Disclaimer: This is all for fun, I do not claim ownership of the characters or anything recognized from the work of JK Rowling. I am only borrowing them.
Warning: Mature themes, subject to change: mild violence, strong language, substance use or abuse, scenes of a sexual nature as well as general innuendo smattered throughout, adult themes including but not limited to death and disease both mental and physical.
[A/N]Happy Birthday to me! In honor of turning 24, here's Chapter 12.
A special thank you to duj and bubblecloudz who constantly keep me on my toes with their questions and suggestions, you make this process so much more enjoyable. If you've taken the time to review, follow, or favorite this story you are also important to me and every notification I receive makes me grin like an idiot.
Google Translate and I are very good friends, if you haven't been able to tell from previous chapters. I apologize in advance if any of the French grammar is completely off.
Playlist: Led Zeppelin - Kashmir | Celldweller - The Imperial March | Cake - I Will Survive | MUTEMATH – Reset
Monday, August 1st, 2005 | 5:03 pm | Derwent Room, Orphus & Gamble Industries, London
No sooner had Dudley locked the door behind him to the ornate meeting room two men appeared with a soft crack announcing their arrival. Even though he had seen it done dozens of times and had even travelled by Apparition himself once or twice, it still startled him and left him feeling disoriented just to witness it.
Without hesitation the man with light blond hair, that he had met previously and knew to be Draco Malfoy, let go of the arm of the second man and rushed towards Hermione. Since she still stood at his side he felt the brush of the man's hand against his skin as he grabbed both of her hands into his own. Draco's skin was ice cold and it was all Dudley could do not to recoil away from him. Compared to the feverish heat of Hermione's fingers gripping his arm it made shivers run up his spine. They had walked together from the elevator to this office with her concealed beneath some charm that made her almost invisible so he had insisted she keep a grip on him so he would not lose her.
"I'm so sorry about what happened at St. Mungo's," Draco whispered earnestly. His hands with long, elegant, and scarred fingers moved from her hands to her wrist and her cheek. Dudley knew the pulse he was checking would be elevated from the magical effort she had made in getting here unnoticed from his flat. She had rested all day while he pretended not to know anything of her whereabouts. The Aurors he had expected hadn't shown, but Hermione warned it was only a matter of time before Harry tried to find her at work. Once the work day concluded, he sent her a quick text and met her in the Apparition room on the first floor.
"You did brilliantly," Hermione replied, moving her hands to his forearms to halt his attempts to take all of her vitals. "I wouldn't have been able to get out without you distracting that hideous reporter."
"I assure you that wasn't my intention. I wanted you moved down to the labs as soon as possible." A shadow crossed the man's features and he glanced back to his companion that had not moved from his original spot. Looking back to her he asked, "Will you be able to move forward with the research after all of this?"
"Of course," Hermione scoffed. She softened her expression and placed a hand against Draco's cheek. "I have all the more reason to now. Pardon me, Draco. You've met Dudley, of course. Professor Snape? This is one of my business partners, Dudley Dursley."
Hermione moved to pull Dudley closer to the dark and imposing man that stood in the far corner as if he were trying to meld into the shadows. As she addressed him directly he stepped towards them but hesitated after the mention of the younger man's name.
"Petunia's boy?" was the soft reply. Despite his initial hesitation, he still held out his hand. Dudley noticed that it was just as pale and thin but even more scarred than Draco's.
"Yeah," Dudley replied, pushing his nerves down. The man's hand was just as icy as Draco's, as well. "How do you know her?"
It was obvious that this Professor Snape character was forcibly not snorting in disdain. "Your mother and I met many years ago and I doubt I left the best impression."
Dudley's eyes widened as the dots connected. "Oh, you're the one that fancied Harry's mum."
Even Dudley was abashed at his own lack of tact. He was rewarded with a full sneer; no attempt was made to hide the contempt this time. Damn his nerves. They were never this bad in meetings with clients.
"Yes." The single syllable uttered coldly from Professor Snape's clenched teeth made Dudley flinch as though physically struck.
"Bloody hell. I'm really sorry, sir." Dudley immediately held out his hand again. "I apologize for that, it was out of line and none of my business. Can I make it up to you and try this again?"
Professor Snape considered his outstretched hand for the longest ten seconds of Dudley's life before reaching up to grip it again. He was silent as he grasped it briefly before snapping his hand back. With an elegant turn he swirled away from Dudley to sit at the opposite end of the meeting table. For now that might be all the forgiveness he deserved, Clare had warned him after all.
Why was he such a fucking idiot?
Monday, August 1st, 2005 | 7:15 am | Dudley's Flat, London
"We're meeting the blokes from the Prophet?" Dudley asked around a mouthful of toothpaste.
"Yes, love," replied Clare as she walked past the open bathroom door back to their bedroom to finish getting dressed, steaming mug of coffee in hand. "They're both Potions Masters and if all the stories are to be believed very powerful wizards so don't do anything stupid."
"C'mon, Clare, cut me some slack," he called down the hall. "Name the last time I did something as stupid as provoking a wizard?"
Her face peered around the corner and just stared at him blankly for a few moments. "Dudley, I love you, but you are much better at interacting with Muggles than with wizards. I blame your parents, but that's neither here nor there. You really do not want to provoke these two."
Dudley shrugged, attempting to mask the anxiety Clare's warning was building within him. "I trust any friend of Hermione's. I'll just keep my mouth shut, yeah?"
Clare's lips twitched into a small smile, patting him on the cheek fondly. "You try that, love."
Monday, August 1st, 2005 | 5:30 pm | Derwent Room, Orphus & Gamble Industries, London
Despite the terrible way the meeting began, Draco thought it ended well. He had met Dudley Dursley on many occasions before realizing that he was related to the Boy Wonder and that had been purely by chance and he had never been this ill at ease. With the way Severus was acting, however, Draco wasn't entirely surprised.
Orphus & Gamble worked extensively with Derwent Designs and was the only purchasing company in the United Kingdom for their products. The firm modified them for the Muggle world which meant preparing the necessary documentation to cover up their wizarding origin and filing the patents. The only reason Draco did any of the face to face work for these accounts was the benefit of working directly with Hermione who was sure to keep his secret from the rest of their world. It wasn't time to reveal the true owners of the massively respected medical supply company just yet. Dudley was his number one contact at Orphus & Gamble for any preliminaries with Hermione often present as a consultant.
With the assistance of everyone he was able to get out in the years after the war, the Malfoy family's company was thriving on the continent. When Britain started to show interest in the devices and medicines it manufactured Draco was understandably cautious with his business dealings.
Hermione was passed out one Sunday afternoon on his couch when the perfect business opportunity presented itself to solve the potential publicity dilemma. His birthday was the previous Thursday and she had taken him out to get thoroughly pissed in a Muggle town outside of Paris whose name he did not remember. If not for Astoria collecting them they would have splinched on the way home.
"How are you always up, dressed, and making breakfast before me?" Hermione whined into the cushions.
"Good breeding," Draco called over his shoulder. That earned him a pillow to the face.
"Fucking ferret," grumbled Hermione as she all but crawled off of the couch to the floor. The pillow was swiftly returned at the jibe, making her snort with laughter.
Over their breakfast of toast and eggs, one of the only things Draco could honestly make well by himself, the topic of work inevitably came about. All they did was work. Hermione was complaining about the lack of quality diagnostic tools available to her in the office which was a not so subtle hint that she wanted all the toys he had taken from her given back. To Draco, it was too risky for her to use the tools outside of the country they were fully patented in. Even with the proper anti-theft and copy-resistant charms protecting the devices, Draco was too paranoid to let her keep the research equipment when she left France and Russia to return to Britain.
"You've only been there a few months, how do you know that you can trust these people?" whined Draco into his coffee mug.
"I've been working with Orphus & Gamble for almost a year now, since you earned your Potions Mastery last July. I couldn't come work for the company officially until I returned from Russia."
"I'm still not convinced it's the right time to return to England. Mum still...she hasn't left the house for a few months again."
Hermione rested her hand on Draco's briefly. Pulling away, she rummaged through her ever-present canvas bag with the Undetectable Extension Charm.
"It's the best time, Draco. The fifth anniversary of the Final Battle was a month ago. I still want to know how Astoria let you leave that media trap early." She was still shaking her head with jealousy when she brought out a folder that was stamped with St. Mungo's official seal.
"Now, I understand that St. Mungo's has an open contract for a direct supplier of, let's see," she began to thumb through the pages of parchment leisurely. "Monitoring wristbands, gurneys, and oh, look! They need something called a Derwent Dynamoscope. I wonder where they could possibly find one of those?"
"You're a right annoying bitch when you're facetious, did you know?"
Hermione ignored him and continued with a spark in her eyes framed by a riot of curls in desperate need of a brush or a charm in his brutally honest opinion. It was a wonder how small mammals and birds didn't lose their way into her hair. "This inquiry found its way to the marketing team that usually works with my department and one of them remembered that I went to school in France for Healing which just happens to be the same place Derwent Designs began a few years ago."
"Has anyone reminded you that you're a know-it-all recently?"
"The hospital is so desperate to get their hands on a Dynamoscope that they would consider buying the next best thing, a Muggle X-Ray machine." She paused, giving him a significant look. "They're trying to bribe L'Institut de Guérison Magique to loan the one they have for a few years for their research department and thought O&G might have an easier time convincing the university. They'd even be willing to pay - "
"I see the numbers!" Draco groaned in defeat, his forehead falling to the table. "Stubborn fucking witch."
She merely chuckled at his grumbling. Just like that the rest of his post-birthday weekend was spent preparing a proposal that she presented to her supervisors after she returned by international Portkey. After the initial meetings occurring weekly for a few months with Draco under a Glamour and speaking only in French the contracts were finalized. Hermione was the chief contact since it was her actions brought the notoriously reclusive company forward.
Hermione preferred solitary research to the face to face marketing experience, but it was tempered by the fact that she did not need to pretend to schmooze Draco. As her health declined steadily following her Christmas Day collapse, she had to work even harder to keep up her energy for their deliberations. Eventually she brought in a man from the marketing team to assist her with the matters that needed to be handled more personably between company and client so she could wash her hands of that nonsense. The imposing stature of Dudley Dursley initially caught Draco off guard. The genuinely friendly smile that went along with it was even more distracting.
"Wonderful to see you again, sir," Dudley said as he gripped one of Draco's hands in both of his own.
It was the first meeting with the man when Hermione was not present. "Où est Hermione?"
The French translator worked to keep the lines of communication going as Draco was still under Glamour as Monsieur Jacques Marchand. Hermione had snorted inelegantly after hearing his chosen moniker, essentially titling himself John Doe.
Dudley's rudimentary, and obligatory, French from his school days finally was showing its worth. "Avec ses amis." With a poorly concealed wince he returned to English. "She has vacation this week, she's with some friends for an anniversary retreat of some kind."
Draco seated himself gracefully at the table between them, removing the necessary forms for this meeting from his satchel. "Quel dommage. Rappelez-moi la date d'aujourd'hui , s'il vous plaît?"
"It's Halloween, Monsieur Marchand. Friday the thirty first of October. She's with my cousin and his family, they went to school together in Scotland and Halloween is a tradition of some sort."
"Excuse...excusez-moi?" choked Draco, barely catching his blunder and switching back to French. "Quel est le nom de votre cousin?"
"Harry Potter," Dudley responded casually. Too casually, it seemed, as his body language shifted into a more guarded posture.
Containing his composure and laughing at fate through the rest of the meeting, Draco made a point to author a letter to send by owl inviting Hermione to tea following the end of her vacation to discuss keeping him in the dark on such an important detail. Predictably, her response was to shrug and ask him if he had any orange biscuits left in the tin since she swore she saw a few left the last time she visited.
By the next meeting, Draco dropped his Glamours and revealed who he really was to Dudley Dursley. It made the meetings go by so much faster without the aid of a superfluous translator. The frequency of their meetings reduced to quarterly after initial production numbers were solidified and as DMB 3.2 began to wreak havoc on all the test subjects, Hermione included. Draco's attention was required elsewhere, and the deal was too new and too sensitive to pass off yet. It was the first company Derwent would work with that had ties to the Muggle and magical world.
DMB 3.2 was the first Derwent Designs item to be distributed officially in the United Kingdom. Previous versions of the potion were secretly administered at Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire before the lot of them temporarily relocated to their Paris homes, Severus included. 3.2 was also the worst thus far, failing to alleviate a single subject's symptoms, worsening them in most cases. Hermione was on her way to proving DMB 4.6 as a rival recipe in negative reactions. A large part of Draco could not help but feel guilty over all the health bullshit she was enduring. After all, she was cursed during her brief but bloody incarceration at Malfoy Manor. Guilt was a feeling he was uncomfortably familiar with and was absolutely a feeling that was coloring the tone of their secretive gathering in the uppermost floor of Orphus & Gamble Industries.
In the slight lull of conversation after Hermione explained how she snuck out of the hospital and walked through London to Dudley's flat, Draco caught himself staring. The slur on her bare forearm drew his gaze like the lantern of a hinkypunk.
The previous day the scar was swollen, gangrenous, and completely covered by bandages. It wasn't the horrid appearance of the wound, even in its improved state, that caused Draco discomfort. The memory of his inaction to her torture shamed him to this day. Swallowing down bile that threatened to spill over in his throat, he forced himself to look at her face instead. Draco sighed in relief silently when her attention was on Dudley next to her and not on his traitorous gaze.
"Thankfully all of the work agreements have been settled," continued Draco, drawing the room's attention back to him. "The only thing that's left is deciding where we're going to begin."
Hermione leaned over the table closer to Draco with obvious zeal. The sight was encouraging as they all over the last few days witnessed her laid out as if minutes from the Veil. "I haven't had a chance to read all of your notes yet, not with all the other shite happening, but from what I understand you're stuck on just a few more patients, right?"
"Correct," nodded Draco. He wondered how she could be so flippant over her near death experience.
Dudley reached to pour more tea for everyone present. "How many are there besides Hermione?"
"Twelve," said Severus who had not moved from his chair furthest from their end of the table.
"Twelve?" repeated Hermione incredulously, her voice slightly hoarse from overuse.
"Did I stutter?"
Draco opened his mouth to admonish Severus for his rudeness that had been a theme since Dudley's blunder but before he even got past the first syllable of his name he saw a biscuit fly past his face towards Severus's. The instant before it landed square in the middle of his forehead he caught it in his fist. Instead of pulverizing it in his palm like those seated at the table expected him to, he snapped it in half and placed one piece in his mouth. Hermione looked mutinous but merely sat back down to glare at the tray of biscuits like it had betrayed her.
"Now that that ridiculous display of infantile behavior is over," snapped Severus after swallowing the first half of the thrown treat, "I suggest we retire to either the labs at St Mungo's or to the Lodge. We need to establish a safe place for Granger to recover and those are the best places for continued observation outside of an actual room in the hospital, which is out of the question. Are your notes still at your home in Surrey?"
The last question was asked into his teacup but when Hermione didn't answer he looked up. Hermione was already looking at him defiantly when his gaze rose to meet hers. "Yes," she said through clenched teeth.
Draco didn't understand where this level of animosity was coming from and just prayed to Merlin it was only because of lack of sleep on both their parts.
"Dudley," Severus said, speaking to the man for the first time since the indelicate introductions. "Can you retrieve the documents and bring them here for one of us to collect?"
Before responding Dudley glanced significantly at Hermione who nodded, giving him permission to answer. "Yes, sir."
"Are you keyed to Granger's wards?"
Dudley fidgeted a bit with his teacup before nodding again. Draco couldn't help but think that Dudley would have been best sorted into Hufflepuff with the way he cowered beneath Severus's gaze.
"Good. Go."
Monday, August 1st, 2005 | 7:23 pm | Derwent Room, Orphus & Gamble Industries, London
Before Dudley had bolted from the room to do as Snape ordered, Hermione grasped his hand tenderly and said it would be easiest if he used her Floo to send everything over to the Lodge. She assured him that even if he didn't get it right the first time that the flame-retardant crates the documents and books were stored in would protect the precious material.
"I'm sure Harry had someone check my house already," she said to him quietly. Hermione's brows furrowed, worried about the actions of whomever Harry had assigned to watch her house as he surely had. "The documents are hidden in the shape of a waste basket nearest to the fireplace, just shove the whole thing in when the flames are green. And Dudley, I'm going to send Harry a Patronus. I'll tell him I'm safe but not to call off the Auror until after you've left the house. I want you left alone but I also want you safe."
Dudley nodded. He had witnessed firsthand while visiting his cousin to what lengths the magical version of paparazzi would go. Few he met were completely morally stable. With one last sincere hug and a promise that he would see her soon, Dudley left the room. Just before the door shut behind him the occupants of the room could hear him on the phone with his fiancée to assure her of his whereabouts.
"Can you cast another Patronus?" Draco asked in a deceptively neutral voice as he collected the documents spread out on the table before them. Severus was moving out of the corner of his eye with purposeful rummaging through his trench coat.
"I'll have to," Hermione responded, slouching down slightly in her chair. "Harry won't trust yours. It has to be mine."
She stood and pulled her wand from its sheath. A few exacting wand movements and a clear recitation of Expecto Patronum brought the little otter to life.
"Harry. I am safe. Do not attempt to contact me. Do not attempt to trace this Patronus. I will contact you by Ginny's birthday. I'm sorry."
The apology sounded like a last minute decision due to the small wince on her lips. Another wave of her wand and the apparition fled out the window.
Monday, August 1st, 2005 | 7:54 pm | Malfoy Lodge, Loch Lomond
"There are few things in the world that I want more than a dose of CNF right now," groaned Hermione.
The Side-Along Apparition with Draco had jostled the small amount of control she had been able to take over her body since before the warding ceremony. As soon as they arrived in the Lodge's sitting room she bent double and vomited all over the expensive rug.
"Thank goodness for Scourgify ," was all Draco said as he effectively cleaned and vanished the vomit before it could stain.
Severus moved to take her shaking form into the guest bedroom down the hallway but Hermione had batted his hands away, preferring to lean on the walls or counter-tops within her reach for support. Draco had sighed in resignation at the look on his godfather's face.
"She's almost as stubborn as you are, you know," he said.
Draco filled a glass of water from the sink and followed Hermione to the bedroom, just far enough behind that he wasn't completely hovering but also close enough to catch her if she started to fall. Once Hermione settled herself onto the mattress and kicked off her shoes, Draco went up to her to force her to drink the entire glass in his hand.
"You can't have any other potions until the morning, Hermione," Draco explained, reading over the intake charts from her bag. "Mungo's had you on some strictly controlled substances when you arrived. The Capitus Nausea Fulgarix was carefully balanced with the Blood-Replenishing Potion. Then there's the seizure tincture that had to be administered between muscle relaxers. Thank Merlin they didn't put you in an induced coma, Uthquart's recent additions to the Draught of Living Death react poorly with everything."
"Draco, love, I've read the chart. Do shut up and let me sleep?"
Folding up the parchment, Draco stood from his perch on the bed next to her. He cast a cooling charm on a cloth next to her bed so she could place it on her forehead when she awoke again. Refilling the water glass and placing it by her on the nightstand, Draco left the room without another sound.