Hermione dressed in jeans, a camisole, and a long cable-knit cardigan. She didn't lock the front door, and didn't really hesitate to leave, she could hear him behind her on the stairs. She led Malfoy toward the coast, as between the cliffs there was a pleasant little cove with an actual sandy beach, something of a luxury in the UK. When she plopped herself in the sand at the top of the cove, she finally looked over at him, she saw he dressed in a pair of black jeans with a slate grey button down and a black vest. He was sitting next to her, elbows on propped up knees. His sleeves were still securely buttoned around his wrists and she found it really bothered her. She was instantly tempted to reach across and roll them up, but she assumed it would start a fight. He just looked too stiff for a late morning jaunt at the beach, but he sounded relaxed enough when he opened his mouth,

"I thought you were going to tell me about piracy as we walked Granger. I might get antsy just sitting here." She nodded at his honesty,

"If you get antsy, we can look for shells. If that's not enough, we can walk back and prune the fruit trees, Merlin knows they need it."

"And here I thought I was being honest when I said I wouldn't do your chores." They both chuckled at that.

"So what do you want to know about piracy? Usually, a person owns a ship and then it's commandeered, and the surviving crew votes in a captain—it's all very democratic—"

"Ha Ha Granger. Start at the beginning."

"With the House of Granger or the House of de La Grange?" His head snapped around to face her,

"That's one of the oldest houses of nobility in Europe, from well before the Statute of Secrecy—"

"I know, but it's all the wrong side of the sheets, regardless."

"de La Grange, then."

"How's your French history after 1066?" He shrugged his shoulders, but his upper lip was arranged in a pucker as if to say 'so-so'. There was a noncommittal noise to accompany the upper lip, and it suddenly struck her how like Harry he was.

"Familiar with Jean de La Grange? He lived from 1325 to 1402, was a prelate and politician during reign of Charles V and VI. He was a reigning member of papal curia in Avignon."

"The name rings a faint bell."

"Well despite being a bishop, not that it was uncommon at the time, he had a mistress, and several bastard sons. None of the sons were ever acknowledged formally, so they bore the surname LaGrange instead of de La Grange. It was a publicly recognized bastard line in France for centuries. That part isn't important, although they were mostly merchants or publicans. There ended up being a sole female heir, Acanthé Hephzibah LaGrange. She was born between 1599 and 1605, she ran Paris brothel, and her husband took her surname."

"And no one argued about a woman inheriting everything?"

"Of course not, because technically, her husband inherited everything."

"But he took her surname."

"Exactly. She made sure it was legal for her to run everything by owning everything—she just didn't own it on paper. You want proof how unimportant that husband was—I couldn't find any records of his first name, or his former surname. If memory serves, he died mysteriously after she bore her son and heir between 1620 and 1623."

He stood and paced the beach for seashells while she explained that Acanthé's son left France in his early twenties according to her research. This son and heir, Gareth 'Le Garrot' LaGrange, ended up reappearing in Haiti as a Brethren of the Coast in the late 1640s. He had changed his surname and had, therefore, started the Haitian House of Granger. Hermione told Draco how she'd only found records of Gareth in Haiti because the English and the Spanish had put out warrants for his arrest on charges of piracy.

They walked back towards the house as she explained that Gareth had married a West African woman named Abeni. Abeni had been brought to Haiti as a young girl to be a slave and was said to be a practitioner of voodoo. Hermione told him how there were records showing that Acanthé had gone to Haiti to see them wed, and stayed for a year or so. Acanthé had bought a brothel and stayed long enough to see her grandson born. Gareth's son, grandson, and great-grandson also married either former slaves or mestizo women of Taíno descent.

All of these men were also apparently pirates, although they seemed to double their income by owning property and businesses associated with either ship-building, shipping, or pubs, that their wives ran. When piracy went out of fashion, the Grangers still built ships, ran import/export, even did the occasional bit of smuggling. Their profits went to buying land, including what was now the family estate on Tortuga, the shipyard in Port-de-Paix, and several square miles of coffee and vetiv plantations in the mountains east of Port-au-Prince. The family apparently went on having mostly legitimate businesses—she tried to explain that this was not uncommon in the Caribbean—but Malfoy just chuckled and said he could relate.

"That changed when Dad emigrated to the UK. He came here to attend dental college. That's where he met my Mum, Helene Marie Wilkes, whose family name means 'from Wiltshire' originally, and they'd made their family seat in Bedfordshire when it was a part of the kingdom of Mercia. The Wilkes were always landed gentry, they still are. I have two great-uncles in Parliament, one in the House of Lords, and his younger brother was voted into the Commons as an MP. They despise each other, naturally."

He nodded stiffly, his nose in the air, but she could tell he was holding in a chuckle,

"Naturally."

...

Draco would never in all his life guessed that Hermione Granger was capable of humor. Fastidiousness, nagging, prim politesse, certainly. But posh humor, no, never. The odd thought slipped into his head and was quickly shaken off: Blaise would like her.

Blaise was his best friend, his on-again-off-again lover, and trusted confidant, but he sort of doubted that they'd actually get along. Blaise was something of a lothario, and he imagined his friend's dedication to opulence, deviance, and skirt-chasing might offend her sensibilities.

Blaise would like her though, Draco could easily mentally picture her lecturing the man on feminism, the struggles of the working poor, and he would pretend that she'd put his Roman-Eagle nose out of joint over it, but he'd be smirking devilishly underneath.

As they returned to the house, she made a beeline for her notes on the dining table and he excused himself to the parlor. He was calm now, but he wanted for a squashy chair and a bit of a think to himself.

Blaise had always been Draco's polar opposite, it's what made him a good friend in the first place, and it's what had made Draco so attracted to him as a partner. Blaise was playful when he was reserved, methodical in anger where he was explosive, balanced when he was obsessive, affectionate where he was critical. It had always irked him as much as he'd found it comforting, and he wondered whether or not they could all be friends under this new world order.

He wondered if he should tell her the whole truth about him and Blaise. He found he wanted to tell her, despite that they'd both had other relationships, and were expected to marry other people—anonymous hypothetical women—in the future.

She didn't seem to type to balk at the information in any way, never mind think less of them for it. It seemed like the sort of information friends might share in private. But that was not for today, as it wasn't his secret alone. He'd have to talk to Blaise first. The way he'd already talked to Granger about family history wasn't secret, per se, but it was intimate, it informed who you became, and that lent insight to really knowing a person.

He winced to realize that he had unknowingly added a layer to her insecurities with his slurs and his taunting, and that it had likely exacerbated that know-it-all behavior he'd so detested at the time. Draco also reflected that it was that swotty behavior—her consistent besting of him in all things academic—coupled with Potter besting him in Quidditch, that had first led him to question the veracity of blood supremacy. So perhaps it hadn't been all bad.

At the time, Lucius being on the School Board of Governors had been a curse, as all the House Points reports and final grades had been provided to him per term. Draco had known back then that he'd be cuffed for failing to perform well, and that any talk-back about it to his father would earn him a backhanded slap about the mouth. It had never ceased to make him feel small, powerless, and pliable to his father's iron will.

In that way, his parole at St. Mungos had also been a blessing in disguise. He'd been away from Lucius five or six days a week, and there was nothing the Malfoy patriarch could have done about it. His displeasure at Draco being forced to do menial work, to touch, interact with, clean, and heal what Lucius called the 'dregs' of wizarding society, was never eased.

Every time Lucius had growled about his heir doing menial labor, Draco had asked if his father would prefer he violated the terms of his parole and ended the family line in Azkaban. Every time the man had sat at breakfast and railed against the Ministry for the financial 'blood-letting' and the denigration of the family name, Draco had blandly inquired whether his father would have preferred to be punished under the Dark Lord's regime, which could have meant being eaten by Nagini at the self-same breakfast table. Once when his father spit and snarled about blood traitors and mudbloods, Draco had watched his father move to strike him in the face with his walking cane, sans wand, per the man's house arrest, after he'd given a sardonic reply and he'd shocked himself by catching the thing in air and holding it fast. Draco remembered the shock of discovering at nineteen years of age that he didn't like being hit.

Blaise had never been struck by anyone save Draco himself, one time, and Blaise had treated it as nearly unforgivable. He was right to. It was degrading. Blaise's upbringing had consisted of his mother's melancholic affection, if a little overbearing, and the consistency of his successive step-fathers' neglect. Draco knew that Blaise stalwartly ignored how much he'd hated his step-fathers, resented that his own father had died when he was very small, resented looking in the mirror most days for his resemblance to a dead man. Resented the sad smile his mother wore when she looked at his face, all nostalgia, and not enough attention paid to the living son right in front of her.

Suddenly there was noise and movement, a knock, the scraping noise of a chair on the floor, scratchy parchment crinkling under open palms, and soft bare feet treading on wood floor. Draco blinked several times to clear his vision and rubbed absently at his knees, which always protested when he stayed too long in one attitude. He'd known immediately what Granger had meant about rheumatism. Minister Shacklebolt was back, it must be time for tea, and therefore no time to linger in his own thoughts any further.

...

Hermione watched as Malfoy seemed to float towards the kitchen like an automaton, he must still be lost in his own thoughts. She'd gone into the parlor about an hour ago to find his brow furrowed, and his eyes staring off into the middle distance. It clearly hadn't the time to interrupt him, so she didn't. The silence had been nice, anyway. She'd finished her written report, summarizing her conclusions to be presented to the Wizengamot, and she'd researched a bit more for the historical objects that might be needed going forward, but it turned out her gut instinct was mostly likely the correct route.

Kingsley would be here soon, and she'd enjoyed her time getting to know Malfoy as he was now. She could tell he was still holding back, but then, she did that too. It had been an oddly surreal and intimate experience—sharing family histories—but she liked to think that perhaps they could be friends like he was with Ginny. He might always hold her a bit at arms length, but that was okay, as she was likely to do the same. Hell, she did that with Ginny.

The only person who knew her backwards and forwards was Harry, and she had mentally classified him as a somewhat overprotective brother-by-proxy years ago. The only reason she couldn't keep him at a modicum of distance is because he'd been there for every victory, every moment of weakness, and every defeatist breakdown she'd ever had. Being close to him wasn't an option anymore. Growing friendly with Malfoy might never be wholly possible, but she'd enjoyed his company and conversation, and that would be enough.

She'd have bigger fish to fry soon enough.