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).
ooo
"Well, how did it go?"
Hermione hangs her coat on the coat stand before she turns to her mother. "As well as could be expected, I suppose." Now that she's home, she realizes just how tired she is.
The look on Neville's face is pure relief.
"I took him to Charing Cross Road, and then I stood him dinner at Eddie Tonks' pub." She smirks. "I didn't realize that Draco Malfoy could be bribed with the prospect of a good shepherd's pie."
A lucky thing, too, because Eddie's pub is one of the safest locations in muggle London. There's always one or two off-duty Aurors hanging about the place, and she'd wanted to have the rest of the conversation in a place where she had backup. Philippa Bones and Octavian Diggory had been there already, drinking pints and playing darts in the front room, with a clear line of sight to their booth.
Neville says, "So it went well."
She sits down next to him, and relaxes. His warmth next to her is reassuring.
"Halfway through the conversation, he realized he was having more fun arguing with me about what school Hypatia was to attend…" She smiles. "He thinks we're altogether middle-class in merely aspiring to Oxbridge. If she's to go Muggle, he wants to her go first class. After I told him about Genevieve, he got a bee in his bonnet about an aristocratic marriage. I had to remind him about the whole bearer-of-the-name business, and he said, 'Well, that's only if she's a witch,' and then went on to ask about Finch-Fletchley, if his people were sufficiently posh."
Neville says, "But Finch-Fletchley's engaged to Hannah Abbott."
"I don't know how Draco found out about the engagement, but he wants me to put in a word for him with Hannah, in case their first-born is a boy." She adds, "She turned up to Eddie's pub, as it happens. They've been talking shop, I gather, on the running of a wizarding pub."
Neville stares at her for a moment, and then starts to laugh. "Oh, my," he says.
"Oh my indeed. Hannah and Justin aren't yet married, and Draco wants to put in a bid on a marriage contract, on spec. A Half-blood with ties to the Muggle aristocracy would be more than acceptable, whether or not Hypatia is a witch. Then he was asking if Justin had any brothers or sisters with sons of an appropriate age."
Augusta Longbotton has been watching this the whole time, with an amused expression. "Aye, that's the Malfoys I know. Always an eye to brass or advantage. You know I got a marriage proposal from our Draco's great-grandfather." She smirks. "Not a romantic lot. 'My girl, we're the best breeding stock in wizarding Britain. It's only natural you should marry me.' That in the midst of Quidditch practice."
Hermione laughs aloud, and her mother asks, "So what did you tell him?" Neville is smiling; he already knows this story. "Why, I told him a reserve Seeker was no match for a champion Beater, and knocked him off his broom again. It's not the place to bandy words, a hundred feet above the pitch."
Hermione giggles, hearing the high notes of hysteria in it. "Then I should be thankful I didn't have to work particularly hard to convince him that he didn't want to face my encyclopedic observations over breakfast every morning for the next century."
Neville reaches across and squeezes her hand. "A fate worse than death."
She smiles. "Only a shade less horrifying than facing down the Dark Lord, I would imagine." She shakes her head. "On the other hand, if we do marry, than you'll be stuck with Draco Malfoy as a brother-in-law."
Andromeda speaks for the first time. "Kingsley and I will begin drafting the petition."
Hermione nods. The hard part, in her mind, has been convincing Draco to see reason, but after that will come the tedious process of petitioning the Wizengamot. No court wizard's contract has been signed for some six centuries; the last such was concluded in the time of the later Crusades, with a Muggle aristocrat who sought an extra layer of protection for his ventures on the Silk Road. Nowadays the Statute of Secrecy must be taken in consideration. The case is helped, Andromeda reports, by the prospective signatories' prior knowledge of the wizarding world; that they are the parents of Hermione Granger is not anticipated to hurt, either.
"Well, I suppose if this goes through, you won't be going back to Australia," Hermione says to her mother.
"Oh no, we decided some time ago." Hermione's mother smiles, a sly expression that echoes Andromeda's look. "Things are ever so much more exciting here. I'm quite curious as to how all of this is going to turn out."
Hermione's father says, "I suppose it's all very well as a legal dodge—rather clever, I should say—but what are we going to do with a court wizard?"
Hermione says, "There will be some restrictions, of course. No weather-working, nothing that's a Statute of Secrecy violation, no Dark Magic…"
"Certainly not. This is a respectable neighborhood. What would the neighbors think if we had one of your school friends practicing necromancy?"
William says, "Are you sure about that weather-working provision? Just a little, for the roses…"
Hermione glares at both of them, until the expression on Andromeda's face tells her that they're having her on.
Andromeda says, "We can work that out later. First things first." It's so much her mother's tone, that she wonders that she ever saw any resemblance between Andromeda and Bellatrix. It settles on her that it's over, and it's all she can do not to slouch in the armchair; she's restrained by the example of Andromeda's effortlessly erect posture.
Instead she says, "It's a task, trying to talk sense to Draco Malfoy."
Neville smiles. "But you managed it."
"With much biting of the tongue," she says. "I think he heard 'no' from me more times in an afternoon than from his mother in the whole time she's known him." She can feel the hysterical laughter bubbling up in her chest.
Neville looks at Hermione's mother, and then to his grandmother. Augusta Longbottom nods, with magisterial decision. "I think you've more than earned this." Hermione's mother stands up and goes into the kitchen, followed by Andromeda Tonks. It isn't until they started handing round the tumblers that Hermione understands what they are about. Madam Longbottom pours out two or three fingers of firewhiskey in each glass.
"We're all of age here," she says, with a glance at her grandson, the junior of the company. "Sense has been talked, then."
"And actually heard," Hermione says. She accepts a tumbler and adds, "With rapture, on my part. Well, modified rapture. He nearly wore me down with questions about the strings that were going to be pulled for his sister." She knocks back her glass with abandon, and nearly chokes as the fire reaches her sinuses.
"Eh, lass, that's not water," Madam Longbottom says.
"He has rather a lot of nerve," Hermione says. "As if he were doing me a favor, agreeing that no did mean no. Because, really, if he hadn't, I would have hexed him right there, and there wouldn't have been a question of his duties to the Line." She smiles, and Neville smiles in return. If that smile mirrors hers, her own is rather satisfactorily predatory. "I'm not sure if Malfoy is more of a trial now that he's semi-reformed…" She looks at Andromeda, "With all due respect, your sister's notions of child-rearing…"
"You'll have no disagreement from me. Cissy was exceedingly indulgent, though in view of her experience it makes some amount of sense."
"He doesn't think of anyone but himself, or him and his." She takes another sip of the last of her Firewhiskey, and Madam Longbottom gives her a quelling look. "All right, I won't make the mistake of drinking and talking about Malfoy at the same time. He kept insisting that if I were trying to change the law, it must be for the sake of my grand passion for him personally, and that was the only plausible or decent answer."
Her mother adds, "I did say he wasn't much on general principles."
The full force of the dose of Firewhiskey begins to hit her, and she knows perfectly well that it's loosening her tongue. "I suppose I ought to be touched at all the family feeling, but it's strictly Malfoys only with him. Nobody outside the family circle really counts." She knows she's going too far, but says it anyway. "His mother was the one who identified me, you know. Perfectly happy to sacrifice me to get them in the clear." She leans back in the chair, looking at the light in her tumbler. "And now he's going to be my foster-brother. Ugh. Virtue must be its own reward…"
Neville leans across and kisses her on the cheek. "But that means you'll be in his family circle."
She pulls a face at that, and finishes the glass of liquor.
ooo
By the time that Draco returned to the Manor, Hypatia was fussing and wriggling. It wasn't only that she was getting hungry; she was plainly over-stimulated from so many strangers picking her up and talking to her. There had been cousin Audrey, to whom Hypatia was quite partial, and then Hannah Abbot, whom she decided wasn't bad either. Hermione – with whom he was going to have to be on given names because she was shortly to be his foster-sister, if all went well with the petition to the Wizengamot – well, Hermione mostly kept aloof, not that the other two weren't doing a fine job of making much of his sister. And then Eddie Tonks – whom he found it odd still to address as Uncle Eddie – came over to greet Draco and the little one, and she kept her good humor with visible effort.
There was politicking to be done, and he engaged Hannah Abbot in a hypothetical conversation about marriage prospects, which Abbot seemed to find odd.
He didn't miss the fact that the Aurors, Bones and Diggory, kept him well in sight even as they played their game of darts and sipped the exotic Muggle drinks. He declined Audrey's offer of a pint; his aunt Andromeda might claim to find butterbeer cloying, but Draco liked his drinks and his treats both to be sweet.
Abbott had made a particularly strange face when he'd raised the question of Finch-Fletchley's antecedents in the Muggle world. As usual, it was plain-spoken Audrey Tonks who said it. "You haven't shown an interest before, I'd guess," she said. "So, you're trying to marry off the little one before she's even out of nappies." He glared at her. Muggles – or at any rate, the ones he found among his relatives by marriage – were vulgarly explicit about everything.
"Oh, don't look at me in that tone of voice, Draco," Audrey said. "It's not a good look on you. Puts me in mind of a ferret with indigestion."
Hannah Abbot giggled, and Draco felt his face heat. Even at the distance of more than four years, he didn't like to be reminded of that particular incident.
Audrey looked at him and raised an eyebrow, and then she and Hannah both collapsed in giggles, which hilarity his sister seemed to approve, at least to the extent of waving her arms about and trying out her own laugh. Hypatia's laugh was rather a work in progress, somewhere between a squawk and a snort.
Even his baby sister was laughing at him.
Hermione kept aloof, for the most part, and even shot him a glance that seemed sympathetic. Of the pair of them, Granger and Longbottom, it turned out that Longbottom was the one to whom small children gravitated. He wondered if Granger ever really had been a small child herself, or if she'd always been the somewhat pedantic miniature adult he remembered from their first encounter on the Hogwarts Express.
He wished Longbottom joy of it, if he did end up married to Granger. He supposed that they were better suited … at any rate, he had more to think about than romance, at the moment. There was politics, the matter of redeeming the family name, and that was a twenty-year task. Memories were long in the wizarding world; Slughorn the Potions master still held the Malfoy family in ill regard for things dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, when he'd been at Hogwarts with Draco's great-grandfather.
It would be twenty years until his father was out of prison, parole not being an option… Not that Lucius Malfoy would have anything to say about his daughter's fate until she was well past her majority. She'd be twenty years old when he got out of prison.
That brings him back to the present matter.
Hypatia has begun to talk, and she called him "papa", and he's encouraged her in the practice.
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Draco knows that there's no deceiving anyone in the wizarding world about his sister's parentage, because it was a matter of discussion in the Prophet for months, but in the Muggle world, he's already had a few encounters that have left him with the temptation to elide the matter. When he's out and about in Muggle London, in his aunt's company or on his own with the baby, he's overheard older people remarking tenderly on the young father and his child. In his rather formal Muggle clothes, he passes for a few years older than his actual age.
Once or twice, disconcertingly, he's looked up to see Muggle girls eyeing him. The baby helps, it would seem.
Audrey teases him about it from time to time. "They think you're a nice boy, and you've already proving you'd be a good father. If you're not careful, you'll find yourself awash in offers." She gracefully glides over the point they both know: he's very far from a nice boy, and his father would have an apoplectic fit if his Heir married a Muggle.
It's confusing. Everything is confusing.
ooo
His mother looks at him gravely.
"Andromeda tells me that Miss Granger spoke with you."
Draco nods.
"I told you that they were out of reach."
"Everyone's out of reach. And don't go on about cousin Audrey. She fancies Percy Weasley."
His mother sighs, with a ghost of a shrug, and continues to nurse Hypatia.
He's not going to tell her about the conversation between Audrey and Hannah, in which they giggled over the boys they fancied. There's something disconcerting about being in the company of women talking about what they find attractive in men. Audrey likes Percy's red hair and the way he turns pink when he's talking passionately, and his slim wiry frame … well, she did have modesty enough not to get into detail about what she'd like to do with him, but from the sparkle in her eye, Draco has a good idea. Hannah was somewhat more reticent, but she did talk about Justin's curly hair and sweet smile.
And then the both of them turned to Hermione and talked about how Neville had turned out quite fanciable indeed, if one had more robust tastes.
Hermione turned bright red. Draco would have laughed at her, except he suspected that his face was a similar color.
The other thing he doesn't want to remember is Hannah Abbott's first glance at him. She flinched, just visibly, and then recovered herself. Yes, her parents had been killed by Death Eaters, and Draco's father had been a Death Eater. Nonetheless, the trials had made it a matter of public record that Draco himself had been rather conspicuously inept in that line.
Well, and Abbott was doing business, so to speak, with his Muggle cousin. It was no secret what her apprenticeship to the keeper of the Leaky meant; old Tom was thinking of retirement and looking for a successor. Meanwhile, Eddie Tonks' pub had apparently been a place of resort for the younger generation of the Auror Corps, at least since the time of his cousin Dora.
That did explain the pictures on the wall above the bar: Dora, in a rare Muggle snapshot, and a pencil portrait of Remus Lupin, after a wizarding photograph, he was told; and then there was a Muggle studio photograph of Kingsley Shacklebolt in full Muggle rig, as part of the entourage of the Muggle Minister. There was even an ancient black-and-white photograph that he recognized as a very much younger Alastor Moody, undercover as a Muggle air raid warden.
That was from the days of the Grindelwald War, Audrey had explained. The nonchalance with which his Muggle cousin would cite bits of wizarding lore still gave him a start.
Oh yes, and he didn't exaggerate when he said that Audrey was spoken for - or rather, she'd put in a claim, a rather conspicuous one, on Percy Weasley. The look on her face when he walked into Eddie's pub left very little to the imagination: her eyes brightened, and her face lit to incandescence, her cheeks pink and the brilliance of her smile nearly outshining the twinkle in her eye. If Weasley didn't know that she fancied him, he was one of nature's own fools.
Audrey is very definitely not his type but he wouldn't mind if someone looked at him like that.
ooo
Meanwhile, there's business to be discussed. Andromeda and Kingsley—yes, that's Minister Shacklebolt—are beginning the process of drafting the petition to the Wizengamot, and the thing that gives him pause is that his mother will have to give testimony.
She lifts her chin and looks at him with cold dignity. "Of course," she says. "The post-war is full of disagreeable necessities." She doesn't need to remind him that she's already testified before the Wizengamot, in rather less pleasant circumstances: as an accused accessory to the Dark Lord. Even in Azkaban grey, she cut an impressive figure.
He frowns. "And what about father?"
"Your father's opinion of the matter is rather beside the point," she says.
Draco knows that under the new regime at Azkaban, the prisoners are permitted to receive not only letters but newspapers as well. There will be no question but that his father will read about it in the Prophet.
He frowns. "So you've discussed it with him?"
"What your father and I discuss is none of your affair, Draco."
He shrugs. She can pretend that he's still the child of the house, but he knows better. And in any case, she's right. It really doesn't matter what his father has to say about Hypatia.
Draco watches his mother nurse Hypatia, and wonders just how much of a part she's going to take once the child is weaned. He narrows his eyes, thinking just how oddly this has played out… she did give him the vital information about the marriage contract, after all, on the way to telling him why he wasn't to marry another Pureblood, that she'd decided single-handedly to upend previous practice, indeed to resign their Pureblood status for the coming generations.
The whole thing makes him dizzy, actually. How much had she been swayed by her renegade sister? Well, he oughtn't to complain about aunt Andromeda, because she'd been a help and support, but nonetheless…
Andromeda had been the one who'd offered him the option of being the foster-father, knowing Hypatia's likely squibhood. Yes, there's no question in his mind but that she'd known, well, guessed at least, to judge from what she'd said of her refusal to help his mother to fulfill the terms of her marriage contract.
And if he'd known all that in the beginning, would he have said yes?
Hypatia has fallen asleep, nestled in the folds of her mother's cloak, and by candlelight they look like a marble composition of mother and child, all that's holy in the Pureblood way of life.
His mother smiles slightly, looking down at the little one sleeping against her heart, and then looks up and meets his eyes. Yes. There's no doubt that they're united in the same conspiracy. If she was willing to risk the ire of the Dark Lord for his sake, then defying her husband on behalf of his sister is a relatively small matter.
For that matter, she likely asked her sister to render the traditional sisterly aid in the matter of squib offspring, knowing that she'd refuse… well, she could plead, then, that she'd been faithful to the forms. A good Slytherin to the last, and it wasn't her fault that the only force on earth that could prevail against a daughter of the House of Black was another such. Well, leaving Molly Weasley out of the picture, in the matter of his late aunt Bellatrix, because Bellatrix was a different case entirely, and not one he cares to contemplate even now.
ooo