Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).
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Four o'clock in the morning again, and this time Hermione actually hears the doorbell.
She is quite wide awake, still jet-lagged from her trip to Australia. It had taken quite a while to arrange that. With the slowness of international diplomacy in the wizarding world, it had been months after the war crimes trials that Australia had consented to let in any representatives of the rogue nation that had lately threatened the world with their Dark Lord. Never mind that Voldemort had never been her Dark Lord; as a Briton, she was tarred with the same brush as the Death Eaters.
That was the effect of foreshortening; from the other side of the planet, wizarding Britain no doubt looked like a nation of crazed Dark witches and wizards.
Then there had been the time and trouble of securing the services of one of St. Mungo's top Spell Damage experts, who accompanied her there on her first visit to her parents. It had turned out that the memory charm she had done was at the high end of magical memory editing, with its safe-house for the original memories and its maze of indirection, not to mention the parallel things she'd done with computer records in the Muggle world.
(Which was part of how she'd managed to live apart from the wizarding world for months and do just fine for income; she had more skills than those taught at Hogwarts. But that is quite a separate question at the moment.)
After one last check of the foe-glass, she drops the barriers and lets the visitor in.
It's Malfoy again, this time not in a sinister hooded robe but a very elegant lined cloak, intermediate in style between the wizarding world and the Muggle nineteenth century. The first words out of his mouth are a reproach.
"Granger, where were you? I kept coming here and you weren't answering the door." He sounds sulky, as always, though by no means as high-strung as on his first visit.
"I was in Australia," she says, although there's no reason he needs to know this.
He stands the bottle on the table. "Mother insisted I bring this," he says. It's dark, cobwebbed, with something red gleaming inside. Hermione suppresses a shudder; it looks as if it's been fetched up from the depths of some medieval dungeon, or decanted from Poe's cask of Amontillado.
Her silence must read to him as ignorance, because he huffs at her, "Elf-made wine, you barbarian. What did you think it was?"
Leave it to Malfoy to present a gift and an insult in the same breath.
He unclasps his cloak, revealing his Muggle costume: the black trousers, grey jumper, and white dress shirt. He's a bit more at ease in those clothes now; she remembers the first day in the waiting room when he kept his cloak wrapped around him, she realizes now because he wasn't used to clothes that showed so much of the outline of his body. She never would have suspected him of modesty.
He looks about for a place to hang the cloak; she indicates the coat rack by the door. He's already learned that there are no servants in her house, neither Elves nor humans, so he hangs it up himself. It gives her the shudders how normal he looks in those clothes. Even his hair, which is rather longer than Muggle regulation, wouldn't make him stand out particularly on the London streets; he could be a young musician or actor, instead of a middling-unsuccessful junior assassin with a war criminal for a father.
"What business did you have in the Antipodes?" he asks.
"My parents." He frowns. "I had to hide them away from your lot during the war, if you must know." She looks at the dark bottle standing on her parents' sideboard. "So why the wine?"
"I know you'll be taking it to Slughorn to have it checked for poisons," he says, "and anyway, Mother thought jewelry would be in bad taste, considering that business with the opal necklace." Vintage Malfoy, that; no information at all. "She thought you might like a little touch of luxury, since things have … not been good." He actually pinks up a bit. "And… she's grateful. For the help, you know."
She had put Narcissa Malfoy's name on the list, knowing from the testimony at the trial that she likely had post-traumatic stress as well. Much as Hermione didn't like her or Lucius, Narcissa was in a position not dissimilar from a widow, less the respectability.
At the clinic, it had been difficult to greet Narcissa and get her settled as if she were any other patient. During the ordeal at the Manor, Hermione hadn't had the benefit of nearsightedness like Harry; Narciss Malfoy's face had engraved itself on her memory during the adrenalin-stretched eternity before Bellatrix took her into the drawing room to torture her. It's that face she remembers in her nightmares, that and the shadowy, maniacal visage of Bellatrix. Odd thing about Bellatrix, that she's never quite in focus in any of those nightmares, but the paler sister is.
Draco had hung back, not making eye contact with any of them, so while she remembers him, it's not quite the same way as his mother. When she closes her eyes, she can count Narcissa's eyelashes, and note ironically the similarity of her bone structure to that of her cousin Sirius Black and her niece Tonks: the same heart-shaped face, pointed chin, and sharp-cut, mobile mouth: scornful on Narcissa, cynical on Sirius, and mischievous on Tonks.
Neville had seen the difficulty she was in and had stepped in, soothing Madam Malfoy with the appropriate Pureblood courtesies. Neville fascinates her; he seems the very picture of an ordinary Muggle bloke much of the time, except when he has to deal with one of them, and then someone else emerges, a young grandee well versed in archaic politesse.
"I hope she's keeping well," Hermione says, feeling foolish, asking after the health of the woman whose face is her personal icon of terror. "Thank her for the wine. I do appreciate the gesture."
And yes, he's right; she'll have it very thoroughly assayed for Potions, curses, and other nasty booby-traps. The darkly gleaming vessel, netted with cobwebs, stands there as a reminder of the existence of that other world, the one that claims her as a citizen and almost killed her. It makes her more than a little nervous, that it's sitting here in her parents' house.
Ignoring her guest, she casts a Patronus and sends it on its way to Hogwarts. Slughorn is a sybarite, but he keeps a Potion Master's nocturnal hours and likely is awake even now.
"You don't waste time," he says.
She looks at him. He picks up the picture on the sideboard, the one from her walking tour in Lancashire, and looks at it. "That's Longbottom, isn't it? I didn't recognize him in Muggle togs." He frowns, and Hermione knows that he's trying to puzzle out the difference. To be fair, Ron and Harry had had the same reaction. She knows what that difference is: ease, for he's on his home ground, and something like happiness. That picture was taken by Neville's primary-school friend Andrew after most of a day's ramble, twenty miles or so. It was a party of four: she and Neville and Andrew and Andrew's girlfriend Miranda, to whom he's to be married at midsummer.
Andrew and Miranda are alive because Augusta Longbottom and her wizarding neighbors in Lancashire took care of their own in the late unpleasantness.
There's a crack outside, and she opens the door to Horace Slughorn in his green brocaded dressing-gown. He bows to her and sweeps in, entirely ignoring Malfoy. "Miss Granger, my pleasure as always. Is that the offending object?"
She nods, and Slughorn takes the bottle very firmly by the neck, supporting its rounded base as if it were a baby or a cat. "Very fine vintage," he says, in a connoisseur's tones, "Harvest of 1789, if I do recall aright. If it's free of difficulties, it will be a pleasure to drink. You have not tasted elf-made wine, I trust?"
She shakes her head. No, she hasn't had much time to taste any of the luxuries of that world.
He looks at the hallmark on the bottle. "Cellars of Malfoy Manor. Yes, I see why you might want to have this assayed. Rest assured, I shall be thorough." He adds, "It was a pity about your friend Rupert, and it shan't happen again."
He never has gotten Ron's name right, even after the Order of Merlin. He still talks about how Lily Evans married too young, and she wonders if he had Ron pegged as yet another despoiler of youthful talent, like James Potter.
"I'll send you an Owl when I'm finished," he says, and makes a slight courteous bow before Apparating from the front walk, just inside the first layer of Muggle-repelling charms.
She turns back to see Malfoy with his arms folded over his chest as if in defiance or disdain, though when she looks more closely he's hugging himself as if chilled to the bone.
"You seem to have a knack for arriving in time for breakfast," she says, carefully averting her glance as he blinks away the tears she is pretending she didn't see. Slughorn gives him flashbacks, apparently. "There's plenty of toast, and I bought some fruit conserve and lemon curd."
Actually, she bought them in anticipation of the return of her mother, whose favorite treats they are, but she can always buy more if her uninvited guest puts too much of a dent in the stores.
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