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).
***
Granger puts out the breakfast things, and Draco notices that the selection of food is somewhat more bountiful than before. This largesse isn't for him, of course. He does know how to connect the dots, and he assumes she has replenished the larder in anticipation of her parents' return to Britain. Left to herself, Granger has rather monkish habits.
He wonders if they ever reproached her about that, as his father reproached him for his excessive love of sweets.
He doesn't like thinking about his father, especially when he realizes that Granger's father is still alive, and presumably abroad in the world breathing the air of freedom. More than can be said of his own… He takes a shaky breath and lets it out, because he can feel tears welling up when he thinks about his father—even ordinary things, like coming downstairs to the sound of his parents' voices on the terrace in summer. The Manor is much too quiet lately, but at least he's sleeping now. His mother is not happy, exactly—he doubts she'll ever be happy again—but she looks more clear-eyed and well-rested, since they've been going to the odd electric-lit place in the heart of Muggle London.
No, he corrects himself, all along they have lived, unknowingly, in the heart of Muggle Britain; it surrounds them. His world is a little kernel of normality in a vast surround of alien habitation. They have lived hidden from the common enemy on the other side of the wall of the Leaky Cauldron for three hundred years, and now it is that enemy that is rendering them succor.
His mother is sleeping through the night for the first time since the war, difficult as that is in her advanced state of pregnancy.
On the second visit, Fleur Delacour-Weasley had invited his mother over to share her bountiful portion of take-away, when she saw that they had neglected to bring anything to eat. There's a freemasonry of pregnant women which acts as a sort of flag of neutrality.
He'd hung back because he still can't look at Bill Weasley's horribly scarred face without knowing that it's his handiwork.
***
Granger has put on hot water for tea, setting the kettle on the stove top and turning one of the knobs; a ring of blue flame, like bluebell flames, springs up beneath it. He frowns; there's no crackle of magic in this place, which makes him feel all the more keenly the aura that dances delicately over her skin. He's lived all his life saturated in it, and this place… this feels weirdly awkward, with its vast pools of empty space between them, that are inhabited by something else. The presence of someone else of his own kind is oddly welcome…
He picks up his wand to help things along, and she shakes her head sharply. "No, you'll fry my electronics doing that."
He watches the condensation play over the surface of the tea kettle and then vanish entirely as the flames play beneath, and a delicate wreath of steam puffs from its spout. She pours out the hot water into a small teapot (for him) and then the rest into a conical vessel on top of her coffee cup (for her).
She looks at him, straight into the eyes. "Are you sleeping well?" Rather too personal a question, but then he first had come to her house at four o'clock in the morning to extract an answer as to why he wasn't sleeping well, so it's fair enough.
"Better than before," he says, watching the tea leaves swirl in the bottom of the pot. Daft Professor Trelawney would make something of that, no doubt. Granger catches his eye and unexpectedly picks up the thought.
"It's always the shape of a Grim, or else a skull," Granger says with a smirk. "I never did care for tea, but I'd no idea it was a dangerous habit until I came to Hogwarts."
She sets the conical vessel in the sink, and breathes in the steam from her coffee cup as if she were incensing her hair. Granger's morning coffee is obviously a solemn rite. It's still too hot to drink, but she breathes in the smell of it, with her hands clasped around the cup. He would hurry it along with a touch of a cooling charm, but of course she doesn't use magic in this place. It would… what did she say? … fry her esoteric Muggle things.
Last week, Arthur Weasley had come into the waiting room one morning with a message for his son Bill, and had fallen to explaining Muggle magic. Apparently the Muggles have their own form of magic, which uses all of the other forces of the world besides magic. Draco had tried not to look interested, but couldn't help listening. There were fascinating magazines in the office, Arthur said, and the woman at the front desk had explained to him how he might find more materials on the question. So he's to be receiving a library card… just like an actual Muggle.
From the tone, you would think that someone had just told him he was to be appointed Minister for Magic.
Draco says, "They canceled the sitting of the NEWTs. Did you have something to do with that?" The question has been bothering him for some time.
Granger shakes her head. "No, Kingsley's idea. No one who was at Hogwarts last year is in any condition to take them." She adds, "And there's the whole business of the distorted admissions policies last year. We made a mistake thinking we could just pretend everything was normal."
She says "we" as if she still belonged to his world.
She continues, "It's too ugly to sort out all in one go. Best to level the ground first, and clean up the damage from the rubbish that the Carrows were teaching." She makes a sour face.
He remembers all too vividly how sick that made him, to be assigned Crucio in the Dark Arts class, after he'd been playing the torturer's apprentice all through August, till the Death Eaters glared at him every time he walked into a room; he knew that if anything happened to his father or Bella, he'd be thrown to them for their entertainment.
And Crucio would have been the least of it.
And after all they made him sit through at the trials… and behind closed doors, as well. There's nothing like having your head pushed into a Pensieve and being forced to witness all the details … he'd had no idea. Really. The fire, and the blood, and the screams of children, no idea at all what "Muggle-baiting" had meant, what he'd been calling down every time he said that they should kill the filthy animals …
***
He doesn't realize that he's fallen down the well of memory until that voice across the table calls him back.
Cool, firm hands gently unwrap his fingers from the teacup he's been clutching, and someone hands him a clean handkerchief, and when his hands tremble too hard to take hold of it, those same hands take it back, and wipe the tears and snot from his face.
"I think we should talk about something else," Granger says, her voice as cool and decisive as her hands. "I didn't know that was going to give you a flashback."
At least he didn't completely disgrace himself. Weeping is bad enough, but the last time, he had vomited.
"It's time we ate breakfast," she says.
So they do, very carefully following the instructions of Dr. Burgess, to remain in the present, and he wishes once more that he'd known half of this before the war. He might not have taken everything for granted: sweets and fresh air and sunlight and sleep, his father and mother at the breakfast table. Knowing wholeness, he might not have loaned destruction such a powerful glamour.
***