[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter!]


At precisely 5:00 p.m., Harry's floo roared to life and Nev jumped out of it. He'd traded his gloves and apron for a stylish crimson and black acromantula silk waistcoat and gave Harry a firm handshake. "It's good to see you, mate," he said. "I figured there was no chance at all that Sue would be here on time, so this was a safe time to show up."

"Well played," Harry said.

Nev cocked his head at the closed doors between the living room and the floo room. "I don't think I've ever seen you close those doors," he said. "What's up?"

"It's a long story," Harry said, "and I was hoping–"

The rush of the floo behind them cut him off, and they both took a step away so Sue could hop out. She'd dressed in a brown gold skirt, white blouse, and golden-colored half-length cape over the blouse, and took a moment to smooth everything out and tuck an errant strand of hair back into her braid crown before hugging Harry and Neville. "It's good to see you both," she said. "It's been too long since all three of us hung out."

"Definitely," Harry said. "I'm sorry it's not entirely for social reasons this time. Sue, do you remember the muggle woman I've been having lunch with?"

Sue's eyes narrowed. "Harry, what did you do and how many people am I going to have to Obliviate?"

"None," he said, "because it turned out she wasn't a muggle." He pulled open the doors to reveal a nervous Hermione. "Nev, Sue, this is Hermione Granger. Hermione, these are my oldest friends. We all would have met when we were 11, except someone bound Hermione's Magical Core to hide the fact that she was a muggleborn witch."

Nev's jaw dropped, but Sue's only reaction was to slip into "Auror mode." "Does she have any memories of it?" she asked. "Have you identified any spell residue? Do her parents–"

"No leads yet," Harry cut off the line of questioning. "Let's all have a seat and I'll explain everything."

By the time Harry and Hermione finished explaining their adventures, Nev and Sue were both shocked and horrified. "Do you want me to talk to Auntie?" Sue asked. "She'd love to get her hands on whoever did this."

"Not yet," Harry said. "They don't know she's in our hands yet. If they find out, McGonagall is worried the Conservative Purebloods will try to bind her for being over eighteen with no O.W.L.s."

"Ugh," Sue said. "I understand her concern. Nev, we wouldn't have the votes to stop that, would we?"

"Doubtful," he said. "There are too many Pureblooded arseholes in the middle, too. I don't think I could wrangle enough of their votes to be confident."

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, "but who's your aunt? And Neville, do you work for the Wizarding Parliament?"

Sue smiled. "My aunt is Amelia Bones, the current Minister of Magic, and she sort of owes her position to Harry. And Nev here doesn't work for the Wizengamot; he's a hereditary member as Lord Longbottom. I'm also kind of in it right now, since Auntie needs a proxy for the House Bones seat while she's the Minister."

"Oh!" Hermione's eyes widened. "Harry, are you ever going to tell me when I'm interacting with a Peer, or are you just going to keep letting me be rude?"

"No," Sue said, "he isn't."

Nev snorted. "It's hard to stand on ceremony with someone who remembers you as a snot-nosed Firstie. Besides, he doesn't make us call him 'Lord Potter,' either."

Hermione took a deep breath, grabbed a throw pillow, and proceeded to beat Harry with it while yelling, "Harry Potter, how dare you not mention that to me?"

Sue smirked. "You did that intentionally, didn't you, Nev?"

"Absolutely," he said while Hermione hit Harry. "I think it worked splendidly."

"Help?" Harry asked in between batterings.

"No, thank you." Nev and Sue shared a grin. "We don't need any."

Eventually, Hermione's arms tired out. "I don't believe you never said anything," she said. "You knew how upset I was when I found out that Sirius was a lord and nobody told me."

"It's only been a few hours and we've been busy," Harry said.

She blinked. "It has? Goodness, it has, hasn't it? That seems so long ago."

"It's been a long day," Harry said.

"What with the near-death experiences," Nev added helpfully, "and beating the tar out of Harry with a pillow."

"She did very well with that," Sue said primly. "We might be able to make a proper lady of her yet."

"Wait," Hermione said, "what does beating up Harry with a pillow have to do with being a lady?"

"For most people, it doesn't," Harry said.

"Auntie has been on me to marry a nice lord for years now," Sue said. "Auntie also raised me to be able to break most of those snobbish prats like a twig without raising so much as an unladylike sweat, and that seems to worry most of them for some reason." She made a show of looking at her nails. "I can't imagine why. So as far as I'm concerned, your ability to thoroughly thrash Harry is extremely ladylike, since I'm a lady and I share that ability."

"Oh, do you now?" Harry asked.

"Certainly," Sue said. "I just need to find someone to soften you up first."

"That doesn't count," Harry said.

"I'm sorry," Sue said, putting a hand to her ear, "I couldn't hear you over the massive whinging."

Nev laughed. "Well, on the plus side, Hermione now knows what our years at Hogwarts were like. Several hours a day of this interspersed with classes and the occasional…um…incident."

"Person trying to murder Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Yes," he said. "How did you know?"

"I noticed a pattern in all of his stories," she said.

"She is clever," Sue said. "It took me until Third Year to figure that out."

Harry sighed. "Let's get some supper," he said. "We can talk more about who's probably trying to kill us this time afterward."

Supper was a delicious meal of saffron rice and chicken thighs cooked so the skins were still crispy, followed by an unexpected dessert of fresh brownies. While they ate, they planned. Nev offered to meet with her one afternoon a week to teach her herbology in his family's greenhouses, while Sue agreed to take her to lunch every week to get her out of the house and start introducing her to the Wizarding World.

After Nev and Sue left, Harry and Hermione went downstairs and washed up the dishes by hand. Dobby had helpfully cleaned everything he'd used for cooking, but that still left the dinner dishes to do. Harry attempted to do them as he normally would, which didn't go well.

"That's not clean." Hermione handed the plate back.

"Yes, it is," Harry said.

"Then what's that?" She pointed to a spot.

"A few molecules of food, maybe."

"You can't see molecules, you know," she said.

"It's fine."

"No, it isn't."

"Do you want to wash?"

"Yes!"

"Fine!"

They switched places and worked for awhile in silence. Finally, Hermione said, "I could have handled that better, couldn't I?"

"Yeah," Harry said. Honesty compelled him to add, "You weren't exactly wrong, though."

"Story of my life," she said as she scrubbed a plate. "I'm right, but annoying about it. My life literally depends on it and I can't stop being obnoxious."

"I don't want you to stop standing up for yourself," Harry said. "We just have to work out how to do that in a way that communicates what you want without being unnecessarily harsh." He looked down. "It looks like our current compromise worked. Instead of you telling me how to wash, you're washing and I'm drying."

"And I'm ignoring how the plates aren't as dry as I'd like," Hermione said.

"And I'm ignoring how much longer you take with each item," Harry countered.

They looked at each other and laughed. "Maybe we can do this," Hermione said.

"I think so," Harry replied.

A few minutes later, Hermione asked, "Sue wasn't taking the mickey about you being a huge celebrity, was she?"

Harry shook his head. "Sadly, no. I have people stop me on the street all the time, and I guarantee you that you'd end up in the Daily Prophet if you were seen eating out with me."

"That sounds dreadful," she said.

"It is," he replied. "Even if we glamoured your appearance, I'd still be worried about attracting too much attention to you."

"I see what you mean." Hermione dried off another plate and put it away. "And thank you for trying to help me make more friends, too. I can tell that's what you're trying to do."

"Oh. I wasn't too obvious, was I?"

"I don't think so," she said. "I do appreciate the thought. As introverted as I am, I'd probably still go stir-crazy studying here all day, every day."

"I can imagine." Harry dried the last glass and put it back in the cupboard. "Well, thank you for helping with the dishes."

"No problem!" Hermione said. "I mean, I live here now. They're my responsibility, too."

Harry blinked. "Oh, right. Sorry, I forgot that for a second. When I left this place on Sunday, I didn't think I'd come back with a flatmate."

"I see what you mean," she said. "Is it weird?"

"Very. Not bad, mind. Just weird. Anyway, speaking of you moving in, do you need any help with your stuff?"

"No, thank you, but I probably should get working on that," she said. "Thank you for the reminder."

"No problem." She hurried upstairs and left Harry to his own devices. Unfortunately, Harry was still too keyed up to focus on a book or Wizarding Talk Radio (which was generally as vapid as the Daily Prophet, anyway), and after about fifteen minutes he gave up and decided to do something useful. He dug up some parchment, a self-inking quill, and the only first-year textbook he still had left, and got to work. He was still at it when she came down two hours later, sweaty and smiling.

"That was all of it," she said. "I've loaded everything into the dresser and the marvellous walk-in closet. One question, though: that closet seems like it extends past the walls of the house. Is that…"

"Magic, yes," Harry said. "I thought I might need more closet space, so I paid someone to cast some Space-Expansion Charms on them."

"That's incredibly useful," Hermione said. "So, what have you been up to?"

"I'm planning out a first-year Charms curriculum for you," he said. "We'll only have a couple of months for each year, so I'm trying to hit the most important spells only, either for their uses or the theory behind them."

"Thank you," she said. "I didn't mean to steal your whole Sunday."

He waved off her concerns. "No worries. I'd probably just be down the pub otherwise and this is an interesting challenge." His body promptly registered its disagreement with a yawn. "Do you have any idea what time…" the grandfather clock in the floo room started chiming the hour.

"Is it midnight already?" Hermione asked when the chimes finished.

"Apparently. Shall we call it a night?"

"I want to get right into studying," she said, "but I wouldn't retain anything at this hour. We should sleep."

Harry rose and stretched. "You're probably right. After our adventure this morning, we need rest. Goodnight, Hermione. Let me know if you need anything."

"OK," she said. "Goodnight, Harry. And…thank you. For everything." She bit her lower lip for a moment in thought, then lunged at him and hugged the life out of him briefly before running back upstairs.

He stood for a moment in the empty living room, lost in thought. He couldn't deny he was nervous about whether he could live with someone he barely knew, but after that evening, he thought they could make it work. And he couldn't deny that it was nice to have someone in the house to say "goodnight" to, and to say "goodnight" to him.


Harry left his old-fashioned dual-bell alarm clock off the next morning and ended up rolling out of bed around nine. There was no sign of life from Hermione's direction, so he showered and slipped out of the house to get some food (since he still couldn't lift the stasis charms on his). The convenience store about three blocks back towards Grimmauld Place provided the basics, and he resolved to do a proper grocery run later.

The house was still quiet when he returned, and in no time at all he had a proper fry-up going. Hermione came down around when he was finishing up, wearing an old bathrobe and carrying a bag of toiletries. "That smells wonderful!" she said.

"I thought we could use a serious breakfast this morning," he replied.

"Thank you," she said. "Do I have time…?"

"Maybe five minutes," Harry said.

She nodded and hurried around him into the downstairs bathroom. There was probably a good reason these old houses only had bathrooms on the very top and bottom floors, but he'd never figured it out.

Hermione was out of the bathroom in no time and, after they'd thoroughly stuffed themselves on eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, tomato, and beans, insisted that she take care of all of the clean-up. That worked out nicely, since Harry was firmly of the opinion that cooking without magic was vastly more fun than cleaning without it.

Afterward, she settled in for a proper shower while Harry looked around for any books that might give him an idea of what a proper home potions lab would require. Eventually, he found the copy of "The Prudent Potioneer" Andi had given him as a graduation present in the (vain) hope he would continue to practice her art. It had a good list for a well-stocked home lab, as well as recommended Charms to protect the rest of the house from said lab and instructions for performing them.

He instinctively pulled out his wand to duplicate the pages with supply suggestions, but stopped himself before actually performing the spell. That reminded him that he needed to get Hermione her own wand, but that would have to wait until she could perform magic, too. In the meantime, there was nothing for it but to write it the old-fashioned way.

By the time she finished showering and went back upstairs in her old bathrobe, he had a solid list for her Potions lab, and was putting the finishing touches on his draft Charms curriculum from the previous night when she came back down dressed in jeans and a jumper and carrying some parchment and a pair of quills. "Alright," she said, "where do I begin?"

"I think I have a decent idea for an introduction to Charms theory for today," he said. "One question, though: are you going to be able to take notes with a quill?"

"I've been doing it all week at Sirius's house," she said. "It was weird at first, but I got the hang of it quicker than I thought I would. It forces you to be mindful as you write and only jot down the most important things, so you have to figure out what those are quickly."

"I never thought about it like that." Harry picked up his notes and took a deep breath. "We have nine months to turn you into a witch, starting now. Let's do this."