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Chapter Text

The doorbell above the entrance let out its usual soft chime; silver-toned, like wind through hollow bone, as Hermione pushed open the door to Sage.

Sage did not simply sit on Diagon Alley: it breathed there. From the outside, it looked more like a storybook cottage than a shop: painted in muted sage-green with climbing jasmine curling over the front windows, tiny silver runes etched into the wooden trim like protection charms disguised as decoration. A brass bell hung over the door, not enchanted, just charming, and soft candle-gold light always spilled through the panes, warm even in winter. The sign above the door was hand-carved:

Sage

Herbal & Arcane Remedies - Curated by H.J. Granger

A sprig of silver-leafed sage wood-burned along the bottom, simple and elegant. Inside, the shop unfurled in warm earth tones: oak shelves polished to a soft honey shine, worn smooth where countless fingertips had trailed across the wood. Glass apothecary jars lined the walls, each labeled in Hermione’s meticulous script: lavender, powdered moonstone, dried hellebore petals, phoenix-ash salve. A narrow copper rail ran beneath the shelving where bunches of drying herbs dangled overhead, their soft scent always hanging in the air with rosemary, mugwort, chamomile, St. John's wort, sage in several varieties.

The counter at the front was a dark marble slab set atop reclaimed holly wood, its surface veined with gentle silver like moonlight caught in stone. Behind it, neat drawers and a small enchanted scale. A glass cloche held freshly brewed tinctures, and a sleepy pot of honey-gold calming balm sat in the corner, steaming gently like a friendly cauldron that had decided to settle down and raise herbs instead of trouble.

At the back of the shop, beyond a beaded curtain threaded with moonstone chips and sage beads, was the potion room, Hermione’s sanctuary. No grand cauldrons or theatrical bubbling, just quiet precision: shelves of ingredients organized by potency, not alphabet; three workbenches carved with rune-circles to stabilize magic; a copper cauldron she’d restored herself; and neatly rolled parchment notes pinned above each station. It smelled faintly of peppermint oil, crushed petals, and parchment warmed by lantern-light. A window overlooked a tiny courtyard garden, where she grew magical lavender and silver-sage in clay pots charmed to thrive even in the chill.

Sage felt alive, serene yet steady, an anchor for those who entered. A place built by a woman who had spent a lifetime fighting battles outside and now fought the quiet ones within, turning healing into ritual, and ritual into refuge. The air inside was already thick with scent: lavender and crushed juniper, warmed beeswax and parchment, something sharper (ginseng, maybe) hiding underneath. Dust motes danced lazily in the morning light filtering through the slatted blinds, falling across rows of dark-glass bottles and hanging bundles of drying herbs. The space had its own rhythm, its own silence. The kind that settled into the cracks of the day and held everything still.

She exhaled slowly. Here, at least, the world felt manageable. Shedding her cloak and hanging it on the iron hook beside the counter, Hermione tucked a stray curl behind her ear and moved with practiced ease. Flip the “Closed” sign to “Open”. Light the hearth in the back. Stir the cauldron that had been brewing overnight, a cooling tonic for spell-burns, commissioned by a mediwitch at St. Mungo’s. She sniffed it and adjusted the flame beneath it, almost absentmindedly, already compiling her mental list for the day.

Calendula for Mrs. Oakwood’s arthritis poultice. More valerian root to replenish the sleep tinctures. An owl to the supplier in Copenhagen about the centaur-harvested sage. Check in with Briony about her Herbology practicals. And later, her shift at the hospital. Hermione closed her eyes for a moment, letting the faint hum of the wards settle around her. It was early yet, the quiet hour before the regulars arrived and the noise of the world cracked open. She liked this part best.

At precisely eight thirty, the front door creaked open again.

“Morning, boss,” Briony chirped, her braid lopsided, cheeks pink from the morning air.

Briony Fairclough had arrived at Sage the same way some rare plants arrived in Hermione’s greenhouse: unexpected, quietly extraordinary, and with roots that took hold before anyone quite realized it. She was twenty-four, bright-eyed and sharply thoughtful, with the sort of Ravenclaw intellect that glittered like the edge of a well-honed quill. Not the airy, distracted sort of clever, but the kind that could dismantle complex theory with soft questions and a cup of tea placed silently at your elbow.

Her hair was a tumble of dark auburn curls she never quite managed to tame, usually pinned back with a quill or a sprig of rosemary she’d forgotten she tucked there. Her eyes were a storm-soft blue, always assessing, always learning. Freckles dusted the bridge of her nose, the bridge between a serious scholar and someone who still laughed with her whole face.

Briony was a muggleborn who had graduated Hogwarts a few years after the war, top of her class in Charms and Potions, and then worked briefly at St. Mungo’s, where Hermione first noticed her. Not because she was loud or ambitious, but because she had steadiness. A way of holding space for patients that felt strikingly familiar. Kindness without fragility. Curiosity without arrogance. When Hermione opened Sage, she hadn’t intended to hire anyone, but Briony showed up one morning with a meticulously organized binder titled “Herbal Integration & Muggle Herbology Expansion Models for Sage Apothecary.” And then she’d nervously added, “I could… help. If you want.” Hermione had wanted help.

Briony worked methodically but moved with a quiet excitement, the sort that made bottling tinctures feel like stargazing and reorganizing salves feel like solving mysteries. She asked thoughtful questions. She brewed delicate blends. And sometimes, when the shop was still, Hermione caught her humming ancient Ravenclaw lullabies under her breath as she labeled jars in looping ink. Hermione trusted her. Deeply, instinctively. And Briony, for all her polite reserve, clearly admired Hermione with something like awe, not the celebrity awe the world still projected onto the Golden Trio, but the quiet admiration of student for mentor, and woman for woman. People learned quickly that Sage belonged to Hermione’s brilliance, but Briony stitched herself into its rhythm like silk thread in steady hands, making everything run smoother, brighter, easier. And she often wondered, in moments between crushing herbs and stirring remedies, if young witches like Briony might be proof that the world they fought for had indeed arrived, fragile and real, breathing.

“Morning,” Hermione said, managing a small smile. “Kettle’s hot if you want tea.”

“Please,” Briony said, dropping her bag behind the counter and heading straight for the back.

“How late were you here last night?”

“Not too late.” A lie. She’d left the apothecary well past midnight, after spending hours reviewing a series of obscure case studies on hereditary hexes. She’d brought three home and dreamt about blood magic twisting like vines around a ribcage. She didn’t tell Briony that part.

“Your rotation at Mungo’s today is Spell Damage, right?” Briony asked from the back room, her voice slightly muffled.

“Mm. Noon to eight. Could you mind the shop ‘til close?”

“Course.” A pause. “And you’ll eat something before you go, right?”

Hermione snorted softly. “Yes, Mum.”

Briony emerged again with two mismatched mugs and handed Hermione one, then leaned on the counter, watching her. “You’ve got that look again.”

“What look?”

“The one that means you spent the night thinking too much and sleeping too little.”

Hermione didn’t answer. She took a sip of tea instead. “C’mon, we’ve got work to do”.

***

The hours slipped by the way they often did: quietly, steadily, like water down a smooth stone. A handful of customers came and went. Hermione measured out doses, scribbled notes in careful handwriting, smiled when appropriate. Listened.

A man with trembling hands who couldn’t bear loud noises anymore. A witch with a fresh scar crossing her cheek, eyes wide and glassy. A child with panic attacks triggered by the smell of smoke. She didn’t ask for stories. They bled through anyway.

At eleven-thirty, she changed into her hospital robes in the back room, re-braided her hair, and flooed directly to the Spell Damage wing. The noise hit her first: distant groans, voices half-lost to Pain Relief charms, the rustle of mediwitches moving like wind across the floor.

She moved like wind too.

There was a rhythm here, different from Sage, but one she had memorized nonetheless. She fell into it: checking charts, casting diagnostics, discussing new potion trials with Healer Kaminsky. The stale scent of antiseptic clung to her robes. It was the third double shift this week, and Hermione Granger was beginning to feel it in her bones.

The wing lights of St. Mungo’s dimmed slightly to signal the night turnover. Her wand hand ached. She flipped through the notes in the latest patient’s file and tried to shake the image of his burns from her mind. Magical fire was unpredictable, and no one knew that better than Healers. She adjusted the lapel of her green robes as she walked down the corridor toward the break station. Her office upstairs still needed reorganising. She had found at least two rogue doxy wings wedged between dried aconite samples yesterday. But tonight, she needed a breath. A pause.

A familiar figure leaned against the corridor wall near the break station, flipping idly through a folder.

Auror robes. Worn boots. A posture that still carried echoes of vigilance, even at rest.

Harry Potter.

His scar was mostly hidden by tousled black hair now, softened by time, by age, by the quiet weight of a life lived beyond survival. It had been twelve years since the war ended. Twelve years since the boy who had once carried the fate of the world on his shoulders had been allowed, finally, to grow into a man.

He was an Auror now. A good one.

A husband. A father of three.

Married to one of Hermione’s best friends.

And still, impossibly, her brother in all the ways that mattered.

They had not been born family. They had chosen it - again and again - through loss, through rebuilding, through the stubborn insistence on staying when it would have been easier to drift apart.

"I thought you were stationed in Wales this week," she said, sliding up beside him.

Harry glanced sideways and gave her a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"They reassigned me. London needed backup."

Hermione’s brow furrowed. "Backup for what?"

He shut the folder with a sigh. "Coffee?"

She hesitated for a breath, then nodded. "Please."

They made their way to the staff lounge, modestly charmed to smell like cinnamon and fresh parchment, and poured two mugs from the never-quite-full pot. They sat near the corner, at their usual table. Hermione casted a muffliato.

“They’ve been sighted again,” Harry said without preamble, stirring his coffee counterclockwise. “Three incidents in the last fortnight. Brighton, then Hereford, and now Leeds.”

Hermione blinked, her mug pausing halfway to her lips. “Incidents?”

“Subtle ones,” he clarified. “Break-ins. Museums, mostly. Muggle institutions. A handful of artefacts taken - nothing that looks impressive on paper, but all of it… intentional.”

She set the mug down carefully. “Any casualties?”

“No,” Harry said. “That’s what makes it worse. No deaths. No direct attacks. Just panic. Confusion. Entire city blocks unsettled by magic they can’t name.”

Hermione frowned. “You’re sure it’s dark magic?”

“Same residue every time. Black scorch patterns along the wards and walls. Not enough to trigger alarms immediately, but unmistakable once you know what you’re looking for. No Dark Mark in the sky,” he added quietly, “but the feeling is there.”

She folded her arms, leaning back in her chair. “Do you think it’s really them?”

Harry shook his head slowly. “I don’t see how it could be. Most of the Death Eaters are dead or in Azkaban. The rest are too fractured, too afraid, or too watched to organise anything like this.” He hesitated. “But whatever’s doing this is borrowing their language. Their magic.”

“That’s what worries Kingsley,” Hermione murmured.

“And me,” Harry said. “They’re not claiming responsibility. No messages. No threats. No demands. Just… fear left behind. Like something testing the ground.”

Hermione exhaled, her gaze drifting to the window. “I thought we were past all this.”

“So did I.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

Outside, night cloaked the hospital wing. Somewhere in the distance, a soft flicker of blue Patronus light darted through a far corridor - brief, purposeful, gone almost as soon as it appeared.

Something old was stirring. Not loudly. Not yet.

"You’re still coming Sunday?" Harry asked, voice lighter.

She blinked again, pulling her thoughts back. "To the Burrow? Of course. Ginny would hex me if I missed another one."

He grinned. "Molly’s making roast lamb."

"And you’re using that to bribe me. Shame on you, Harry."

He shrugged, sipping. "Whatever works."

After they parted ways, Hermione apparated home in silence. The lights of her apothecary, Sage, were off for the night, the soft scent of dried lavender clinging to the curtains. She climbed the narrow staircase to the flat above, lighting candles with a flick of her wand. It was small, but hers. Books stacked in corners. An old knit blanket from Molly draped over the sofa.

She pulled her hair down, massaging her scalp absentmindedly. Her eyes landed on the shelf above her writing desk. A collection of photographs lined the narrow space: a silver-framed one of Teddy Lupin grinning mischievously, his hair shifting from blue to green to pink; another of her, Harry, and Ron on the day they’d reopened the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, arms slung around one another, sun in their eyes; one static Muggle photo of her and her parents in front of a quiet beach cottage in Cornwall, taken before the war and untouched by magic; a recent one of her holding little Lily Potter in her lap as Albus and James mugged for the camera on either side; and a candid of her with Luna and Neville, the three of them seated in a wildflower meadow, half-laughing, half-midstory, caught forever in the golden hour. Each image was a memory preserved. Some moving, some still, like small windows into the life she had tried so hard to keep stitched together.

Hermione exhaled softly. Twelve years since the end of the war. It sounded like a lifetime, and yet, some things never changed.

But she had.

Who would have thought that the fourteen-year-old girl who once stood trembling but defiant in a classroom, arguing for the freedom of house-elves, would someday be the witch who drafted, defended, and finally passed the law that ensured they were paid, protected, and seen? She had done it. Five relentless years at the Ministry - corridors that smelled of ink and old magic, debates that stretched past midnight, compromises that tasted bitter even when they were necessary.

She was proud of that work. Grateful for it. It had mattered.

And still, somewhere along the way - in quiet sessions with a mind healer, in long silences that followed victories that should have felt fuller - she had begun to understand something about herself. That helping did not always have to look like policy and parchment. That healing could happen far from conference tables, in smaller rooms, with steadier hands.

Andromeda had seen it before Hermione could name it. A retired Healer by then, sharp-eyed and unflinching, she had become an unexpected mentor, guiding her through textbooks that smelled of dust and chamomile, through the discipline of potion theory married to care, through the humility of learning how to tend instead of command.

The transition had been slow. Deliberate. Necessary.

Now she owned her own apothecary, surrounded by herbs and glass vials and the soft patience of growing things. Sage. Nearly a year old. Built not from ambition, but from longing - a desire to expand what it meant to help, to touch lives in ways that felt more human, more sustainable. She had discovered a love for working with plants, for the language of leaves and roots, for remedies that listened before they acted.

She was still learning. Still reaching. Still trying to make things right.

But she was no longer the rigid, painfully rational girl she had been in the early years at Hogwarts, measuring the world in rules and absolutes because chaos had terrified her. Life, through love and loss in equal measure, had softened her. Not weakened her. Softened her enough to see nuance. To sit with uncertainty. To understand that most truths lived in the grey spaces between right and wrong.

Still, some part of her wondered if it would ever be enough.

After all these years - after the war and the rebuilding and the forgiveness - would peace ever feel natural to her? Or were there ghosts that simply refused to rest, no matter how much light one brought into their life?
She sat at the desk. Opened her journal. Wrote nothing.

Her mind drifted, uninvited, to the rising fear curling in the pit of her stomach. She had fought too hard, for too long, to feel this again. The cold knot of dread that came with whispers of Death Eaters returning. Her hand lingered over the spine of the journal, fingers twitching. For a long time, she had convinced herself that peace would hold - not perfectly, not forever, but enough.

And yet here they were. Strange signs. Unspoken threats. People looking over their shoulders again. Her jaw clenched. And then, like a thread tugged loose from memory, she thought of the blade. Bellatrix Lestrange’s blade. The night they were taken to Malfoy Manor. The scream that tore her throat, the burn that seared her forearm. A slice meant to maim, not kill. But Dark Magic didn’t always announce itself loudly. Not a wound. Not a disease. A curse with no clear name.

Months later, in a quiet, antiseptic room at St. Mungo’s, a diagnostic charm had flickered strangely across her abdomen. The Healer’s brows had furrowed. They had asked questions. Run more scans. But no answer ever fully explained what had happened. Only the lingering curse signature remained: subtle, deep, and tied to blood. A blood curse. Ancient magic, tangled in intention and blood and pain. Something Bellatrix had imbued into the blade, perhaps not even fully consciously. But it had settled into Hermione like a seed, hidden deep. Dormant, insidious. A tether of magic that rendered her infertile.

Not by breaking her body, but by sealing something within it. She had read everything. Consulted every expert. Sought obscure rituals and whispered remedies. And still, the curse held. Some days she hated how quietly it had done its damage. How permanent it had become before she even knew it was there. Other days, it felt like a bruise she pressed on, just to remind herself it hadn’t disappeared.

What unsettled her most was how personal it felt. As if Bellatrix had reached through the years to snatch away something essential, something private. Not just her future children, but her choice. It had changed her, in ways she rarely spoke of.
In how she looked at family. In how she carried grief. In how she avoided certain questions, even from friends.

She had thrown herself into research after that, not the comfortable kind tucked inside well-organized textbooks, but the impossible cures buried in footnotes, the fringe theories dismissed by the Ministry, the rituals whispered about in old journals no one bothered to catalogue. If she couldn’t fix what had been taken from her, she could at least learn the shape of the loss. And somewhere along the way, it stopped being only about her.

The blood curse had lit a fire in her she couldn’t put out, a need to understand the magic that maimed as much as the magic that mended. She still hadn’t cracked her own curse; access to the materials and archives was maddeningly scarce. But she was close, after many years, to publishing her first real breakthrough: the lycanthropy cure she developed with Theo Nott, Lunaris. It was something fragile and astonishing that made her believe, for the first time in years, that maybe nothing was truly “impossible” after all.

She looked out the window. The moon was waxing. The wind whispered against the glass.

She traced her fingers across the cover of the journal.

There were wars, and there were aftermaths.

Chapter Text

The Burrow was alive with sound.

Laughter spilled from the windows, carried on the warm breeze of a Sunday afternoon. The long wooden table in the garden was already half-covered with platters of roast lamb, glazed carrots, Yorkshire puddings, and Molly Weasley’s famous treacle tart. Chickens clucked nearby, and the gnome garden had recently been de-gnomed, though a few stubborn ones peeked warily from under the hedge.

Hermione stood for a moment at the edge of the yard, letting herself soak it all in: the laughter, the clatter, the sweetness of honeysuckle in the air. The Burrow hadn’t changed much over the years. A little more creaky, a bit more lopsided, but it still felt like home.

Ginny was pouring pumpkin juice into tall glasses while her youngest, Lily, toddled barefoot through the grass, giggling as she tried to catch a charmed Quaffle that bobbed just out of reach. James, now seven, sat proudly at the head of the children’s table, retelling a wildly exaggerated story about spotting a rogue Niffler at Diagon Alley. Albus, five, clung more quietly to his mother’s skirts at first, then wandered toward the table, fingers smeared with strawberry jam from a half-eaten tart he’d stolen off the tray.

"Hermione!" Molly’s voice floated across the garden. "There you are, love. Come, sit! You’re far too thin, I won’t hear another word until you’ve eaten."

Hermione smiled and made her way over, hugging Molly tightly before taking a seat between Ron and Ginny. Arthur was tinkering with what looked like an enchanted lawnmower nearby, muttering about "muggle engineering genius."

Ron grinned at her as he passed the potatoes. "Thought you were going to bail again."

"I wouldn't dare face your mother’s wrath," she said with a smirk, spooning potatoes onto her plate. "Besides, you lot are the best part of my week."

He bumped her shoulder with his. "You say that now, but wait until George starts on about nosebleed nougats again." As if on cue, George raised his glass from across the table. "Oi! Who’s slandering my legacy?"

They all laughed, and for a while, the conversation turned light. Percy boasting about his daughter’s top marks in Transfiguration, Bill discussing Fleur’s latest Gringotts expedition, Ginny teasing Harry for nearly falling off his broom during Auror drills. Mrs. Weasley had proudly passed around a moving photograph of Charlie and his new boyfriend, Bruno, a dragon specialist from Brazil. The two of them were waving cheerfully from somewhere deep in the Amazon rainforest, their faces sunlit and content, scales glinting faintly in the background from the dragons they were taking together to Romania. They looked genuinely happy, wild and free in a way that made Molly smile.

Hermione noticed Harry’s eyes softened watching the scene. He still carried himself like the young boy she’d met on the train, but there was weight behind his smile now. Years of leadership, parenthood, war. He caught her gaze and raised an eyebrow, and she nodded slightly.

And then there was Ron.

Merlin, how grateful she was that, after a few painful days, they had both realized they were better off as friends. Ron had always wanted something simple: a warm home, a loving wife, children to come back to at the end of the day.

Hermione was never meant for that kind of life. She wasn’t built for the traditional sort of love. And even if she had been… well, she’d learned the hardest way that some things simply weren’t meant to be.

But it comforted her to know Ron had found peace with Susan, and Harry with Ginny. They all deserved it. Still, no matter how fulfilling her work was, there were nights when the silence pressed too close, when the house felt a little too big, and the ghosts of what might’ve been lingered just long enough to make her ache.

A soft burst of laughter rose from across the room, pulling her gently back into the present. The warm hum of conversation wrapped around her like a familiar shawl. Life moved - bright, bustling, imperfect, alive - even when old aches stirred beneath the surface. The lanterns Molly had hung along the porch beams flickered in the early dusk, casting honey-colored light across the wooden planks. Children darted past her ankles, grass stains on their knees, pockets full of stolen treacle tart.

Hermione breathed in deeply. Honeysuckle. Fresh bread. The faint metallic twinge of old magic lingering near her scar. Sometimes the world was kind enough to let all these things coexist.

As the servers floated by with trays of shimmering tarts and sugared citrus, the mood shifted.

The children squealed, darting after Susan and her enchanted soap bubbles, which glowed like tiny moons drifting through the air. Their laughter rose like sparks, bright enough to cut through the growing tension threading the adults’ table.

“Three attacks now,” Harry said quietly, pushing his plate aside.

The clink of cutlery faded around them, conversation from the garden dulling to a distant hum.

“And all so deliberately spaced,” Ginny added. “They’re trying to stir panic. Not chaos. Panic.”

Ron leaned in, elbows on the table. “The same markings as before?”

Hermione nodded, her throat tightening. “Harry showed me the file. Black scorch patterns. Almost sigil-like. There’s no signature spell, but the magic is… rotten. Unstable. Like something held together by will alone.”

Harry didn’t answer immediately. He stared down at the grain of the table, jaw tight, as if weighing how much to say.

“Those marks,” he said finally, “aren’t random. Kingsley called me in two nights ago. Private meeting. No minutes, no observers.” He exhaled slowly. “The Department’s been tracking residual dark signatures since the war. Most of them fade. This one hasn’t.”

Ginny’s brows drew together. “You’re saying it’s consistent.”

“I’m saying it’s familiar,” Harry replied. “Old magic. Pre-war training. Someone who knew how to erase his presence just enough to stay beneath alarms, but not enough to disappear entirely.”

Hermione felt something cold coil low in her chest.

“Dolohov,” Harry muttered.

At the name, Hermione’s hand moved instinctively to her chest, brushing the fabric just above her collarbone. The scar was no longer angry purple, time and healing had faded it to a dusky violet-grey, but it still tingled in the cold or when she was afraid.

And she was afraid. Not for herself, not anymore. But for all of them. For this life they had finally managed to build - patched together from grief and stubborn hope, defended inch by inch.

“He’s resurfaced?” Ron asked, voice low, incredulous.

Harry nodded once. “Kingsley believes so. Dolohov’s been flagged for years - sightings across Eastern Europe, then nothing. Off the grid. Out of the United Kingdom entirely.” His gaze lifted, hard. “Until last month.”

Ginny went very still. “He crossed back?”

“Quietly,” Harry said. “No portkey records. No registered apparation. Which means help. Planning.” He hesitated. “And he didn’t come back alone.”

Hermione frowned, her mind already racing. “And Dolohov was always one of the quiet ones,” she said. “Never needed spectacle. Dangerous in his stillness. He preferred systems. Structures. Long games.”

Harry looked at her sharply. “Exactly.”

Silence settled over the table, not empty, but braced. Like the held breath before a storm finally breaks.

From inside the house came the clatter of cutlery and Arthur’s delighted shout about finally getting the enchanted lawnmower to hum. A soft wind stirred the grass around the porch, brushing Hermione’s curls against her cheek. The moment felt suspended - calm wrapped too tightly around something waiting to break.

Ginny gently reached for Hermione’s hand, looking at her chest. “It still hurts?”

Hermione glanced down at the place just above her heart. “It’s just a reminder now,” she murmured.

Ron looked away, jaw tight. “You never deserved that.”

Hermione touched the scar through her robes, fingers steady. “None of us deserved any of it. But here we are.”

Her eyes drifted out across the yard. Children playing. Friends laughing. The sun dipping low enough to turn the sky apricot.

Here we are, she repeated silently. And I will not lose this.

Harry’s expression darkened. “We need more eyes. I was thinking of reaching out to Pansy and Theo. See if they’ve heard anything through their own circles.”

“Good idea,” Ginny said quickly. “They’ve been reliable. Pansy said the last time we wrote that some old families were getting... restless. She didn’t elaborate, but I think she’s watching closely.

“And if anyone can pick up on subtle shifts in the undercurrents,” Hermione added, “it’s Theo. He always had a way of noticing what others didn’t say.”

Ron snorted softly, but there was no derision in it. “Still wild to me that he ended up with Luna. They really were made for each other.”

Hermione smiled - a soft, private thing - as a memory rose: the night of her own birthday years ago, when Theo had finally come out of the Department of Mysteries while they were developing Lunaris, long enough to attend her little rooftop party at Diagon Alley. Luna had wandered over, wearing mismatched shoes and a crown of moon flowers, and Theo had looked at her as though someone had whispered the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.

They had been inseparable ever since. Odd and luminous, a constellation that made more sense the longer you looked.

“And Pansy and Neville,” Ginny said, shaking her head with a grin. “Merlin, who would’ve predicted that?”

Hermione laughed under her breath. “It took them ages to admit it. I think they were the last to realize they liked each other.”

“His grandmother certainly had opinions,” Ron teased.

Hermione nodded. “But she came around faster than I expected. Said Pansy reminded her of herself when she was young - sharp, stubborn, and quick to hex anyone who needed hexing.”

“That lake ceremony last year,” Ginny sighed. “Absolutely stunning.”

Hermione pictured it vividly: the mirror-still water in northern Italy, the floating lilies charmed to glow pink and gold, Neville crying openly while Pansy pretended not to. Hermione had stood beside Luna, hand in hers, thinking that second chances sometimes bloomed in the places most people forgot to look.

“Maybe the world didn’t turn upside down after all,” Harry said thoughtfully. “Maybe it finally landed in the right place.”

Ginny raised her glass. “To unexpected alliances.”

Hermione clinked hers gently. “And to keeping an eye on what matters.”

As the evening wore on and the stars blinked into existence above the crooked rooftop of the Burrow, Hermione felt both held and haunted - tethered to love, to family, to memories that refused to die. She didn’t yet know how the past would rise again. But she felt it, like a storm rolling quietly across the horizon.

She was no longer the teenager fighting a war that had never truly belonged to her generation. She was the adult now, a healer, a strategist, a woman who had learned to love fiercely and protect relentlessly. Her friends had become her family. Merlin, they all had families of their own.

Once, they had fought for the world they hoped to build; now, they fought to protect the one they finally had.

And no one threatened a lioness’s pride.

After all, there was a reason the Sorting Hat had placed her in Gryffindor.

Chapter Text

The morning at Sage began quietly.

Hermione had always loved the early hush of the apothecary, when the light filtered through the frosted windows in muted golds, and the scents of dried herbs and polished oak lingered in the still air. She moved through the shop with practiced grace, wandlessly unlocking cabinets, sorting ingredients, and whispering a soft cleaning charm as she passed her wand over the counter. The copper kettles gleamed. Rows of potion bottles lined the shelves in precise gradients of color, from soft blue sleep draughts to deep red pepper-up tonics.

Crookshanks trailed at her heels, curling up at his usual spot by the sunlit corner window. Oh, Crooks… during the Horcrux hunt, Hermione had begged him to hide. A week after the Battle of Hogwarts, Crookshanks had found her again. She was in tears, standing before the empty house where her parents once lived, before she’d sent them to Australia. He had followed her through the long, three-year journey that came after, as she tried, and failed, to restore their memories. Another ghost of the war. Another consequence of choices made out of love and fear.

Hermione took comfort in knowing that Wendell and Monica Wilkins were two healthy dentists enjoying their quiet life somewhere along the Australian coast. But it still ached, knowing she could never again be their daughter, not truly. Even so, she was grateful for the family she had built since then. For Sage. For the small life she’d created for herself, and for Crooks, steadfast as ever. Thank Godric for the Kneazle blood that kept him alive far longer than any ordinary cat. Losing him, she thought, would be one loss too many to bear.

Her hands moved automatically as she weighed mugwort and rosehips, but her mind circled back, again and again, to the conversation from yesterday. Dolohov. A name that once had the power to paralyze. Now, it stirred something colder. Calculating. A curse mark that tingled faintly beneath her blouse.

She shook her head, focusing instead on the vial labels. She still had two custom orders to finish before brunch. One for a mild calming tincture, the other for a fertility support elixir - one she brewed more out of professional obligation than belief in its effectiveness. For others, it sometimes helped. For her, it never would.

By late morning, she had left Briony in charge and apparated to the leafy courtyard of a small magical café in Notting Hill, where everyday was summer - a favorite spot for brunch among her closest friends. The tables spilled into the garden, clustered between potted lavender and enchanted wind chimes.

Luna was already there - all ethereal calm and soft color, her linen wrap dress embroidered with tiny Thestrals in silver thread that shimmered when she moved. Her hair was longer now, loosely braided with sprigs of rosemary she must have collected on the walk over. She sat barefoot, ankles tucked beneath her, sipping tea that shifted hues like a slow-turning aurora.

Pansy sat across from her in sharp black robes tailored within an inch of perfection. Her sunglasses were far too large for the weather and her lipstick a precise, intimidating berry-red. A copy of Witch Weekly lay open in front of her - or rather, had been interrogated by her; she was already halfway through judging its fashion section into oblivion.

“Thank Merlin, you’re here,” Pansy drawled as Hermione approached. “I’m surrounded by positivity and whimsy.”

Luna smiled serenely, tucking a strand of pale hair behind her ear. “Whimsy is very good for the spleen, you know.”

Pansy shuddered theatrically.

Ginny arrived moments later, hair windblown and cheeks flushed from a morning run. She looked like the definition of living warmth - bright eyes, sun-kissed freckles even during winter, and a sleeveless top that made her look ready to sprint into either a duel or a hug, depending on the need.

They all exchanged hugs, and soon a pot of chai and warm honey scones had appeared on the table.

Hermione felt her shoulders loosen the moment she sat. She hadn’t realized how tightly she had been holding herself until now. These women - chaotic, brilliant, unpredictable, steady - were the closest thing she had to sisters.

Hermione scanned the small garden café, noticing one absence before anything else.

“Where’s Susan?” she asked, setting her bag down beside Ginny.

Ginny snorted into her chai before answering. “Caught a last-minute incident at the Auror Office. Something about an ‘unauthorized demonstration of controlled substances.’” She made air quotes with an exaggerated flourish. “Which, translated from Harry’s language, means she’s teaching him how to brew something technically illegal but morally useful.”

Pansy arched a brow over her sunglasses. “Potter learning illicit potions? Oh, this I would pay to see.”

Luna stirred her tea, which had just turned lavender. “I hope they’re being careful. The last time Susan experimented with volatile mixtures, the cauldron grew legs and left the building.”

Hermione laughed - soft, fond, involuntary. Of course Susan wasn’t there. She was brilliant, fierce, and carried a gravitational pull toward chaos that rivaled Ginny’s. And for a moment, the thought flickered warm in her chest: how good it felt to have Susan woven into this circle now.

In the years after the war, Susan Bones had fit into Hermione’s life with a quiet inevitability - like something that had always been meant but only now found space to bloom. They had been colleagues through the worst of the reconstruction, but friendship… that had come later. Slowly. Solidly. As Susan and Ron found each other in the wreckage of who they used to be.

They had met in the Auror Office - both determined to make something meaningful from the rubble of their own losses. What began as camaraderie had turned into companionship, then affection, then marriage, almost before anyone had time to blink. Hermione remembered standing beside Ginny at their tiny ceremony at the Burrow, watching Ron’s hands shake as he slid the ring onto Susan’s finger. It had been the first time she’d seen him look truly anchored.

Susan had become something like a sister after that - sharp and funny, with a bite that matched Pansy’s and a kindness that soothed like Luna’s. She challenged Hermione, defended her, teased her, held her together on days where she felt stretched thin.

And here, in this sunny little courtyard, her absence left a small, Susan-shaped space that Hermione felt with unexpected clarity.

“She’ll join if she can,” Ginny added, bumping Hermione’s shoulder. “You know how she and Harry get about ‘important experiments.’”

Hermione smiled into her spritzer. “I do. And I’m glad she’s got him to keep her from blowing up the entire Auror wing.”

“Optimistic,” Pansy said dryly. “I’d say it’s fifty-fifty.”

Their laughter rolled easy into the morning air, and Hermione let herself settle into it - grateful, grounded - surrounded by the women who had become her constellation.

Pansy gave Ginny a dramatic once-over, then smirked at Hermione.

“You look like you haven’t slept in a century,” she said, pouring some tea. “So, business is booming.”

“Exhaustion is the price of brilliance,” Hermione deadpanned, accepting the hibiscus spritzer Luna ordered for her.

Talk meandered comfortably, like a river finding its way around smooth stones.

Hermione half-listened, half-watched them - the tableau they made, the life that had grown in the cracks after war.

Ginny, all flame and laughter. Luna, all moonlight and truth. And Pansy…

Pansy was the one who surprised her the most.

Hermione glanced at her now - the dramatic tilt of her chin, the razor-sharp humor, the sunglasses perched like armor. It was easy, from the outside, to mistake Pansy Parkinson for vanity and venom. But Hermione had learned better.

She wished, sometimes, that she’d known this Pansy sooner - the one who could make her laugh until her ribs hurt, the one who would hex bureaucracy on Hermione’s behalf, the one who showed up at her door with soup when she was sick and wine when she was sad.

They had become close in the strangest, quietest way.

Back in their eighth year, both of them bruised in different places, Pansy had been the one person Hermione hadn’t expected to orbit toward her.

Hermione had been grieving the loss of her parents - gone to Australia, technically alive, technically reachable, but no longer hers. The Unspeakables working with the Australian Ministry had written back, cautious, noncommittal, promising that memory work of that magnitude “required time.” It took three more years before they would finally admit there was no way to reverse the spell she herself had cast.

But Pansy had been there from the very first letter - the one that didn’t yet say irreversible, only uncertain - and somehow that was worse. Hermione had spent months oscillating between hope and dread, and it had been Pansy who found her crying in the empty stairwell near the Hogwart’s library after that initial reply. Pansy who sat beside her without saying a word. Pansy who simply placed a hand on her back and stayed.

Because Pansy, too, had been freshly broken.

Her father imprisoned. Her mother, gone by her own wand. Her younger sister, the one Hermione had once seen trailing after Pansy in Diagon Alley, murdered by the same men Pansy had been raised to trust.

Pansy had never truly believed in Voldemort. She had believed in survival. But survival had betrayed her anyway.

Two girls with different scars, sitting on a stone stair, breathing in sync for the first time.

That afternoon marked the beginning of something neither of them named.

Not a reconciliation. Not forgiveness. Simply a quiet decision to sit beside one another again the next day.

And the one after that.

Pansy began appearing at the long tables in the library without comment, sliding into the empty chair across from Hermione with a stack of books and a familiar, unimpressed huff. Ginny joined them soon after, then Neville, earnest and gentle, always bringing extra parchment. Theo followed eventually, orbiting like a curious comet.

They studied together. Not just spells and theory, but how to exist in the aftermath of war without flinching at every shadow.

Pansy was sharper than Hermione had expected - disciplined, methodical, impatient with sloppy thinking. Hermione, in turn, found herself laughing more than she had in months, sometimes at Pansy’s dry commentary on Ministry texts, sometimes simply at the absurdity of surviving long enough to argue footnotes again.

There were small, human moments that stitched themselves into memory.

The morning Pansy cornered Hermione in the girls’ bathroom and demanded, without preamble, to cast a charm to tame her wild curls, struggling with the high humidity of the Scottish castle. Hermione had snorted, but agreed. Pansy rolled up her sleeves, and taught her a modified smoothing spell that respected natural texture instead of flattening it. Hermione stared at her reflection afterward like she’d been handed a new language.

The December trip to Muggle London for Christmas shopping followed soon after. Pansy had asked, hesitant for once, if Hermione would take her. Just for a day. Just to see.

It changed everything.

She fell in love with fabrics that shone with color, with silhouettes unconcerned with tradition, with the quiet rebellion of clothes chosen for comfort and expression rather than lineage. Hermione watched something inside her shift - grief redirected, not erased but transformed. Pansy spoke that evening, over mulled wine and damp coats, about legacy. About inheritance. About using what she had been given - gold, influence, survival - to build something that didn’t rot from the inside.

She would revolutionize wizarding wardrobes, she declared lightly. Drag them, kicking and screaming, into the modern world. Blend Muggle structure with magical craft. Make beauty practical. Make power wearable.

Hermione had believed her without question.

Because she had seen how Pansy Parkinson rebuilt herself: not by denying the past, but by choosing, again and again, not to live inside it.

Her attention drifted to Luna’s voice, sharing updates on her latest article: an in-depth exploration of Mooncalf migration patterns, complete with interviews from Welsh farmers and a poetic tangent on lunar energy.

Pansy, meanwhile, was deep in the chaos of launching a second location of her bespoke wizarding fashion atelier in Paris. “You’d think after proving myself for ten years, they'd stop asking for ridiculous permits,” she huffed. “I’m blending Muggle textiles with spellwoven fabric. It’s revolutionary, but apparently, it’s also ‘potentially hazardous to magical equilibrium.’”

“Hazardous how?” Hermione asked, sipping her drink.

“They’re worried that wizarding robes with stretch might cause a cultural collapse,” Pansy replied dryly. “Heaven forbid someone wear enchanted denim.”

“Your last collection was gorgeous,” Luna said sincerely. “Neville wore your navy overcoat to the Ministry gala last spring, remember?”

Pansy softened a little. “He looked good. He always does, that oaf. He tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but I caught him twirling in the mirror.”

Ginny laughed. “I’d pay galleons to see that.”

“Theo nearly cried when you tailored his first pair of Muggle trousers,” Luna added fondly. “Now he won’t wear anything with wizard buttons. Says they’re barbaric.”

“I believe that,” Ginny said. “I really do.”

But then the conversation turned. Luna casted a muffliato.

“We’ve heard more chatter in the last week,” Luna said softly, her expression distant but focused. “From the centaurs in the south forest. They said the stars are shifting strangely. And those old names are being spoken again.”

“Dolohov?” Hermione asked.

Pansy nodded. “And more. Selwyn. Mulciber. The kind of names that get whispered around pure-blood tables when politics start to taste too much like peace.”

Ginny frowned, leaning forward. “Harry’s getting reports from France and Belgium, small incidents, but too well-coordinated to be random. Theo and Neville intercepted a letter last week that hinted at a gathering. Code phrases. Old spells. It’s... unsettling.”

Ginny exhaled sharply. “Harry’s assembling a unit to track and intercept before anything organizes further. He asked for names, people who know the darker magic, who’ve been on both sides.”

Hermione looked up. “Who’s he asking?”

Pansy didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she took a long sip of tea, then said, “Draco’s coming back.”

Hermione’s fingers stilled around her cup.

She didn’t freeze, not outwardly. But something inside her shifted, subtle and unmistakable, like a door clicking shut somewhere deep in her chest.

Ginny nodded. “He’s been working with the French Auror Department for years now. Clean record. Actually, very good at it. And more importantly, he knows the networks. Harry’s bringing him in.”

Hermione absorbed that in silence for a heartbeat too long.

“I haven’t seen him since the trials,” she said at last, voice calm, almost clinical. “After that, he left for France. He kept his head down. Most people stopped talking about him.”

Pansy watched her over the rim of her cup, sharp-eyed and unreadable.

Hermione took a breath, slower than usual, and set her mug down carefully. “It makes sense,” she added, after a pause. “If this is organized - if it’s someone like Dolohov - Harry will need people who understand how these circles actually work.”

Ginny relaxed a fraction, as if she’d been bracing for something else. “That’s what Harry said too.”

Hermione nodded once. She even managed a small, neutral smile. “Then I hope he’s ready for London again.”

The conversation drifted on.

Luna showed them a new charm she was developing to detect lies through variations in ambient light, her hands sketching soft prisms in the air. Pansy teased Ginny about retiring from Quidditch only to become addicted to morning jogs. The plates were cleared; fresh tea appeared again and again.

Hermione participated when spoken to. Asked a question here. Laughed once, softly, at something Luna said.

But some part of her had already turned inward.

Draco Malfoy. Back in England. Back in Harry’s orbit. Back in the same city where memory had never quite learned how to stay buried.

She told herself - firmly, sensibly - that it was just information.

And wondered, with a quiet, unwelcome ache, why her pulse still hadn’t settled.

***

Back home, after brunch with the girls, and then her shift at St. Mungos, she stood in her small kitchen holding a cup of cold tea.

Crookshanks was already curled on the windowsill, his lion-like tail twitching lazily as he blinked at her with golden eyes that missed nothing. The faint smell of bergamot still lingered in the air from the pot of tea she hadn’t touched, now gone cold.

She reached out to Crooks automatically, running her fingers through the familiar roughness of his fur. He purred a low, grumbly thing, and nudged her hand insistently, then leapt down and padded toward the bookshelf where a tiny, magically warmed cushion waited. His presence had always calmed her, ever since the war. Steady. Loyal. Unfazed by her silences.

Hermione leaned back on the sofa and exhaled slowly, eyes on the dancing shadows cast by the late afternoon sun. The tea sat on the table, cooling further. Her mind, however, was anything but still.

Draco Malfoy.

Of all names, it had to be his.

The shock of hearing it spoken so casually, by Pansy, of course, but then confirmed by Ginny, had knocked something loose inside her. Something old. Unresolved. And now it sat with her like a second shadow, familiar and unwelcome. She hadn’t seen him since the trials, when she and Harry gave statements that made sure him and his mother didn't stay in Azkaban with his father. Hadn’t spoken to him in even longer. She hadn’t thought about him in years, not properly. Not beyond the occasional, clinical acknowledgement of his name in reports or his role as an auror in France.

But now he was coming back. To help. To work with Harry. Her stomach turned at the thought.

And yet… beneath the unease, something else pulsed quietly. A memory she had long pushed aside.

She’d been fiftteen. The Yule Ball had ended in embarrassment. Ron’s jealousy, her tears, the weight of wanting to be seen. She’d fled to the stone staircase outside the Great Hall, hidden in the shadows, still wearing her periwinkle dress and feeling as though the night had frayed something inside her. And then… footsteps.

Not Ron. Not Harry. But Malfoy.

She’d tensed, ready for some cruel jibe. But instead, he had looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and then wordlessly handed her a pressed white handkerchief. Fine linen. Embroidered with a tiny silver D.L.M. in one corner.

Hermione shook her head now, trying to dispel the image. It was absurd, he was absurd. A handkerchief did not erase years of cruelty, or his family's history, or the fact that they were fundamentally opposed in every possible way. And yet… he was coming back. 

Hermione couldn’t afford to be a hypocrite. If she could share tea with Pansy, laugh with Theo, even cross paths with Blaise and Daphne from time to time, why not extend the same courtesy to Malfoy? He, too, had been a soldier once, a boy forced into a war he never truly chose. Only on the opposite side.

And yet… those grey eyes haunted her. The memory of them fixed on her while Bellatrix carved pain into her flesh on the drawing room floor of his family’s manor, that was something she could never quite erase. There had been fury there, she remembered. Or had she imagined it? A fleeting glimmer of defiance, of wanting to stop it all, to save her. But he hadn’t.

Draco Malfoy, back after twelve years in France.

Now, she was friends with his friends. And he would stand on their side of the battlefield this time. Hermione only hoped that he was not the same arrogant prat she once knew, that the war had changed him, as it had changed them all. Not always for the better, but changed nonetheless.

She stood up abruptly and carried the cold tea to the sink. Crookshanks lifted his head lazily as the kettle hissed to life once again, the sharp scent of fresh lemon balm now steeping in the water. Hermione wrapped her arms around herself as the steam rose, fogging the window.

Chapter Text

The lift shuddered slightly as it descended into the lowest levels of the Ministry. Hermione leaned against the brass rail, arms crossed over her chest, watching the flickering lamps blink past through the grated gate. The descent always took longer than it should, almost as if the Department of Mysteries existed in a pocket of the building that bent time just slightly.

It suited Theo, she supposed.

When the doors finally groaned open, the temperature dropped, and that familiar hush wrapped around her shoulders like a weighted cloak. She stepped out into the polished black stone corridor, her footsteps quieted by the silence itself, and made her way through the twisting hallways with practiced familiarity.

​​Normally, it was required a Level 9 clearance to access the Department of Mysteries. But there were perks to being the Golden Girl, War Hero, and Brightest Witch of Her Age.

Also, for three years, Hermione had worked closely with the Department on the development of a lycanthropy cure. That was how she’d grown really closer to Theo in the first place, and how she’d earned permanent clearance to visit the lower floors whenever she pleased.

Theo had, of course, insisted on naming their cure potion Nott-Granger, a ridiculous pun on “not Granger,” which had made her roll her eyes for days. In the end, they’d agreed on calling it Lunaris, after the moon that had once condemned so many.

He was waiting for her.

Theo stood in front of a wide archway, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his wand tucked behind his ear and a steaming mug in his hand. The mist rising from it smelled like clove and something smoky. His tie was loose, and his hair had that usual permanent disarray, less from carelessness and more from constantly running his fingers through it in thought.

“I made the tea you like,” he said by way of greeting, passing her the cup without ceremony.

“Merlin, I needed this,” Hermione said, accepting the warmth into her hands.

“You always do when you visit me down here.” His voice was softer than usual, but it carried. “Long day?”

“Long week.”

Theo tilted his head, and they fell into step beside each other, heading deeper into the Department. He led her past the Hall of Prophecies, now long abandoned, and into a smaller observatory room with charmed ceiling glass that reflected stars in real-time.

They sat on opposite ends of an old velvet settee, worn down and half-shoved into the corner like someone had forgotten it existed. Hermione curled her legs beneath her, letting herself exhale properly for the first time that day.

​​Theo exhaled through his nose, leaning back against the enchanted glass. “By the way, the lycanthropy paper is officially in the Ministry’s pit of bureaucratic doom.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “All tests passed, field trials approved, Healer Council signatures completed months ago… and now we wait for three departments with no actual expertise to debate the placement of a comma.”

Hermione groaned softly. “Don’t remind me. We’re sitting on the first functional reversal in magical-disease history and the delay is because someone in Regulation thinks ‘lycanthropic phenotype inversion’ sounds too alarming.”

“It is alarming,” Theo said. “But it works.”

“It works,” she echoed, quieter, pride warming the words. “After three years. And twenty-seven prototypes. And the disaster with the mandrake-infused serum.”

Theo winced. “Never again.”

They shared a look, equal parts exhaustion, triumph, and that stubborn, private thrill of two people who had done the impossible together. He nudged her shoulder lightly. “Anyway. The cure is done. The science is perfect. The world just has to catch up.”

“I missed this,” she murmured. “The quiet here. You.”

Theo smiled, a slow, almost imperceptible shift of expression. “Me too.”

The tea warmed her fingers as she watched the illusion of constellations flicker above them. Somewhere far above London, the real stars waited behind the city’s haze, but down here, beneath the Ministry, beneath the noise, there was only quiet.

“I still can’t believe you work in this place,” she said eventually, eyes flicking to the glowing ceiling. “It always feels like it might eat me alive.”

“It might,” Theo said, deadpan. “But I’ve made peace with that, darling.”

She laughed under her breath, the sound small but real. “It suits you, though. All this darkness and mystery. Brooding suits you.”

“I do brood beautifully,” he said, taking a sip of his tea. “But mostly, it keeps people out of my business. Which, as you know, is all I’ve ever wanted.”

“No, it’s not,” she said, nudging his foot with hers. “You just don’t trust people.”

“I trusted you.”

The words were soft. Not a dramatic declaration, but a simple truth.

She looked over at him.

“Do you remember,” she said finally, “the first time we talked?”

“Eighth Year. You were crying over a copy of Advanced Theoretical Charms,” he said. “At least, pretending not to cry.”

“I was furious,” she corrected, “because the text made a passing reference to ancient bloodline limits as if that were still a valid magical theory.”

“You were also crying,” he added, smug. “It was adorable. I considered hexing you just to break the tension.”

“Thank you for resisting.”

“I didn’t. I just gave you tea and insulted your handwriting.”

“That you did,” she murmured, smiling into her cup.

Silence stretched between them again, but this one was warmer, touched by the golden light from the floating candles and the soft sounds of the stars shifting above them.

Then Theo’s tone changed, just slightly.

“You’ve been seeing more of Pansy again,” he said.

“Mm. Brunches with her and Luna and Ginny.” Hermione glanced at him. “Why?”

“She’s worried.”

Hermione straightened. “About what?”

“About the recent movements. Dolohov. Some of the old names are surfacing in Europe. Most of them are disorganized. Desperate. But Dolohov…”

Theo trailed off, fingers tightening around his cup.

“He’s not desperate,” Hermione finished.

“No. He's vicious. And you know as well as I do that he holds grudges like lifelines.”

A chill spread through her chest.

“Has he done anything new?” she asked, already fearing the answer.

“No. Not yet. But the Department’s been intercepting coded owl traffic, hexed parchment, layered protections - the kind of magic you only learn when you’ve lived in shadows. And his name keeps coming up.” He paused. “Along with a few others.”

She looked at him then, fully. “You think Malfoy’s return will really make a difference?”

Theo's gaze flickered with something unreadable. “He’s not who he was, Hermione.”

“That’s what everyone says,” she murmured, not unkindly. Not dismissive either. Just tired of miracles promised too easily.

“It’s what I say,” Theo replied quietly. “And I know him better than most.”

She nodded slowly, eyes drifting to the teacup warming her palms. The name carried weight, more than she liked to admit. History layered with silence.
“It’s just… strange,” she said. “Imagining him here again. After all these years.”

Theo leaned back slightly, considering. “None of us came out of the war untouched,” he said. “We all changed. By love. By loss. By things we survived and things we didn’t.” His mouth curved faintly. “But Draco… Draco changed deeply. Not loudly. Not for show.”

Hermione stayed quiet, listening.

“He lost more than people know,” Theo continued. “And then he became a father. That does something irreversible to a person. It rearranges priorities. It strips away performance.” He glanced at her. “I’ve visited him a few times a year since he moved. I’m his son’s godfather. I watched Draco learn how to hold a child like he was terrified of breaking the world. I watched him choose patience. Softness. Responsibility.”

Her fingers tightened briefly around the cup.

“He didn’t vanish,” Theo said gently. “He withdrew. On purpose. France gave him space to grow without being watched, judged, or mythologized. He worked. He kept his head down. He earned things the slow way.”

“And now he’s back,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “To hunt Dolohov.”

Theo nodded. “No one better, honestly. He understands that world from the inside. The rituals. The psychology. The way men like Dolohov think they own endings.” A pause. “He knows how to survive them.”

Hermione exhaled, the air between them suddenly dense with memory - corridors, spells, choices made too young.
“You trust him?” she asked.

“With my life,” Theo said without hesitation.

She let that hang between them. Then she said, “I trust you, Theo.”

He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “That’s all I need.”

The corridors of the Ministry were nearly empty when Hermione left the Department of Mysteries. She took the long way out, her feet moving of their own accord, unwilling to return too quickly to the silence of home. The hum of old magic still clung to her skin, and Theo’s words echoed somewhere in the back of her mind, refusing to settle.

The lift gave a small jolt as it climbed, and she closed her eyes, leaning against the brass rail. The scent of dust and parchment, of lingering potion ingredients and floor polish, was oddly comforting. Familiar. A scent of the life she had built piece by piece, brick by brick, after the war had shattered everything.

She flooed home not long after, arriving with a soft whoosh in her living room, greeted by the low flicker of candlelight. The space was warm, if quiet, too quiet, sometimes. The kind of quiet that made a person think too much.

Crookshanks padded in from the kitchen, yawning exaggeratedly and giving her a look that was somewhere between disdain and begrudging affection. Hermione bent to scratch behind his ears.

“Sorry, Crooks. No fish tonight. I’ll do better tomorrow.”

He purred anyway, then sauntered to the couch and curled himself into a perfect circle, tail wrapped neatly around his body.

She sat beside him, kicking off her shoes and folding her legs under herself. The fireplace crackled to life with a flick of her wand, and for a while she just sat there, staring into the flames, her body still and heavy, her thoughts anything but.

Her conversation with Theo looped in quiet spirals. His certainty, his history with Draco, the gentle way he had looked at her when he’d said “I trust him with my life.”

And the other thing he had said, softer, almost like an afterthought. He lost more than people know.

Malfoy. Back in London. Back in their world.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed it when Ginny and Pansy had told her. But hearing it from Theo… that made it feel more real. More immediate.

She shifted, pulling the soft blanket from the back of the couch over her lap. Her fingers toyed with the frayed hem absently.

He’s not who he was, Hermione.

It was the sincerity in Theo’s voice that unsettled her most. She stared into the fire, which crackled softly. The flames danced as if they knew something she did not.

Draco Malfoy. Old rival. Heir to a rotten legacy. But also, and maybe this was the most important, once a boy.

A boy caught in the middle of a war he never chose, with parents who chose for him. A teenager with the world on his shoulders and no way out. She remembered his face during the trial, the exhaustion, the shame, the contained anger. How he couldn’t meet her or Harry’s eyes when they testified. As if he felt unworthy of mercy.

But what she knew now, and perhaps even then, deep down, was that no one comes out of war unscathed. Not the victors. Not the defeated. Not those who watched from the sidelines. And certainly not those used as pawns.

She took a deep breath, sinking further into the cushions.

She couldn’t hate him. Never truly did.

She’d been afraid, angry, disgusted. But hate? She reserved that for those who had the choice, and still chose to do evil for pleasure.

Malfoy was, after all, just another badly healed scar in a story they all shared.

He wasn’t good. But he wasn’t evil. And maybe that was the point.

They were all trying to be someone else, after the war.

Better people. Or at least new people.

And now he was a father.

That part still unsettled her, not in a judgmental way, but in something quieter, more curious. She could barely picture him holding a child in his arms, caring for something so impossibly small. Not because she doubted he could, but because he’d always moved through the world like a man constantly bracing for collapse.

Then again… she remembered the article.

It had been years ago, a clipped little column in the international section, long before she’d understood what life he’d built abroad. Astoria Greengrass Malfoy, deceased after a prolonged illness. Survived by husband and newborn son. Living in the French provinces.

She remembered pausing over the page longer than she meant to. Not out of morbid interest, but because something about it had felt wrong. Lonely. A life rebuilt elsewhere, then broken quietly, far from the world that once feared the surname Malfoy.

Newborn. The word had sat there heavier than the rest. Not emphasized, not explained, but unmistakable to anyone who knew how to read between lines.

Astoria had died the day their son was born. The paper hadn’t said it outright. It hadn’t needed to.

Hermione clutched the blanket to her chest, feeling a strange pang beneath her ribs.

Theo had said Draco lost more than people knew. Now she understood what he meant.

She hadn’t seen him in years. And now he was coming back. Working with Harry, apparently. Rebuilding something. Maybe dignity. Maybe a name. Maybe just a life. She wanted to believe it was possible. For him. For herself. Everyone deserved a fresh start. Even Draco Malfoy.

And perhaps, just perhaps, the boy who had once pressed a handkerchief into her shaking hands outside the Yule Ball, choosing kindness when cruelty would have been easier, finally had the space and time to become that version of himself permanently.

Chapter Text

The bell above the door chimed softly, its sound mingling with the faint scent of dried sage and bergamot that always lingered in the shop. Hermione looked up from the counter just in time to see Ginny step in, balancing a small bundle of energy on her hip.

“Morning,” Ginny said, cheeks flushed from the chill outside. “I’m so sorry to barge in unannounced, but you’re my last resort.”

Hermione smiled, brushing her hands on her apron. “That’s quite an entrance, you haven’t made one that dramatic since you turned a 120-to-10 match around all by yourself.” 

Ginny laughed. “Lily caught a fever last night, James is off at his friend’s, and Al refused to stay home. Said he wanted to help Aunt Mione make potions.” She grinned tiredly. “I think he misses you.”

Hermione’s heart softened immediately. “Of course he can stay.” She crouched down as Ginny set Albus on his feet. “What do you say, Al? Think you can handle a few potion ingredients?”

The boy nodded solemnly, his green eyes wide beneath a mess of dark hair so much like his father’s. “Can I stir things?”

“Only the cauldron I tell you to stir,” Hermione warned with mock severity, earning a giggle.

Ginny leaned against the counter. “You’re a lifesaver, you know that? I’ll pick him up before dinner. He’s got his little snack in the bag.”

“Go,” Hermione said, waving her off. “Take care of your girl. Al and I will be fine.”

When the door closed behind Ginny, the apothecary fell into its usual quiet hum: the soft bubbling of simmering tinctures, the faint clinking of glass. Albus wandered toward the back shelves, eyes full of curiosity. Hermione followed him, half to supervise, half to drink in the sight of him: small and determined, already showing flashes of his father’s stubbornness and his mother’s fire.

He paused before a row of neatly labeled jars. “Aunt Mione, what’s salamander blood for?”

She smiled. “For strengthening fire-based potions. Though we don’t use it much here. Most of what I brew is for healing, not burning.”

He wrinkled his nose. “That’s good. Burning sounds awful.”

“Yes,” Hermione murmured, her eyes drifting toward the cauldron on the workbench. “It is.”

***

The morning passed in a comfortable rhythm. Albus sat perched on a high stool beside her, stirring gentle mixtures under her watchful eye. He measured ingredients with surprising precision, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth in fierce concentration.

“You’re quite the apprentice,” she said when he managed to mix a potion without spilling even a drop.

“I’m going to be a Healer like you,” he said proudly. “Mum says you fix people with magic and with thinking.”

Hermione laughed softly. “That’s a rather accurate description.”

“But,” Albus continued, lowering his voice as if confessing a secret, “Dad says you’re also scary when people don’t listen.”

She snorted. “Well, your dad isn’t wrong.”

He giggled again, and the sound wrapped itself around her heart like a charm.

There was something deeply healing about children. Their simplicity, their wonder, the way they existed entirely in the present moment. Watching Albus play with the puff of steam rising from a cauldron, Hermione felt a warmth she rarely allowed herself to linger in.

Her eyes softened. If things had been different…

The thought rose before she could stop it. It always did, sooner or later.

She turned away, pretending to check the temperature of a brew.

The blood curse had taken many things, not only her fertility but also the unspoken dreams that had lived quietly beneath her work, her causes, her relentless pursuit of justice. She had learned to bury them under achievement, to disguise loss as purpose. But every so often, when Albus looked up at her with those bright, trusting green eyes, the ache returned - gentle, persistent, human.

Sometimes, when Albus’s laughter filled the shop, or when Rose Weasley clung to her hand at Sunday lunches, or when she tucked Lily’s curls behind her ear while the little girl slept in her lap, Hermione felt something warm and aching blossom beneath her ribs.

It wasn’t envy, not exactly. It wasn’t grief alone, either.

It was knowing. A truth she had carried quietly for years.

She didn’t need to carry a child to be a mother. She didn’t believe that love was diluted by the absence of shared blood.

She had seen too much loss, lived through too many kinds of love, to think family was determined by lineage alone. She could adopt one day, she knew that. Love someone into belonging. Grow a family the way she grew everything in her life: through devotion, persistence, tenderness.

But she had never found the right person to do that with. Some people did it solo, but after the war… Merlin knows how much she deserved some company.

For a time, she had tried.

Viktor had been the first, after everything ended. Or perhaps after everything finally began to hurt in earnest.

They had attempted distance, at first - letters crossing borders, long conversations that stretched past midnight, promises made carefully, as if both of them knew how fragile the ground still was beneath their feet. Viktor was kind in the way mountains were: solid, dependable, unmoving. He offered steadiness when the world still felt too loud. He called her Hermy-own with stubborn affection, sent her books in languages she didn’t yet speak, and once told her, without drama or pressure, that he would move anywhere she asked.

But she wasn’t the girl by the Black Lake anymore, and he wasn’t the boy who had once given her quiet refuge from fame and fear. They were both older, carrying grief in different shapes. His life pulled east, toward stadiums and skies she didn’t quite belong to; hers rooted itself in rebuilding, in ministries and memory work and wounds that refused to close neatly.

They let go without bitterness. No explosions. Just the slow recognition that love, sometimes, is not enough to bridge two futures moving in opposite directions.

And then there was Terry.

Brilliant, thoughtful Terry Boot, whose mind danced easily alongside hers. With him, the attraction had been almost entirely intellectual - conversations that crackled with curiosity, debates that spilled into dawn, notebooks filled with shared ideas and half–formed theories. For a while, it felt dangerously close to something more.

But in truth, they had always been more companions than lovers. Two people drawn together by thought rather than longing. And as time passed, that became clearer, not sadder. They parted gently, with mutual understanding and no sense of loss, only relief.

They still spoke, occasionally. A message here, a conversation there. Terry sometimes asked for her perspective on Ministry reports or research proposals; she answered, as she always had, generously but without yearning. Whatever they’d shared belonged firmly to the past, a chapter closed with respect.

Ron, she didn’t count.

He had been something else entirely - always a constant, always family. Whatever confusion had surfaced during the war had burned out quickly, leaving behind clarity rather than regret. A few days after the battle, after Fred’s funeral, they had chosen friendship without drama or nostalgia. Ron had never truly been part of the list. He never would be.

Hermione never regretted any of it. Love, even when it didn’t last, was never wasted. Each attempt had taught her something - about herself, about timing, about the difference between connection and belonging.

She just hadn’t found the person who made the future feel like a place she could rest.

Someone who saw not only her brilliance and endurance, but her quiet softness - the part of her that tired easily, that wanted to be held without explanation - and stayed anyway.

So for now, she mothered in other ways.

In borrowed moments and open arms. In healing hands and patient guidance. In loyalty, and fierce protectiveness, and a heart that knew how to love deeply — even if it had not yet found its home.

She was not less for it.  She knew that. And yet, she realized, she was happy. Truly happy, in this small, sacred way.

She got to nurture, to teach, to protect, all without the sharp edge of expectation. Being a godmother was enough. It had to be. For now, at least.

By midday, the apothecary smelled of honey and thyme. Hermione had set up a small workspace for Albus, who was now carefully sorting dried petals into color groups while humming a Quidditch tune.

She leaned on the counter, watching him. “You know,” she said lightly, “if you keep organizing things that well, I might have to hire you.”

He beamed. “Really?”

“Well, maybe when you’re a little taller.” She held her hand a few inches above his head.

He frowned in mock offense. “That’s not fair. I’m growing fast!”

“Are you now?”

“Uncle Ron says I’ll be taller than Dad one day!”

Hermione laughed, shaking her head. “I’d like to see that.”

The door creaked as Briony, her assistant, returned from delivering an order. “Oh, he’s here!” she said, delighted. “Hello, Albus Potter. Haven’t seen you in ages!”

Albus puffed his chest proudly. “I’m helping Aunt Mione.”

Briony winked. “Then I’ll trust you with the hardest job: keeping her from working too much.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Traitor.”

The three of them shared an easy afternoon rhythm filled with laughter, chatter, and small tasks. Albus spilled a jar of mint leaves at one point, and Hermione taught him the charm to gather them up again. He was a quick learner. Too quick, she thought, with a tug of pride.

When he dozed off on the window seat, curled up with Crookshanks snoring beside him, Hermione sat quietly for a long moment, sipping her tea and watching the winter sunlight across the floor.

The world outside the glass felt so deceptively calm.

Inside, though, there was a storm brewing, in the corridors of the Ministry, in the rumors she and Theo had discussed, in the names whispered once again. Dolohov. Others. Old loyalties rekindled in dark corners.

And somewhere in France, or perhaps already back in London, he was returning.

The thought came unbidden, sharp and strange.

She hadn’t seen Draco Malfoy since his trial, twelve years ago. She still remembered the moment he’d looked up from the witness stand, eyes hollow, stripped of arrogance. That was the first time she’d seen him as something other than her enemy. Just a boy who’d survived the wrong war.

Now, he was coming back. And for reasons she didn’t yet understand, that knowledge unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.

A soft sound broke her reverie: the chime of the door.

Hermione glanced up automatically, expecting perhaps a customer who’d ignored the “Closed” sign, or Ginny returning early.

But instead, a small boy burst through the doorway, all laughter and wind, the bell above him clattering wildly in his wake.

He couldn’t have been more than four or five. His coat hung open, the buttons undone, a green wool scarf trailing dangerously close to the floor as he darted toward the shelves with wide-eyed fascination. His hair,  pale as moonlight, caught the afternoon sun like a halo.

For a fleeting, irrational moment, Hermione thought of first-year Hogwarts - of children arriving too big for their robes, carrying more wonder than fear. The thought tightened something in her chest.

“Whoa there!” Hermione called, half amused, half alarmed as a stack of potion boxes wobbled precariously.

The boy froze mid-step and turned toward her.

For a moment, she forgot how to breathe.

He had that same impossible blond hair and the sharp, aristocratic lines of a face she hadn’t seen in over a decade. But it was the eyes that did it. Grey like smoke and rainclouds, bright with curiosity instead of coldness.

Recognition hit her not like lightning, but like gravity - slow, inevitable, impossible to fight.

He looked at her with open wonder, completely unguarded.

“I’m sorry!” he said quickly, his voice soft, cultured, and entirely earnest. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just looking! Dad’s in the bookshop next door and said I could explore a bit-”

He stopped, glancing around the apothecary with delight. “It smells nice here. Like… like leaves and something sweet.”

Hermione found her voice at last, a little caught in her throat. “That’s lavender and sage. They help calm the mind.”

The boy nodded gravely, as though this were the most important information he’d ever heard.

“Are you a Healer?” he asked, inching closer to the counter.

“Yes,” Hermione said softly. “I make things that help people feel better.”

She realized, distantly, that she was kneeling now - lowering herself without thinking, as if her body understood before her mind did that children deserved eye level, deserved gentleness.

He smiled, dimples appearing in his cheeks. “That’s what dad does too. He helps people.”

Something in her chest tightened, recognition, disbelief, a strange ache she couldn’t name.

“Does he now?” she managed, forcing her voice to steady. “And what’s your name, sweetheart?”

He hesitated for a second, then said proudly, “Scorpius. Scorpius Malfoy.”

The name fell into the quiet room like a stone into still water.

Hermione stood very still.

Malfoy. Not spoken with arrogance. Not sharpened into a weapon. Just a name, offered freely by a child who had never learned to fear it.

She drew a slow breath, grounding herself, and offered him a small, real smile.

“And I’m Hermione,” she said gently. She paused, not out of hesitation, but intention.

“Hermione Granger.”

The name felt different now when she said it. Not defiant. Not defensive. Simply hers.

It was all there: the eyes, the hair, the careful posture even in his excitement. For one dizzying heartbeat, the years between then and now collapsed.

Draco Malfoy’s son was standing in her apothecary, smiling up at her with the kind of innocence the war had nearly erased from the world.

Outside, the bell over the door jingled faintly again, a shadow moving past the glass, tall and unmistakable.

Hermione’s pulse quickened. She rose to her feet. Not away from the child, but into herself. Into her full height, her present, her adulthood.

Then, she looked back at the boy, at Scorpius, and then toward the window, where the outline of a man passed through the door.

He’s here.

The world seemed to narrow to a single heartbeat, to the boy’s bright smile, to the sound of that familiar voice calling faintly from outside -

“Scorpius!”

And before she could breathe, before she could think, Hermione knew exactly whose voice it was.

Chapter Text

For a long, suspended moment, Hermione could not move.

Scorpius Malfoy stood in her apothecary with sunlight in his pale hair and curiosity bright in his grey eyes, as if he had stepped out of a memory she had never lived yet somehow recognized. A ghost of a lineage she had spent years trying not to think about. A living reminder that time had marched on without asking anyone’s permission.

Hermione felt the strange, disorienting pull of two timelines colliding - the war-bound girl she had been and the woman she was now, standing among jars of herbs and half-finished cures, watching the future walk in on small, eager feet.

And then-

“Scorpius!”

The voice was unmistakable even softened by distance, smooth, deep, and threaded now with fatherhood and alarm rather than arrogance. It struck her like a spell.

Hermione’s pulse kicked. 

Briony’s gaze flicked rapidly between the child, the doorway, and Hermione - already trying to map the emotional geography of a room she had clearly just walked into without a guidebook.

Before Hermione could speak, before she could even breathe, the bell chimed again.

He filled the doorway. Tall. Broad-shouldered in well-fitted charcoal wool. Hair longer than she remembered, pale strands brushing his collar. No swagger, no sneer,  just a stillness, sharp as winter air.

Draco Malfoy had grown into himself in a way she hadn’t expected. Not softer, but quieter. The sharp angles remained, but they were tempered now, worn smooth by time and loss. His frame carried strength without show, the kind built by endurance rather than arrogance. There was restraint in the way he stood, as if he had learned, painstakingly, how much space he was allowed to take in the world.

And those eyes, steely grey, widening the slightest fraction when they found her. For one absurd beat, Hermione thought: You’ve gotten older. And then, like a second thought chasing the first: So have I.

She was suddenly acutely aware of herself - of her ink-stained fingers, her healer’s robes, the faint scent of sage clinging to her sleeves. Not the girl he had known. Not the woman the Prophet once tried to mythologize. Just… herself.

Draco Malfoy’s expression shifted, something unreadable flickered across it, gone before she could name it.

“I apologise,” he said quietly, voice deeper now, smooth but roughened in places time had eroded. “He slipped away. I thought he was still at Flourish and Blotts with me.”

“It’s quite alright,” Hermione managed, surprised to find her voice steady. “He’s perfectly safe.”

Draco looked at Scorpius, and the sternness melted from him like snow under sunlight. His shoulders eased. His gaze softened. The transformation was so startling, Hermione felt her breath snag.

So that was what fatherhood looked like on him. So that was the change Theo had spoken of.

It wasn’t performative. It wasn’t careful. It was instinct - fierce and immediate, as if the world rearranged itself around the small boy at his feet.

Scorpius ran back to him, small hands gripping the hem of his cloak.

“I found a shop that smells like magic,” he announced proudly.

The corners of Draco’s mouth twitched, and for a fleeting second, Hermione saw the boy he had been: sharp-featured, bright-eyed, teetering between pride and shyness.

But not cruel, she realized. Just… afraid. Then. And maybe now, too, in different ways.

“That you did,” Draco murmured to his son. “We try not to alarm shopkeepers though, hm?”

Scorpius nodded solemnly, but his gaze had already drifted to the shelves again, sparkling with interest.

Before Hermione could speak, a sleepy little yawn rose from the corner.

Albus sat up on the window bench, rubbing his eyes, Crookshanks stretching beside him with kingly disdain for all things unexpected.

Hermione moved automatically, maternal instinct laced with habit, and brushed his hair from his forehead.

“Did I fall asleep?” Albus mumbled.

“You did,” Hermione whispered, smiling softly. “And you have a visitor, it seems.”

Albus blinked at Scorpius, then at Draco, then back at Scorpius.

“My name’s Albus Potter,” he declared, scooting forward. “What’s yours?”

“Scorpius Malfoy,” the boy replied, chin lifting proudly.

Albus considered this, then nodded with the solemn approval only a five-year-old could muster.

“Wanna see my favorite stirring spoon?”

Scorpius’s eyes widened as if he had just been offered pure gold.

“Yes.”

And with that, the Malfoy heir followed the Potter heir toward the workbench like a small, determined shadow. Crookshanks watched them with narrowed eyes, tail swishing in suspicion.

Draco’s gaze followed the boys, something unreadable passing across his face as he took in the sight - two children, laughing easily, unburdened by names that once would have meant war.

Briony shot Hermione a holy-Merlin-what-is-happening look, then wisely followed the boys, murmuring, “Right, we’re… learning spoons today. Excellent.”

She cast one more baffled glance over her shoulder, clearly filing this moment away for later analysis, but already shifting into competence like a seasoned professional dropped into chaos.

Hermione turned back to Draco.

They stood a pace apart. Not enemies. Not yet friends. Something suspended and fragile between.

She felt the weight of everything unsaid pressing gently at her ribs - years of distance, of survival, of parallel lives that had never quite stopped orbiting the same history.

“Welcome back,” she said, voice steadier than it felt.

Draco inclined his head, posture crisp. “Thank you.”

“How long have you been in London?”

“Arrived this week.” He glanced around the shop, jaw tight. “Didn’t expect my son to conduct reconnaissance without permission.”

“Children do that,” Hermione replied. “They find places.” A beat. “And people.”

Something flickered over his expression; quick, sharp, almost defensive. Not softness, but recognition. He looked away first.

His eyes flicked, briefly, toward Albus. “Is he… yours?”

Hermione blinked, then let out a small, surprised huff of laughter. “No. I’m his godmother. He’s Harry and Ginny’s.”

Draco’s brows lifted a fraction. “Of course he is,” he said dryly. “Who else would name their child after Dumbledore?”

“And Severus,” Hermione added, unable to stop herself.

Draco froze.

Actually froze.

“…Severus,” he repeated, slowly.

“Yes. His name is Albus Severus Potter.”

A beat.

Then, incredulous, softly: “Bloody hell.”

Hermione smiled, just a little. “For someone who named his child Scorpius and kept the entire Black constellation alive, I’d say your moral authority on naming conventions is… limited.”

The corner of his mouth twitched despite himself.

And just like that, something eased - not the past, not the damage, but the tension. The sharp edge dulled, if only for a moment.

“Scorp’s adjusting,” Draco said. “We both are.”

Hermione’s gaze drifted to Scorpius. He leaned over Albus’s cauldron, sleeves slipping back to show faint pink patches along the base of his palms, subtle, but unmistakable. Wards rubbing wrong. Ambient magic pushing back. A reaction most people would miss.

Her breath stilled. “He’s been scratching at his hands,” she murmured. “And the erythema… that’s ward friction.” Her eyes met Draco’s. “How is he handling the new protections?”

His silence lasted a second too long.

Then, like a lock turning, he spoke.

“He’s reacting to them.” His mouth tightened. “Mother and I re-warded the Manor. Clean slate. But some… structures don’t appreciate revision.” His tone cooled. “Old blood magic is stubborn.”

Hermione nodded once. “It reacts hardest to innocence.”

His eyes narrowed at that, uncomfortable truth landing too close.

“Yes,” he said. Clipped.

The war sat between them then, faint, but undeniable. A shadow, a memory, a reminder.

“I didn’t want to bring him back yet,” Draco said, quieter. “But avoiding England isn’t an option anymore.”

Hermione studied him. Not kindly. Not unkindly. Simply looking at him clearly for the first time.

“You shouldn’t have to avoid it,” she said. “He’ll adjust. You will too.”

Her tone wasn’t warm. It was honest.

Something in him accepted it. Very slowly.

“I can brew something to help stabilize his field,” she offered. “It might reduce the irritation.”

Draco exhaled, controlled, but real. “If you’re willing.”

Hermione’s heartbeat stuttered once - not at the words, but at the way he said them, as though he wasn’t used to receiving help without cost. As though asking her for anything at all required reaching across a canyon.

It wasn’t gratitude.

Not exactly.

More like conceding ground.

She moved to the workbench, reaching for vials. Draco followed, stopping a careful distance behind her - respectful, cautious. Not one step too close.

And Merlin, she felt every inch of that distance.

She hated that she noticed.

It had been years since she’d stood this close to him - close enough to feel his presence, the way he carried tension like armor under his skin. Close enough to sense the restraint in him, as if he feared even breathing too loudly might be presumptuous. Close enough that the air shifted around them, old ghosts stirring between glass jars and bundles of drying herbs.

She reached for sage leaves, and her fingers shook just slightly.

Ridiculous.

She steadied them.

She felt the weight of his gaze on her hands as she selected ingredients. Sage leaves. Marshmallow root. A thread of dissolved moonstone. Calm, clearing, protection.

It helped to focus on muscle memory. On purpose. On the small universe of potion-making where every step was known and safe and predictable, unlike the man behind her, who had once been the embodiment of unpredictability, cruelty, confusion. And later - much later - quiet astonishment.

She measured, poured, stirred, and for a moment, the apothecary was a heartbeat of warmth, the bubbling of the cauldron and the murmurs of children filling the space with a domestic magic that made her chest ache.

There had been a time she would have never imagined this scene.

The son of Harry Potter laughing beside the son of Draco Malfoy, Crookshanks watching them like an ancient omen, her own hands steady over a healing brew.

And Draco Malfoy standing behind her without venom, without posturing, without the sharp edges of adolescence, only a man trying to help his son.

She wondered if Malfoy felt it too, the strange, impossible softness of the moment. 

The surreal peace of existing in the same room without battle lines drawn.

She handed him the vial.

Their fingers brushed. Barely.

A whisper of touch.

But the brush of skin was startling, like touching a match that hadn’t yet sparked but threatened to. Her breath caught. Not visibly, she hoped.

A spark of recognition.

Human and startling and real.

Malfoy drew in a breath so quiet she would have missed it if she weren’t standing so close.

“Thank you,” he said again, voice lower, steadier, but with a thread of rough sincerity she had never heard from him before.

It shook her more than she expected.

“You’re welcome,” she whispered.

A beat.

A flicker of silence.

The world narrowing to breath and pulse.

Then-

“MIONE!”

Ginny’s voice burst through the door like a gust of wind, cheeks flushed, red hair wild.

“Oh!” she said, freezing mid-step as she spotted Malfoy. “Well. That’s unexpected.”

Malfoy’s expression flickered, old war reflex, walls rising, and Hermione saw how quickly he guarded himself when someone new entered the room. A tell she filed away silently.

Albus darted forward, clutching Scorpius’s hand. “Mum! Look! I made a stirring friend!”

Ginny blinked. “You… what?”

Hermione nearly choked on a laugh.

Scorpius bowed, polite, pure-blood manners polished like silver. “Hello Mrs. Potter. I am Scorpius Malfoy.”

Ginny blinked again. Looked at Hermione. Then at Malfoy. Then back at Hermione.

“Oh,” she said plainly. “We're doing this today.”

Hermione shot her a warning glare. Ginny mouthed later like a gleeful ravenclaw gossiping behind textbooks.

Draco cleared his throat. “We should be going.”

Scorpius waved at Briony, Hermione, Ginny and Albus with the enthusiasm of a child certain life would bring them together again soon. “Bye! Thank you! I like your spoons!”

Albus waved both arms. “Bye Scorp!”

Draco hesitated at the door. Just a fraction. Barely noticeable unless someone was watching him instead of the exit.

Hermione was.

Draco cleared his throat, glancing at the vial again. “I’ll send an owl later to arrange payment for the potion.”

Hermione shook her head lightly. “There’s no need. Please, bring Scorpius back if the reaction worsens. I’d rather keep an eye on it.”

His expression shifted with surprise, something like gratitude, something softer still, before he managed, “…Thank you, Granger.” 

Hermione nodded. “We’ll talk soon.”

Not a question. Not permission. A thread tied loosely, waiting.

Draco turned slightly, then paused again, looking toward Ginny. “Goodbye, Ginevra.”

Ginny stiffened.

Hermione winced preemptively.

Ginny crossed her arms, lips curling into something sharp and delighted. “If you call me Ginevra again, Malfoy, I will hex you so creatively even Hermione will take notes.”

A corner of Draco’s mouth twitched before he could stop it. “Noted.”

Draco inclined his head and stepped outside, Scorpius hopping at his heels like a small comet orbiting a distant planet.

The door closed.

Silence expanded.

Ginny turned slowly, eyes wide, lips curled into a grin as dangerous as any Weasley prank.

“So,” she drawled, “that’s how your Wednesday is going.”

Hermione let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ginny smirked. “Oh, we’re absolutely talking about it.”

Crookshanks yawned, tail flicking.

And somewhere in Hermione’s chest, fear, curiosity, hope, and something unnamed stirred like a spell waking after over a decade of sleep.

Chapter Text

(Narcissa’s POV)

Malfoy Manor exhaled.

That was the only way Narcissa knew to think of it. For years after the war, the house had held its breath. Stone walls tight, magic coiled in corners like something wary, wounded, waiting for the next scream.

It had taken a long time to coax the place into softness again. Long nights of dismantling curses layered by generations, long mornings airing out memories like heavy curtains.

She stood in the music room now, fingertips trailing over the polished piano lid. Her mother once played here. Lucius sometimes stood behind her, hand on her shoulder, pretending he did not prefer silence. 

But what Narcissa remembered most was Draco.

How he had loved this piano.

How his small hands had learned melodies before they learned Latin declensions; how he used to sit on the bench with a seriousness far too large for his tiny frame, brow furrowed in concentration as if each chord were a puzzle only he could solve. He had talent - real, startling talent - the kind that made her turn her head, breath catching, because some notes sounded like a glimpse of the man he might one day become.

And then the war came.

And the music stopped.

The piano had gathered dust through the darkest years. After the Battle, after the trials, after Astoria’s death, that silence had grown heavier. Draco could not bear to touch the keys. Even passing by the room made him tense, as though melody itself had become a reminder of all that had been taken from him.

He had not played in years.

Narcissa rested her hand on the closed lid, the faint reflection of her face wavering in the polished wood.

“Perhaps,” she murmured to the empty room, “the music will return to him one day.”

So many ghosts.

After the trials, shortly followed by the marriage and Astoria’s illness worsened, Draco had fled England not out of cowardice, but out of desperation. A drowning man clinging to the only branch left in a world built to watch him sink. Narcissa had followed, as any mother would, packing grief and hope in the same trunk, leaving behind a house filled with ghosts she no longer had the strength to command.

France had been kind in its anonymity; French society whispered, but from a safer distance. Scorpius learned to toddle across pale marble floors in rooms washed with morning light, and for a brief stretch of borrowed time, they had built something like peace.

They could have stayed in France forever. It was safer, quieter, easier to be ghosts there.

But Malfoys did not disappear. Malfoys rebuilt.

So Narcissa returned first, quietly, purposefully, and treated the Manor like a wound. She tore out carpets soaked in memory, scrubbed stone that remembered screams, replaced dark paneled halls with warm light and living green. She whispered healing charms not to the walls, but for them. And slowly, the Manor softened, as if it, too, were tired of carrying history like chains.

She had stood once in the drawing room, hearing Bellatrix’s voice in the grain of the floorboards, feeling young Hermione Granger’s scream still trembling in the air like trapped lightning. She pressed her palm to the stone and whispered an apology that came a decade too late, but came nonetheless.

I will not let this house devour my grandson the way it devoured its past.

So the Manor breathed again.  And Narcissa breathed with it.

Now Draco had returned, grief-tempered, war-worn, but older, steadier, a father before anything else. Scorpius brought starlight into rooms once drenched in shadows. And Narcissa, who once presided over a dynasty built on fear, found herself tending a garden built on hope instead.

It was different now. Lighter, if a manor such as this could ever be called such a thing.

The carpets were new. Pale, soft cream instead of intimidating black. The walls had been cleaned, repainted in warm whites touched with gold. The chandeliers glowed with gentle enchanted flame rather than icy blue. A vase of winter roses, real ones, fresh from the gardens, sat beside her.

A new beginning carved into old stone.

Lucius would have hated it.

Narcissa allowed herself one deep, even breath. Lucius is gone. She had loved him once, fiercely, foolishly, and as a woman determined to survive the world handed to her. But love had become loyalty, then habit, then burden.

Azkaban had taken pieces of him long before it took all of him.

She wore no mourning black now. Only soft dove-grey, and pearls at her throat. Grief could be dignified; it did not need to scream. 

She touched the roses, letting her magic brush theirs: gentle, steady, alive. For them, she thought. For my dragon. For my little star.

Draco, her son. Thin as a blade at fifteen, broken as one by seventeen, and still somehow forging himself again after the war. She saw pieces of him in every hallway, quiet determination, sharp wit gentled by fatherhood, exhaustion tucked beneath formal courtesy.

He carried too much. She had always known he would. The children of war always do.

And Scorpius, sweet, thoughtful Scorp, his little star, shining despite every shadow cast before he was even born. Born into grief, born into a curse, and yet full of light as though the universe were determined to balance itself through him.

Narcissa’s fingers tightened softly on the rose stem. Astoria.

Beautiful, fragile Astoria, who had walked into Draco’s life like autumn sunlight, warm but fading even as it arrived. Narcissa had known the curse was in the Greengrass line. Old, cruel magic that slept until it claimed the first breath after birth. Astoria had known too, knew if she was to get into labour she wouldn’t survive it, but she had wanted her son enough to choose it anyway. After years insisting, Draco conceded her last wish.

The night she died, Narcissa had sat beside her, holding her hand.

Thank you, Astoria had whispered. Take care of him, both of them.

And Narcissa had sworn she would.

Loneliness was a quiet predator. It did not roar; it seeped. She watched it circling Draco sometimes, the exhaustion in his eyes, the way his gaze softened when he looked at Scorpius but hardened at himself. He did not believe he deserved happiness. Not truly.

He had married Astoria for steadiness, for safety, for someone who understood the weight of old magic and older names. They had been companions, survivors, gentle toward one another in a world that had not been gentle to either.

But love? Not the consuming, terrifying kind Narcissa had once felt in her youth. Not the kind that reshapes a life.

Draco had never known that kind. And she feared he might never try to.

A breeze stirred the enchanted curtains. Outside, winter sun spilled across the estate, pale gold catching on frost. Somewhere in the distance, the greenhouse elves tended the orchids, Astoria’s orchids. Narcissa swallowed.

She would never force Draco to remarry. She would never meddle outright, she had learned too well the danger of shaping another’s future to fit your hope.

But she prayed, quietly and without arrogance, that life might offer him someone worthy. Someone strong and gentle and brave enough to carry both his fire and his scarred softness. Someone who saw him not as a Malfoy, not as a survivor, but simply as Draco.

He deserves joy, she thought fiercely. He deserves warmth. He deserves peace. He deserves love that does not hurt.

Especially now. News had begun to travel again, the way it always did when old shadows stirred. Names whispered in corridors of power, in private owl posts, in the fearful tremor of the Ministry’s wards tightening like breaths held too long.

Dolohov.

Even now, after so many years, the name tasted bitter on her tongue, a poison she remembered far too well. She had seen what he was capable of. She had watched him walk the halls of the Manor with cold purpose and darker joy. If evil had ever worn a quiet face, Antonin Dolohov's had been one of its most skillful masks.

Once, she had been forced to keep silent in the presence of men like him. To survive them. To preserve her son beneath their influence even as she despised every breath they drew.

Never again.

If the rumors were true, if he had returned to Britain, prowling the shadows like a vengeful ghost, then she would meet him not as the woman forced to stand obediently in the drawing room while horrors unfolded, but as the mother who had found her spine sharpened by love and loss.

She had fought a war to save her son. She would fight another to protect her grandson. And this time, she would stand on the right side of the field. Intentionally, irrevocably, without hesitation.

She had given shelter to darkness once. She would not give it passage again.

Let the Ministry keep its secrets. Let rumors coil like smoke. Narcissa Malfoy would watch. She would listen. She would guard her family like a dragon guards fire.

Lucius had been loyal to bloodlines. She would be loyal to love.

That, she now knew, was the only legacy worth passing on.

She turned toward the window as she heard the front gates creak open.

Footsteps, two sets, one quick, one measured, crossed the stone path. She knew that stride. She knew both of them.

A smile touched her lips before she could stop it.

Her boys were home.

***

The foyer doors swung open and Scorpius came bursting in like a dropped star: spinning, bright, alive.

“Grandmother!” he chirped, cloak half undone, scarf trailing behind him. “We went exploring! And I made a stirring friend!”

Narcissa laughed softly, a sound she hadn’t made often in years. “Did you now? That sounds very important.”

“It was!” Scorpius beamed. “He showed me spoons! And a cat! And the lady smelled like herbs and books and-”

“Deep breaths, darling,” Draco murmured, brushing snow from his shoulders.

Narcissa’s gaze lifted toward her son.

He looked tired. Travel-tired. World-tired. But there was something else in him too, something bright and unsettled beneath the surface.

Narcissa’s heart tightened.

Draco was studying his gloves rather than meeting her eyes, a sign she recognized from childhood: feeling too much, trying to hide it.

“It appears,” she said lightly, “that your explorations were successful.”

Scorpius nodded so vigorously his hair bounced. “We met Hermione Granger.”

Silence.

Not shocked silence, charged silence. Narcissa looked at Draco.

His posture did not change. His expression did not truly move. But she felt it, the tiniest tremor in the air, as if something old and long-buried had fluttered beneath his ribs. Not dread. Not disdain. Recognition. Uneasy awe. The ghost of a boy who once didn’t know how to be forgiven.

And perhaps, though Narcissa did not assume recklessly, a spark of something he did not yet have the language for.

She placed a hand delicately over her pearls.

“Hermione Granger,” she echoed softly. “That must have been… unexpected.”

Scorpius nodded. “She helped. And her cat liked me. And Albus is my friend now. And she made Daddy magic tea in a bottle.”

Draco cleared his throat, faint color touching his cheeks. “A potion for Scorp. For the wards.”

Narcissa did not smile. She did not tease. She simply studied her son for three long heartbeats.

His shoulders were tense. His jaw tight, not with anger, but with thought. His fingers flexed once against his cloak as if feeling the ghost of a touch.

So. The universe had decided to be interesting again.

“Then we should write her a thank-you note,” Narcissa said gently, voice smooth as silk over silver. “Proper gratitude matters.”

Scorpius nodded, enthusiastic. Draco swallowed, barely audible.

“Yes,” he murmured. “It does.”

Inside the manor, something ancient shifted. Not dark, not heavy. Just the faintest rustle of destiny stretching its wings.

Narcissa rested her hand briefly on Draco’s arm. “My dragon,” she whispered in her heart, may this time not break you.

Then she looked at Scorpius, bright eyes and wonder bursting from him like starlight.

“And my little star,” she thought with a swell of fierce love, perhaps you will guide him home.

Chapter Text

Hermione closed the apothecary an hour early.

She told Briony she needed to rest, but the truth sat heavier: she needed to think. To breathe. To understand what had just happened today, the way twelve years of distance had collapsed in a single quiet moment.

Home felt smaller than usual when she stepped inside, twilight shadows stretching long across the floorboards. Crookshanks trotted in, tail lifted, but even he seemed to pause at the threshold, as if sensing the shift in the air around her.

Hermione flicked her wand; candles bloomed into warm light. But the warmth didn’t reach her bones. She placed her bag down slowly, hands moving on instinct while her mind spun far behind her ribs.

Draco Malfoy was back. Not a rumor, not a distant name murmured over brunch, but here. Flesh and bone and with a child. With the sort of quiet steadiness that only suffering and time could shape.

She poured herself tea she did not drink, again.

For a long moment she simply stood in her kitchen, palms braced against the counter, breathing as though the ground beneath her had shifted half an inch and her body was still catching up.

Then, almost without thought, she moved to her bedroom.

There was a drawer beneath her bed she rarely opened. Not because it hurt, but because memory was a kind of incense: powerful, lingering, best uncapped only with intention.

She slid the drawer open.

A stack of letters written on mismatched parchment. Some with Ginny’s looping script, others cramped and efficient from Harry, and a handful written in Pansy’s aggressively neat handwriting, scolding her for skipping meals during their eighth-year. A tiny brass Timeturner charm, broken and long useless, which McGonagall had given her after she quit the Ministry to become a healer with the words “No more turning back.” A dried sprig of heather Ron had tucked into her coat the day she left for her first post-war conference. A pressed alpine violet Neville once gave her on the Hogwarts grounds, right after the war ended, when they were all still trying to remember how to exist without fear or purpose.

There were books too - her mother’s old gardening manual with penciled notes in the margins; a small leather-bound journal labeled Sage: Formulas, Failures, Miracles from her first month running the apothecary; and, tucked carefully at the side, a little river stone the size of a galleon.

Smooth. Cool. Etched with a single rune for anchor - gifu, carved by her mind healer during their third year of sessions.

She had carried it to every appointment after that.

Held it through panic, through acceptance, through the slow and stubborn rebuilding of a life that grief had hollowed.

The stone had absorbed years of tears, mantras, and breathwork, its once-sharp rune now softened under her thumb.

It wasn’t magic. Not formally.

But it had steadied her more than any spell she’d ever cast.

And beneath it, the photograph.

The one she and Pansy took in Australia three years after the war, on the day everything became final.

Wendell and Monica Wilkins - her parents, yet not - smiling in front of their sunny, suburban home, arms linked, blissfully unaware of the fractured universe that had once belonged to them. Pansy had been the one to suggest the photo.

“You’ll want something real,” she’d said, uncharacteristically gentle.

It had taken the Australian Healers three years to determine that the magic was irreversible. Three years of hope shrinking and reshaping into acceptance. On that day, Pansy returned to Australia with Hermione, so she could say good-bye. They’d posed as photography students doing a cultural documentary, snapping pictures with a camera. After the picture was taken, Pansy sat beside her on the sunlit curb while Hermione tried to memorize every line of her parents’ faces.

She lifted the photograph now.

Hermione, at last, had learned that this too was love: letting them remain whole in the life they chose, even if it meant releasing the one they once shared.

Going through the drawer again, she finally found what she was looking for. Wrapped in tissue paper, carefully preserved through years, through battles and moves and quiet nights… A handkerchief.

Faded linen thread, delicate silver embroidery: D.L.M.

Hermione exhaled, not in surprise, but in recognition. As if something deep inside her had known she would look for it tonight.

She sat on the edge of her bed and unfolded the cloth slowly, her fingertips brushing the initialed corner. It was soft from age, worn gently. And as her hand clenched around it, memory rose like mist.

Flashback - Yule Ball

Snow drifted outside the castle, soft as breath. The castle windows glowed with warm amber light, the Yule Ball’s music floating faintly down stone corridors like a memory of joy.

Hermione’s footsteps echoed, uneven, her eyes burning. She pressed the back of her hand to them, refusing to let tears fall. Not over this. Not over him.

Ron’s argument still rang in her head. Jealousy, sharp and clumsy, cutting without knowing how to wound properly, yet still succeeding. She had walked away before her voice broke. Pride had held her upright until she reached the cold corridor outside the ballroom.

Now she sat on the stairs, breath shaking, the cold stone pressing against her shoulders. She hated crying, hated the way it made her feel young and small and foolish.

Footsteps approached.

She wiped her eyes quickly, schooling her expression into something firm.

Then she saw him.

Draco Malfoy paused at the bottom of the staircase, silver hair catching torchlight, pale eyes widening just slightly when he realized she was alone. Their gazes met, a soft collision of surprise and something else she could not name.

He didn’t smirk. He didn’t draw his wand. He didn’t say Mudblood.

He simply stood there.

Then, almost awkwardly, he reached into his pocket and held out a neatly folded handkerchief.

Hermione blinked. “I’m not crying over you, Malfoy.”

A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I should hope not. I’d have to check for Polyjuice.”The tiniest startled laugh escaped her throat.

He took a step up. Not close, just enough that the offering felt intentional, not thrown. The handkerchief lay on his palm like a peace treaty neither of them had been trained to make.

“Don’t cry over Weasley either,” he said quietly, tone stripped of mockery. “No offense to… whatever that is. But he doesn’t deserve it.”

Hermione let out a wet, incredulous laugh. “Look at that, an insult wrapped in… concern? I wouldn’t have imagined you capable.”

Draco’s jaw tightened, not with anger, but with something heavier. “Don’t flatter yourself, Granger. I’m not being noble.”

She arched a brow. “No, of course not. Merlin forbid Draco Malfoy be caught doing something human.”

A beat. His gaze flickered, sharp, then strangely unguarded.

“You didn’t choose the family you were born to,” he said quietly. “And neither did I.”

There was such stark honesty in it she forgot how to breathe.

Their hands brushed when she took the cloth. Warm. Real. Human.

He didn’t say another word. Didn’t ask for anything. He turned and walked away into the shadows, leaving only the echo of silk on stone and the faintest tremor in her chest.

Hermione pressed the handkerchief to her cheek and watched the snow fall.

***

She sat very still on her bed now, the handkerchief pooled in her lap like the quiet echo of a turning point.

It wasn’t a relic of schoolgirl yearning, it had never been that. It was the moment she first realized the world, and the people in it, were not made of tidy binaries. That even the cruel and privileged could slip, for a single heartbeat, into humanity. It was proof that light could flicker in unexpected places, that mercy sometimes arrived in the unlikeliest of hands.

She had kept it not out of nostalgia, but as a reminder, of humility, of the impossibility of perfect judgment, of the fragile, stubborn possibility of redemption. A symbol of the truth she clung to in war and after: monsters were made, not born, and even those raised in darkness might one day choose the light.

And yes, perhaps there had been a small part of her, once, that hoped Draco Malfoy would someday see her as more than the slur he used to spit. Not because she needed his validation. But because change, real change, meant even the hearts taught hardest to hate might one day look again and find something different.

She could not deny what she saw today. The man he had become held pieces of that boy: quiet observation, surprising gentleness, restraint like armor forged under pressure no teenager should ever have borne.

And she… she was not untouched by time either. Not untouched by scars. The curse, the war, the losses, the healing she forced upon herself piece by stubborn piece.

But neither were they the same children who stood on opposite sides of a battlefield.

Hermione folded the handkerchief and placed it back in the drawer, fingers lingering on the fabric longer than she meant to. Her breath steadied, but her thoughts did not.

The past was not a prophecy, she reminded herself. It was a wound, yes, but also a seed. Memory and possibility interwoven.

She refused to let fear speak louder than truth.

And yet...

A quiet thought trembled loose, fragile as a hairline crack in glass: Please. Let this not be the beginning of something breaking again. Let this not be another war wearing a different face.

She did not think she could survive another battle inside her own home, inside her own skin, not after she had worked so hard to make her life livable again, soft again, hers again.

The silence in the flat thickened, the kind that happens right before a storm changes direction.

She exhaled, and that was when she felt it.

At first, only a prickle at the far edge of her wards. Barely there.

A shift, a pressure, like a whispered name she didn’t want to hear.

Her spine straightened.

Crookshanks lifted his head from the armchair, fur lifting in a bristle of instinct older than magic itself.

Another flicker. Sharper. Like claws scraping glass.

The air went cold.

And Hermione understood, with the clarity that only those who have survived war ever truly learn, that the past was not done with her after all.

Someone was testing her protections.

Hermione rose slowly, wand in hand before she realized she’d drawn it.

“Crooks,” she whispered, voice steady only by force of will. “Come.”

He moved instantly, hackles raised, tail thick.

A pulse of dark magic hit her wards again, harder.

Someone was trying to break in.

Fear did not come first. Training did. War carved instincts into bone.

Hermione sealed the bedroom door with a flick. She felt movement outside, muffled voices, the crackle of intent, the hum of a spell charging like venom.

She didn’t think.

She acted.

Fireplace. Floo powder. Grip on Crookshanks.

Flame roared emerald.

“POTTER RESIDENCE!”

The wards shuddered, something slammed against them hard enough to make the walls shake.

A spell hissed, sickly, purple light bleeding under her front door.

Crookshanks yowled.

Hermione leapt into the fire, just as the first curse broke through.

Emerald light swallowed her.

And then she was gone.

Chapter Text

Hermione crashed into the Floo grate at Grimmauld Place like a spell still crackling off impact. Ash scattered, firelight roaring in protest as she stumbled forward, wand already raised.

Crookshanks skidded out beside her, tail puffed, fur standing on end like a storm given shape.

“Hermione?” Ginny’s voice cut through from the kitchen, sharp, alarmed. Then louder, “HARRY!”

Hermione wasn’t shaking. Not anymore. She burned.

Harry appeared in seconds, wand drawn, Auror robes half-thrown on, eyes fierce. He took one look at her face and didn’t ask if she was alright.

He knew. He remembered this expression from the war. Not fear, but rage sharpened to survival.

“What happened?”

“Attempted breach,” Hermione snapped. “Three figures outside my wards. They tried to get through. They very nearly succeeded.”

Harry swore under his breath. “Merlin. Come sit-”

“I’m not sitting.” Her voice cracked like a flint. “You need to send someone. Now.”

Harry didn’t argue. He turned to the mantel and touched the rune on his DMLE shield. “Auror emergency dispatch. Priority level one. Coordinates: Hermione Granger’s residence, Diagon Alley residential ward. Unknown hostile entry attempt. Prepare containment and forensic sweep.”

A voice echoed back: “Confirmed.”

Ginny came forward, hand warm on Hermione’s arm. “You’re safe here. You did the right thing-”

“No,” Hermione said, voice low. “I wasn’t going to die there, Ginny. And I’m not going to hide now.”

Ginny nodded once. Fierce understanding. They were warriors, both.

Harry grabbed his coat. “I’ll check the scene myself. Stay here.”

“I’m coming with you.”

He didn’t look at her, didn’t soften. “No. If they wanted you, you stay behind the strongest wards we have. That’s here.”

It wasn’t patronizing. It was tactical.

Hermione exhaled, trembling only a fraction. “Fine. Go.”

He vanished with a crack. Silence fell like snow behind him.

Ginny led her to the sofa, poured firewhisky into a mug from the good shelf, the post-battle shelf. Hermione didn’t protest this time. She drank. It burned like clarity.

Crookshanks paced like a guard lion.

Hermione whispered into the quiet, voice rough. “It’s starting again, isn’t it.”

Ginny wrapped an arm around her shoulders, not as comfort but solidarity. “If it is, we end it.”

***

Harry was gone for an hour.

Hermione stood through all of it. Pacing. Wand drawn. Her fury hung in the air like a storm spell, crackling, electric, but she was not trembling. She refused to tremble.

Grimmauld Place had changed since the war, not by force, but by gentleness worn into stone. Where once there had been peeling wallpaper and the bitter hush of an ancestral mausoleum, there were now warm wooden floors and enchanted lanterns glowing like soft stars along the walls. The ornate crown molding remained, Harry insisted on keeping what belonged to Sirius, but it was painted in pearly cream instead of oppressive black, as though memory itself had been brightened. A tapestry of enchanted constellations shimmered above the fireplace, each star tracing lazy arcs as if breathing. Ginny’s broom rested by the umbrella stand, Lily’s tiny boots beside Albus’s toy dragon. The house no longer watched visitors with suspicion; it exhaled safety, belonging. Once it had been a fortress, but now, it was a home.

And yet, Hermione couldn’t settle into it, not tonight. Safety was a concept, but tonight she craved certainty, action, truth. Crookshanks prowled the rug like a low, orange stormcloud, picking up every jagged thought humming through her.

She stood in the center of the room, a witch carved from fire and intent, when the floo roared again, emerald flames tearing open the hearth.

Two figures stepped through.

Harry.

And Draco Malfoy.

Hermione froze.

Draco’s expression was composed, but his shoulders were tense, breathing just slightly too shallow. Snow flecked his cloak. His eyes swept her quickly, head to toe, assessing for harm like instinct, not courtesy.

“Granger.”

The first word he had spoken to her since leaving the shop. It sounded different now. Not polite. Not guarded.

Alert. Wired. Invested.

Hermione’s stomach twisted, not in fear. In recognition.

Harry dropped something onto the table. A folded parchment, singed at the edges.

“Found this on your kitchen table,” he said. “I reckon it wasn’t there before the attack.”

Hermione unfolded it with practiced control.

Ink shimmered in a dark rust-red hue, not quill ink. Something older, heavier. The writing writhed slightly, as though resisting light.

Little Mudblood,
You survived once by accident.
You won’t again.
We are not finished.
Blood repays blood.
-A.D.

Her breath hitched, not at the slur; that poison could no longer reach the marrow. It was the signature. Dolohov. And the echo of his curse still lived under her skin like a brand.

Draco moved first.

He didn’t snatch the parchment, he lifted it like a relic of war, eyes narrowing to icy slits.

His jaw clenched, pulse visible at his temple.

“He signed it,” he murmured. “He wants you to know it’s him. He wants fear to do half the work.”

Hermione met his gaze. “It won’t.”

Something shifted in his face. Respect, sharpened.

Harry spoke, voice of all strategy: “We reinforced your street. We’ll post Auror rotation. You’re not going back tonight.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Hermione said, tight.

Her jaw ached from how long she’d been holding it clenched. Adrenaline still hummed beneath her skin, sharp and metallic. Three attempts. Three shadows pressing against the edge of her wards like fingers testing bruises. She hated how close it had been. Hated even more that she hadn’t felt invincible in her own home.

Draco cleared his throat, tone controlled, formal, but edges frayed. “Your wards are insufficient.”

Hermione bristled. “Excuse me?”

The word landed like a slap. Not because it was cruel, but because it struck too close to something tender. She had built those wards herself. Layer by layer. With care. With knowledge. With the stubborn pride of someone who had survived too much to be careless now. Hearing him say it - him - scraped directly against her sense of competence. Of safety. Of control.

“You know they are,” he said, not unkindly. “Dolohov uses ancestral dark magic. Your wards are modern Ministry-type. Efficient, but straightforward.”

Harry nodded reluctantly. “He’s right.”

Of course he is, some traitorous part of her thought. Of course Malfoy walks back into her life and immediately sees the cracks.

She tasted something bitter at the back of her throat - not fear, exactly, but the old, familiar resentment of being assessed, evaluated, found wanting.

Draco continued, gaze steady: “I’ll re-cast them. You need layered protection: blood, core, intent barriers. He can’t be fought with half measures.”

Hermione stared. “And you assume I'll let you into my home?”

Her arms folded tighter, as if she could hold herself together through sheer will. The image flickered unbidden: the Yule Ball. Her tears. His silence. The white handkerchief pressed into her shaking hands, not as pity, but recognition. Empathy. The boy who had known humiliation and isolation in his own way. She hated that memory for surfacing now. Hated that some part of her had never fully forgotten it.

“I assume,” Draco replied quietly, “you want to live.”

The words didn’t feel like a threat. That was what unsettled her. They felt like a statement of fact. Like something he had already learned the hard way.

The room went still.

Ginny raised a brow, quietly impressed, not offended.

Hermione crossed her arms, chin high. “We don’t trust each other.”

And wasn’t that the truth. Neutrality, she could manage. Professional respect, perhaps. But trust implied softness. Implied opening a door she’d spent years reinforcing from the inside.

Draco’s reply was soft steel. “Trust isn’t required. A common enemy is.”

Something in her chest shifted. Recognition, not agreement. The cold logic of it resonated in places she didn’t like to acknowledge. War logic. Survivor logic.

Crookshanks strutted over and sat directly in front of Draco, glaring up at him like a judge.

Draco stared back.

Crookshanks blinked.

Then… sat beside him.

Ginny’s eyebrows shot up. “Well. That’s new.”

Hermione exhaled despite herself. Crookshanks had always known things. Chosen people with unnerving precision. The traitor.

A muscle jumped in Draco’s cheek. Not quite a smile, but its ghost.

She caught it - the restraint, the habit of holding emotion in check - and felt an unexpected pang of familiarity. She knew that discipline. Had learned it herself.

Harry clapped his hands lightly. “Right. Hermione stays here tonight. Malfoy and I will secure her house at dawn. Full ward suite.”

Draco inclined his head, an old ritual, bent into a new purpose. “I’ll be there.”

Hermione swallowed. “You don’t have to-”

The words rose on instinct, on independence, on the part of her that had survived by refusing help unless it was absolutely necessary.

“Yes,” Draco cut in. “I do.”

Their eyes met. Something unspoken thrummed.

Not apology. Not penance. But responsibility. Recognition. Two people who knew what it meant to carry a target on their backs - and to keep going anyway.

This wasn’t debt. Or guilt. Or old allegiance. It was a choice. And responsibility. And recognition of someone else carrying a wound you understood too well.

Harry broke the moment with clipped authority. “Ginny will set up the guest room. Hermione, stay armed. I’ll brief Kingsley at first light.”

Ginny tugged Hermione toward the hallway. “Come on. You need to rest.”

Hermione allowed it, muscles tight, head spinning.

At the doorway she paused, looking back. Draco stood by the fireplace, parchment in hand, reading Dolohov’s threat like a prophecy he intended to tear apart.

Their eyes met again.

Not enemies. Not allies yet.

But two people who had survived hell and recognized it in the other.

She whispered, just loud enough:

“Tomorrow, then.”

Draco inclined his head. “Tomorrow.”

Hermione turned away, heart pounding like war drums in her ribs.

And behind her, Draco Malfoy, once her enemy, now her personal puzzle, watched her go with the expression of a man who had just chosen a side again and knew there would be no turning back.

Chapter Text

She stood instead in the Great Hall, but not as it had ever been. Candles floated low, halos of warm gold hovering just above her shoulders, close enough to brush her hair. Music hummed from no visible source: not fast, not slow, but something that felt like turning pages in a book she’d forgotten she loved.

The hall was empty. Except for him.

Draco Malfoy stood at the center of the room, dressed as he had been at the Yule Ball their fifth year. Sharp lines, silver embroidery, and eyes still too guarded for someone that young. But here, his expression was different. Softer. A little uncertain, like he wasn’t sure he was supposed to be part of the memory at all.

Hermione frowned. “This never happened.”

“I know,” Dream-Malfoy said, but his voice wasn’t mocking. It was quiet. Observing. “But dreams don’t care much for truth. Only for what’s unfinished.”

She should have walked away. She meant to. But her feet didn’t move.

When he stepped forward, the candles brightened, casting gentle light over features that once only scowled at her. Here, his face was tinged with something she couldn’t name. Not guilt, not arrogance, not the brittle sharpness of the boy he’d been.

Something like… apology.

He offered his hand.

Not with pomp. Not with the sneer she remembered. Just a simple gesture, palm half-open, as if waiting to see whether she’d choose to take it.

“This isn’t real,” Hermione whispered.

Malfoy’s expression didn’t change. “Neither were half the things we believed back then.”

Her throat tightened.

The music shifted again, softer, almost tender. And somehow, impossibly, they were both moving. She didn’t remember placing her hand in his. She didn’t remember taking the first step. But they were dancing, slow and careful, the kind of dance where the slightest breath could send it crumbling.

His hand at her waist was too gentle for the boy she remembered.

She wasn’t sure what that said.

“Why are you here?” she asked, voice small.

Dream-Malfoy exhaled, and it sounded weary. Older. Nothing like the echo of their childhood.

“Because you keep wondering,” he said. “Wondering if people can change. Wondering if I did.”

Hermione swallowed. “Did you?”

He didn’t answer with words. Instead, the candles around them flared, not harsh, but warm, illuminating the space between their feet. The marble beneath them wasn’t the stone of Hogwarts anymore.

It was the polished floor of the apothecary. Her apothecary.

And Dream-Malfoy looked down at where their hands were joined, as if he were seeing something he’d never believed possible.

“You’re not afraid of me here,” he said softly. “Not like you were then.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” she murmured.

He raised an eyebrow, the only gesture that felt precisely like him. “You were afraid of what I stood for.”

Hermione’s breath hitched. Because that sounded true.

“And now?” she whispered.

Malfoy held her gaze, steady and unblinking. “Now you’re afraid of what I might stand for.”

Her heart twisted.

But when she blinked, the hall dissolved; candles blinking out, lights fading. The warmth at her waist, the steady pressure of his hand around hers… all slipping like mist through fingers.

She reached for something, she didn’t know what, but the dreamscape was already collapsing.

Just before everything vanished, she heard his voice, faint and almost human:

“Granger… you don’t know me anymore.”

And then-

Hermione woke before the sun, not so much rested as emptied out. The guest room at Grimmauld Place was warm and dim; the curtains were drawn against the grey wash of an almost-morning. For a few seconds she stared at the ceiling and tried to remember what quiet used to feel like inside her body.

Crookshanks was a curled comma of ginger at her feet, one eye cracked open in that judgmental way of his that said you left me to fight a war alone in a different room, and I am displeased but magnanimous. On the armchair by the window, Ginny had fallen asleep in a blanket, a book facedown on her chest, wand still in her hand. Hermione’s heart tugged. Gratitude, love, the ache that came from being kept by people who knew how to stand between you and the dark.

She sat up. The movement was enough to stir Ginny awake in an instant, all War-Mum reflexes. “You slept,” Ginny said softly, sounding a touch surprised and a lot relieved.

“Something adjacent,” Hermione murmured.

Ginny set the book aside and came to sit on the edge of the bed. There were no speeches, no platitudes. Just the warm pressure of Ginny’s palm over Hermione’s knuckles, the kind of contact that said we have held the line before; we can hold it again.

“You don’t have to be invincible twice,” Ginny said after a moment, voice low. “You’re allowed to be tired and furious at the same time.”

Hermione huffed a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt. “Tired and furious seem to be all I’ve got.”

“Good,” Ginny said briskly. “Those are useful.”

The floorboards in the hall creaked. Harry appeared in the doorway, hair wilder than the horizon, eyes flinty with the kind of focus that had once made the world both follow him and fear for him. He had changed clothes, but the smell of cold street and spent magic clung to him.

“Kingsley wants you under Auror rotation today,” he said, voice quiet to keep the room gentle. “But first, breakfast. And then we go.”

“We?” Hermione echoed.

Harry’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Malfoy’s already downstairs.”

Of course he was. Hermione’s stomach did something ridiculous and inconvenient, like a bird hitting a window, startled to find glass between it and the open sky.

Ginny squeezed Hermione’s fingers once, then stood. “Tea. Toast. Several eggs. You’re not warding anything on an empty stomach.” Crookshanks leapt down, stretching into a long, indignant ribbon, then threaded himself around Hermione’s ankles as if to herd her toward sustenance.

The kitchen had been charmed to smell faintly like oranges and cinnamon; sunlight hadn’t fully arrived yet, but the enchanted lanterns cast a soft, steady light across polished wood and framed photographs. Albus on a toy broom at four. James missing two teeth and grinning like a delinquent cherub. Lily asleep on Harry’s chest, a fist tangled in his robes. These were the spells that mattered, Hermione thought, the ones made of ordinary domesticity, cast every day by people who kept choosing each other.

Draco stood at the far end of the table, not quite leaning on it, hands at his sides like he’d remembered to keep them still by force. He had removed his cloak; the black of his jumper made him look paler, the sharp lines of his face clearer. He had not slept. She could tell by the way fatigue sat under his eyes, by the thinnest roughness on his voice when he said, “Morning,” like a truce.

“Tea?” Ginny said, all hospitality and a hint of mischief. She didn’t wait for an answer, set a mug near Draco’s right hand, another near Hermione’s place, a third for Harry. “Eat,” she commanded, which was the Weasley family’s oldest ward.

They ate. Not much, but enough. Toast, eggs. The kind of breakfast that steadies hands. Conversation was spare, factual.

“The letter,” Harry said, tapping the copied transcript lying between the salt and the marmalade, “was etched with curse-fire, not ink. Forensics confirmed. There were also faint traces of a signature hex in the frame of your kitchen window, someone anchored a temporary scrying sigil to watch for movement.”

“Neatly done,” Hermione said, because she could not bring herself to say intimate.

“Sloppy for Dolohov,” Draco countered, that precise calm of his slipping a fraction. “He wanted us to see that. He wanted you to know he was inside your perimeter.” His gaze flicked to Hermione, only briefly. “Terror as a first layer.”

“Then we peel it off,” Hermione said, setting her cup down with a soft click. “Let’s go.”

They left as the sky was bruising from night to day. Diagon Alley before opening was a different creature, sleepy shutters, streetlamps guttering, the scent of damp stone and parchment, a shopkeeper here and there sweeping a stoop. The world hadn’t heard last night’s whisper yet. It would.

Hermione walked between Harry and Draco. It felt, absurdly, like being escorted by past and future, war and what comes after. She kept her wand out and her jaw set, part defiance, part brace against the inevitable flood of memory she knew would come when she crossed her threshold.

Sage’s sign was still. The glass gleamed faintly. For a heartbeat she saw the reflection of three people who might once have killed each other standing arm’s length apart, aligned by something harder than forgiveness: intent.

Harry went first, sweeping the door and frame for traps, then the floor. Draco stood still, head cocked like he was listening to music in a language only he knew. Hermione put her palm flat to the lock and murmured a counterphrase; the shop recognized her and sighed open.

The smell of dried herbs and clean glass and a ghost of last night’s brewing hit her like home. Beneath it, something rank, curse-residue, clinging to the air like old smoke. Ginny’s words from last night returned: you’re allowed to be tired and furious at the same time. Hermione let the fury bank and the practicality rise.

“Walk me through your ward schema,” Draco said, not looking at her yet, eyes on the ceiling beams, the corners, the places magic likes to gather and gossip. The formality of it steadied her. She told him, layers, triggers, intent keys, tethered anchor in the bedroom and a secondary in the back storeroom, the way she had tied the wards to her core signature so no one could piggyback in behind her Floo.

He listened like a craftsman. And then, mild, “You built for intruders. Not for ghosts.”

Her mouth twitched. “You say the most comforting things.”

Harry snorted. “He’s right. You guarded against force. He’s using decay.”

“Patch rot,” Draco said, finally meeting her eyes. “Old magic digs under and unthreads.”

Hermione took a breath. “Then we thread deeper.”

They began.

It was delicate work, the kind that made time move strangely, swell and shrink and vanish under concentration. Harry warded the perimeter with Auror signatures - tripwires, flares, a trace net that would sing if anything pressed from the wrong direction. Draco and Hermione moved through the interior in a slow, spiraling dance, unbinding, purging, rebuilding.

He did not take over. He did not even suggest. He offered a sequence, and she considered; she suggested an alteration, and he adjusted; they tested; they listened. It felt, disconcertingly, like playing chamber music with someone whose phrasing you somehow already knew.

“Here,” he said once, low, at the corner of the counter where a hairline fracture of unspooling magic clung to the underside of the wood. “Hold your intent steady and draw from the side, not through the break.”

“Through will tangle it,” she said, because she’d seen this exact thing in theory and never in practice. She set her wand, angled her wrist, poured control through the shape he’d sketched in the air. The break sighed and closed like a suture.

“Good,” he said. Not praise, exactly. A confirmation.

At the back wall, beneath the high shelf where she kept her personal stock, they found what they’d expected and dreaded: a thin, elegant lattice burned faintly into the magic of the room, almost invisible unless you knew where to look. Not a door. A suggestion of one. The kind of mark that grows if left alone.

“Signature hex,” Harry said from the doorway, grim. “They watched you make tea.”

Hermione refused to look at the kettle. Draco’s mouth tightened.

“You’ll feel it fight,” he warned, and then, softer, “I’m with you.”

Ridiculous, the way a sentence could change the quality of a room.

They cut the lattice. It did fight, like the dry snap of old bone and the sting of smoke in the throat. The counters rattled faintly. Crookshanks, who had followed them in with the offended dignity of royalty returning to a restored palace, hissed once and then settled beside Hermione’s ankles like a second anchor.

When it was done, the air changed. It took a moment to realize how. Then she heard it, the room had stopped listening for a voice that wasn’t hers.

“Again,” she said. Draco nodded. They moved.

At the bedroom anchor, the private tether built into the quiet heart of her flat, Hermione hesitated. The door stood ajar. Her bed was made. The drawer beneath it, closed. Everything precisely where she had left it, down to the book face-down beside the lamp and the scarf thrown carelessly across the chair. And yet the room no longer felt like something she’d woven. It felt exposed, as if someone had imagined their way into it and left a thought behind.

Harry did a perimeter sweep and then withdrew without comment, a courtesy and a trust. Draco did not step past the threshold. He stood a respectful distance and inclined his head toward the air above the bed.

“Here,” he said. “Press down. If it pushes back, we seed a counter-intent.”

Hermione lifted her wand. Pressed. The wards rose like palm against palm, resistance, then give, then resistance again, the way two people who care too much and have different methods argue.

She did not like the way her throat felt.

“Easy,” Draco said, so low she almost didn’t hear it. “Don’t meet force with force. Meet it with definition.”

She shifted. The pressure yielded. The tether sang.

“There,” he murmured. “That’s you.”

It startled her, the clarity of it, the way her own magic sounded when someone else named it. Precise. Warm. Relentless. She swallowed and touched the point again, lighter. The sound came back. Hers.

They layered protections. Some were the Ministry’s finest, structured, clever, as dependable as a grid. Some were older, wordless, shaped by intention, by names spoken softly and promises held. Draco drew a few runes on the air, delicate, almost translucent, like frost fractals, and Hermione, who knew twelve alphabets of magical notation, could not immediately read them. She filed the strangeness away with a scholar’s curiosity and a soldier’s patience. Another day. Another page.

By the time the sky had shifted from grey to the pale gold of a reluctant morning, the flat felt different, not impenetrable (there was no such thing) but itself again. The way a person feels after a long fever breaks and the body remembers its own temperature.

Harry lowered his wand and exhaled. “That’s as tight as it gets without building you a fortress.”

“I don’t want a fortress,” Hermione said, breathless and very clear. “I want a home.”

Draco glanced at her, and for the first time that morning, the line of his mouth softened fully into something almost like a smile. Small, private, gone quickly and entirely real.

They went back downstairs. The shop was waking with the rest of the Alley; footsteps and voices drifted past the door, ordinary life reasserting itself with stubborn cheer. Hermione reset the sign to Closed with a flick. Not today.

“What did Forensics get from the letter?” she asked Harry, drawing the parchment copy toward her again with two fingers as if wary of being burned. “Beyond curse-fire.”

Harry set a small folder on the counter. It looked wrong there, like bureaucracy in a chapel. “Two layered hexes, one to obscure origin, one to lace intimidation into the act of reading. Both stripped when you opened it, leaving residue and a signature. He wants you to hunt him with a particular fear.”

“Fear fails in the face of information,” Hermione said crisply. “What else?”

Draco tapped the corner of the page. His fingers were long and precise; his nails were clean. For a bewildering second she wondered if he cut them with a Muggle file or a charm from a Malfoy groomer. War made odd roommates of thoughts. Focus.

“It isn’t merely curse-fire,” Draco said. “There’s a strand of bloodwork woven through. Not fresh. A distillate.” He glanced at Hermione, measuring the weight of the next suggestion before he lifted it. “He’s working in a vocabulary adjacent to Slavic keening magic. Old. Nasty. Rare in Britain.”

Hermione felt the distant click of a door inside a library opening, an intellectual response that existed on a separate track from the immediate personal hatred she held for Dolohov’s name. “Which means he’s either importing rites,” she said, “or he studied with someone who survived him.”

“Or he’s improvising from half-remembered war notes,” Harry added. “We kept incomplete files on some of that. For good reason.”

“Which is exactly why he wants me to know it’s him,” Hermione said. “He thinks I will flinch.”

“Will you?” Draco asked quietly.

It was not a challenge. It was a calibration.

Hermione looked at the letter. She thought of her chest and the old, ugly bruise that had faded from purple to memory. She thought of the handkerchief in the drawer and the vow she made to herself long before she knew what adulthood would cost. She thought of Albus asleep on her window seat yesterday, of Scorpius’s eyes lit with curiosity, of Crookshanks choosing to sit beside a Malfoy without being told.

“No,” she said simply. “I will not.”

Silence settled, not heavy now, but purposeful.

Harry slipped the letter back into the folder, then set his hand on the counter, palm down, the way people do when they are about to ask for something they know they have no right to demand but will anyway. “Kingsley wants a briefing at noon,” he said. “And I want you under watch until then. We can rotate a witch from the Auror Office to sit here while you sort the shop.”

“I’m not opening,” Hermione said.

“Good,” Harry said. “Then let me take you back to Grimmauld-”

“No,” Draco said. It was soft, but it moved the air.

Both Harry and Hermione looked at him.

“Granger should set her wards in her own bones again,” Draco said evenly. “If she leaves now, her home and her shop will remember fear, not restoration.”

Harry’s mouth turned. “You always talk like a Malfoy, you know that?”

Draco didn’t blink. “I am one.”

Hermione found, to her own surprise, that the stiffness in her shoulders eased a fraction at his certainty. It wasn’t arrogance. It was lineage used as a promise instead of a weapon.

“I’ll stay,” she said. “For a few hours. Then I’ll come to the Ministry.”

Harry hesitated. Then nodded once, trusting her to know the difference between stubbornness and strength. “Two hours,” he bargained.

“Two and a half.”

“Fine.”

He looked at Draco. “You’re keeping an eye on her?”

Draco’s answering look was drier than the Sahara. “She could hex me into soup if I tried. I’ll-” He paused, rating words like potions-carefully calibrated, not to be wasted. “-I’ll be nearby if she needs me.”

Harry accepted that. Hermione pretended she didn’t notice the way her pulse tripped.

They stepped outside together. Morning had fully arrived; the Alley was awake and yawning, cheerful and unsuspecting, the way cities are when they haven’t been told the news yet. The sign over Sage swung slightly in a friendly little breeze. A child ran past, scarf streaming; somewhere a kettle whistled; Flourish’s front display had been rearranged to feature a window full of dragonology volumes and one unfortunate stack of kiss-and-tell memoirs about Quidditch stars.

Hermione stood in her doorway and breathed, long and even. The wards hummed against her skin, answering. Hers. Again.

Harry touched her shoulder, brief. “I’ll see you at the Ministry at 10 A.M.” He nodded to Draco, an old soldier acknowledging another, and was gone in a twist of air.

Draco remained on the pavement. He looked, suddenly, like a man who didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. He settled on clasping them lightly behind his back, deferent, unthreatening, a posture learned in the kind of rooms where eyes weighed worth like coins. She wondered who taught him that, and then decided she didn’t want to know.

He glanced past her shoulder, into the shop where light lay clean across glass and wood. “You did good work,” he said, and it took her a second to realize he meant more than this morning’s warding.

“So did you,” she said, because precision mattered, and because truth was a kind of protection of its own.

His mouth tipped. Not a smile. A note in a chord they were building. He stepped back, ready to go. Their eyes caught, just for a breath too long.

“Don’t face him alone,” he said, almost under his breath. It might have been the wind. It might have been an oath.

“I won’t,” she answered, and heard herself mean it.

He nodded once, as if that were all the reassurance either of them would get today, then turned and walked away into the brightening morning, a tall shadow with purpose at its heels.

Hermione watched until the crowd swallowed him. Then she went back inside Sage, reset her shelves by hand, whispered to glass and herb and air, and let the shop retell itself the story she needed it to remember: not fear. Restoration. Not silence. Song.

Outside, the Alley went on. Inside, a bell waited to be rung. The wards thrummed. Crookshanks leapt to the counter and yawned as if to say, That will do for now, human.

“For now,” she agreed, stroking his head. And now held.

Chapter Text

Hermione had stood in this atrium as a student, a soldier, a reformer, a legislator, and a consultant. She had stood here tired, triumphant, furious, grieving, hopeful. The Ministry of Magic had watched her grow up the same way Hogwarts once had, silently, with walls that remembered every footstep.

But she had never stood here quite like this.

The marble floor gleamed under brighter wards than usual, storm-silver veils of protective magic humming at the ceiling like a net of silent thunder. Aurors flanked every entrance. Senior clerks whispered urgently as they hurried by, and a goblin delegation moved through security with the brisk confidence of those who knew their worth and would not be inconvenienced again.

Hermione adjusted her robes, chin high. It was not vanity. It was armor.

Her visitor badge appeared with a hum: H. GRANGER - SPECIAL CONSULTATION

Special. Not honorary. Necessary.

She walked toward the lifts. Two junior aurors paused their conversation, staring as she passed. Not rudely, anxiously. Grateful that she was here. Afraid that she needed to be.

War never really ended. It only slept and woke up again in different shapes.

When the lift doors slid open, someone already inside caught her eye - tall, dark navy robes, hair half-tamed, posture tense in the stiff, coiled way of someone who had slept little and fought thoughts all night.

Draco Malfoy.

For one beat, neither moved. The gates began to rattle shut.

Hermione stepped in.

He shifted slightly to the side, making space without comment. They stood shoulder to shoulder; a ministry memo zoomed by their heads squawking about cauldron compliance. It was absurd and domestic and at odds with the knot in her spine.

“Hello again,” Hermione said quietly.

Draco’s gaze flicked down, then back up. “Granger.”

There was a softness beneath the neutral tone, or maybe exhaustion had simply scraped away some defensive edge.

The lift chimed: Level Two - Department of Magical Law Enforcement. They exited together into orderly chaos. Aurors marched, parchment rustled, spells sizzled faintly through the air like electrical static. This floor had always smelled like ink and vigilance.

Kingsley stood near the war-room door, broad and still as a granite monument, reading three reports at once. When he noticed them, something warm flickered beneath his calm, relief disguised as solemnity.

“Hermione. Malfoy. Thank you.”

No theatrics. Kingsley Shacklebolt never used more words than needed. His voice was a ward.

Inside the conference chamber sat familiar and unfamiliar faces. Harry, posture alert despite fatigue; Susan Bones-Weasley, firm-jawed and steady; two Wizengamot observers; the goblin envoy Bloodedge Steelquill; an Unspeakable who Hermione thought might be Theo Nott (mask or no, posture betrayed him); and two really senior curse-breakers from Gringotts.

There was one more person she knew would hear about last night before the sun fully set on that winter day, but that wasn’t there: Ron. Ron Weasley, who had once been half of a future she thought she wanted, and who had instead become something better, a brother in all the ways that mattered.

He would panic first, of course, feet stomping, hair mussed from running his hands through it, demanding to know every detail, swearing he should have slept by her fireplace like old times. Then, once Ginny finished scolding him into breathing and Harry briefed him properly, he would march over to George’s shop with that determined tilt to his chin and pretend to be shelving inventory while actually waiting for the moment he could “just pop by and make sure Hermione’s alright, yeah?”

Susan would talk him down, or at least try. Susan Bones, as gentle as tea on a cold morning and twice as restorative, but fierce enough to make even hardened criminals reconsider life decisions. Susan, who could rock a baby in one arm and pin a Death Eater to the wall with the other. She wasn't just a brilliant detective in the DMLE; she was a stabilizing force, the quiet strength Ron needed after a war that had nearly unwound all of them.

Hermione smiled at the thought. Ron had chosen peace. He still came when called, he always would, but he had stepped out of the fight willingly, choosing laughter and neon signage and the steady magic of George’s jokes over another lifetime on the front lines. And she was glad for him. Glad he had found a place to land softly. Glad he had a partner who could laugh with him, challenge him, and hand him a sandwich when he got dramatic about paperwork.

And when he inevitably learned what had happened, when Ginny’s owl got to him, when Harry sent word, when Susan raised an eyebrow and said go then, she’s family, he would come crashing into the story again, heart first and wand second. Because peace hadn’t softened him; it had only taught him what was worth protecting.

And she would welcome him into this fight, when the time came. Just… not yet. He deserved one more morning where the world felt safe.

Hermione took the seat beside Harry. Draco stood for a second longer than necessary, then took the one at her other side. Something in the arrangement steadied her. Harry on one flank. Draco on the other. Past and present, certainty and uncertainty, woven together by circumstance.

Kingsley began.

“Last night’s incursion confirms Dolohov’s signature. Covert, psychological, ritual-oriented. Reinforced not by fresh recruitment but by sleeper remnants and ideological inheritance.”

Hermione’s fingers curled reflexively. Memory of cold floors, purple flame scars, Bellatrix’s laughter. She shut it down. Focus is a spell of its own.

“We are forming a special task unit,” Kingsley continued. “Harry will lead field coordination. Malfoy will act as foreign liaison and tactical consultant. Hermione will assist with curse-theory and healing on the battlefield, with the full authority to act independently if threats escalate.”

There were murmurs, not resistance, but the respectful fear of people realizing how serious this was.

Harry leaned in just slightly. “We asked you because you’re the best,” he muttered.

Hermione swallowed. Because I’ve survived him before. She did not say that.

Kingsley’s voice dropped.

“Dolohov marks those he intends to break before he kills. He is not seeking just chaos. He is seeking poetry.”

Draco’s hand tightened around his quill. Hermione felt rather than saw it.

Susan slid a folder forward. “We believe his objectives include symbolic targets. War figures. Key reformers. Magical heritage thought leaders. And-”

“People who represent bridge-building,” Harry finished.

Hermione felt eyes flick to her. She sat straighter.

“We do not reward fear with retreat,” she said. “We answer it with structure.”

Kingsley smiled faintly. “And that is why you’re here.”

The briefing continued. Maps, reports of faint magical tremors near Knockturn, intel of a suspected hideout in Yorkshire. Draco spoke rarely but when he did, silence followed. Tactical precision, cold clarity, the kind of analysis born from knowing exactly how darkness thinks.

“He’s probing for weak walls,” Draco said once, voice low. “Not to enter, but to choose where to break the foundation.”

Hermione shivered. Harry nodded grimly.

Plans set. Roles assigned. Two warding squads deployed, a signal net ready for alerts, joint authority between DMLE and St. Mungo’s for ritual injuries.

At the end, Kingsley looked at Draco.

“Auror Malfoy, your position is formalized as of now.”

Draco inclined his head. “Understood.”

“And, Miss Granger,” Kingsley added gently, turning to her, “your presence is not advisory. It is essential.”

Hermione nodded once. Hand steady. Heart loud.

When the meeting dissolved, she and Draco exited at the same time, footsteps echoing on the clean stone floor.

Halfway down the corridor, she exhaled. “You didn’t have to stand next to me the whole time.”

“No,” he agreed. “But it felt… strategically sound.”

She almost laughed. “Strategically sound?”

His lips ghosted toward a smirk. “You’re a gravitational force, Granger. Best to stand near the strongest point in the room.”

She blinked. “That sounded suspiciously like a compliment.”

“I’m told I’m capable of three per year.” A pause. “And I used one yesterday.”

She huffed, annoyed at the warmth that rose in her chest. “Thank you. For coming. For everything.”

Draco hesitated. A muscle in his jaw worked. “It isn’t about gratitude.”

“No?”

“It’s about… knowing the right side of the battlefield this time.”

She nodded, once. “Good.”

Their eyes held. Not tender, but resolute.

She broke first. “I have a shift at St. Mungo’s.”

Draco stepped aside, letting her pass. “Try to eat something during it.”

“Try not to antagonize anyone before noon.”

“No promises.”

She smiled. 

***

Hospitals always carried the ghosts of emergencies past, spells that never fully dissipated, whispered diagnoses clinging to tile and metal. But to Hermione, St. Mungo’s was not haunted. It was holy ground. People were broken here, and fixed. And fighting was not always done with wands.

She spent hours stabilizing a curse-split shoulder, then counseling a terrified mother whose son’s accidental transfiguration had turned his arms into willow branches. (Easily reversible, emotionally less so.)

A junior healer tripped over a cart. Hermione steady-handed him, helped reset his casting posture, and murmured, “Breathe from your diaphragm, not your panic.”

He blushed. “Yes, Healer Granger.”

People had always looked at her like she had answers. War taught her that answers were rarely the point. Questions, though? Those saved lives.

At half-past four, when she had just summoned charts for the next patient, a floral scent cut through the antiseptic tang of healing charms.

Hermione turned.

A healer's aide stood holding an elegant arrangement, white witch-roses with silver-touched leaves, arranged in a crescent that resembled both a cradle and a crest. The vase was polished obsidian. Magic shimmered off the bouquet in a protective veil, gentle but unmistakably ancient.

“Delivery for Healer Granger,” the aide said, staring as if expecting the bouquet to breathe.

Hermione frowned. “From who?”

The aide handed a card and fled, as though proximity to aristocratic flowers might mark him.

Hermione unfolded the parchment.

Miss Granger,
Your expertise and kindness are not overlooked.
Sage is a rare blessing in this world.
My family extends its gratitude, for your skill and your grace.
Please join me for tea, at your convenience.
-Narcissa Malfoy

The penmanship was elegant, old, precise, but soft at the edges, like someone learning gentleness late in life and holding fast to it.

Hermione stared.

A Malfoy did not send flowers lightly. Gratitude from them was a currency rarer than galleons.

She touched one petal. It glowed faintly, warmth, not fire, and she felt something like a ward wrapping around the bouquet, protective magic so subtle she nearly missed it.

“She sent you flowers?” the junior healer whispered, passing behind her and nearly tripping again. “Malfoy flowers?”

Hermione blinked. “So it appears.”

Her chest ached in a strange new place, tenderness mixed with disbelief. She had faced curses meant to kill her; she had fought men who wanted her erased; she had lived alone with ghosts. And now Narcissa Malfoy was sending her roses.

War did strange things to people. Peace, stranger still.

Hermione set the flowers on her desk as though they were fragile, breathing things. They gleamed under the hospital lights, dignified and impossibly out of place among charts and spell gloves and a half-drunk mug of mint tea.

A single thought settled into her mind, unwelcome and oddly gentle:

The world is changing. And I am changing with it.

She exhaled slowly.

“What in Merlin’s name,” she whispered, “am I getting myself into?”

Crookshanks, who had somehow smuggled himself into the hospital’s ward again and appeared at her heel with impeccable timing, meowed like a cat who already knew the answer and found her slow.

Hermione sat, pulled her ledger toward her, and steadied her heart.

There were curses to break, futures to build, and tea to accept.

Chapter Text

Hermione had always believed that shelves revealed something about a person. A tidy shelf meant a tidy mind, usually. Or a frantic attempt to control what life refused to tame. After everything that has happened this week, her shelves today were not tidy, and she suspected she was the latter: collecting order in small doses the way one collects courage before an execution.

It struck her, distantly, that this was how she had always survived - by arranging the world into pieces she could hold. When chaos roared too loudly, she answered with labels, lists, rituals. Today, even that felt thin.

Briony had the day off. The shop felt quieter without her humming, without her bright, capable hands rearranging bottles into constellations no one but her understood. Sage breathed softly in the late morning light, lavender and clary sage drifting through the warm air like blessings.

This place had become more than work. It was proof. That she could build something gentle after destruction. That healing could be chosen, cultivated, grown. She clung to that truth now, the way one clings to a railing during a storm.

Hermione sealed a parchment-wrapped bundle of dried feverfew and tied it with twine. Simple motions. Measured. Safe. Just keep moving.

Movement meant not thinking. Not remembering the knock at the door. The shadows testing her wards. The sound of her own heartbeat when fear had finally found a way in.

The bell chimed.

Her wand was in her hand before she turned, instinct, not fear. Then she exhaled.

Because fear, she realized, had already been spent.

Draco Malfoy stood in the doorway, Scorpius’s small hand wrapped inside his.

Time bent. Folded. The past surged forward with sharp clarity - silver-green eyes in a corridor, frostbitten words, a boy taught too young how to be cruel in order to survive. And yet, the man before her stood differently. Not rigid with superiority. Rigid with vigilance.

“Sorry to intrude,” Draco said, voice low. His eyes flicked over her face, checking for shadows or remnants of fear, she realized. The realization startled her. He wasn’t assessing her as a threat. He was checking if she was harmed.

“He wanted to show you.”

Scorpius held out both palms proudly. “Look! They’re not pink like dragons anymore!”

Hermione laughed, soft and genuine. “That’s wonderful news.”

Her laughter surprised her - that it came so easily, so honestly. Children did that. They cut through history with the blunt force of presence.

She crouched to inspect them, taking his little hands in hers.

Warm. Alive. Fragile. The weight of that trust settled into her chest like something sacred.

The skin was still faintly rosy, but calm, magic steady, not buzzing or flaring.

“You’ve done very well,” she murmured. “Keep the potion in the morning and night for one more week, to be safe. And don’t-”

Scorpius grinned, already reciting, “-touch any new wards, or frogs, or portraits that shout!”

Hermione blinked a laugh. “That’s… a surprisingly accurate list.”

She felt it then - the sharp, unwelcome ache beneath her ribs. The instinctive tenderness. The pull she rarely allowed herself to feel.

Draco’s mouth twitched, a near-smile. It was restrained, reflexively. As if joy were something that had to be monitored, lest it invite punishment. She recognized that habit painfully well.

“The Manor has opinions.”

“And carpets that yell if you spill juice,” Scorpius added gravely.

Hermione looked up. “Your mother must be pleased to have the house restored.”

Draco’s features softened, briefly, like sunlight through cloud. “She is. She’s worked on it for years.”

Years of undoing damage done by men long dead. Of choosing repair over rot. She wondered when Narcissa Malfoy had begun that work, and how lonely it must have been.

Hermione hesitated, then said it, because dancing around truth no longer suited her. “She sent me flowers. At the hospital.”

Draco went still. Very still. She saw the moment his world shifted, recalibrated. As if the idea of these two women, his mother and her, sharing space unsettled some carefully stacked belief inside him.

A flicker of surprise broke through his composure, almost something vulnerable. “She did?”

“Yes.” Hermione brushed her hands on her apron. As if grounding herself. As if this were not, somehow, momentous.

“And invited me to tea.”

Draco blinked once. Twice. “She- invited- you.”

There it was again, disbelief edged with something fragile. Hope, perhaps.

Something in his voice softened when he spoke the word you, and Hermione felt heat climb her neck.

Ridiculous, she thought. Absolutely ridiculous. And yet.

Scorpius tugged her sleeve. “Grandmother says tea fixes everything. Except cursed carpets.”

“Wise woman,” Hermione murmured.

Draco cleared his throat, mask sliding back into place, but not perfectly. There was a crack in the silver. “You should go,” he said quietly. “The Manor… is different now.”

Not a warning. An invitation, poorly disguised.

Before Hermione could reply, Scorpius gasped.

Not dramatic. Not theatrical. A small sound, confused, frightened. His hand flew to his chest. His knees buckled.

“Daddy-?”

Then the magic hit.

A violent pulse tore through the air, shimmering like heat above stone. And Hermione felt it in her own core, a sympathetic ache, like hearing a bone crack inside someone else’s body.

Scorpius’s magic flared wild, untamed, snapping like live wire against the shop wards. Bottles rattled. Crookshanks hissed and bolted from the shelf.

Draco caught his son before he hit the floor, voice sharp and raw. “Scorp-look at me-look at me, little star, breathe-”

But the boy wasn’t breathing right. Magic crackled under his skin, veins lighting faintly, painfully, as if his small body were trying to contain a storm.

Hermione moved. There was no thought. No fear. Only clarity. The kind that came when purpose snapped into place.

Her wand was at Scorpius’s chest in a heartbeat, the other hand cupping the back of his trembling neck. Her healer’s instincts sang, sharp and merciless. This was not reaction. This was crisis.

“Malfoy, hold him- steady- don’t shield, he needs a release path-”

Draco didn’t question. And that, too, struck her. Trust given instantly. Not earned. Offered.

He held his son with both arms, forehead pressed to Scorpius’s temple, murmuring-

“You’re safe. Dad’s here. Breathe. Just breathe.”

Hermione drew magic gently, crafting a soft siphon thread, not to drain him, but to anchor him. To stabilize. A healer’s spell, not a fighter’s. Warm, glowing, wrapping around the boy like hands soothing fevered skin.

“Tempus lenis… stabilio cordis… pax animae…”

The flare shuddered, then broke. Scorpius went limp, breathing shallow but steady again, curls damp against his pale forehead.

Draco’s voice cracked on a whisper. “Scorpius. Look at Daddy.”

The sound went through her like glass. She had heard that sound once before, in another man, in another war. It was always the same.

Scorpius blinked, dazed. “Hurts…”

“I know.” Draco kissed his hair. “I know.”

Hermione lowered her wand slowly, breath shaking.

She was suddenly, acutely aware of her own pulse. Of how close this had come. Of how little margin the world allowed children born into legacies they did not choose.

“He’s okay. But Malfoy, this isn’t an allergy.”

His shoulders locked. Like a man bracing for impact he already expected.

The world seemed to shrink to the three of them.

Hermione met his eyes. She had seen terror in men. She had seen grief. She had seen cruelty. But nothing, nothing, was as devastating as the helplessness in Draco Malfoy’s gaze now. And understood. Not intellectually. In her bones.

“Tell me,” she said softly.

He swallowed. Then again. She watched the effort it took for him to speak. For him to stand upright while his world tilted.

His voice, when it came, was sanded raw.

“It’s a blood curse.”

Her breath stilled.

Of course it was. Blood always remembered.

“His mother…” Draco’s jaw clenched. “Astoria believed it would end with her. A bloodline poison, burning itself out. And for a while, it looked like she was right. She was wrong.”

Hermione’s chest tightened, not with pity, but with recognition. The shape of a wound she shared.

Because she knew that kind of wrongness. The kind that waits patiently, dormant, until hope relaxes its grip. The kind that lets you believe the worst has passed before returning sharper

“How long have you known?”

“Since he was three.” His voice wavered. “Episodes were rare. Manageable. Only flickers at first, magic misfires, sensitivity to wards, a spell surge if he got too upset. France helped. Less ancestral pull. But back here…” He looked at the shelves, at the wood, at the country that had shaped them. “Old magic remembers old blood.”

Hermione listened, not as an enemy, not as a savior, but as someone who knew the shape of fear that lived in a parent's throat even if she had never held a child of her own.

She thought, fleetingly, of all the times she had held other people’s terror instead. Patients. Friends. The war itself. How she had learned to sit inside fear without letting it consume her.

“The Manor?” she asked quietly.

“Yes, the Manor woke something,” he whispered. “Ancestral wards, old family blood, Malfoy and Greengrass magic woven into stone…” His voice thinned. “I think his magic recognizes its lineage before he can choose who he wants to be.”

Hermione felt the floor settle beneath them, reality rearranging into something sharpened by purpose.

This was not coincidence. This was pattern. And patterns, she knew how to break.

“And if it progresses?” she asked.

Draco looked at his shaken hands. “Until he reaches eighteen, his core should stabilize. But his blood curse isn’t allowing it to stabilize properly…” He swallowed hard. “With this happening, he will slowly lose control of magic. Of health. Or worse.”

Hermione’s breath left her. “So there isn’t much time.”

“No,” Draco whispered. “Not enough.”

She stepped closer, not touching, but present.

Close enough to anchor him. Close enough to say without saying I see this.

“You don’t have to be alone in this.”

A flicker of disbelief crossed his face. “Granger-”

“I can help,” she said, steady. “I’ve been researching blood-curse healing protocols for years. Ancient ritual reversals. Magical core stabilization. Spell regenerative sequencing.”

Draco stared at her like she had shifted gravity.

She had seen that look before - not admiration, not awe, but the stunned recognition that the impossible might, in fact, be possible.

“Why would you-how could you possibly know enough to-”

She inhaled, slowly. This was the truth she rarely spoke aloud. The one that lived beneath her ribs like a second heart.

This was always the hardest part, shaping vulnerability into speech. But well, Draco Malfoy was being vulnerable with her. He deserved the same.

“Because I live with one.”

He blinked, confusion first, then dawning horror.

Hermione forced the words out evenly. “Bellatrix didn’t just torture me. The knife she used was cursed, deeply, ritually. It didn’t scar my skin. It scarred my magic. It… stole something fundamental.”

She felt the familiar, distant ache as she spoke. Not sharp anymore. Just permanent.

Draco’s face drained of color. “You-”

“I can’t have children,” she finished, gentle and brutal at once. “I’ve spent years studying how to undo that curse. So yes. I know this language. I’ve walked through it.”

Silence, weighted and aching.

In that silence, she felt exposed, but also strangely steady. This was not shame. This was fact.

Draco’s voice broke like it had been cut from inside. “Granger…”

He stopped himself, torn apart.

She saw the instinct to apologize for surviving. For asking. For existing.

“I don’t deserve your help,” he whispered. “Not after what my family-what I-”

Hermione raised her wand before he could finish.

“Accio handkerchief.”

The little square shot into her hand, white linen, edges frayed now with time and meaning. D.L.M. stitched in silver thread. A memory made tangible.

Draco stared like she’d summoned a ghost.

“You kept it,” he whispered hoarsely.

Hermione held it carefully, the memory living between them like a fragile flame. Because it had been proof. That even in the worst version of him, there had been a choice.

“Because even then, you chose kindness. You didn’t have to. You did.”

He looked away, jaw trembling once before he mastered it. “That was nothing.”

“It was everything,” she corrected softly. “The smallest act tells the truth of the person.”

Their eyes met. The world stilled.

And she realized, with quiet certainty, that this was the moment something shifted irrevocably.

“You are not your past,” she said.

Something in Draco broke then, not in weakness, but in the way a lock breaks when it finally gives under force meant to free it. Relief; painful and profound. The moment a drowning man realizes the hand reaching toward him is real.

“Can we do this?” he asked, voice a raw, fraying thread.

“Yes,” Hermione said.

But she didn’t stop there. Her gaze flickered to Scorpius’s hand curled against her knee, then back to Draco. A future balanced on the edge of possibility.

“The lycanthropy research is finished. The publication is with the Ministry now. Which means…” she exhaled, decision settling into place like armor, “I’m free. I can start something new.”

Draco swallowed. “And how long would something like this take?”

Hermione hesitated. She refused to lie. Healing built on truth or not at all.

“Years,” she admitted. “Normally. Blood-curses are layered, vicious, and unpredictable. And this one is-” she glanced at Scorpius again, softer, “-personal.”

Draco’s jaw clenched. Something fierce lit behind his eyes. “I can shorten years.”

Hermione blinked. “What?”

His voice sharpened with Malfoy steel, Malfoy fury, Malfoy love channeled into something lethal and decisive. This was the Draco Malfoy who survived. Who fought. Who refused to let fate dictate terms.

“I’ve spent months paying curse-breakers in France, hiring arcanists from Prague, offering obscene sums to anyone with a degree and a grudge against impossible magic.” His nostrils flared. “None of them could even name the curse.”

Hermione’s brows rose, awe threading through her calm. Not at the money. At the devotion.

“Of course they couldn’t. The origin is-”

“I know,” he cut in. “And if you say ‘dangerous,’ I’ll be forced to agree. Which is why-” He leaned in, voice low, urgent, reverent, “-I’m telling you I have resources they don’t. Access they don’t. More money than anyone should. Books that were never meant to leave the Malfoy vaults. Rituals locked behind wards older than the Ministry.” His chest rose, tight. “I can get you anything you need. Everything. Just tell me what it is.”

Hermione stared at him, at the truth of him, at the fire, at the father.

She spoke before she could think better of it. “You already tried to buy the solution.”

“I tried everything.” His voice cracked. “And none of it, none of them, was enough.”

Hermione’s lips curved, small, fierce. A spark. A challenge accepted.

“Well,” she said. “None of them had my brain.”

Draco let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh; broken, disbelieving, grateful. Relief cracked through him, bright and dangerous.

“So we do this?” he asked again, steadier this time. “Not hypothetically. Not… politely.” His eyes burned. “We do this.”

Hermione nodded. Not gently. Not cautiously. With conviction.

This was not impulse. This was alignment.

“Yes,” she said. “We do this.”

Together.

Draco exhaled shakily, as if he had been holding his breath for years. He smoothed a hand down Scorpius’s hair. “I should take him home. Let him rest.”

Home.The word landed differently now. Not as a place of walls and wards, but as something provisional, fragile, constantly negotiated. Hermione wondered - briefly, uninvited - what kind of home Scorpius knew. How much laughter lived there. How much fear. How much silence carefully curated around love.

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows. “He’s still too weak to floo or for wizard apparition”.

Her healer’s instinct rebelled at the thought of sudden movement, of tearing space when the child’s magic had only just quieted. She felt that familiar, sharp responsibility bloom in her chest, the one that came when she chose to care.

“It’s alright, I’ll ask for help. MIPPY!”

A soft pop sounded, and a tiny house-elf appeared, lilac tutu bouncing, pearls shining like tiny moons.

Hermione felt something soften at the sight.

Paid. Free. Proud.

A small, living echo of battles she had once fought on principle, now embodied in joy.

“Mippy is being summoned by Master Draco!” she squeaked, tiny shoes tapping.

Scorpius stirred and lifted his head weakly. “Hi, Mippy…”

“Oh, precious moonbean,” Mippy cooed, brushing his hair. Then her eyes widened enormous when she saw Hermione. “THE HERMIONE GRANGER?!”

Hermione blinked. “Er, hello.”

She had never quite grown used to being a symbol. It still startled her, the way her name sometimes arrived in rooms before she did, trailing stories she barely recognized as her own.

Mippy sniffed loudly, wiping her eyes with a sparkly handkerchief. “Legend! Queen of freeing house-elves! Mippy cries every Tuesday reading article about your socks campaign!”

Draco exhaled as if fate were mocking him personally. “Mippy-”

“Mippy loves Miss Granger and will die for her,” Mippy declared.

Hermione smiled despite herself. “Please don’t.”

She thought, absurdly, that if the world had ended right there - magic, chaos, grief and devotion tangled together - it still might have been enough.

Mippy puffed proudly. “Yes ma’am.”

Draco gently lifted Scorpius into her arms. The little boy nestled into Mippy like he had done it a thousand times.

Scorpius murmured, “Papa…”

“I’m right here,” Draco whispered, brushing his son’s hair back. “You’re safe.”

Hermione felt her throat tighten at the word Papa. She wondered what it did to a man like Draco Malfoy - to hear it, to mean it, to live inside it. How fatherhood must have carved him open and stitched him back together into someone braver, rawer, less armored.

Mippy looked at Hermione like a knight being knighted. “Mippy will keep him safe. Miss Granger may trust.”

“I do,” Hermione said.

And she realized she truly did. Not because Mippy was powerful, but because love like that was difficult to counterfeit.

And she meant it. Another pop, and they were gone.

Hermione exhaled. “Go. Be with him.”

He hesitated, rare, almost shy in its unfamiliarity. She saw it - the pause of a man unused to leaving without a plan, unused to trusting that someone else would still be there when he returned.

“I’ll… send an owl later. We should speak properly. Plan. Work out a research schedule.”

Something warm fluttered low in her chest, purpose, connection, and something unnamed.

Purpose. Alignment. The rare relief of not carrying something alone anymore.

“Yes,” she said. “We will.”

Draco swallowed, voice quieting further. “I also have Snape’s journals.”

Hermione’s breath caught.

Severus Snape: secrets layered like scars, brilliance buried beneath cruelty and sacrifice. She felt the old ache of complicated gratitude rise in her chest.

Old grief, old reverence. “He trusted you with them.”

“He trusted me to learn from them,” Draco corrected softly. “Don't repeat mistakes.”

Hermione recognized that impulse instantly - the need to extract meaning from suffering, to make pain useful. It was one of the few things they had always shared, even when they stood on opposite sides of a classroom.

He looked at her, eyes steady and bright with something like belief and fear intertwined. “If we combine what you’ve discovered with his notes… with what my family records hold… we may find a way through this. Quicker than normal.”

We. The word sat between them like a tether.

Hermione nodded. “Then we start together. That’s a promise.”

A flicker, the tiniest, startled relief. “Thank you,” he whispered, not as Malfoy, not as Auror, but as a father.

She felt it land, not as gratitude owed, but as something exchanged.

He took one slow breath, as if anchoring himself before the next step.

“Alright,” later, I'll-”

“-send the owl,” Hermione finished, lips tugging just slightly. “I know.”

She knew the rhythm of men like him now. The way plans were scaffolding, holding fear at bay.

For the first time, the corner of Draco’s mouth softened, not a smirk, not a shield, but something almost humanly unguarded.

“Good,” he said. “I’d hate to be predictable.”

Hermione smiled. “Talk soon, Draco.”

Saying his name felt like stepping onto new ground. Not dangerous, just unmapped.

He froze, the first time she’d ever spoken his given name like it belonged in this world and not the past.

“…Talk soon, Granger,” he murmured, but softer than he ever had before.

And then he disapparated, leaving lavender air and a handkerchief heavy with memory in her palm.

Hermione stood alone among the shelves she’d built, heart unsteady but fiercely alive.

Sage no longer felt merely like a shop. It felt like a threshold.

A child to save. A curse to break. A promise stitched long ago into fabric and fate.

She pressed her fingers briefly to her sternum, grounding herself in breath, in body, in choice.

Dolohov felt like a smaller monster now, a shadow she could face while chasing sunlight. Fear had no place when purpose burned this bright.

Not because he was less dangerous, but because she was no longer facing him empty-handed.

She tucked the handkerchief into her pocket.

This time, she was not trying to undo the past. She was building a future.

She would not fail this time. Not again. Not ever.

Chapter Text

(Draco’s POV)

The Manor breathed differently now.

It always had, he supposed. But for years the sound of it breathing had felt like a judgment rather than a welcome - walls remembering what he wished they would forget, magic murmuring names he no longer answered to. Tonight, though, the breath felt… cautious. As if the house itself were holding vigil.

Mippy arrived first, popping into existence with a soft crack, Scorpius cradled carefully in her small arms and tutu fluttering like anxious wings. A heartbeat later, Narcissa Malfoy was already sweeping into the child’s room, silk robes pooling like moonlight as she took in the sight, her grandson limp, magic flickering faintly around him like static before a storm.

Draco felt something primitive coil tight in his gut at the sight - the helplessness of watching another life flicker beyond his control. He had survived war, trials, exile. None of it compared to this.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered, voice made of velvet and steel. Her hand trembled only once as she brushed pale curls from his forehead. “Nana’s here.”

Mippy wrung her hands, voice squeaking. “Young Master had a fright, Missus. Miss Hermione fixed him right up, she did, clever witch she is, very clever and very kind-”

Narcissa laid a gentle hand on the elf’s shoulder. “Thank you, Mippy. Truly.”

Draco registered, distantly, the way his mother thanked now, sincerely, without hierarchy. War had burned something brittle out of her, leaving only what mattered.

A second crack split the air, this one sharper, heavier, and Draco apparated into the doorway, wand still drawn, chest still tight with the echo of panic. For one disorienting moment, he expected blood, screaming, curses overhead. War muscle memory never really died.

It lived in his spine. In the way his hand still shook before it steadied. In the way every room was first assessed for exits, threats, casualties.

Instead, he found his mother and his son.

Narcissa turned to him with a calmness born only from surviving hell and choosing softness anyway. “He’s resting,” she murmured. 

Draco crossed the room in three strides. He gathered Scorpius into his arms, holding him as though touch itself could anchor life. The child’s breathing settled against his chest, steady, safe, real.

Real. That word had become a prayer.

Only then did Draco’s shoulders drop from their battle-ready tension.

Narcissa watched him, really watched him, something knowing and ancient in her gaze.

Her inhale was sharp, familiar, the sound of a mother who learned to swallow panic long ago. “Has it worsened?”

“It’s… accelerating.” Draco rubbed his forehead, suddenly exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that lived behind the eyes, bone-deep and relentless. “The wards here triggered something. His magic is responding more violently. And I don’t think going back to France will stop it.”

Narcissa's lips tightened, grief and fury held in perfect posture. “That legacy should have died.”

“Yes.” His voice was steel wrapped in ash. “It should have.”

A beat of quiet, where the only sound was Scorpius’s breathing.

“Come,” Narcissa murmured. “We should talk.”

He followed her to the small library, not the grand ancestral one, but the sunlit corner she’d reclaimed. Shelves of plant lore and children’s books. A faint floral scent. A home, not a mausoleum.

Draco still noticed it every time - how she had shrunk the Manor without diminishing it. How she had chosen rooms meant for living over halls built for intimidation. He wondered, sometimes, whether Hermione would notice that too.

She poured tea. He didn’t refuse; he never did when she made it. In war, he’d once thought tea was a luxury. Later, he learned it could be armor.

Narcissa studied him as he sat, and Draco felt stripped bare as only a mother, one who had learned to lie to survive, could do.

He had faced judges who wanted his soul and enemies who wanted his blood. Nothing undressed him like her gaze.

“What happened?” she asked softly.

And to his own surprise, Draco told her. Not everything, but enough.

That Scorpius surged. That Hermione helped him. That she understood the nature of the curse. That she did not flinch.

That she had stepped forward where so many others had stepped back.

Narcissa listened in stillness, always composed, always poised, yet never cold. The world forgets that women who survive war are not porcelain, they are iron dipped in velvet.

“And she offered her help,” Narcissa murmured.

“Yes.”

“And you accepted.”

“I-” Draco hesitated. The old reflex rose - to justify, to minimize, to punish himself for wanting relief. “I did.”

Something softened, flickered in Narcissa’s gaze, surprise, relief, grief. Pride held carefully so it would not spook him.

“She told you about her curse,” she said gently.

Draco turned away. “She… suffered because of Bellatrix.” His voice was quiet, but jagged. “My aunt, your sister… cursed her. Stole her ability to have children. And she-”

His throat closed painfully.

The injustice of it burned hotter than any accusation ever thrown at him.

“She still offered help,” Narcissa said, voice low.

“She shouldn’t.” His hands clenched, nails biting his palms. “She owes me nothing. She owes this family even less. I don’t deserve-”

“Draco.” Narcissa’s hand covered his, elegant, cool, grounding. “You have spent half your life believing redemption means punishment. It does not.”

He had learned that lesson in blood. She was offering him a different language now.

He swallowed, fighting the instinct to recoil, to argue, to reject comfort like poison.

“She kept a handkerchief,” he whispered, barely audible. “From the Yule Ball. Mine.”

Narcissa blinked, real surprise. Rare. “She... kept it?”

“Yes.” Draco told her about his gesture, all those years ago.

For sixteen years. Folded. Remembered. Not as proof of his shame, but of his humanity.

He stared at the tea, unable to meet his mother's gaze. “All this time.”

A beat.

Then Narcissa’s voice, quiet with something like wonder: “She remembers kindness.”

He huffed a laugh, bitter, disbelieving, aching. “I hardly earned such remembrance.”

“You offered humanity when neither of you had reason to.” Narcissa set her cup down with precision. “Sometimes, Draco, mercy echoes louder than cruelty.”

The idea lodged somewhere deep and unsettling. Mercy, as legacy.

He stared. He had never been taught that. Not as a boy.

Narcissa’s gaze drifted to the dark window. “The world may yet have grace left in it.”

He wanted to believe her. More than he wanted absolution.

Draco let the words sit between them. Strange. Tender. Foreign.

“And Dolohov?” she asked softly, her voice changing like a blade being sheathed. “How much do we know?”

“Enough to know he won’t stop.” Draco’s voice sharpened. “He marked Granger’s home. He wanted fear. He will not have it.”

Narcissa nodded once, slow and deliberate. “We must protect her.”

Draco blinked. “What?”

“She is helping our family,” Narcissa said, her tone clear as polished glass. “And she has suffered at our hands. No woman who endured what she did should walk unguarded in a world where that monster breathes still.”

Something in his chest shifted. Not obligation, not debt. Recognition.

She paused, and when she spoke again, something in her voice shifted - less brittle, less careful. Something truer.

“Draco… I spent years pretending,” she said quietly. “Pretending for survival, for your father, for the world that demanded the masks we wore.” Her eyes softened, but there was steel beneath. “But the war ended a long time ago. I have no patience left for disguises.”

Draco stared at her.

He realized, then, that she was not asking his permission. She was inviting him to stand beside her without shame.

Narcissa lifted her chin. “We are wealthy beyond measure. Old money, old land, old influence. Even after spending so much of it to help rebuild everything after the war. You do not need that Auror salary. You work because you choose to. You protect because it is who you have become.” Her gaze flicked momentarily toward the memory of Hermione standing brave in the Manor. “And we can use every galleon, every contact, every scrap of power left in this name to save your son.”

He had once hated that wealth. Now he saw it as what it could be: leverage against monsters.

She stepped closer, her voice lowering. “And to do some good in a world that still fears shadows.”

A breath. Barely audible.

“Hermione Granger is formidable,” Narcissa added. “But even the strongest woman should not fight alone.”

Draco looked down. Something fierce, and grateful, twisted in his chest.

“And if helping her is helping Scorpius,” Narcissa finished, “then we owe her more than gratitude. We owe her our protection. Our resources. And the truth of who our family has become.”

A quiet vow threaded every syllable.

Draco looked down at the table, pulse uneven. “I intend to protect her.”

The words surprised him by how easily they came. How little resistance they met inside him.

He thought of Hermione Granger in the soft light of her shop, hair wild from worry, hands steady, voice steadying his world without knowing she held it.

Not as an enemy. Not as a symbol. But as a woman who had steadied his world with her hands.

He had not meant to care. Care was dangerous. Care costed blood, once. And yet…

She had kept his handkerchief. His past, the smallest mercy, folded into her future.

And suddenly he was fourteen again, watching her shoulders shake on the cold stone steps outside the Great Hall, fury and loneliness trembling under candlelight, and feeling something inside him splinter. He had offered the handkerchief because it was the only thing he could offer without betraying the life he’d been born into. Because after the Quidditch World Cup, after masks and green flames and the raw terror clawing itself into the night, he had started to realize that everything he’d been taught shivered like a cracked charm under real scrutiny. But choice was a privilege he had never owned, not then. So he played the prince of Slytherin, arrogant, untouchable, the heir to a legacy already rotting, and spat the words expected of him, while somewhere deep in his ribs a new truth curled and pulsed like a bruise: fear did not make cruelty righteous. Power did not make purpose. And a girl with wild hair and fire for a soul did not deserve to be broken by a world she was brave enough to challenge. A beautiful girl, he thought for the first time that night-

He closed his eyes.

“I don’t know what she sees in me,” he whispered.

Narcissa’s expression held something aching and wise. “Perhaps she sees who you became. Not who you were asked to be.”

And for the first time, he wondered what it would mean to let someone see that - and stay.

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

The clock ticked. The walls hummed soft magic. Somewhere upstairs, Scorpius breathed safely.

A knock of wings broke the silence. A barn owl landed on the windowsill, parchment tied to its leg, seal green and silver.

Not the Ministry. Not healer coded.

Theo. Of course it was Theo.

Draco untied the ribbon. The script was familiar, sharp strokes, smug elegance.

Slytherins are gathering.
My home tonight.
No excuses - you’re back, you show up.
P.S. Bring my gremlin godson if he’s awake.
Luna misses him.

Draco exhaled, unexpected fondness tugging at him. Trust Slytherins to treat post-war reintegration like a battle summons disguised as a social call.

Narcissa smiled faintly. “Go.”

“You’re sure?”

She brushed a finger across his sleeve, a gesture he remembered from childhood, when tenderness was forbidden but she gave it anyway.

The same gesture she had used when he was small, frightened, and pretending not to be.

“You need allies. And reminders that your past does not own you.”

Draco nodded once.

His mother kissed his temple, rare, sacred.

“For now, enjoy yourself,” she said. “And tomorrow, protect what matters.”

He made it halfway to the stairs before stopping. Looking back.

“Mother?”

“Yes, my dragon?”

The nickname hit him in the chest, not from pride, but from how fiercely she had chosen softness after war tried to take it from her.

“I think…” he began, voice unsure, “I do think Hermione Granger may be different. Not just forgiving. Not naive. Something else.”

Narcissa’s eyes warmed. “She has always been fire. Perhaps you only ever saw the flame from the wrong side of the battlefield.”

And perhaps, he thought, I am no longer that afraid of being burned.

He inhaled. Exhaled.

“And now?”

“Now,” Narcissa said, “she stands beside you. And you must learn to face warmth without flinching.”

He left before he could break.

In Scorpius’s room, the boy slept curled like a comet mid-flight. Draco sat beside him, fingers lightly brushing his son's hand.

“I will protect you,” he whispered to the dark. “From curses. From blood. From history. Even from my mistakes.”

His voice shook. He didn't stop. “And I will be worthy of the people helping us. Of her.”

The vow felt dangerous. Necessary. Alive.

The owl hooted softly. Draco swallowed. 

Tonight, he would face Theo, the Slytherins, the past.

Tomorrow would be war.

He rested his forehead against the railing of the bed and closed his eyes.

For the first time in years, the Manor felt like a sanctuary.

Chapter Text

Evening at Sage settled like a spell that knew her name.

Hermione locked the front door with a practiced flick of her wand, a cascade of soft silver wards blooming across the glass like frost patterns, and exhaled. The shop smelled of rose balm, crushed thyme, and something faintly citrus from the potions Briony had brewed the day before.

She climbed the narrow staircase to her flat, Crookshanks padding behind her in heavy, loyal steps like a guardian lion with chronically unimpressed whiskers. The fairy lights in her living room flared awake as she entered, and a kettle charmed itself toward a boil.

Home. Not grand. Not gilded. But hers.

She kicked off her shoes, rolling her ankles, and only then did she let her shoulders sag. The day’s weight loosened: lingering adrenaline from Scorpius’s spell-shock, the look in Draco’s eyes when he realized she meant to help him, the ghost of fear in her own ribs each time she remembered the intruders at her door.

Dolohov. His name felt like the taste of iron.

Hermione pressed her palm flat against the nearest bookshelf, grounding herself, feeling the hum of magic as the room settled. She was safe. For now.

The kettle whistled softly and poured itself into her favorite mug, pale green with tiny pressed fern leaves. The quiet made her bones ache with something like relief and something like anticipation. She took the tea to her desk, rolled up her sleeves, and pulled out parchment.

The moment she sat, the old instinct woke.

Her mind sharpened. Her breath steadied. Quills aligned themselves without being asked, and reference books floated from shelves like obedient planets in the gravity of her need.

Hermione Granger was built for problems.

Built to unmake curses, to pull apart systems, to decode old cruelty and craft antidotes from sheer will. Knowledge was not an escape; it was a weapon. And tonight, she intended to wield it.

Her quill hovered, the ink glistening. She had done this before. She and Theo had spent three years wrestling lycanthropy into submission. Sleepless nights, broken prototypes, near-explosions, two moral crises, and one mandrake-related disaster she still refused to discuss. And they had won. They had carved a cure out of magic older than the Ministry itself. If she could unravel a curse that lived in the bones of the moon, she could unravel this. She would. The only difference now was time. Scorpius didn’t have three years. He was a time bomb. This was a race she had to win on the first sprint.

She tied her curls back with a ribbon, opened a fresh notebook, and wrote at the top in tiny neat lettering:

Blood-Curses - Hybrid Arcanum, Lineage-Triggered Manifestation

Her quill hovered, then moved again, sharper strokes this time:

Case Study A: Mudblood Knife Curse - residual, non-active trigger; infertility, magic-womb interference, no somatic decay.

Case Study B: Astoria Greengrass Line Curse - hereditary blood-magic decay, latent activation, mage-core instability.

Her breath caught. The quill stilled. She whispered the name, almost reverently.

“Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy.”

A child born of two lines with histories full of shadowed magic. A boy with laughter like sunlight through glass, and who did not deserve to inherit pain he never asked for.

Her throat tightened.

She could not heal herself. But maybe she could heal him.

Hermione reached for a stack of texts, her own annotated research on post-war curse identification. Then another, thinning, dog-eared, covered in post-it charms: advanced rune logic, Nordic and Slavic cross-mapping.

Runes.

Her eyes narrowed with that familiar spark of intellectual hunger.

Slavic runes weren’t like the Nordic sets wizards used for wards and artifact enchantments. They were older. Messier. Living magic instead of structured magic. They responded to intention, blood, and fate in ways wizarding academia still… politely avoided.

And Draco’s description, the flare in Scorpius’s palms, the faint shimmer, matched symptoms she had only seen once, in a case file buried in St. Mungo’s restricted section, marked with Ministry red ink like a warning bell.

“A curse that believes in inheritance,” she murmured.

She scribbled formulas; she drew rune clusters; she tapped her wand against her lip in rapid, restless rhythm.

Crookshanks hopped onto the desk, tail sweeping a stack of parchment. Hermione absently stroked him with ink-stained fingers. He purred, loud and grumpy and reassuring.

“You don’t think I’m being reckless, do you?” she whispered.

Crookshanks blinked at her. A very pointed blink.

“Oh hush. Calculated recklessness is still... mostly sensible.”

He meowed once, skeptical, then curled against her elbow like an oath of loyalty written in fur.

Hermione reached for another book, the thickest one, and paused.

A thud against the window.

Not soft. Not random. A deliberate impact.

She stood instantly, wand out, heart tripping.

A snowy owl hovered outside, dignified and unimpressed, far too elegant for panic. The wards recognized friendly intent and eased. Hermione opened the window and the owl swooped in, landing on the back of her chair with aristocratic grace.

A Malfoy owl.

Her pulse fluttered.

“Right on cue,” she murmured.

The owl extended its leg. A parcel and a letter.

Heavy books, two, bound in dark leather with gold filigree. She recognized the crest embossed on one.

Family Grimoires - Blood Magic Index

And the other:

Severus T. Snape - Personal Research Logs, Vol. IV

Her breath wavered. Snape’s journals. The weight of war memories stirred around her like dust motes.

She swallowed and opened Draco’s letter first. His handwriting was sharp, elegant, controlled, like the man who wrote it.

Granger,
As promised.
Volume IV covers curse-deconstruction frameworks, rune degradation patterns, and theoretical counter-casting. Handle with respect, it is the only copy.
The Family index includes ancestral blood-magic references. Start with section VII - Heir-line Magical Instability.
Scorpius is resting. Sleeping peacefully. Thank you, again.
Send word when you're ready to coordinate research. We begin this properly.
-D.L.M.

P.S. Mippy insisted on adding biscuits. I advised against it. I was ignored. Do not eat the lavender ones.

Hermione stared at the page for a long moment, warmth curling in her stomach. Gratitude. Trust. A sliver of unexpected fondness.

Lavender biscuits indeed, the owl looked offended on Draco's behalf.

Hermione huffed a soft laugh despite herself and reached out, stroking the owl's sleek feathers with gentle fingers. “I wasn’t blaming you,” she whispered, offering a tiny owl treat from a drawer. The bird accepted it with regal dignity. “Stay a moment, will you? I’ll send a reply now.”

She pulled parchment toward her and wrote back, quill moving gently this time:

Malfoy,
Books safely received, thank you.
I’ll begin with Section VII tonight. We’ll compare notes tomorrow evening unless an emergency interferes. 
I’m pleased Scorpius is resting well. He’s a brave child, and lucky to have you.
Also, do tell Mippy that the biscuits were charming, even the lavender ones.
-Hermione

She hesitated, then drew a second sheet.

Her handwriting softened. Curved. Civilized.

Mrs. Malfoy,
Thank you again for the invitation. I would be delighted to join you for tea.
Tomorrow afternoon works beautifully.
Please let me know the time that suits you best.
With appreciation,
Hermione Granger

She sealed both letters and tied them to the owl’s leg. The bird hooted, almost approving, and swept out into the night like a white comet.

When the owl vanished into the night, Hermione stood very still.

The acceptance she had penned to Narcissa Malfoy glimmered faintly in her mind like a rune still settling into parchment, irrevocable, delicate, dangerous. She had agreed to return to Malfoy Manor. Into the marble halls where she had once screamed until her throat bled. Into the house that had held her pain like a goblet, ornate, cruel, cold.

Her fingers trembled once, only once, and she pressed them firmly to the desk until breath and body aligned again.

There was a time she would have crumbled at the thought. A time when the idea of stepping back into that house would have frozen her lungs and dragged her heart back into those floors, that carpet, that voice.

She was not immune to ghosts. She never pretended to be.

It had taken years, slow, painful, necessary years, of dropping into a mind-healer’s chair and learning how to sit with silence instead of trying to out-think it. Of naming the wounds instead of out-running them. Of learning that strength wasn’t the absence of shaking hands, but the choice to unclench them anyway.

She had grieved her parents with someone sitting beside her, not alone in the dark with her brilliance as armor. She had mourned the children she might never bear in a room where she was allowed to say it’s unfair without apologizing. She had learned that healing wasn’t linear, it was breath by breath, day by day, sometimes inch by inch.

And somewhere in that slow, reluctant acceptance, she had understood something essential: there are magics you do not touch.

Memory was one of them.

She had spent years wondering if she should have tried again, searched for a counter-charm, hunted down obscure rituals, begged answers from old Australian archives. But with time, she realized the truth she had been too young to face: tampering further could have shattered what remained. Their new lives were real. Their peace was real. And the witch she had become knew better than to rip open a wound simply because she could.

Even if she found a cure for that, she wasn’t sure she would want to use it.

So she had let her parents be whole in the life she’d given them, and turned her brilliance toward wounds she could mend: lycanthropy, blood curses, the remnants of war that punished the innocent. She could not rewrite memory, but she could rewrite suffering. She could reclaim futures. She could build cures that gave other families what she had lost. 

It was, perhaps, the truest kind of honoring she could give them.

And tonight, when fear flickered under her ribs, it didn’t own her. It didn’t direct her feet. It simply existed as a companion, not a captor.

She was older now. Softer in some places, steel-wrought in others. She did not romanticize pain; she survived it and kept choosing life anyway.

Going back to the Malfoy Manor would not be a return to helplessness. It would be a reclamation.

Not forgiveness, that word never quite fit, but transformation. Memory into meaning. Trauma into knowledge. Suffering into agency.

The Manor had once been a battlefield. Soon, it might become a laboratory. A place to unmake curses instead of create them. A place where a girl once hurt could stand as a woman who builds.

Redemption, for them, for her, for history, was work. Messy work. Brave work.

She inhaled. Exhaled. Human. Fallible. Ready enough.

Yes. She would go. Not as a scar, not as a symbol. But as Hermione Granger, who had learned how to heal without erasing what hurt.

And she would not enter as someone broken, but someone building.

Hermione breathed out. Then she returned to her desk, to books and runes and war-sharp determination.

Dolohov haunted the edge of her thoughts, but tonight, tonight he felt small. For Merlin’s sake, they had killed Voldemort. He wasn’t harmless, never harmless, but diminished in the shadow of a greater calling.

Saving a child and rewriting a curse as old as blood. Proving that mercy was not weakness, that redemption was not naive, that war survivors could build instead of break.

She traced a rune cluster in the air. Golden symbols shimmered, crackled, then sank into parchment.

She would solve this. She had faced darker magic than this. She had out-thought monsters. She had carved hope out of ruin before.

And she was not alone now.

The kettle warmed itself again as if understanding. Crookshanks purred. Outside, the moon lifted its silver crown over London like a quiet blessing.

Hermione dipped her quill once more.

And she worked, steady and luminous beneath lamplight, like a star refusing to go out.

Chapter Text

(Draco’s POV)

Theo’s townhouse in Kensington smelled of sandalwood, peppermint, and something vaguely chaotic, the signature scent, Draco thought dryly, of a man who had once housed a baby basilisk under his bed for “research purposes” and swore it was harmless until it tried to eat Blaise’s trousers.

The house itself was what happened when Slytherins grew up and got money, well, kept money, but decided they deserved softness instead of gold-plated misery. Dark green silk drapes framed tall windows. Enchanted low lamps glowed amber-gold like candle hearts. Books and rune stones shared space on polished tables, along with Luna’s woven moonflowers in glass vases.

Of course, there were the unmistakable Lovegood touches: a floating mobile of enchanted paper stars and tiny silver frogs that croaked when the moonlight hit them, a bowl of polished seashells that hummed softly in Welsh, a framed crayon drawing of Theo, Luna, and a Kneazle wearing a crown. A glass terrarium on the mantle held three miniature puffskeins wearing tiny knitted hats - Luna's doing, clearly - while the sleek emerald sofa was draped in a sunflower-yellow throw blanket that should have clashed but didn’t, somehow grounding the room like sunlight pressed into velvet.

A charmed herb garden grew on the windowsill, basil and dittany thriving beside bright calendula blooms. A selkie flute rested near a decanter of elf-made wine, as though Luna had paused mid-song and forgotten it there.

It was elegant. Strange. Intimate. A home made of two magics learning to breathe in the same room, built not to impress, but to belong.

Draco removed his coat, and it struck him: this wasn’t a salon, a battlefield, or a ballroom. It was safety. He didn’t entirely know what to do with that.

“Darling!” Pansy exclaimed, rising from the velvet sofa in emerald green robes like a cat stretching in sunlight. “You’re late.”

He arched a brow. “I had a child to put to bed. And I apparated from Wiltshire. Forgive me for not sprinting.”

Blaise lounged beside her, wine glass in hand, smirking. “You could have flown. Would have been dramatic. Wind in the hair. Cloak fluttering. Gasps from the Muggles.”

Daphne Greengrass, Astoria’s sister, still grace incarnate, swatted Blaise’s leg lightly. “Leave him. He looks tired.”

Draco did. He felt it too, but not the bone-deep, soul-rotting exhaustion of the old days. More like… the ache that came after holding something fragile too tightly.

“Where’s Luna?” Draco asked, hanging his coat.

Theo appeared from the kitchen carrying a tray like a benevolent but slightly unhinged host. “She just left to visit Ginny. Something about experimental cocktails and charmed anti-Wrackspurts cosmetics. I didn’t ask questions.”

Pansy leaned in conspiratorially. “I have to say, I was tempted to go too, if it wasn’t for the Wrackspurts.”

Theo set the tray down: wine, charmed fizzing pear cider, lemon biscuits.

He tapped his wand against a glass. “To war survivors who refuse to age bitterly.”

Draco’s lips twitched. “Bit dramatic, even for you.”

Theo winked. “I save my subtlety for seduction.”

Blaise hummed. “You’ve been married for seven years.”

“And?” Theo shot back. “Seduction is a lifestyle.”

Pansy lifted her glass. “Hear, hear.”

They toasted, a gentle clink, not a triumphant one. Quiet respect.

Daphne studied Draco quietly over the rim of her glass, eyes soft, thoughtful. Always the observer. Always the one who saw beneath posture, beneath pride, beneath armor. She had been there before the wedding bands and funeral lilies, before Astoria’s fevered breaths and the quiet dignity of goodbye. Daphne had learned how to stand beside him in grief without suffocating it, not demanding words, only offering presence. Never intrusive. Never pitying. Just… there.

She had been the one who made sure Scorpius had warm milk after the nights Draco didn’t sleep, the one who sent books and tiny socks and absurdly soft blankets enchanted for sweet dreams. The one who helped him remember that fatherhood wasn’t punishment; it was miracle and terror intertwined.

He married her sister, but somewhere along the way, Daphne had become his sister too, not by bloodline but by endurance and earned tenderness. If war forged steel, grief had forged this bond, quiet, unbreakable, threaded through memory and mercy. Not just Daphne, but his friend and her husband, Blaise. They were family.

Her gaze now wasn’t curious. It was protective. Proud. And a little relieved, as if she had waited years to see even the smallest new light find him. A warm weight settled in Draco’s chest, not unwelcome. He had missed this. Their odd little constellation.

Pansy plopped down beside him, immediately adjusting his collar. “You look like you’ve been thinking. Don’t do that unsupervised.”

“Terrifying,” Blaise murmured. “Never leads anywhere peaceful.”

Theo magically flicked a cushion at Blaise’s face. “Be nice.”

Draco huffed something like a laugh. “I’ve simply had a long day.”

“Oh?” Pansy sang, eyes glinting. “A productive day? Or… an emotionally interesting one?”

Draco refused to react. Which, of course, told them everything.

Blaise lifted a finger. “He’s doing that thing with his jaw. The ‘I refuse to discuss it but yes, I felt something’ thing.”

“I do not-”

A soft tap-tap-tap on the tall window cut through the room’s warmth.

All heads turned.

A sleek tawny owl perched on the sill, parchment tied neatly to its leg, proud, efficient, obviously on a mission.

Before Draco could so much as breathe, Theo shot up like he’d been launched. “Oh look, post!”

“Theodore,” Draco warned, rising slower, dignity intact, “give me that.”

But Theo was already unlatching the window, greeting the owl like an old friend. “Hullo, magnificent creature. You come bearing gossip, yes?”

The owl hooted once, imperious, clearly deciding Theo was beneath her but tolerable. He untied the parchment with a flourish; Draco lunged for it, too late. Theo danced back three steps, smug, unfolding the note.

Pansy gasped dramatically. “A letter? Merlin, who writes letters to Draco? Who likes him that much?”

Daphne hid a soft smile.

Theo pointed his wand at a rolled parchment. “Speaking of feelings.”

“Oh Merlin,” Draco muttered. “Don’t.”

Theo unrolled the parchment and cleared his throat dramatically.

Malfoy,
Books safely received, thank you…

Blaise grinned slow and wicked. “A woman writes him thank-you notes. Tragic. He’s doomed.”

Daphne hid her smile in her glass. “How polite of her.”

Theo continued:

We’ll compare notes tomorrow evening… I’m pleased Scorpius is resting well… You’re lucky to have each other.
-Hermione

Pansy clasped her hands like she’d just been proposed to. “Oh that’s it. She’s adopting him. Draco’s going to have emotions. I need more wine.”

Draco felt heat crawl up his neck. “If any of you speak another word-”

“Oh hush,” Daphne murmured softly, touching his wrist. “It’s good. She’s good.”

Her eyes gentled, a memory in them. Astoria. And suddenly it wasn’t teasing anymore. It was something tender. Respectful.

“I visited the Manor last week,” Daphne said quietly, trying to change the subject. “Brought Scorpius that stuffed dragon. He showed me his book on hippogriffs. He’s happy, Draco.”

The words almost undid him. He swallowed. “Thank you.”

Daphne nodded once. “Always.”

Pansy sighed dramatically. “Well, this is heartfelt and lovely and emotionally mature. I hate it.”

Theo chuckled. “Don’t lie. You adore it.”

“I do,” she admitted. Then pointed her wand at Draco. “Now tell us what’s going on.”

He hesitated, then exhaled.

No masks tonight. Not here.

“Scorpius is sick,” Draco said softly.

Silence fell like velvet, heavy, respectful.

“Blood magic,” he continued. “Inherited. Rare. Quite possibly fatal without intervention.”

Daphne’s hand found his again, no pity, just presence.

Pansy asked him: “Astoria?”

“Yes.”

He stared into his glass as though memory lived in its reflection. “The curse surfaced in the branch of the Greengrass line generations ago. A dormant blood spell, slumbering, muttering in the veins, waiting for someone unlucky enough to wake it.” His voice softened, frayed. “Astoria was supposed to be the end of it. Every record said so. It shouldn’t have passed again.”

Daphne nodded, eyes shadowed with old hurt. “Father spent years searching. All of us did.”

“She made it to twenty-three,” Draco continued quietly. “Longer than anyone expected, for her blood curse. Because her curse wasn’t tied to magical maturation. She didn’t have… a clock on her.”

Pansy’s breath caught. Blaise’s jaw set.

“Scorpius does.” Daphne whispered.

Draco nodded once. “He has until eighteen to stabilize his core, like all wizards do. But his blood curse isn’t allowing it to fuse properly…” His throat tightened. “If this keeps happening, his body will collapse under its own magic. It’ll burn itself out.”

A weighted silence. Not shock, grief, old and new, shared.

Theo’s brow furrowed. “That’s what you were doing in France?”

Draco’s hand flexed. “They tried everything. Ritual detoxification. Binding runes. Muggle-adjacent metabolic studies. It slowed the symptoms, kept him stable.” A bitter twist at his mouth. “We thought bringing him home would be safe, now that the war is ancient history.”

“But?” Blaise murmured.

“The wards here triggered something. Not just the Manor, the ambient British magical field. Line-magic. Old-magic.” He swallowed. “It’s accelerating now. We can’t undo the trigger by returning to France. The curse is awake.”

Daphne’s fingers tightened around his. “So now time is moving.”

Draco nodded. “And faster than it should.”

Pansy’s voice was barely above breath, but steady as steel. “We’ll beat it. We’ll help you beat it.”

A faint tremor ran through him, not fear. Not quite hope. Something braver and more fragile than both.

Draco managed, quietly, “Thank you.”

Blaise leaned forward. “What do you need us to do?”

And suddenly, Draco remembered why Slytherin friendships survived war. Not declarations. Not sentiment. Loyalty in action. The kind that didn’t require softness to be real.

He cleared his throat. “Hermione Granger recognized the curse. She’s been researching it on her own. She offered help.”

Theo let out a low whistle, grinning like a cat who’d swallowed something illegal. “Of course she did. I’ve been working with her for years, the woman could out-think half the Unspeakables blindfolded.” He lifted a hand, as if giving testimony in court. “And yes, that includes me. Don’t tell the Department.”

Pansy snorted.

But Theo wasn’t done.

“You should’ve seen her during the lycanthropy cure project,” he continued, voice warming with something like awe buried under layers of sarcasm. “Three years of absolute madness: sleepless nights, theories no one sane would touch, scribbling runes on the walls when the parchment ran out-”

“You said that happened once,” Daphne muttered.

Theo pointed at her. “Twice. Don’t defend her, she’s terrifying. Brilliant, but terrifying.”

Blaise laughed under his breath.

Theo leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I’m telling you, Draco… Granger doesn’t just study magic. She interrogates it. Bullies it into obedience. She’ll pull apart a curse thread by thread until it either yields or packs its bags and flees the country. She rebuilt the entire framework of the lunar-bound arcana because one footnote annoyed her.” His eyes glinted. “She rewrote a field of magic because it was inefficient.”

Draco blinked. “…She what?”

Theo smirked. “Exactly. That’s who’s helping you. That’s who you’ve got on your side now.” A beat. “And if she needs Unspeakable access, she has mine. Fully. I’ll sign whatever forms I have to forge.”

Pansy muttered, “That’s illegal.”

“Helping a child is more important than the Ministry’s paperwork,” Theo said with a shrug. “Hermione’s research changed everything. Working with her was the only time in my career I felt like I was actually doing something that mattered.”

He settled back, eyes sharp and sincere all at once. “You have no idea how lucky you are that she agreed to help.”

Pansy arched a brow, delighted. “I always said she was brilliant.”

“And dangerous,” Blaise murmured with unabashed admiration. “My favorite combination.”

“That’s because you have a death wish,” Pansy muttered.

Pansy’s voice softened. “She was also the first person outside of us to treat me normally after Neville and I got together.” She tilted her head. “No pity. No gossip. Just… kindness. Quiet, uncomplicated kindness.”

Daphne nodded, almost emotional. “She told me once Neville was lucky,” she said, eyes flicking away. “Not just Pansy.”

Theo let out a quiet snort. “That’s what happens when you befriend the brightest witch of our age. She sees people.”

Draco felt something twist in his chest at that.

Blaise lounged back in his chair. “So she’s helping. Truly helping.”

“She is,” Draco said. “And tomorrow she’s coming to the Manor to begin research.”

Theo’s brows shot up. “You’re letting someone new into Malfoy Manor?”

“It’s time,” Draco murmured. “We need every tool.”

There was a soft hum around the table, understanding settling like dust in sunlight.

Then Daphne leaned forward, her eyes gentler than the others’. “Draco… it’s not an accident you returned now.”

He frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”

“You went to France because you had to,” she said simply. “For Astoria. For yourself. And stayed later for Scorpius, to study the curse where no one could watch you crack under the weight of it.” Her expression softened, cool and warm at once. “But you came back because this is where you belong.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she lifted a hand.

“It’s not just about Dolohov. This is your home. Your people. Your son’s future.” She glanced toward the door where Scorpius and Albus had disappeared earlier. “And Hermione? She’s gonna be good for you. For him. She already is, for all of us, honestly.”

Pansy smirked. “Daph’s got a point. Hermione Granger walking into the Manor isn’t a scandal,” she said. “It’s a blessing.”

Theo grinned. “And a tactical advantage.”

Blaise shrugged. “And she’s hot. That never hurts.”

“Blaise,” everyone said at once. Daphne punched his shoulder.

He lifted his hands. “What? I’m supporting morale.”

Something eased, barely, in Draco’s chest. A breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

They weren’t giving him hope. They were giving him strategy. A path. A spine. A reminder that he wasn’t doing this alone.

Slytherin friendship at its finest.

Theo refilled glasses. “And hm, Dolohov?”

“Alive,” Draco said. “Moving. Planning.”

A low hum rippled through the room. Recognition, unease, the quiet steadiness of people who had learned to smell danger long before it arrived.

Blaise set his glass down with deliberate care. “He’s using old channels. The ones that never really closed, whispers in Knockturn, dead-drop runes in Godric’s Hollow cemetery, coded adverts in The Pureblood Ledger.” His jaw ticked. “I’ve… nudged a few of those channels into dead ends.”

Theo nodded, folding his fingers. “I’ve traced three wand signatures that match his old casting profile. Low-yield magic for now. Testing wards. Testing patience.”

Daphne exhaled, expression soft but steel-edged. “Some of the old families are restless. Most won’t act, too afraid or too changed, but a few…” She shook her head. “We’re watching them.”

“We,” Blaise echoed. “Not just the Ministry. Us.” Not a boast. A promise.

Draco’s chest tightened, pride and shame and relief tangled together. Once, they had been the generation taught to uphold a rotting ideology. Now they were quietly dismantling its bones.

Pansy leaned forward, subtle fire in her eyes. “Nev’s been tracking it too.” Her voice warmed when she said his name, softer than old Pansy, deeper than old war. “He spoke to the Herbology guild. Some restricted venom-based ingredients have been requested in back channels. Dolohov’s not brewing household charms.”

A pause.

“He wouldn’t be stupid enough to use Hogwarts grounds again,” Daphne murmured.

“No,” Pansy agreed. “But he has followers who still think children are fair targets.” Her tone dropped, iron-cold. “And I will hex every last one of them into the ground before I let them near them.”

Silence. A powerful one. Shared history, shared guilt, shared vow.

Theo reached across the table, brushed her hand. Not dramatic, but grounding. “Neville did marry a terrifying woman.”

Pansy smirked faintly. “And he thanks Merlin for it daily.”

Draco felt something shift inside him, subtle, like a door gently coming unlocked. This was not the Slytherin table of their youth. This was a circle. A fortress. A family forged in the fire they once helped start and then chose to put out, piece by piece.

“We’re doing it differently this time,” Blaise said quietly. Not defensive, assured. “No more pretending neutrality keeps anyone safe.”

Daphne lifted her glass, eyes fierce. “The world tried to turn us into monsters.” A beat. “And some of us believed it for a while.”

Another beat. “But not anymore.”

Pansy clinked her glass against hers. “We protect ours. All of ours.”

Daphne lifted her glass. “To healing children and burying old monsters.”

Glasses lifted.

“To choosing better than we were raised,” Blaise added quietly.

“To second chances,” Theo murmured.

Draco swallowed hard. “To building something worth surviving the war for.”

They drank.

Warmth spread. Not just alcohol, but belonging.

They drifted into softer talk. Theo’s absurd research project on lunar tide spell resonance, Blaise threatening to hex Ministry bureaucracy into order, Pansy describing her new Paris showroom, Daphne showing a picture of Scorpius hugging the stuffed dragon.

Chaos. Tenderness. Home.

When the night gentled, candles burning low, Blaise and Daphne curled half-asleep on the sofa, Pansy sipping champagne and Theo cleaning glasses with lazy wand flicks, Draco slipped outside onto the balcony.

He pulled Hermione’s letter from his pocket again.

Read it once more.

His thumb brushed her signature. Something unfamiliar, fragile, dangerous unfurled in his chest.

Hope. Fear’s sibling. Brave where fear was sharp.

He looked up at the dark sky.

“Tomorrow,” he murmured.

Not a threat. Not a prayer. A promise.

He would protect his son. He would face his past. He would walk forward, not alone this time.

Inside, Theo called, “Malfoy! We’re debating whether Crookshanks could take Potter’s hippogriff in a fight!”

Draco allowed himself a real smile. “Coming.”

He pocketed the letter, squared his shoulders, and went back to his family, his strange, sharp, and loyal constellation of serpents.

Tomorrow, Hermione Granger would walk into Malfoy Manor. And the world would shift again.

Chapter Text

The floo flared green just as Hermione finished tying the last ribbon in her braid.

Pansy stepped out like she owned the room, which, for all intents and purposes, she often did, even when it wasn't hers. She dusted off a speck of ash that dared land on her pristine sleeve, squinted, and lifted a garment bag in one imperious hand.

“Granger. Do not embarrass me today.”

Hermione blinked. “I’m… sorry?”

Pansy swept past her, tossing the bag onto Hermione’s sofa with theatrical disdain. “You’re having tea with Narcissa Malfoy in the newly sanctified, post-exorcism Malfoy Manor. You cannot go in your little healer robes and cardigan like you're about to grade essays at Hogwarts.”

Hermione crossed her arms. She learned to not ask Pansy how she always knew about things before being told. “I look professional in my robes.”

“You look like you're seconds away from asking someone if they’ve been flossing.” Pansy pointed at the bag. “Open it.”

Hermione did, and gasped.

Sage-green silk. Clean lines. Soft structure. Elegant, subtle embroidery that shimmered like starlight if one looked closely. Understated, powerful, graceful. A matching shawl charmed to hover lightly around the shoulders.

The kind of dress that whispered rather than shouted.

“Pansy, it’s… beautiful!”

Pansy smirked. “I know.” Then leaned in with a mock-conspiratorial whisper. “You weren’t seriously thinking of giving Narcissa your frizzy-librarian aesthetic today, were you?”

Hermione rolled her eyes but smiled. “I like my aesthetic.”

“And I support it,” Pansy said sweetly. “Every other day. But today, you are walking back into a manor that became a home again. Let’s honor that.”

Hermione went quiet.

Pansy’s voice softened, a rare shift. “It’s not just fashion. Presentation is armor. Communication. Strategy. Narcissa understands that. She’ll respect you more like this.” She paused. “And Draco will combust. Which is a bonus.”

Hermione snorted. “I am not dressing to impress Draco Malfoy.”

Pansy waved her wand, transfiguring Hermione’s hair ribbon into a sage velvet tie. “Of course not. Heaven forbid we fuel the sexual tension you’re not acknowledging. Ginny told me everything.”

“I-”

Pansy held up a hand. “Spare me. I can smell denial like Amortentia, it’s practically a sport.”

Hermione huffed. “I am having tea. With his mother. We're probably gonna talk about the research.”

“Mmhmm.” Pansy plucked at the dress. “And to walk into the domain of the woman who once held worlds together with just cheekbones and maternal spite. She’ll adore you, truly. But do your part.”

Hermione hesitated. “Pansy… going back there…”

Pansy looked at her, really looked. “I know.” Then, softer still, “But you’re not the girl who screamed on that floor anymore. And this is not that house anymore. You are stepping onto new ground, not returning to old wounds.”

Hermione swallowed. Something warm and brave unfurled in her ribs.

“And,” Pansy added lightly, “you are going to make Narcissa Malfoy fall in love with you, because if you two ever unite on anything, the world simply won’t survive.”

Hermione laughed, a real, full laugh. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good.” Pansy dusted her hands. “Now put the dress on, and don’t embarrass us. And if you see a peacock, don’t challenge it. They remember every slight, ask Theo later.”

Hermione stood before the mirror, after changing and letting her hair down. The soft sage-green silk skimming over her frame like calm over water. Pansy had exquisite taste, and the dress whispered rather than shouted, draping over her waist, resting against the curve of her hips, hinting at softness instead of demanding attention. The moonstone at her throat glowed faintly, as though recognizing something ancient in her.

She hadn’t really looked at herself in a while. Not like this, not without rushing for work robes or tying her hair up with ink-stained hands. Slowly, she lifted her gaze.

Brown eyes, warm, steady, the color of honeyed tea and late-afternoon libraries, stared back. Softer than when she was younger, perhaps; shadowed by grief and brightened by knowledge. Honest eyes, that had seen too much but still searched for meaning.

Her curls fell freely now, coppery chocolate and wild, tumbling around her shoulders and brushing her collarbone, defiantly untamable. She had tried sleek hair for years, after the war, waiting for the world to quiet if she sharpened her edges. It hadn’t. Now, the curls felt like reclamation.

A dusting of freckles kissed her nose and cheeks, more noticeable in the Manor’s gentle light. A body grown into itself, with a small bust, narrow waist, hips that curved with a softness she had learned not to apologize for. Strength lived in quieter places now - her shoulders, her calves, the line of her throat when she lifted her chin in conviction. She wasn’t the girl who had marched into battle with textbooks for armor and fury for a shield. She was a woman who had broken, softened, rebuilt.

And she looked… like someone worth returning to. Not perfect. Human. Whole in her own unfinished way.

Behind her reflection, Pansy leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a slow smile spreading across her face, equal parts smugness and genuine affection.

“Look at you,” Pansy breathed, eyes glimmering. “A witch reborn. You’re going to knock every pure-blood portrait in that Manor off its frame.”

Hermione snorted softly. “It’s just tea.”

“Yes,” Pansy said, pushing off the frame and brushing a curl behind Hermione’s shoulder. “And it’s during tea, my dear, where empires grow.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth lifted.

Then, without thinking too hard, before she could talk herself out of it, Hermione turned and wrapped her arms around Pansy.

For a heartbeat, Pansy went stiff. Old reflex. Old armor.

Then she sighed - dramatic, long-suffering - and hugged her back anyway, firm and warm, cheek pressed briefly to Hermione’s hair as if she could hide the tenderness inside the exasperation.

“Merlin,” Pansy muttered into her curls. “Careful. Someone might think you have emotions.”

Hermione let out a small laugh that wobbled at the edges. She didn’t loosen her hold. “I do,” she said quietly. “Some of them are even… manageable, these days.”

Pansy made a sound that was halfway between a scoff and a hum of approval. “Debatable.”

Hermione pulled back just enough to look at her. Her throat tightened, soft with truth. “I’m grateful,” she said. “For you. For us. Sometimes I think about how much time we lost. How long it took for us to become friends, even when we were… right there. Eighth year. Two broken girls in the same ruined castle.”

Her eyes flicked to their reflection, the mirror holding them both like a spell. “I wish we’d found each other sooner.”

Pansy blinked once, quickly - too fast for it to be anything as dramatic as tears, obviously. She lifted her chin a fraction, like a queen refusing sentimentality in public. “We would’ve been insufferable,” she said dryly. “Together at fifteen? Absolutely illegal. The Board of Governors would’ve had to intervene.”

Hermione laughed, relief threading through it. “You’d have taught me how to hex people with style.”

“And you’d have taught me how to spell ‘bureaucracy’ without sounding like I’m choking,” Pansy replied, then softened in the way she did when she thought no one was watching. “We found each other when we could. That counts.”

Hermione’s gaze lingered on their reflection again - two women now, dressed in silk and survival, standing in a room that smelled like sage and second chances.

“Did you ever imagine,” she asked, voice low, “that those girls - those eighth-year girls - would get this far?”

Pansy’s smile turned slow and certain. “Of course,” she said, like it was the only logical conclusion. “You’re Hermione Granger. You were always going to claw your way into something better.”

Hermione’s brows lifted. “And you?”

Pansy tipped her head, smugness returning like a familiar perfume. “Please. I’m Pansy Parkinson. I’m excellent at getting what I want.”

Hermione’s mouth curved. “Even when what you want is… good. Or gentle. Or real.”

Pansy’s expression flickered, quick as a wandflash, and then she rolled her eyes hard enough to be a full performance. “Don’t ruin my brand.”

Hermione squeezed her hands once, and Pansy let her.

Then, quieter, Pansy added, almost begrudgingly, “Thank you.”

Hermione blinked. “For what?”

Pansy’s gaze slid toward the moonstone at Hermione’s throat, then to Hermione’s eyes. Something protective settled behind her voice. “For going,” she said simply. “For giving Narcissa the dignity of your presence. For… giving Draco a chance to be something other than a cautionary tale. For giving Scorp a chance at living well and happy.”

Hermione’s breath caught, surprised by the sincerity.

Pansy’s mouth twisted into a familiar smirk, as if she’d immediately regretted sounding heartfelt. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not endorsing Malfoy as a romantic prospect.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed, amused. “Oh?”

“I’m endorsing him as a useful instrument,” Pansy said smoothly, “like a very expensive knife. Sharp. Dangerous. Occasionally decorative.”

Hermione snorted. “That’s… generous. Coming from you.”

Pansy shrugged one shoulder. “He’s my friend,” she said. “And he’s suffered enough to learn what suffering is for. Which is more than I can say for most men with hair like a shampoo advert.”

Hermione’s gaze softened. “You're saying he’s changed.”

Pansy’s eyes sharpened with the kind of clarity that had always made her frightening in duels and brilliant in war. “I'm saying he’s grown up,” she corrected. “There’s a difference. Change is cosmetic. Growth hurts.”

A beat.

Then Pansy’s smirk returned, wicked and familiar. “Also,” she added lightly, “if you two don’t end up tangled in some deeply inappropriate emotional entanglement after all of this, I will be personally offended.”

Hermione choked on a laugh. “Pansy.”

“What?” Pansy’s eyes went wide with innocence so fake it deserved an award. “I’m simply saying: shared trauma, ancient libraries, morally complicated men trying to be good, and you in that dress? It’s practically a prophecy.”

Hermione shook her head, cheeks warm. “We’re just taking tea.”

“Mm,” Pansy hummed. “Tea. The gateway ritual.”

Hermione swatted at her arm. Pansy caught her wrist with effortless grace, squeezing once - affection disguised as competence.

“Go,” Pansy said, voice softer now, something protective folded into it. “Hold your head up. Be brilliant. Be kind - within reason.”

Her smile turned sharp again. “And if any portrait so much as sneers at you, remember: you’re allowed to set things on fire. Metaphorically.”

Hermione smiled, eyes bright.

Pansy pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, then patted her shoulder as if sending a soldier into battle. “Nev’s waiting for me in Hogsmeade. Luna’s meeting us later. Try not to break any hearts without me.”

Hermione shook her head, reaching for her wand and the floating shawl. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you,” Pansy replied, pausing at the floo, “are luminous. Let them see you.”

Then she was gone in a flare of emerald flame, leaving only jasmine perfume and a fierce, unexpected swell of courage in her wake.

Hermione took one last breath, steady, grounding, and turned toward the fireplace.

It was just tea. And yet, somehow, it felt like crossing a threshold.

***

The wrought-iron gates opened before she touched her wand to them.

Just beyond the gates, the season made itself known. Winter still clung to the earth in thin frosted streaks along the path, a stubborn whisper refusing to retreat. A late snowstorm had swept through the countryside only two nights before - wild, sharp, and thoroughly out of season - leaving behind drifts that now melted in slow, glistening curves. The air carried that unmistakable promise that comes at the edge of winter’s surrender: cold enough to bite, warm enough to hint. Tiny shoots of green pushed through patches of thawing ground as if the world, too, was trying to remember how to bloom again.

Hermione stepped inside the grounds. Breath slow, spine straight. The air smelled different than she remembered: lavender, freshly cut grass, apple blossom and earthy grounding herbs woven into the wards. Cleansing magic. Renewal.

The Manor itself… glowed.

Where once the walls had been cold marble and shadow, now ivy climbed playfully across pale stone, charmed to bloom small silver flowers. Windows gleamed clear instead of shuttered. Sun pooled across polished floors like honey, not like interrogation light.

What was once a mausoleum felt like… a home learning how to live again.

As she crossed the foyer, her magic brushed the house's magic, and felt no malice. No teeth. No memory pulling her under. Instead, a hum of cautious welcome.

Her hand trembled, just once, as her feet touched the threshold where she had once crawled, blood on the patterned rug.

Hermione inhaled, steady and grounded, like her mind-healer taught her.

I am not returning to the scene. I am reshaping it.

A house built for cruelty turned into a sanctuary? There was power in that.

A soft pop echoed behind her.

Mippy appeared, tutu puffing like a startled dandelion, little ballet slippers tapping the marble.

“Miss Hermione Granger, ma’am,” she squeaked, eyes wide with earnest pride. “Missus Narcissa is waiting. Mippy is to escort the Bright Witch.”

Hermione blinked. “Bright-? Oh. Just Hermione is fine.”

“Mippy calls brilliant witches Bright,” the elf declared simply, nose lifting. “This is manners.”

Hermione felt her throat tighten unexpectedly. “Well. Thank you, Mippy. It’s lovely to see you again.”

Mippy beamed so broadly Hermione almost feared her face would split. “Mippy is happy to see Miss again too. Very happy. Much better meetings than before.”

Hermione’s breath stilled, a flicker of memory, carpet fibers against her cheek, her own voice raw and breaking-

But then she looked up.

Soft green wallpaper where cold stone once was. Warm sconces instead of iron brackets. A charmed painting of a moonlit garden replacing the sneering portrait that had once watched her fear.

Not erasure. Reclamation. She exhaled. “Mippy,” she murmured as they walked, “are you happy here?”

The elf blinked, startled by the question, most witches never asked. Then she puffed her tiny chest.

“Oh yes, Miss Hermione! Missus Narcissa is kind. Master Draco is kind. They gives Mippy days off and socks and healthcare plan. We have elf union card.” She whispered, scandalized by her own bragging. “We even gets dental.”

Hermione tried, truly tried, not to laugh, but it bubbled out. “Dental? That’s wonderful.”

“Mmhmm.” Mippy nodded vigorously. “Only one bad master here before. He gone now.” A solemn little bob. “Rest is good people. Not perfect, but trying. Trying is most important magic.”

Hermione’s chest warmed. Trying. Yes. That was magic.

They turned a corner. Hermione noted charmed tapestries woven with living flowers. A shelf holding children's books and a tiny dragon plush. Scorpius's things, lovingly placed. A fresh vase of lavender, peace magic, domestic and gentle.

Hermione’s pulse steadied. Once, this corridor had felt like a throat closing around her. Now it felt like lungs relearning breath.

At the doorway to the tea room, Mippy bowed, deeply, dramatically, tutu swaying like a proud little banner.

“Mippy will be near,” she said, voice softening. “If Miss needs anything. Anything at all.”

Hermione placed a hand over her heart. “Thank you.”

And when Mippy popped away, Hermione stepped forward, not as a girl dragged here by violence, but as a woman choosing to walk in under her own power.

***

Narcissa Malfoy waited in the tea room wearing pearls and soft ivory silk, hair in an elegant twist, but her presence was not cold marble, it was warm bone china and quiet strength.

“Miss Granger,” she said, voice smooth as lace and iron. “You look exquisite.”

Hermione curtsied because she felt compelled, not by hierarchy, but by grace. “Thank you for having me. And please, Hermione is fine.”

Narcissa gestured to the table, porcelain cups, enchanted cream roses, lemon shortbread, a teapot steaming in shades of pale lavender and sunlight.

“Hermione it is. It is my honor. Sit. Let us begin with herbal tea, chamomile and starflower. Calming, clarifying, fitting.”

Hermione smiled softly. “Fitting indeed.”

They sat. They poured. The stillness was not uncomfortable. It buzzed and charged with history and curiosity and something else.

“I hear,” Narcissa said gently, “that you intend to help my grandson.”

Hermione swallowed. “Yes. If you’ll allow me.”

Narcissa’s eyes glimmered. “You saved us all once. Perhaps more than once. You owe me nothing, yet you return. That is… uncommon in this world.”

“I just want him to be alright.”

“And that,” Narcissa murmured, “is why I am grateful.”

Hermione hesitated for a moment, fingertips grazing the rim of her teacup.

“And how is Scorpius today?” she asked gently. “I hope he’s feeling alright.”

A softness touched Narcissa’s expression, something warmer than polished poise. “He is well,” she replied, voice touched with quiet fondness. “Quite energetic this morning, in fact. He is spending the day with Daphne and Astoria’s old elf, in good hands. Daphne spoils him terribly, of course. She has never known how to love in moderation.”

Hermione smiled. “He seems like a wonderful child.”

“He is,” Narcissa said simply, the way only a devoted grandmother could. “A bright little star.” A pause, delicate as porcelain being set down on silk. “Thank you for asking.”

Hermione dipped her head in acknowledgment, and the conversation flowed naturally from there. They spoke of runes. Of ancestral spells. Of books older than the walls around them. Of built damage and how to unbuild it. Narcissa offered tea cakes, charmed sugar violets, and knowledge woven like silk.

And beneath the polite discourse, something glowed,respect, yes. But also recognition. Of survivors. Of mothers-in-waiting and mothers-in-pain. Of women who had lost worlds and still chose to mend instead of burn.

Then: “Andromeda,” Hermione said quietly.

Narcissa’s cup stilled. For a heartbeat, she did not breathe.

Andromeda’s name moved through the quiet like a ghost, like the sound of footsteps in a house she once knew intimately and now only visited in dreams.

She lowered her lashes, porcelain mask softening, cracking at the edges.

“There were moments,” she murmured, voice thin silk, “during the war… when I thought of writing to her.” 

A confession, fragile as spun glass. “When I feared for my son. When the walls of this house felt like a tomb, and I wondered if blood could mean something more than legacy and expectation.”

Her fingers brushed the rim of her teacup, as though steadying herself.

“But fear is a habit one must unlearn slowly. And love-” Her voice wavered, so slightly a less perceptive witch might have missed it. “Love does not always move in straight lines. Sometimes it waits. In doorways we never opened.”

She exhaled, soft and tired and very real.

“I fled to France before I could face what remained. Distance is a coward’s salve. I told myself there would be time later.” A beat, heavy with years unsaid. “There is never as much later as we imagine.”

And then she lifted her chin again, still Narcissa Malfoy, still steel and grace, but with a tenderness that felt like a newly exposed wound learning how to heal.

“She loves her grandson,” Hermione continued gently. “And I can tell you do too. Perhaps… one day soon… bridges could be rebuilt.”

Narcissa’s gaze softened, cracked, just barely. “Some bridges were burned from both ends. But fire does not preclude rebuilding.” A pause. “You see too clearly. It is… disconcerting.”

Hermione smiled. “Occupational hazard.”

***

The shift in air when a powerful wizard entered a room before he even spoke. Heavy boots. Dark robes. Draco strode in still smelling faintly of wind and London smoke, eyes sharp from the DMLE field, the kind of alertness born from years of watching shadows move before danger followed.

His robes were formal Auror black, fitted clean over broad shoulders that hadn't existed in school, cloak sweeping behind him like it remembered old pure-blood theatrics but refused to lean into them. The wand holster at his forearm was undone, fingers still curled like he hadn't convinced his body the threat was over yet.

And his face-

She’d forgotten how striking he had become. Gone was the adolescent sharpness she once thought cruelty made, pointy and petulant and mean. Age had refined those angles, softened and sharpened again with purpose. High cheekbones, a jaw cut clean, a faint shadow of stubble softening the aristocratic lines. An exhaustion etched at the outer corner of his eyes, but steadiness there too. Steel tempered by something gentler beneath.

His hair was slightly tousled, pale strands fallen across his forehead, as though he’d raked a hand through it on the way in. And the storm-grey eyes, searching, assessing, then briefly resting when they found her, just for a heartbeat, just for enough time to make something under her ribs tighten.

She schooled her expression immediately. A healer’s calm. A scholar’s neutrality. No one needed to know her stomach had fluttered like a startled bird.

He nodded once in greeting, composed as marble. Yet something in the way his shoulders eased, in the nearly-imperceptible exhale he released upon seeing her, spoke of a relief so quiet it almost felt private.

Hermione tucked a stray curl behind her ear, forcibly steadying her breath.

War made boys into soldiers. Time made some soldiers into something else entirely.

And Draco Malfoy, Merlin help her, seemed to be becoming someone she wasn’t prepared to look at directly for too long.

“Mother. Granger.”

“You're early,” Narcissa teased lightly.

“I was dismissed.” Draco’s gaze flicked to Hermione. “Research in a bit? I’ll just-”

“Yes,” Hermione said quickly. “Of course.”

He vanished, only to reappear half an hour later, with hair damp, sleeves pushed up, grey Muggle sweatshirt and soft trousers, looking disarmingly human. Soft. Real.

Hermione's brain stopped for a moment.

He looks… different like this. Like a man, not a legacy.

He caught her staring. One corner of his mouth curved, not with arrogance. Something quieter. Warmer. Amused.

“Shall we?”

She nodded, finding her voice. “Yes. Let’s.”

***

Draco opened the carved doors.

Hermione froze.

Rows upon rows of shelves spiraled up into enchanted ceilings, starlight dripping down like liquid silver. Books bound in dragonhide, velvet, linen, ancient, whispering, alive. Ladders that rolled like gliding shadows. Runes etched into stone archways humming in old tongues.

The air itself felt spell-thick, like it remembered every incantation ever spoken within its walls. Charms glimmered faintly along the spines, preservation wards, memory runes, the occasional pulse of magic like a heartbeat beneath fingertips.

To the right, glass cases housed relic-texts so old their pages shimmered with breathing starlight, quills hovering beside them like loyal sentries. Orbs floated lazily overhead, each holding a captured scene, flashes of past scholars studying, dueling, debating, dreaming.

A domed alcove recessed at the far end, constellations carved into its ceiling that shifted and glowed in slow cosmic rhythm. Enchanted telescopes pointed skyward even indoors, tracking celestial bodies in real time, as if the heavens answered when called from here.

Tables of deep mahogany and emerald-green leather chairs formed intimate study coves, each lit by lantern globes glowing candle-gold, charmed never to flicker nor buzz. Quills rested in glass-ink wells that shimmered with iridescent spell-ink.

Living silver vines climbed the pillars, blooming runic blossoms that opened and closed in response to breath, touch, thought. They perfumed the air with the faint scent of parchment, honeysuckle, and something like old magic waking up.

Beneath her feet, mosaic marble gleamed, serpents twining through lilies, phoenix feathers inset with gold, constellations winding toward a sunburst center. Runes along the border glimmered soothingly, not oppressive wards, but welcome and protection.

It wasn’t merely a library. It was a cathedral of knowledge. A sanctum. A place where time bowed its head, hush-deep and reverent, to the pursuit of truth.

Hermione’s breath faltered, reverence blooming in her chest.

She made a sound, embarrassingly close to a squeak.

Draco chuckled. Actually chuckled. “I suppose it meets your standards?”

She shot him a helpless, reverent look. “It-Malfoy, it’s-”

“Beautiful?” he supplied, half-teasing.

“It’s holy.”

He blinked. Something like pride flickered and softened in his expression.

“Alright, Granger.” His voice steadied. Determined. “Let’s begin.”

Together, they crossed the threshold.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded. “Ready.”

Chapter Text

Weeks slipped by not in great sweeping movements, but in small, steady stitches.

Morning reports with the DMLE, with parchment spread like maps of future danger, Harry’s jaw tight, and Susan’s sharp eyes missing nothing. Quiet dread pooling under ribs as sightings of Dolohov multiplied like spider cracks in glass.

Afternoons at St. Mungo’s, warm hands, steady wandwork, long hallways filled with whispered pain and fragile, human hope.

Late afternoons brewing dream elixirs at Sage, bottling peace and clarity for customers who didn’t know they held war in their bones, too. Life did not slow.  It surged. Demanded. Pulled.

She still went to Sage, of course, the apothecary was her heart as much as her work, but far less often than she was used to. Briony had taken the reins with a confidence that made Hermione ache with both pride and gratitude.

She remembered one morning in particular, when she’d arrived flustered and apologizing for being gone so long. Briony had simply rolled her eyes, placed a warm mug of rosemary-mint tea in her hands, and said, “Hermione, for Merlin’s sake, go save the world. I can manage the register.” Then, softer: “You’ve carried everything alone for too long. Let me carry some of it.”

It still warmed her, thinking about it. Briony restocking shelves with wand-light flickering over her freckles, humming off-key, shooing Hermione out the door whenever she lingered too long. You work too much, she would say. Let me prove you taught me well.

Hermione smiled to herself. Sage was in good hands.

And threaded between all of it, like silver runes inked between lines of text, a secret language only she could read, were hours at Malfoy Manor.

And those hours changed everything.

She had not expected to return more than once. She had not expected to want to. Yet here she was, every evening apparating past iron gates that no longer felt like teeth, walking stone floors that no longer remembered blood, breathing air that smelled of jasmine and new beginnings.

Sometimes, to celebrate the end of the winter, she took tea with Narcissa in a sunlit parlor where the light fell warm across Persian rugs and silk cushions. Narcissa, who could command a room with a single raised brow yet spoke to Hermione with softness threaded through steel. They spoke of ancient runic dialects and transmutation theory; sometimes they spoke of sons and mothers and the quiet ache of love held too tightly for too long.

Sometimes Hermione found herself in the gardens, kneeling in dark rich soil with potential herbs seeds for the cure, hands dirty, hair loose, Scorpius beside her offering her handfuls of petals and enthusiastic commentary on every beetle in existence. Her heart softened every time. She did not permit it, but it happened anyway.

And then there were the nights in the library with Draco.

Potions texts open, starlight glimmering across the desk, pages smelling of old ink and older secrets. They debated theories. They compared curse patterns. They stood close, too close sometimes, leaning over diagrams and manuscripts, breath mingling in the space between them like something quietly flammable.

Hermione would catch him watching her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

And she pretended not to notice. Pretended her pulse didn’t trip. Pretended she didn’t feel something growing in these quiet hours, gentle as ivy and just as persistent.

It terrified her. It steadied her. It made her feel something she hadn’t felt in a very long time, not longing, not desire, not nostalgia. Possibility.

***

A cauldron simmered low and soft, steam curling in delicate spirals like calligraphy in the air. Runic ash swirled in the stirring circle Draco traced, the motion slow, reverent, precise.

Hermione sat poised over parchment, quill tapping thoughtfully. Runes glowed faint blue where she’d charmed them into transparency, the Everroot mixture halfway between theory and miracle.

“We adjust the lunar infusion by one-sixteenth,” she murmured. “The curse reacts violently to sudden stabilizing magic, steady coaxing might bypass the core resistance.”

Draco hummed low, thoughtful, not dismissive. “A coaxing cure rather than a combative one. Subtle. Not your reputation.”

She arched a brow at him. “You think all my solutions involve explosions?”

“Historically? Yes.”

She sniffed. “That’s an exaggeration.”

“That’s documented history,” he countered, lips twitching. “Ask Gringotts.”

“That was one time,” she muttered. “And that dragon deserved to be freed.”

His smile flickered, real, soft, dangerous in its unexpected warmth. “I didn’t say it wasn’t impressive.”

She swallowed, heart unhelpfully warm. “Focus, Malfoy.”

He did. But his eyes lingered a fraction longer than they should have before shifting back to the cauldron.

Silence settled, a comfortable one, broken only by the bubbling brew and the whisper of turning parchment.

And then-

Tiny footsteps pounded down the corridor.

“Mione!”

Scorpius burst through the door with all the grace of a baby dragon discovering its wings, hair windblown, cheeks flushed, clutching a small wooden broom like a knight bearing a sword.

Over the past weeks, she had grown used to the soft rhythm of his presence: the small footsteps padding toward her study chair, the earnest tug at her sleeve whenever he wanted to show her a sketch or a newly memorized spell, the quiet way he leaned against her side when he grew tired. She hadn’t expected it, this gentle tether winding itself between them, but Scorpius had attached himself to her with the unguarded devotion of a child who recognized safety by instinct. And somewhere along the way, she had begun anticipating him too: the brightness of his smile, the way his laughter softened the Manor’s walls, the comforting weight of his trust. It was unsettling at first, then grounding… then something that lived in her chest with a warmth she tried not to examine too closely.

When he arrived, Hermione startled, then smiled without thinking, a reflex as natural as breathing. “Hello, little star.”

Draco froze mid-stir, shoulders going rigid.

Scorpius practically launched himself into Hermione’s lap, babbling, “Grandma says I can fly in the hall but not the stairs because the stairs bite now but the broom is good and look-look-I made it zoom!”

Hermione steadied him, laughing softly. “Show me?”

He zoomed the toy broom in a chaotic circle, complete with sound effects loud enough to wake the portraits.

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. “The Hall of Ancestors is going to riot.”

Hermione leaned in, stage-whispering to Scorpius, “Once, your Aunt Ginny turned a Quidditch match around on the Comet Two-Sixty alone. True story.”

Scorpius gasped, his entire vocabulary replaced with awe. “Can I be like Aunt Ginny?”

Hermione winked. “You’re already magical enough.”

Draco cleared his throat. It sounded suspiciously like someone trying not to melt. “Scorpius. What did we say about interrupting research?”

“Um.” Scorpius thought. “Only if it’s very important?”

“And was this very important?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. “I had to show Mione.”

Hermione’s heart tripped, once, hard. Draco’s eyes flicked to her, searching, something raw flickering before he shuttered it.

She brushed Scorpius’s hair back gently. “I love seeing your magic. But we’re brewing something delicate. How about… tomorrow afternoon, you come play at Sage? Albus will be there.”

Scorpius lit up like someone had cast Lumos Maxima in his chest. “YES. Albus. And Mione and Crooks and plants and maybe biscuits?”

Draco blinked. “Biscuits?”

Hermione smirked. “I spoil children.”

Draco’s gaze softened minutely. “I’ve noticed.”

“Daddy,” Scorpius chirped, holding his broom upright like a little soldier, “can Mione teach us potions too?”

Draco opened his mouth. Closed it. Failed entirely to hide the stunned pride and panic warring on his face.

“We’ll… discuss it,” he managed.

Scorpius beamed, then tore out again, cape flying behind him. “I’M GONNA TELL NANA!”

His footsteps faded.

Hermione realized she was smiling helplessly. Draco realized he was looking at her helplessly.

A beat. A breath.

She cleared her throat and stood. “We should prepare the next infusion.”

“Right.” Draco exhaled. “Before he names an entire greenhouse after you.”

(And the tragic truth was: she wouldn’t have minded.)

***

Later, as Hermione gathered her notes, Draco reached for the ladle too quickly, fingers brushing hers, light, electric, careless and careful all at once.

Both froze.

His breath stilled. Her pulse stuttered.

And something unspoken curled in the air like smoke from a long-quiet fire finding oxygen again.

Before either could speak, footsteps approached, quiet this time, measured, practiced.

Narcissa appeared in the doorway, gaze flicking from their hands to their faces. Pride, hope, and something ancient and aching passed through her expression like a star falling silently across night sky.

She didn’t say a word to them.

She only thought to herself, soft as silk, reverent as prayer: Astoria, he is learning to live again. Then, she spoke to them: “Would you care for some tea?”

The cauldron simmered between them, quiet, steady, full of potential.

“Sure,” Hermione said. “That’d be lovely.”

And Hermione, pulse still unsteady, thought: Some spells are not cast. They grow.

Chapter Text

The late-afternoon light spilled across Sage like honey, warm and slow-moving, touching jars and copper cauldrons with gentle gold. Hermione wiped the counter clean one more time, not because it needed it, but because her hands needed something to do.

Her body still carried the echo of recent days - of ward failures, of research that ran long into the night, of adrenaline followed by sudden stillness. The kind of tired that lived behind the eyes, not in the muscles. The kind that came when purpose burned too brightly for too long.

Briony had left early. The shop door chimed once, twice.

Then-

“Mione!”

Tiny footsteps thundered, and Scorpius burst in like sunlight with legs, hair wild, cheeks pink, eyes bright enough to rewire constellations. Ginny followed behind him, carrying Albus on her hip, his fingers tangled in her hair.

Albus practically leapt into Hermione’s arms when he saw her, burying his face against her shoulder like she was still his whole world and not someone he’d soon tower over.

Her heart did something painful. Sweet. Dangerous.

It always did that - this sharp, tender ache - when a child chose her without question. When small arms wrapped around her like she was safety itself.

“Hi, my love.” She kissed his temple. “Are you ready for your playdate?”

Scorpius already was: broom in one hand, a tiny bag of toy potions ingredients in the other.

Albus wiggled eagerly in Hermione’s hold. “I have my dragon!” he announced proudly, producing a worn stuffed Hungarian Horntail from Ginny’s bag.

Scorpius gasped as though this were international diplomacy.

“You have a dragon?” he whispered reverently.

Albus nodded with all the gravitas of a five-year-old knight. “His name is Firepickle.”

They were best friends instantly.

Hermione chuckled under her breath. Ginny bumped her shoulder. “You’re glowing.”

“No, I’m… warm.” Hermione gestured vaguely. “Hearth-adjacent.”

“That’s glowing, love.”

What followed was the sort of chaos she wished she could bottle and keep forever. Little feet thundered through shelves of tinctures and books as Hermione created a makeshift play-space on the rug.

She found herself moving differently around them - slower, more attentive, as if the world itself required gentler handling when children were inside it.

Scorpius, serious and determined, put on her spare brewing apron backwards like a cape. Albus dragged a crate of plush Kneazles like an army general preparing troops. They “brewed” a pretend potion with crushed rose petals and biodegradable shimmer powder.

Scorpius gasped when it puffed glitter smoke. “Magic!”

Hermione winked. “Very advanced.”

Albus declared, “We’re gonna heal all the sick dragons.”

And somehow, Merlin, somehow, Hermione’s chest cracked open.

She had imagined this before. Children in her space. Little hands. Little laughs. Tiny people finding magic in everyday things.

She told herself she was content, she had love, meaning, purpose. But this?

This hurt in a way that felt like an organ remembering how to breathe.

It wasn’t grief exactly. It was recognition. A body remembering a future it had once prepared for, and then learned - slowly, painfully - to release.

“You okay?” Ginny murmured, leaning on the counter beside her.

Hermione nodded too quickly. “Of course.”

Ginny hummed the way people hum when they don’t believe a word of it, but refuse to ruin your pride.

She didn’t push. Ginny had learned, over the years, when Hermione needed words - and when she needed time.

The floo inside the shop’s office flared green, and Theo stepped out dusting ash from pale robes, tie slightly askew from a long day.

“Godfather Theo!” Scorpius squealed, abandoning his imaginary cauldron to cling to Theo’s leg.

Theo scooped him up with practiced ease. “There’s my favorite chaos sprite.”

“And me?” Albus demanded, outraged.

“You, my dear Albus,” Theo intoned solemnly, “are chaos royalty.”

Satisfied, Albus nodded like a wise monarch.

“Malfoy on duty tonight?” Hermione asked casually. Too casually.

Theo’s eyes sharpened. Just a flicker. He smoothed Scorpius’s hair. “Yes. He asked me to fetch the heir because someone has discovered broom racing in enclosed spaces.”

Scorpius looked very proud.

“Well, look at that,” Ginny drawled. “Theo Nott doing domestic pickup duty. Truly, war changes people.”

He put a hand to his heart, offended. “Ginevra, I’ll have you know I am deeply domesticated. Ask Luna. She has a rota chart. With hearts.”

Ginny snorted. “You’re whipped and we all support it.”

Theo's gaze slid to Hermione, gentler now. “Thank you for everything.”

Something in his tone lingered, gratitude, relief, something protective and fierce.

Hermione’s heart stuttered. “It is nothing.”

“It’s. ” Theo said. Quiet. Final. “He smiles more lately. Scorp does too.”

She swallowed. Looked away. Couldn’t meet that truth head-on.

Because smiling more was not nothing. Because it meant safety. Continuity. Hope.

Theo studied her another second, exchanged looks with Ginny, then set Scorpius down. “Say goodbye, little star.”

Scorp launched at Hermione for a hug, tiny arms tight around her neck. “Bye Mione! See you tomorrow? Can we potion again?”

“We’ll see,” she said softly, voice catching. “Sleep well.”

Scorpius waved like a royal and vanished into the green flames.

Silence settled, crackling gently between them.

Ginny folded her arms. “You like them.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “They’re children, Ginny. It’s permissible to like children.”

“You like him.”

Hermione froze.

Ginny raised an eyebrow. “Hermione Jean Granger, don’t insult me by pretending you don’t know who I mean.”

A long breath. A longer pause.

“It’s ridiculous,” Hermione whispered. “Insane, actually. I am not- it’s not- Draco Malfoy does not see me like that.”

Ginny snorted. “Oh, sweetheart. He looks at you like personally alphabetized the stars.”

Hermione made a strangled noise. “Ginny.”

“And you look at him like you don’t want to look at him, which is worse.”

Hermione pressed a hand to her chest. It hurt. Everything hurt. Hope always did.

“He’s… different now,” she admitted quietly. “But I don’t know what that means. And I don’t- I can’t…” Her breath trembled. “Let myself believe in something impossible again.”

Ginny’s expression softened. “It isn’t impossible. It’s terrifying. Different thing entirely.”

Hermione laughed once, sad and small. “I don’t know if I can afford terrifying.”

Ginny squeezed her hand. “Then you don’t face it alone. That’s what family is for.”

She hesitated, then added more quietly, more carefully, “How have you been, really?”

Hermione blinked. The question landed deeper than intended.

She leaned back against the counter, eyes drifting toward the scattered toys on the rug, the faint shimmer still lingering in the air.

“It’s been… exhausting,” she said slowly. “And invigorating. Both. The research, I mean. Working with him.”

Ginny tilted her head, attentive.

“He’s a remarkable study partner,” Hermione continued, words gaining momentum now that she’d begun. “Focused. Precise. He sees patterns quickly - sometimes before I do. And that’s… rare.”

She paused, frowning faintly. “It makes sense, actually. He was always second only to me at Hogwarts. I think we both pretended not to notice.”

Ginny’s lips twitched.

“I worked for years to be good at Potions,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “To make it instinctive. And now it is. But for him? It’s innate. Structural. He thinks in compounds and reactions the way some people think in sentences.”

Ginny burst out laughing. “Merlin, listen to you.”

Hermione stopped mid-thought. “…What?”

“You just gave Draco Malfoy a glowing academic review,” Ginny said, delighted. “If McGonagall were here, she’d be beaming.”

Hermione flushed. “I did not.”

“You absolutely did.”

Hermione groaned, burying her face briefly in her hands. “That’s not- I’m talking about competence.”

“Sure you are,” Ginny said sweetly. “Very objective. Very detached.”

Hermione peeked at her through her fingers. “…Am I that obvious?”

Ginny softened, stepping closer. “Only to people who love you.”

Hermione swallowed.

Ginny brushed her thumb over Hermione’s knuckles. “You don’t have to decide anything. You don’t have to name it. Just... let yourself exist inside it for a bit.”

Hermione nodded slowly. “That’s the frightening part.”

Ginny smiled. “Yes. But also the alive part.”

“And, speaking of family, Molly wanted me to remind you,” Ginny said, tone brightening deliberately. “Sunday lunch. Everyone will be there. Bring wine. And emotional resilience.”

Hermione groaned. “Excellent. A Weasley interrogation.”

“A Weasley gathering,” Ginny corrected. “And you know Ron will be protective but supportive.”

Hermione nodded, warmth flickering under her ribs despite everything. “I’ll be there.”

Ginny leaned and kissed her cheek. “Good. Now go sleep before you accidentally cure mortality.”

Hermione snorted as Ginny left through the floo with Albus.

And then Sage went quiet. Really quiet.

Hermione leaned on the counter and exhaled, long, shaky, afraid-to-hope air.

She had battles to fight. Curses to break. A world to protect again. But tonight, what echoed loudest wasn’t fear or war-plans or prophecy-heavy dread.

It was Scorpius’s tiny voice: See you tomorrow?

And her own foolish heart whispering: Please.

Chapter Text

The Burrow smelled like home.

Not her childhood home, that one lived only in memory now, tucked away behind layers of grief and acceptance, but a home. Warm bread, rosemary chicken, buttered carrots, laughter, a baby squealing somewhere upstairs, chairs scraping on old floors, the creak of a house held together equally by love and stubbornness.

Hermione stepped out of the Floo brushing soot from her sleeve, only to be immediately flattened by a black-headed blur.

“AUNT ’MIONE!”

James, seven and endlessly energetic, barreled into her legs with all the force of a Bludger in training. “Aunt Hermione! Aunt Hermione! I flew so fast today that Dad said if I go any faster I’ll set the yard on fire!”

Behind him came Lily, three, tiny, scarlet-haired, toddling with fierce warrior-princess determination, hair bouncing as she marched forward like she had personally conquered the Forbidden Forest. She flung her arms up. Hermione scooped her without hesitation.

And Albus, sweet, serious-eyed Albus, trailing behind them, clutching her hand like he had never let go yesterday. Dark hair rumpled, expression solemn in that way only very small boys trying very hard to be brave can manage.

“I saved you a seat,” he whispered, as if sharing classified Ministry intelligence.

Before Hermione could answer, another pair of smaller arms wrapped around her waist, Rose Weasley, five years old, honey-brown hair and freckles like sun-spilled stardust across her cheeks, beaming up at her with Ron’s grin and Susan’s eyes.

“Aunt Mione, I brought you flowers! I picked them myself! Daddy says the garden is his, but he lied because I found the prettiest ones.”

Hermione laughed, utterly undone. “Of course you did, my love.”

Just behind her, Susan swept forward with baby Hugo on her hip, soft ginger curls, a sleepy fist tangled in his mother’s robes, one chubby hand reaching vaguely toward Hermione like he was blessing her presence with pure baby chaos magic.

“He insisted on being part of the welcome committee,” Susan said, amused and exasperated in equal measure.

Hugo promptly sneezed glitter-like crumbs of biscuit all over Hermione’s robes.

James cackled. “He’s practicing spells!”

“No he’s not,” Rose sniffed primly. “He just eats everything.”

“Eating is a talent,” James declared with pride, very much Ron’s nephew.

Albus burrowed slightly into Hermione’s side. “We missed you.”

And in that moment, arms full of Lily, Rose’s flowers tickling her wrist, Albus’s hand in hers, Hugo gurgling at her like she hung the moon, Hermione felt something in her ribs loosen, warm, alive.

There were many kinds of love in the world. This one, soft, lived-in, sticky-fingers and grass-stains and tiny arms around her neck, was one she never took for granted.

“Hermione, dear!” Molly bustled in, apron dusted with flour, cheeks pink from the heat of the kitchen. “You look thin again, I’ll fix that. Come, come. We’ve got enough food to feed a Quidditch league.”

Hermione laughed, kissed Molly’s cheek, and followed the kids to the back garden where long tables had been charmed to float among the wildflowers.

The Weasleys were all there, a tapestry of red hair and easy joy. Bill and Fleur with Dominique and baby Louis (Victoire already at Hogwarts); Percy and Audrey pouring lemonade; George and Angelina setting plates; Arthur tinkering with a wireless set to Muggle jazz.

And there, Charlie, sun-browned, strong as ever, laughing with a tall man beside him with dark curls and warm brown skin. The stranger had Draco Malfoy cheekbones but joy where Draco had tension. She recognized him from the picture Molly showed around a few Sundays ago at the Burrow.

“That’s Bruno,” Ginny murmured at her side. “Dragon specialist from Brazil. Charlie met him wrangling a Romanian Ridgeback who had a taste for tourists.”

Bruno waved enthusiastically at Hermione and called, in accented English, “Oi, Hermione! Charlie says you fought dark witches like a dragon fights fire!”

Hermione blinked. “That’s… the nicest and most alarming compliment I’ve ever received.”

Charlie barked a laugh and kissed Bruno’s cheek, unselfconscious, radiant.

Definitely a man who had chosen to live.

***

Later, while children chased gnomes and Molly conjured floating pies, Charlie leaned against the old orchard fence beside Hermione.

“Good to be home again,” he said softly. “Feels like when things were right after the war. Before everyone scattered to mend.”

Hermione exhaled. “Mending takes different shapes.”

“Yeah.” He nudged her shoulder. “I ran off to dragons. You ran off to fix the world.”

She smiled, small. “Someone had to.”

He studied her for a moment. “You know… being brave doesn’t mean not being scared. Sometimes the bravest thing I ever did was admit who I am. Even after a war.”

Hermione watched him, brow softening.

Charlie continued quietly, “I spent years convincing myself there was no space for me. That loving who I love was… indulgent. Unnecessary. After everything we saw- who was I to want joy?”

She swallowed. That sounded painfully familiar.

“And then,” he gestured toward Bruno, who was laughing at George and Angelina’s toddler smearing carrots on his shirt, “I realized life is already short. War or no war. So I leapt. And my family caught me. Even Ron.”

Hermione huffed a soft laugh. “I’m glad. You deserve happiness. And to live a life being true to yourself, while still surrounded by love.”

“So do you,” Charlie said simply. “Don’t hide from happiness when it comes knocking, Hermione.”

Her heart beat unevenly. A linen handkerchief tucked back in a drawer in her flat came to mind. She didn’t answer, couldn’t.

Charlie didn’t push, and went to meet Bruno. Weasleys rarely did when the wound was deep.

Ron approached her with two mugs of butterbeer, ears pink, eyes awkward in that familiar Ron Weasley way.

“Hey,” he said, offering one to her.

She took it with a smile. “Hey yourself.”

They leaned on the fence together the way they used to, like the world made more sense when their shoulders lined up.

“I know you’ve been spending time at… uh… Malfoy Manor,” Ron said, voice careful.

Hermione sighed. “Ron-”

“Look, I know people change.” He shifted, frowning. “And Harry says he’s solid now. Theo does too. And Susan says the French Auror records were clean.”

“So what’s the problem?”

He stared at his boots. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Again. The war already took so much from you. After your parents-”

Hermione’s throat tightened. “I’m not- I don’t- It’s not like that. He’s… we’re just working on something important.”

Ron glanced sideways at her. “Yeah? And you’re happy?”

She hesitated. That was enough to answer.

Ron’s expression warmed, protective and soft. “I just want you to have someone who sees how bloody brilliant you are. Whoever that ends up being.”

The world wobbled slightly. Hermione blinked fast.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Susan approached then, looping her arm through Ron’s. “Talking feelings without me? Rude.”

Hermione laughed, grateful. “Just the classics. Friendship, loyalty, existential dread.”

Susan grinned. “Excellent. Dessert topics then.”

***

Later still, as Hermione helped carry dishes inside, Molly cornered her gently.

“So,” Molly began, wiping her hands on her apron, “when do we finally meet that sweet boy you’ve mentioned?”

Hermione blinked. “Scorpius?”

“Yes, dear.” Molly patted her arm. “Bring him. And Draco. Next Sunday. We Weasleys don’t hold grudges longer than ten years.”

Hermione choked. “M-Molly!”

Molly smiled with warm finality. “Family isn’t just blood, Hermione. It’s who stays. Bring them.”

Hermione’s heart twisted. Terror and hope in equal measure.

They were gathering dessert plates when Harry’s Auror badge flared red with a sharp, urgent crack.

His face drained.

“Dolohov,” he breathed. “Public sighting- Diagon Alley.”

Everything stopped.

Molly clasped her heart. George stood instantly. Percy surged forward. Ron’s wand was already out.

Hermione’s pulse roared in her ears. Not again.

Harry looked at her- fear and determination and brotherhood all pressed into one moment.

“We go,” he said.

Hermione nodded, wand in hand before she realized she’d moved.

The air shimmered with fear and firelight as they Disapparated, the warmth of home collapsing into war again.

Chapter Text

The world snapped sideways as Hermione spun into Diagon Alley with a loud crack, boots hitting cobblestones already slick with spilled potion and something darker.

For a split second, her body lagged behind her magic. Apparition always did that - a fractional dissonance where the world had not yet decided which way was up. Then gravity asserted itself brutally, and the night slammed into her senses all at once.

Smoke. Heat. Panic.

Screams cut the air, sharp and animal, echoing off brick and glass. Shopfronts flickered violently, wards straining under pressure they had never been designed to hold. Glass trembled in its frames like frightened teeth. A cart of spell-candles had toppled and ignited, fire eating hungrily toward the apothecary at the corner, flames licking the cobbles with unnatural color. A woman clutched her child behind a toppled crate, eyes too wide, breath locked. A man lay unconscious beside a shattered window, blood pooling slowly, obscenely calm amid the chaos.

And spells - curses - were flying.

Green. Red. Purple.

Hermione’s heart slammed against her ribs, too fast, too loud. Not fear exactly. Readiness. The old reflex waking from long dormancy.

Ron landed beside her with a crack, wand already raised, freckles stark against his pale face. Susan dropped into a crouch before straightening, her whole posture snapping into command - shoulders squared, voice cutting cleanly through the noise.

“Aurors, forming a northern perimeter,” she barked into her badge, then to Ron, “Cover left flank.”

Hermione felt the shift then - the invisible reordering of space that happened when trained people took control of chaos. Lines drawn. Priorities set. The panic didn’t vanish, but it gained shape.

Then she saw them.

Two figures already deep in the fray.

Theo, cloak scorched, one sleeve half-burned away, wand held high like a conductor’s baton, redirecting panic into strategy. He was shouting orders, hexing mid-sentence, thinking three moves ahead the way he always had.

And Malfoy.

Her breath caught, not because she didn’t expect him, but because seeing him like this recalibrated something in her chest.

He moved like a whispered threat turned flesh. Quick. Precise. Controlled fury. Every spell a scalpel, never a hammer. Smoke curled through moonlight around him; his robes torn at the shoulder; hair disheveled; jaw set with lethal clarity that made his profile look carved rather than grown.

This was not rage for rage’s sake.

This was protection.

He looked nothing like the boy she once knew.

And exactly like the man he had become.

“Dolohov’s here,” Harry shouted, sprinting past her, voice tight. “And he’s firing curses.”

The name hit her like a physical blow.

Dolohov.

It burned like iron against scar-memory - against the place in her chest that never fully forgot what it felt like to almost die. Fifteen again. Cold stone. Purple light. Helplessness blooming like poison.

Her stomach dropped. Her fingers tightened around her wand until her knuckles ached.

Not again.

She lifted her wand, forcing breath into her lungs, grounding herself in the present. She was not that girl anymore. She had learned. She had survived.

Theo shouted over the madness, voice hoarse. “Civilians out! Apparition choke point east alley! Do NOT let him circle back!”

Hermione dove without thinking, her body already moving as a curse tore through a hanging lantern above her head. Molten glass rained down like falling stars, sizzling as it hit stone. She threw up a shield, transfigured a signpost into a barrier in one smooth motion, and shoved a trembling shopkeeper behind it.

“Run!” she shouted.

The woman didn’t hesitate. She ran.

A masked figure lunged from the smoke. Hermione’s wand whipped up, muscle memory sharp as instinct.

“Expelliarmus!”

The spell hit clean. The attacker slammed into a stack of crates, wand skidding across the stones. Hermione spared them half a glance - stunned, not dead - and moved on.

Susan’s voice crackled through badge static, overlapping with screams and shattering wards:
“Two masked hostiles confirmed, Dolohov sighted toward Knockturn-”

A flash of sickly purple cut across the street.

Hermione’s breath froze.

That color.

That spell-family.

Harry chased, shouting, “STUN-”

Dolohov turned.

Time slowed, cruel and intimate.

Hermione saw Harry’s stance - open, determined, just a fraction too slow. She saw Dolohov’s mouth curve into that familiar, contemptuous smile. She felt the old scar throb, a phantom ache answering its creator.

“Protego!” she screamed, voice tearing out of her chest.

Harry’s shield held, barely. The impact slammed him into a wall hard enough to crack stone. He crumpled, unmoving.

“Harry!” Hermione bolted toward him, heart in her throat.

Dolohov’s gaze found her, sharp and delighted.

“Oh little lioness,” he hissed, voice oily with recognition. “Still alive? Pity.”

Rage surged, hot and blinding. Hermione raised her wand-

-but a jet of red cut across her vision, forcing Dolohov to twist away, cloak snapping like bat wings.

Draco.

He stepped into the space between them without hesitation, body angling instinctively to shield, stance wide and unyielding. His wand was steady. His breathing controlled.

He didn’t look at her.

He didn’t need to.

He was there.

They clashed - curse for curse, speed for speed - the air between them vibrating with power. Draco blocked a spell meant for her chest. Then another aimed toward Theo. Then one that ricocheted wildly toward fleeing civilians, dispersing it mid-flight with brutal efficiency.

Hermione’s throat closed.

He was everywhere danger pointed.

And then Dolohov flicked something small and dark - a rune-etched obsidian shard - toward Harry’s slumped form.

Hermione screamed. “DON’T-”

Draco didn’t think.

He moved.

Steel met spell. Light burst like stars shattering. The impact knocked Draco back a step, then another; his jaw clenched, teeth bared against pain, but the shard cracked harmlessly on stone instead of piercing Harry’s ribs.

He had shielded Harry.

With his own magic.

With his own body.

Hermione felt something rupture inside her chest - fear, relief, fury, awe colliding all at once.

Dolohov vanished into smoke, disapparating with a crack like breaking bone.

Silence rushed in where he’d been, abrupt and disorienting, broken only by distant screams and the crackle of dying fire.

Hermione stood frozen for half a heartbeat, wand still raised, pulse roaring in her ears.

Then she ran - to Harry, to Draco, to the aftermath - the world snapping back into motion around her as the cost of survival settled into place.

Not again, she thought fiercely.

Not without a fight.

***

Hermione didn’t remember apparating.

One moment she was in the alley, fingers locked into Harry’s sleeve, holding him upright by sheer refusal to let go; the next she was pushing through St. Mungo’s doors, robes streaked with ash and dust, lungs burning like she had run the distance instead of folding space around herself.

The hospital smell hit her like a second impact - antiseptic, magic, fear held at bay by routine.

“He needs observation, three hours minimum,” she said to the medi-witch already rushing toward them, voice sharp with authority even as it trembled underneath. “Internal curse-residual screens. Twice. And start skeletal diagnostics immediately.”

The medi-witch nodded once, brisk and grateful. Hermione was speaking their language.

Harry swayed. Hermione tightened her grip instinctively, anchoring him with her body the way she had learned to anchor herself.

“I’m okay, ’Mione,” he murmured, trying for a smile, breath too shallow, too careful.

She felt it instantly - the way his ribs resisted expansion, the uneven hitch of breath. Not okay. Not even close.

“You nearly weren’t,” she said, and her voice cracked despite her effort to keep it clinical. “Don’t argue with me.”

Harry squeezed her wrist weakly. “Bossy.”

She huffed something that might have been a laugh if it didn’t hurt so much.

Hermione leaned closer, lowering her voice so only Harry could hear it.

“Ron’s fine,” she said quietly. “Shaken, furious, but fine. Susan stayed with him - she’s coordinating with the DMLE, locking down Knockturn and pulling witness statements. Theo too. He refused to leave until the perimeter was stable.”

Harry exhaled, relief loosening his shoulders just a fraction. “Good. That sounds like them.”

Hermione hesitated for half a heartbeat, then added, softer, more careful, “Malfoy’s coming in as well. He took a hit. Not life-threatening, but… enough.”

Harry’s eyes sharpened immediately. “Is he-”

“He’ll walk,” Hermione said. “Barely, if he has his way. I’m making sure he doesn’t.”

A corner of Harry’s mouth lifted, tired but knowing. “Of course you are.”

She squeezed his hand once, grounding both of them. “You’re not alone. None of you are.”

Harry nodded, gaze steady on hers. “Neither are you.”

And for a moment, in the chaos of St. Mungo’s, that was enough.

They lowered him onto the bed together. Hermione’s wand was already moving, not rushed, not frantic - controlled. She had learned the hard way that panic was a luxury healers couldn’t afford.

Scan first. Then fix.

Golden diagnostic light rippled over Harry’s torso.

There. There it was.

Her stomach clenched.

“Three fractured ribs,” she said calmly, even as her pulse spiked. “Fourth, fifth, and sixth - lateral. Internal bleeding along the pleural lining. Mild lung contusion.” She looked up sharply. “Get me blood-replenishing draughts, slow infusion. And I want stabilization charms on the chest wall before we even think about regrowth.”

The medi-witch was already moving. Hermione placed her palm flat against Harry’s sternum, grounding spell first - always first - magic sinking deep, steadying breath, easing the panic response.

Harry exhaled shakily. “You’re… very good at this.”

She swallowed. “Stay conscious.”

She sealed the internal bleed with a precise thread of magic, not closing too fast, letting tissue remember how to hold itself together. One rib knit. Then another. Then she reinforced without finishing - healing was about pacing as much as power.

Alive, she thought fiercely. You’re alive.

And then the bed beside them rolled in.

Draco.

Hermione’s attention snapped sideways before she could stop it.

He was still gripping his wand like releasing it might collapse the world again. Shoulder scorched, leather armor blackened, jaw bruised deep enough to already be blooming purple. Blood soaked the fabric beneath his shoulder guard, dark and insistent.

For one heartbeat, the room tilted.

Her body reacted before thought had permission.

“Finish the chest stabilization,” she told the other healer without looking away from Draco. “He’ll need regrowth spells in an hour, not now. I’ll take over from there later.”

Authority snapped cleanly into place. No one argued.

Hermione crossed the space in three strides.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Draco rasped, voice roughened by smoke and pain. “You’re needed-”

“I’m exactly where I need to be,” she snapped, louder than intended, the words propelled by fear she hadn’t processed yet.

His eyes widened - not offended, not defensive. Surprised. As if he hadn’t expected to matter this much.

They wheeled him into an examination room, Hermione’s hand firm on the side rail, wand already humming with contained magic. The door shut behind them with a soft click that felt intimate, final - four walls sealing them into a moment neither had time to examine yet.

He sat on the cot, breathing shallow, one hand still wrapped around his wand like a lifeline. His shoulder armor was scorched nearly through; fabric torn; blood blooming beneath like a dark flower refusing to wilt.

“Take your robe off,” Hermione said, briskness sharpened into a shield.

He huffed a breath that tried for humor and missed by a mile. “If you wanted to get me undressed, Granger, there are easier ways.”

“Shut up,” she murmured, and the softness startled both of them.

Her fingers brushed his collar as she helped him peel the robe away. The touch was meant to be clinical. It wasn’t. Heat arced, undeniable, her magic responding to the living pulse under her hands.

His skin was warm - too warm - adrenaline and residual curse-energy buzzing beneath the surface, muscle taut, trembling with spent power.

He stood between Dolohov and Harry, her mind whispered. Without hesitation.

She cast a numbing charm, palm gliding along the line of his collarbone. He inhaled sharply - not pain.

“You should lie back,” she said, quieter now.

“I’m fine sitting.”

“You’re bleeding,” she replied, calm steel returning. “Humor me.”

He did.

Slowly. Carefully. Like surrender was unfamiliar but not unwelcome.

She cleansed the wound with precise strokes, magic pooling between her fingertips in soft gold. When her thumb brushed the inside of his arm by accident - pulse point, vulnerable - his breath stuttered.

“You’re shaking again,” he whispered, eyes half-lidded, watching her face more than the injury.

“So are you,” she countered, barely above a breath.

“You were in the street,” he said, jaw tightening. “I saw the curse fly past you. If I had been one second slower-”

“You weren’t,” she cut in. “You weren’t.”

The words were a rope thrown tight between them.

She stitched the final charm into place, magic settling into skin like warm starlight into snow. Draco’s eyes fluttered shut for half a second - involuntary, intimate - before he caught himself.

“Thank you,” he said, voice lower now, stripped of irony. “For healing me. For… all of it.”

The gratitude landed heavy. Earned. Real.

She swallowed. “Don’t do that again.”

He opened his eyes. The storm there had quieted - not gone, just choosing stillness in her presence.

“I don’t plan to,” he said. “But if I must-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” she warned.

Something like a smile tugged at his mouth. Something like respect.

A breath passed. Then another.

She stepped back, needed distance, and yet-

“What happened?” she asked, healer and strategist threading back together. “Dolohov didn’t strike randomly.”

“No,” Draco said, jaw tightening again. “He wanted Knockturn. There’s a vault beneath the old apothecary. Pre-war dark-arts storage. If he’d reached it-”

“He didn’t,” she said firmly.

“No. We intercepted. And we captured one of his men.” His gaze sharpened. “He knows things. I’m going to pull them out.”

Her brows lifted. “You’re Legilimens.”

Not a question.

“I trained in France,” he said quietly. “After the war. I needed to repair my mind with Occlumency. And learn how to defend it with Legilimmency.”

Of course you did, she thought, ache threading through admiration. You rebuilt yourself the way I rebuilt myself.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

“I will.”

“You always say that.”

“And yet,” he murmured, gaze dipping to where her hand still hovered near his shoulder, “here I am.”

She snorted, emotion snagging halfway. “You’re impossible.”

“And you,” he said softly, “are terrified I’ll get myself killed.”

Her voice trembled. “Someone has to be.”

Something opened between them - not romance, not yet - but recognition. Shared weight. Shared refusal to let the other disappear.

He eased off the cot and she steadied him without thinking. His hand closed over hers for one suspended second, warm and solid and real.

His eyes softened. “I’ll try to be careful.”

“Trying isn’t good enough.”

“Then I’ll do better.”

Outside, alarms flared again - the world roaring back.

Hermione stepped aside to let him pass, lungs finally burning as adrenaline drained.

Draco paused at the doorway. Turned back.

Looked at her like she was the thing that had anchored him when the world tried to tear him under.

“We’ll get him,” he said. “Dolohov. We’ll end this.”

“Together,” she answered, without hesitation.

Their gazes held - a handclasp neither dared initiate.

The door clicked shut behind him.

And only then did Hermione’s legs give out.

She slid down the cool stone wall until she was sitting on the floor, back pressed hard against it, knees drawn in, wand slipping from fingers that suddenly would not obey her anymore. The quiet rushed in all at once - not true silence, but the distant hum of wards, the echo of hurried footsteps far down the corridor, the steady reminder that the world had not stopped just because her heart was pounding too loudly.

Her breath hitched.

Once.
Twice.

And then the sound broke free.

She folded forward, pressing her forehead to her knees as the sob tore out of her chest - sharp, raw, unceremonious. Not elegant. Not contained. The kind of cry that came when the body realized, belatedly, that it had survived.

No one she loved had died today.

The thought landed like a revelation, fragile and holy.

Harry was alive. Hurt, yes - ribs broken, blood where it did not belong - but breathing, stubborn, infuriatingly alive. Ginny would scold him. Ron would hover. He would complain and recover and carry on like the indestructible fool he had always been.

It could have gone differently. She knew that. She had lived enough war to know how thin the line was.

Her shoulders shook harder as the truth settled.

It was a miracle.

A fragile, undeserved miracle, but real.

Her breath slowed, unevenly, and another thought crept in, uninvited and insistent.

No one she loved had died today.

Did Draco belong in that sentence?

Her chest tightened.

She didn’t know. Not yet. Not in the way Harry did. Not in the way Ginny, Ron, the children did. He was not family. Not history softened by years of shared kitchens and holidays.

And yet-

Her mind betrayed her, replaying the image she could not shake: Draco Malfoy on a gurney, blood dark against scorched leather, wand still clenched like the world might end if he let go.

Harry first. Then him.

The order of it had mattered more than she wanted to admit.

Her stomach twisted as she remembered the cold spike of terror, sharper than she expected, when she’d seen him wheeled in - how her body had moved before thought, how her hands had known where to go, how something deep and feral inside her had recoiled at the idea of losing him too.

She pressed her palm flat against the floor, grounding herself.

You’re caring, she told herself firmly. That’s not the same as belonging.

But the distinction felt thinner than it should have.

He was important.

That, at least, she could admit.

Important enough that seeing him broken had hurt in a way that startled her. Important enough that gratitude had not been abstract, but visceral. Important enough that the idea of him not walking back out of St. Mungo’s had left her breathless.

Her tears slowed, leaving her eyes burning and her head aching dully.

She scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand, impatient with herself now, with the luxury of collapse. The world was still wounded. Patients still needed her. Magic still needed mending.

She wiped her tears properly this time, smoothing her hair back, grounding herself in ritual and resolve. A healer’s pause - brief, necessary, done.

Hermione pushed herself to her feet.

Her spine straightened. Her shoulders settled. The weight of fear didn’t vanish, but it rearranged itself into something usable - focus, vigilance, purpose.

She picked up her wand.

Someone down the hall cried out for help. A medi-witch called her name.

Hermione Granger inhaled once, deep and steady.

Then she walked forward, back into the light, back into the work - not unbroken, not untouched, but standing.

She had survived the war.

She had survived today.

And she would keep everyone else alive too, because that was who she was.

Because that was who she had been born to be.

Chapter Text

(Draco’s POV)

A hum filled the stone: old magic, Ministry wards, containment spells layered like geological strata. Draco sat in the chair opposite the reinforced cell, elbows braced on his knees, fingers steepled against his mouth.

Cold. Sterile. Salt wards in the corners. Iron thread woven through the walls. Standard protocol for high-risk war operatives.

Twelve years ago, he would have been on the other side of the glass.

The thought never stopped stinging.

Inside the cell, the captured man - gaunt, trembling, curse-scar tissue crawling up his forearms like black roots - rocked gently, a priest without a god, lips moving in devotional murmur.

Devotion to Dolohov. To the old order. To a war they never stopped fighting.

Draco scraped a hand over his jaw. His reflection in the glass barely looked like the boy who once stood in dark halls pretending he knew what strength was.

You chose this, he reminded himself. You asked for this life.

But knowing that didn’t make the weight easier to lift.

He rose, stepped into the cell. Wards thrummed, acknowledging clearance. The door sealed behind him with a soft hiss.

The prisoner’s eyes snapped up, pupils blown wide, ringed with fanatic gold-flecks of curse binding.

“Malfoy.” He spat the name like a relic soaked in betrayal. “Blood traitor.”

Draco’s pulse didn’t flinch. “Creative. I’ve been called worse.”

A twitch. A grin too wide. “He knows,” the man hissed. “He knows you’re crawling back. Knows where you kneel now.”

Draco’s jaw ticked once. “I kneel to no one.”

A laugh like a breaking bone. “You kneel to the Mudblood.”

The room tightened around him.

He hadn’t told anyone outside their circle. He and Hermione were working quietly, deliberately, as equals. Saviors by necessity, not sentiment. And yet… The implication landed too close to something he had not yet named.

Draco let the insult settle. Then he stepped closer, wand hanging loosely at his side, not as a threat but as a promise.

“Legilimens.”

His magic flowed sharp and clean, icewater through a vault lock, but the prisoner’s mind rose up to meet it like tar set aflame.

A wall of chanting hit Draco first.

Not speech. Not thought. Programming.

The Cycle Turns. The Window Opens. Twelve for Twelve.

The phrases looped in different voices - young, old, male, female - as if dozens of mouths were speaking through one throat. Each repetition dug grooves through the prisoner’s synapses, carving obedience where memory should have been.

Draco pushed deeper.

Images struck like blows:

Dolohov’s smile, too calm for madness, too bright for sanity. A circle of masked figures, not Death Eaters but pilgrims, hands painted with runes that pulsed like open wounds. Vault doors in France. A stone altar in the Carpathians. A forest clearing under blood-moon light where someone screamed not in pain but ecstasy.

The Cycle Turns. Twelve years of silence for twelve signs returned. Blood for blood. Ruin for rebirth.

Draco tried to anchor his magic, but the mind he touched was not a mind, it was architecture, carved with ritual precision. A cathedral of fanaticism.

He felt his own stomach turn.

He broke contact with a ripping gasp, stumbling back until his hand found the cold wall.

The prisoner slumped forward at the loss of connection… then lifted his head with a smile that was not his own.

“The Window Opens,” he crooned. “The Vessel Comes. Twelve for Twelve.”

Draco’s wand snapped up before he even felt his arm move.

“Enough.”

The man laughed - a wet, rattling hymn. “This is above you, blood traitor. Above all of you.”

Draco straightened, breathing through the fury, wand steady.

“We’ll see.”

He left the cell, sealing the wards behind him. His hands shook only when he was alone. He hated that Hermione’s face was the first thing his mind sought for steadiness.

The War Room felt different tonight. Not just tense, hollowed, as if the walls themselves were bracing for bad news. Maps hovered in mid-air like exhausted sentinels, ink bleeding threat-lines across Europe and the British Isles. Charms flickered low, tired from overuse. Aurors clustered in pockets of shared breath and stale coffee, shoulders touching in the way soldiers do when they forget they’re no longer on battlefields.

Draco crossed the threshold and felt old instincts crawl up his spine.

Not fear. Recognition.

This room had been built for emergencies, but, for twelve years, it had mostly been a formality, a symbol of vigilance rather than a crucible. Tonight, it felt like a memory resurrected.

Hermione stood between Harry and Susan, curls slipping from a futile hairpin, smudges beneath her eyes like charcoal sketches of sleepless weeks. Ron leaned against the edge of the strategy table, jaw clenched hard enough to crack. Theo was at the back, arms folded, expression shadowed as he flicked through floating runic projections. Kingsley paced in slow, deliberate lines, his silhouette heavy against the glowing maps. Gringotts had sent a single representative this time, a curse-breaker named Sahir Dumez, quiet, hawk-eyed, face cut with worry.

No one said it aloud, but the room smelled like the cusp of something.

Hermione’s gaze snapped to Draco the moment he entered. Not relief, but something steadier, sharper, like confirmation that he’d made it out alive. He shouldn’t find safety in that. He did.

Harry cleared his throat. “Report?”

Draco forced his voice level. “Dolohov’s target wasn’t the alley. It was the vault beneath it. The one storing confiscated relics from pre-war purist sects.”

A ripple of dread moved through the table.

Ron let out a low whistle. “Brilliant. More cursed heirlooms.”

“Not heirlooms,” Draco said, dragging the floating map toward him. “Tools.”

Hermione inhaled sharply. “For blood ritual magic.”

He nodded once.

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees.

Susan Bones swore softly under her breath. “Who the hell taught Dolohov ritualcraft strong enough to pull this off?”

No one answered.

They all knew the war hadn’t ended cleanly. But they’d allowed themselves to believe - foolishly, mercifully - that time had diluted the poison.

Draco looked at the map. Glowing pins marking France, Belgium, the Carpathians.“The operative we captured had traces of rune-soil from all of these. Dolohov’s been moving across Europe. Quietly. Carefully. For years.”

Kingsley exhaled, a slow, weighted sound. “Twelve, to be exact.”

Draco blinked. Kingsley rarely spoke numbers casually.

“Twelve years of isolated incidents abroad,” Kingsley continued, gaze sweeping the room. “Hex-fires in France. A vanished cult-crypt in Poland. A resurrection attempt in Brittany, small, containable, but patterned.” He tapped the map with two fingers. “The same signature appeared today.”

“Why wasn’t any of this made public?” Ron demanded.

Kingsley’s expression shuttered. “Because panic spreads faster than truth. And because none of the incidents crossed our borders until a few months ago.”

A silence settled. Resentful, reluctant, resigned.

Hermione rubbed her temple. “So the Ministry under-reported them.”

“To prevent spirals,” Kingsley corrected gently. Then, quieter: “And because we hoped they weren’t connected.”

Sahir, the curse-breaker, lifted his head. “They were connected,” he said, voice low. “Some of us in Europe suspected as much. But the patterns were too faint. Too scattered. Like someone testing doors rather than breaking them.”

Hermione’s breath hitched. “Until today.”

“Until today,” Sahir confirmed.

Harry turned to Draco. “You interrogated the operative. What did you see?”

Draco kept his tone even, but the memory of it crawled cold fingers up his throat. “His mind was altered. Not like the Cruciatus burns synapses, this was… sculpted. Lanes carved through memory. Whole sections rerouted. His identity was intact enough to serve a purpose, not enough to resist.”

Hermione flinched. “Ritual modification.”

“Yes.”

Draco’s jaw flexed. “And whatever blocks were built into him… they’re not permanent. Not entirely.”

Several heads turned.

“In custody,” Draco continued, voice low, “his walls will weaken. They always do. Exhaustion, isolation, the absence of reinforcement rituals. Eventually the mind slips. If I try again, when the conditioning falters…” He hesitated, not out of uncertainty but because the thought of entering that mind again twisted something in his gut. “I may see more. Not much, his pathways are carved, not clouded. But enough to understand intent. Enough to understand the pattern.”

Harry nodded grimly. “But it will be limited.”

“Very.” Draco’s gaze slid back to the hovering map. “He wasn’t meant to know anything. Only to deliver. To serve as a channel for instruction. A vessel, not a participant.”

The word vessel would later strike them differently. Tonight, it only made the room feel smaller.

Sahir leaned forward. “Merlinic?”

“Older,” Draco said. “Or… mimicked. The architecture was crude but intentional. Designed to make him obedient. Devout.”

Theo’s head snapped up. “So we’re not dealing with Death Eaters.”

“No,” Draco said. “We’re dealing with a cult.”

Sahir nodded grimly. “Many modern cults build around ideology. But this… this has the structure of a resurrection order. Symbolic cycles. Sacrificial geometry. Twelve-year hinges. It’s not about worship. It’s about reenactment.”

Hermione’s pulse stuttered. “Twelve years since the war.”

“Exactly,” Sahir said.

“But why now?” Ron asked, frowning. “Why wait twelve bloody years to start trouble?”

Hermione’s eyes darkened. “Because ideology doesn’t die, Ron. It burrows. And reemerges when enough people feel disillusioned or angry or hungry for old lies dressed as prophecy.”

Draco felt the truth of it like a bruise blooming beneath the ribs.

Harry leaned over the table. “We need to prepare a public statement. We can’t say ‘resurrection cult,’ but we can say we faced coordinated extremist activity and that Dolohov is behind it.”

Kingsley nodded. “We will stress this is not a resurgence of Death Eaters. But a criminal cell. Focused. Contained.”

Draco didn’t believe it was contained. Neither did Hermione, he could see it in the hard set of her jaw.

Harry looked at Draco again. “What else did the operative say?”

Draco hesitated, not for secrecy, but because the memory of it scraped like broken stone. “He kept repeating the same phrases. ‘The Cycle Turns.’ ‘The Window Opens.’ ‘Twelve for Twelve.’ He didn’t understand the words. They were drilled into him.”

Hermione shivered. “Ritual language.”

Theo murmured, “Devotional language.”

Susan muttered, “Propaganda.”

Kingsley rubbed his temples. “I’ll need an analysis report within the hour.”

Draco’s jaw tightened. “There’s more.”

The room paused.

“The operative didn’t resist Legilimency because he was loyal,” Draco said. “He resisted because… he couldn’t remember. Someone stripped his cognitive pathways. Ripped out context, emotion, fear. Sculpted his mind into a vessel for instruction.”

Hermione exhaled sharply, pain flickering across her face. “So he wasn’t really a follower.”

“No,” Draco said quietly. “He was built.”

A harsh silence fell.

Harry’s voice was the one to break it. Soft. Devastated. “We’re too late to stop the first step.”

Kingsley lowered his head. “Then we make sure we’re not too late to stop the second.”

Draco looked at the glowing map of Europe. At the pulsing red pin marking London.

He felt, with perfect clarity, the weight of twelve years shifting into motion.

He wasn’t afraid. Not for himself.

But for the world they had rebuilt, fragile, hopeful, imperfect, and now trembling under the echo of old ghosts.

Hermione’s eyes met his across the table.

Resolve. Fear. Recognition.

Family forming in war again.

It made Draco want to crawl out of his skin.

It made him want to stay.

(end of Draco’s POV)

***

The days after the attack blurred into something taut and shimmering, like magic stretched too thin over a wound not yet closed. London was uneasy.

The DMLE held emergency sessions, rooms thick with parchment maps, enchanted red markers, and a tension that clung to skin like smoke. Hermione attended every briefing she could fit between St. Mungo’s shifts and Sage hours; she sat between Harry and Susan while Ron paced the back of the room like a restless guard dog.

It felt like the first cold wind before a storm.

It’s starting again. War in the marrow of the world.

Still, nights dragged. Sleep felt thin, brittle, easily punctured by memory. Hermione’s cottage felt too quiet, too fragile, too exposed. When she worked at the Manor, she wore comfort like borrowed armor. When she came home, she stripped it off and felt the cold.

But she refused to be hunted again.

Tonight she came to the Malfoy Manor’s library with runes under her skin and war in her blood. Crooks was curled on the sofa with a judge’s glare. 

Oh… Crookshanks. He had taken to the Manor like he’d always owned the place.

It had started innocently, Hermione spending more hours here than in her own home, Narcissa insisting she not fret about leaving her familiar alone, and Crooks, being who he was, deciding he’d simply invite himself.

Now he padded through Malfoy corridors as though patrolling ancestral territory, tail high, whiskers twitching with disdain for any dust mote foolish enough to exist. The elves left out bowls of salmon for him. The carpets knew his pawprints. Even the enchanted candelabra dimmed respectfully when he passed.

He tolerated Draco.

He approved of Narcissa.

He adored Scorpius, in a haughty, you may pet me, small heir, but only twice sort of way.

Most shockingly, he had made peace with the peacocks. The first time he encountered them, feathers flared like stained-glass rage, Crooks simply blinked and sat, unimpressed, until they retreated, clearly deciding he was either beneath confrontation or too powerful to challenge.

Now, when he roamed the gardens, they shadowed him at a polite distance, as though guarding a visiting dignitary.

Hermione watched him and felt something warm in her chest.

If Crookshanks could find his way here, this place once carved from cruelty, now tender in its rebuilding, maybe she could too. Maybe they all could.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she murmured, setting her satchel down. “I’m not crazy.”

Crookshanks blinked. Judged harder.

“Fine. Not entirely crazy.”

She lit the desklamps. Books sprawled across the desk like battalions ready for war: rune theory, curse anatomy, healing texts, Malfoy ancestral tomes now annotated with her tight handwriting.

Her notes filled the room like constellations, threads of logic connecting ink to future.

I can do this.

Her curse thrummed quietly in her body, not a wound, not dormant, but coiled like a weight in her bloodline. She had known for years it reacted to magical strain. Knew it flared under severe stress.

And she was so very tired of pretending she wasn’t breakable.

The last few days at the Manor had made her… braver. Or foolish. Or both, always both. Afternoons with Scorpius chasing magical ladybirds through Narcissa’s soft new gardens. Evenings bent over tomes with Draco; parchment smudges on his long fingers, silence warm rather than brittle. Magic humming between them, never named.

Scorpius had given her a drawing yesterday: three stick figures under a crooked sun. One had wild curls like storm clouds. One had blond hair like candlelight. One was tiny and beaming.

Me. Daddy. Mione.

She had stared at it an embarrassingly long time.

That drawing sat on her shelf back home now, anchored between potion flasks. She tried not to think of it as she pulled fresh parchment toward her.

“No going soft now,” she murmured to herself.

Outside, the sky rumbled, low thunder, distant.

Hermione rolled up her sleeves, breathing steady, eyes bright with that particular Granger fire that had once terrified Death Eaters and professors alike.

Time to test.

She drew the runes slowly, reverently, each stroke a prayer in ancient shapes. The protective circle pulsed silver. Her wand glimmered. Magic gathered thick and warm in the air.

Stabilizing matrix. Runic anchor. Blood-magic dampening weave.

“Magical core buffer… activate,” she whispered.

A hum filled her bones.

Then, because she had always been her own test subject, she opened the runes to her own blood.

Pain struck like lightning.

Fire surged under her ribs, the Bellatrix scar igniting white-hot like molten metal. Her curse flared violently, arcane static exploding through her nerves. She gasped, staggering, clutching the table. Ink bottles rattled. Books shook. The lights flickered.

Her heart stuttered. Magic reared like a wounded beast.

The world tilted.

Marble under her back. Cold. Screaming. A wand at her throat. Bellatrix’s voice like a razor. “Mudblood filth-”

Hermione choked, breath fractured. She pressed trembling fingers to her sternum, trying to ground herself in the present, in the library she loved, in the safety she earned.

But pain didn’t care. Memory didn’t ask.

“No- no-” she whispered, sinking to her knees.

The runes crackled, fractured, surged back toward her like a tide reversing, raw and wild.

Her hands shook violently. And then-

A knock of magic against hers. Soft. Frantic. Childlike.

Scorpius.

Not physically, stars, she prayed he wasn’t, but she felt him. A tug on the thread between them. The first spark of something ancient: magic recognizing magic; the instinct of a child to run toward the person who made the world safer.

Her breath broke. A tear fell. Then another.

He felt me hurting. How?

Crookshanks hissed, fur puffed, crouched like a guardian kneazle ready to attack the storm itself.

“Granger?”

Draco’s voice outside. Then a pounding fist.

“You need to open this door. Now.”

She couldn’t move. The runes wards throbbed, ringing. Her breath came in sharp, panicked gasps. Sweat chilled her spine.

The door blew open, he’d overridden her runes wards with pure raw force. Runes on the frame sizzled and spat, offended by blunt power.

Draco stood there, eyes wild, wand lifted, chest heaving like he’d run through hell.

Scorpius peeked behind his legs, wide-eyed, clutching a stuffed dragon.

“Mione hurt?” he whispered, voice tiny, cracking.

Draco knelt instantly beside her, wand flicking to collapse the volatile runic circle before it could lash again. His hand hovered at her jaw, not daring to touch yet.

“Breathe,” he commanded softly. Not Malfoy ice, dragon-warm, scared to death. “Granger. Look at me.”

She forced her gaze up. His face was tight with terror. She didn’t know he could look that human.

“It backfired,” she rasped.

“No,” he said, voice low and breaking. “It hurt you.”

He eased her upright; magic flared gently from his palm, a stabilizing charm, cautious as a touch on broken glass. His hand cupped the side of her neck, thumb brushing her pulse to steady it.

“You shouldn’t be here, Scorp-” she managed.

But Scorpius crawled into her lap before Draco could stop him, curling into her chest. His tiny hands pressed to her sternum, warm, instinctive, magic bright. He looked up, anxious.

“Mione okay?” His bottom lip trembled.

Her heart cracked clean down the middle. She wrapped one arm around him, protective, instinctive, maternal in a way that burned.

“I’m okay,” she whispered.

“You weren’t,” Draco murmured, voice too raw.

Crookshanks rubbed against Scorpius, as if soothing him too. The stuffed dragon tumbled to the floor.

Draco’s hand hovered near hers, shaking. He steadied Scorpius’s back gently.

Then he looked at Hermione, and she saw it: fear. real and unmasked. Not fear of her. Fear of losing someone again.

“You can’t do this alone,” he breathed.

The words sat between them, pulsing like a rune.

She closed her eyes. I didn’t want anyone to see if I failed.

He exhaled sharply. “You think failure scares me? Granger, I drowned in it.”

Silence swelled, thick, aching.

Narcissa appeared in the doorway, regal, alarm tightening her face for a fraction of a second before relief softened it. She took in the scene, Hermione shaking, Scorpius holding her, Draco kneeling, magic lingering in the air like a storm losing strength.

Narcissa bowed her head, gratitude and apology in one ancient gesture, and withdrew silently.

Scorpius’s little fingers curled in Hermione’s jumper.

“Mione safe,” he whispered, as if declaring it made it true.

Her throat closed. She kissed the top of his messy blond head before Draco gently coaxed him back.

“Come on, little star,” he murmured. “Let’s give her air.”

Scorpius went reluctantly, eyes huge and shining.

Draco laid him on the sofa where Crookshanks immediately curled around him. Scorpius clung to the cat like a talisman and promptly fell asleep, exhaustion from magical empathy taking him under.

Hermione wiped her eyes. “He shouldn’t- have to feel that.”

“He feels what you give,” Draco murmured, returning to her. “Safety. Warmth. You’re… important to him.”

The implication hung there. Unbearable. Beautiful. Terrifying.

She shivered. He softened.

“Let me help.”

“But if I keep asking you-”

“You’re not asking.” His voice fractured. “You are barely letting me.”

Her laugh was watery. “Control issues.”

“Shared,” he admitted, almost smiling.

He reached out, paused, then finally brushed a curl back from her cheek. Slow. Careful. Devotional. Her breath hitched.

“You don’t have to be invincible anymore.”

She blinked back tears. “I don’t know how to not be.”

“We learn,” he whispered.

Thunder rolled outside, but inside, lantern light softened. The storm had broken.

Her eyelids drooped. “Stay?”

He didn’t hesitate. “I’m not leaving.”

Sleep tugged her down, but her hand, without thought, curled in the fabric of his sleeve. This time, she held.

Draco sat beside her on the floor until her breathing steadied, guarding her like a knight who never thought he could be one.

Across the room, Scorpius slept curled around Crookshanks, one small hand still reaching toward her, even in dreams.

Somewhere beyond the rain, the world was hurting. Plotting. Bleeding.

Inside this room, something else knit itself fragile and new.

Chapter Text

Hermione stood barefoot on warm stone.

A greenhouse stretched around her, but not one that existed in reality. It glowed.

Glass panes shimmered with soft gold light, moss crept in gentle spirals across ancient brick, and vines with silver-veined leaves curled delicately around overhead beams. Night-blooming flowers glowed faintly blue, their petals seeming to breathe.

It smelled like summer after rain. Like safety. Like somewhere she had never been, but her magic recognized instantly.

Hermione exhaled, and her breath fogged the glass.

“You’re late.”

She turned.

Draco stood in the center of the greenhouse.

Not as the tense, exhausted man who sat beside her in the real world, but something softened, something healed.

His shirt sleeves were rolled back; his hair was rumpled, like he’d been running fingers through it. He looked… honest. Unguarded in a way she had never seen him.

Hermione blinked. “This is a dream.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Yes, Granger. Even your unconscious has better taste in architecture than reality.”

She meant to scoff. To build distance.

Instead, she stepped closer.

The greenhouse brightened, not dramatically, just a subtle shift, like it approved.

Draco extended a hand.

Not pompous. Not dramatic. Simply offering.

Hermione hesitated, pulse quickening.

“We’ve never danced,” she murmured.

“Not when we were young,” he said softly.

Her stomach pulled tight. She didn’t know what he meant by that, not really, but her fingers slid into his before she could think better of it.

His hand was warm.

The greenhouse responded: petals unfolding, vines tightening into gentle arcs above them, and moonlight sharpening across the leaves.

Music rose, thin and sweet, like a melody remembered from childhood.

They moved. Not gracefully. Not perfectly.

But slowly, carefully, as if both understood the fragility of the moment. She stepped once to the right, he followed; his hand hovered at her waist before settling lightly, his thumb brushing fabric.

Hermione’s heart stuttered in her chest.

“This is absurd,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he murmured. “That’s why it’s perfect.”

She looked up, startled. Their faces were close. Too close.

His breath brushed her cheek. Her pulse raced. The greenhouse glowed brighter.

“Why am I dreaming of this?” Hermione asked, voice barely audible.

Draco’s expression softened, something like sorrow, something like hope. “Dreams show us things we think we’ve hidden,” he said. “Even from ourselves.”

Her throat tightened.

Before she could answer, a soft patter echoed behind them.

Hermione turned.

A small shape darted between the glowing vines: curly blond hair, bright eyes, and cheeks flushed.

“Scorp?”

The little boy barreled into her legs, giggling, arms thrown around her waist. He looked younger than he did in reality, maybe four, dream logic rendering him softer, rounder, full of pure light.

“Mione!” he chirped, burying his face against her. “Look! It’s growing!”

He held out a tiny sprig of sage, fresh, bright green, pulsing faintly with magic.

Hermione’s breath caught. The symbol was too pointed. Too clear.

Draco crouched beside them, placing a gentle hand on Scorpius’s back. He didn’t look at the plant. He looked at her.

The expression on his face - worn, reverent, quietly undone - made something deep inside her chest tremble.

“Dreams show us what matters,” Draco said quietly.

Scorp beamed. “We’re going to fix everything, right?”

Hermione’s eyes stung. She reached out and brushed a curl from the boy’s forehead. “Yes, sweetheart,” she whispered. “We are.”

Scorpius grinned, and the greenhouse bloomed all at once, flowers opening like applause, light swelling until it was too bright to bear.

Hermione lifted a hand as everything dissolved into warmth-

She woke slowly, as if surfacing from deep water.

For a moment she didn’t remember where she was. Her body ached in odd places, the echo of magic recoil, the soreness that came after bracing against terror. The room was dim, lit by a few hovering lanterns enchanted to mimic candlelight. The curtains moved gently in a breeze that smelled faintly of verbena and old magic.

And Draco Malfoy was asleep in a chair beside her.

Not elegantly. Not poised. But slumped in a way that suggested he had fought sleep until it took him. His head tipped forward, silver hair falling into his eyes, jaw unguarded in rest. His cloak was half-slipped off his shoulder. One hand still loosely circled his wand, as if instinct refused to let him release it even in exhaustion.

On the sofa a few feet away, Scorpius slept curled around Crookshanks, who tolerated the position with begrudging dignity, tail flicking occasionally like a metronome. Scorp’s fingers were loosely tangled in the ginger fur, small chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of children who trust the world is held up by steady hands.

Something warm twisted inside Hermione’s ribs.

She shifted slightly and Draco jerked awake, wand raised before his eyes even opened fully.

“Easy,” she murmured.

His shoulders dropped. For a heartbeat he looked almost lost. Then the mask slid back, softer than it once might’ve been, but still present.

“You’re awake.” His voice was low, rough with sleep and fear that hadn’t fully drained.

She nodded. “You stayed.”

His jaw flexed. “You asked me not to leave.”

Her cheeks warmed. She hadn’t meant to need him. But she had. That truth sat between them, quiet and startling.

Silence stretched, gentle, not awkward. She pushed herself upright, slow, careful. He watched her, gaze tracing her movements like one cataloguing wounds.

“How long was I out?”

“Only a few hours,” he said. “It’s nearly dawn.”

Dawn. A new day. She felt wrung out, tired to the bone, but in that clean way pain sometimes brings, when it drains what festers.

“I should go home.”

He hesitated. “You should rest.”

“I will. Just… in my own bed.”

He studied her face for a moment. Then nodded. “I’ll take Scorpius to his bed. Mother is still awake.”

Hermione blinked. “You mean she-?”

“She never sleeps when she’s worried.” There was a brittle gentleness to the way he said it, as though memories pressed beneath it.

Hermione’s gaze drifted to Scorpius, one small foot hanging off the sofa, Crookshanks’ tail draped over his ankle like a warding charm.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Draco swallowed. “For what?”

“For coming.”

For kneeling on the floor like a man afraid the universe might collapse if she stopped breathing.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

She apparated home after saying goodbye to Scorp and Crooks (Crookshanks permitted one kiss between his ears before sauntering back to his borrowed sun-spot as if he owned the Manor now).

Her flat above Sage felt smaller after the Manor’s ancient weight, but it was hers, stone hearth, enchanted herb planters in the windows, shelves crowded with books and potion bottles. Familiar. Safe.

And yet the walls felt closer somehow, as if they exhaled with her.

She washed her face, brewed tea with trembling hands, sat at her kitchen table, and breathed. Slowly. Intentionally. Like the mind healer had taught her years ago.

You lived. You survived. You are still here.

When her breathing steadied, she wrote one name on parchment:

Andromeda Tonks

Some answers lived only in the company of those who had bled the same way.

Letter sent and replied, she dressed in soft wool, twisted her curls into a low knot, and flooed.

***

Andromeda opened the door before Hermione could knock twice. She looked older than Hermione remembered, hair streaked silver, lines carved deep around eyes that had seen war and rebuilding and quiet mornings alone.

“Hermione Granger,” she said, voice steady but warm. “Come in, dear.”

A cup of tea was already steaming on a side table. Of course it was.

Hermione stepped inside. The air seemed to settle around her like a blanket, grounding her.
She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding herself together until the quiet pressed in - not silence, but safety. The kind that lets the body loosen before the mind is ready.

Andromeda’s home smelled like hearth smoke and something tender, like old parchment and lullabies. It was modest compared to the Manor, but warm, lived-in. Photos lined the mantle: Ted laughing in the sun; Tonks with neon-blue hair mid-wink; Remus holding newborn Teddy, eyes soft with terror and awe.

Hermione swallowed around a sudden sting in her throat.
So much love. So much loss. Still standing.

“You look tired,” Andromeda observed gently.

Hermione huffed a laugh. “I feel tired.”

“You nearly died once,” Andromeda said lightly, as if remarking on the weather. “The body remembers.”

Hermione froze mid-sip.
Not accusation. Not drama. Just truth.

Andromeda’s gaze softened. “And sometimes it reminds us at inconvenient times.”

Hermione let out a slow breath. “I tried something I shouldn’t have.”

“Ah.” Andromeda’s eyes flicked to her ribs, as if she could see the curse coiled beneath. “We always think we outgrow fear. But bravery rarely means absence of fear. More often, it means walking anyway.”

Hermione’s throat tightened. And sometimes running straight through fire.

“How did you survive it?” she asked quietly. “After… everything?”

“Ted?” Andromeda asked softly. “My daughter. My son-in-law. A war that took nearly everyone I loved?”

Hermione nodded, unable to form words.

Andromeda’s voice didn’t break. That was grief at its oldest stage: smoothed by years of handling, like a river stone worn down but never erased.

“I kept breathing. I kept feeding Teddy. I kept walking into a world that felt wrong and insisting it could still be made right.”

She paused, gaze drifting to the window where sunlight spilled onto a small garden.

“And sometimes, I let myself fall apart. Privately. Quietly. Not because weakness is shameful, but because healing is loud and messy and children need our quiet more than our wounds.”

Hermione felt that land somewhere deep, heavy and true.
She had learned how to be strong very young. She was still learning how to be held.

“And now?” Hermione whispered.

“And now,” Andromeda said, “I choose softness when I can. And steel when I must. And I let myself love again - not the way I did before, but enough.”

Their eyes held.

Hermione thought of long nights at St. Mungo’s. Of choosing one more shift. One more patient. One more impossible case. Of believing that if she stopped, something terrible would happen.

“You taught me how to heal,” Hermione said suddenly, the words escaping before she could weigh them. “Not just spells. The weight of it. How to hold pain without letting it hollow you out.”

Andromeda smiled, small and knowing. “I tried to teach you not to disappear inside it.”

Hermione looked down at her hands. “I’m not very good at that part.”

“No,” Andromeda agreed gently. “You are very good at carrying too much.”

A quiet beat.

“Healers,” Andromeda continued, “are drawn to broken things. We believe - falsely - that if we can just mend enough pieces, we will finally earn rest.”

Hermione felt seen in a way that made her chest ache.

She had always thought exhaustion was the price of usefulness.

“And sometimes,” Andromeda added, “we step beyond our limits because stopping feels like abandonment.”

Hermione’s voice wavered. “I don’t know how to let go without feeling like I’m failing someone.”

“That,” Andromeda said softly, “is something you will have to unlearn. Slowly. Kindly. With help.”

Hermione swallowed.

“Narcissa invited me to tea,” she said.

Surprise flickered across Andromeda’s face - not sharp, but something like a held breath.

“Did she.”

“Yes. I… went.”

“And how was she?”

Hermione thought of careful smiles, of china cups held too tightly, of a woman rebuilding decency brick by trembling brick.

“Changed,” she whispered. “And trying.”

Andromeda closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them, something like peace lived there - fragile, but real.

“I always wondered if she would,” Andromeda said. “If she could.”

There was history there. Blood and silence and years of choosing opposite sides to survive.

“She loved fiercely,” Andromeda continued. “Poorly, sometimes. Fearfully. But fiercely. War twists love into something unrecognizable.”

Hermione nodded. She had seen that shape before.

“And Draco…” Hermione began, then faltered.

“And Draco,” Andromeda echoed, not unkindly.

Hermione flushed. “We're friends now. I mean- I don't know.”

“You don’t need to know,” Andromeda replied softly. “Not yet.”

Hermione set her cup down. 

Andromeda tilted her head slightly. “I've never really met him,” she said honestly. “War fractures families in quiet ways. Silence grows where intimacy once lived.”

That, somehow, made it easier to breathe.

Hermione nodded. “I know. That’s part of why this feels… strange. Confusing.” She hesitated, then went on. “We’re not enemies anymore. And we’re not pretending to be polite strangers either. We work together. We research together. And he’s-” she searched for the right word, frustrated by how slippery it was, “-present. In a way that unsettles me.”

Andromeda listened without interruption, healer’s stillness, the kind that makes space rather than filling it.

“It started with his son,” Hermione continued softly. “Scorpius. He has a blood curse. Inherited. And Draco is terrified.” Her voice dropped. “Not loud terror. The quiet kind. The kind that wakes you before dawn and never really leaves.”

Andromeda’s gaze sharpened with understanding. “That kind I know.”

“He asked for my help,” Hermione said. “Not because he trusted me, I think - but because he had run out of doors to knock on.” She swallowed. “And I couldn’t say no. I know that  type of curse. I live with its language.”

Andromeda nodded slowly. “Helping a child has a way of cutting through old histories.”

“Yes,” Hermione whispered. “And helping him - helping Draco - feels different from anything else I’ve done.” She rubbed her thumb along the edge of her cup. “He’s brilliant. In research, I mean. Focused. Intuitive. He sees patterns quickly, sometimes before I do. It makes sense now, how he was always right behind me at Hogwarts.”

A quiet, surprised laugh escaped her. “And that scares me too. How easy it feels to work with him. How natural.”

“And what frightens you more,” Andromeda asked gently, “the ease… or the intimacy that follows it?”

Hermione closed her eyes. Just for a moment. “The intimacy.”

Andromeda reached for her hand again, grounding. “Then let me say this, not as his aunt, but as your former mentor.”

Hermione looked up.

“Working closely with someone under pressure, especially when a child’s life is at stake, creates bonds quickly,” Andromeda said. “Urgency accelerates connection. Shared purpose can feel like destiny if we aren’t careful.”

Hermione’s shoulders tensed, absorbing the truth.

“But,” Andromeda continued, “that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It means it deserves slowness. Reflection. Choice.”

Hermione exhaled. “I don’t know where to put my feelings.”

“You don’t have to place them anywhere yet,” Andromeda replied. “You are allowed to say: this matters to me, and I don’t know what it is yet. That is not weakness. That is honesty.”

A tear slid free again. Hermione didn’t wipe it away.

“I’m afraid of crossing lines,” she admitted. “Of losing myself in responsibility again. Of confusing the need to save with the desire to stay.”

Andromeda’s thumb brushed her knuckles. “Then your task is not to withdraw,” she said softly. “It is to remain aware. Ask yourself, again and again: Is this costing me more than it gives?”

Hermione nodded, slowly.

“And one more thing,” Andromeda added, voice firm now. “You are not responsible for redeeming him. Or fixing his past. Or carrying his guilt.”

Hermione’s breath hitched. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been gripping that possibility.

“If something grows between you,” Andromeda said, “let it be because you are choosing each other - not because you are both bleeding in the same place.”

Hermione’s hands tightened around her cup. “I’m afraid.”

“Of him?” Andromeda asked.

Hermione shook her head. “Of hope.”

Andromeda’s breath caught, just once. “Then you are further along than you think. Hope is the final stage of grief. The most frightening one.” She smiled faintly. “Although, in my opinion, grief never really goes away. We just get bigger than the hole living in our soul.”

Hermione blinked fast. A tear escaped. She let it fall.

Andromeda reached across the table and took her hand — steady, warm, sure.

“You’re healing,” she said. “And he is too, by what you told me. But healing alone is a long road, Hermione. Sometimes… it’s okay to choose a company.”

Hermione’s voice was small. “I don’t want to break again.”

Andromeda’s thumb brushed her knuckles. “Then do not choose someone who would break you.”

Hermione laughed weakly. “That simple?”

“No.” Andromeda smiled, tired, knowing. “But it is worth trying.”

Hermione let out a shaky laugh. “You always did have a way of making things painfully clear.”

Andromeda smiled. “Occupational hazard.”

They sat in silence for a moment, tea cooling, morning stretching.

Hermione felt tired. But steadier. Less alone inside her own head.

And for the first time, the question wasn’t what is this becoming?

It was simply: how do I stay true to myself while I find out?

***

When Hermione returned to the Manor that evening, after a shift at St. Mungus and checking in on Briony and Sage, dusk painted the sky lavender and gold. She stepped through the floo into a quiet sitting room. Narcissa glanced up from her embroidery, eyes assessing, then relief settling like silk.

“He’s in the library,” she said softly. “He pretended to work. He was mostly worried.”

Hermione bit her lip. “And Scorp?”

“Tea, bath, story, asleep,” Narcissa said, pride in every word. “He asked for you.”

Something inside Hermione folded tenderly in on itself.

She crossed the hall. The library doors were ajar, lamplight spilling out. She pushed gently, and stopped.

Draco was asleep in a chair again, this time in a soft jumper and trousers, thin silver-rimmed reading glasses still perched on the bridge of his nose. An open book rested slack in one hand, his other curled instinctively near his wand. His head had fallen against the cushion, pale hair tumbling over his brow in a way that made him look younger, almost gentle in sleep. A blanket had been draped over him. Narcissa, no doubt.

Hermione’s breath caught. Not at the library, but at the sight of Draco Malfoy in glasses. Soft in a way she had never been allowed to imagine.

Something fluttered low in her chest, fragile and terrifying. And yet, she didn’t look away.

Draco stirred, just barely, eyes fluttering open halfway.

“You’re back,” he murmured, voice low and sleep-rough.

“I am.”

His gaze traced her face, slow, searching for cracks. “Are you alright?”

She nodded. “Better.”

He exhaled, relief softening him, smoothing sharp edges into something painfully human.

“Good,” he whispered. “Good.”

She hesitated. Then, barely audible:

“I visited Andromeda.”

One blink. Surprise. Then something warmer, respect, nostalgia, grief softened by time.

“My... aunt?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, she was my mentor when I was studying to become a healer. She said…” Hermione’s throat tightened. “Some healing we don’t do alone.”

His breath caught like someone who shot through once and was learning to breathe again.

She moved to sit across from him. The library’s ceiling shimmered with enchanted starlight. 

Draco watched her with quiet astonishment, as if unsure how this had become his life.

“Now,” she whispered, “let’s begin again.”

A corner of his mouth lifted, not a smirk, but something small and real.

“Let’s do it.”

Hermione exhaled, a breath she’d been holding for twelve years.

Hope was terrifying. But it was here. And she was still standing.

Chapter Text

Hermione returned to the Manor the next morning before she could talk herself out of it.

She arrived just after breakfast, before the sunlight fully settled into the marble halls. The Manor was different in the morning, gentler, almost drowsy, like an old cat basking under warm stone. Gone was the charged, ancient hush it held at night. Now it hummed with the quiet domesticity of a household learning how to live again.

A house that had once been carved for cruelty, now holding tenderness like new paint on old wood.

Crookshanks trotted out of a side room to greet her, tail held high in judgment and acceptance both. His fur carried a faint dusting of flour.

“You’ve been in the kitchen again?” she whispered, scooping him briefly before he wriggled down. “You little traitor.”

He meowed, unbothered, padding off toward the gardens like he had a schedule to keep. Probably supervising the peacocks.

Hermione smoothed her robes, heart fluttering as she crossed the hall toward the library. She wasn’t nervous, she told herself.

Just… aware.

She pushed the door open quietly.

Draco was already there.

Not in the dramatic, imperious silhouette she once knew. Not leaning like he owned the world. Instead he sat on the floor, long legs folded beneath him, surrounded by books opened to runes, notes scattered like falling leaves around him.

He still wore the reading glasses.

Hermione's breath caught in a way she resented and cherished at once.

He looked up as she entered, and the smallest flicker of real warmth crossed his face, quick and unpolished.

“You’re early,” he said softly.

“You’re wearing glasses again,” she replied before she could stop herself.

His hand twitched toward them, like he might remove them out of reflex, then froze.

“Don’t,” she blurted, mortified.

He blinked. She flushed. 

“I mean-” she cleared her throat, “you don’t have to.”

Draco studied her, something curious alive behind his eyes, then sat back slightly.

“I forgot I had them on,” he admitted, tone low, private. “I don’t wear them often.”

“They suit you,” she murmured, then immediately wished she could evaporate into dust.

The flutter of a fragile bridge being built plank by plank.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

Hermione’s pulse stuttered.

She dropped her bag beside him and sat, mirroring his posture. He shifted just enough to give her space, then stopped, as though realizing she didn’t need it. They settled, side by side, the distance between them deliberate, not fearful.

“So. What did you find?” she asked, opening her notes.

He exhaled through his nose. “A headache. A few existential crises. Five contradictory texts. And one promising angle.”

She smiled before she could help it. “Which was?”

“That ancient bloodline curses don’t break,” he said, fingers brushing a parchment, “they redirect.”

Hermione froze. “Redirect?”

He nodded. “Magic doesn’t disappear. It moves. Adapts. Takes new shape.”

Like trauma, she thought. Like grief.

“Meaning,” he continued quietly, “your curse and Scorpius’s might be… neighbors.”

A slow pulse of hope stirred beneath her ribs.

“Meaning,” she whispered, “if one stabilizes, the other might follow.”

His gaze lifted to hers, steady, startling, luminous with the kind of cautious belief only the broken earn.

“Meaning,” he said, voice frayed with sincerity, “we might win this.”

Her throat tightened.

“We will,” she replied. “We have to.”

He didn’t look away.

“For you,” he said.

“For him,” she dared say.

He nodded. “For all of us.”

Silence settled, not sharp, but warm, like sunlight filtering through dust motes.

Then he looked down again, adjusting a vellum sheet. “Scorp sensed you last night.”

Hermione exhaled, guilt and something else twisting. “I know.”

“He’s… attuned to people he trusts.” Draco traced the edge of the parchment, avoiding her eyes. “And you’re-”

He stopped. The sentence trembled unfinished between them.

“I never meant for him to worry,” she whispered.

“He worries because he cares,” Draco murmured. “And because you matter to him.”

She swallowed. “That’s such a privilege.”

Draco’s eyes flicked to her, soft and sharp at once. “It is.”

The quiet between them deepened, thicker, almost fragile in its sincerity.

Then footsteps pattered down the corridor; a tiny voice giggled.

“Daddy said no running but I runned anyway!”

Scorpius barrelled into the doorway like a small comet, hair wild, socks mismatched, clutching a toy broomstick. He skidded to a halt, eyes lighting up when he saw her.

“Mione!”

Hermione laughed, a sound she didn’t realize had been missing from her life until it returned to her throat like something rediscovered.

“Hello, little star,” she greeted.

Scorp beamed, scrambling into her lap without hesitation, settling there with the easy instinct of a child claiming somewhere safe. Crookshanks entered behind him, offended he’d been outrun, then sat on Hermione’s other side like a guard.

Draco watched them. Warily. Possessively.

She felt something shift in the room, not dramatic, not loud, but tectonic. A future clearing its throat.

Scorpius held up his toy broom. “I can fly! Daddy thinks I can’t but I CAN.”

Hermione gasped softly. “You can fly?”

He nodded very seriously. Draco muttered into his robe, “…it was three inches off the ground and supervised,” but Hermione didn’t tease.

Instead she lifted Scorp off her lap gently, kneeling in front of him.

“I’m gonna tell you a little secret. When you fly, you have to be gentle with the magic,” she whispered. “It took me a long time to learn it, but magic is stronger when our heart’s in it, not just our mind.”

As she said it, something flickered through her. A quiet, private truth she did not speak aloud.

She had hated flying once. Not for the obvious reasons, but because it demanded the one thing she feared most: surrender. Trusting the broom, the air, her balance, her body. Trusting what she could not fully control. And control had been her armor.

After losing her parents’ forever, after realizing even brilliance couldn’t fix everything, her fear of flying had seemed suddenly… small. Insignificant beside the truth that some things in life would always be beyond her reach. Going to the mind healer had taught her that letting go wasn’t failure; it was living.

Since then, the sky had stopped terrifying her. Flying didn’t scare her anymore. Loving someone she could lose still did, though.

But she kept that thought tucked safely behind her ribs, where Scorpius’s bright eyes could not reach.

Scorpius blinked up at her like she’d just recited scripture.

“Daddy has a strong heart,” he decided.

Hermione’s pulse jumped.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “He does.”

Draco stilled, breath catching, as if bracing against something overwhelming and unwanted and miraculous all at once.

Hermione turned away, cheeks warm, and opened a rune scroll.

“Let’s get to work.”

***

Hours passed.

Runes sketched. Theories whispered. Their shoulders brushed once, twice, each time a lightning-thin awareness threaded between them. Scorpius eventually curled on the rug with Crookshanks and fell asleep, toy broom tucked under his arm like a wand he hadn’t yet grown into.

At one point Hermione laughed, genuinely, brightly, at a sarcastic jab Draco made about Victorian runemasters who “thought blood was decorative and moral superiority was a spell ingredient.”

The sound startled them both.

Draco’s hand stilled on the parchment. For a second, one unguarded, shockingly tender second, he looked like a man remembering sunlight after years underground.

“It feels good to hear laughter echoing through the Manor’s walls, especially after...” he said softly.

Hermione’s smile faded. “Astoria?”

He nodded once, eyes lowering. “And before everything turned into a countdown.”

Hermione folded her hands carefully. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I do,” he interrupted, voice raw but steady. “No one ever asks. Everyone assumes they know the story, but they know the war version of me. The headlines. The family name.”

He leaned back against the shelves, voice tightening, not defensive, but breaking open.

“I didn’t fall in love with her,” he said. “I don’t think she ever expected me to. We married because of the post-war and she… understood me. Saw me. Not the name. Not the heir. Just-”

He exhaled. “A boy who couldn’t breathe.”

Hermione’s chest tightened. “Companionship.”

“And safety,” he admitted. “For both of us. When you survive a war like that, sometimes love looks like just choosing someone who won’t harm you.”

Hermione nodded once, slow, reverent. “That is a kind of love.”

A humorless smile touched his mouth. “She wanted to be a mother. Desperately. Even knowing what it would cost her.”

“And you let her,” Hermione whispered, not accusatory, but full of empathy so sharp it felt like mercy.

“I did,” he breathed. “Not because I was selfish. Because denying her would have been cruel. She chose life. Even a truncated one.”

He swallowed hard. “I lost her anyway. But Scorpius-”

His voice cracked, barely, but enough.

“He made me something I didn’t know I could be. I look at him and I see proof that I am not my father.”

Hermione’s gaze softened. “Lucius.”

Draco’s jaw worked. “He taught me power. Legacy. Fear. But never… fatherhood. I'm relieved he died in Azkaban. I hate myself for saying it, but I am. Scorp will never hear his voice. Never flinch from him. That is mercy.”

Hermione’s breath shook. “You did what he couldn’t. You gave your son tenderness.”

Draco looked at her,really looked, as if no one had ever named that truth aloud.

“I’m trying,” he said quietly. “Every day. To be the man Scorp needs instead of the one I was made to be.”

Silence settled, not empty, but thick with things neither of them had ever been brave enough to say aloud before now.

Hermione traced the rim of her teacup, her voice softer than memory:

“It’s strange, isn’t it? Becoming an adult without a parent there to see it. It’s a good thing you’ve got Narcissa, and Scorp.”

Draco looked up, sharply, like she’d reached into a place he hadn’t expected anyone to touch.

“You lost yours,” he murmured. “Not to death, but-”

“To a choice,” she finished, a breath trembling in her chest. “To protect them. And now they’re living their lives. Whole. Safe. But without me in it.”

Draco’s head lifted sharply, silver eyes burning. “You saved them.”

Hermione blinked. “It didn’t feel like saving.”

“You did,” he said, fierce and sure. “I was in the Manor when the Dark Lord sent a squad to capture and kill them. But they were already gone. Because you acted first.”

Hermione’s breath faltered. “I condemned them to forget me.”

“You condemned them to live,” he countered.

A tremor ran through her. She didn’t know she was crying until the tear fell onto her notes, smudging ink like melted memory.

“They never knew me again,” she whispered.

Draco’s voice went hushed, reverent. “They didn’t have to remember you to be yours.”

She looked at him, steady, unflinching, devastatingly exposed.

“You’re kinder than anyone ever gave you credit for,” she murmured.

“You’re braver than anyone ever understood,” he replied.

“And you,” she replied softly, meeting his gaze, “you are choosing to become a different kind of father than the one you had. That’s its own kind of bravery.”

Air shifted. Magic hummed. Something honest and dangerous and soft sharpened between them. Then-

“Daddy? Mione?”

Scorpius rose from the sofa, hair rumpled from sleep, Crookshanks smug at his heels. He rubbed his eyes and climbed into Hermione’s lap without hesitation, curling into her like she’d been home all along.

Hermione froze, stunned by the quiet gravity of being chosen.

Draco watched, just humbled, breath catching like he was witnessing a spell he didn’t dare breathe on.

Scorpius mumbled, half-asleep, “We’re safe, right?”

Draco knelt beside them, brushing a hand through his son’s hair. “You are. Always.”

Hermione rested her cheek on Scorp’s head. “We’ll keep you safe.”

Draco’s eyes lifted to hers, grateful and undone.

“We will,” he echoed.

And just like that, the moment passed, not broken, but crystallized. A promise suspended in air.

Chapter Text

Warm, damp air wrapped around Hermione the moment she stepped into Greenhouse Three. The familiar mix of earth, water enchantments, and the faint hum of magical roots was enough to soften the tightness in her chest.

Neville stood at the central worktable, wand tucked behind his ear, sleeves rolled up, wrist-deep in a tray of moondew soil. A Whistling Fuchsia bobbed above his shoulder, warbling a greeting as Hermione approached.

“Careful,” Neville murmured without looking up. “She’s moody today.”

“She’s a plant, Nev.”

“She is a lady, Hermione,” Luna corrected serenely, drifting into view from behind a vine of Luminescent Snaring Ivy. “And don’t mind her attitude, she’s budding. It makes anyone irritable.”

Hermione blinked. “Is that scientific?”

“Obviously,” Luna said, as though it were self-evident.

Neville snorted. “I see you’re holding down the side of mystical botany today.”

“I hold down many sides,” Luna replied dreamily, brushing a glowing tendril with affection as it purred. “It’s a circle, really.”

Hermione couldn’t help smiling. She needed this.

Neville wiped his hands and turned to her, expression shifting into quiet seriousness. “How’s the research coming?”

Hermione blew out a breath. “Conceptually? Progress. Practically? I’m still trying to understand the curse’s original binding matrix. It's unlike anything in the recorded curse archive, bleeding edge Dark Magic, layered with old blood-law.”

“Layered magic isn’t meant to be undone.” Neville’s voice was gentle, but weighted.

“Which is why somebody has to do it,” Hermione murmured.

Luna's gaze softened. “And if anyone can change the shape of magic by sheer stubborn brilliance, it’s you.”

Hermione’s throat tightened. “I just… I can’t fail him, Luna.”

“Scorpius?” Neville asked quietly.

Hermione nodded.

Neville leaned his hip against the table. “You’re doing everything you can. And you’re not doing it alone. That matters.”

Luna twirled a strand of hair. “Speaking of not alone…”

Hermione groaned. “No.”

“We’re just observing,” Luna said innocently.

“You are not observing. You are matchmaking.”

“We are not matchmaking,” Neville corrected. “That implies effort. This is more of a… horticultural assessment.”

Hermione stared. “…excuse me?”

“Well,” Neville said thoughtfully, “you put two plants together, watch if they grow toward each other, see if their roots acclimate, whether the ecosystem supports it-”

“-and whether one of them tries to devour the other,” Luna finished helpfully.

“Comforting,” Hermione deadpanned.

Luna smiled. “They seem to be growing toward each other, for what it’s worth.”

Hermione’s ears warmed. “He’s- Malfoy is- we’re just working on research. And Scorpius.”

“And Scorpius adores you,” Neville said. “He talks about you every time he’s here.”

Luna nodded dreamily. “He told me you smell like safety and raspberries.”

Hermione blinked rapidly. “I don’t even smell like raspberries.”

“Metaphor,” Luna sighed. “Children are excellent poets when adults haven’t wrung it out of them yet.”

Neville dusted soil from his hands. “Look. Whatever is or isn’t happening there, Malfoy’s trying. And he’s better when you’re around. I've seen it.”

Hermione swallowed. “Nev-”

“You don’t have to justify working with him,” he said gently. “I know what forgiveness looks like. I married Pansy, remember?”

Hermione’s expression softened. “That’s different.”

“It’s not,” he said plainly. “People aren’t fixed points. They’re roots and storms and seasons. They change.”

Luna beamed at Neville. “He’s very wise when he remembers he is.”

Hermione breathed in damp air, lemon thyme, the familiar hum of leaves. “I’m not ready for… whatever you two think you see.”

“No one ever is,” Luna said simply. “Not for love. Not for healing. Not for second chances.”

Neville nudged her shoulder. “You don’t need to be ready. You just need to keep showing up. One step. One spell. One day.”

Hermione blinked fiercely. “Thank you.”

Luna squeezed her hand. “You’re building miracles. Even miracles need patience.”

Hermione inhaled, feeling something settle in her ribcage, fragile, but steady.

“I should get back,” she said softly. “So much theory to test.”

“Bring him soil samples next time,” Neville called after her. “And tea. He looked… tired last time I saw him.”

Hermione paused. “Scorpius?”

“Draco,” Neville replied. “Some burdens are inherited before they’re chosen.”

Hermione looked down at her hands, fingers stained faintly with ink and lavender oil. A healer’s hands. A fighter’s hands.

“I know,” she whispered.

As she stepped out into the evening air, Luna called gently:

“Remember, Hermione, love and war both change magic. And you’re standing in both.”

Hermione didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

The greenhouse door swung shut behind her, vines rustling like they whispered secrets to the soil.

***

Night had settled thick and velvety over Malfoy Manor, the kind of night that hummed softly against the wards like a pulse. The library breathed with quiet magic, starlight glimmering from the enchanted ceiling, runes pulsing faintly along stone archways, shelves whispering in ancient tongues. Crookshanks dozed atop a velvet chaise, tail flicking lazily.

Hermione sat cross-legged on the rug beside a low table, parchment unfurled around her like wings. Draco leaned over beside her, one knee braced, ink smudged across his thumb, hair pulled back in a loose tie that had given up an hour ago. His reading glasses perched halfway down his nose, a detail she had pretended not to notice but had absolutely noticed.

Between them, the air was warm with candlelight and something else unspoken. Trust, perhaps. Or proximity. Or two minds working in perfect tandem across ancient, dangerous territory.

“You annotated over my annotation,” Hermione murmured, not looking up from the runic chart she was cross-referencing.

“You wrote your annotation over the original phrase,” Draco countered. “Which was wrong, by the way.”

“It was not wrong.”

“Granger, you added a participle to make it sound friendlier.”

“Runes are relational constructs,” she sniffed. “Language matters.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was humor there, soft and reluctant, and Hermione found she liked coaxing it out of him. “What it originally said was ‘blood paid in blood taken.’ What you changed it to was…”

“‘The blood that was taken can be returned.’ Yes. That’s the point.” She turned a page. “Language shapes magic. I am shaping the magic differently.”

“You’re rewriting ancient law by sheer force of will.”

“Someone has to,” she said simply.

He swallowed, and there it was again, that flicker of awe he tried very, very hard to hide.

Before she could tease him for it, a silver streak burst into the room, a Patronus leaping through the open doorway, urgent and luminous. A hawk, Susan Bones’ shape, swooped low.

“Malfoy. Now. Holding level two. It’s the prisoner.”

Hermione felt her pulse trip. Draco rose in one fluid motion, wand already in hand, expression closing like a steel door. Gone was the quiet scholar. In his place, the Auror, forged in a foreign theater of war.

He met her gaze for one brief heartbeat, and she saw it, the dread beneath the armor. The stakes.

Hermione nodded once, sharp and sure. “Go.”

And gods, there was something electric in the way he listened when she spoke like that, like her command anchored him.

He tapped the table once, a silent promise, and disappeared in a tight, crackling Apparition.

Hermione exhaled only when the wards settled again. The silence he left felt sharper now, like breath held between worlds.

She gathered parchments, cleaning instinctively, methodically, a ritual against fear. Crookshanks hopped down to butt his head against her shoulder as if sensing her heart. “I know,” she whispered, stroking his fur. “I know.”

And somewhere out there, Draco Malfoy was walking into whatever truth Dolohov had left behind. Down in the reinforced containment wing, where the others were likely already converging. Harry would be there. Susan. Theo. Bones. Kingsley would arrive the moment his schedule allowed.

If they hadn’t called her yet, they would. They always did.

Hermione tightened her grip on her wand.

Then, with a soft crack of displaced air, she disapparated toward the cells, toward the place where answers were waiting to be fought for.

***

(Draco’s POV)

The room was white, stark, humming with containment wards that thrummed like trapped winter. Iron thread lined the walls. Salt runes burned faintly underfoot. It smelled of metal and sweat and old fear. A space built for interrogations that were never meant to feel humane.

The prisoner lay on the cot, gaunt and fever-wasted, curse-scarring creeping up his arms like black veins turned outward. His earlier ferocity had eroded into something brittle, but the fanatic glow still pulsed under his skin.

Bones stood rigid near the door, shoulders squared. Theo lounged against the far wall with deceptive ease, wand turning lazily between his fingers - a posture Draco recognized as his friend’s way of masking readiness to kill. Harry paced in a tight line, jaw ticking, the old war carved faintly into the tension of every step.

“You’re sure?” Harry asked, voice low.

Draco nodded once. “He’s breaking. His resistance is down. If I try now, I may get more than symbols and shouting.” A beat. “Later, the walls will rebuild. Or his mind will collapse.”

No one argued.

Draco stepped forward. Rolled his sleeves. Closed his eyes.

Entered.

It wasn’t thought. It wasn’t memory. It was ritual.

His mind fell into a vortex of sound and symbol: fire licking bone-altars; runes carved in concentric spirals; chanting that beat against the skull like war drums.

The Cycle Turns. The Window Opens. Twelve for Twelve. The Root Must Bleed. The Old Magic Wakes.

The prisoner’s consciousness was a cathedral of devotion, every wall carved with Dolohov’s creed. Brainwashed wasn’t even the word. Consecrated was closer.

Draco pushed deeper.

A child’s silhouette flickered beside a star-marked altar. Pale hair, small hands, a shape more abstract than identity. Not Scorpius exactly, but the outline of him. A key. A vessel. A sacrifice.

Draco’s breath hitched.

Then-

Granger.

Not physically, but symbolically, brightness against the dark, a disruption in the rite. Rune-lit. Defiant. Dangerous. The new pattern threatening the old.

“She rewrites the wound,” the voices chanted. “The world must not change again.”

A serpent appeared, eating itself backwards, tail devoured first, a corrupted ouroboros. A cycle forced to restart. The ritual’s core.

Darkness surged like teeth.

Draco tore himself out of the mind with a gasp that scraped his lungs raw. His knees nearly buckled.

Behind him, the prisoner convulsed once, twice, then went still. A ribbon of smoke curled from the curse-scar on his temple.

Silence descended, thick as soot.

Theo exhaled. “Well,” he murmured. “That’s subtle nightmare fuel.”

Harry’s voice was iron. “What did you see?”

Draco wiped sweat from his brow. “A ritual. Pre-Merlinic. Multi-point. He’s gathering lineage relics and star-aligned sites. And-”

He hesitated, breath thin. “It involves a child.”

Harry stiffened. “Someone specific?”

Draco’s jaw clenched. “He believes a child born after the war carries the right blood constellation to act as a ‘key.’”

Sahir, who until now had been silent, stepped forward from the corner where he’d been analyzing the readings. “Post-war magical resonance,” he murmured. “Children born after 1998 have different harmonic signatures. The rebuilding of the magical field after the Battle of Hogwarts altered collective ley imprints.”

Hermione’s presence, steady, controlled, was felt from the doorway.

Draco hadn’t heard her arrive, but he felt it, that subtle shift in the room’s pressure, the clean snap of disciplined magic settling into place.

Of course she was here.

He’d apparated the moment she’d said go, the command threaded with terror and purpose, and he hadn’t dared look back. But seeing her now - hair wind-touched, magic still humming faintly at her edges - he understood she must have followed only seconds after he’d vanished from the Manor.

Because of course she did. Because this was Hermione, and Scorpius was hers to protect now too.

She stepped fully into the prison cell, voice steady, controlled, already answering Sahir’s question as though she had been standing there all along.

“Yes. Magical epidemiology recorded it years ago. Their cores are more responsive to polar extremes, creation and destruction both.”

Draco swallowed. “He’s looking for the perfect match. A child whose blood constellation aligns with an ancient cycle.”

Harry’s eyes sharpened. “We protect every child. Full stop.”

Draco said nothing. He didn’t need to. He already knew which child Dolohov truly wanted. Knew it in his bones, in his fatherhood, in his fear.

But until he had certainty, he would not put a target on his son’s back.

“Why now?” Susan asked, eyes on the prisoner’s still form. “Twelve years of nothing, then this?”

Sahir answered before Draco could. “Because pre-Merlinic rites require astronomical precision. Only twice per century do the geomantic nodes, lunar triads, and bloodline vectors align. The window opened at the start of spring.” He tapped a shifting star-map. “It closes at midsummer.”

Hermione inhaled sharply. “Which means he’s in activation stage, not planning stage.”

“Exactly,” Draco said. “What I saw in his mind, this isn’t preparation. It’s execution.”

Harry walked to the table where maps floated, constellation overlays shifting with each breath. His voice was low, grim. “Three to four months ago, sightings of Dolohov began again. France, Belgium, Carpathians. Then… the first thefts here.”

Hermione nodded. “Runic artifacts from Muggle museums. Bones from old wandlore vaults. Ritual tools. And the Diagon Alley attack was an attempt to retrieve something from that underground vault.”

“But he failed,” Susan muttered.

“Yes,” Draco said. “Which means he’s improvising now. He’s abroad again, as we already gathered. Hiding. Trying to reconstruct what he lost.”

Kingsley finally spoke, voice weighted by weeks of sleepless strategy meetings. “Other Ministries are cooperating. France and Norway confirmed ritual-site disturbances. The ICW is alert.” A pause. “And the press is circling. We can’t deny the gravity of the Diagon Alley attack anymore.”

Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They’re starting to think we lied in the first statement. That when we said it wasn’t a Death Eater resurgence, we were softening the truth.”

“Because they’re not,” Hermione murmured. “This isn’t an army. It’s a cult.”

Theo nodded. “Zealots with old magic and new grudges. Brilliant.”

Harry’s jaw tightened. “You can reason with soldiers. You can’t reason with zealots.”

“And if he misses this lunar triad,” Sahir added, “he loses eight years of preparation.”

Kingsley gave a humorless, exhausted huff. “Which is why he’s willing to burn bodies now.”

Draco exhaled. “He is accelerating. Desperate. And since he failed to obtain what he wanted in the vault-”

“-he’ll come back soon and push harder,” Hermione finished. “He’ll take risks. Recruitment. Sacrifice. Displays meant to inspire or terrify.”

Susan’s hands balled into fists. “Then we outthink him.”

Theo straightened. “We build a counter-ritual. Sahir and I can start mapping the matrix. Hermione, we’ll need your harmonic stabilizer work.”

Hermione nodded. “We give him nothing. Not fear. Not prophecy. Not children.”

Draco caught her gaze. Something passed between them, wordless, fierce, resolute.

Harry drew a steadying breath. “Emergency strategy meeting in fifteen. War Room.”

No one flinched at the word.

It was not history.

It was now.

***

The emergency meeting dissolved in sparks of parchment and murmured strategy. Aurors filtered out in clusters, boots clacking against stone. Theo rolled up his runic diagrams; Susan dispersed the ward prototypes with a flick; Sahir tucked a glowing astrolabe under his arm. Kingsley left last, exhaustion threading through every line of his frame.

Harry had stood then, gathering the room’s attention with the quiet authority he no longer needed to raise his voice for. “Alright. We reconvene as soon as we have movement. No one works alone, no one goes dark. Keep your teams close and your comms open. We’ll update the public once Kingsley finalizes the statement.”

He swept a final look around the table, a silent thank you, a silent be careful, and then disappeared down the south corridor.

Minutes later, the great chamber stood mostly empty.

Only maps remained, with floating constellations shifting in delicate spirals, timelines of magical convergence humming quietly, the residue of conflict soaking the air like static.

Draco stepped into the corridor and braced himself against a pillar. His breath came too fast. Too sharp. His hand trembled once before he curled it into a fist.

Thirty minutes of collected professionalism had shattered the moment the room emptied.

The images still clung to him: the altar, the chanting, the outline of a child too close to Scorpius to be coincidence, and Hermione glowing like a threat in the ritual’s vision.

His stomach turned.

He didn’t hear Hermione approach, her steps were soft, healer-soft, but he felt her presence like magic recognizing its twin.

“Draco,” she said quietly.

He didn’t look up. Couldn’t. “I saw him.”

Her breath hitched. “Who?”

He swallowed hard. “A child. Not clearly, but… the shape. The resonance.” His jaw tightened, breath thinning. “I think- Merlin help me- I think Dolohov wants Scorpius. Or someone like him. A child carrying a blood constellation he believes ties to the original curse.”

Hermione stepped closer, not touching, but anchoring. “It’s like we said, post-war children have resonance patterns that react differently to primordial magic. You didn’t do anything wrong by seeing that.”

“It isn’t certainty.” His voice frayed. “But it’s close enough to feel like truth. And if he’s right, if the ritual needs a child with a bloodline tied to ancient wounds- Scorpius…” His breath cracked. “I can’t lose him.”

Hermione’s chest tightened with something fierce and protective. He looked so young, suddenly, young in the way grief made everyone young.

“You won’t,” she murmured.

He blinked at her like she had spoken something impossible.

“You say that like it’s a promise.”

“It is,” she said simply.

A tremor ran through him. Not fear, recognition. Hope, thin and terrified.

“I nearly broke, Granger,” he whispered. “In the prisoner’s  mind. If I’d faltered, if he had seen Scorpius clearly-”

“But he didn’t,” she said, voice solid as stone. “And tomorrow, you won’t be alone. We’ll walk into every memory, every threat, together.”

He huffed out a shaky breath.

Hermione continued, softer: “And we’re not just defending Scorpius. We’re removing the target entirely.”

Draco frowned faintly. “Meaning?”

She stepped closer, her voice almost a vow:

“Once we finish the cure, Scorp won’t be the boy with the blood curse anymore. No ritual will see him as a vessel. No magic will call to him. No madman will believe he can be used.” A heartbeat. “He’ll just be a child. Yours. Safe.”

The words landed like a spell.

Something fragile flickered in Draco - gratitude, terror, affection - too many things he didn’t have names for.

“And Dolohov will not use any child,” she added, fiercer now. “Not in this country. Not in any country. Not while we’re alive.”

His breath caught.

“You’re terrifyingly good at this,” he murmured.

“I’m practiced,” she said with a small, tired smile. “War makes healers too.”

He let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, almost.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You never have to thank me for helping to protect your son.”

That did something to him. His gaze flicked to her, open in a way he didn’t allow with anyone else.

Precious.

For one suspended heartbeat, they stood like that, two people rebuilt by war, reshaped by loss, and now bound by a boy sleeping safe in a manor that had once known nothing but fear.

Then Hermione inhaled, steadying.

“We have about six weeks,” she said, glancing at the constellation charts still pulsing faintly through the doorway. “That’s when the alignment window closes.”

Draco nodded. “And until then?”

She lifted her chin, quill tucked behind her ear like a blade.

“We work.”

***

Hermione and Draco didn’t speak again as they left the Ministry.

They didn’t need to.

They Apparated straight to the Manor, landing in the front hall where the sconces still flickered with the aftertaste of reinforced wards. The moment their feet touched stone, Draco exhaled, sharp, like he’d been holding himself together through force of will alone.

“I’ll check on Scorpius,” he said quietly.

She nodded, unable to hide how her chest warmed at the thought of father and son reunited in the safety of home.

His hand brushed hers - accidental, intentional, both - and then he climbed the stairs two at a time.

Hermione stood there for a beat, surrounded by the hush of a house that now did not feel haunted, but alive.

She needed to move, to think, to keep her hands busy before her mind spiraled into what-ifs and the unbearable image of the child-shaped shadow Draco had seen in the ritual vision.

So she went to the one place in the Manor that always steadied her: the library.

The door welcomed her with a soft shift of air. Cedar, parchment, lingering traces of Draco’s cologne. She loosened her cloak, sat at the long table, and pulled parchment toward her already-stained fingertips.

But the moment the quill touched the page, her hand trembled.

War rooms were one kind of battlefield. Private silence was another.

She pressed her palms flat on the table and tried to breathe through the storm gathering under her ribs.

That was when Theo arrived.

No knock. No announcement. The door eased open and he wandered in like he owned several shares of the place.

Hermione startled; he didn’t bother pretending he hadn’t meant to.

Theo simply crossed the room and collapsed into the armchair opposite her, legs stretched out, posture the relaxed laziness of a man who had survived too many horrors to waste energy on formalities.

He regarded her for precisely three seconds before saying, “You look like a storm holding its breath.”

She huffed a laugh, weak, but real. “I feel like one.”

Theo studied he, not with Luna’s dream-softness, nor with Pansy’s surgical precision. Something quieter. Older. Weather-beaten, the way only certain survivors recognized in each other.

“You know,” he said, tilting his head, “orphans like us don’t learn safety.” His voice was mild, but the truth ran deep beneath it. “We learn endurance. Survival. Efficiency. Scar tissue mistaken for strength.”

Hermione swallowed. Her throat burned.

Theo gestured vaguely, fondly, toward the upper floors of the Manor, where Draco was almost certainly curled around his son in the dim lamplight.

“But family…” he murmured, “family is a different spell entirely. One that terrifies us because it isn’t about fighting to live, but choosing to.”

His words landed inside her like a chord struck true.

He wasn’t talking about Scorpius alone.

He wasn’t talking about Draco alone.

And Hermione,who had spent decades choosing survival before choosing anything else, felt the truth of it settle in her bones.

Theo continued, voice low. “I didn’t know what it meant until Luna. Found families aren’t accidents, Granger. They’re decisions. Repeated.”

Honesty like that was rare. Precious.

Hermione let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “You think I’m choosing?”

“I think you're terrified because you already have.”

Somewhere down the hall, Scorpius giggled, a bell-bright sound, life spelled out in laughter. Hermione’s chest ached.

Theo rose. “Protecting each other isn't a weakness. It’s the only way we won the first time.”

He paused near the door, then added casually, “And if you hurt him, Pans will hex your hair off.”

Hermione choked on a laugh. “Duly noted.”

Theo winked and vanished into the hall with a soft pop.

Hermione sat alone again, but she did not feel alone.

She pressed a hand over her heart.

A vow lived there now.

And like all ancient magic, vows change the world.

Chapter Text

Hermione loved The Burrow, of course. It had been the first place, after Hogwarts, she ever felt like magic could mean safety, not fear. But tonight she wasn’t heading toward the crooked roof and warm chaos of Ottery St. Catchpole.

Tonight, she was Apparating into a calmer hearth: the Potter home.

The last of the sunset dipped behind the trees like molten gold, and children’s laughter filtered through the window, bright, unburdened, the way she had prayed the next generation would be. Hermione let herself breathe in the sound. They made it. Against all odds, they made it here.

Before she could knock, the door swung open and Albus barreled out in tiny socks and pajamas decorated with cartoon broomsticks.

“AUNT MIONE!”

She barely had time to brace before five-year-old arms collided with her knees. She scooped him up without thinking, pressing a kiss to his unruly black hair.

“Hello, darling.”

“You came!” he announced, as though she ever wouldn’t.

“I promised I would.”

He beamed, burying his face into her shoulder with the full-body sincerity of a child whose trust had never yet been betrayed.

Hermione swallowed a wave of emotion. She ruffled his hair and stepped inside.

Warmth hit her, literal and emotional. Ginny was levitating dishes to the table, hair in a braid that said busy mum but still lethal on a broom. Harry stirred something at the stove, one hand subconsciously hovering protective near his ribs, still tender from Dolohov’s raid but healing well.

Ron and Susan sat on the couch, ankles brushing. Ron snacked on bread like he hadn’t eaten since breakfast; Susan rested her head on his shoulder, one hand absently holding a baby monitor.

“About time!” Ron called. “Thought you’d gotten kidnapped by your little snake-friends.”

“Ronald.” Ginny flicked a spoon at his head.

“Oi!”

Hermione rolled her eyes and hugged him anyway. “Hello to you too.”

Susan stood to embrace her warmly. “We’re glad you’re here.”

Hermione hugged her back. Susan always smelled faintly of rosemary, calm in human form. A different kind of bravery, quieter and steadfast.

“Dinner’s ready,” Harry said, turning with a smile that still had a bit of boy-wonder brightness in it. “Sit. Eat. Pretend we’re normal.”

Hermione snorted. “We have never once been normal.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ginny said. “I peaked at thirteen, thank you.”

Ron snorted; Susan patted his knee as if supporting his existence alone took patience and love, which, in fairness, it often did.

Hermione sat, Albus climbing into her lap like it was written in law. James, seven, mischievous, and loudly convinced he would be the next captain of the Holyhead Harpies, plopped down across from her and wiggled his eyebrows.

“So,” Ginny began casually, as she passed the potatoes, “how’s Malfoy?”

Hermione choked on air. Harry didn’t even pretend not to smirk.

“He’s… fine,” she managed, heat rising in her cheeks.

“Fine,” Ginny repeated, nodding like a scientist logging data. “And how’s Scorpius?”

Hermione felt her chest soften. “He’s… wonderful.”

“Mhm.” Ginny speared a carrot. “And how’s Hermione?”

“Ginny,” she hissed.

“Just checking in.” Ginny’s tone was sunshine-sweet and demon-mischievous. “You know. Since you’ve been at Malfoy Manor so much lately that Crookshanks now responds to the name Lord Crooks of Wiltshire.”

“The little traitor,” Hermione muttered.

She didn’t deny it, though. And that silence said enough that Ginny’s grin grew feral.

Ron cleared his throat, trying for subtlety and achieving the opposite. “Just making sure he’s… not being a git.”

Hermione sipped her pumpkin juice. “He’s… different. Healing. And he’s trying.”

Ron grunted. “Good. Because if he hurts you, I’m hexing him bald.”

Susan elbowed him. “Ronald.”

“Just his eyebrows, then,” he amended.

Ginny tossed a napkin at his face. “She’s a grown woman, not just your second school crush.”

Hermione flushed. Ron looked wounded. Harry quietly pretended to be absorbed in slicing roast chicken.

“I’m not worried about him hurting me,” Hermione said softly.

That quiet truth shifted the room.

Harry looked up, eyes gentle. “He’s different. War did that to all of us.”

Ron reluctantly nodded. “Still don’t have to like him.”

Susan smiled at Hermione. “But you don’t not like him.”

Hermione opened her mouth, closed it, then muttered, “Eat your vegetables.”

“Which is not an answer,” Ginny sang.

“Aunt Mione,” Albus whispered in Hermione’s ear loudly enough for the whole table to hear, “Scorpius has the coolest dragon toy ever. Can he sleep over?”

Ginny’s eyes gleamed. “Well well well.”

James perked up. “Sleepover?! Here?!”

Albus nodded fiercely, curls bouncing. “He can play dragons and I can show him my Quidditch cards and Crooks can come too!”

Harry chuckled. “One day, sure.”

“Al, you’ll see him on Sunday,” Ginny corrected. “At Gran’s. Remember? Molly wants to meet him. And to make sure Malfoy knows how to properly season roast lamb.”

Hermione blinked. “Did Molly really invite them?”

“Yes, I told her more about Scorpius,” Ginny said innocently. “And how he calls you Mione. And how Draco looks at you like he’s checking his pulse. She sent a letter this morning and Malfoy replied agreeing.”

Hermione buried her face in her hands. “I hate you.”

“You love me.” Ginny kissed her forehead across the table. “And I’m right.”

Ron muttered, “As long as he doesn’t find a reason to be dramatic and brood at the fireplace-”

“Ron,” Susan warned, amused.

“What? It’s genetic.”

Hermione smothered a laugh.

The food was delicious, roasted chicken rubbed with thyme, buttered green beans, fresh rolls, spiced apple crumble Ginny had made with a smug “baked while taking a toddler to the loo twice and answering three Ministry memos” flourish.

For a while they just… existed together.

Harry told a story about Teddy pranking a Professor at Hogwarts by enchanting his quills to scream every time he wrote “homework.”

Ron talked about George testing glitter bombs on Percy’s office.

Susan spoke about a promising lead in a DMLE investigation, nothing to do with Dolohov, she clarified quickly, which allowed everyone to breathe again.

The kids argued about whether hippogriffs or dragons were cooler. Hermione almost cried again over nothing and everything: safety, laughter, not looking over her shoulder.

This was why they fought. This was what peace was supposed to give them.

Near dessert, Ginny leaned over and whispered, “You’re still glowing.”

Hermione blinked. “I am not.”

“You are. It’s disgusting.”

Hermione flushed scarlet. “Ginny-”

“I’m not saying marry him,” Ginny said, spooning crumble onto plates. “I’m just saying if he helps you breathe easier instead of harder, that’s worth paying attention to.”

Hermione stared at her plate, throat thick. “It’s not like that.”

“Maybe not yet.” Ginny winked. “Meanwhile, Molly wants to knit Scorpius a jumper ‘just in case he might get cold.’ Which is Molly-speak for ‘I approve.’”

Hermione groaned. Ron made gagging noises. Susan smacked his shoulder lovingly.

Albus tugged on Hermione’s sleeve. “Mione?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Do you think Scorpius likes treacle tart? I can share mine.”

Hermione’s heart squeezed. “I think he would love that.”

Harry exhaled quietly around his teacup, watching them, something like peace and sorrow intertwined in his gaze.

“We made it,” he said softly. “Didn’t we?”

Hermione turned to him. The boy who lived. The man who chose to.

“We did.”

Ginny nodded. “Now we live like we deserve to. And we’ll keep it like that.”

Hermione looked around, at a family built from blood and battle and choice. And she believed her.

For the first time in years, she believed her.

***

Later, when the children were in pajamas and arguing over which story to hear first, Hermione pulled on her cloak by the fireplace.

Harry walked her to the floo, voice low. “If you need backup, you call. I know you’ve got Pansy and Theo and Malfoy and a Kneazle-powered emotional support squad, but-”

“I know,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “I always will.”

Ginny hugged her from behind. “And if you kiss him, I demand to know immediately.”

“GINEVRA-”

“Tell me!” she sang, then darted away cackling as Hermione hissed into the collar of her cloak.

She was about to step into green flames-
-and a soft rap tapped the window.

Hermione froze, heartbeat quickening.

A pale-feathered owl hovered in the dark, poised and still, unmistakably Malfoy.

Ginny shrieked-laughed from the hallway. “I KNEW IT!”

Hermione ignored her, cheeks flaming, and opened the window. The owl swept in, elegant and expensive, dropping a thick envelope sealed with silver wax, the Malfoy crest glinting.

In Draco’s neat, precise script:

Need you at the Manor when you can.
Breakthrough.
-D.M.

Her pulse jumped. Urgency. Discovery. Trust. And beneath, in smaller handwriting:

P.S. Scorp asleep clutching Crooks’ toy rat.
He asked for you.

Hermione inhaled sharply, something warm and terrifying unfurling beneath her ribs.

Ron peeked over her shoulder and whispered, horrified: “…bloody hell, Hermione. You’re doomed.”

Ginny squealed. Harry sighed. Susan smiled like she saw the future and approved.

Hermione clutched the letter to her chest. “I have to go.” And for more than once, she sounded ready.

The green flames swallowed Hermione, and when she stepped out into the Malfoy Manor floo, the shift in atmosphere hit her like stepping through seasons: warmth and noise left behind, replaced by cool marble hush and silver-blue candlelight.

From family chaos, to ancestral palace. From wild laughter, to velvet-soft quiet.

Yet the moment felt… right. As if she were walking into two halves of a world slowly stitching together.

Crookshanks trotted out from somewhere, tail high, looking smug, as though he’d been at the Manor all evening by choice, and not sulking when she left for dinner.

“You,” Hermione whispered, bending to scratch under his chin. “Traitor to my emotional dignity.”

He purred, unbothered and furry.

Then a familiar soft voice echoed from the hallway.

“You’re back.”

Draco stepped into view, jacket off, sleeves rolled, glasses hanging from his shirt collar. He had an ink smear on one knuckle. He looked like he’d been thinking intensely for hours… and also like thinking intensely suited him obscenely well.

Hermione’s stomach fluttered traitorously.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I was kept hostage under threat of maternal interrogation.”

Draco’s brow lifted. “Potter’s wife or Weasley’s mother?”

“Oh both would do it,” Hermione sighed, shrugging out of her cloak. “For this round it was Ginny.”

His mouth twitched. “And did you survive?”

“Barely.”

“I admire your fortitude.”

Her pulse misbehaved. It was ridiculous how casually he weaponized manners.

He gestured down the corridor. “Library?”

“Yes,” Hermione breathed.

As they passed through the Manor, she saw the changes again, soft greens, open curtains, family photographs tucked into gold frames: Astoria laughing in a garden, Scorpius in baby robes reaching for a bubble charm, a picture of Draco with his hair messy and his face warm as he held a toddler on his shoulders.

Not the house she remembered, her heart whispered. Not the boy she remembered.

When they entered the library, the scent of parchment and starlight greeted her.

A book hovered mid-shelving. Runes glimmered faintly across the marble floor. Papers covered an oak table in overlapping constellations.

“For the record,” Draco said quietly as she joined him, “I didn’t expect you to come this late.”

“I told you I would.”

“Yes. I just… don’t take that for granted.”

Something warm and sharp flickered between them. Hermione swallowed.

“Well,” she said briskly, because feelings were terrifying, “show me the discovery.”

Draco blinked, then snapped into research mode with endearing precision, pushing a cracked emerald-bound text toward her.

“It’s from the eastern archive,” he said. “Slavic corpus. Blood-line curses, core tether rituals, generational bindings. I’d forgotten we even had it.”

Hermione’s brows rose. “What made you remember?”

Draco hesitated, then answered honestly. “When I broke into that man’s mind,” he said quietly, “the one Dolohov sent… there were flashes. Symbols. Circles. Not the same curse, nothing this sophisticated, but the structure echoed something I’d seen before.” He tapped the book. “This. The binding diagrams, the tether logic. It jogged my memory.”

Hermione felt a chill that wasn’t fear, but recognition. “Dolohov wasn’t using this tradition.”

“No.” Draco’s voice hardened. “What he’s doing is crude. Brutal. But the aesthetic overlap was enough to push me back to this volume. And when I reread the diagrams…” He exhaled. “Things clicked.”

Hermione scanned the runes. Ancient Slavic. Layered curse structure. Blood as tether. Magical core destabilization. The notes she and Draco had combined shimmered faintly in his tidy handwriting.

Then she saw it.

“Wait,” she breathed, leaning closer. “This glyph here, this isn’t deterioration. This is… a dependency marker.”

Draco nodded once, slow and reverent. “The curse isn’t fixed. It needs feeding. If the magical supply line is broken-”

“It stalls.” She sucked in a breath. “It weakens.”

“And,” Draco continued softly, meeting her eyes, “if you introduce a counter-binding agent…”

“It could starve the curse,” Hermione whispered. “Or choke it.”

They stared at each other, the magnitude settling.

A first real crack in ancient dark magic.

Hermione felt her heartbeat gathering itself, like it might try to fly out of her ribcage.

“What’s the binding agent?” she asked, reaching for the text.

Draco hesitated. Not dramatic hesitation, protective hesitation. When he finally answered, his voice was low.

“Starfire asphodel.”

Hermione stilled.

“…Draco, Starfire asphodel hasn’t grown in Britain since-”

“The war.” He nodded. “And it only grows in magically scarred soil fed by residual healing energy.”

Her breath caught. “That means…”

“There are only two places it’s been confirmed since the war.” He swallowed. “And both are outside Britain.”

She leaned over the map parchment he summoned. Two glowing marks appeared.

One, in the foothills of northern Albania.

The other, deep in a protected valley in northern France.

Hermione’s fingers flexed. “So we go.”

Draco stared at her, the ghost of fear or hope hiding in silver eyes. “You’d… leave Britain right now? With Dolohov out there? With everything happening?”

“Yes,” Hermione said simply. “To save your son? Yes.”

The silence after that was not silence at all. It rang.

Draco exhaled shakily. “We do this carefully, as soon as we can. Securely. The DMLE will need to approve travel. And someone needs to stay with Scorpius. I guess mother can-”

Hermione smiled softly. “Ginny will insist. You know she will.”

“And Potter?”

“He’ll sulk and demand we send him hourly Patronus updates, but yes. He’ll approve it.”

Draco rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Merlin. I’m… grateful. I don’t have the right words.”

“You don’t need the right words.” Hermione folded the map closed. “Just get ready. I’ll send Harry an owl and for us to meet tomorrow. Oh, and the day after, Sunday at the Burrow - you and Scorpius are coming, right?”

Their eyes held. Charged. Unsteady. Trust stretching, fragile but real. He nodded.

Narcissa entered, elegant in pale velvet. “Hermione, dear. You’ll stay the night, of course?”

Hermione startled. “Oh, I-”

“Scorpius is asleep upstairs,” Narcissa added gently. “And Crookshanks has already decided which armchair is his. It seems foolish to leave.”

Draco nodded once, quietly. “Stay. If you want.”

Hermione’s heart did something wholly unreasonable. “All right.”

Narcissa smiled, victory quiet and maternal. “Good. Breakfast at nine.”

Hermione didn’t realize she was still smiling after Narcissa left until Draco coughed softly.

“You do know what this means,” he murmured.

“That I’m sleeping under your roof?”

“That Scorpius will assume you live here now.”

Hermione laughed. “Well. He’s a child of discerning intelligence.”

“And dangerous optimism,” Draco muttered, but the corner of his mouth curved.

They worked late, side by side, ink smudging fingers, tea cooling forgotten.

At one point Hermione nearly brushed his hand when they reached for the same reference text and her brain did something. Something lovely.

Chapter Text

Sage breathed differently in the early hours of the morning.

Hermione always felt it before she saw it: the slight shift in temperature, the way the dust motes suspended themselves like quiet, floating thoughts, the scent of steeped calendula warming in the cauldron behind the counter. Some shops woke with dawn; the Sage settled into itself slowly, as if remembering its purpose with every simmer and sigh.

“Morning, love,” she murmured to the shelves.

The shelves, of course, said nothing. Still, she felt answered.

Hermione set her satchel on the counter, shrugged off her coat, and lit the warm cluster of beeswax candles near the register. Light blossomed across the shop in gentle strokes, illuminating the dried bouquets that hung from overhead beams: sage, lavender, holy basil, rosemary. The place smelled like parchment and healing. Like a home she’d built from threads of choices she’d once been too afraid to make.

She tied her apron around her waist. Pale green, soft linen, pockets deep enough to hold both measuring spoons and the ordinary weight of her thoughts.

She paused, hands resting on the edge of the counter as the shop exhaled around her. For a moment, the memories of last night washed through her with the clarity of a fresh draft of potion: sharp, luminous, impossible to ignore.

Draco had looked different when the discovery clicked into place, not triumphant, not relieved, but steadier, as though the world had tilted a fraction back toward balance. As though hope, that fragile creature he never allowed near his ribs, had dared to land there anyway. Starfire asphodel. A form she had only read about in footnotes of footnotes. Hidden in an enclave in northern France. A chance, slim, improbable, but a chance, to slow the curse tightening its grip around Scorpius.

And by the end of today, after the DMLE meeting, they would know whether they were allowed to go. We. She still wasn’t used to the word.

Hermione smoothed her apron, fingers tracing the soft linen as if it might anchor her thoughts. She hadn’t expected to sleep at the Manor. She hadn’t expected to sleep at all, truth be told. But exhaustion had caught up with her in a wave after hours poring over texts at Draco’s desk, the lamplight gold on both their pages, his voice low as he read aloud a translation neither of them trusted.

The Manor had felt less like a fortress than she’d imagined. And the guest room, airy, quiet, too generous, had held her in a strangely tender sort of silence. She had lain awake longer than she meant to, listening to the creaks of an old house remembering it had survived a war. Listening for footsteps that never came. Wondering if Draco had slept at all, or if he’d kept vigil the way he always did: spine tense, jaw set, hope hidden so deep it barely knew how to breathe.

And Sunday. Merlin, Sunday was still looming on the horizon. The Burrow. With Scorpius. And Draco. For the first time.

Hermione felt her stomach tighten, a flutter somewhere between dread and something she refused to name. No. She wasn’t thinking about that now. Not yet. There were enough battles to fight before afternoon even arrived.

Hermione shook her head, a faint, private smile tugging at her lips. It was ridiculous to feel… anything about it. About the Manor. About him. About the quiet thread of trust weaving itself between them when she wasn’t looking.

And now, standing in her shop with calendula warming behind her and the world painted in beeswax light, she felt the echo of it like a pulse beneath her skin.

She inhaled, letting the scent of rosemary settle her. Today would be long. Complicated. But necessary.
And if they succeeded… Scorpius might have more time. Draco might have more time.

And she-

The back door opened with a thud, followed by the unmistakable clatter of someone bumping into a crate.

“Ouch, bloody crates! Hermione?”

Briony’s voice drifted from the storage room. Light, breathless, already laughing at herself. Hermione smiled.

“In here!” she called.

A moment later, Briony appeared, her curls pinned up messily, her forearms dusted with powdered petals, and her cheeks flushed from carrying boxes. She wore her Sage apron over a white linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow. She looked like she’d been sketched from the essence of the shop itself, youthful, warm, unpretentious, and very much alive.

“There you are,” Briony said, brushing her hair back with her wrist. “The peppermint root arrived early. The supplier said it’s the freshest batch of the season. I think it actually winked at me.”

Hermione laughed. “Peppermint root does not wink.”

“This one does. I know when I’m being flirted with.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

Briony grinned. “Grace says the same thing.”

Hermione shook her head, but warmth bloomed in her chest. She loved this - Briony’s humor, the effortless camaraderie, the way Sage felt fuller when Briony moved through it. She’d hired her on instinct, ten months ago, after Briony had walked into the shop with a meticulously organized planner, a dog-eared herbal compendium under her arm, and a quiet determination in her eyes. She’d simply said she wanted to work somewhere that healed people without rushing them. Hermione had said yes before she even finished the sentence.

That was the moment Hermione knew. Sage needed her. Hermione needed her.

“Put the peppermint on the drying screens?” Hermione asked.

“Already done.” Briony nodded toward the back. “And before you ask, yes, I labeled the jars. And no, I didn’t mix up the elderflower with the elderberry again.”

“It happened once.”

“It happened dramatically.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Grace told me you spent the entire yesterday evening ranting about taxonomy.”

Briony placed a hand over her heart. “Incorrect taxonomy is a moral crime.”

Hermione laughed again, this time full-bodied, and crossed behind the counter to check the simmering pot. The calendula was softening perfectly, its oils releasing into the amber water. She inhaled deeply.

Briony leaned her elbows against the counter, chin resting in her palms. “You love that smell.”

“It smells like… gentleness,” Hermione said quietly.

Briony watched her with softened eyes. “You know Sage only smells like this because of you. It was just a room before.”

Hermione shook her head. “It was never just a room.”

Sage had been a possibility first. Then necessity. Then refuge.

“You opened it exactly a year ago next week, didn’t you?” Briony asked.

Hermione nodded. “Exactly a year. Ginny keeps reminding me to celebrate it.”

“You should,” Briony said. “It’s not every day someone turns grief and stubborn hope into a shop that feels like this.”

Hermione’s fingers paused on the wooden spoon. The words landed deeper than Briony intended.

“I’m not sure hope had anything to do with it,” Hermione said softly. “It felt more like… listening to a tug I’d ignored for too long.”

“To build something that was yours?” Briony asked.

“Yes. And to build something that could help people without rushing them through corridors and paperwork.”

Briony’s expression softened even more. “You always say the Sage teaches you patience.”

“It does,” Hermione murmured. “Here, healing doesn’t have to sprint.”

Briony glanced around. “It shows.”

They slipped into the quiet rhythm of the morning then: chopping, brewing, filtering, sealing. The kind of companionship that didn’t require performance. Hermione had missed this kind of ease for years after the war, missed it without realizing she was missing it.

By late morning, sunlight spilled across the front windows, catching on jars of powdered petals and tinctures. Customers filtered in and out gently. An older wizard asking for something to help him sleep without dreams; a mother picking up an elderberry tonic; a teenage girl wanting something to soothe the ache behind her ribs after a heartbreak she didn’t yet want to name. Hermione and Briony tended to them with slow care.

“You’re good with people,” Hermione murmured as Briony explained a steam-inhalation ritual to the teenage girl, using nothing but warm water and dried lemon balm.

Briony shrugged after the girl left, cheeks faintly pink. “Honestly? People are good with gentleness. They just don’t get enough of it.”

Hermione’s throat tightened. She knew that better than most.

Near midday, Briony stacked a few empty crates and brushed dust from her palms.

“Lunch?” she asked.

Hermione nodded. “Tea?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

Briony went to the back, returning moments later with the classic two mismatched mugs - the Sage had a collection, none of them coordinating, all of them cherished. Hermione took hers gratefully.

They sat on small stools behind the counter, knees almost touching, the shop quiet around them.

They sat on small stools behind the counter, knees almost touching, the shop quiet around them.

“You looked less tired when you came in today,” Briony said, stirring her tea. “I can tell when you’ve had a St. Mungus week.”

Hermione snorted softly. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to someone who’s lived the same shift pattern,” Briony said, smiling. “I don’t miss that part.”

Hermione’s expression softened. “I don’t either. Not the frantic pace. Not the endless alarms. Not feeling like there’s always another crisis waiting the moment you breathe.”

Briony nodded. “But you still like being there sometimes.”

“I do,” Hermione admitted. “Some patients… stay with you. And the work is meaningful. Just not when it consumes every corner of my life.”

Briony hummed thoughtfully. “Grace says you’ve been more balanced this year. Even if it’s because you’re drowning in blood-curse research.”

Her voice softened just a touch when she said the name. Grace, her girlfriend, an ER nurse at St. Mungus who still pulled the occasional overnight shift with her.

Hermione smiled wryly. “More balanced is a generous interpretation.”

“It is,” Briony said, grinning. “But it’s also true. You’re not pulling sixteen-hour days at the hospital anymore… and you’re not living inside the Sage either.”

Hermione breathed in the warm steam of her tea, letting the truth settle.

“I needed the shift,” she murmured. “I needed… to choose where I placed my energy.”

Briony’s eyes softened. “And did the Sage help with that?”

Hermione let the answer rise slowly.

Hermione breathed in the warm steam of her tea. She let the answer rise slowly.

“It gave me permission to be human again,” she said.

Briony leaned back slightly. “Grace says you were a big inspiration to her.”

Hermione blinked. “Me?”

“Mm-hm. She says working with you feels like what healing is supposed to feel like. Quiet. Intentional. Kind.”

Hermione’s throat tightened unexpectedly. “I’m glad,” she said, voice thin.

Briony sipped her tea. “Do you ever think about expanding? Sage, I mean?”

Hermione didn’t answer at first. The question hung between them like a slow-burning candle.

“Sometimes,” she finally said. “But I don’t know what expanding would even look like.”

“A bigger building?” Briony suggested.

Hermione shook her head. “No. That would feel wrong. Sage is… small because healing often starts small. And because people need rooms that don’t overwhelm them.”

Briony smiled thoughtfully. “So not expanding outward.”

“Maybe inward,” Hermione said. “Or deeper. Or… differently.”

Briony brightened. “Workshops? Healing circles? Herb-foraging trips? Other franchises? Maybe even a small garden?”

Hermione’s lips curved. “Possibly.”

“And,” Briony added, tapping her mug with a grin, “maybe a second employee so I can stop working twelve-hour days during flu season.”

Hermione snorted. “You do that to yourself.”

“I do not,” Briony protested. “I simply care.”

Hermione touched her arm. “I know.”

Briony’s expression turned earnest. “If you ever wanted to expand… you wouldn’t have to do it alone. I like building things with you.”

Hermione felt warmth spread along her ribs, steady, grounding. “I like that too.”

They fell into silence again, but it was a warm silence, like sitting inside a pocket of summer.

A faint breeze drifted in from the front window, carrying the scent of sage bundles Hermione had tied the night before. The leaves clicked softly against their twine, like whispering wind chimes.

Briony stretched, long and loose. “Grace told me to ask you something.”

Hermione took a slow sip. “Should I be concerned?”

“Oh, definitely,” Briony said. “But it's a benign concern. She wants to know if you’d ever consider doing a little educational program here. Something calming. Something about herbs and emotions.”

Hermione blinked. “Emotions?”

“You know, like how chamomile soothes tension, or how rosemary opens memory pathways. Grace says you’re the best person alive at explaining the heart of things.”

Hermione shook her head, embarrassed. “She’s being generous.”

“No,” Briony said simply. “She’s being accurate.”

Hermione looked down at her mug. Her reflection wavered on the dark surface.

“I think,” she said slowly, “I’ve spent so much time studying formulas and healing rites and medicinal combinations… that I forget how much of healing is storytelling.”

Briony nodded. “That’s what Grace says you do. You teach people to tell the truth to themselves.”

Hermione swallowed. “Sometimes I forget to do that for myself.”

Briony hesitated, then asked gently, “Is that why you came in early today? You seemed a little…”

“Restless?” Hermione guessed.

Briony shrugged. “Only in the way people get restless when something’s about to change.”

Hermione’s breath caught. She forced a light laugh.

“It’s nothing dramatic,” she said. “Just a lot on my mind.”

Briony tilted her head. “Want to talk about it?”

Hermione hesitated.

She wasn’t used to being asked that. She was used to being needed. Not known.

Her fingers traced the rim of her mug.

“It’s… complicated,” Hermione admitted.

Briony smiled softly. “Everything worth naming is.”

Before Hermione could respond, a small cluster of customers came in, and the afternoon unfolded once more into gentle busyness. Mixing herbs, explaining dosages, wrapping bundles in brown parchment, threading new strings through overhead beams.

Hermione moved through it with a kind of quiet grace, aware of Briony always within arm’s reach. Their partnership felt like a well-practiced dance. Briony finishing Hermione’s explanations without stepping on them. Hermione catching jars Briony forgot she was levitating. Laughter woven into the space between tasks.

By late afternoon, a soft golden haze had settled across the shop. The sun had begun its slow descent, brushing light over the jars of powdered fennel and the hanging marigold petals. Hermione was labeling a new batch of moonflower tincture when she felt Briony approach again with soft, tentative footsteps.

“Hermione?”

“Yes?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Briony said gently. “But… if something’s changing, and it’s making you restless… I’m here. I meant it earlier.”

Hermione set the quill down, exhaled.

Her shoulders loosened ever so slightly.

“It’s not something I’ve talked about much,” Hermione began quietly.

Briony nodded. “Then take your time.”

Hermione turned the small bottle of moonflower tincture in her hands, watching the pale liquid catch the light. She inhaled deeply.

“Do you remember the blond man who came in a while ago?” Hermione asked.

Briony’s eyebrows shot up. “The one with the cute little boy? Scorpius, right? I took him to the back so he could play with Albus while you talked.” She squinted. “The father looked like someone carved an aristocrat from marble, scolded him for fifty years straight, and then dropped him into a thunderstorm.”

Hermione pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh. “That… is alarmingly specific.”

“I’m gifted,” Briony said breezily. “Grace says I can diagnose emotional weather just by looking at someone.”

Hermione shook her head, amused and mortified at once. “Yes. Him.”

Briony blinked. “Oh. Wait.” Then her eyes widened. “No. No, Hermione. That’s Draco?”

Hermione nodded, a quiet tension thrumming beneath her ribs.

Briony let out a small, incredulous sound. “You’re joking. That is the Draco from the research? The one you’ve been losing sleep over while muttering things like ‘hexotomic regression’ under your breath?”

“Yes,” Hermione said softly.

Briony stared for another beat, then exhaled. “Well… that actually explains a lot.”

Hermione frowned. “Explains what?”

“Oh, come on.” Briony waved a hand, as if it were obvious. “The tension. The static in the air. I didn’t know what it was, but something was happening between you two. I assumed it was academic stress, or trauma proximity, or - Merlin, I don’t know - but you two stood there like you were trying very hard not to touch anything too sharp.”

Hermione felt heat climb up her neck. “We were not-”

“Okay,” Briony conceded with a grin, “maybe you weren’t. But he looked like he was choosing his words the way people choose which floorboard won’t creak.”

Hermione forced an exasperated breath. “Briony.”

“What?” Briony held up her hands. “I didn’t say it was romantic tension. Could’ve been unresolved enmity. Or post-war emotional archaeology. Or whatever category your generation uses when someone from your dark academic past walks into your place of business.”

Hermione groaned softly. “I hate that you’re perceptive.”

“No, you don’t,” Briony said warmly. Then: “Do you… want to tell me the rest?”

Hermione hesitated, then nodded, slowly.

Briony didn’t push. She simply sat back, tea in hand, eyes steady, ready.

“He and I… knew each other,” Hermione said.

Briony waited, not pushing.

“In school,” Hermione added. “Not well. Not kindly.”

Briony’s gaze sharpened with understanding, but not judgment.

“And now?” she asked softly.

Hermione looked around Sage; the smallness, the gentleness, the living quiet.

Now, everything was different.

But she didn’t know how to name that yet.

So she simply said, “Now… he’s not who he was.”

Briony nodded slowly. “Neither are you, I’m guessing.”

Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but the words didn’t arrive.

Not yet.

Outside, the light dimmed a little more. Sage held the silence carefully, like a hand cupping water.

Briony lifted the bottle from Hermione’s fingers and placed it gently on the counter.

“Tell me the rest when you’re ready,” she said. Then she smiled, bright and warm. “And Hermione? Your restlessness looks better on you than you think.”

Hermione snorted. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” Briony insisted.

Hermione rolled her eyes but couldn’t suppress the faint heat rising across her cheeks.

As Briony moved to greet a new customer, Hermione let her hand rest on the counter for a moment, grounding herself in its smooth grain.

Something was shifting. Something quiet and uncertain and alive.

And as the Sage breathed around her, warm, steady, familiar, Hermione allowed herself, for the first time that day, to feel the beginning of it.

The last customer left with a soft chime of the door, and Briony returned to the counter, brushing a curl behind her ear, cheeks slightly pink from the effort of carrying a too-large bundle of dried chamomile.

She caught Hermione’s eyes and tilted her head. “You look like someone who’s arguing with their own thoughts.”

Hermione let out a breath. “I might be.”

Briony leaned on the counter, elbows down, chin propped on her hands. “Want round two of telling me the rest?”

Hermione hesitated. Then, quietly, almost reluctantly, she said:

“Draco and Scorpius are going to the Burrow this Sunday.”

Briony blinked. “Oh. That sounds… nice?”

Hermione stared at her. “Nice?”

Briony shrugged. “Well… yeah? There’ll be food, right? And kids for Scorpius to play with? And, wait, is this one of those wizarding things where I’m supposed to know the subtext but I don’t because I was raised by two accountants who thought their whole lives magic is a metaphor?”

Hermione let out a helpless laugh. “Not exactly. It’s just… complicated.”

Briony’s eyes softened. “Okay. Then… explain it to me?”

Hermione rubbed her palms together, feeling the faint dusting of moonflower powder still clinging to her skin.

“I keep forgetting,” she said gently, “that even though you’re Muggleborn… your first year at Hogwarts was right after the Battle.”

Briony nodded. “Yeah. They rebuilt the greenhouses that year. I had to share one with a family of puffapods. Traumatic.”

Hermione smiled, then exhaled slowly.

“So… all the history with the Malfoys… the war, the tension between families, you didn’t really see any of it.”

Briony’s expression shifted into open curiosity. “No. Not firsthand. I mean… I know the basics. Who fought. Who didn’t. But it always felt like someone else’s era. Like reading about a storm that passed before you ever learned to name clouds.”

Hermione’s chest tightened at how true that was.

She rested both hands on the counter, grounding herself.

“The Malfoys,” she began softly, “were aligned with Voldemort. All of them. Lucius, Narcissa, Draco… the entire family was tied to him. Lucius willingly. Narcissa reluctantly. Draco because he was a child with no way out.”

Briony straightened slightly, surprise flickering across her face.

“I didn’t realize,” she murmured.

“Most people your age don’t,” Hermione said gently. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t live it.”

Briony nodded slowly, absorbing it.

“Draco,” Hermione continued, voice softer still, “was sixteen when he was ordered to kill Dumbledore. Sixteen, Briony. And he didn’t want to. He was terrified. Trapped. And… I saw that. Even when I hated him, I saw that.”

Briony’s eyes widened, empathetic, not pitying.

“And his father?” Briony asked quietly.

“Lucius died in Azkaban about six years ago,” Hermione said. “And Narcissa… well. Without her, without her recognizing Harry as alive and lying to Voldemort, none of us would have survived that night.”

Briony inhaled sharply. “She saved Harry?”

“She saved everyone,” Hermione whispered.

Briony was silent for a long moment. Sage hummed softly around them, sunlight slanting gold across jars of powdered petals, shadows gathering beneath shelves like folded quilts.

“And now,” Hermione said, almost laughing at the absurdity of it, “Draco Malfoy is walking into the Burrow. The heart of the Weasley family. A place built on kindness and chaos and warmth. A place he once mocked. A place he never would’ve set foot in as a child.”

Briony blinked. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” Hermione said.

“So you’re… nervous,” Briony said slowly, “because this is the kind of full-circle moment that feels too big for one Sunday afternoon.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes. And because the Weasleys lost so much during the war. They are forgiving, but… it’s still the Malfoys. There’s still history. Pain. And even if Draco has changed, and he has, I don’t want him to be uncomfortable. Or judged. Or tense.”

Briony studied her.

“And you don’t want the Weasleys to be uncomfortable either.”

“No,” Hermione exhaled. “I don’t.”

Briony nodded, piecing it together.

“That must feel like having two worlds you care about brushing up against each other,” she said quietly. “Worlds that were never meant to touch.”

Hermione looked at her with sudden, aching gratitude. “Exactly.”

Briony softened. “And the boy? Scorpius?”

Hermione smiled faintly. “He’s… he’s wonderful. Curious. Gentle. Nothing like his grandfather. Everything like Narcissa’s better instincts.”

Briony absorbed that too.

“And he’ll be playing with the Weasley kids?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That actually sounds lovely,” Briony said. “Children don’t inherit old wars.”

Hermione felt her throat tighten.

“No,” she whispered. “They don’t.”

Briony paused. Then, with a small smile:

“So why does this make you nervous?”

Hermione froze. Briony didn’t press, but her gaze was steady, perceptive in that intuitive way she had.

Hermione swallowed. “Because… Draco and I…”

She faltered.

Briony waited.

“…we’re different now,” Hermione finally said. “We’ve spent weeks researching together. Talking. Working. And there’s… tension. A lot of it. Not hostile. Just…”

Briony raised her brows. “Charged?”

Hermione glared weakly. “Don’t.”

Briony grinned. “I will absolutely not stop.”

Hermione sighed, laughing under her breath. “Fine. Charged.”

“And that makes the Burrow feel even stranger?” Briony asked.

“Yes,” Hermione said softly. “Because it used to be the place where I felt safe from boys like him.”

Briony’s expression gentled, the kind of gentleness that comes from understanding someone without needing to pry.

“And now,” she said, “he’s one of the people you want to protect.”

Hermione blinked, quietly startled by the truth of it.

“…yes,” she whispered.

Briony reached across the counter and touched Hermione’s wrist lightly.

“Then it makes sense,” she said. “Why it feels strange. Why it feels important. And why it feels like something inside you is shifting.”

Hermione looked down at their hands.

Something was shifting. Something real. Something she wasn’t ready to say aloud.

Briony squeezed gently. “You’ll be okay. And he will too.”

Hermione exhaled.

“And Hermione?” Briony added, a teasing glint returning to her eyes. “If he stands too close to you again on Sunday… at least try not to combust.”

Hermione groaned. “Briony-”

Briony smirked. “What? I’m just preparing you.”

Hermione shook her head, warmth rising across her cheeks.

Outside, the sun dipped lower. Inside, the Sage breathed around them, soft and warm and alive.

And Hermione, just for a moment, let herself imagine what Sunday might look like.

What it might feel like. What it might change.

But first, the DMLE meeting, only minutes away now.

Then… everything else.

Chapter Text

The Burrow had always breathed differently from every other home Hermione had ever known.

It wasn’t merely the crooked angles of the walls or the way the house leaned into the sky as though built by enthusiasm rather than architecture. It was the heart of the place. The warmth that radiated from its stones. The soft magic that held it all together like invisible twine. Even after all these years, stepping out of the Floo into the Weasley sitting room felt like entering a space that existed slightly outside the rules of physics and entirely within the rules of affection.

Today, though, it felt even more alive.

Hermione dusted ash from her robes and tightened her grip on Scorpius’s small hand. The child looked around with wide, grey-green eyes that seemed to absorb everything at once. The crooked fireplace, the patched rugs, the string of mismatched teacups dangling above the mantel, chiming softly with every shift of the house’s magic.

The Burrow wasn’t beautiful in the way Malfoy Manor was beautiful. It didn’t gleam or intimidate or echo with history. But it was warm, filled with colors that didn’t match and chairs that didn’t belong to the same set and a kind of tender chaos Hermione had never stopped loving.

She felt Scorpius press closer to her side just as the room erupted into noise.

Children rushed in from the back garden. James with grass in his hair, Lily with paint on her cheeks, Albus with his shoelaces mismatched and a brush tucked behind his ear like a quill. A gnome darted across the floor and disappeared under a cabinet. A pan clattered in the kitchen. Something upstairs exploded gently.

And then…

Everything stopped.

Just for a breath.

Just long enough for Molly Weasley to see the little boy half-hiding behind Hermione’s legs.

“Oh,” Molly whispered, voice already trembling as though she were seeing a memory instead of a child. “Oh, sweetheart… look at you.”

Scorpius blinked up at he, solemnly, politely, a tiny furrow between his brows as though unsure what was expected of him.

“Hello,” he said.

And Molly melted.

She swooped down with all the unstoppable force of a mother who had spent her entire life loving other people’s children as fiercely as her own. She cupped Scorpius’s cheeks, declared him darling and far too thin and in desperate need of feeding, and told him, firmly, that he was to eat at least three servings of lunch.

Scorpius accepted this decree with wide eyes and a slow, thoughtful nod, as though concluding that this was how one survived the Weasley household.

Hermione bit back a laugh. The Manor had rules, yes, but they were quiet, elegant things. Here, the rules came in Molly’s voice. Warm. Absolute. Non-negotiable.

Before Scorpius could do anything except blink again, a streak of black hair collided with him.

“SCORP!”

Albus threw his arms around Scorpius with the force of a Bludger. The two boys toppled slightly, then righted themselves, clinging to each other in pure, uncomplicated joy.

Scorpius lit up, truly lit, like dawn breaking across his small face. “Albus!”

Hermione felt something in her chest shift. This… this softness in Scorpius’s expression, she’d only seen glimpses of it. A smile born not of politeness or caution, but belonging.

James arrived next, puffing out his chest. “I’m referee,” he announced, although no one had suggested a game yet. “And rule number one is: no fire charms inside.”

“Especially after last time,” Ron said from behind him, shaking his head as he entered the room. “No dragons indoors, James.”

“It wasn’t a dragon-”

“It had wings and teeth.”

“It was small!”

“It was on fire,” Ron reminded him.

James huffed, but Hermione caught the grin he fought back.

Behind her, the Floo flared again.

Draco stepped out, brushing soot from his sleeve with a precision that belonged to a man who ironed his shirts even during active investigations. For a moment, just a moment, Hermione saw him at the Manor: composed, controlled, the quiet dignity of someone who had rebuilt his identity stone by deliberate stone.

Then he looked up and froze.

The Burrow seemed to take him in, all its mismatched, leaning chaos, its family-sized love, its sound and color and warmth, and Draco Malfoy did not know what to do with any of it.

Hermione nudged him gently with her elbow.

“Welcome to the Burrow,” she murmured.

His throat bobbed. “I- yes. I know. I’m just not used to…” His voice trailed off, eyes lingering on Scorpius still tangled with Albus. “…safety coming so freely.”

Hermione’s chest tightened.

Ginny breezed past at that exact moment, smacking Draco lightly on the arm. “Get used to it, Malfoy. We adopt people here.”

“Adopt-?”

“Oh absolutely,” Ginny said. “You’re already on Mum’s meal rotation.”

From the kitchen, Molly’s voice floated out: “Wednesday is stew night, dear!”

Draco went very still.

Hermione had to bury her face in her shoulder to keep from laughing outright.

And then Arthur appeared, holding a rubber duck with reverence.

“Hermione,” he greeted warmly. “Draco, my boy! Did you know this Muggle object squeaks if you press it just right?”

Draco blinked. “Y-yes. I’ve… encountered them.”

Arthur looked delighted. “Marvelous!”

Hermione pressed her lips together. This was going to be a day.

A long one. A chaotic one. A good one.

Lunch at the Burrow was not so much a meal as it was an event - a living, breathing organism composed of clattering dishes, floating platters, overlapping conversations, and Molly’s unstoppable determination to feed everyone into contented silence.

Hermione guided Scorpius to the long wooden table that had seen more elbows, ink spills, and family secrets than most Ministry rooms combined. Its surface was scratched in familiar patterns: initials of Weasley children carved during adolescence, scorch marks from Fred and George’s experiments, a faint stain shaped like a hippogriff footprint from a disastrous Care of Magical Creatures essay Ron had once written.

Scorpius touched the surface carefully, tracing a groove with the tip of his finger as though reading something hidden there. Hermione wondered, not for the first time, how much of the world he understood not through facts, but through feeling. He was sensitive in a way that reminded her painfully, achingly, of Draco when he wasn’t performing anything for anyone.

Draco stood a little behind her, hands clasped behind his back like he was reporting for duty rather than attending lunch. The posture was an old instinct - rigid spine, contained shoulders - but Hermione could see the way his gaze kept drifting, softening, snagging on small domestic details he didn’t know how to interpret.

A teapot humming to itself on the counter. Crooked picture frames crowding the walls. A stack of mismatched plates wobbling in anticipation. Children’s drawings stuck to the fridge with heart-shaped magnets.

The Manor had changed since the war. Hermione knew that, had seen it herself in the quiet hours spent in Draco’s library these past months. Scorpius’s watercolor butterflies pinned to the edges of Malfoy and Black family portraits. Sunlight allowed in without apology.

But even softened, even reclaimed, the Manor was a place built for silence.

The Burrow… was not.

And watching Draco adjust felt a little like watching someone learn to breathe in a new language.

Ron appeared at Draco’s side, clearing his throat. Hermione tensed instinctively, old habits, but Ron only extended a hand, awkward but sincere.

“All right, Malfoy?”

Draco blinked, surprised. “Weasley. Yes. Er- hello.”

Ron nodded once, then glanced at Hermione as though checking whether he’d executed the greeting correctly.

Hermione smiled back, warm and grateful.

Ron continued, words tumbling out faster now as though he needed momentum to survive the conversation.

“Harry told me your meeting with the DMLE went well. About the France thing. The- the asphodel.” He said the forbidden ingredient the way someone might say the name of a volatile potion. “Hope you find it. Hope it helps the kid.”

Draco went still, but not cold. Just… taken.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “We’ll try.”

Ron nodded, awkward but sincere. “Yeah. Good. And, uh- good luck. With all of it.”

Hermione waited, thinking Ron would stop there.

Of course he didn’t.

“And if you ever want to talk Quidditch, real Quidditch, none of this backyard nonsense, I’m around.” A beat. “But don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because you saved Harry’s arse that day at Diagon Alley.”

Draco actually huffed a laugh. “Perish the thought.”

Ron grinned - quick, lopsided, unexpectedly warm - before James called him over to referee a dispute involving Lily, a pixie, and something that was definitely smoking.

Hermione watched Ron jog away and glanced back at Draco.

He looked… surprised. And maybe a little steadier.

Molly interrupted before anything more could be said, summoning everyone to sit with the authority of a general calling her troops to formation.

Platters levitated, landing in front of guests with gentle thumps: roast chicken, charmed to stay warm; roasted carrots glazed with honey; fresh bread; potatoes mashed with butter and chives; a bowl of green peas that James immediately tried to turn into a catapult.

“Absolutely not,” Ginny warned, leaning across the table.

James wilted.

Scorpius sat beside Albus, who had already begun explaining their grand afternoon plans, something involving gnomes, dragons (imaginary), and possibly a tunnel system. Scorpius nodded solemnly at each suggestion, committing them to memory with the seriousness of a scholar.

“This is really nice,” Scorpius murmured to Hermione as Molly heaped his plate with more food than any five-year-old could possibly consume in this decade.

Hermione laughed softly. “It is.”

“It’s loud.”

“That too.”

“But warm.”

Hermione felt that same shift in her chest, the tender pull of emotion that surprised her more each day she spent with this child. She hadn’t expected to grow attached. And yet.

“Hey,” Harry said as he slid into the seat across from her, nodding gently at Scorpius. “Good to see you again, mate.”

Scorpius beamed. Draco, who sat on Harry’s other side, stiffened instinctively, then slowly forced himself to loosen his shoulders.

Hermione hid a smile behind her fork.

Harry didn’t miss anything, of course. He shot Draco a sideways glance, the kind that said: I’m watching, but not unkindly.

Draco cleared his throat. “Potter.”

“Malfoy.”

“How’s the Legilimency training?”

“Better now that you’ve stopped correcting my wand grip,” Harry said dryly.

Draco lifted a brow. “Your grip was atrocious.”

Hermione kicked him under the table. Draco’s mouth twitched.

To anyone else, it might’ve looked like banter. To Hermione, who had watched them co-lead field operations, watched Harry trust Draco in small, grudging increments, it looked like something closer to respect.

Halfway through lunch, Arthur asked Draco about Muggle train stations.

Not magically weaponized train stations. Not charmed infrastructure. Just… train stations.

Draco, caught mid-sip, lowered his glass slowly.

“Er. I’ve… passed through a few?”

Arthur leaned forward as though Draco held the secrets of the universe. “Incredible!”

Draco stared at Hermione, pleading for rescue.

She only smiled serenely.

After lunch, Molly shooed everyone outside (“Shoo! Out! Let me tidy without tripping over you lot!”), and the garden opened up before them.

It was exactly the same as Hermione remembered, and somehow softer, too, touched by the gold light of a late afternoon that promised lingering warmth.

The lawn stretched unevenly, dotted with patches of wildflowers and half-retired garden gnomes peeking nervously from underground. The Weasleys’ chicken coop clucked with noisy life. A crooked shed leaned perilously toward the vegetable patch. Wind chimes sang from the trees, mismatched and magical.

The Burrow’s upper floors swayed faintly in the breeze, looking as though a single sigh could knock them over, yet Hermione knew they were unshakably, impossibly sturdy.

Children scattered instantly.

James conjured a toy Snitch. Lily chased butterflies made of drifting sparkles. Albus tugged Scorpius toward a teetering broomstick lying in the grass.

Ron caught Draco’s eye. “Fancy a game?”

Hermione saw the flicker of instinctive refusal, the Malfoy dignity that didn’t know how to fit itself into casual play, but Ron was already tossing him a practice Quaffle.

Draco caught it with one hand. Graceful. Automatic.

Memories flickered in Hermione, the Malfoy heir cutting through the sky during school matches, arrogant but undeniably skilled, and something warm curled low in her stomach.

“Fine,” Draco said, voice deceptively mild. “But I refuse to referee.”

“James is already ref,” Ron groaned. “Merlin save us all.”

Hermione followed them into the garden, heart swelling at the sight of Scorpius watching Draco with reverent admiration, that quiet longing of a child seeing his father step into a world he’d never known before.

It was beautiful. And a little heartbreaking.

The makeshift Quidditch match unfurled itself across the Burrow’s garden with all the elegance and precision of a controlled explosion. Children ran in zigzags that defied any semblance of strategy, James shouted rules no one followed, Lily kept enchanting fallen leaves into fluttering pixies, and Ron and Draco tried, genuinely tried, to pretend they were taking this seriously.

Hermione stood near the back porch, watching the chaos with a fondness that lived somewhere between nostalgia and awe.

The Burrow did this to people. It reminded them how to be young.

Scorpius held a tiny toy broom, Albus’s old practice broom, half-charmed and slightly wobbly, staring at it as though it were something sacred. His hands wrapped around the handle carefully, reverently, testing the balance.

“You can hover, if you like,” Albus said, practically vibrating with excitement. “Dad said it’s safe as long as you don’t go above -”

“- waist height,” Harry called from across the yard, wand subtly at the ready.

Scorpius nodded, determined. Hermione could see it in the set of his small shoulders, the desire to belong, to understand this world of games and rules and laughter.

Draco was watching too, standing a short distance away, Quaffle cradled against his hip like something alive. His expression had softened, unguarded in a way Hermione rarely saw outside the quiet of the Manor library.

The moment Scorpius’s broom lifted, only a few inches, Draco’s breath hitched.

Hermione felt it more than saw it: the way his chest tensed, the way fear and pride battled behind his ribs. He took a step forward before stopping himself, hands curling in restraint.

“He’s all right,” Hermione murmured, moving to stand beside him.

Draco didn’t look away from his son. “He’s small,” he said quietly.

“He’s brave,” Hermione replied. “And careful. Wonder where he gets that from.”

Draco blinked at her, startled, as though the idea that she might mean it had never occurred to him.

She held his gaze, letting the truth of it rest in the air between them.

Then James whistled, loudly, off-key, and declared the game begun.

Draco was immediately roped into playing Chaser opposite Ron, which Hermione suspected was Ron’s not-so-subtle attempt to test how much lingering tension existed between them. What Ron didn’t anticipate was that Draco, stripped of House colors and years of rivalry, was not only competent.

He was elegant.

Even on the ground, he moved like a man who had spent his childhood carving the sky open with sharp turns and perfect arcs. The Quaffle seemed to obey him rather than the other way around. Ron, competitive as always, shouted directions no one listened to and tried to block Draco with the vigor of a man reclaiming lost teenage glory.

It was absurd. It was wonderful.

Scorpius laughed, actually laughed, clapping tiny hands as Draco scored past Ron with insulting ease.

Hermione felt something warm bloom inside her.

She looked at Draco again and saw it clearly:

He belonged here. Not in the same way the Weasleys did, not yet,  but in a way that mattered.

He belonged because Scorpius did. Because Hermione was here. Because the man he had become allowed for softness where the boy he once was would not.

Hermione wasn’t the only one spectating. Susan had arrived sometime during the chaos, Hugo perched comfortably on her hip, one tiny fist tangled in his mother’s hair as though steering her like a broom.

“Ronald Weasley!” Susan called, weaving through the uneven grass with the ease of someone who had survived both Auror training and raising small children. “You’re absolutely cheating!”

Ron, who was attempting to block Draco by waving his arms like a windmill, shouted back, “I am NOT!”

“You stepped into the scoring circle!” Susan yelled. “And if you make me pull my badge on you, Ron-”

Ron groaned loudly. “Merlin’s beard, Susan, we’re married! You can’t arrest me!”

Susan adjusted Hugo on her hip, unimpressed. “I can and I will. The law applies to everyone. Especially you.”

Hermione snorted.

Hugo babbled happily, reaching toward Draco as if he had decided the man was the most interesting thing in the field. Draco, mid-pass with the Quaffle, paused long enough to blink at the toddler pointing at him like an accusation.

Susan sighed. “Yes, Hugo, that’s your mummy’s coworker. The one who keeps sending your Uncle Harry home with scorch marks.”

“That was one time,” Draco muttered.

“It was three,” Susan corrected.

Hermione turned her attention downward as small fingers curled into her own.

Rose. Five years old, hair everywhere, expression permanently unimpressed - a perfect blend of Ron’s stubbornness and Susan’s convictions.

“I hate sports,” Rose announced solemnly, swinging Hermione’s hand with absolute finality. “Everyone’s sweaty and loud.”

Hermione bit back a laugh. “You don’t have to like sports, sweetheart.”

“Good,” Rose said. Then added, very gravely, “Quidditch is stupid.”

Hermione squeezed her hand. “Don’t let your father hear that.”

“It’s stupid,” Rose repeated, louder, just as Ron missed a catch and fell directly into a bush.

Susan cupped one of her hands around her mouth. “THAT’S A FOUL!”

Ron shouted something unprintable back, which made Hugo cheer and Rose roll her eyes with perfect five-year-old disdain.

Draco, meanwhile, retrieved the Quaffle with quiet dignity and pretended not to know any of these people.

Hermione took in the scene. Rose at her side, Hugo waving drooly enthusiasm from Susan’s arms, Ron yelling, Draco pretending the rules of physics and social chaos did not apply to him, Scorpius and Albus shrieking with delight on their brooms over a gnome they’d rebranded as a dragon.

The game dissolved when Lily’s enchanted pixies began stealing the Quaffle, and Ron argued that “that is absolutely cheating,” and Lily countered that “pixies don’t follow rules, Uncle Ron,” which, judging by Fred and George’s surviving jokes littering the garage, was entirely true.

People drifted.

Molly summoned lemonade. Arthur tried to convince Scorpius that gnomes were perfectly friendly (they weren’t). Harry pulled Ron aside to discuss something quietly, probably work-related. The children ran in spirals of laughter.

Hermione exhaled, letting the warmth of the moment sink in.

Draco wandered toward her, still catching his breath. His hair was windswept, slightly damp at the temples, and Hermione thought, absurdly, that she had never seen him look more alive.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” she asked.

He scoffed. “Weasley cheats.”

“You cheated first.”

“I did not.”

“You stepped on the boundary line.”

“That line was conceptual at best.”

She laughed. He tried, and failed, not to smile.

A quiet settled between them, not uncomfortable, not uncertain. Just quiet, the kind that suggested the world had narrowed to the two of them for a moment.

Hermione glanced toward Scorpius, who was now crouched beside Albus, both boys whispering conspiratorially over something in the grass. Lily tried to eavesdrop. James proclaimed himself Minister of Dragon Affairs.

Draco followed her gaze.

“He’s happy,” he said softly.

“He is,” she agreed.

“I didn’t think…” Draco hesitated, swallowing. “I didn’t think he’d ever fit this easily anywhere.”

Hermione’s voice gentled. “He fits with you.”

Draco’s lips parted, not in disbelief, but in something quieter, more vulnerable.

“He fits here,” Hermione continued. “Because he feels safe. And because you’ve been helping him to be someone who can trust safety when he finds it.”

Draco looked away abruptly, blinking hard at the horizon as though the sky might steady him.

Hermione felt the shift in him, the same one she had felt countless times in the Manor, in the lamplight of the library, reading side by side. A subtle unraveling. A loosening of shields.

They stood together for a moment, listening to the wind chimes sing.

The Burrow smelled of cut grass and apples and sun-warmed earth. Somewhere inside, a kettle hissed softly. The upper floors rocked faintly in the breeze.

“It’s strange,” Draco said, voice low. “I used to think homes like this were… frivolous.”

“Frivolous?” Hermione lifted a brow.

He gestured vaguely. “Colorful. Loud. Overcrowded. Falling apart.”

“And now?”

Draco considered the question carefully. Finally, he said, “Now it feels alive.”

Hermione’s breath caught.

He wasn’t talking only about the Burrow. He was talking about the Manor, the way it had changed after the war, the way Scorpius’s laughter filled its halls, the way Hermione’s presence had stirred something in its stone bones.

“You’ve made your home alive too,” she said quietly.

He didn’t answer immediately.

Then-

“Not alone,” Draco murmured. “I… haven’t been doing it alone.”

Hermione’s pulse stuttered.

Before she could respond, a shriek of delighted laughter erupted across the yard.

“DADDY, LOOK!” Scorpius cried.

He was on his little practice broom again, hovering all of four inches off the ground, arms spread wide as if flying above clouds.

Draco’s breath broke. Just a sound. Small. Sharp. Emotional.

Hermione touched his arm without thinking, a steadying gesture, warm and instinctive. His muscles tightened beneath her palm, then eased.

“You’re doing well,” she whispered.

His eyes flicked to hers. Grey, bright, raw.

“So are you,” he said.

She froze.

Something new hummed between them, bright as wandlight, soft as a birthday candle’s flame.

A call. A pull. A possibility neither of them dared name.

Before either could speak, Ginny strode toward them, smirking.

“Well,” Ginny announced cheerfully, “you two are having a moment.”

Draco nearly choked. Hermione elbowed Ginny so hard she wheezed.

“Thank Merlin,” Ginny croaked. “Subtlety never was my strength.”

Hermione wanted the earth to swallow her whole.

Ginny winked and sauntered off, leaving silence - stunned, awkward, sizzling silence - in her wake.

Hermione cleared her throat. Draco folded his arms as though physically anchoring himself.

“We should… check on Scorpius,” Hermione said.

“Yes,” Draco replied too quickly.

They both stepped forward, at the same time, nearly colliding.

“Oh- for Merlin’s sake,” Hermione muttered.

Draco’s mouth twitched again.

And somehow, impossibly, the moment softened.

The sun dipped lower, softening the garden into a wash of amber and honey. Long shadows stretched across the grass as the early evening settled in, draping the Burrow in a glow that made every crooked angle look intentional, like a quilt pieced together from the best parts of life.

Hermione watched as Scorpius and Albus ran in dizzying circles, Lily toddling behind them with a flower crown sliding off her hair. James, newly self-appointed Minister of Dragon Affairs, had assembled a committee meeting under the old oak tree, which consisted mostly of him giving orders and the others happily ignoring them.

She felt Draco approach before she heard him. He had a gravity to him, not heavy, not dark, just… noticeable. Present in a way she was still getting used to.

He stood beside her without speaking, watching the children carve circles through the grass, their laughter carried on the warm drift of early evening. Hermione could feel the nearness of him, not intrusive, simply there, as though he moved through the world now with a deliberate awareness of where she was.

“They look happy,” Draco said softly.

“They are.” Hermione followed Scorpius with her gaze as he darted behind the oak tree, pretending to hide from James’s imaginary dragon patrol. “It’s good for him. For all of them.”

A small hum of agreement vibrated in Draco’s throat. Then, after a pause heavy with what tomorrow meant, he asked, “Are you ready for it?”

Hermione didn’t need clarification. Tomorrow had been a shadow at the edge of her mind all day. The trek into the valley where starfire asphodel was rumored to bloom only under very specific conditions. Rare. Temperamental. Dangerous if harvested incorrectly. But necessary.

“As ready as I can be,” she said.

Draco exhaled slowly, as if steadying himself with her answer. “Good. Because we’ll need all the focus we can get.”

“We’ve trained for worse.”

“But this time-” Draco stopped, jaw tightening. Hermione saw him swallow down the fear that accompanied any conversation involving Scorpius’s curse. “This time it matters more.”

Hermione turned to him fully. “We’ll find it, Draco.”

He didn’t nod. Not at first. His eyes stayed on the children - on Scorpius lifting the crooked little practice broom, on Albus cheering him on as though he’d been born for the sky.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, roughened at the edges. “I have to believe that.”

“And I do,” Hermione said. “For both of us.”

Something in his posture loosened, not relief exactly, but the beginnings of trust settling deeper into him.

“We’ll go over the extraction protocols again tonight,” Draco said, more firmly now. “After this. When we’re back at the Manor.”

Hermione nodded. “Of course. I was thinking we should revise the lunar alignment charts as well, the bloom cycle isn’t perfectly stable in that region.”

“Good.” Draco’s voice warmed slightly, the way it always did when work gave him something to anchor himself to. “And I need to check the stabilizing runes again. I want our equipment ready before we go through the French gateway.”

Hermione smiled. “We make a good team.”

Draco looked at her then, really looked, and something unspoken flickered between them, something fragile and steady and growing in the quiet spaces they’d begun to share.

“Yes,” he said, the word soft but certain. “We do.”

The children shrieked again, dissolving the moment. Scorpius raced toward them, breathless and glowing, Lily stumbling close behind with her flower crown now fully sideways.

Draco’s expression softened instantly.

Hermione felt something warm unfurl in her chest, something that made tomorrow seem a little less daunting.

Harry appeared near the back door, calling the children inside for supper. The sun had dropped to a molten line on the horizon, and the air hummed with that gentle quiet that comes right before dusk settles.

Inside, the fairy lights blinked on one by one. The kitchen glowed. Laughter drifted.

The children barreled past Harry in a tangle of small limbs and high-pitched chatter, racing each other toward the long kitchen table as though supper were a competitive sport. Lily tripped over a rug and immediately declared it the rug’s fault. James leapt over her dramatically. Scorpius tugged Albus by the sleeve, both of them breathless with excitement.

Hermione and Draco followed more slowly, stepping into the warmth of the Burrow as the door swung shut behind them. The air was thick with the scent of Molly’s stew, a low simmering pot humming on the stove. Fairy lights reflected in the windows like tiny, patient stars. It felt… safe. Undeniably, overwhelmingly safe.

Ginny intercepted them before they reached the table, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched with unmistakable mischief.

“So,” she said casually, “just thought you should know, Scorp and Al are planning a sleepover.”

Draco stopped mid-step. “A what?”

Ginny grinned. “A sleepover, Malfoy. You know, two small humans under one roof, giggling until dawn, collapsing from exhaustion, that sort of thing.”

Draco opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I- well, I hadn’t- Hermione?”

Hermione smothered a laugh. “He’ll be fine, Draco.”

Ginny waved a dismissive hand. “More than fine. And honestly, it makes tomorrow easier. Harry and I already talked about it. Scorp can stay with Albus at our place tonight. Saves you two the back-and-forth before the France trip.”

From the kitchen, Molly chimed in as though fully briefed, “I’ll pack him snacks before you go! And a jumper! And-”

“Mum,” Ginny called, amused. “They’re not even leaving yet.”

Draco looked like someone had cast a gentle Confundus Charm on him, not distressed, just… undone.

“He wants to stay?” he asked Hermione quietly, almost disbelieving.

Hermione softened. “Draco… he adores being with Albus. And he’ll be safe. And happy. And only a floo away.”

Scorpius chose that moment to dash back over, eyes bright, cheeks flushed from play.

“Daddy!” he said, grabbing Draco’s hand with both of his tiny ones. “Can I sleep at Albus’s house tonight? He said we can build a pillow fort and maybe, even if Aunt Ginny says no, maybe we can stay up until the stars come out.”

Draco blinked. Once. Twice. Something in him melted with each blink.

“You… want to?” he asked, voice steadier than Hermione expected.

Scorpius nodded so earnestly his hair flopped over his eyebrows. “Yes. Please?”

Hermione watched Draco’s expression shift, surprise giving way to tenderness, then to a quiet acceptance that made her chest tighten.

“Yes,” Draco said softly. “If you want to, then yes.”

Scorpius beamed, brilliant, bursting, and threw his arms around Draco’s waist. Draco froze for half a heartbeat before lowering a hand to his back, steady and gentle.

Ginny leaned toward Hermione, whispering with zero remorse, “He’s toast.”

Hermione elbowed her. Ginny only grinned wider.

They all moved toward the table then, children squabbling over chairs, Molly fussing with spoons, Arthur explaining to Albus why kneazles couldn’t legally run for Minister of Magic.

Hermione cast one last glance at Draco as he settled beside Scorpius, the golden light catching the edges of his hair, softening him in ways she wasn’t ready to think about.

Tomorrow, they would stand side by side in a foreign valley, searching for a plant that bloomed under fire and starlight. Tomorrow, the weight of the curse would return, heavy and urgent.

But here, in the warmth of the Burrow, with stew on the stove and laughter at the walls, there was a brief, precious pause. 

As every visit, it felt like family. It felt like home. It felt like hope.

Chapter Text

Hermione woke slowly, the kind of waking that comes after too many thoughts and not enough sleep. Warm blankets. A soft pillow. The faint smell of cedar, lavender, and… peacocks?

Right. Malfoy Manor.

Not because she lived here now, Merlin no, but because last night, after the Burrow, she and Draco had stayed in the library until well past midnight finalizing ward protocol, scanning runes, and drafting the DMLE travel clearance for today’s mission.

And then he’d insisted she not apparate or floo alone in the dark after an active Death Eater resurfaced. It wasn’t a dramatic moment. Just: “You’re staying. It’s safer.”

And she had simply nodded, tired enough, trusting enough, to accept the guest room down the hall. The bed was absurdly comfortable. The silence was ancient. And yet, sleep had only come in pieces.

Her mind replayed the memory of Saturday’s DMLE briefing:

Harry at the head of the table, jaw tight, eyes steady in that way that always hurt a little to see, too much bravery housed inside a boy who never wanted it. “You two go Monday morning. You’ll have Auror backup on portkey standby. Covenant wards will track you every hour. If anything feels off, you abort. No pride missions.”

Hermione had opened her mouth to argue; Draco beat her to it. “We’re not dying for ritual flowers,” he’d said dryly.

Harry had smirked, weary affection in his voice. “Good. I need you alive. Both of you.”

Ron had muttered, “If Malfoy gets eaten by a magical shrub, we’re never living it down.”

Susan had tapped her quill, thoughtful. “This is the best shot we’ve had in decades at breaking a hereditary curse. You’re doing this for more than Scorpious. You’re doing it for every child who gets punished for blood they never asked for.”

Hermione remembered how Draco’s hand had tightened slightly on the table, not trembling, but close.

And then, the thing that had undone her a little: Harry looking at her quietly and saying “We’ve got you. If anything touches you, anything, we’re there in seconds.”

Not just as Head Auror. As her family. It was strange how love made you brave. Stranger still how fear did too.

Hermione exhaled now, staring at the Manor ceiling. She heard soft footsteps. A kettle downstairs. Voices. And then-

A pop.

Mippy materialized at the foot of the bed, wearing a tiny purple waistcoat and spectacles. She looked like a magical professor who moonlit as a tea cozy.

“Mistress Hermione is awake!” she squeaked. “Breakfast is ready. Master Draco is packing three cloaks, two maps, five emergency potions, and one Very Important Biscuit Tin.”

Hermione blinked. “Biscuit tin?”

“For nerves,” Mippy whispered seriously. “Master Draco has many.”

Hermione smiled helplessly. “I know.”

Mippy’s ears twitched. “Little stars are at the Potters’ house still. They fell asleep making pillow fort. Master Scorpius snored like baby dragon. Very dignified.”

Her heart warmed. “Good. I’m glad.”

Mippy leaned close, conspiratorial. “Missus Narcissa is feeding breakfast to the anxious father. It is adorable.”

Hermione snorted. “Then I should save her.”

***

The kitchen of Malfoy Manor had somehow become cozy. She still didn’t understand it. Magic? Interior design? Narcissa deciding the world had been bleak long enough and therefore installing teapots that talked if one looked lonely? Maybe all of them.

Soft morning light spilled in. Copper pans hung from enchanted hooks, some stirring themselves on the stove. A tiny greenhouse window held herbs and moon lilies. Narcissa stood at the stove stirring porridge, that glittered faintly like starlight caught in steam.

Draco sat at the table, elbows braced, mug untouched, brows knotted. He wore a storm-grey jumper and travel trousers, parchment spread before him, boots half-laced. The picture of a man trying very hard not to be terrified for his child.

Narcissa turned the moment Hermione entered. “Good morning, dear.”

“Morning,” Hermione managed. “It smells wonderful.”

“I made honey-spice porridge and rosemary rolls,” Narcissa said, then added casually, “and anti-anxiety tea.”

Draco muttered into his mug, “I’m not anxious.”

Both women hummed in disbelief.

Hermione sat. Draco slid a plate toward her without looking up. It felt… domestic.

“You slept?” he asked finally.

“Eventually,” she admitted. “You?”

A shrug. “Read until sunrise. Excellent coping, obviously.”

Narcissa pressed a steaming cup into his hands. “Drink. You will not be useful if you faint.”

He glared with no heat and obeyed.

Hermione hid a smile.

Before she could speak again, green fire roared in the hearth, and Harry’s head popped through.

“Morning! Both children alive! House intact! Ginny only cried once!”

Hermione blinked. “Why did she cry?”

“She stepped on a toy broom. Emotional injury.” He lowered his voice. “Also she loves Scorpius. He asked her if she thought stars get lonely.”

Hermione pressed a hand to her heart. Draco’s eyes flicked over, softening.

Harry cleared his throat. “Portkey’s activated for backup. Auror Carson will shadow the perimeter from here. If anything feels off, pull out.”

Draco nodded. “Understood.”

Harry’s gaze flicked between them, something protective, something proud, something relieved. “Come back in one piece, yeah?”

Hermione smiled. “We will.”

Draco murmured, “We better.”

Harry grinned and vanished in emerald sparks.

Silence hovered. Soft. Steady.

Hermione rose. “We should go.”

Draco stood too quickly, caught himself, ran a hand through his hair. “Right. Yes.”

Narcissa came around the table, and for a moment Hermione wasn’t sure who she hugged first. “Bring each other home,” she murmured.

A chill slid down Hermione’s spine. But she nodded.

***

The world shifted with the portkey delivering them. Frost-kissed air, ancient trees arching overhead like cathedral ribs, the quiet hum of old battlefield magic deep beneath their boots.

Hermione inhaled, steadying. “Beautiful,” she whispered.

Draco nodded.

They began their trek together, boots crunching lightly over patches of silver moss. Above them, the sun had already begun its climb toward its peak - the reason they had to arrive early, the reason every step mattered.

Hermione found herself talking about Sage and Briony, about her patients, about how healing had saved her when battle hadn’t ended inside her.

Draco listened. Really listened.

“I thought,” she confessed at one point, “when the war ended, peace would just… arrive. Like the sun after the rain. But it came in choosing life over and over.”

He looked at her, eyes unreadable and burning. “You didn’t survive the world. You rebuilt it.”

Hermione’s breath trembled. “And you?” she asked. “How did you rebuild yours?”

Draco traced a protective rune into the earth, fingers steady even if his voice wasn’t. “By refusing to become my father. By choosing a child over legacy. By learning that love isn’t… inherited. It’s built.”

Something inside her cracked open.

They walked on through the sloping French valley, where winter clung to the shade but spring warmed the light. The air held that crisp stillness unique to northern ranges, an old magic that whispered in needles of pine and in the slow thaw of snow.

Hermione brushed her fingers along the ridge of her satchel. “When we first mapped this valley,” she said, “the starlight residue readings were faint. Almost nonexistent.”

“That’s because there weren’t any,” Draco replied. “Your hypothesis was the only thing that made sense. If starfire asphodel needs soil untouched by destructive magic for at least twenty years, then the places we ruled out formed a pattern.”

Hermione nodded. “Every valley that failed the criteria had documented magical interference after the Second War. But here-” She gestured to the mountains. “This land hasn’t seen a spell since the First Goblin Insurrection. It’s practically sacred.”

“Unscarred earth,” Draco said quietly. “Stubbornly rare.”

“And the solar effect?” Hermione added, glancing upward at the brightening sky.

Draco’s mouth quirked, not quite a smile, but something thoughtful. “Your theory again. That under direct noonday light, when the snow melts just enough, the petals refract the sunlight instead of starlight. A different kind of illumination. A different bloom.”

Hermione flushed, not because of praise, but because he made it sound like something important. True.

“If we’re lucky, they’ll become visible only for a few minutes,” she said. “When the sunlight hits the ridge at the right angle.”

“And then vanish again when the snow refreezes.” Draco exhaled. “A plant that only appears at the moment snow loosens its grip and gives into fire. Stubborn indeed.”

Hermione smiled. “Perfect for us, then.”

They walked in silence for a stretch. The sun climbed higher.

Hermione glanced sideways. “You didn’t sleep much last night.”

He huffed a humorless breath. “You make a habit of stating obvious truths.”

“Occupational hazard,” she said gently. “Healers need to see what hurts.”

His jaw flexed. A muscle ticked. For a moment, he didn’t answer, only scanned the tree line, wand loose but ready in his hand. The air smelled of pine resin and frost.

Finally-

“Every time I close my eyes,” he murmured, “I see him burning.”

She stopped walking.

Draco kept staring forward, rigid, still, like if he moved the thought would swallow him whole.

“He was three when it first happened,” he said quietly. “I held him through it and his magic lashed at me.” Raw. Wild. Not malicious, just terrified. “And I realized… if anyone took him from me, I wouldn’t survive it.”

Hermione’s breath caught, not in fear, but in recognition. A bone-deep ache. Love like armor and wound all at once.

“And now,” he continued, voice lower, “I’m fighting two wars. One against a curse that might kill him. One against men who would steal him to break me.”

She stepped closer, slow, careful, as though approaching a wounded phoenix.

“You’re not alone in either war.”

He laughed softly, rough edges, disbelief threading through. “Sometimes I still think if I blink wrong, I’ll open my eyes and be back in a manor suffocating under my father’s shadow. That everything I’ve built is an illusion.”

Hermione’s hand found his forearm, tentative, then firm when she felt him freeze beneath her touch and not pull away.

“You built a life,” she whispered. “Not in spite of what you survived, but after it. That’s harder. That’s braver.”

He swallowed. Hard. “I keep waiting to lose it.”

“You won’t.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“No,” she said softly. “But I can promise you won’t face it alone.”

He looked at her then, really looked. And something undefended flickered across his face. A crack in careful walls. A prayer disguised as fear.

Without meaning to, Hermione’s fingers brushed his wrist, warm skin, pulse jumping under her thumb. They both stilled.

They stood like that, breath mingling in cool mountain air, the world held between the spaces of everything they never said.

Then, a sound: delicate, crystalline, like the soft sigh of thawing petals.

Hermione’s gaze snapped downward.

There, nestled in melting frost, slender petals shimmered pale gold under the noon-bright sun. Starfire asphodel, blooming in the exact moment snow surrendered its hold.

Her breath caught. “Draco.”

He followed her gaze. For a moment, all fear and war and dread fell away, washed clean by wonder.

“We found it,” he exhaled, voice almost reverent. “Merlin, Granger… we actually-”

She squeezed his sleeve, grounding both of them. “We did.”

Hope, terrifying and wild, bloomed like a new star between them.

Draco knelt first, reverent, boyish awe flickering through his guarded features.

Hermione knelt beside him. Their shoulders brushed. The world held.

“This is for him,” Draco murmured. “For Scorp.”

“And for you,” Hermione whispered. “For the life you’re choosing.”

***

By the time they took the portkey back to the Manor, it was early afternoon. The shift from the bright, frost-kissed valley to the soft, amber-lit hall of the Manor felt almost surreal. And yet, the house felt warm. Lived in. Like it had taken a breath.

The moment their feet touched the floor, Crookshanks trotted in with imperial purpose, tail high, inspecting the basket of asphodel as though issuing a royal decree of approval. Hermione managed a shaky laugh. Draco exhaled something halfway between disbelief and relief, running a hand through his hair, leaving it slightly mussed.

They had done it. They had actually done it.

Before either of them could speak, there was a soft rustle from the corridor.

Narcissa.

She stood in the doorway as though she had been rooted there for hours, waiting for the moment magic would bring her son and grandson’s hope home. Her gaze darted immediately to the basket, to the faint glow of the starfire asphodel nestled within layers of protective cloth.

Her breath broke.

“Draco,” she whispered, one hand rising to her mouth. Her eyes shone, not with panic, not with fear, but with a fragile trembling hope Hermione had never seen on her face.

Draco straightened instinctively, as though bracing for judgment. But Narcissa moved toward him slowly, reverently, fingers brushing the edge of the basket as though afraid the miracle might dissolve if she touched it too boldly.

“You found it,” she breathed. “You truly found it.”

Hermione watched as something inside Narcissa fractured, beautifully, quietly. A single breath too sharp, a shimmer of tears gathering before she blinked them back with practiced grace. It was not weakness. It was relief, so profound it trembled through her like light.

Then Narcissa got closer, first to Draco, cupping his cheek with a gentleness that made Hermione’s heart ache, thumb brushing a smudge of frost from his skin.

But when her gaze shifted to Hermione, something even softer settled there.

“My dear,” Narcissa whispered, stepping toward her, “it was your mind that led them to it. Your courage. Your persistence.”

Before Hermione could respond, Narcissa reached for her hands, enclosing them between her own cool, elegant fingers.

“Thank you,” she said, voice breaking in a way that felt like a secret being entrusted. “For giving my grandson a chance. For giving my son hope.”

Hermione felt her breath catch. The warmth of Narcissa’s gratitude, of her affection, wrapped around her like silk. It was not performative. Not polite. It was real.

“I merely followed the evidence,” Hermione murmured, overwhelmed, “but I’m glad it brought us here.”

Narcissa squeezed her hands once more, reverent. “You brought us here.”

Then she drew a steadying breath, shoulders lifting with renewed purpose.

“I’ll- Mippy!” Narcissa turned, voice wavering with softness. “They must be starving. Tell the elves to prepare a luncheon immediately.”

A pop sounded as Mippy appeared, bowing so deeply she nearly toppled forward. “Right away, Mistress Narcissa! Master Draco! Miss Hermione! Welcome home!”

Narcissa touched Draco’s arm, a gesture so tender Hermione felt it in her own chest, then swept out to give instructions, spine tall, determination radiating from her like a protective ward.

The moment the hall fell quiet again, Hermione released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Draco did the same.

“You did well today,” she said softly.

He looked at her, truly looke, and the rawness in his expression nearly undid her.

“So did you,” he murmured.

Silence stretched, warm and electric. Not a barrier, never that. More like an open door neither had dared to cross yet.

Hermione cleared her throat, gathering herself. “I should send word.”

Draco nodded, stepping slightly closer, as though reluctant to break the moment. “Yes. Let them know.”

Hermione lifted her wand.

A silver otter burst into existence, bright and dancing, and she whispered to it, “Harry, we got it. It’s safe. We’re home.”

The otter vanished through the wall in a shimmering trail.

Another Patronus took form, sleek and bright, carrying her voice across the distance to Ginny. “We’re back. Scorp’s safe to come through whenever you’re ready.”

The light faded.

Hermione let her shoulders relax for the first time since dawn. The asphodel glowed gently through its wrappings like starlight caught in petals.

And just when she thought the quiet might settle-

A shriek from the fireplace.

“MIONE!!! I MADE A DRAGON THAT BREATHES MARSHMALLOW SMOKE!”

Scorpius barreled out of the floo in a tornado of glitter and sticky sugar, arms spread triumphantly, hair sparkling with what looked suspiciously like enchanted edible confetti. Behind him, Ginny stepped through, smug, victorious, and covered in far more glitter than seemed legally permissible.

“We did crafts,” she announced, brushing a star-shaped sparkle off her sleeve. “Art builds character.”

Hermione laughed, but Ginny didn’t stop there. She crossed the room in three strides and pulled Hermione into a fierce hug.

“You did it,” Ginny whispered, voice rough with pride. “Hermione, you actually did it.”

Hermione’s eyes stung unexpectedly. “We did.”

Ginny squeezed harder. “I’m so damn proud of you.”

When she pulled back, she slapped Draco’s shoulder with zero ceremony. “You too, Malfoy. Good job not dying.”

Draco blinked. “That was never-”

“Shh,” Ginny said, turning toward the glitter-covered child already attempting to demonstrate the dragon’s breath attack. “Celebrate later. Clean-up first.”

Draco made a faint noise of despair.

Hermione laughed again, heart full, overflowing.

Ginny winked to Draco. “Dinner’s at ours next Friday. Bring your brooding face, Malfoy.”

Draco scowled. Scorpius giggled. Crookshanks meowed in judgment.

They had done it. The first real step. The first break in the curse’s impossible wall.

Hope glowed in the basket between them, warm as sunlight. Alive as breath. Bright as the future shifting beneath their feet.

Chapter Text

(Draco’s POV)

For the second night in a row, Hermione Granger slept under his roof.

Not out of emergency. Not because of Dolohov’s shadow still prowling the edges of the wizarding world.

This time, it was because neither of them had noticed the hour slipping into dawn.

The asphodel from France lay spread across the long table in the library, parchment glowing with starlight-ink formulas, rune diagrams half-translated, potion matrices scattered like constellations waiting for shape.

She had pushed and pushed, refusing to stop until she’d mapped the metabolic stabilization path three different ways, insisting they double-check trigger runes, refusing to risk Scorpius’s health on a theory that wasn’t airtight.

Draco had told her, at least four times, to go home.

She’d ignored him, at least four times, in four increasingly sharp tones.

And then, somewhere near 2 a.m., she’d simply… fallen asleep in the armchair, quill slipping from her fingers, a sheet of notes fluttering to the carpet.

He’d woken her gently, murmured that she needed an actual bed, and she had blinked up at him, exhausted and stubborn and soft around the edges, and agreed far too quickly.

Overtired, he had thought.

Trusting, something quieter had whispered.

So he’d guided her to the guest wing again, Crookshanks padding at her heels like a personal guard, and she’d murmured a thank-you with half-closed eyes before disappearing behind the door.

No theatrics. Just quiet, bone-deep fatigue and… safety.

And then, as if fate herself wanted to test his composure, Albus Potter was also here tonight.

Because Scorpius, small tyrant that he was, had declared: “Albus saw my house in pictures, but pictures aren’t real. He needs to meet the dragons.” (The peacocks. Salazar help them.)

Potter and Ginevra had laughed and agreed, and now the boys slept in Scorpius’s room, wand-nightlights glowing, toy wands abandoned on the floor, Crookshanks wedged between them like he owned the Manor.

Draco had intended to sleep. He’d even tried.

But instead, he found himself pacing the corridor again, wand in hand, shirtsleeves rolled, hair a mess from running nervous fingers through it.

Every instinct sharpened after the war. Quiet nights made him uneasy. Happy children made him protective. And Hermione Granger sleeping down the hall made him feel…

He couldn’t name it.

Was there even a word for something that felt like standing at the edge of a cliff after years underground? For realizing the world was bigger than the fear that built you?

She unsettled him more than any curse ever had.

Because she walked through his home as if she somehow belonged nowhere and everywhere at once, a contradiction carved of stubborn hope and quiet resilience.

Because she faced pain without flinching, not in the reckless way soldiers do when they believe dying is noble, but in the way healers do when they believe living is worth fighting for.

Because she cared in a way that burned; fierce, uncompromising, infuriating. A loyalty that wasn’t inherited by blood or demanded by legacy, but chosen. Earned. Because she would bleed for Scorpius without hesitation, and he didn’t know what to do with a heart that had grown used to emptiness suddenly wanting too much.

He never apologized to her. Not properly. Not in words that mattered, or in a place where his pride wasn’t holding the quill. And now she sat at his table, studied beside him, fought for his son like she had every right to, and he knew he didn’t deserve a fraction of it.

He had been so cruel to her. Deliberately. He remembered every swallowed insult, every time he had chosen cowardice disguised as cruelty over decency disguised as courage. He remembered wanting her to break because he was breaking. There was no redemption in excuses. Childhood. Blood. A war he didn’t ask for but still bled into.

He didn’t deserve her help. He didn’t deserve her kindness. He didn’t deserve the softness that occasionally flickered in her eyes when she looked at Scorp, or at him, like they were both worth saving.

Guilt sat heavy in his ribs, familiar, suffocating. The sort that didn’t fade, only shifted shape. But there was something else too, sharp, fragile, terrifying.

Want.

Not desire, though there was that, quiet and startled, like a new flame afraid of wind. But want in a deeper, bone-marrow sense. Wanting a life where he didn’t wake every morning preparing to lose everything. Wanting to believe he could stand beside someone instead of always bracing to be left behind.

And yet, loss lived in his blood.

He had lost Astoria in a way that scarred. The kind of grief that doesn’t drown you at once, but drips into the cracks until you wake one morning and realize you’ve been living underwater. She had been his calm after the storm, not a grand passion, but a safe harbor when all he had ever known was hunger and expectation and fear.

Loving her had been quiet. Losing her had been brutal. Part of him still believed love was a gamble he had already paid for once, and lost.

What right did he have to want again? What right did he have to put Scorpius at risk of more loss? What if opening the door to someone else meant losing them both?

He wasn’t sure he knew how to survive that. So he told himself this was just gratitude. Just partnership. Just… human proximity after too many years alone.

A lie so thin he could almost see through it.

He dragged a breath in, slowly, and the memory of the dream he had a few nights ago slipped back in before he could stop it.

It had started in mist. Not fog, not smoke, but something thinner, colder; the kind of mist that curled around your ankles and refused to say whether it came from winter or memory. Draco stood on the Manor grounds, except the Manor didn’t look like itself. It shifted at the edges, as if it couldn’t decide which decade it belonged to.

The yew trees were dead. And blooming. And dead again. Every blink changed them.

He hated that. Dreams without logic made him feel twelve again. He walked forward anyway.

Somewhere in the shifting haze, he saw a figure sitting on a low stone wall with pale hair, long dress, and head bowed. Not Hermione. Not exactly Astoria either. More like a silhouette of what he had lost: quiet companionship, stillness, a life that had slipped through his fingers without giving him the chance to say he wasn’t ready.

He didn’t approach. He didn’t want to.

But the figure lifted her face, not with accusation, not with longing. Simply… acknowledgment.

And then she dissolved. Just like that. Like fog burned away by sudden sunlight.

His breath stuttered.

Because the light that followed, bright, gold, warm in a way he had never associated with the Manor, wasn’t sunlight at all.

It was her. Hermione.

Not standing, not walking, just arriving, as if the light itself delivered her.

She wore no robes, no battle scars, no exhaustion. Only soft white linen and a faint glow around her edges, like she was the answer to a question he had been avoiding for months.

He wanted to look away. Instead, he moved toward her.

The ground under his feet shifted; cobblestone turning to grass, grass to polished stone, stone to the hardwood floor of the Manor library. The dream had no intention of letting him control it.

Hermione reached out one hand.

Not toward him,  just to the air. A gesture of curiosity, of testing the temperature, of grounding herself.

But his chest tightened anyway, because the light around her flickered.

As if she could vanish too. As if everything gentle in his life was made of mist and endings.

He stepped closer, instinctive, protective, and the moment he did, the entire dreamscape stilled. The mist dropped. The air brightened. The library shelves righted themselves like soldiers standing at attention.

Hermione turned toward him, and he woke. Violently. Heart pounding. Shirt damp at the collar. Hands clenched hard enough to ache.

He sat up in the dark, breath harsh, and told himself - firmly, logically, ruthlessly - that it meant nothing.

Just a dream. Just exhaustion. Just the mind confusing gratitude with longing.

But he knew better.

He knew dreams where loss chased him. He knew dreams twisted by fear. He knew dreams he wished he could forget.

This one wasn’t any of those. This one was worse, because it felt like a warning.

Hermione Granger made him feel like perhaps there was something after grief. After duty. After the quiet guilt of surviving more than he deserved.

And that possibility, terrifying, fragile, unbearable, was the first thing in years that felt more dangerous than war.

He could not survive losing someone like her. To lose again. 

So he exhaled sharply, forced his shoulders back, and shoved the dream down deep enough that even memory would struggle to find it.

A lie so thin he could almost see through it.

He shook his head and turned, intending to check the boys one last time, when-

A sound tore through the hallway.

A choked breath. A strangled sob.

Then-

“No! stop! Please- don’t-”

Granger.

There was no thought in his body, only movement. He slammed her door open, wand raised, heart slamming against his ribs-

She sat upright in the bed, fists tangled in the sheets, eyes wild, breath tearing through her chest.

“Bellatrix…” she gasped, voice breaking. “Get off- get off me-”

Draco’s throat tightened violently. The world snapped small.

“Granger.” His voice shocked him, low, urgent, gentle. “You’re not there. Look at me.”

She struggled, breath coming in harsh, animal panic.

He crossed the room in two strides, dropped to the edge of the bed, but didn’t touch, not yet, not without permission.

“Granger. It’s me. You’re safe.”

Her eyes darted to his, unfocused, haunted, then slowly clearing.

Recognition hit like a gasp.

“ Mal- … Draco?” Her voice was broken glass.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “It’s me.”

She shuddered, one violent tremor rolling through her. He reached out slowly, letting her see his hand first, and when she didn’t pull away, he touched her wrist, light, careful, grounding.

“You’re not there,” he murmured again. “You’re here. In the Manor. Two small gremlins are sleeping in the next room and one homicidal peacock is standing watch outside your window.”

A shaky laugh escaped her, the kind born from pain and relief colliding.

He sat beside her then, not touching elsewhere, but close enough she could feel solidity, warmth, presence.

Her eyes brimmed. Not fear, not now, but the aftermath of drowning.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, hating the weakness she felt.

“Don’t,” he said, too quickly, voice rough. “Don’t ever apologize for surviving something like that.”

The silence that followed felt like a spell itself, humming, fragile, sacred.

When she finally exhaled, her shoulders loosened. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t have to be,” he answered. Soft but firm. “Not with me.”

Her breath hitched, surprise flickering across her face.

He swallowed hard. “Do you want me to stay until you fall asleep?”

For a moment he thought she’d say no. That she’d protect him from the weight of caring.

But she closed her eyes and whispered, “Yes.”

So he stayed.

Not touching. Not intruding. Just presence.

He watched the tension leave her body slowly, watched her breathing settle, watched her fall back into sleep, this time gentler.

Only when he was certain her dreams had softened did he stand.

He hesitated at the door. He wasn’t supposed to feel this. Not protective to the point of ache. Not furious at the past on her behalf. Not terrified of the thought of losing her.

He should be grateful for her help and nothing more. He should keep his distance. He should not be imagining a world where she stays.

Merlin, he was in trouble.

Without thinking, he slid down the wall beside her door and sat, wand across his knees, back straight, as if guarding a battlefield.

But this wasn’t duty. It was devotion he refused to name.

(end of Draco’s POV)

***

Sunlight crept in gently, soft and gold, pooling across the duvet in slow-moving warmth. Hermione surfaced from sleep the way one rises through water, cautiously, breath steady, surprised to find peace waiting instead of panic.

No screaming. No cold stone floor beneath her knees. No shadow-laughs or manic eyes or-

She inhaled. Lavender. Polished wood. A faint trace of bergamot.

Malfoy Manor.

She had slept. After all these years, after that nightmare…

Her fingers curled into the blankets. She remembered fragments, a voice pulling her back, low and steady. Grey eyes. A hand on her wrist, warm and human and real.

Draco.

Heat crept up her neck at the memory, just the bewildering relief of not being alone in the aftermath. It unsettled her more than the nightmare.

She turned her face into the pillow and breathed out slowly. She had spent years learning how to soothe her own panic. Mind-healers. Journals. Steady breathing. Naming sensations. Reclaiming the body from memory.

But last night… Last night the past had drowned her again. And someone else had pulled her up. Her ribs tightened.

She sat up slowly, sheets rustling, Crookshanks stretching luxuriously beside her like he had slept better here too. Her familiar blinked at her with the smug superiority of anyone who had chosen comfort over vigilance.

“You traitor,” she whispered, scratching behind his ear. “You didn’t even try to wake me.”

Crookshanks purred, utterly unrepentant.

Hermione swung her legs off the bed, and froze.

The door was slightly ajar. And just beyond it…

Draco Malfoy was asleep on the floor against the wall, wand loosely in hand, head tipped back, long legs stretched inelegantly across the corridor. One arm was braced along his side like he had fallen asleep mid-watch.

Her breath caught.

He hadn’t left. He hadn’t simply calmed her and gone to bed. He had kept vigil.

Without fanfare. Without expectation. Without even letting her know.

Her first instinct was to step back, retreat, pretend she hadn’t seen, but then Crookshanks hopped off the bed with a chirrup of interest and trotted straight to him.

“No- don’t-”

Too late.

A ginger tail flicked across Draco’s cheek.

He inhaled sharply, eyes snapping open in pure reflex, wand hand tightening before focus returned, before he saw her.

Hermione stood in the doorway, hair messy, sweater too big, toes curling into the rug.

For a heartbeat, neither spoke.

“Morning,” Draco rasped, voice low from sleep, blinking as if orienting himself in two worlds at once. “You’re… alright.”

Hermione swallowed. “I am. Thanks to you.”

A flush touched his cheekbones, faint, almost imperceptible. He pushed himself up in one fluid motion, schooling his posture back into that composed-soldier elegance, like vulnerability was something to hide behind his cuffs.

“I didn’t-” he began, then stopped, exhaled, tried again. “I didn’t want you to wake up alone.”

Hermione’s chest tightened, sharp and tender. Most people were kind in the daylight. It took a different sort of courage to sit guard through night terrors no one else would see.

“That was…” she searched for the right word, one that didn’t crack under the weight of history, “…very thoughtful.”

Draco looked away as if the praise stung.

Their eyes held again, and she felt something pull taut between them, fine as silk thread, fragile and real.

A burst of footsteps thundered down the corridor.

“MIONE!”

Scorpius barreled out of his room in dragon-printed pajamas, hair wild, eyes bright. Hermione barely braced before he crashed into her legs, wrapping her in a fierce, warm hug.

“You’re here! Albus says your flat is too small and smells like books but I told him that’s perfect and I dreamed we had a baby unicorn and you named it Basil!”

Hermione blinked. Draco choked on his own breath.

Scorpius looked up with absolute sincerity. “Can we get a baby unicorn?”

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. “No one is getting a unicorn.”

Albus came skidding after him, wand-shaped toothbrush still in hand. “Hi Aunt Mione! We’re making pancakes! AndGrandpaArthurSaysSettingFireToTheStoveIsFineIfIt’sExperimental!”

“Molly is going to murder Arthur,” Draco muttered.

Hermione laughed, helpless, real, and the boys beamed like they’d earned a prize.

Scorpius tugged her hand. “Come on! Grandma made cinnamon cream and we want to show you the peacocks before they scream because they always scream. They hate mornings.”

“And trousers,” Albus added gravely.

Draco stared at the ceiling. “Why do I live like this?”

Hermione couldn’t stop smiling.

She glanced at Draco. Hair mussed, shirt wrinkled, wand still in hand, exhaustion on his face, but eyes bright in a way she hadn’t seen since they were teenagers, before the war.

“Breakfast?” she asked softly.

He nodded once. “Breakfast.”

The boys seized her hands and dragged her down the hall, babbling about pancakes and unicorns and whether peacocks could play Quidditch if bribed with toast.

Hermione let herself be pulled along, heart unsteady in the gentlest way.

Behind her, she felt Draco fall into step, not leading, not following, simply… beside her.

The Manor didn’t feel like a mausoleum, like in her nightmare. It felt like morning.

Chapter Text

The Manor kitchen smelled of cinnamon and warm vanilla when they entered, a scent Hermione would never have imagined existed here during the war.

Sunlight poured in through charm-warmed windows, gilding marble counters and copper pots that hovered politely over the stove, stirring themselves with gentle clinks.

And there, at the stove, was Narcissa Malfoy.

Not regal, not distant, though she was always a queen, even in house slippers, but soft. Hair in a loose twist, sleeves rolled to her elbows, wand guiding a floating pan of pancakes while she judged gooseberry jam with the severity of a Potions Master.

“Oh good,” Narcissa said as they tumbled in like a small hurricane. “You’re all awake. I was worried Scorpius might try to levitate the sugar again.”

Scorp gasped. “I only did that once! And it was to see if fairies would come eat it!”

“And they did,” Albus announced proudly.

Hermione blinked. “They did?”

“They were very tiny and very sparkly and very sticky,” Scorp whispered, awe-struck. “It was glorious.”

Draco shot Hermione a long-suffering look. “My life is a cautionary tale, Granger.”

She bit back laughter. “It seems… lively.”

Narcissa turned, and Hermione braced, she still never quite expected gentleness here.

But Narcissa only smiled, real warmth in it. “Good morning, Hermione. I hope you slept well.”

Hermione opened her mouth, paused, then nodded once, meaningfully.

Narcissa saw more than Hermione said. Her gaze softened, not pity, but acknowledgement. Women who survived war recognized each other without speaking.

“Tea?” Narcissa offered, voice silk and steel.

Hermione nodded.

Draco moved before he realized he’d moved, quietly stepping in to prepare it. Black tea, honey, a touch of lemon. Exactly how Hermione took it.

She stared. “You… know how I take my tea?”

He shrugged, casual in theory, catastrophic in practice. “You made it that way in the library yesterday,” he said, too quickly. “I notice things.”

Something warm and unsteady slid through her chest.

Before she could reply, Scorpius tugged her to the table. “Sit next to me and Albus. We saved you the best chair.”

“It has extra cushion charms,” Albus whispered proudly. “Uncle George taught me.”

Hermione sat, feeling oddly like someone had quietly reserved a place she hadn’t realized she wanted.

Narcissa floated plates to them with graceful flicks. Pancakes stacked tall, berries glistening, clotted cream in silver dishes, breakfast like comfort was a spell.

“Thank you,” Hermione murmured.

“Nonsense,” Narcissa replied softly. “You are like family here.”

Hermione swallowed hard, pulse stuttering. She wasn’t sure how to hold a sentence like that. She wasn’t sure she was allowed to.

Draco stiffened like the words hit him, too, quickly hiding it in his teacup.

Crookshanks leapt into Narcissa’s lap like royalty accepting an audience. Narcissa stroked him once, dignified, and Crooks purred like thunder.

Traitor, Hermione thought fondly.

Breakfast unfolded in bright, ridiculous bursts: Scorpius assigning pancake toppings like a general distributing weapons, Albus announcing they were forming “The Order of Pancake Knights”. Draco, deadpan: “We do not need another secret society in this family”. Narcissa: “At least this one only uses jam.” Hermione laughing, freely, without flinching from the sound. Crooks attempting to kill a blueberry.

There was a moment, just a moment, where Hermione looked at Draco across the table, and the air shifted.

Maybe she hasn’t been thinking lately about a partner because she didn’t trust life to give her good things and let them stay.

And maybe, sitting here, in a kitchen where pain once grew but hope now brewed gently with morning tea…

Maybe she wondered if healing could be this quiet.

If love, someday, could be this soft.

“After breakfast,” Narcissa announced, elegant even while buttering a scone like diplomacy itself, “the boys may explore the orchard. And Hermione dear, if you’d like to help me repot the moon-orchids later, I’d be delighted. They always bloom better with company.”

Hermione’s throat tightened. “I’d like that.”

Then Draco, pretending to be nonchalant but failing spectacularly: “And after that we’ll check those stabilizing runes. I want to review your notes again. Unless you’re needed at Sage or St. Mungus?”

Hermione met his eyes. “Of course. I took the week off from St. Mungus, and Briony is in charge of Sage for today, so I can fully focus on this.”

It was such an ordinary thing. And somehow the most extraordinary of all.

Scorpius wiped jam across his cheek like war paint. “Mione is staying forever!”

Draco choked on tea. Hermione nearly died.

Narcissa only smiled like she had seen the future first and approved.

***

The orchard behind Malfoy Manor was not the same place Hermione remembered, no longer dark, no longer silent with the heaviness of legacy. It breathed now. Lush and living, full of bees humming like tiny spells of mercy.

Scorpius and Albus tore across the grass with wooden wands, arguing passionately about who would win in a duel: a Hungarian Horntail or Aunt Fleur on a bad hair day.

Hermione snorted. Smart money’s on Fleur. She’s already done it.

Narcissa knelt beside a bed of moon orchids, hands steady, elegant. She conjured soft soil into a waiting pot as Hermione knelt beside her.

“Thank you for helping,” Narcissa said quietly.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Hermione replied.

They worked in silence at first, gentle magic coaxing roots, the scent of earth and mint in the air. Birds flitted overhead. Sunlight danced on Narcissa’s wedding band, same ring, new life.

Finally, Narcissa spoke.

“Do you know why I chose moon orchids for this garden?”

Hermione shook her head.

“They bloom only when the night is gentle,” Narcissa murmured. “They do not trust the dark entirely. Not after the world I raised my son in. So they needed a place where shadows soften. Where night is allowed, but cruelty is not.”

Hermione’s breath caught. A language only survivors knew.

“I spent years,” Narcissa continued softly, “building rooms where light could return.”

Hermione looked around: new benches, pale stone paths, rose bushes pruned with care. A house once made for fear, now healing through patience.

“You did all of this,” Hermione whispered.

“I needed to,” Narcissa replied. “The Manor remembers. Trauma lives in walls, you know. It must be overwritten, or it festers.”

Hermione’s hand stilled on the orchid stem. “Yes,” she said. “I do know.”

Their eyes met.

Two women scarred by the same war but on different sides, and yet somehow walking forward together.

Narcissa placed a delicate, cool hand over Hermione’s.

“You are safe here,” she said. “Not because you earned it. But because you deserve it.”

Hermione swallowed hard. Not flinching. Not running. Letting safety in; terrifying, warm, unfamiliar.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Truly.”

A beat.

“Draco worries,” Narcissa added, voice hushed. “About opening this place to others. About hoping for more than duty. About wanting something gentle and not knowing if he deserves it.”

Hermione’s chest tightened.

“I don’t know if I can be gentle,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”

Narcissa smiled, soft and knowing. “You already are. It seems like it frightens you more than war ever did.”

Hermione blinked, stunned, because it was true.

Before she could answer-

A silvery wolf bounded into the garden and halted before her. Theo’s voice echoed through the warm morning:

“No new activity from Dolohov. Keep watch, stay armed.”

Silence followed, thick and heavy with relief and dread in equal measure.

Narcissa exhaled slowly. “The quiet… I never trust it.”

Hermione nodded. “Me neither.”

Scorpius raced up then, cheeks flushed, hair wild. “Mione, look! I found a ladybug army!”

He held out a leaf crawling with gentle spotted bugs.

“See? Peacekeepers,” he whispered importantly. “They patrol the flowers. Very brave.”

Hermione smiled. “Very brave indeed.”

Draco watched from the terrace, leaning against the stone railing, sunlight catching in his pale hair. When Scorpius darted off again, Draco crossed his arms, a defensive habit, but his gaze when it landed on Hermione wasn’t guarded.

It was… soft. Tentative. Like someone standing in a doorway of a room they once feared and realizing it smells like cinnamon and safety now.

Hermione stood, brushing earth from her knees. The Manor hummed, its wards alive, and magic thick with renewal.

Not haunted. Not hostile. Healing.

And in her chest, an unfamiliar peace, fragile but real. She did not flinch from it.

Chapter Text

When the children sprinted off again, Hermione stood, brushing grass from her knees.

She didn’t hear the Manor doors open, but she felt him approaching before she saw him. Footsteps measured, presence steady, as if he had made a choice somewhere between the staircase and the sunlight.

When Draco reached them on the lawn, Narcissa greeted him with a faint touch to his sleeve, a silent maternal check-in he seemed to answer simply by breathing easier.

Hermione straightened, murmuring a quick cleansing charm to brush the soil from her palms. Draco looked at her with something like intention - unrushed, unforced, but real.

The children, at a short distance, bolted off toward the orchard, leaving a sudden hush in their wake.

“Library?” Hermione asked, her voice soft but sure.

Draco nodded once. “Yes. Library.”

As Hermione passed Narcissa, the older witch let her fingers brush Hermione’s arm, gentle, deliberate.

“You are building something here,” Narcissa murmured. “Let it grow slow.”

The words settled inside Hermione like a warm stone placed in cold hands - weight, comfort, permission.

Her breath steadied.

She followed Draco toward the Manor, the sunlight at her back, the future humming somewhere just ahead.

The Manor library was quieter today, reverent, almost temple-still. Light filtered through high windows like liquid gold, dust motes drifting in lazy spirals as though time itself had slowed to watch them.

Hermione crossed the threshold and felt it again, that thrum in her bones, that ancient hum beneath her ribs.

Books whispered against their shelves. Runes along the vaulted stone arch shimmered with faint enchantment. The carved serpentine floor tile beneath her foot pulsed in greeting. The library remembered pain, but it was learning softness now, too.

Draco walked beside her, not leading but… accompanying. A subtle difference, and yet she felt it like a spell settling warm on her skin.

He set down two stacks of books on the central table: thick rune treatises, old alchemical journals, several scroll tubes that looked older than Hogwarts.

Hermione did the same, her notes, her research journals, her painstaking rune sketches, brittle letters she’d translated from Russian and Bulgarian archives.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Terrified,” he replied dryly. “But yes.”

There, that little smile he didn’t know he had. Sharp edges dulled by exhaustion and hope.

Hermione sat. Draco sat across from her.

They worked.

After a while, it felt like the library was breathing.

It always felt that way at dusk, when the last spill of sunlight brushed the high shelves and turned the worn spines into quiet gold. When shadows pooled in corners like waiting ideas, and every page seemed to hum with potential.

Hermione sat cross-legged on the floor, parchment unfurling around her in messy constellations. Ink smudged her thumb. A quill dangled from her fingers like she had forgotten she was holding it.

Draco lay stretched out on the rug opposite her, an elegant sprawl that suggested aristocracy had a way of remaining in the bones even after war had shaken the world loose. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his forearms, tie discarded somewhere, hair slightly mussed like he had run his hand through it too many times.

Between them: the asphodel, glowing faintly in its stasis charm. Fire made into a flower. A miracle disguised as folklore.

Hermione stared at the diagram she had been refining since the other night, runes looping into delicate spirals, celestial cycles charted with obsessive precision, notes crowding margins like breathless whispers.

“One more piece,” she murmured, mostly to herself.

Draco didn’t look up, but his quill paused. “Which one?”

“A second conductor.” Her eyes traced the core pattern again. “We’ve created the matrix. We’ve mapped the runes. We’ve isolated the magical signature and the stabilisation tether. But we still need a binding agent.”

“A catalyst,” he murmured. “Something to link the curse-magic to the restorative pattern without fracturing the core.”

Hermione’s lips pursed. “And not just any catalyst. Something that resonates with renewal and blood-magic undoing.”

He sat up slowly, stretching long legs out in front of him. A low tired sound left him, not weakness, but exhaustion with an edge of stubbornness. “Your notes from last night… you mentioned moon-bloomed magical flora. To contrast with the asphodel’s fire.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Magic that doesn’t just grow, but awakens.”

She leaned forward, parchment scattering like startled birds. “There’s a species in the Ardennes. Rare. It only flowers under moonlight once a lunar cycle. Ancient wandlore compendiums mention it in association with core stabilisation rituals.”

Draco sifted through one of the books beside him, a French text bound in bark-soft leather. “You mean the Luneclaire Veritas.”

Hermione’s pulse stuttered. “You know it?”

“I’ve read about it. Never seen it.” His tone softened, inexplicably. “Most people don’t even realize it exists.”

Hermione smiled, small, tired, aching. “We’re not ‘most people.’”

His gaze flicked up. Grey. Sharp. Something warm beneath steel.

“No,” he said quietly. “We’re not.”

She tugged a fresh scroll toward her. “The next lunar cycle is in… two weeks.”

“We’ll have to go,” Draco said immediately.

Hermione blinked.

He raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m letting you go alone into an enchanted French forest to hunt a moon-flower that may or may not try to bite? No, Granger. I remember fourth-year Magical Herbology.”

“That flitterbloom attack wasn’t my fault.”

“It followed you to the castle.”

“It liked me.”

“It nearly ate you. And besides, we are a good team, the trek to get the asphodel showed that.”

Hermione huffed, part laugh, part indignation. “Fine. We’ll go together.”

His expression warmed a degree. Hardly noticeable. Utterly devastating.

She cleared her throat before her pulse did something embarrassing. “We’ll need another portkey. Camping supplies. Wards. Star charts. And anti-venom vials just in case.”

“Lovely,” he drawled softly. “A proper holiday.”

Her laugh escaped, short, startled, genuine. His eyes softened further at the sound.

Then his expression shifted, serious, steady. “And Granger… no more testing on yourself.”

Hermione’s breath faltered. “Draco-”

“No.” The word was firm, but not sharp. “I mean it. I will not watch you tear yourself apart to save us.”

“It’s my curse,” she whispered.

“And it’s my son.” His voice didn’t rise- it deepened, like a vow. “We save him together. But we don’t lose you doing it.”

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe.

His hand sat near hers on the rug, not touching, but close enough she felt the warmth like a living thing. She could count the flecks of silver near his irises. She could see the tiredness there, the terror dressed as discipline.

“You’re not alone in this,” he said quietly.

For a heartbeat, for one tiny impossible second, Hermione thought he might reach for her hand.

Instead, the doors burst open.

“Darlings!”

Narcissa Malfoy entered like a silken hurricane, pearls shimmering, excitement crackling around her like static. Her robes were deep emerald, swept around her like ivy in motion. The faintest dusting of rose perfume followed her, elegant and nostalgic.

Hermione startled upright. Draco flinched so subtly only someone watching too closely, someone like Hermione, would notice.

“Narcissa?” Hermione blinked. “Are you… breathless?”

“Of course I am!” Narcissa declared, luminous. “I have glorious news.”

Draco leaned back on his elbows, wary. “Mother.”

She clasped her hands dramatically. “The board has approved the Ministry Spring Gala, and they’ve accepted my proposal that it be held…” She paused, reveling in the moment. “Here.”

Hermione stared. Draco blinked once. Twice.

“The Ministry… gala,” Hermione repeated. “At Malfoy Manor.”

“Yes!” Narcissa all but beamed. “A symbol of unity. Reconciliation. Rebirth. The world needs hope, and what better way than to open these doors again in peace rather than fear?”

Hermione’s chest tightened. Renewal. Reclamation. Healing magic of a different kind.

“That’s…” Hermione swallowed. “Beautiful, Narcissa.”

Narcissa glowed.

Draco, however, had gone still. “This will put us under scrutiny.”

“It will put us under light,” Narcissa corrected. “And light is what cleans shadow. Don’t look so grim, Draco. We survived worse than the press.”

“Besides,” she added, sweeping into the room as though briefing diplomats, “you know the climate we’re in. After the Ministry released that statement separating Dolohov from the Death Eaters, the public is caught between relief” her hand fluttered, “and dread. They’re grateful this isn’t 1997 all over again, but the man is still at large. Even if he’s abroad.”

Hermione nodded slowly. She had felt it too: that uneasy mix in the air, relief braiding with anxiety.

Narcissa continued, voice crisp with purpose. “The Wizengamot pushed Kingsley to keep the Gala rather than cancel it. Appearances matter now more than ever. People want proof that the Ministry is steady. That life continues. That Britain is not slipping back into fear. A public show of unity is necessary.”

“And the Manor,” Draco said flatly, “is meant to be the symbol of that unity.”

“Of transformation,” Narcissa corrected again, eyes bright. “Of the fact that darkness can be reclaimed. That families can rebuild. That the past does not decide the future. Kingsley said it himself, there is no stronger message than asking the Malfoy family to open these doors not for war, but for celebration.”

Hermione felt a prickle behind her ribs. Recognition, awe, and something softer.

Hope, fragile but real.

Narcissa smiled, triumphant. “Death Eaters are the past. We are building what comes next.”

She clapped her hands like a woman orchestrating fate. “Three weeks from now. And Potter’s wife is already on the event committee, so we are practically cousins by proximity.”

Hermione blinked. “Ginny? Really?”

“Oh yes. Ginevra. Fiery creature. Terrifying in meetings. I adore her.”

Merlin.

Ginny Weasley might truly be the only person on Earth capable of out-organizing Hermione on a deadline. Somehow she had retired from professional Quidditch and still juggled a Prophet column, three children, morning jogs, a husband who attracted trouble like lint, and now Ministry gala committees?

Hermione made a mental note: she absolutely needed to invite Ginny for a glass of wine. Preferably an entire bottle. They had catching up to do, and apparently an event to survive.

Narcissa’s wand appeared in her hand. In one graceful flourish, she summoned parchment and quill. “I shall owl Pansy at once. Hermione, dear, you should too, she will need your measurements.”

Hermione flushed. “Right.”

Draco’s ears went slightly pink. Hermione tried not to notice.

Narcissa’s smile turned sly, just a whisper. “And of course, you two will need proper escort arrangements.”

Hermione choked on absolutely nothing. Draco coughed sharply.

“We- haven’t-” Hermione stammered.

“Well, discuss later.” Narcissa waved airily, already writing. “You’re very bright, you’ll sort it out.”

“Mother,” Draco said warningly.

“Yes, darling?”

“Leave.”

She kissed his cheek, kissed Hermione’s forehead, and floated out like a benevolent monarch with an agenda.

Silence poured back into the room. Hermione sat very still. Draco stared at nothing, expression neutral in the way that meant he wanted to sink into the floor.

Finally, Hermione exhaled a tiny laugh. “She’s unstoppable.”

“You have no idea,” he muttered.

Hermione rolled up her parchment carefully. “Two weeks until the trip. Three weeks until the gala.”

“Plenty of time,” Draco murmured.

“To panic,” she offered.

“To prepare,” he corrected softly.

Their eyes met, and held. Something quiet cracked open between them. Two lifetimes ago, they would have destroyed each other. Now? They were building something.

Hermione stood, parchment in hand. Draco remained seated, watching her with that unreadable softness that made her heart feel too big.

“Goodnight, Draco,” she said before thinking.

His breath hitched, barely there, but real.

“Goodnight, Granger.”

The library exhaled with her as she stepped out, and in the hush that followed, hope unfurled like a moon-flower waiting for its night.

Chapter Text

(Narcissa’s POV)

There was a particular sound old magic made when it was coaxed back to life, like a low hum beneath the bones of a place, a vibration not heard but felt, like the faint echo of a wandstroke cast decades before.

Malfoy Manor had been quiet for too many years.

Not the peaceful quiet of rest, no. A brittle silence. Haunted stillness. A house that had held screams and blood and war and then been forced to breathe normally after, as though trauma could be scrubbed from marble with sunlight and expensive polish.

But now?

Now the halls hummed again. And it sounded nothing like fear.

Narcissa moved through the ballroom, her ballroom, bare feet silent against the enchanted marble. She liked to walk without shoes here. It made her feel the pulse of the wards underfoot, the subtle heartbeat of stone that once trembled with terror and now thrummed with renewal.

Above her, chandeliers the size of carriages glittered softly, unlit but waiting. Charm-laced vines Sebastian-the-Enchanted-Groundskeeper insisted on training along the ceiling were beginning to bloom with pearl-petaled flowers that opened only at dusk.

Soon, very soon, this room would be filled again.

Not with masked monsters and whispered promises of glory and blood, but with laughter and politics and cautious hope. Ministry officials. Aurors. Diplomats. Survivors.

And Hermione Granger, she thought with an unexpected warmth that startled her each time it rose.

Narcissa paused in the center of the empty space, resting a hand against the banister. Draco had laughed here as a boy, chasing himself. And now, Scorpius who ran these halls like a sunbeam personified.

This place, once a shrine to arrogance and purity and power, was being rewritten. Stone could remember spells and screams, yes. But it could also remember healing. And so could she.

Oh, the press thought this gala was about politics. That it was a gesture. A symbol. Public relations for the Malfoys. A careful attempt at rebranding wealth and legacy.

Let them believe that. Let them think this was strategic and cold and calculated.

For Narcissa, it wasn’t just that - just because she was, indeed, a Black and a Malfoy, and these things mattered. But, for now, this was mainly a personal reclamation. An altar to a new era. A declaration of truth whispered only in the dead of night when she pressed her palms to the window glass and prayed-

Let him have a life unburdened by ghosts.

Draco deserved to be seen as something beyond war, beyond lineage, beyond grief stitched into skin. He deserved to stand tall not because he was his father’s heir, but because he had clawed his way out of ruin to become a man who knew tenderness and steel and love for his son that bordered on holy.

And Hermione… Hermione Granger had walked into this house like light poured through cracked walls.

Narcissa was not blind.

She saw the way Draco stood differently when Hermione entered a room. Not stiff, not braced, but aware. Like some part of him long frozen had remembered thawing was possible.

Hope was a delicate, terrifying thing, but Narcissa had always collected rare things. And hope, hope she would protect with claws if she must.

***

A few days later, Narcissa stepped onto Diagon Alley, head held high, posture regal but softened by the faintest curve of anticipation in her chest.

Pansy’s boutique sat like a jewelbox wedged between a wandmaker and a florist, enchanted mannequins in the window rotating in slow circles wearing robes cut like dreams and rebellion. Velvet, starlight-silver threading, tailored lines that whispered modern sorcery.

Narcissa entered to the soft ringing of a charm-bell tuned to a pitch only old money and good taste could appreciate.

Pansy Parkinson, now Pansy Longbottom-Parkinson, fashion empress, menace, and emotional hurricane, swept toward her in scarlet silk trousers and a blazer that shimmered like crushed garnets.

“Narcissa!” she crooned, air-kissing both cheeks. “If you’re here early I assume either the gala is falling apart or you’ve finally decided to let me give you a metallic-shoulder cape.”

“I do not do capes,” Narcissa intoned. “And the gala is proceeding beautifully.”

Pansy tisked. “A shame. Dramatic breakdowns are good for the complexion.”

“Only yours, I suspect.”

“You wound me.”

She did not. They both knew it.

Pansy handed her a glass of water with a slice of lemon. Hydration before fittings, very civilized, and led her to a private room where enchanted mirrors flanked a raised platform.

“What fabric did you choose?” Narcissa asked.

Pansy smirked. “Oh no. You don’t get to know it. You get to experience it.”

Ah yes, chaos run by couture. She supposed she liked her well for a reason.

As Pansy fussed with pins and murmured to enchanted measuring tape, Narcissa cleared her throat delicately.

“And Hermione’s gown?”

Pansy’s eyes sparkled like she’d been waiting for the question. “She will look… unforgettable.”

A beat. A sly smile. “A touch of goddess, a touch of scholar, a touch of what-if-I-break-every-maledictum-of-fate-and-choose-myself.”

Narcissa fought the curl of her lips. “Very subtle.”

“You adore me,” Pansy said, snapping her fingers so a seam refit itself.

“I tolerate you magnificently.”

Then Narcissa’s attention sharpened. “And Draco? Has he been for his fitting yet?”

Pansy groaned loudly enough to rattle a button box. “No. Because your son is apparently determined to behave like a nineteenth-century widower pretending he has no romantic instincts whatsoever.”

She continued mercilessly. “But don’t worry, Narcissa. I’ve already paired his palette to Hermione’s. Sage-green undertones, lunar-silver accents, the sort of coordination that suggests fate while allowing plausible deniability.”

Narcissa arched a brow, deeply pleased. “Excellent.”

“Oh, trust me,” Pansy said, hands on her hips. “Those two idiots are going to arrive matching and together even if I have to Imperius Draco myself. And honestly? At this point, it would be a public service.”

Narcissa nodded serenely. “Quite.”

The door chimed behind them.

Pansy didn’t look up, she was mid-pin-stab. “Someone check the front, I’m elbow-deep in couture devotion.”

But after a couple of minutes, Narcissa turned. And froze.

Andromeda stood near the counter. Older. Softer. Silver woven through dark curls. Dignity in every line of her spine. Eyes that had once laughed with her in childhood, before their world fractured along lines of blood and shame and terror.

She held a garment bag. She had come for something beautiful.

Narcissa could breathe for precisely one heartbeat, then not at all.

Andromeda saw her.

Time did not stop, it simply bowed its head, humbled.

“Narcissa,” Andromeda said softly.

Her voice was not cold. It was not warm. It simply existed, like a doorway long sealed and suddenly, gently cracked open.

Narcissa’s throat tightened. “Andromeda.”

“You look well,” Andromeda said.

“As do you,” Narcissa whispered.

There were a thousand apologies in the space between them. None spoken. None required, perhaps, not yet. Pain had its own language; so did forgiveness.

Andromeda gestured to the bag. “I’m picking up my gown. Teddy insisted I attend the gala if it meant tearing down the last walls between our families.”

Narcissa swallowed. “He’s a good boy.”

“He is,” Andromeda breathed. “And your grandson is, from what I hear, radiant.”

Oh. The ache in Narcissa’s chest bloomed.

“You’ve seen-?”

“I have not,” she said gently. “But Luna and Theo talk. So does Neville. So does Pansy.” There was a beat, then Pansy froze mid–pin-stitch, and stepped away.

A small, wry smile. “And Hermione writes long letters.”

Narcissa blinked once, slowly. Hermione. Of course.

Of course she had been weaving the family back together in quiet threads while healing brick and blood and boy.

“Narcissa,” Andromeda said softly, tentative as dawn light on frost, “would you… take tea with me? Anytime soon?”

Narcissa’s breath trembled. Hope tasted like grief and honey and something sacred.

“I would like that,” she whispered.

Andromeda smiled, cautious, but real. “Bring pictures of Scorpius.”

“And you of Teddy.”

“Yes,” Andromeda breathed. “Of course.”

They stood like that, two women who had once been girls braiding each other’s hair under summer sun, now older and aching but reaching. The future felt possible.

At the front of the shop, Andromeda gathered the garment bag into her arms, and slipped out through the jingling door into late-afternoon light.

Narcissa lifted her hand to her chest, not pressing, merely… steadying.

Before she could gather herself fully, a soft rustle of magic crackled from the corner of the boutique. The air shimmered, familiar, silver-flecked. A Patronus forming.

Narcissa turned just enough to see Pansy Parkinson half-hidden behind the far corner of the private fitting room. She was crouched inelegantly behind a rack of star-spun gowns, as if silk and sequins constituted legitimate cover. Her wand was lifted with the precise poise of someone performing a sacred duty: gossip.

Her patronus, a sly little fox with a silk ribbon around its neck, sat primly on the marble counter, tail flicking like it had opinions about everyone alive. Pansy’s voice floated from its mouth in a conspiratorial whisper that was, in fact, not quiet at all:

Granger. Confirmed sighting: Andromeda and Narcissa are having tea soon. You little minx, it worked! Darling, please, let’s have some wine later for the full update!

Narcissa pressed two fingers to her mouth, not quite hiding the smallest, traitorous laugh.

Only then did Pansy notice Narcissa noticing her.

She froze. Then sprang upright far too quickly, nearly tangling herself in a cascade of enchanted chiffon. She smoothed her hair in one swift, guilty swipe, lifted her chin with all the dignity of a woman who absolutely had not been spying from behind formalwear, and mouthed, with great dignity and zero sincerity:

You heard nothing.

Narcissa inclined her head, queen acknowledging chaos-princess, and replied softly:

“Of course.”

And if her heart felt startlingly light, like a door somewhere had opened just a fraction wider…

Well. Magic returned to families in strange ways.

The invitation that came to the Manor the same day, later, in writing, had been simple. A single line in Andromeda’s careful script:

Life’s too short. Tea? Now? -A.

Narcissa’s hands had trembled when she read it. The last time her sister wrote her initial to her, owls still wore Dark Mark wax seals and hope was a thing for fools and corpses.

Now, she stood at a small stone cottage fringed with wisteria and wild roses, the air thick with spring and second chances. Teddy’s broom lay abandoned in the garden, a child’s flight frozen mid-dream, and Narcissa’s throat tightened with a grief so gentle it hurt.

She lifted her hand. Knocked once.

The door opened almost immediately, as though Andromeda had been standing behind it, breath held since the moment the owl left.

They stared.

Two women who once shared secrets and braids and moonlit window ledges, and who had since shared war, widowhood, exile, and the unspeakable ache of loving the same dead sister.

Andromeda broke first, voice rough and soft all at once.

“Cissy.”

Not accusation. Not hesitation. Just the nickname. Their first language.

“Andy,” Narcissa whispered, every syllable a prayer stitched from old wounds.

For one suspended heartbeat, neither moved.

Then Andromeda stepped aside.

“Come in,” she said, and it was not forgiveness, it was an opening.

Narcissa entered the cottage the way she once stepped into sacred halls, spine regal, breath held, palms tingling as though the air itself weighed memory.

The space was warm, sunlit, lived in. Family portraits lined the mantle. Tonks laughing in Auror robes, Ted waving from a Muggle campsite, little Teddy with bubble-gum-pink hair on a toy broom, now older in Hogwarts uniform, beaming, confident, alive.

Narcissa touched the frame of Tonks’ photo, her niece’s grin frozen mid-mischief, eyes so much like Bellatrix’s but free from madness.

“She was beautiful,” Narcissa murmured.

“She was joy,” Andromeda whispered back. “And grief. And pride. And every star worth naming.”

Narcissa swallowed. “I think… I think if things had been different, she might have liked Draco.”

“She would have,” Andromeda said without hesitation. “She had a soft spot for boys trying to unlearn their fathers inheritances."

Narcissa’s breath caught.

There it was. Truth like a blade, sharp, but not aimed to kill.

They sat at a small round table by the window. Tea steamed between them: chamomile, lemon balm, and something sweet Narcissa couldn’t place, possibly memory.

For a while they didn’t speak. The silence wasn’t enemy anymore, just old fabric being stretched, tested, softened.

Then: “I’m sorry,” Narcissa whispered, fingers trembling around her cup. “For-”

Andromeda reached across and covered her hand.

“No,” she said, voice steady as roots. “We do not apologize for surviving. We were thrown into a war our blood demanded we fight. We made choices. Some broke us. Some kept us breathing.”

Narcissa’s vision blurred. “I should have chosen sooner.”

“Yes,” Andromeda said simply. “So should I. We were slow. But we are here.”

A shuddered breath fled Narcissa’s chest. “…we lost so much.”

Andromeda’s eyes softened with the weight only women who buried too many Black family dead could understand. “We lost family. We lost innocence. We lost pride, but we also gained clarity.”

Narcissa nodded, voice cracking. “And now we rebuild.”

“We do,” Andromeda whispered. “With gentler bricks.”

A moment passed, heavy, holy.

Narcissa’s gaze drifted to the window, to the outline of the Manor’s gardens trembling under spring wind. “Draco has changed,” she said at last, quiet but certain. “He… tries. Every day.”

Andromeda tilted her head. “Tell me.”

Narcissa exhaled, a breath carved from years she had never spoken aloud. “He was never cruel,” she murmured. “Not truly. Just a boy who thought survival meant repeating his father’s steps. In that house, obedience was safety. Silence was safety. I saw him, Merlin, I saw him- trying to question things when he was a teenager. Only with me, only behind closed doors. But then soon after he was marked, and after that-” Her hands tightened around her teacup. “After that, it was all fleeing shadows and outrunning consequences. He became a child soldier pretending he was a king in a kingdom that was already doomed.”

Andromeda closed her eyes, grief and understanding settling like dust.

“We left for France after the war, after the trials.” Narcissa continued, softer now. “Astoria needed peace; Draco needed anonymity. And for a time… it worked. He could breathe there. They built something quiet together. But Astoria-” She swallowed. “We always knew her life would be shorter than his. And once she was gone… we knew France wouldn’t hold forever. Grief has a way of pushing people back to their roots, even when the soil is poisoned.”

A silence, delicate, trembling.

“I was a coward,” Narcissa said suddenly, voice low. “I should have written to you sooner. But after everything, after what the war took from you, I thought you would never want to see me again.” Her voice broke. “You lost nearly everyone, Andromeda. How could I ask you to look at me?”

Andromeda reached across the tiny table, her palm warm over Narcissa’s wrist. “Suffering doesn’t erase blood,” she said, steady and tender. “It clarifies it. And yes- I lost too much. Ted. Dora. Remus. The life I built outside Black walls.” Her throat shook. “But you were my sister before you were his wife. You could have written.”

Narcissa bowed her head. “I know.”

She breathed once, shallow, then deeper, as though dredging words from years buried under ash.

“When Lucius was first arrested after the Department of Mysteries,” she whispered, “I should have felt devastation. But what I felt first was… relief.” Her fingers trembled. “It was the first time in decades that I could breathe without his shadow filling the room. And that was when I realized I hadn’t loved him, not truly, in a very long time. Ours was a marriage of passion at first. But then, it soon became all about alliances, of expectations, of ‘proper futures’ crafted by other people’s hands.”

Andromeda’s expression softened, wounded, knowing.

“But Draco,” Narcissa continued, voice tightening, “Draco was my compass. My only constant. I wanted to flee with him. To take him far from that house, that life-” a hollow shudder “but Bellatrix was still free. The Dark Lord was moving into our home. And every corridor of that Manor was thick with Death Eaters. I wasn’t a wife then; I wasn’t even a woman. I was a prisoner wearing jewels.”

Her eyes glistened, unhidden.

“I had burned every bridge I ever had,” she whispered. “Yours most of all. And I had nowhere to run. No allies left. No path that wouldn’t end with Draco dead at sixteen.”

Andromeda closed her eyes, pain flickering like candlelight. “Cissy…”

“Letting him be marked,” Narcissa said, voice trembling, “was the worst thing I have ever done as a mother. But every other alternative would’ve gotten him killed. He had no protection outside that circle; only proximity to the monster kept him breathing.” Her hands clenched. “I loathed myself. I loathed Lucius. And I loathed the world that cornered my boy into a war he never chose.”

Silence thickened, full of ghosts.

They both knew the shape of their sister, Bellatrix, hovering unspoken between them. The force of her madness. The way she devoured every path that might have saved them all.

“She ruined us,” Andromeda said softly. Not cruel, just true. “Our sister. She broke every home she touched.”

Narcissa nodded, a single tear slipping free. “And still, I missed you,” she whispered. “Every day. But the world I was trapped in… it felt like there was no door out.”

Her gaze drifted, distant, almost haunted. “When the war finally ended… when Lucius was sent to Azkaban again and never returned…” A breath, thin and ragged. “I grieved the man he should have been. But I would be lying if I said I did not also feel relief. The kind that shames a widow.” Her fingers twisted in her lap. “And when Bellatrix fell during the battle… the world became quieter. Less sharp. Less impossible to breathe in.”

Andromeda did not recoil. She simply listened, sister to sister, survivor to survivor.

“We were all trapped in her shadow,” Narcissa murmured, voice barely a breath. “In theirs. And when they were gone… for the first time in decades, I could imagine a future that wasn’t written in someone else's blood.”

Andromeda inhaled, slow and deliberate. “And yet,” she said, voice gentling, “you’re here now. And that matters more than the late years.”

A breath passed between them. Then Andromeda smiled, small, aching. “Teddy asks about you, you know.”

Narcissa jerked her gaze up, startled.

“He’s twelve now,” Andromeda sighed. “Looks more and more like Dora every day. Same grin, same impossible hair, same talent for causing minor catastrophes with major charm. He knows he has family with Harry being his godfather, and Merlin knows Harry tries, but once he started Hogwarts, once he saw children with whole magical lineages, he began to wonder about his own. About the Blacks, about the roots he was denied by war.”

Narcissa’s eyes shimmered. “He wants to know us?”

“He wants to know where he comes from,” Andromeda corrected gently. “And part of that is us. Ted’s world. Dora’s world. Ours.”

Narcissa pressed a trembling hand to her chest. “I never thought- after what our house cost your daughter- I never thought you’d let me near her child.”

Andromeda’s jaw trembled once before she steadied it. “Losing Dora didn’t make me forget who harmed her. And it wasn’t you, Cissy.”

Silence draped around them, tender as a shawl.

“You were a Black before becoming a Malfoy,” Andromeda said firmly. “And Blacks survive. But survival is the beginning, not the end.”

Narcissa inhaled, shaking. “Then help me make an end that builds something better.”

Andromeda squeezed her hand. “We already have.”

Narcissa blinked back tears. “Do you think we can be… a family again?”

Not legacy family, real family. Living family. Family built with choice instead of curse.

Andromeda squeezed her hand. “We already are. We simply forgot.”

A tear slipped down Narcissa’s cheek. She didn’t wipe it.

“And our grandchildren,” Andromeda added, voice trembling with something fierce and bright, “should grow up knowing not only the darkness we came from, but the light we carved out of it.”

Narcissa laughed, soft and broken and healing all at once. “They will.”

“And one day,” Andromeda continued, eyes twinkling with mischief that once defined them both, “we will be obnoxious old matriarchs at family dinners, embarrassing them with stories.”

“Oh, I fully intend to haunt your grandchildren if you start without me,” Narcissa sniffed.

Andromeda smiled, real, wide, young. “Then stay. Come back. Often.”

“Yes,” Narcissa breathed. “I will.”

They finished tea in companionable stillness, hands never fully separating.

Two Black sisters, no longer statues in a burnt tapestry, but living women rebuilding a dynasty from gentleness and stubborn love.

Hope didn’t always roar. Sometimes it was the quiet clink of teacups and hands held across linen.

***

When she returned to Malfoy Manor that night, she found Scorpius asleep on the sofa, Crookshanks sprawled on his stomach like a judgmental orange guardian, and Hermione curled in an armchair with a Slavic book and Draco asleep beside her, head tipped toward hers, not touching, but orbiting.

The house hummed. Alive. Becoming.

Narcissa touched the doorframe, whispered to the walls like old friends:

“We are building something new.”

And somewhere deep in the stone, the Manor whispered back: At last.

Chapter Text

(Draco’s POV)

Time, Draco had learned, did not march. It layered. Thin films of moments stacking: tea steam curling through library light; parchment filled with runic diagrams; Scorpius’s steady breathing at night when the world felt too sharp; the way hope, once a foreign tongue, was slowly learning to speak in his voice again.

And somewhere between old ghosts and blooming possibility, days had begun to blur into something dangerously close to… life.

His mother was glowing. Not in the brittle porcelain way she had once forced herself to shine, but soft, human, alive.

He’d returned from a DMLE briefing to find her in the drawing room, talking animatedly to Scorpius about “proper tea posture,” only for him to proudly spill jam on his jumper. She hadn’t even flinched. She only laughed, a sound Draco hadn’t realized he’d been starving for, and wiped the smear with a charm.

Then, later, she told him, tone still trembling with wonder: “I had tea with Andromeda.”

And Draco, who had seen mountains of cursed parchment, blood runes, death oaths, and the inside of Azkaban cells, had felt his throat go tight.

She described the reunion not as triumph, nor apology, but as return. Two sisters turning grief into bridge instead of barricade. And when Andromeda returned a week later, to meet Scorpius, Draco watched his mother introduce his son to family with her hand on his small shoulder like she was reassuring herself he was real.

That night, Draco stood outside the nursery and listened to Scorpius chatter about “Aunt Andy” and how she smelled like old books and “almost like Grandma but also like something new.”

And Draco had gone to bed with a strange ache in his chest, one that felt suspiciously like gratitude stabbed with the edge of fear.

Good things were delicate. Precious things were targetable.

Because Dolohov had gone quiet. That was never good. Silence from evil was not peace, it was construction.

Draco had spent the past days splitting hours between DMLE tactical reviews, red threads across moving maps, updating protective wards around the Manor, and research, endless, breath-stilling research, for Scorpius.

And every night, worry braided into his ribs like wire. If the cure failed, if the war returned, if either threat took his son…

He could not finish that thought. He refused to.

Because there was also this: Scorpius laughing breathlessly when Hermione spelled leaves into fluttering paper cranes around him. Narcissa humming as she rearranged flowers. The Manor smelling faintly of bread and rosemary and home.

Hermione at the long table in the library, with stacks of runes, quill tapping, brow furrowed, hair wild, and him, constantly pretending he wasn’t watching her breathe life into every room she entered.

It was… dangerous. To feel like this.

Still, he hadn’t planned to ask Pansy for advice. He’d simply gone for his gala fitting.

But Pansy Parkinson possessed the lethal Slytherin skill of identifying emotional vulnerability like blood in water.

The moment he entered her atelier, she arched a brow as though she’d been waiting to pounce.

“You’re brooding in three different emotional registers,” she declared. “Tell Auntie Pansy why.”

He had not, in fact, been brooding. He had been strategically quiet. There was a difference.

Still. Pansy was already circling him, pinning fabric, muttering charms to adjust the cut.

“You’re worried about Granger.”

He froze. “I am concerned for her role in the curse research. Naturally.”

But even as he said it, something twisted sharply in his chest.

He’d seen the shadows under her eyes last night. The way her hands trembled for a heartbeat before she steadied them over a quill. She wasn’t just tired. She was paying a cost he hadn’t earned.

And the worst part, the part he couldn’t say aloud, was that she was doing it all while he hadn’t even offered her the smallest, most overdue words: I’m sorry. For the war. For the cruelty. For the silence afterward. For letting her carry this weight without ever acknowledging the history between them.

The guilt sank like lead beneath his ribs, bitter and dense. He didn’t know how to fix that yet. He only knew he wanted to. Needed to. Before it was too late - for her, for Scorpius, for whatever fragile thing had begun forming between them.

Pansy snorted. “Naturally. And the sky is naturally blue, and I naturally have the patience of a saint.”

He glared. “Pansy.”

“She told me once,” Pansy continued, too casually, “about the way she used to help her grandmother care for cornouillers in the back garden. Dogwood, in English. Pale petals like little handkerchiefs.”

His breath hitched. Handkerchiefs.

Pansy didn’t look at him directly, an act of mercy disguised as indifference.

“She said her grandmother always whispered to the seedlings, you know. ‘Grow where you are loved. Roots can choose their soil too.’”

He swallowed.

“And now Granger is bleeding herself to save your child,” Pansy finished quietly. “If you don’t mark that, if you don’t honor that, then you deserve to be alone forever. And Astoria would hex your stupid balls off.”

He exhaled, long, sharp. Pansy softened, her voice switching from blade to silk.

“She likes flowers,” she murmured. “Especially the ones that remember things.”

She flicked her wand toward the florist’s window, unimpressed with his hesitation. “Honestly, Draco, we’re pure-bloods. We were taught the language of flowers before we could read. Stop being an idiot and use it.”

And something inside him clicked, threads in his heart rearranging. Acknowledgement.

He didn’t go straight home. First, he endured Pansy’s triumphant smirk as the final measurements for his gala attire were taken and pretended very hard that the whole thing wasn’t symbolic in ways he refused to examine.

Only then, when the last pin was removed and the fabric charmed to fit him like intention, did he leave Diagon Alley that morning with a box of seedlings cradled in his arms and a decision blooming, irrevocable, in his chest.

Outside the shop, he paused beneath the afternoon light, breath misting like resolve. He lifted his wand.

A silver dragon unfurled into being - sleek, bright, unmistakably his - and took shape with a single purpose.

“Longbottom,” he murmured, steady now, “I need to ask you something about how to grow a tree in a day.”

The dragon dipped its head, then streaked skyward toward Hogwarts, carrying a message Draco Malfoy would not have sent, not even imagined sending, a year ago.

A message that meant he had already chosen.

***
(Hermione and Draco’s POV)

Ink blurred a little on the page. She’d been reading the same runic passage three times and the sigils had started dancing. It was late, later than she meant, and the library was cloaked in that enchanted hush of old paper and older magic. Only the soft crackle from the fireplace kept her company; even Crookshanks had deserted her, curled somewhere warm and smug.

Draco had sent word earlier, a clipped but apologetic note carried by Mippy: Unexpected complication. I won’t make it to the library tonight. But I’ll find you before you leave.

She’d tucked the parchment into her pocket, telling herself it didn’t matter, that she preferred the quiet for work.

But her eyes kept drifting to the door anyway.

She closed her book, rubbed her eyes-

And then a flare of silver light rushed past the window.

Hermione sat up, startled. It didn’t drift like any patronus she knew, it carved the air, powerful and precise, scales shimmering like starlight caught in water. And then it burst through the cracked-open window in a sweep of moon and silver fire.

A dragon. Not serpentine like the school mascots of old. Not monstrous like the one she had once fled across the sky. But regal, fierce, ancient, and shimmering with a quiet, protective gravity.

It landed on the table, tail curling like smoke, wings folding with soundless power. Its eyes, sharp, intelligent, unmistakably grey, lifted to hers. And then it spoke in Draco’s voice, low and steady: “Granger. If you’re still awake, come to the garden. There’s something I’d like to show you.”

Not an order. Not an obligation. A question in disguise. A hope made cautious.

The dragon flickered, flame-silver and alive, like it was waiting, not for confirmation but for choice.

Hermione’s breath caught. “You… have a dragon patronus?”

The creature’s head tilted, and if a spectral dragon could smirk, this one managed it.

Andronic curiosity, quiet pride, and something else. Hermione swallowed. “Alright,” she whispered. “I’m coming.”

The dragon dissolved in a soft burst of starlight, elegant even in departure, leaving her alone with a racing pulse and a sudden warmth in her chest she refused to name.

She stood, heart thudding, and found herself smoothing her hair for no reason at all. Completely unreasonable. Ridiculous. Perfectly fine.

She repeated the lie to herself once, twice, and tried to pretend her palms weren’t damp.

Then she headed out of the library, down the quiet corridors, toward the night-lit gardens and… whatever he had waiting.

She crossed the silent marble, down steps cool as starlight, past the foyer where portraits once sneered and now merely observed, curious, not cruel. Out the back doors, into the gardens.

And Hermione stopped dead.

Draco Malfoy was standing there in dirt-streaked gardening clothes.

Not elegant trousers, not Auror blacks. Worn canvas trousers, a soft shirt rolled at the elbows, boots muddied, hands smudged with soil, a stray stem clinging to his sleeve like affection.

Hermione stared like her brain had crashed. Entirely.

“You… garden?” she managed.

He smirked.

“Don’t sound so alarmed. I am capable of manual labor without combusting.”

“I didn’t say combusting,” she murmured, eyes wide. “More like… collapsing from aesthetic whiplash?”

His ears burned. Wonderful. He was thirty and blushing like a schoolboy caught carving initials into a desk.

He cleared his throat, gesturing stiffly. “Come on.”

The garden path wound beneath pale lantern orbs, gentle things, not the cold, hard sconces of his youth. The air smelled of lemongrass and distant honeysuckle. And then, the clearing.

Hermione gasped.

Small trees stood in an elegant semicircle near the fountain, delicate branches crowned in pale petals that glowed almost moon-born. Dogwood. Soft like parchment edges, luminous as memories.

“Oh,” she whispered. Her hand covered her heart, fingers curling into her shawl. “Draco…”

He swallowed. “Pansy mentioned something. About your grandmother. About the flowers behind your childhood home.”

Hermione’s face softened, grief and wonder braided in her eyes. “They were my favourite.”

“I knew,” he said quietly, “that if I was going to do this, it had to be perfect.”

“You planted them yourself?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “Well. With some advice from Neville for them to grow super fast, mid-level panic, an alarming amount of charmwork, and… actual digging.”

She laughed, tired and bright, breaking something inside him pleasantly. “I truly never imagined you planting anything, Malfoy.”

“No one ever imagines the Malfoys with dirt under their nails. We come out of the womb immaculate and insufferable.”

Her eyes crinkled. “Not immaculate tonight.”

“Ruined my reputation entirely,” he deadpanned. “There’s soil in my hair. I expect a medal.”

Hermione’s gaze dragged through moonlight and landed on him, really landed. He felt it. Warm as touch. Dangerous as faith.

He exhaled, looked at the blossoms instead. “Your grandmother spoke to them, didn’t she?”

Hermione stilled. “How did you-?”

“You told Pansy. About whispering to seedlings. About how magic listens.”

“She… she did believe that.” Hermione stepped closer to the nearest tree, fingertips hovering but not touching. “She used to say plants have memories. And that roots choose where they belong.”

A truth he’d felt but never voiced pressed up his throat. “She was right.”

Hermione looked at him, wide-eyed, hair wild from hours of study, exhaustion softening her edges. She looked like someone who’d fought monsters and earned hope with bruised hands.

He wet his lips, pulse stumbling. “Do you want to know the secret?” he asked, voice low.

She blinked. “The secret?”

“Yes.” He stepped closer, close enough to see freckles across her cheekbones. Close enough to smell calendula and parchment and something quiet and brave that was uniquely her. “You talk to them, but in French.”

She blinked again, confused, until he whispered to the blossoms in French: “Poussez doucement. Vous êtes chez vous maintenant.” Grow gently. You are home now.

Hermione’s breath caught so violently he thought for one wild second she might faint.

“Since when,” she croaked, “do you speak French like that?”

“First, I’m a Malfoy. I learned French when I was Scorpiou’s age. Second, I lived there, as you know. Picked up a few things.”

“That was not ‘a few things.’ That was…” her voice went embarrassingly airy.

His mouth betrayed him; it curved. “You’re flustered.”

“I am evaluating linguistic implications and horticultural nuance, don’t flatter yourself.”

The flowers suddenly shivered, as if waking. A soft glow rippled through their petals, pale gold at the edges like moonlight catching dew. Before her eyes, they unfurled a touch wider, stems lifting, color deepening into something almost iridescent, as though the earth itself had exhaled beneath them.

Draco brushed soil from his fingers, voice low and matter-of-fact, but warm underneath. “Dogwood will only respond properly to coaxing in French. Old magic tied to the lineage of the witches who first cultivated them. Wrong language, wrong intention, they refuse to thrive.”

His eyes lifted to hers, soft, sincere, a secret shared across old fault lines. “Some magic only blooms when spoken in the tongue it remembers.”

He gestured toward a stone bench beneath a trellis. “Sit? There’s something we should talk about.”

She hesitated, hope flickering, fear flaring, then sat, skirts settling like moss and moonlight. He sat beside her, polite distance that still felt charged.

For a moment, neither spoke. Fountain whispering. Leaves rustling. The world holding its breath around their small, fragile slice of peace.

Then she said softly, “I told Pansy my grandmother gardened. But I didn’t tell her I found out something else.”

She twisted her ring absent-mindedly, a nervous tell he’d cataloged without consent. “My grandmother was the granddaughter of a Squib. French witching line. The name Granger came from there, but then the branch that lost magic settled in England. Magic skipped a few generations, until me.”

Draco stared. It knocked something ancient in him sideways: lineage, legacy, the myth of purity collapsing like dust.

“You were always magic,” he murmured. “Regardless of blood or branch.”

Hermione blinked quickly, not tears yet, but close. “I didn’t know. As a child, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why I was different. Later, once I learned, I was proud. But… being muggle-born in this world still feels like walking uphill sometimes.”

Shame sliced through him, memory sharp as razorwire. His thirteen-year-old sneer. His mother’s pearls. His father’s cold pride. His own cowardice.

“Granger,” he said, voice scraped raw, “I owe you more apology than one life can hold.”

She opened her mouth, gentle denial already forming, but he lifted a hand, stopping her.

“No. Let me say it.”

She closed her lips.

He inhaled, deep and steady.

“I hurt you.” Words weighed, precise. “I mocked what I feared. I upheld standards I never examined. I was a boy shaped by a house built on arrogance and blood and shadows, but I still chose cruelty. I chose safety over courage. I chose silence when I should have chosen justice.”

Her breath trembled, barely there.

“And you…” He swallowed. “You chose mercy. At the trial. You spoke for me when you had every right to hate me.”

Hermione looked down at her hands, always busy hands, hands that healed and brewed and fought and tended.

“You didn’t deserve my forgiveness then,” she whispered. “But you earned it. Slowly. With every choice since.”

He closed his eyes for one fragile second. He hadn't realized how desperately he had needed to hear that.

“I’m not the boy I was,” he murmured. “But I want, desperately, to be someone worthy of where you stand.”

Her heart clenched visibly in her chest. Gods, he could see it.

She reached, hesitant, and brushed soil from his sleeve. It was the smallest touch, but it felt like a vow.

“I forgave you years ago,” she said softly. “Not because you earned it then, but because I needed to become someone who believed people could grow.”

He exhaled shakily.

She looked around at the blossoms, glowing like paper memories. “They look like handkerchiefs.”

His chest twisted, gentle and aching. “Appropriate, then.” A soft smile. “A different kind of handkerchief. A different kind of beginning.”

She stared at him, really saw him, and then did something he had not dared imagine.

She leaned in and hugged him.

Not tentative. Not polite. But real, full arms, cheek against his shoulder, warmth pressed into him like she belonged there, like she was tired of fighting gravity.

He froze. Then, slow, reverent, lifted his arms and held her. Careful at first, then firmer, as if afraid she might dissolve.

He breathed her in, rosemary shampoo and parchment and the warm, steady scent of safety he had never known in childhood.

For one trembling heartbeat he allowed himself to want. To hope. To imagine mornings where she brewed tea here. Evenings where laughter echoed off old walls. A life planted in warmth, not duty.

Too much. Too soon. So he let go first, gently, painfully, before desire became recklessness.

She drew back slowly, hands sliding from his sleeves. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For the flowers. For the apology. For trying.”

“Thank you,” he echoed. “For… everything.”

She smiled like sunrise, tired but bright. “Goodnight, Draco.”

Something in him jolted. He swallowed. “Goodnight, Hermione.”

The name landed between them like a spell spoken for the first time. Not accidental, not casual, but chosen. Her breath hitched, barely noticeable unless you were watching her the way he always did now. He had never said her name like that before. Not without armor. Not without distance. Not without the buffer of Granger.

Just Hermione.

She tucked her shawl close and walked toward the Manor, lantern lights catching in her curls. At the door, she paused, as if feeling the shift in the air, as if the syllables were still settling over her skin. She turned, met his eyes with something soft and startled and vast.

And then she was gone.

Draco exhaled, alone now with moonlit petals whispering in French and the echo of her warmth lingering on his chest like a spell that had not yet settled.

“Grow where you are loved,” he murmured to the blossoms.

More and more, the Manor did not feel like a house he inherited,  but one he was beginning to deserve.

Chapter Text

Hermione always loved how Sage smelled. Even though the scent shifted day to day, with a different tincture simmering, a different herb drying, a different potion cooling on the back counter, the shop always carried the same quiet promise of comfort.

Today, the air was warm with lavender steeping in glass jars, cedar shelves breathing softly, and a faint ribbon of clary sage curling through the stillness like a blessing.

Here, time didn’t march. It drifted. Unhurried. Kind.

After her morning shift at St. Mungo’s (two spell burns, one stubborn fungus case, and a trainee Healer nearly fainting during wound-cleansing), Sage felt like exhaling into herself again.

Briony was already at the counter, quill tucked behind her ear, annotating a new stock ledger. She wore navy robes rolled at the sleeves and glasses sliding down her nose, the picture of Ravenclaw competence paired with a style only someone her age could pull off without effort.

“You look tired,” Briony observed, not unkindly, just factual. She passed Hermione a mug of chamomile-honey infusion. “Drink before you keel over. I cannot run this place without you, I don’t care what my mother says about ‘leadership potential.’”

Hermione snorted, wrapping cold fingers around the warm cup. “Lovely to see my legacy of compassion thriving in your hands.”

Briony grinned. “I learned from the best.”

Sage came alive gently across the afternoon, a steady trickle of regulars. Mrs.Twill for her seasonal allergy tea, a young Hogwarts student’s mother seeking dreamless sleep for the exam season, a retired Hit Wizard who’d sworn Hermione's nerve tonic kept him from hexing Muggle drivers.

And as always, a few curious eyes lingered on the trays of moon-glass stones and jars of star-aniseed.

“Magic meets earth here,” someone once whispered upon walking in. Hermione kept the compliment in her heart like pressed flowers in a journal.

Late-afternoon drifted golden, warm and almost idle. Hermione sorted bundles of mugwort behind the counter while Briony labeled a batch of rose hip balm.

“You’re thinking about it again,” Briony murmured, not looking up.

Hermione blinked. “About what?”

Briony gave her a look, sharp, knowing, annoyingly Ravenclaw. “The trip.”

Hermione exhaled. “Two days. Yes.”

“Camping,” Briony said dryly. “With Draco Malfoy.”

“Research!” Hermione corrected, heat rising up her neck. “It’s a harvest ritual. It must be done under moonlight, Scorpion is also coming, and-”

“And Draco Malfoy will be there,” Briony cut in. “Possibly in morally questionable knitwear again.”

Hermione tried, really tried, not to smile. She failed.

“He’s… trying,” she said softly. “So much harder than I ever imagined.”

Briony softened. “You look less heavy around him. Thought you should know that.”

Hermione startled.

Less heavy. She’d never put language to it, but yes, weight lifted in his presence now, not added. Strange. Impossible. Real.

Before she could reply, the door chimed.

Ginny breezed in first, hair sunlit wild, cheeks flushed from broom flying or motherhood or sheer force of personality. Behind her came Pansy, elegant in deep green, expression sharp enough to slice diamonds.

Briony straightened. “Ladies. If you’re here for professional potions advice, please pretend Hermione does none of the labor and I do all of it.”

Pansy smirked. “I believe nepotism when I see it.”

Ginny grinned. “We’re here on an intervention mission.”

Hermione blinked. “Intervention?”

Ginny nodded firmly. “Yes. You're one brisk cauldron-stir away from turning into a Victorian governess.”

Pansy leaned across the counter. “We’re here to forcibly extract you for wine.”

Briony perked. “If Hermione goes, I go.”

Hermione spluttered. “We can't just leave Sage early-”

Ginny snapped her fingers, wandlessly calling the shop’s shade charms to the windows. The air hummed. The Closed sign flipped.

“Problem solved.”

“You can’t do that!” Hermione exclaimed.

“Harry said if I didn’t take you out of the house voluntarily, he’d assign you mandatory Auror wellness checks,” Ginny countered. “And believe me, you don’t want Proudfoot knocking at your door asking if you’ve eaten vegetables.”

Hermione crushed her face into her palms.

“This is mutiny.”

“Darling,” Pansy purred. “This is friendship.”

They ended up at a wine bar around the corner with old bricks, string lights and herb planters hanging from the ceiling. Ginny ordered a chilled rosé. Pansy requested something dry and judgmental. Briony got sparkling elderflower wine; Hermione a buttery chardonnay because she knew herself and what she deserved.

They settled into a quiet corner. The world softened around them.

Briony lifted her glass. “To balance.”

Ginny clinked. “To survival.”

Pansy tapped her rim, dramatic. “To seducing emotionally stunted aristocrats into emotional maturity.”

Hermione choked. “I hate everyone here.”

Ginny wiggled her eyebrows. “How’s Prince Ferret, anyway?”

“Do not call him that.”

“So he’s good, then,” Ginny said, smug.

“He is…” Hermione swirled her wine, searching. “A puzzle to me.”

Pansy sipped with feline satisfaction. “He’s been evolving for years. Like a very sexy Pokémon. That’s the correct name you once told me, right?”

Hermione covered her face. “Pansy-”

“Oh don't pretend you don't notice,” Pansy insisted. “You once spent years fighting him. Now you're spending nights in his library. Progress.”

“We study,” Hermione said weakly.

“Mmm,” Pansy hummed. “So does a wand polishing spell.”

Ginny snorted wine up her nose. Briony clapped, delighted.

Hermione groaned. But there was warmth in her chest she couldn’t deny, the comfort of being known and teased and loved.

Pansy raised an eyebrow, sipping again. “Speaking of wands and polishing, when exactly were you planning to tell us about the garden, darling?”

Hermione froze. “The garden?”

Ginny and Briony leaned in immediately, hungry for blood like affectionate piranhas.

Pansy’s grin spread slow and wicked. “The garden, Granger.”

Hermione’s stomach dropped. “Oh Merlin.”

Briony gasped. “There was a garden involved?”

Ginny’s eyes widened, sparkling with unholy delight. “Was Malfoy involved? What happened?”

Hermione took a long drink of wine, because she knew she was doomed. “It wasn’t like that.”

Pansy cackled. “It was exactly like that. You should thank me, by the way.”

Hermione gave her a flat look over her wine. “I figured you’d take credit eventually.”

“Yes,” Pansy said, smug. “Because I was the one who told him you still love dogwoods. The little story about your French grandmother’s garden. You’re welcome.”

Hermione set her glass down, rubbing her temples. “Well… he planted a few trees.”

Silence.

Absolute, stunned silence.

Ginny’s jaw dropped. Briony clutched the edge of the table. Pansy leaned back with a slow, feline smirk, looking unbearably pleased with herself.

“He- he what?” Ginny sputtered. “Planted dogwood trees, plural? In the Manor?”

Hermione nodded, cheeks heating. “In the courtyard. Said it was… for me.”

Briony’s mouth fell open. “That’s not a gesture, Hermione. That’s… that’s romantic horticulture.”

Pansy fanned herself. “That man is flirting like a nineteenth-century poet. Next he’s going to duel a ghost for your honor.”

Ginny let out a low whistle. “Malfoy planting symbolic apology trees. Can’t say I saw that coming.”

Pansy perked up suddenly, eyes sharpening like a cat spotting movement in tall grass. “Well, well… quite the coincidence, isn’t it? Dogwoods looking so terribly similar to handkerchiefs.”

Hermione groaned. “Pansy, please-”

“No, no, no,” Ginny said immediately. “What do you mean, handkerchiefs?”

Briony scooted closer. “Yes, I’m going to need elaboration immediately.”

Pansy smirked, delighted. “Hermione can explain.”

“I cannot,” Hermione said, mortified.

Of course Pansy would bring that up. Hermione cursed herself silently. Merlin, why did I ever tell her that story? Two years ago. Too many Firewhiskys. A night where they’d sat together until closing time at a muggle pub, talking about unlikely friendships, about Slytherin and Gryffindor never mixing, and somehow Hermione had ended up admitting she still kept a handkerchief Draco Malfoy had given her at the Yule Ball.

She remembered Pansy’s face that night. Stunned, then moved, then far too invested. Hermione had told her that the moment had been the first quiet crack in her black-and-white view of the world. That Draco hadn’t been cruel then. That he’d surprised her. That the handkerchief had become a tiny symbol of something she couldn't name at the time. And Pansy, traitor that she was, had never forgotten.

“Hermione,” Ginny warned, pointing at her with her wine glass, “if you don’t start talking right now, I will hex your chair.”

Briony nodded solemnly. “I’ll hold her down.”

Hermione covered her face. “You’re all impossible.”

“Talk,” Pansy sang.

Hermione inhaled. Exhaled. Resigned herself to fate.

“Fine,” she muttered. “It was… the Yule Ball in my 4th year.”

Ginny’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. “WHAT.”

Briony grabbed Pansy’s arm. “There’s lore? Why didn’t I know there was lore?”

Hermione groaned into her hands. “It wasn’t anything dramatic. I was crying outside. Stressed. Overwhelmed. I’d just argued with Ron over Viktor, of all things, and everything felt… too much.”

Briony’s eyes softened, instantly charmed. “Oh.”

“And Draco found me,” Hermione continued, voice low. “He… didn’t insult me. He didn’t sneer. He just- he handed me a handkerchief.”

Ginny’s mouth fell open. “I’m sorry- I’m sorry- WHAT? Hermione Jean Granger, you kept that from me for over a decade?”

Hermione swallowed. “Yes.”

Pansy snapped her fingers triumphantly. “See? Handkerchief.”

Ginny leaned forward, voice softening. “And I’m assuming you kept it?”

Hermione hesitated. Her throat tightened.

“Yes… because it was the first time I realized the world wasn’t as black-and-white as we thought it was,” she said quietly. “Because it felt like… a tiny shift. Like maybe he wasn’t just the boy I argued with in corridors.”

The table fell quiet.

Briony reached out, touching Hermione’s hand. “And the dogwood…”

“…felt like a continuation of that,” Hermione finished, eyes warm. “A small sign that maybe people grow. Change. Try.”

Ginny’s smile melted gentle. “Hermione… that’s actually beautiful.”

Pansy sniffed dramatically. “Ugh, you’re all going to make me emotional.”

Briony laughed softly. “This is the softest gossip we’ve ever had.”

Hermione hid her burning face in her hands again.

And Ginny, grinning like she’d discovered a new constellation, whispered:

“Dogwood and a handkerchief. Hermione… you’re so doomed.”

Conversation drifted, the way it always did with the four of them, like threads being braided by invisible hands, looping seriousness into silliness and back again.

“So,” Ginny began, swirling her rosé, “Narcissa is… terrifyingly excited.”

Hermione blinked. “For the gala?”

Ginny nodded grimly. “I’ve never seen a woman threaten three decorators and charm a ballroom in the same breath. She cornered me after the committee meeting and asked if the floral arrangements were ‘statement level’ or merely ‘acceptable.’”

Pansy smirked. “She means: are they capable of silencing the ghosts of the aristocracy judging her from beyond the grave?”

“She did mention Weasley-Potter dynasty energy,” Ginny muttered. “I’m not sure if that was a compliment or a threat.”

Hermione laughed into her glass. “If anyone can manage a Ministry gala post-nearly-reignited war tensions, it’s Narcissa.”

Pansy raised her glass. “To Malfoy women holding society together by sheer force of ambition and impeccable taste.”

Briony blinked. “And… what’s the theme again?”

Pansy leaned forward, eyes bright, a general about to present battle plans. “Rebirth in Spring. Renewal. Soft power wrapped in elegance. Think ethereal silk, enchanted florals, embroidery that breathes when the moonlight hits it.”

Hermione felt warmth bloom in her chest. “That’s beautiful.”

“That’s politics,” Pansy corrected, tapping a manicure sharp enough to duel with. “Nothing says ‘we won’t bow to fear’ like wearing a gown made of literal living wisteria.”

Ginny snorted. “You want people attending to leave thinking, I fear that woman and also want to look like her.”

“Exactly.” Pansy looked pleased. “And since Narcissa drafted me to coordinate wardrobe diplomacy, expect everyone to look stunning enough to end bigotry by aesthetic alone.”

Hermione blinked. “Wardrobe diplomacy?”

Pansy rolled her eyes, sipping. “Symbolic unity via fashion and shared color palettes. It’s very nouveau politics. Also, I enjoy the power.”

Briony whispered, awestruck, “You’re terrifying.”

Pansy patted her hand. “I know, pet.”

Then she turned to Hermione with the slow, feline smile of someone dropping matches onto carefully arranged kindling.

“Oh- and you’ll be delighted to know that your gown, entirely by accident of course,” she said with absolutely no sincerity, “happens to share a few, just a few, color notes with Draco’s suit. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough that everyone with eyes will… wonder.”

Hermione stared. “Pansy.”

“What?” Pansy said, all false innocence. “Color harmony is important. Don’t worry, you two won’t look like a matched set.” A beat. “Unless you stand too close. Then all bets are off.”

Briony choked on her drink. Hermione covered her face. Pansy looked delighted with herself, as if unity-by-fashion were merely a side quest to her favorite hobby: orchestrating fate.

Before Hermione could retort, Susan appeared at the edge of their small pavement table, hair wind-tousled from her long shift, Auror cloak half-undone, cheeks pink from walking through the cool Diagon Alley air. 

“Please tell me this establishment has something stronger than tea,” Susan said, already pulling out her wand.

With a neat flick, she conjured an extra chair. Oak, sturdy, perfectly matching the others, and slid into it with a sigh that belonged to someone who had negotiated with both criminals and bureaucrats in the same afternoon.

“Yes,” Pansy replied. “Depending on whether you want to cope cute or cope properly.”

Susan grabbed a glass of sparkling cider. “Then coping medium it is.”