The Afterlife
Of course, it wasn't as simple as that.
It was rather complicated, actually.
Draco had to memorise a long list of do's and don'ts. It was mostly don'ts:
He couldn't tell Hermione directly who she was: the shock could be damaging for her. (Fine.)
He had to live as a Muggle. No wand. No magic. (Erk.)
He couldn't contact anyone from the magical world. (No problem. He had no one he wanted to talk to, and he was certain there were lots of people who didn't want to talk to him.)
He shouldn't call attention to himself. Keep his head down. Live simply. (Fine.)
It would be nice if he could do his absolute best not to upset Hermione. (He'll try, but no promises.)
Finally, when he'd achieved his objective, he would return to the Afterlife and his presence on Earth would be wiped. (Sure. Why not.)
"This won't be a holiday, young Malfoy," Dumbledore warned. "Not at all."
Draco was happy to accept all conditions except the wand. Long and hard did he argue with the two old duffers, pointing out its necessity in the event of an emergency and how was he going to prevent accidental Muggle exposure to magic, or get himself out of a pickle?
Eventually, they agreed to an emergency hotline of sorts: if he uttered a certain phrase, either Dumbledore or Slytherin would respond and sort his pickle out for him.
At last, negotiations ceased, and Dumbledore rose and stretched his arms. "Have you ever been employed before, young Malfoy?" he asked.
Draco furrowed his brow. "Had a job, do you mean? Of course not! When would I have found the time between school and living in a state of evil malevolence?"
"Well, you have one now. Toodle-oo!" And with a wave of his hand, Draco disappeared into thin air faster than he could say "Hey, what the hell's going on" -
Another cocktail appeared in Slytherin's hand. "Bit harsh, don't you think?" he asked, taking a sip.
"He needs to learn to adapt," was Dumbledore's serene reply. "He may be a Malfoy, but he seems to be made of strong stuff. He'll be fine."
Rochester
Meanwhile, Hermione was making excellent progress with her GCSE studies. The walls of her study were thoroughly papered over with timetables, study notes, revision schedules, key study goals, Venn diagrams, visual aids and the odd motivational poster.
About six months in, she told Gerry she was ready to take the online GCSE exams.
Sitting in her office, Gerry's eyes boggled over her glasses. "You sure, dear?" she asked. "Don't the courses take at least a year to get through?"
"I've been speaking to the online tutors, and they've given me all the coursework and assignments for the full year and told me to work at my own pace. I've handed everything in, and they think I can sit the exams now."
Good Lord, Gerry thought faintly. A savant is sitting in my office! And she's so tiny. Her arms still look like sticks! And her cute little pixie haircut makes her eyes look so huge...
Her mama instincts kicked in, yet again. "Well, then!" she cried, leaping up from her office chair and grabbing her handbag. "Let's celebrate with some yum cha! My treat."
Hermione swallowed a sigh and followed Gerry out of the busy social services office. Luckily she planned ahead and skipped breakfast.
Some weeks later
... And, of course, Henrienna Miller (Police-assigned surname) aced every single exam she sat. It was harder to say who was more emotional about her final marks – her tutors or Gerry.
Hermione managed to talk Gerry out of throwing a party to celebrate, saying she would prefer to get on with her A levels. Gerry was torn between visions of Henri sailing into Oxbridge and graduating with a major in whichever qualification gets you the highest-paid career in England (with a minor in the second-highest-paid career) and concern for her mental health.
"Do you have any hobbies, my dear?" Gerry asked while pouring the tea at Hermione's house, seemingly out of nowhere as far as Hermione was concerned.
"Hobbies?" Hermione had to sit down and think about that one. "Um, I like reading..." (her phone was clogged with ebooks that she chewed through in between adhering to her study schedule. The same study schedule Gerry took one look at and nearly toppled down the stairs in shock at the sight).
"Right," Gerry nodded encouragingly. "Do you go out anywhere at all?"
"Of course," Hermione replied, still confused. "I go to your office, of course, and my therapist's office, and occasionally into the city to see the plastic surgeon, and the supermarket, and" –
"Ah, good," Gerry interrupted, nodding rather desperately. "I was rather thinking along the lines of a hobby. Maybe a sport? Or the arts? Maybe music? Or rambles through parks or walking trails? There's a trail named after Charles Dickens, did you know?"
"Oh." Hermione pulled her mug of tea closer. "I haven't really given hobbies much thought."
"How about volunteer work? There's thousands of them out there. You could work with animals, young people, elderly people, the ones in-between..." Gerry knew she was rambling, but sometimes Henri was so serious about everything that she couldn't help it.
But Hermione wasn't listening. She sat frozen in her seat with closed eyes, her hot mug of tea heating her fingers rather unbearably.
She saw what she presumed was herself, knitting a hat in four bold colours: red, yellow, blue and green. It wasn't that great, and she wasn't as fast as she would like to be. But she was knitting for a reason. It was to help someone. Or... something?
A boy with glasses was lazing on a comfy red settee with his feet up on the coffee table. Whoever she was lifted up her own leg and shoved his ones off. They were wearing a school uniform – mostly grey with long black robes, the sort you only wear at university when you graduate, for example. But the boy looked to be around thirteen, and she presumed she was the same age.
There was an emblem on the boy's robes. Galvanised, Hermione tried to lean in and look at it close up, but to her frustration she couldn't move; and all she could make out was a 'H' in the centre.
Then the boy spoke. "I wish I hadn't told you about Dobby and his blasted sock," he grizzled.
She opened her voice to reply - snarkily, of that Hermione was certain – but the vision wobbled and disappeared.
"No!" Hermione cried out in despair, and opened her eyes to find that Gerry had pulled the hot mug of tea away from her hands and replaced it with an ice pack wrapped in a clean tea towel. Her face was deathly white.
"Are you all right, love?" Gerry squeaked. "It was like you were in some sort of trance. That mug was burning your poor old fingers and you didn't even react!"
Hermione exhaled and swallowed hard. "I think I had one of those 'visions' again. About who I really am."
Gerry's eyes widened to the shape of saucers and she plonked herself back in her chair. "What did you see?" she whispered.
"I think I was in a school common room," Hermione said haltingly. "It might start with 'H'."
"Crikey, that's amazing!" Gerry gasped. "We can compile a list of schools that start with 'H' and see if you recognise any!" She fished out her casebook. "Were you wearing a uniform?"
Hermione nodded. "It wasn't much to speak of: a grey skirt, grey socks, grey jumper. The boy sitting opposite me had a red and gold tie on. But the odd thing was that he and I wore academic robes. But we were only about thirteen, by my guess."
"Huh. That is odd," Gerry agreed, making a note. "Maybe a private school, then? Or an overseas school?"
"The boy spoke with an English accent," Hermione recalled. "Maybe an international school, or somewhere in the UK? If it's a boarding school, it could be outside England."
"Good point." Gerry made another scratching in her file. "Any more about this boy you can remember?"
"He had messy black hair and glasses. He put his feet on the coffee table until whoever I was shoved them off."
"What did he say?" (Not for nothing was Gerry a good interviewer. Too regularly she had to give evidence in court about awful things that happened to her clients.)
Hermione closed her eyes, straining for the right words. "He said he'd wished he'd never told me about Dobby and his sock?" She opened her eyes. "That doesn't make sense."
Gerry furrowed her brow and pulled on her ear. "Was he reacting to something you were doing or saying?" she asked.
Hermione slammed her hands down on the kitchen table, then yelped when her poor burned fingers smarted. "I was knitting!" she crowed triumphantly, then cradled her fingers around the ice pack again.
Gerry boggled. "Knitting?" she repeated. Then she beamed. "Oi! That's a hobby!"
Hermione wasn't sure. "The hat I was knitting wasn't that good," she admitted.
"Ah, but you were younger in the vision!" Gerry pointed out. "What if you've kept it up over the years? You could be really good now."
Hermione shrugged, but said "I'll buy some wool and knitting needles and see how things go."
"Excellent!" Gerry was a happy lady. "Now, what about this 'Dobby' chap, then?"
Hermione frowned. "Maybe it's a surname," she mused. "But what if it's not a person? Could it be a pet? But what kind of school lets the students have pets?"
"Well, dressing up pets is apparently the cool thing to do," Gerry said, wincing as she recalled an argument with her daughter, who demanded that Gerry purchase a retired racing greyhound so she could dress it up in hats and sweaters. Then again, her daughter was ten at the time.
"Nothing springs to mind," Hermione said sadly.
"Never mind, duck," Gerry replied, looking at her notes over her horn-rimmed glasses. "Do you remember the boy's name at all?"
Hermione rubbed her eyes. Then she looked up at Gerry and said "Potter. Potter? Yes! His last name is Potter, I'm sure of it!"
"That's wonderful!" Gerry beamed, and leaned over the table to give Hermione a hug. It might be small, but there was evidence that Henri was starting to recall what were hopefully facts that weren't directly triggered by something.
My little girl is getting better, she thought fondly. And a little sadly.
In the meantime...
Draco extracted his grease-smeared hands from the innards of the machine and fought the urge to kick the temperamental bastard down the road. But that would result in more repairs. Possibly more repairs that he wouldn't be able to fix.
And he didn't have money for repairing temperamental bastards. Simon, his squib mentor, soon-to-be employer and volunteer heckler of extremely good-looking magic-free wizards, nodded at the machine while he lit a new cigarette with the end of the soggy one dangling in his mouth. "Let's see what you're made of, lad," he called out, and Draco wasn't sure if he was speaking to him or the motorbike that was the source of Draco's grease-stained hands.
Grumbling under his breath and wiping his hands on a rag, he straddled the bike, prayed to Merlin, pulled the clutch in and pressed the start button.
The bike thought about it for a second, then grumpily roared into life. Elated, looked back over his shoulder, sending his most Malfoy-iest smirk at Simon. Unimpressed, Simon smoked the cigarette down to the filter and flicked it to the ground, grinding it out with his foot. "Congratulations," he said, turning to head back into his workshop. "You've got a job."
A job! Draco smiled for real, this time.
If the thought of his only son getting his hands dirty with an honest-to-goodness job wasn't enough to send to Lucius to an early hellish grave, Draco didn't know what would.