The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies
Chapter 3: Zombies in the Night
The first clue that the death of Severus Snape had not been a hoax was the fact that he looked exactly the way he had on the day of his death—which was to say not well at all. One would have thought that if he had spent the interval alive, he would have dressed his wound and perhaps applied a touch of disinfectant.
And, then, there was the faint bluish tinge to his lips and fingers, which said, quite distinctly, that he was not a living, breathing person.
None of this seemed to deter Pansy, who had flung herself into his arms and was sobbing into his shoulder. After a moment, she drew back and wiped her eyes, smearing her eyeliner across both cheeks and turned around to face Ron.
She hiccoughed once, a strange mixture between a laugh and a sob, gesturing helplessly. "This is my fiancé."
"Ronald Weasley? I thought you had better taste."
From behind, Hermione could see the red creeping up Ron's neck and ears as Pansy said, "He's the only boy who would let me put him on a leash."
That set her off a second time, this time into the crook of Ron's neck. It was the first time that Hermione had seen them standing side by side, and Hermione couldn't help but notice that they were nearly the same height. No wonder he no longer felt the need to hunch over in an attempt to look shorter—he was dating an Amazon.
Next to the two of them, Snape—who had always seemed so tall and commanding in her memories—was dwarfed.
The silence stretched on, only broken by Pansy's muffled sobs, until Hermione heard a crisp, calm voice ushering everyone back into the drawing room. It took a moment to realise that it was hers, and that everyone, including Snape, was obeying.
A cool trickle of clarity spread up her spine and into her thoughts as everyone settled into seats, including Snape. It was quite clear that he was an inferius, and, though they were hardly her specialty, she knew enough to be aware that they rarely brought glad tidings. For the time being, he seemed harmless enough, but she was nevertheless glad that there were two fully trained Aurors in the room, with the former head of the department on the way.
A quick glance around the room told her what she needed to know—that nobody was about to panic. Molly seemed to have been shocked into silence, Amos Diggory and his wife were huddled on a loveseat with twin looks of horror, and her parents appeared to be nothing more than puzzled, making her envy their ignorance of the magical world. Pansy was sandwiched in between Ron and Snape, both of whom seemed perfectly content to follow her lead.
Hermione caught Harry's eye and motioned for him to join her. "What do you think?" she whispered.
"He's definitely not like any Inferius I've ever seen—I mean, he talked."
"That's what I thought, but I didn't know enough about them to be sure. Anything else I should know?"
"Er… That they're fucking hard to get rid of?"
"Lovely. So, if something goes wrong…"
He nodded. "Oh, and since I have your attention—has Ginny said anything to you about me? She's acting oddly, and I'm not sure…"
"Harry, there is a time and a place for asking this sort of question, and, believe me, this isn't it."
"Ah," he said. "Right."
"However, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on Pansy."
"Pansy? She's hot."
She felt as though she had been slapped in the face for about the tenth time that day—fortunately, she was beginning to be immune to the feeling. "And also a giant bitch?"
Harry shrugged. "That can have its perks."
"What about Ron?"
"His thoughts on Pansy? I should think that's pretty obvious."
The look she gave him would probably have withered an entire forest. "I meant, would he know anything about Inferi?"
"We could ask him."
Harry tried beckoning to Ron, but he was too busy staring at Snape in bewilderment to notice. Pansy nudged him, and the two of them stood and walked over as a unit.
"Before anyone says anything," she hissed, "I want to be perfectly clear that Professor Snape is going to be taken care of, and that there will no killing, maiming, debilitating, or damage to him of any kind."
Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance. "You do realise that he is potentially dangerous?" Hermione said.
"Potentially?" Pansy snorted. "Whatever the hell he is, he definitely isn't an Inferius—they don't talk or have personalities."
Some of the confusion cleared from Ron's face. "Then what is he?"
"Fuck if I know," Pansy said. "I only know about Inferi because the Egyptians were fond of using them as guards in their tombs. Gringotts likes us to know about this sort of thing, because they do so hate training new curse-breakers."
"You work for Gringotts?" At least it explained why she had been at a fundraiser for goblin rights.
"I do have a life outside of annoying you and sleeping with your ex-boyfriend, you know."
"Ladies," Ron said, "I know I am irresistible, but can we please try to focus?"
There was a brief moment in which Hermione and Pansy were united in twin expressions of scepticism. Harry stepped in before they could speak, in a valiant move to save Ron's ego from irreparable damage.
"So, what should we do?"
"Kingsley should be here in an hour or so—until then, I can research and see if there is any information about unusual types of undead."
"I'd rather like to finish my dinner," Ron said, as Pansy rolled her eyes but failed to completely disguise her amusement.
"You would."
"Snape can come up to my study, since I doubt he's what most people want to look at over dinner," Hermione said. "I can also question him and see if he knows anything about what brought him back."
Harry furrowed his brow. "By yourself?"
"I'll have my wand, and if that doesn't help, I'll just jump out the window and levitate myself down."
Ron sniggered. "Like the time that experimental potion blew up, and you broke your ankle?"
"Oh, shut up."
*
The first thing Hermione did was to find Snape an old turtleneck of Harry's. Although the wound didn't seem to be festering, that didn't mean she wanted to spend the rest of the day staring at the place where Nagini had torn into his neck.
"Does it hurt?" she asked, not really sure what sorts of painkillers worked on animate corpses, but not wanting to be inconsiderate.
"Not particularly, although I feel as though it should."
"At least it seems to have clotted."
She turned around so that he could change without scrutiny, and flipped open her laptop. The search results for 'zombie' were overwhelming, and most likely useless; she clicked it shut and set it back onto her desk, settling for a notebook as she turned back to face him.
"So, on a scale from one to ten, how alive are you feeling right now?"
"Obviously not very."
"Your throat doesn't hurt, you said, but can you feel this?" Undeterred, she prodded his wrist with the end of her pen. He twitched away from the contact and nodded.
"Close your eyes, and hold out your wrist," she said. "I want you to tell me when you can feel the pen."
"And I want you to tell me if any of this serves a purpose."
"I just want to check—"
"My vitals? I haven't got any—I'm dead."
"And I suppose that you have some sort of brilliant idea to explain what you're doing here, when earlier this week you were tucked up in a snug little coffin?"
"Awfully eager to get rid of me, aren't you?" His lip had curled up into a snarl, and he was backing away from her with narrowed eyes.
"Actually, I'm awfully eager to find out who decided to use a ritual killing at Stonehenge to try and raise the dead, but your option is beginning to sound more and more appealing. If you don't want to answer my questions, then I suggest you sit down and start talking of your own accord."
If Pansy had been in the room, Hermione would have probably been turned into a pile of smoking ash on the spot. As it was, Snape's glare, given enough time, might do the trick.
"Fine," he said, taking the seat behind him.
"Lovely."
"Where would you like me to start?"
"With whatever you remember."
He paused and took a deep—and probably unnecessary—breath. "I woke up in the dark and thought that you idiots had buried me alive."
It was the sort of remark to which she had no immediate reply—just an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia, of the inability to breathe. The only way to counter it seemed to be with a question to which she knew the answer, even if it did expose her to the pointed part of his tongue.
"You don't recall being dead, then?"
A curtain of lank, tangled hair tumbled in front of his eyes as he shook his head. "I remember the Shrieking Shack, and then—and then there was just light. And that was it."
Even with his voice muffled, she could tell that it had a strangled quality to it, even if she couldn't quite put her finger on why.
"Until you woke up."
He nodded, and his hair parted around his face so that his expression was no longer obscured; his eyes were focussed on something just beyond her, jaw clenched. "There was a period of time where I couldn't move—not because I didn't want to, but because I was completely stiff. That was when I realised I wasn't breathing, and that I couldn't possibly be alive."
With the same empty gaze and flat tone, he related to her clawing his way out of the ground, only to have his suspicions confirmed by the patches of ice on the ground—he had died in the summer. However, it wasn't until he reached a train station yesterday afternoon and saw the date that he realised how much time had elapsed.
"Seven years," he said, shaking his head, "and I didn't feel a second of it go by."
"But why come here?"
He shrugged, and fixed his eyes on hers for the first time. She shuddered; they were cold, dead, but with a spark of intelligence, a touch of warmth glimmering in their depths.
"Potter will never give up this house, so I knew that someone, at least, would be here. Besides, where else was there to go?"
*
When all the other guests had begun to trickle out, Luna, her father, and Kingsley Shacklebolt had just alive, and were nibbling on heated leftovers. Her parents exchanged worried glances as she descended the stairs to hug Andromeda goodbye and hand Teddy his gift.
"You can't open it until tomorrow morning," Hermione said, as he began to tear at the wrapping. "You know the rules."
He scowled, and she knelt down so that they were at eyelevel. "I'm terrible, I know—but please tell me that I still get a hug."
His hair shifted from dark blue to pink, which meant that he was no longer sulking about being forced to leave his cousins. With the inexplicable shyness of a seven-year-old faced with the attentions of a grown-up, he wrapped his hands around her shoulders and kissed her cheek.
"What do you say, Teddy?" Andromeda took his hand as he stepped back.
"Thank you."
Just beyond them, Pansy and Ron were saying goodbye to Bill and Fleur, who were struggling to bundle their children into scarves and coats. Victoire was insisting that she could do up the buttons all by herself, and fighting off Fleur's attempts to fix the lopsided attempt, whereas Antoine had latched himself onto Pansy's leg and was wailing at the top of his lungs.
Pansy tried to step out of his grasp and stumbled backwards; Ron caught her as Bill descended onto his son and tried to make a game out of putting on mittens.
As Ron and Pansy fell into each other, laughing, it occurred to Hermione that she was glaring at them with narrowed eyes, and she turned her back on them to go find either her parents, who would want to be taken home, or Kingsley, who desperately needed a slap.
Kingsley was the more easily located of the two options—he was in the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator in search of beer. His carefully honed Auror senses didn't seem to be dulling in the slightest, as he turned to face her before she had shut the door behind her.
"I take it you've heard about our Inferi problem? I spent the last three hours preparing a press release detailing how we plan to handle it…"
He looked too exhausted for her to feel comfortable about hexing him into oblivion, so she settled for a grimace. "Er… yes. Only they aren't exactly Inferi, and we very possibly have one in the house."
All traces of exhaustion disappeared with the straightening of his shoulders. "You let an Inferius in the house? Are you completely insane?"
"Terribly sorry that I didn't send you a memo when I cracked—all this working when I'm supposed to be on holiday, you know."
"And when you are killed by animated corpses I'll have to find someone else half as competent to pick up the pieces."
"Theo should do well on his own; just make sure that you let him carry a bucket around to crime scenes in case he feels ill."
"Clever attempt to distract me, but, believe it or not, Auroring did leave me with some interrogation skills—and since I know you aren't an idiot, do you mind telling me what possessed you?"
"I, er—I think it may be one of those things that you have to see for yourself."
*
There was a certain element of humour in watching Kingsley Shacklebolt prodding open the door to her study with the tip of his wand. Several elements, actually, starting with the wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression of terror, and ending in the faint trembling of his wand arm.
"This is Auror stealth?" she whispered. "Because, silly me, I thought there would be stealthiness involved."
He ignored her, pushing the door open another inch, then crouching. When he was certain that nothing was lurking within a couple of feet, he lunged, casting a silent Stupefy.
The flash of red light hit the bookshelf on the opposite side of the room and sent several books tumbling off the shelves. Snape, who was sitting in the armchair with a periodical on Arithmancy, looked up and smiled.
"Why, Kingsley, how good of you to drop by. I'm afraid that I wasn't quite prepared for visitors—I'm just getting caught up on some reading. One of the drawbacks of being dead is that there aren't many books lying around."
Kingsley had gone white, and was fumbling behind him for the door handle; when he found it, he used it to brace himself. "You're right—that is definitely not an Inferius."
"I could have told you that," Snape said. "In fact, I've already told her."
Hermione attempted to carve 'I Told You So' into the back of Kingsley's head with her glare. It didn't work.
"But you are dead?"
"Either that, or I've brought new meaning to 'deathly pallor'."
The two men stared at each other for what seemed like years; Kingsley shocked silent and Snape looking little more than mildly irritated.
"Sorry to leave such a riveting conversation," Hermione said, "but I should probably take my parents home. I'm sure they're bored out of their minds right now. If it makes you rest easier, Kingsley, I've already tested him and he can't do magic."
"So if I want to attack you, I'll have to use my brutish zombie strength to do it." Snape set the book aside, expression mild except for the faint glitter in his eyes.
On her way down the corridor, she nearly ran into Pansy and Ron, who were either engaging in an arcane cannibalistic rite or making out, but managed to skirt them just before Pansy half-threw Ron against the other wall. Clearly Molly had, at long last, relinquished her death-grip on the dirty dishes stacked in the kitchen sink.
She found her parents sitting on the sofa, listening to Luna and her father describe the process of catching a triple-horned snorkack with polite interest.
"They're particularly fond of socks," Luna was saying, "so it's important to sprinkle pixie dust in front of the entrance to one's wardrobe to keep them from getting in…"
"Mum, Dad, are you ready to go?"
Both of them nodded and practically leapt to their feet, following her to the front door.
"Darling," Lindsay said in an undertone as she adjusted her scarf around her neck, "is that girl quite all right? In the head, I mean?"
"That's just Luna."
"Imagine what her poor father must have to go through to take care of her—nodding along to that rubbish."
"Mum," said Hermione, "believe me when I say that Luna is the sane member of that particular family."
From the doorstep, Hermione disapparated with her parents into their front hall and hugged them goodbye with a promise to see them tomorrow. Rather than returning home right away, she apparated to an alley a few blocks away from Grimmauld Place and walked the rest of the way, glad to finally have a moment alone.
Sleet—more snow than anything, now—pelted down around her, soaking into her coat and making her shiver into the damp fleece. She quickened her pace, finding satisfaction against the sound of her feet slapping against the wet pavement and slipping through the slush.
Questions that had piled up in her mind over the course of the day were now allowed free range. There were too many of them to address, or even attempt to answer, and everything seemed to stall at the fact that she had—for lack of a better word—a zombie in her study.
It sounded as though it ought to be the title of a children's book, alongside The School Nurse Is from Mars and There's a Ghoul under the Floorboards.
Then, of course, there was the even more shocking and potentially traumatising piece of information involving her ex-boyfriend and her worst enemy, but she was setting that aside for later, when she felt emotionally equipped to contemplate the implications.
Which would preferably be never.
Twelve Grimmauld Place loomed ahead of her, and she climbed the steps and slipped in the door, hanging up her jacket to dry and heading up the stairs.
From the drawing room, she could hear the mingled voices and laughter of Luna, Xenophilius, and Harry; since Kingsley's voice could usually eclipse everyone else's in the room combined, that meant he was probably still in the study with Snape, and she didn't want to make any guesses as to what Pansy and Ron were doing.
Believing it to be disgusting was hardly conjecture.
Twenty minutes and a scalding shower later, she found herself barrelling into a dishevelled and sweaty Pansy wearing little more than patches of strategically positioned black lace and a red silk robe cinched at the waist; before she had a chance to consider the many reasons she had to be bitter about running into Pansy Parkinson when wearing nothing but a towel—in her own house—she was being dragged the rest of the way down the hallway, into her bedroom.
"Well, I heard the rumours when we were in school, but I hadn't thought you'd be quite so blatant about it," Hermione said. "And before you ask, I don't do threesomes."
"You poor, deluded creature."
Hermione tried to cross her arms, which resulted in more towel slippage than she was comfortable with. In the name of modesty, she settled for hugging her ribcage instead; just because some people insisted in darting around in their unmentionables didn't mean she had to follow suit.
"What do you want?"
"You don't like to waste time, do you? If I were to say that I was hoping we could paint each other's nails and stay up all night swapping stories about our first kisses, I hope you would feel bad about being such a bitch."
It was difficult to appear nonchalant in a towel that was half-drenched by one's dripping hair, but Hermione did her best. "And you have the right to complain?"
"It's not a right, it's a responsibility."
Hermione knew of several hexes that could have wiped the smirk off of Pansy's face—the only drawback was that her wand was in her purse.
"Anyway, I didn't want to talk to you to reaffirm that my tongue is sharper than yours, I wanted to tell you that I have information that might help you out on your case."
"You want to help me?"
"No, I want to help you help Professor Snape and Theo." She paused, studying her nails before shooting Hermione a sly look. "And if Lucius Malfoy gets a broomstick shoved up his arse in the process, I'm all for it."
The amount of restraint it took to keep herself from rising to the bait probably deserved a shiny plaque and a cash reward, but she managed to keep her face smooth and unquestioning. "Yes?"
Pansy pursed her lips, obviously disappointed. "It might interest you to know that there are a few books on necromancy in Malfoy Manor's library—some rare ones that even Gringott's curse-breakers don't hear about."
"Broomstick up his arse, you say?" For the first time in her life, Hermione could feel blind hatred blossoming into love. "I'm sure that can be arranged."
It was Pansy's cue to sweep out of the room and back into the bed where Ron was doubtless waiting for her, but she lingered a second longer than necessary, relaxing and tightening her lips as though she wanted to say something, but thought better of it. Hermione twisted her mouth into a grin as Pansy edged out of the room.
*
Her goodwill towards Pansy lasted until she stumbled out of bed and down the stairs the next morning, to find her sitting alone at the table in paisley pyjamas that were slightly too tight in the bust, but otherwise too long—Ron's. Hermione grunted out a greeting that was half 'hello' and half 'good morning', then stalked over to the cupboard, taking out her displeasure on the porcelain dishes.
Rather than suffering through a silent breakfast, she cupped her bowl of cereal in her hand and climbed the stairs to her study.
Eight hours of sleep had done more than just erase last night's sudden stab of fondness for Pansy Parkinson; she had also completely forgotten about the slightly less troubling problem of keeping someone who could probably be classified as undead in her house.
She screamed and nearly dropped her bowl, he jumped and sent the book he had been reading flying into the wall, and the two of them froze, staring at one another with matching guilty smiles twitching across their faces.
"Sorry," she said, setting her breakfast on the desk for safekeeping and handing the book back to him. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"I was the startled one?"
"I'm sorry for shrieking at the sight of you."
"Ah, so we get to the heart of the matter."
She smiled, and retrieved her laptop. "I won't disturb you if I sit in here, will I?"
"It's your room."
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, only broken by the turning of pages and the click of keys under Hermione's fingers. She hadn't anticipated any striking new developments to appear on Christmas Day, and it appeared that she had been correct; nevertheless, she skimmed through all of her usual news sites before running a search on Jennifer Bartleby and her group of neo-Druids.
Being almost completely certain that the murder could be pinned on Lucius Malfoy meant that she would have to exhaust all other areas of inquiry, just in case she had to prove it wasn't their other suspects. As she worked her way through Bartleby's webpage on—probably historically inaccurate—Druid ritual and worship, an owl pecked at the window. She rose to let it in, but Snape beat her to it, removing the special Christmas edition of the Daily Prophet from its legs and tossing it to her.
A glance at the front-page headline sent icicles shooting out from her spine into her fingertips; it was a moment before she could bring herself to move and unfold the paper the rest of the way so that she could see the article.
"Oh, fuck," she murmured. It took an effort of will to remember to breathe as she scanned the article.
Snape looked up from his book, alarmed. "What is it?"
She held up the paper so that he could read it for himself: "War Casualties Are Home for Christmas."
Although he probably couldn't read it from where he was sitting, names leapt out at her from the body of the article: Fred Weasley, Colin Creevey, Cedric Diggory, Alastor Moody, and Nymphadora Tonks.
And the name that wasn't in the article, but belonged to the dead man sitting in front of her. Severus Snape.
"I see," he said, finally.
"At least you're not alone." Her attempt to sound bright and encouraging was more morose than anything; more zombies to deal with, in addition to their sobbing families, did not a chipper Hermione Granger make.
She left the room, then, without a word, peering through the crack in the doorway to be certain that Pansy hadn't returned to bed before slipping in and leaving the paper folded open on Ron's night table, where he wouldn't miss it.
*
She spent the rest of the morning flat on her back on the sofa, occasionally opening her laptop to look something up, but otherwise she fixed her gaze on the ceiling. Harry brought her tea; Ron, worried that she was sulking over his choice of girlfriend, made his peace offering in the form of chocolate; and Pansy was parading her friends through the house one by one to Hermione's study, where Snape received them, like some sort of priest with the ability to absolve them of their sins.
Ron hadn't said a word about the article, or the knowledge that his brother was currently in the same state as Snape, merely sank into the chair on the opposite side of the room as Hermione and sank into the same contemplative silence.
When she was certain that Pansy was nowhere in earshot, Hermione rotated her head so that she was looking at Ron. "Pansy Parkinson? Really?"
"Really."
It occurred to her that she was obsessing. Not jealous—she had been over Ron for years—but deeply concerned. Besides both being at least six feet tall, they had absolutely nothing in common. A relationship was bad enough, but marriage? It would be nothing short of a disaster.
There were so many questions to ask: how, why, how could he? If they had decided to form an orderly queue starting in her temporal lobe and working their way out onto her tongue, she might have been able to articulate them all; as it was, she could only stutter and hope that he would manage to extract some meaning from the sounds.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner—it's just that we spent the first two months being totally disgusted by each other, and then after that… It was nice to have something that was finally mine, you know? And then the longer I put it off, the harder it was to tell you."
The trouble was that she did know—the three of them, it seemed, had always shared everything, from near-death experiences to dates, which would be carefully dissected before a verdict could be reached. For a period of time, it had even been Harry and Ginny, and Hermione and Ron, but that had been even more suffocating, and she had missed the Ron who said inappropriate things and made her laugh.
She'd had to break up with him to get that back.
A sudden, horrible thought struck her that, if true, would make the entire situation infinitely worse. "What about Pansy's friends? Did they know?"
He was saved from having to answer by Theo bursting in, attired in what looked like liquid rainbow. At first, she thought that her eyes were lying to her and that the combination of serial murders, zombies living upstairs, and the world's failure to invent caffeine that could be injected straight into the veins had sent her off the deep end, but it soon became clear that some poor, misguided fashion designer had gathered together every last sequin and stitched them onto Theodore Nott's robes.
"Where is he? I left the Christmas party as soon as I got Pansy's letter."
"Snape?" Hermione asked, eternally practical, at the same time as Ron said, "Oh my God, my eyes!"
"I was in the middle of intense sexual relations with a Hufflepuff, when I was called away to witness the miraculous event and grabbed the first thing that I saw."
"Hufflepuffs at the Malfoy party?" Hermione snorted. "That would be on par with me receiving an invitation."
"Okay, so someone let Blaise Zabini's new stepfather drink half a bowl of punch, and then challenged him to a transfiguration competition. My robes may or may not have got in the way."
"Theo?" Pansy's—well, technically they were Ron's—socks slipped on the rug as she sprinted around the corner and launched herself into his arms. The embrace was complicated by the fact that she was several inches taller than she was—in the end, she settled for draping her bosom over his shoulder. "He's upstairs," she said, voice muffled by his sequins.
As they left the room, Hermione turned her attention back to Ron with narrowed eyes. "He didn't seem terribly surprised."
Ron shifted to a cross-legged position, glancing at every patch of carpet except for the one surrounding the sofa. "That would be because he's not."
She stilled the lurching in her stomach, and forced herself into a state of calmness. If she could handle serial murders and decomposing bodies on a regular basis, she could handle being stabbed in the back by, it seemed, all of her friends.
"What about Harry?" she asked. His answer didn't matter—she didn't care. Knowing the truth was more important.
"Do you think he could keep a secret from you for longer than five minutes? Of course not."
And the sigh that was rippling through her was not a symptom of relief.
"Besides, I didn't expect him to react as well as he did—of the two of you…"
Ron knew better than to finish the thought, bless his ginger soul. He didn't need to. If Harry, who couldn't stand in the same room as Draco Malfoy without turning puce with rage, who couldn't stand the thought of Hermione dating someone whom he deemed unworthy (such as intelligent, sensible Terry Boot), could accept Pansy in stride, why couldn't she?
Then again, Harry had never experienced the full force of those lips twisting at him, felt the snag of her barbed words catching under his skin. Harry had been to Pansy as Hermione had been to Malfoy—someone who was shot at because of his proximity, not the real target. That had been an honour bestowed only upon her.
Ron patted her hand, and stood to leave the room. "Why don't I make you a cup of tea and bring you your laptop? Research will help take your mind off things."
Like Pansy Parkinson invading her study, and the rapidly approaching and almost certainly awkward dinner with her parents.
His words restored a block of confidence, and reminded her that this was still Ronald Weasley, and he knew her better than nearly anyone else in the world.
"You'll get used to her, I promise," he said.
It would have been nice for her smile to be effortless; nevertheless, it was a smile, and she supposed that was what counted. "I suppose I'll have to if I want to keep you around. Someone needs to keep me supplied with tea."
*
Dinner with her parents came as nearly a relief—all afternoon, Twelve Grimmauld Place had been filled with Slytherins forming a mass pilgrimage into her study. When Ron had brought her the laptop, Millicent Bulstrode, who was clawing at the casing, asking where it kept its brain, had accompanied him. At the sight of Hermione, she froze and glared suspiciously, before shrugging and sitting on the floor opposite from her, and peppering Hermione with questions.
Explaining a piece of technology that she didn't fully understand to someone who had never seen a battery-operated toy was a bit like flinging herself from the Tower Bridge into the murky waters of the Thames. Repeatedly.
When Draco Malfoy joined them half an hour later, asking if the laptop would bite him if he stroked it, and whether or not it had a name, she had the strange sensation of being folded into a community without her consent. It was a community that had fought against Harry, that had wanted to kill her and everyone who fell into her genetic category, and that had bullied her and her friends on sight.
When Malfoy asked how the laptop felt about being named Geraldine, she nearly broke into a lecture on why understanding was a key element in tolerance, and that it was no wonder Purebloods and Muggleborns had been at odds for so long. Only the return of Theo managed to soothe her boiling rage.
That wasn't to say that Christmas dinner was a pleasant affair. By the time Hermione and her parents sat around the table, they had lapsed into an uncomfortable silence only interrupted by the scratch of knives across porcelain.
"So, Hermione," Lindsay said, digging a valley into her mashed potatoes, "why don't you tell us about your latest case?"
"Er… there isn't really much to tell. I mean, it's not really something I'm supposed to talk about." She fiddled with her napkin and took a sip of wine, trying not to focus on the sag of her mother's shoulders that was growing as pronounced as the lines tanned into her face.
She might have been able to blink it away, had it not been for Lindsay's quiet, "I see."
A quick glance in her father's direction told her that he was staring at her with raised eyebrows, chin resting on his knuckles.
"Okay," she said, setting her fork and knife neatly side by side, and swallowing the mouthful of food. "You know the murder at Stonehenge? And the man who turned up at the door last night? That's part of it."
As she sank into the story, she realised the lowering of her father's bushy eyebrows was directly proportional to the amount he leaned forward, and how some of her mother's lines smoothed from her forehead until she looked like the woman who had guided her through math problems and listened to her read aloud as a child.
They still worried about her, she realised. Even as they were afraid of her—they were more afraid for her, more afraid of losing her, this time for good.
She finished with what appeared to be the result of the most recent killing—for lack of a better word, zombies. It was a final flourish on a wildly preposterous tale that her parents wouldn't possibly believe, and for a moment they couldn't seem to manage anything more coherent than outright denial.
She really couldn't blame them.
But then her father surprised her by clearing his throat and straightening his glasses. "So, this has happened before, you're saying?"
"Serial killings, yes, but none quite like this." Even days after the fact, the mutilation of the last corpse had the power to make her stomach roll.
"And you've been working on this for nearly a year, but didn't tell us?"
"Sorry, Mum. I didn't want to worry you."
Of all the insensitive, idiotic things she could have said, that was the worst; the way the blood drained from her parents' faces told her more than any words, and she had to fight to keep back the apologies that were flooding onto her tongue.
She hadn't wanted to worry them when she erased their memories and sent them to Australia, either.
Their fragile truce flexed under the weight of deep breaths from all corners of the room, but held.