Flint Manor was an archaeologist's fever-dream. The estate in the centre of Winchester had started as an Anglo-Saxon hall, which had been transfigured from wood to stone then expanded with paired Gothic wings. When the additions had proven insufficient or unfashionable, a Flint ancestor had tacked on another storey in Baroque style complete with a slate mansard roof. It was just as well the wards and Repelling Charms were thickly layered. No one could forget seeing the hotchpotch building.
Marcus Apparated them onto a gravel circle ringed with low marble benches. The spot gave an excellent view of the gargoyles and other grotesques guarding a huge oak door that wouldn't have looked out of place in Heorot. The weathered gouges and old scorch marks defacing the wood suggested the Flints had faced down worse than Grendel in defence of their home.
"What we have, we keep." Marcus remarked as he escorted her to a much smaller door on the east wing. This was varnished and carved so intricately the surface looked like natural bark shaped and twisted into a rope of Celtic knots. That moved. Hermione had to look twice to be sure but the wood had definitely changed at second glance.
"Is the knotwork an illusion or is it tied to the wards?" She asked as Flint swept his wand over the door in a complex runic pattern.
"Buggered if I know. Mother made it." He didn't question what his maternal parent did with her time any more than he inquired what his father did rattling around in his wing of the house. "If you ask her, she'll tell you. For days."
Madam Flint was in a large, airy workroom carpeted with wood shavings. She was built like Millicent Bulstrode; broad and stolid. The witch strode around an ornate chair on a plinth, frowning at it from several angles almost menacing the inanimate wood with her wand. The creative process evidently had hit a snag.
"Mother." Marcus shouted. The room was quiet but neither of his parents paid any attention to him unless he yelled. He shifted in front of Rosier as his mother whirled around, wand up. She didn't like being interrupted.
"You're not supposed to be home until tomorrow." Eglantine snapped, irritated by the change of plans. She'd have to send an elf to find her husband so Gerard could open his part of the house to his son. Marcus was of age and thus she no longer had to make room for him in her wing.
"I'm not staying." He'd had a speech half-planned in his head, something formal to show his understanding of his responsibilities. What he actually said was more blunt. "This is Cathal Rosier. The Malfoys want her."
"Where have your wits gone begging?" Eglantine demanded. She had mentioned often to her son about the need for him to find a wife. She had not expected him to take her commands so literally. Fates knew she wasn't the next Morgana but at least she had more sense than to grab the first Miss who could be persuaded not to scream. "How old are you, girl?"
"Thirteen." Hermione replied, discovering where Flint had inherited his manners.
"That's four years you'll have to wait, Marcus. I assume you can count that high." Madam Flint put her wand away. She'd been trying to find the right harmonies with the carving for hours and the piece just wouldn't balance. Working with yew always left her moody. "I expect you think that will suit you." Her son had the temerity to smirk. "That's four years for her to find out how much of a disappointment you are."
"Yes, mother." Marcus didn't mention how well he'd thought he'd gone on his NEWTs this time around or that he'd been scouted by Falmouth. He'd long ago developed a thick skin when it came to parental criticism. His mother disliked him because he reminded her of his father and vice versa. There was nothing he could do to change that.
"The Malfoys usually pick for beauty." Eglantine surveyed the unlovely girl. Thirteen was an awkward age and the pallid slip in front of her looked made of knees and elbows. "You don't sound French."
"I'm not." The Rosiers had a cadet branch of the family in Avignon, which was as much as Hermione knew about them. "I'm Evan Rosier's daughter. Piers Rosier's granddaughter."
That got her a hard look from Madam Flint. The older witch glared at her son, who inclined his head once in a crisp nod. The inquisitorial stare returned to Hermione. She had to look up to meet the gimlet but she did. This was not the moment to a delicate, bashful maiden. Unlike the Malfoys, the Bulstrodes and the Flints selected for endurance.
"You may stay." Eglantine said steadily. "I liked your father. Didn't think much of his bride. Bookish and quiet. Her family was respectable however." She kept to herself her opinions on Evan's death. The Rosiers had always been political. Piers had been shrewd. If Evan had had more sense, he might not have died. But at least he wasn't a crawler like Malfoy.
Hermione said her thanks and said good-bye to Marcus, who pretended he was hurrying back to celebrate with their fellow Snakes not a lone Lion waiting for him in the broomshed. Madam Flint snapped her fingers for a house elf to show her guest to a suitable suite then returned to exert her will on yew.
The bedrooms were all on the Baroque floor of the Manor. Hermione slept in a room that looked like it had escaped from Versailles. An incautious Lumos reflecting off the gilt could blind someone. She slept well in a borrowed nightgown with her wand under her pillow. Cathal Machtilde Rosier would take oblivion where she could find it.
Morning happened with a knock on the door. She muttered drowsy permission and the door flung open wide but Marcus Flint remained in the hallway. Hermione got out of bed. The nightgown ran from chin to ankle. An ogler would get more of a show from a curtain. She raised an eyebrow at the shadows under his eyes and the half-healed bruise on his neck.
"Someone thought it was very kind of me to give you a place to stay." Marcus had managed a shaky healing spell to get rid of most of the evidence but was too spent and too sated to give much of a damn. Cathal muttered Episkey to rid him of the residual aches. "I spoke to Professor Snape. He was not pleased to hear where you were. Still gave me your trunk, though. Told me he wants five feet of scroll on some mirror spell."
"You Apparated tired?" Hermione started to scold, heard her other self in her voice then literally bit her tongue to stop herself. Flint shrugged, handing over her battered trunk. Narcissa's purchase had eventually reappeared in the Room of Hidden Things. She'd left it there in case it was charmed to reveal its location.
"Did the boat thing but couldn't be arsed with the train." Mentally exhausted after NEWTs, he'd wanted to be done with Hogwarts. Marcus was looking forward to weeks and weeks of not doing anything much before the Quidditch Cup and beginning training with the Falcons. "Some of the lads are coming around tonight to get ratted." He rubbed the side of his neck where the love bite had been. "He can't come here. Need to find a way to sneak over to his place."
"Use Polyjuice." The solution seemed obvious, not least because she wasn't going to share any of her specialised charm-bonding potion mediums. Hermione intended to keep that ace well up her sleeve.
"Pucey once stuck my hands to the table to keep me from interfering in our Girding Potion." Marcus grinned at the memory. He'd got even by filling Adrian's bed with beetle eyes though Snape had given them an E for the potion. "It takes a month to brew and I'd probably poison myself."
"I have some." Hermione usually kept her finished potions in her caches but she'd begun collecting the ones she'd need for the summer, carrying them shrunken in her randoseru in case she had to leave suddenly. Although she had her trunk locked magically, she didn't trust her dorm-mates not to pry. Professor Snape commanding someone to gather her unmentionables hadn't occurred to her.
"Brew it yourself?" He asked, not being the responsible adult and asking why she had a controlled potion readily to hand. At Cathal's nod, he quashed a pang of conscience. Marcus took the view that his life was vastly improved by not prying into the business of others. If no one looked likely to die or be carried off by ravening Muggles, he could totter on blithely. "I'll buy all you have. He's got try-outs with Puddlemere. That's more than local enough for someone to recognise me."
They negotiated price and supply. The Flints had their own brewing laboratory, which no one much used, and the prospect of spending proper time with his secret sort-of-maybe boyfriend made Marcus generous. He couldn't decently just hand her family money without a betrothal contract but he could start an account for himself at Slug & Jiggers Apothecary. If Cathal ordered by owl in his name and the money came out of Marcus's personal vault then she wouldn't look kept.
Madam Flint could spend money on Cathal, and did after the house elves informed her of the paltry state of her guest's wardrobe. Eglantine despised fripperies and would hex anyone who accused her of being modish. She bought the best, made it last, and ignored all criticism. Being seen shopping for a young witch in Diagon Alley would cause far more comment than she wanted to hear so she summoned her seamstress to the Manor. In short order, by brisk order, Hermione got a dragonhide work robe, a summer weight gown in white, and a Nile green linen kirtle. Excepting the fair hair, she looked like a cut-down version of Madam Flint herself.
Hostess duties done, her nominal chaperone largely ignored her. Hermione wasn't sure how to behave until she noticed Marcus was barely acknowledged either. Gerard Flint had emerged once from his wing of the house, eyed both teenagers dyspeptically then barked questions at her. She gave her name, her antecedents, her Hogwarts House, and a brief oration on the uses of henbane. He left with a terse nod.
Days later over Firewhiskey, him, and butterbeer, her, Marcus explained his father was a Master Herbologist. Gerard and Eglantine had been matched because of their lack of consanguinity and their mutual interest in flora. Unfortunately his mother cut things down while his father preferred to grow them; a good metaphor for their marriage. After they'd had the requisite heir, they'd moved to separate wings and barely spoke.
Pure-blood chaperonage was not the Georgette Heyer whimsy Hermione had vaguely expected. Madam Flint wasn't there to guard her virtue but her allegiance. Cathal could parade about Flint Manor skyclad and so long as she didn't become pregnant, all was well. Marcus told her this then politely asked her to refrain. But if she took money from the family or appeared with them at a public event or was seen alone with him touching or a hundred other things that gave away something improper was happening, then she'd look like she was selling herself or he'd look like he was poaching.
"Poaching?" Hermione gave him a cool stare over her glass.
"That's not what it's called legally. There's a lot of blather and it all gets tied up in jus sanguinis and inheritance law." Marcus had to know about that guff because he was the only son. His father's brother had died young during the first wizarding war and his grandfather's brother had only had daughters. Unless he dug for Squibs, and that was too desperate for his pride, he was the only Flint name heir. "Didn't your mother tell you about this? She should've."
"She was more focussed on magic and theory, and the Rosiers have other heirs." She lied, recalling the pedigree Harnak had shown her. More a tumbleweed than a tree.
"Lucky you." He grumbled into his drink. Marcus was sitting across the table from her in a pub in wizarding Glasgow. They'd both drunk Polyjuice with hair got from two random Muggles. He'd Apparated to Scotland mostly as practice. Oliver lived in the 'green hollow' of the city's Brythonic name, a little walled remnant of Celtic times.
Marcus had sent an owl to the Wood residence with their location and how long they'd be there. Unsure of what the Gryffindor was doing, the Slytherin was content enough to lean back in a chair not in his family home. Every year he forgot how much he disliked being stuck between his parents and every summer he learned anew.
"Why couldn't your father chaperone me?" Hermione asked, shifting in her seat. She'd picked a middle aged man from out of the crowd of commuters and certain biological differences were making it difficult for her to sit comfortably. She tried to lounge like Flint but felt slightly ridiculous with the amount of space she was occupying.
"He'd be seen as biased towards the family. He'd let me get away with wooing you without a formal courtship. That's the poaching part. You aren't supposed to chat up a girl without her family's permission. Stealing her heart makes her magic incline towards you. That's what's supposed to happen at the bonding ceremony." Marcus shrugged, more comfortable in a borrowed body near his height and build. He wasn't sure about the beard but he could put up with it for an hour. "Mothers marry into the family so they know how to get the best bargain for their loyalty."
"So I should be surly and expensive." She smirked.
"You're expensive already. Sacred Twenty-Eight and with enough new blood your kids won't be their own cousins." He sighed. "I really should want to marry you."
"But you don't." Hermione didn't take offence at his lack of interest. Whether or not his relationship with Oliver lasted, she hadn't been aware of any connection between the two previously, she and Flint didn't have much in common. "You could adopt or use a surrogate if you need a biological child."
"Surrogate?" Marcus reckoned if given the choice between a childless marriage or an illegitimate blood heir, his parents would go for the heir. He'd never hear the end of it but if his son's mother was pure-blood then maybe that'd be enough to avoid having to make a witch permanently miserable as his wife.
"Muggles have them to help infertile or homosexual couples. Some are donors too, so the child they carry is biologically theirs but not always." She paused to parley human biology into green magic. "You take seed from a wizard and a witch, combine the essences but plant the energy in a second witch's sacred cradle."
"Muggles can do that?" He didn't laugh in her face because Rosier was clever and Rosiers were vengeful. "I'm not saying I don't believe you but I don't want any child of mine touched by a Mudblood."
Hermione stopped short of saying a Muggle-born Healer would probably understand the process of in-vitro fertilisation and might have the skills to do the procedure either medically or magically. Flint wasn't going to like that he'd have to talk to someone who didn't refer to sperm as 'generative fluid', and her sympathy for him had withered at his casual slur.
They drank in silence, with Flint trying to pretend he wasn't watching the door. He'd told Wood to look for two people wearing blue pointed hats. They couldn't be more descriptive as they hadn't known whose hair they'd use for the Polyjuice. Once they'd got to the pub, he'd booked a room and Rosier had said she'd run errands. Disguised no one was likely to bother her.
Oliver Wood sauntered in not quite half an hour after they'd arrived, looking flushed and grass-stained. He ordered a beer at the bar so he could linger in scanning the crowd then brought his drink to the table of two wizards he'd never met before. One shifted over quickly so he could share the bench. He inspected the two but couldn't find any flaws in the change. No melted waxen skin or odd lumps of flesh.
"Where'd you get the potion?" Oliver hadn't taken NEWT Potions and knew Marcus hadn't either. He wasn't keen on them using a bodgy brew whipped up by one of Marcus's Quidditch cronies, most of whom were complete duffers.
"Rosier made it. She's a young Circe." Marcus meant it as a compliment as well as an endorsement. He'd heard the doubt in Wood's tone and didn't like the suggestion that he'd quaff any old philtre. "She's willing to keep making it so unless you want to beg off meeting, keep civil."
"I don't want to stop seeing you." The Scottish wizard said, stung. He would've shot back with something cutting about the Flints being the cause of all this skulking about but he caught his tongue. Something in the way Marcus was holding himself, too tense, too wary, made him wonder if the Slytherin expected him to break it off. "I wasn't just using you to scratch an itch, Marcus."
"Yeah." Flint said into his Firewhiskey. Hermione looked at him. He shot her a glare. "Why don't you go do whatever until we have to head back for dinner?" He was defensive now, uncomfortable that his feelings had been bloody obvious. All Wood's fault for looking so good. His mouth was so damn kissable.
Hermione made her exit hiding a smile. He might be a thuggish jock but Flint had such a crush. She couldn't remember Oliver ever mentioning his boyfriend, though they hadn't spoken much first time around. The age difference and the Quidditch obsession meant they hadn't been friends. He'd come back for the Battle but Flint hadn't. A lot could happen in four years.
Once she was out of the pub, she removed the distinctive hat and strolled until she found an deserted alley. It smelled of impromptu pissoir. Hermione grimaced, checked to see she was unobserved then cast a scouring charm. With the source gone the smell abated somewhat. Magic was wonderful.
"Moppet, can you hear me?" She asked the brickwork, interested to see if the Polyjuice interfered with the house elf's ability to find her.
"Miss is all beardy." The little creature remarked after appearing barely a minute later.
"In several senses, yes." Hermione agreed, making note that the link between her and her friend seemed to be based off her magical signature not appearance. "Can you feel Hermione Granger? Crookshanks felt something, I'm sure. He didn't like it."
"You isn't the other Miss, Miss." Moppet answered after staring at nothing for a moment. "Like twins. Like but not like."
"I don't envy her what she has yet to face." She rubbed her left hip as it gave a twinge. The Muggle seeming she had borrowed had terrible posture. Possibly an office worker or cab driver. "Do you think it's safe to go to Hogwarts? I have a few hours while Flint and Oliver... talk."
"Hogwarts is very busy. All sorts of changing going on." The house elf considered then shook her head. "There is wards to keep away the reporter people. We don't have enough sneaky."
"Pity." Hermione didn't argue. She and Moppet had snuck in and out of the Castle enough she was perfectly willing to accept her judgement call. "Well, let's go to Diagon Alley. I want to see if I can find a wand of the same type as the one I got from Ollivander. I want to be prepared if Professor Snape or anyone else disarms me."
Although she had practised with other wands from the Lost Wands, the more advanced the spells became the more she needed to have an attuned wand. Using someone else's was frustrating and exhausting. Sometimes the wand cooperated but you could never rely on compliance. Bellatrix's walnut had been a filthy, hateful thing to use.
Moppet popped them to the familiar alcove behind the bank though this time Hermione didn't bother with Gringotts. She'd deal with that problem when she came of age. She'd have to deal with a lot of problems once she was legally adult but considering she turned seventeen only a few weeks before she had to endure the Carrows at Hogwarts, Hermione wasn't courting trouble. It seemed intent on wooing her regardless.
Jimmy Kiddell's Wonderful Wands was lacklustre. He had polished shelves and white velvet cushions and a plethora of wands. The majority were in fashionable woods such as apple or cypress; wands for the charismatic or for heroes. Popular accessories for the witch or wizard who liked the esteem over function. He didn't carry any examples in hawthorn, which while good for Healers was difficult to master and often contradictory.
The Wand Showroom wasn't a store per se. Various examples of wands from foreign wandmakers were displayed to allow the connoisseur to make inquiries. There were no prices shown and when Hermione asked about the cost, the well-dressed clerk suggested she take her custom elsewhere as his establishment was for specialists and collectors. Who were presumably wealthy enough not to have to ask.
Wands by Gregorovitch was in Carkitt Market though around the corner and along a bit from the jellied eels shop where Moppet had opted to remain as walking around invisible got you stepped on. Hermione jostled her way through the crowd, thankful for the Polyjuice. Many of the shops had sales on to clear old stock before new shipments came in for the start of the school year. She picked up a good deal on a set of cold forged iron knives for potion making on her way.
The purple fronted shop lacked the shabby genteel aura of Ollivander's. The wands were ranked vertically by wood and horizontally by core. Hermione found hawthorn then worked along until she found hair, banshee. She took the box to the counter, the bored clerk watched her try the wand then charged her according to the wood and core. He didn't ask any questions and she left feeling as though she had bought a pair of shoes or a toaster. Disappointingly mundane.
Moppet took them back to Glasgow for more shopping. Hermione had quite a list, which involved trekking around the small market poking in stalls for what she wanted. She could have got everything in Diagon Alley except Flint was bound to ask how she had got to London. There was a lot she could order by owl but she wasn't going to make a bird haul a silver cauldron all the way to Winchester.
Certainly they could have gone together disguised though she was betting Flint would be less interested in checking her receipts item by item after the fact than he would standing in an apothecary as she bought scorpion venom by the firkin.
"Will Miss be coming back to the Castle before term?" Moppet asked, loitering on a bench as the witch shrunk or lightened her purchases. Hermione planned to try casting an Extension Charm this summer, hopeful that Cathal had matured enough to sustain the fiddly spell. She was getting tired of having to shuffle and re-shrink objects. Some potion ingredients didn't react well to having their form changed so she was still left with enough bags to look overburdened.
"Fingers crossed, I won't need to." Hermione rolled her shoulders. A day spent as someone else was making her itch. "Flint's going to all the matches of the World Cup. He invited me. His family booked boxes for the semis and finals years ago." She had politely declined and would be left in the custody of Madam Bulstrode, who was chaperoning the nonconformists. Leaving their guest at home in the care of the house elves was apparently simply not done.
"Moppet misses Miss." Moppet confessed, hopping up to take the bags Hermione passed her. To the house elf's delight, they had enough sneaky for Moppet to take the dangerous secret special supplies to Miss's laboratory.
"I miss you too." She sighed. "If we weren't friends, I think I'd go mad. No one else understands, except the Voice and I get the impression it thinks I'm a bit of a whinger."
"When we are over and done, Moppet would like to be Miss's elf." The statement was quiet and it would be so easy to just give a flippant 'of course'. Hermione didn't because she was conscious of having badly bungled her efforts with SPEW, of being well-intentioned but clueless.
"I don't know what is going to happen and I can't make promises for my other self." Hermione wished she could be sure about something. The future was a nebulous mass of conjecture and threat. "If I am me as I am now, then absolutely yes. We're partners."
The house elf hugged the witch then disappeared back to Hogwarts with the most suspicious of Hermione's stockpile. For her part, the witch stared at the space where Moppet had been. An aching loneliness gnawed at her. It was worse in the Polyjuice where she couldn't even be her ersatz self. At least she was fed, warm, and relatively safe, she reminded herself doggedly. The tent in the Forest of Dean was still worse. Though even then at the most wretched, she hadn't been as alone as she was now.
