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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It's four o'clock in the morning, and they're alone in the front room of her parents' house, feeling like teenagers for the first time in the post-war.
Hermione can feel the rough places on Neville's palms where they have calluses from his work in the greenhouses; the careful touch of his fingertips raises rather delicious shivers along her nerves.
And then there's the mutual laughter, which is both awkward and sexy, because they don't want to mention what they saw, that both embarrassed and roused them, and then there are the kisses. Hermione might have speculated about how some of the boys at school would kiss (well, that would be Ron) but Neville had not been among that number. These last months, it's been a pleasant surprise to discover that he's as attentive and careful at that as at any of the other things at which he once was clumsy.
And it's four o'clock in the morning, with warm air wafting through the windows, and the prospect that after, they will return to the resort and take a walk on the edge of the sea…
… after. He's laughing, having undone one of her sandals: fingers brushing her instep, not quite tickling, but nonetheless making her wriggle at the sensation, which provokes from him an involuntary gasp—she's sitting on his lap, after all—
-and then there's a thin wail from outside.
Constant vigilance, she thinks, with the furious aside that no doubt old Moody found it easier, in his solitary life, to follow that maxim.
With a cold stab of fear, she remembers what happened to Moody in spite of his best efforts, and puts aside the pleasant thought of what she and Neville might have done in the absence of external threat. They disengage, and she crosses the room in a heartbeat, to glance in the foe-glass—nothing there—though there is a huddled shape on the front step. She looks out through the peep-hole… and sees that unmistakable blond hair.
While post-war reconciliation is all very well, she does regret the days when Draco Malfoy was her enemy, or she was his, because it meant that she had no obligation to meet him socially, particularly not at four o'clock in the morning. Particularly not at four o'clock in the morning, on the front steps of her parents' house, when she's been otherwise occupied in very pleasant mutual investigation with her boyfriend.
She opens the door, with wand discreetly drawn, just in case her visitor is thinking to be about anything beyond annoyance, and says, "Malfoy. It's four o'clock in the morning. Why are you skulking about again?"
She doesn't really want an answer to that question. Really.
Neville says, quite sensibly, "People don't skulk with babies." The wail, of course, is Hypatia, whose face is screwed up in unaccustomed distress. In the light from the windows, she sees the stricken look on Malfoy's pale face, paler than usual if she doesn't mistake. Something has seriously scared him.
Quite seriously, because when she gestures to him to stand, he can't manage it. He won't let go of Hypatia, which makes it rather awkward as she and Neville help him to his feet. They tell him to come inside so that they can talk it over sensibly. Problems that are scary in the dark frequently take on a more reasonable character by electric light.
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Hermione thinks it might be the better part to decline Boudicca Derwent's offer of apprenticeship as a Healer, because it requires a positive effort to be decent and caring when she's just had her private life interrupted once more. She really is tired of Malfoy turning up on her doorstep at four o'clock in the morning, and at the most inopportune times: first, as she's having breakfast, and then as she's reuniting with her parents, and now, when she thought she might take advantage of the dark and the quiet and the romantic late-summer evening to have a proper snog with her boyfriend…
A voice in the back of her head tells her that sexual energy does all sorts of odd things when it's diverted from its original intent. There must be something to that, because her original plans of ruffling Neville's hair and putting her hands on him under his shirt have transmuted quite effortlessly into the suggestion that snapping Draco Malfoy's skinny neck wouldn't be too difficult, and could be accomplished in time both to return to the originally scheduled programming and to have a nice breakfast on the Mediterranean coast with her parents afterward.
Nonetheless she sighs, and puts on her compassionate face. Now that she's had a look at her guest in good light, he's is plainly in distress: white-faced, shivering, and now that he's sitting on her parents' couch under bright if diffuse electric lighting, with sharp contrast between his pale skin and dark robes, his hands are shaking.
No wonder the baby had started to cry. His terror must be communicating itself to her.
Draco has permitted Neville to take the baby out of his arms; she's still crying, but a little less desperately now, and Neville carefully holds her so that she can keep her brother within view. Hypatia is rather sweet actually, if you forget that she's a baby Malfoy. Her fine blond hair has been pulled into two tiny pigtails and tied with green ribbons—of course, Draco would decorate his baby sister in Slytherin colors—and she's wearing miniature traditional robes, grass-green silk with a stitched silver-and-gold pattern of snakes and eggs. The effect is really quite adorable, if you forget the notions for which that costume stands. (She flashes for a moment on a baby Draco in scaled-down Death Eater robes, and wishes she hadn't.)
Neville cuddles her and jiggles her a bit on his knee, which she seems to like; by and by, her crying settles a bit, and then it's a crooning whine, and then she looks about and delivers herself of a squawk that seems to be neutral in intent… at any rate, not so distressed.
Her brother is sitting on the couch in a parody of well-bred alertness; the angle at which he leans forward is perhaps a trifle too acute, and the knuckles of his folded hands show white. Hermione looks back to see his eyes on her, expectant and something else.
She's a little shocked at the animosity she sees in that face, pale and pointed with the grey eyes in it like demonic lanterns… except just now they're both brighter and darker than she remembers. Brighter, from unshed tears, and darker, because the pupils are dilated… and that look is focused on her, with interest. A very specific sort of interest, that makes her want to cover herself in her full-length winter cloak. Neville was looking at her that way just now, before the untimely interruption, but that sort of regard from Malfoy makes her shiver in revulsion.
She steels herself to be a decent human being, in spite of that stare. At least it's her eyes that have his attention, because if it were anything lower she'd hex him and be done.
She asks him again what the matter is. He shakes his head, and she can see the layer of tears, like rainwater, shiver a little on the pink ledge around his eyes (yes, there's a bit of adrenalin here—for she's noting the shape of his eyes and how like they are to his mother's, and the way the tears bead on his pale lashes when he blinks).
"Is there someone we can call?" she says. "Your mother…"
At this he goes white, and shakes his head again. "No," he says in a soft voice, and whispers, "I can't sleep." He looks down. "I hadn't meant to interrupt you…"
"You wanted to speak to my mother," Hermione says, and he nods. Of course. It's something to do with Hypatia, no doubt. "She's on holiday, with my father."
Neville, holding the baby, blushes, and looks to one side.
"I can't sleep," he repeats. It's plain that whatever the matter is, he's not going to tell her.
She steels herself for the utter ruin of all her plans, and says, "I have some Dreamless Sleep, for emergencies," she says. "And there's a spare room at the villa."
He looks apprehensively at his sister. Neville says, "We'll mind her, don't worry."
Yes, indeed, all ruined. Life is real, and life is earnest, and more of it is baby-minding than it is romance. Neville understands that, and so does she, but nonetheless she can't help a certain twinge of resentment. Her parents are used to Draco turning up at odd hours; they'll take this in stride. She and Neville will get their sunrise walk by the sea, but it will be more in the nature of a conference.
Hermione goes to the bathroom for the flask of Potion, and hears Neville ask him if he can manage Apparition just now, or would like to Side-Along…
… which she remembers that the baby doesn't like, and is reminded afresh when, after squeezing out of the dread compression into the little courtyard in the cool blue dawn, Hypatia hiccups and then spits up all over Hermione's blouse.
Well, that's what a wand is for, she thinks.
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They walk at the edge of the sea, the stars fading and the waves dimly lit in the rising light. The baby fusses, but has decided that she trusts them. In particular, she trusts Neville, sufficiently to fall asleep on his shoulder.
Hermione is still troubled by Draco's crazed manner: the paleness, the tearful glowering full of rage and lust and terror, as if he fancied her and at the same time wished her dead. It makes her feel chilled and unclean at the same time, being looked at like that.
She realizes, halfway through her attempt to explain it to Neville, that she's always been very much more skilled at talking of technical matters than of states of the heart, for all she reproached Ron with his lack of nuance.
Neville is silent, which she has learned is more or less assent. If he disagrees, he says so.
She tries to avoid thinking about how strange things have become. The baby is simply the baby; it doesn't do to think about who her parents are. It's not the baby's fault, of course, that Lucius and Narcissa had a last fling before he went to Azkaban for twenty years. If she thought about the case in the abstract, carefully leaving those sharp-featured faces out of it, she would feel sorry for them.
(As it is, she's talked with Kingsley Shacklebolt about the conditions in Azkaban. Not a cheerful place, even now, but at least it's only a medieval prison, not the domain of the soul-suckers.)
Neville points out that every time they've been on duty in the waiting room, it's been Draco carrying the baby or attending to her. Narcissa seems oddly detached, almost as if she's rejected the child, or is preparing herself to do so.
In the old Pureblood lines, as in ancient Rome, not every child was permitted to live.
The dawn light reflects off the placid waters, and the sails of the fishing boats show pale, then rose, as they put out to sea. It's a very old place, this harbor, and those sails, if she squinted, might be Roman galleys or the swift boats of the Greeks… or at a later date, the dragon-prowed vessels of the Vikings, that still menaced the coasts of England when Hogwarts was being built.
Their fingers interlace, loosely, as they walk, and she says once more how little she liked Draco's predatory grey-eyed glower; it reminds her of unpleasant things and bids her watch her back.
Neville agrees, this time aloud. One tolerates (even forgives) people like Malfoy (because they're fools, because they were too young at the time), but one can't help being reminded of what they did as children, even if politeness forbids speaking of it…
…says the man who still remembers being the boy whom Malfoy had used for target practice.
Neville's big hands hold the baby steady as she sleeps against his shoulder. Hypatia looks remarkably like Draco when she's asleep; Hermione can see the point of the chin, and the angle of the nose—even though it's a soft babyish dab now—how that face will lengthen, and sharpen, and the grey eyes focus… eyes like a wolf, wintry and hollowed-out with hunger.
The little girl with the dangerous face is a fictional character, she has to remind herself, and her brother's ferocity is more cornered rat than ravening wolf. It's not she but her mother who will sort out what it is that has so terrified him.
In a few hours, her parents will wake up, and Draco will as well, and then they'll sit on the terrace facing the sea eating breakfast while Draco talks to her mother, Madam Granger as he inevitably addresses her. And then, maybe, the mystery will be solved, and she can return her attention to more pleasant things.
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