After spending a dull night in St Mungo's and an irritating early morning of signing himself out and visiting the apothecary, Marcus Apparated to his great-uncle's flat. To someone reared in an echoing manor, the place seemed cupboard-sized. The wizard always expected to land on something when he visited or splinch himself into a bookcase.
He did not. He stood there waiting for the gorge to rise as it always did but all he tasted was peppermint. Marcus turned the pastille over in his mouth. The trip had left him feeling light-headed but that passed gradually. He grinned to himself, cracking the strongly flavoured candy between his teeth. One more reason to keep Hermione.
"I'm in the kitchen." The witch called at the sound of his arrival. Marcus sniffed as he strolled in to the bachelor sized niche that served as both kitchen and dining room. It had a table for two, which Hermione had already set with cutlery and glasses.
"The peppermint worked. Thank you." Marcus expressed his gratitude promptly before stealing some toast out of a warming dish. He surveyed her attire. She was still in her pyjamas and looked tired. He put a hand lightly on her arm when she turned to scold him for bread theft. "Do you really want to cook me breakfast?"
"You said you'd want one and I want everything resolved." Hermione had slept badly. The visit to St Mungo's had painfully reminded her of the last time she had seen her mother. She had dreamed of her parents in their car with the windows smashing. Red visceral dreams of them being cut to pieces with flying glass.
Marcus flicked his wand at the pot-bellied stove. The fire went out and lids went onto the pans. Other than the toast, Hermione had not got much further than pulling everything out of the pantry.
"Why don't you go back to bed?" He suggested, not inviting himself to join her.
"I won't sleep." She needed to be up and doing something but even scrambling eggs had seemed a Herculean task. Hermione scrubbed her eyes as tears filled them. She had been so looking forward to cooking for her mum and dad. Indulgent brunches where they could catch up on all that had happened in their absence.
"Come with me to Flint Manor. The elves can whip us up something." Marcus offered her his arm in a courtly gesture so ingrained he could not remember not knowing it. He would rather have been born knowing something more useful than which way to pass the port.
"And will they be adequately compensated for their labour?" Hermione demanded pugnaciously. "House Elves are not slaves, even if they have been exploited for centuries."
"Damned if I know." The wizard shrugged. All the Flint elves did was mind his father and fuss around the estate. Marcus did not even know how many served his family. "What's adequate?"
"I have a chart, with pay-scales." She said frostily, expecting derision and sticking to her principles. The knitted hats had stopped but her commitment to the cause had not.
"Give me a bill and I'll settle it." He smirked at her militant expression. "You are the Lady of the Manor. Running the household is one of your duties. If you want the elves paid then we'll pay them."
"We're not really married, Marcus." Hermione protested, wanting to say the same thing to Ron and Harry. "I signed the papers so you wouldn't be penalised for your blood status. So I wouldn't be bloody Umbridge."
"Doesn't matter." Ducking his head to look her in the eye, the scion of the House of Flint spoke soberly. "I do not have to do much with my life. But there are rules. One of those is to make sure my wife is given her due. By me, by everyone. That rule does not bend." Marcus rubbed her arm, giving contact without encroaching. "So for as long as it lasts, you are the chatelaine of my estate."
"How many of your ancestors are rolling in their graves right now?" She leant into his touch. Hermione did not want it to be Marcus putting his arms around her right now but she did want someone to hug her. He provided, smoothing a hand in circles over her back.
"If they wish to complain, they can haunt me." As with most schools of magic, he had no talent for necromancy. If any of his dead relatives wanted to speak with him, it would be down to them to facilitate it. His living relatives were penance enough.
"Someone else cooking sounds good." Hermione spoke to Marcus's sternum, her eyes shut. He Apparated them. She felt old magic, blood and rune, wash over her. It accepted her, which surprised her. If she had given it any thought she would have expected some hostility. The worst the witch could sense was a hungry longing.
The room where they arrived was stone-flagged with dark oak beams. Sconces flared with light at their presence warming the rustic chamber. Marcus led her to the feasting table, pulling out a chair for her before summoning an elf. Hermione ran her fingers over the scarred wood and studied the carved legs. Migration period, she guessed from recollections of Viking artefacts she had seen during visits to the British Museum.
Wizarding Britain truly was another world. Maybe after this was all done, she should take some time to be a Muggle. Reading Ancient History at university would certainly improve her Latin. There would probably be courses in Old Norse available. Ideal for Runes. Or she could undertake a science degree. Pharmacology or molecular chemistry would be useful if she wished to do Potions research.
She was a witch. She had potentially more than a century to study and hone her knowledge. But her time in the Muggle world would run out well before her own life did. How many ninety year olds were doing doctoral theses? Plausibly, she had fifty or sixty years before British governmental administration started to take an interest in her identity. Unless she started Obliviating social workers. Hermione never wanted to use that charm again.
A full English breakfast appeared before her glistening with the promise of cholesterol and clogged arteries. Black pudding, white pudding, sausages, back bacon, fried slice and hash browns fought for position on the platter in between the eggs, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and toast. She stared. What she noticed was that while she had been provided with two forks and a spoon, there were no knives on the table.
There were no knives anywhere in the medieval kitchen. Hermione let her eyes track over the hanging pots, the ironmongery, the plates in the oak dresser, the hearth and the trough sinks. Someone had removed with great care anything sharp from a place where sharp things should have abounded.
Marcus had said his father was 'indisposed', that Azkaban had broken him. Hermione considered the blunted tines on the forks and suspected she would not find anything with a cutting edge in the manor. Magic was the cure for so much but it could not mend everything.
"How well can you read, really?" She asked, another observation crystallising.
"Not well." Marcus speared a sausage off the platter and conveyed it to his plate, adding egg and toast. "Short words, short passages. The more letters there are, the more they move about. I can keep up if I pay attention but that gets exhausting."
"How did you manage at school?"
"I paid classmates to tutor me. Mostly to read the textbooks aloud." He used the two forks to pry the sausage into chunks. "I took as many practical classes as I could."
"You said you did NEWTs level Divination. I would hardly call that practical." Hermione felt daunted by the fried extravaganza before her so she began with the mushrooms and tomatoes.
"Trelawney was hardly strict. So long as I could spew shite in a dream journal I could scrape through. Got quite good at foreseeing doom." Marcus chewed with a little more force than needed. He had never discussed his weakness so frankly with anyone. "Learned to avoid words I couldn't spell. Not too easy in an exam though. Found about a dozen ways to write ceraunoscopy."
"Did no one realise you had a problem?" She thought about a boy in her primary school who had worn tinted glasses in class, and who had got into fights when other kids had called him stupid.
"I was not a Squib. That is all that really mattered. I could be as fucking terse as I liked." Marcus shrugged. He knew he was not an idiot so the frustration had been with the school-work not with his inability to do it. Quidditch had helped. He was bloody good at that.
"Failing didn't bother you?" That was not an especially tactful question and if she had not been so weary she would have caught herself before she asked it. Hermione made to apologise but he waved that away.
"I didn't care. I wanted to do what I liked and I did. I was not the only one. Derrick could barely spell his own name." He settled down to eat while the witch stared at things and played with her food. She was thinking so he let the silence grow. She was in his house, at his table, breaking bread with him. What more did he need to say?