looked her over and smirked a little, "You look like something the Kneazle dragged in." He wrapped one of his arms around her.

"Merlin, I think George is going to be the death of me if I have to keep this up. I told him I'll come in for a few hours tomorrow but that's all I could promise. This device is really going to be a game changer for the magical world, I think."

"Oh, I know it will."

She pulled away from him just enough to get herself seated and he followed her. "George filed all the paperwork with the Ministry on it. You and are both credited as contributors. He's also giving us each a share of each of the mirrors he sells. He said the product wouldn't have existed at all without the idea and would still be waiting or only half of what it could be if we hadn't all been working together a couple weeks ago."

Draco tensed. "I don't need the money."

"You might some day," she pointed out. Like if your mother cuts you off, she thought to herself.

He frowned. "I'm listed as one of the creators with the Ministry? Salazar. What if they say I'm in violation of my sentence? What if they don't give me back my magic?" He was surviving this whole Muggle thing, but he knew there was an end date to it. This was exactly the sort of thing that could make them want to extend it permanently. Or worse, send him to Azkaban. His whole body was stiff.

Hermione took a breath. "George and I can both vouch that weren't in violation of the terms. You had a discussion with us about the magical theory involved in creating something like this. You did no magic yourself. You couldn't have. The Ministry must know that."

"The Ministry would take any excuse to lock me up," he growled.

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose and took another deep breath. "Well, your name is on the paperwork. We have two options. We can hope that the patents office never gets around to telling the law enforcement office that your name is on the sheet. Or you can tell Burke and Caffrey that you consulted on the spell, performed no magic, and that if necessary we can verify this with Veritaserum."

Draco went very still. He was going to have to think about this. The cards were stacked against him, not undeservedly. But it wouldn't take much for the Ministry to decide his punishment hadn't been severe enough, even with Potter testifying as he had last summer that Draco had saved his life.

"You don't have to decide now. I don't think George realized it was going to cause a problem. He just wanted to give credit where it was due."

"And it could keep me from getting my magic back," he said, sounding a little bitter.

"You didn't break any of the rules."

He raised an eyebrow at her. Plenty of people had enough reason to dislike him that that would hardly matter. He needed his behavior this year to be above reproach and now here he was with his name on a major magical achievement when he was supposed to be living without magic.

The eyebrow raise was almost as if they'd had an entire conversation and Hermione let out a sigh and shook her head. She knew as well as he did that rules weren't always applied fairly.

Draco gave a slight nod.

"Well, what do you want to do now? We can't change what's done. Is there anything to eat?"

"I ordered extra with dinner. I figured you'd be hungry when you got back." He gestured to the kitchen, and Hermione went to get some containers of take out Chinese food. It was one of the things he'd discovered he enjoyed about Muggle culture this year.

Hermione reheated the food and brought some out for him as well as herself and curled up on the couch to eat it. "How was your day? Other than me bringing back terrible news?"

"Fine. Went to the park. Stopped by the library. I learned how to use the copy machine. Did you know about those?"

Hermione did her best not to smile. "Yes. You haven't had the occasion to use it before now?"

The discussion continued on to talk about the copy machine versus replicating spells, and how much faster editing something on the computer was over having to rewrite it all. Although Draco had to admit he wasn't particularly fast at typing and was going to stick to working on his book by hand—for now.

"But I've seen people who seem to be able to write a whole paragraph in a minute," he said.

"Well, you won't get any faster at it if you don't practice," she pointed out.

They stayed up long enough to distract a little from the possibility that George's act of good will might have sabotaged Draco's odds of getting his magic back in a few months. There was nothing they could do about it until the decided whether he'd rather tell the Ministry outright or take his chances. He had almost a week before the Aurors came around again.

Hermione had her notes gathered beside her in a neat pile and had brought identical stacks for Percy and Arthur. She'd told Tom who she was expecting and had let him show her back to the private booth with the promise that he'd bring back the others as soon as they arrived. She breathed deeply and exhaled slowly. She wasn't usually in the habit of asking for advice. Arthur had always seemed friendly enough with Remus that she imagined he'd probably be willing to help. As far as she knew, Percy didn't have anything particular against people with lycanthropy, but you never knew. Draco didn't quite understand Hermione's desire to help them, but then again, with Greyback living in his house and being used as a threat against him…was it really surprising?

"Hermione," said two male voices.

"Percy, Mr. Weasley, it's so good of you to come."

"We had to fight quite a throng to get here. What's going on at the twins' shop? The place looked mobbed."

Hermione looked at him. Old habits died hard. In many ways it would always be Fred and George's joke shop, even with Fred gone. "George didn't tell you? Have you ever heard of mobile phones?"

Arthur frowned. "Like telephones?"

"But a telephone you can take with you wherever you go," Hermione explained.

Both of Arthur's eyebrows rose. "Doesn't it need…a…what's the word…?"

"Cable with electricity?" Hermione offered. "They've found a way around it. Mobile phones can carry a signal to connect to one another. You do have to plug it in every couple of days to charge it, but it means now you can reach someone day or night no matter where they are, as soon as you need them."

Percy looked a little ruffled. "That sounds a little…intrusive."

"You can turn the ringer off and make yourself unavailable, but I see your point. At any rate, the wizarding world hasn't really had anything equivalent to this. I suppose a Floo call isn't unlike a phone call, but you're tethered to the house and the fireplace." She took a breath. "Well, we've been working on coming up with something similar to a mobile phone that would work in the wizarding world. We just announced it on Saturday." She dug in her handbag for a moment. "This mirror will allow you to call people, see them, talk to them, wherever they are, as long as they have one also."

Arthur looked surprised. "Nobody has done much with mirrors in decades."

"Well, now we have," Hermione said. "But that's not really what I wanted to talk to you about today." She handed them each a stack of parchment. "I've been wanting to make a difference in quality of life for people with lycanthropy. For a lot of reasons. Remus Lupin is one. He was given a chance to get an education and not have his condition totally define him, and even with all his struggles…he's one of the kindest men I've ever known. Imagine how life might have been for him if he hadn't been discriminated against all his adult life. And think about all the people with lycanthropy that fought on Voldemort's sign. They didn't ask to become werewolves. Wizarding society didn't want to educate them, wouldn't let them stay employed…where else could they go? We need change on a lot of levels and I want to make that happen. There's a Wolfsbane potion now, and I'm willing to make it and distribute it at no charge…but I haven't figured out how to distribute it or reach the people who need it. But that's really just the tip of the iceberg. They need education, and anti-discrimination laws and…I don't know what else. That's why I need your help. I don't know where or how to get started." She realized she'd been talking for a very long time and shut her mouth with a snap.

"You don't do things by halves, do you?" Percy commented.

"There's no point in doing it by half. I could go put up a sign and hand out Wolfsbane potion, but that's only going to do them so much good if they're still discriminated against and can't hold down a job on account of that."

Percy nodded thoughtfully. "Partly it's a problem of classification. Right now, the only department that has anything to do with werewolves is the department regulating magical creatures."

"Which demotes werewolves to the status of an animal instead of a person who happens to have an affliction," Hermione continued, seeing where he was going.

"During the full moon, a werewolf without the wolfsbane potion is an animal. He doesn't have any way to control the urges he's feeling," Arthur said, trying to sound gentle.

"But that's one day a lunar cycle. Every other day of the year, their wizards and witches—and probably even some Muggles. Is it right to mistreat people every day of the year for something that happens a dozen times a year that they can't control?" she asked.

"I didn't say it was right. Getting them reclassified would help, but it'd be the first of many steps."

"What other offices might be able to intervene? And who might be willing to help?" The conversation devolved into a little bit of a disagreement between the two Weasley men as to which departments would be better positioned to get involved versus which officials in those departments might be willing to take an interest.

At one point, Arthur looked at Hermione. "You do understand just how large a task you've taken on, don't you?"

"I do. And I know I'm not going to make the sort of changes we're talking about all at once. But they need to happen unless the Ministry wants yet another war." She sighed. "I still don't even know what the best solution would be. Whether it would be to try to totally reintegrate the population or whether they might be better off in their own community, but given the option to reintegrate. It would help if there was someone from the community to talk to."

The three of them stayed talking until Percy and Arthur both had to get back to their offices. They had no concrete answers or plans yet, but they were going to be thinking and putting feelers out to see what they might be able to do.

The owl arrived at Hermione's flat shortly after Hermione did. Draco was already there preparing dinner when she got home from the joke shop.

"You look like they ran you ragged." "It was a long day. I had my meeting with Arthur and Percy. I'll tell you all about it in a minute." She went to her room to change out of her robes and into something more comfortable, and when she came out, there was an owl tapping on the window. "Maybe Arthur or Percy thought of something," she said, not quite believing it. She opened the window and the owl flew in with a letter tied to it's leg. It was her own owl, Athena, finally back.

Even without the handwriting, the high quality stationary was impossible to mistake. Narcissa had finally replied to them.

"Draco?"

"Just a minute or the meat will burn."

She waited until he'd taken the meat off the cooked before saying anything else. He came over, looking at her. "What is it?"

"Your mother."

He looked at the letter on Athena's leg, and the owl hooted irritably. Neither of them seemed incline to remove the letter, but Athena seemed to be in an uncharacteristically foul mood. Admittedly, she'd also had quite a long flight. Hermione untied the letter and led her over to her perch, refilling the water dish and food dish and giving her a cursory check over for signs of injury. She seemed to be fine. Not able to stall any longer, Hermione went to stand by Draco again and started to open the letter. It was addressed to Hermione, which made sense. Even though Narcissa's last letter had included a letter for Hermione and a short note for Draco, their response had been written as if it was from Hermione, with indicators throughout it that would show Narcissa that it was from both of them. They'd thought it wise to leave his name off of the signature; the Ministry wouldn't exactly have approved of him sharing correspondence with his exiled mother.

Miss Granger,

I am disheartened to hear that my son is uninterested in making a proper return to wizarding society in a way that befits his position. Should he decide later that he wishes to present himself formally to wizarding society, it may be too late. I strongly advise him to reenter society in a method of his own choosing and not to let gossip trickle in alongside his reentry. The Prophet will not be inclined to tell his story kindly. I have it on good authority that many people did not deem our living conditions this year an appropriate response to the crimes we were accused of.

Children at that age do grow rather quickly. It was not so very long ago that Draco was that age and I was tending to his hurts and teaching him all the things he needed to know in this world. Frequently it seems I remember those days better than he does.

I'm glad that you're enjoying yourself for the time being, though it is well to consider all good things as well as all trials must come to an end eventually. I trust your apprenticeship is going well?

As lovely as the summer and the summer house is, it will be much too late in the season to open it. Perhaps next year.

Narcissa Malfoy

With their heads bent together, Hermione and Draco read the letter three times, to be sure they hadn't missed anything. "Well, I have a fair understanding of diplomatic snobbery, but this puts even my skills to the test."

Draco pursed his lips, section by section. "She understands that we told her that I had no interest in doing whatever she's laid out for me, and she thinks she knows better. She may be right about The Prophet. I was hoping to avoid any coverage on my return, but it may not be doable. The days when a word from my family could stop the press from writing something are long gone," he pointed out.

"I could never control the press. Or almost never. Does your mother know that Teddy is her great-nephew? I know she and Andromeda never made up, maybe she doesn't know. She skips right over him and goes on to chastise you for being a bad son."

Draco shrugged. "I would assume so. I can't imagine that she could have avoided hearing altogether that Andromeda had a daughter and a grandson, but, it's entirely possible. I doubt she knows Potter is the godfather, but she should have picked up on the reference to her sister I think." He read over the end of the letter again. "She hasn't threatened to disown me, but clearly she thinks whatever is between you and I will be over by the time she returns from France. It's not worded as strongly as it might be. There's no 'or else' in there as far as I can tell, just an assumption that she's right."

Hermione nodded and put her arm around him.

"And the summer house—she's going back to the Manor. Evidently it doesn't haunt her the way it haunts me." He folded the letter. "She's not exactly welcomed you into the family, but…it's better than I expected. She's not quite in one of her frozen rages."

She kissed his cheek. "That's all we can hope for at the moment." There was a glint in her eye. "I think with the next letter, we ought to send a picture of us with Teddy and Andromeda. And maybe Harry."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You're very good at this game, aren't you?"

"Well, I just think it's important that we show your mother how much family means to us. After all, she did accuse you of not living up to your filial responsibilities. It may be worth showing her that you're an excellent cousin, nephew, and boyfriend."

With a grin and a nod, Draco agreed. It might not go with the next letter—they didn't exactly have another visit planned at the moment. But they could work something out.

Author's Note 2: I realized when writing this chapter I skipped over including Draco and Hermione's letter to Narcissa last chapter, but I found myself having to write it now in order to do Narcissa's response justice, so here's a little bonus, the letter they wrote last chapter:

April 20, 1999

Dear Narcissa,

It's reassuring to hear that your time abroad is going pleasantly. It eases your son's heart to know that it is so. Spring is coming here as well. You would greatly admire the daffodils Draco sees on his way to work, though I'm sure it's not nearly as lovely the ones in the Manor garden. Hopefully they haven't suffered too greatly in your absence.

Regrettably, a large party does not look like it will fit into the foreseeable future. Work is quite busy these days, as well as a variety of social engagements. Teddy Lupin is growing in leaps and bounds, and his grandmother and godfather are very charming. Family is so very important.

When not otherwise engaged, Draco and I have begun sampling all that Muggle London has to offer. It's quite educational, and we're never bored. Your son is most charming company.

He says that the Malfoy summer house on the lake is even more breathtaking than the Manor this time of year. Have you considered opening up the summer house rather than the Manor when you return?

Hermione Granger