Social Work England
Gerry's office
Gerry peered over her leopard-print horn-rimmed glasses at the girl sitting across her desk. It was a miracle she was able to spot anyone at all, as her desk was crammed to the gills with dirty coffee mugs, dirty coffee stirrers, bushy ferns that seemed to thrive on the dry and temperamental office air conditioning; carcasses of tri-fold calendars of many years past, towers of dog-eared reports, two massive computer monitors on which pictures of her kids were blu-tacked around the sides; and Gerry's lunch: a box of takeaway Chinese with some chopsticks poking out.
"Right," Gerry started, peering at a monitor and clacking away on the keyboard; "it's best to assume you don't know if you've done your GCSEs, but if, by some miracle you did remember, you don't remember what marks you got and in which subjects?"
Hermione blinked. "Sorry, no," she replied.
Gerry leaned over her desk and peered at Hermione even harder. "It's so hard to tell whether you're sixteen, eighteen or twenty-one," she sighed. "But since you want to proceed with higher education, you'll need your GCSEs to begin with." Then she smiled. "And this is where I can help. Scooch your chair on over to this side!"
What followed was a dizzying two hours where Gerry and Hermione surfed dozens of internet sites and sorted out what subjects she wanted to study. She even left the office clutching a crocheted bag that bulged with study guides, courtesy of Gerry's daughter, which looked like they hadn't been opened. Gerry's final words followed her out of the door:
"Don't forget I'm bringing Craig to set up the computer for you tomorrow, around elevenses! I'm bringing Battenberg cake!"
Hermione sighed and shook her head. Gerry meant well, she knew, but the novelty of being treated like a child had worn off long ago.
Was she still a child? She didn't know.
Hermione's home
Back home, Hermione peeled a couple of mandarins and looked once more at the printouts Gerry gave her. Sitting at the kitchen table, she cracked open one of the pristine study guides – English Literature – and munched thoughtfully while her mind formed study plans and timetables. Her fingers itched for some pen and paper.
Her sight was momentarily blinded by a vision:
In a cavernous room softly lit by many candles, surrounded by towers of bookshelves, a disembodied person – was it her? – sat at a dark wooden desk. She, or whoever, was scribbling furiously on a length of old-looking paper; and instead of a sensible ballpoint pen, she held a long feather, which she dipped into a vial of ink.
But just as she tried to hold on to the vision, it disappeared. Try as she might, she couldn't bring it back.
"Shit!" she shrieked, thumping the poor kitchen table with her fists.
Still, she dutifully retrieved her notebook and wrote down what she could recall.
It made no sense!
Obviously, going by the bookshelves, the vision took place in a library. But what sort of library would risk the very real fire hazard of having scores of lit candles in it? She was certain planning laws wouldn't permit it.
Likewise, what about the old, parchmenty-looking paper and the quill?
Maybe it wasn't a lost memory of hers but a vision of something that occurred centuries ago? That would explain the candles and old-fash writing tools.
But why would she experience the vision? Is it a past life thing, or what?
Hermione sighed and put her pen down. Obviously this was getting her nowhere.
She went back to the study guides. She needed to occupy her mind. Give the grey matter a workout.
Next morning
"Coo-ee!" came the call through the front door's letterbox slot at 'elevenses' on the dot. "Give us a hand, love?"
Hermione opened the door to find Gerry and a young man clutching multiple items of computer hardware – and the promised Battenberg cake. Gerry's car was jauntily double-parked right outside her door.
She grabbed the items that threatened to fall out of Gerry's shopping bag and led the way to one of the upstairs bedrooms which had a cheap desk perched beneath a window overlooking the street and a computer chair that sometimes stayed in place when she adjusted it. The view wasn't too distracting, but the lighting was nice.
Craig, an IT guy for the Social Services, was a pleasant-faced young man with curly brown hair and sporting a t-shirt that said "Do I Look Like a Help Desk?" He wasted no time connecting up the hard computer bits with the wiry computer bits. Then he powered it up and sat on Hermione's chair – which promptly ran out of gas, causing the seat to plummet to the floor, throwing Craig off in the process.
"It does that a few times," Hermione confessed as she lent an arm to help a bemused Craig back up.
Gerry eyeballed the chair with evil intent. "I'll order a replacement, dear," she promised.
Craig, meanwhile, decided that standing up would be for the best. So while he was waiting for the computer to wrench itself into life, he had a butcher's out the window.
"Uh, Gerry, the meter maid is sniffing around your car," he said.
"WHAT?" Every part of Gerry that could bristle bristled with indignation as she dashed to the window and heaved up the sill. "Oi!" she shouted to the parking warden, who wondered where the disembodied voice was coming from. "I've only been there a minute!" She dashed down the stairs and out the door, leaving Craig and Hermione alone in the room.
"Who do you think's going to win?" Craig grinned, typing away like mad on the keyboard.
"The safest bet is to never bet against Gerry," Hermione laughed. "She's capable of anything."
"That she is," Craig agreed. "Somehow she managed to get your install booted up a very long list of waiting ticket items despite only phoning it in yesterday!"
They looked out of the window again, watching Gerry enthusiastically gesticulating to a warden who was wishing he was somewhere else.
"Gerry says you're getting some qualifications?" Craig asked, bringing up the internet and frowning at its less-than-stellar speed.
"Yeah, my GCSEs."
"Oh?" Craig turned around and looked at Hermione, surprised. "You seem a little old to be doing them. Not that there's anything wrong with doing GCSEs at any age," he tacked on.
Hermione was intrigued. "How old do I look?" she asked.
"Oh... um..." Craig's cheeks went a little pink as he gave her an appraising stare. "Maybe twenty? How old are you really, if you don't mind me asking?"
Hermione shrugged. "I had an accident and hit my head," she said, using her go-to excuse, should anyone ask. "I don't remember how old I am."
Craig's eyes bulged. "Jeez, that sounds awful."
"Not really," she said lightly. "I just have to start again."
"Crikey." Craig was awed. "Well... good luck!"
"Thanks." Hermione smiled.
"Um..." Craig began, toeing the fraying carpet with a scuffed sneaker. "Maybe we" –
"Henri! Can you pop the kettle on?"
It was Gerry, having sailed victoriously back into the house after convincing the warden not to ticket her; then found a less illegal spot to park her car.
"Sorry," Hermione shrugged and made for the office door. "Pop down for some tea and cake when you're free."
"Uh, yeah, of course." Craig turned back to the computer. Hermione noticed that his neck was rather red.
While the kettle boiled and Hermione got the cups ready, Gerry sliced up the Battenberg cake and lovingly placed it on a plate. "I've got an update from the Police," she said, sotto voce. "Not much of an update, mind. They finished testing the blood and other bits on your clothes, and got some DNA off them. There's at least three, maybe four separate profiles, and two of them appear to be closely related to each other. But none of them are in the Police DNA database, so who knows who they could be?"
"What does that mean?" Hermione asked.
"If any of the people that hurt you end up in a situation where they have to give a DNA sample in the future, they'll be matched to your case, and they can be arrested and put on trial. But without any more information, like the place where it happened, for example, I'm afraid they're running around free, the bastards."
Hermione felt goosebumps rise on her arms and neck.
Gerry looked up from her cake-eyeballing. "Are you all right, love?" she asked gently.
Hermione didn't know. But she didn't want Gerry to worry, so she tried a smile on for size. It seemed to fit.
"Of course," she reassured Gerry. "No worries."
The Afterlife - cruise ship
There was no need for Draco to wonder what DNA was when it was at home, because he wasn't glued to the Scrying Mirror when that conversation took place. This was only because Draco stormed out of the chamber around the time that curly-haired upstart was girding his pathetic loins to ask Hermione out. Never mind that Hermione seemed oblivious to his efforts.
Grinding to a halt by one of the cruise ship's many hand-railed vantage points, Draco gripped the rails so hard it was a wonder he didn't leave acidic-like handprints in the metal.
But why was he so angry?
Draco delicately probed his mind for the answer, like you would at a tooth that was long due a visit to the dentist.
Was he jealous?
Ha! He scorned to himself. Not even worth dignifying that with an answer. Won't even think about it. Nope.
So then… what?
Hermione wasn't making progress, that's what! He gave up his motherfucking (albeit awful) life to save her, to get her back to her mad mates and the other Phoenix members so Potter could kick Moldymort's arse and life could go back to a tolerable kind of normal. Potter needed her. There was no way that twit could do it by himself.
But now she's settling down in Muggle London, getting ready to ace Muggle school qualifications instead of going back to Hogwarts and acing her N.E. ! And maybe, just within a whisker of possibility, he could sneak into the back of the classes without anyone noticing and do just enough to graduate and move the hell away from Wizarding England to a place where no-one knew him, his family or his past.
Except he's dead. He kept forgetting that. Surprising, given his whereabouts.
Nothing was going right, and he'd had enough.
Fuck this shit.
He climbed over the handrail and plummeted into the azure blue ocean below.
It was some time before anyone noticed Draco's absence. Fortunately, the first person to notice was Lucy.
"Draco?" she called, leaning over the handrail and squinting into the ocean.
The man himself, who was floating on his back but not doing much else besides, squinted in turn back up at the ship. He shaded his eyes with a hand. "Afternoon, Lucy."
"What are doing down there?" Her reply floated down.
"I tried to kill myself."
"But… you're dead! Did I forget to cover that in our counselling sessions?"
"I know I'm dead," Draco admitted. "But I hate it here and I don't want to keep… existing."
Cedric and Fred had caught notice of Lucy's perky bikini-ed bottom and long legs as she leaned over the rail, so they wandered over to see what was what.
They both spied Draco floating around in the ocean, a short distance from the ship.
"What's he doing?" Cedric asked Lucy. "He knows we have a swimming pool on the ship. He fell into it when Fred punched him."
"He wants to kill himself," Lucy said forlornly.
"Nice!" Fred got into a comfortable position for watching.
"He knows he's dead," Cedric said crossly. "I told him."
But Lucy wasn't listening. "Draco!" she called out, keeping panic out of her voice. "You need to get back on the ship now. As in right now."
Draco sighed. "Why?"
"Because there's a shark heading towards you."
True enough, Cedric and Fred spotted the ominous sleek fin of a rather enormous shark that was heading with intent towards Draco's pale limbs.
"Oho!" Fred cackled gleefully, rubbing his hands. "Now this is going to be good!"
Lucy pulled Cedric close and muttered into his ear: "Telling you right now, I'm not counselling Fred Weasley. Find someone else to do it."
"But Lucy" –
"Either I counsel him, or I keep sleeping with you. Your choice."
"What does the shark matter?" Draco called up, exasperated. "I told you, I want to die! Obviously falling off the ship did fuck all, so it's more than welcome to have at me."
"Because it won't kill you!" Lucy called back. "It'll savagely eat you, and it will be agonising to the point you will lose consciousness, but then you'll wake up and still be here, with us! And traumatised by sharks!"
Draco sighed. Is there no escape from this bloody Afterlife?
He turned around and noted the large shark fin was rather closer than he thought. Damn things are as silent as the night. "All right," he called up to Lucy (ignoring Cedric and Fred). "Can you throw me something?"
Lucy vigorously rubbed a waterlogged Draco down with a nice, fluffy towel. The boys had gone to find Fred another counsellor by the time she magically raised Draco from the murky depths back on to the ship. The shark had also sodded off, as disappointed by his vanished meal as Fred was on missing out on Malfoy getting some justice.
"Now, Draco," Lucy said assertively while Draco tried to shake some water out of his ear. "Why aren't you happy here?"
Draco slouched against the railing and crossed his arms. "It's the girl I saved," he admitted in a low voice. "She's lost her memory and she's doing everything wrong. She needs to be somewhere else to help save the wizarding world. She needs help and guidance and no one knows where she is except me. And I can't do shit from here! It's driving me mad and I feel helpless as hell."
Lucy joined him by the rail. "I think I might be able to help," she whispered, her hair whipping around her shoulders and lashing the emerging sunburn on Draco's arms.
A tiny flame of hope flickered in his cold heart. "What do you mean?" he asked his saviour.
Lucy smiled, a little sadly. "Let me talk to some people first," she promised.
A/N: Their paths will reconverge soon.