"Hermione," said Ron in a strangled sort of voice. "Hermione," he tried again, and this time Harry stepped in on his behalf.
"You've been living here?" he asked, brows raised. This place put Malfoy Manor to shame, not solely but especially by way of its sleek, unmistakably Muggle interior. It was also possibly the largest single-family home Harry had ever set foot in, Muggle or magical.
She had the good graces to blush. "I know it's a lot, but I promise it's still cozy. Tony and I always have a nightcap together and sometimes Mr. Jarvis even joins in—" She paused, practically literally biting her tongue, and Harry had to ask.
"Who's Mr. Jarvis?"
Hermione tried to casually say, "The butler," and Ron laughed out loud at her expression.
"But I'm sure it's proper cozy," said Ron before elbowing past Harry to face her fully. "Well, let's get on with it, I have to meet this Tony fellow and make sure he's a good sort."
He's my cousin, Hermione had said in the letter she sent back with Chamomile, Ron's new owl named by Ginny. Sort of, she'd added strangely. "He's good enough," was all she said as she led them through the front gate and up to the entrance.
Before she could even touch the handle, the door swung open to reveal a tall, slim elderly man who bowed deeply to Hermione. "Miss Granger," he said in a British accent. This must be the butler.
"Mr. Jarvis, that's really unnecessary," she hissed.
"Oh, am I embarrassing you, miss?" the man asked mischievously and Harry decided he rather liked this Mr. Jarvis. "My sincerest apologies."
"Will you stop?" It was nice to see that someone was needling her like this; she needed it as much as he and Ron did, though she'd probably never admit it. Hermione didn't do well with pity and unending kindnesses. "I suppose now you'll offer to take their bags?"
"Of course," he said smoothly. "Your bags, gentlemen?"
Harry wasn't sure if Jarvis knew about magic and so refrained from lightening the weight of their luggage, feeling a bit bad about it as he watched the elderly man roll it away on a cart.
"Anyway," Hermione said, clearly flustered, "I'll show you around."
She gestured this way and that towards different parts of the house, pointing out the path to their rooms, her room, the kitchen and dining room, the beach entrance, and many other things Harry wouldn't have even thought existed.
"What's downstairs?" asked Ron, pointing to the rather conspicuous staircase leading down from the main living area.
"Tony's lab. He's—"
"Just thrilled to meet his new guests!" Harry and Ron both rounded on the stranger behind them, wands out, and he held his hands up in surrender.
"Right behind you," Hermione said thinly. "Honestly, Tony, you thought sneaking up on them was a good idea?"
The grown man now before them pouted. "I forgot."
Harry eyed the man before him appreciatively. He wore a white button-down unbuttoned over a wife beater covered in grease and started to button the shirt up when he caught Harry looking. "Harry Potter," he offered.
He was surprised when the man looked at him like a predator and said, "Oh, I know." Shirt buttoned, he moved to ruffling his hair — it didn't seem like he was trying to fix it so much as give it a more devil-may-care appearance. "Tony Stark. Call me Tony." He didn't offer a hand. "And you're Ron Weasley," he told the man in question. "Ron Weasley who my sister here kissed in a secret chamber," he added with waggling brows.
Three things happened all at once: Hermione smacked Tony full-force in the chest, Harry guffawed in surprise, and Ron turned as red as his hair.
"You are such an arse Tony Stark, I knew I shouldn't have said anything to you—"
"Yeah, you shouldn't have," the man said as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. From what little Harry had gathered about him so far, it might well have been. "So anyways, Ginger Spice, what are your intentions towards Hermione?"
"Don't say a word," Hermione demanded, and Ron just nodded helplessly. Her hair crackling, she turned to her… cousin-brother? "And you, change the subject now or you'll regret it."
"Cool it, Glinda." The man chanced death by petting Hermione's hair from an arm's length away. "I'll leave him alone for now. No promises once the scotch starts pouring." Hermione blushed a faint pink and Tony winked at Harry.
"Speaking of scotch," Hermione said shrilly, "you said you had something special for our guests."
"Right!" Tony rubbed his hands together excitedly, and Harry couldn't help but be pulled in by the man's enthusiasm. "Have you ever heard of Firewhiskey?"
"Where the hell did you get that?"
Harry wasn't sure what was funnier — Hermione swearing like that, or the look of sheer glee on her decidedly Muggle 'cousin's' face when he refused to answer.
Sure enough, once they were well and liquored up and switched to scotch, Tony started in on Ron like Harry had never seen before. He seemed to be taking on the role of Hermione's protector, almost like a brother, and while he was deeply strange, Harry was glad she had Tony in her corner. Plus, seeing Ron get interrogated like this was priceless.
"I'm going upstairs," Hermione said after the first round of questioning. "Have a terrible night, Tony. Boys, have a nice one." With that, she flounced off to the stairs and disappeared.
"God," Tony said, letting out a heavy breath, "I thought she'd never leave. Does she seem okay to you guys?"
Harry blinked at the tone shift, but Ron was quick to reply, "She's doing better than I expected, honestly. When she told us about her parents, I was really worried about her, but she seems good. Not good," he said, stumbling over the words in classic Ron form, "but, you know, more good than I thought."
"I think being here's been good for her," Harry said to save his friend the trouble. It was true; something about this place or the people in it was doing wonders for Hermione. "You and Mr. Jarvis seem like you really care about her."
Tony almost looked offended. "Of course I care about her. She's like my little sister." He grimaced. "I was worried, the first few days… she says Apparating around the world takes a lot out of someone, but…" He trailed off and met Harry's eyes. Something unfamiliar shone in his, some naive protectiveness Harry wasn't sure he'd ever seen before. "You guys were starving."
Between Hermione's ethics and their complete lack of ability to hunt, meals had been a few too little and a bit too far between. "Hermione took the worst of it. Said we needed our strength," Harry explained, embarrassed now to have let her convince him. "She hasn't told you everything, has she?"
"You don't want to know, mate," Ron tried to tell him, but Tony shook his head fiercely.
"I have to know. If I want to help her, I need to know what the fuck happened to you guys. When did she get tortured? Who carved that into her?"
Tony sounded almost broken. Maybe he was. He seemed to think that if he could just get enough information, he'd be able to fix the entire situation. "Do you really want to know?" Harry asked, his voice heavy.
Tony looked from Harry to Ron and back again. "I don't know," he said so truthfully it hurt Harry to hear it. "Help me help her. Help me help you, fuck, I don't care!"
"She won't admit it, but Hermione like sugar quills," Ron said quietly. Tony whipped to face him, thirsty for more. "Put something sweet where she reads the most. It helps put some energy in her when she skips meals."
'Don't let her skip meals,' Harry could have said, but then he'd be a hypocrite. Instead, he offered, "She needs to feel useful and she wants to help people. Does Stark Industries have a charity side?" At Tony's nod, he continued, "Let her be involved. Especially if you're supporting human rights."
"Thank you," Tony said as reverently as if they were gifting him the very air he was breathing. "Thank you."
As he fell asleep that night in his own guest bedroom, Harry turned the relationship between Hermione and Tony over and over in his head. They weren't legitimately related, he was fairly sure, but they were very familiar with one another and Tony even went so far as to call her a little sister. No matter what biology said, they were family.
It was like Hermione had found her Burrow. If Malibu made her half as happy as the Burrow made Harry, he was just glad she was able to stay here. He hoped Tony wasn't planning on kicking her out any time soon — somehow, he doubted it.
Hermione looked judgmentally over a cup of tea at them the next morning. "How late were you up?" At the group noncommittal shrug, she glared at Tony. "You're a terrible influence."
He threw his hands up. "They're the ones who kept me up! They just had so many things to tell me about you!"
Hermione rounded on him and Ron next: "What did you tell him?"
"I said you like sugar quills," said Ron blithely, seemingly not hungover at all. It was more than Harry could say for himself. "I know that's a big secret, sorry."
"Revealing her secrets is not the way to a woman's heart, Ronald."
Hermione rolled her eyes at Tony and decided to ignore the three of them altogether.
"You kids ever played Nintendo?" While Hermione was still steadfastly ignoring him, Harry and Ron both shook their heads, intrigued. "I've got Super Mario Bros ready to go if you want." He wasn't even halfway through the sentence before he and Ron starting scarfing down their breakfasts to get there faster.
For all she was pretending not to be interested, Hermione did follow them and laugh at his and Ron's attempts to use the controllers.
"I'd like to see you do better," he muttered, and she just turned her nose up at him.
"Hermione, could we talk privately?" Ron asked, and her heart began to sink into her chest.
"Of course," she said with a sense of calm she didn't feel. "Harry, Tony, we'll be back."
They left the breakfast table and Hermione led him to her bedroom. She shut the door firmly behind them and sat on one of the armchairs, not the bed.
"I feel like you're smart enough to figure out what I want to say," Ron said with a mirthless laugh. Now that she looked at him, really looked, she could see that he was tired. She just nodded. "When we kissed, it was — it was good, but—"
"It wasn't right," Hermione interrupted. "The spark wasn't there."
"Yeah." Ron looked away and scratched the back of his neck. "I really don't want you to think you're not a good kisser. That really wasn't the problem."
"Ron?" She asked it so quietly that when he turned to face her it was with concern in his eyes. "I know I'm a good kisser." And she did know it! She was a perfectly competent kisser!
"Studied much, have you?" he teased, then blanched at the realization of how that came across.
She only laughed at him. "Maybe. So, did this go how you expected?"
He grimaced. "I honestly expected more tears."
Hermione scoffed. "I'm holding back so many rude comments right now."
"I don't think Tony's been a very good influence on you!" Ron said with a laugh.
She grinned. "I don't think so, either." They sat in comfortable silence for a few seconds, then she said, "How about we get back to breakfast? You looked sick, you were hardly eating."
His stomach grumbled perfectly on time. "Yeah, I was a bit nervous."
The rest of the visit was uneventful bar Ron and Harry meeting the robots downstairs for the first time. They were allowed down one time, with the stipulation that they leave their wands upstairs and not try to perform any wandless magic ("No worries there, mate"). Harry made a good friend out of one less-skilled robot arm called DUM-E while Ron found himself in a spat with U. The juxtaposition between Harry happily playing catch and Ron swearing at a piece of machinery had been too much to bear, and Tony and Hermione both laughed so hard they cried.
The nightcap tradition continued with Tony choosing stranger and more niche ingredients each evening. They had cocktails rather than neat liquor; Hermione was partial to the Cornell Special, while the boys preferred the sterner-seeming Lower Manhattan. (Tony preferred whatever drink happened to be in front of him at the moment.)
"How do you memorize all these recipes?" Harry asked in wonder one night.
"I'm a genius," said Tony, making Hermione roll her eyes.
"There's a pattern to the recipes, certain ratios of sweet to sour to liquor," she explained. "Once you memorize the ratios and understand what ingredients go well together, you can create most anything. Then it's just a matter of remembering the name."
"You two really could be related," Ron said with a toasting motion. "You're both terrifying."
By the time the boys left, Hermione was guiltily a bit pleased to see them go. She loved them both, but a full week was a long while to entertain two guests. They'd explored Malibu, had fine liquor and liqueurs, and played plenty of Nintendo, but in the end it was difficult to keep high spirits for such a long stretch of time.
She still cried when they left, though.
"You have to write," she told them sternly, the effect perhaps ruined by her tears. "And they can't be short letters!"
"Yes, Mum," Ron teased. She was glad their friendship had survived, even if things had been awkward for a day or so. (Hermione had had to have a firm talk with Tony about not making jokes about them anymore.) "We'll write every day after class."
She smacked him lightly in the chest. "See that you do."
"It was good to see you," said Harry. He opened his arms to let her hug him, something she deeply appreciated. "You seem like you're doing a lot better."
She pulled back and smiled widely. "I am."
And strangely, she really was. A light dose of therapy and Tony's seemingly unconditional love had sparked a change in her that she couldn't have expected or believed in only a month ago. There was a ways to go, but this was a great beginning.
"I'll keep Harry in line, don't worry," Ron said. Harry rolled his eyes dramatically. "Maybe Auror training will kick the crazy out of him."
"Somehow I doubt it," she said as she hugged Ron close. "I'll miss you both."
Once they were gone, Hermione left for the library. Tony was gone for work and Mr. Jarvis let her have her peace. She read the same page twice over before deciding to simply relax and have a sugar quill.