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Chapter Text

I just keep you warm (keep you warm)
And my waves meet your shore
Ever and evermore
- Long Story Short

It isn’t easy at first. Hermione remembers the films she used to go to at the cinema with her parents as a child – the films which documented the war – the ones that never showed what happened after the battle was won. Her parents told her what it was like to be children and sent away to the countryside to get them out of London during the Blitz. Her father had been five, her mother three. Neither of them remembered much of the war, but they remember the aftermath, the austerity, and the desperate attempts to return to some semblance of normalcy when the continent cleaved itself in ideological two.

What she knows now, about the second shadow war that existed behind that of the first, is enough to make Hermione’s stomach turn. The newspapers are full of the names of the dead and the missing. Her parents, though their names are not reported, are among them.

Hermione sits outside the reopened café on Catterlily Place and stares out at the world. She is bone-tired even though there has now been over a month of peace. She needs to go and fetch her parents, undo the memory charm, and make amends somehow. They will be well within their rights to never forgive her, and some sick part of Hermione, the part that is still writhing on the floor of Malfoy Manor under Bellatrix LeStrange’s knife, wants them to think her dead to them. It would be easier if they didn’t see her scars.

She can’t ever explain them, and they won’t ever heal.

She closes the newspaper and sets it aside. She can only delay this so long. Rita Skeeter isn’t above sniffing out a story this good, and, while she and Hermione have achieved an uneasy peace, Hermione doesn’t trust it. She doesn’t think she can trust anything again.

There are two letters and an official invitation next to her empty teacup on the little café table before her. She"s opened the first. Professor McGonagall has written about summer revision and instruction sessions for the students who did not attend school for their seventh year – they’ve postponed the NEWTs until September to give students time to prepare. Hermione is uncertain what she wants to do with the invitation, just as she is about her parents. She knows the right, requisite course of action, of course, but following through is another question entirely.

Her fingers splay out over the letters. One is sealed closed with wax and an insignia that is burned into her mind forever.

What does Draco Malfoy want with her now?

She turns her arm and rolls up the sleeve of her crisp white shirt to stare at the bandage that still lingers on her arm. The wound is cursed, and unlike last time, no amount of Bill, Fleur, and Marietta’s combined skill can break it. She has an appointment at St. Mungo’s in a week to speak with a curse breaker there. Even if they could remove the curse, the scar will probably always be there, and it aches even now. She stares at it for a long time before she opens the letter and begins to read.

~

Later, she pops over to help Harry as he works to clean out Grimmauld Place once and for all. They’re sitting in the kitchen drinking glasses of ice water, sweaty after moving furniture out of the drawing room and rolling up the rug to scrub the floorboards clean the muggle way with Kreacher’s help. When he opened the door for Hermione, Harry announced that he’d bought an electronic sander, and is going to redo the floors if he can charm it to work on magic. Hermione thinks he’s insane, and Kreacher’s moaning about defacing the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black’s perfectly good hardwood floors. 

“Malfoy’s written me,” she says. The water is cool, and the glass is dewing. She sets it down.

Harry looks at her, fiddling with the Order of Merlin sitting in the middle of the table under a pile of yellowing, three-year-old newspapers. Somehow using such an honor as a paper weight fits perfectly with how hollow the award feels. People died. So many people died. So many people’s lives are ruined. “What does he want?”

Hermione pulls out her wand and contemplates the sander for a moment before flicking her wrist to cast a spell she learned from Mr. Weasley that will help her understand the composition of its electronic circuitry. “Suppose to give me back the necklace.”

The letter hadn’t actually said that, but reading between the lines, Hermione spotted Malfoy’s intentions clear as day. Slytherins aren’t nearly as sneaky as they think they are most of the time.

“What’s Fleur think?” Harry tilts his head. He pulls a notebook out of his pocket and the stub of a pencil and passes them to Hermione.

“I haven’t asked her yet – she’d just left for work when it arrived.” She scribbles the spell diagram on the paper and starts in on the proof. “I suspect she’ll want me to get it back. Malfoy – back at Hogwarts – he told me that he was sorry he didn’t have it with him. Apologized to Fleur for taking it too.”

The scene had been surreal, Malfoy untangled himself from his mother’s arms and had picked his way across the Great Hall to where Fleur was desperately trying to prevent Hermione from passing out. She’d found out later that she’d been concussed, and had spent the better part of the next two weeks seeing a healer daily to ensure that there were no lingering effects. Malfoy knelt down and spoke to Fleur, Hermione didn’t remember much of the conversation, but remembered that Fleur said something sharp and Malfoy put his hands up in surrender. “I meant no offense,” he said. “Just to save her life.”

“You stole from me,” Fleur shot back. 

“I had to keep her alive.” Malfoy insisted. “It would have gotten her killed. My aunt –”

“Fleur,” Hermione had forced herself to speak even though her consciousness was swimming even then. “It’s okay. He’s right. She would have done far worse had she known.”

It was only then that Fleur calmed.

The pencil breaks and Hermione reaches for the pen knife that Harry’s been distractedly spinning on the table. She sharpens it and sighs. “I don’t want to go back there.”

“Make him come to you then,” Harry shrugs. He flips the sander over and fiddles with the coiled plug. “Is this going to get us reported to Mr. Weasley’s department at the Ministry?”

“No,” Hermione answers. She sets the final variables into place and looks over the proof. “All you’re doing is charming it to respond to magic as opposed to electricity. You could,” Hermione glances around the kitchen, “also consider getting this place wired.”

“And have Sirius’s mum lose her mind at muggle contractors coming into the house? Not bloody likely.” He wrinkles his nose. “Still don’t know if there are wards on the building that…dunno, dissolve muggles into goo if they come inside.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Hermione points out, raising an eyebrow.

“Good point.” He pulls out his wand and looks at Hermione’s proof. “Dunno why you bother doing the proofs anymore, Hermione. You know it’s going to work.”

“I like to make sure my theory is sound,” she answers. “What if it explodes because I didn’t use the right emphasis in the spell? Happens to Ron enough.”

Harry laughs. She sighs, resting her elbow on the table. “Are you going to go in for the NEWT revision sessions they’re holding in Surrey?”

Harry taps the sander and says the charm, waiting a moment before clicking it on, it vibrates in his hand, and he clicks it off triumphantly. “No,” he says. “I’ve been offered a pass to get into the auror program. They reckon killing Voldemort is proof of NEWT-level skill.” He sets the sander aside and taps his fingers on the table. “They’d offer you a place, if you wanted one.”

“Harry, I don’t want to be an auror.” Hermione says. That’s about the last thing she wants to be if she’s honest.

“What do you want to be then?”

“I…” Hermione blinks, frowns, and then blinks again. “Well, I dunno actually. There hasn’t really been much time to think about it.”

In the distance, there’s a shriek that sounds like someone has let a ghoul loose in the front parlor. Hermione jumps, wand drawn back into a defensive dueling position. Kreacher appears with a sharp crack in the kitchen doorway, eyes wide. “Master Harry!” he says. “Someone who is not being welcome is coming too close to the wards, quickly, quickly, you must get them to leave before…”

In the distance there’s a thud and then a clatter, as though someone has dropped a bag of groceries. Hermione glances at Harry, who’s got his wand out, eyes darting around the room. “What do you mean, not welcome?” he demands. “Like muggles?”

“No!” Kreacher protests. He points at Hermione. “She is allowed into this house, is she not? No, someone who is being banned – they are the only ones who are setting off those wards.” There’s something that seems just a little wicked about Kreacher as he explains. Hermione swallows.

Hermione gestures for Harry to go ahead of her, and they creep up the stairs from the kitchen to the front entryway, wands held at the ready. From where she’s standing, Hermione watches Harry’s profile, watches his adam’s apple bop once. He must be as frightened as she feels then, and Harry has nerves of steel when he wants to have them. “Kreacher,” he says, his voice low. “Wouldn’t those sorts of wards have been taken down when Sirius died – since he was head of the Black family?”

Kreacher pulls on one of his ears, his wizened face pensive. “Not if it was being done…”

Harry looks down at his watch just then, and lets out a bark of laughter.

“Harry?” Hermione asks. Her knuckles are white on her wand. “Don’t be so loud, they could hear you,” she hisses.

Straightening, Harry tucks his wand away and strides to the door, leaving Hermione and Kreacher staring after him. “There are always more Blacks,” Kreacher says darkly. “Even if names are being different now.”

Something feels like it’s closing off in Hermione’s throat and she struggles to suck in air. There’s voices in the distance, but Hermione feels like she’s underwater, her vision swimming as she struggles to breathe. She grips her wand, as it feels solid and steady, uncurved, the wand she’s always used, and tries to force her breathing to steady.

“-mione?” Harry’s voice says.

Kreacher tugs on her sleeve, but Hermione can scarce feel it.

“Give her space , Kreacher.” comes a second voice. This one is female, richer, its accent somewhat familiar. Polished, like how Pansy speaks when she’s frustrated, when her diction lessons and ‘proper breeding’ come out. She knows Kreacher? Who –

Hermione forces her eyes open to see Harry standing in the doorway with a tall woman behind him, her hair tied into a loose bun at the back of her head and a trickle of blood running down her nose. She has a baby in her arms. He’s starting to hiccup, and she bounces him gently, eyes never leaving Hermione. 

“Well,” Harry says. “Guess that serves me right for asking you to come ‘round without first checking on the wards.”

The woman chuckles and Hermione finally forces herself back into an upright position, her fingers never loosening around her wand. “My aunt and uncle were never the most hospitable of people,” she confesses. She wipes the blood from her nose with the back of her hand. “Didn’t much care for blood traitors, but my aunt was notoriously awful at the arithmancy needed for good warding. Don’t know why she didn’t hire a professional considering the family skill at breaking them…shame, I’d suspect. I certainly caused enough of it.” She tilts her head, assessing Hermione as though she’s just noticed her. “Hello, you must be Hermione. I don’t believe we’ve ever properly met.”

Hermione blinks, and tries to shake herself of the dread. She jerks her head downward in a curt nod and forces herself to lower her wand. “Hello,” she says stiffly. Her hand is trembling. Her heart feels like it’s somewhere in her throat, a burning sensation blossoming in its wake. She exhales trying to force herself to be calm, counts to five in English, and then in French, exhales. Bright red sparks shoot out of the end of her wand and Hermione’s cheeks burn with embarrassment. She hasn’t had an involuntary magic episode since last year, and that was only because of the bond. Before that she had been eleven and just about to start at Hogwarts.

“Oh Merlin . Here, Harry,” the woman says. She hands the baby to Harry and steps forward, her expression soft. She raises her hands, looking Hermione straight in the eyes, and takes another step. “I’ve startled you.”

There’s no apology, just a statement of truth.

This isn’t her, this isn’t her…

Swallowing, Hermione extinguishes the sparks shooting from her wand and tucks it back into her back pocket. The over-sized flannel that she’d thrown on against the kitchen’s chill is one of Ron’s, and Hermione knows she looks small. “I’m sorry,” she babbles, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that you’d be coming here and that I’d have to see you and I wasn’t—I wasn’t prepared.” She screws up her face, forcing a smile that seems more like a grimace onto it, and sticks out her hand to shake the woman’s hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Tonks.”

Andromeda Tonks’ hand, when she takes Hermione’s, feels nothing like the cold callouses from complicated wand work she’d encountered from Bellatrix. No, it is warm, sweaty even.  Hermione realizes she’s wearing faded jeans and a cardigan that hangs open over a holey Led Zeppelin t-shirt that looks about two sizes too big for her tucked into the jeans. She dresses like her mum, if her mum wore old ratty band t-shirts. There is no odd wizarding dress, no outer robe, nothing to say that this woman is anything other than a muggle save for the fact that she’s got a wand tucked into her cardigan pocket. There’s something critical about the way she regards Hermione, her eyes full of warmth, yet careful calculation. “Does this happen often?”

“No.” Hermione drops Andromeda’s hand. “Usually I have more time, I can know what to expect, prepare myself.”

From where he’s still standing by the door, Harry lets out a small sound and the baby in his arms makes a noise in return. He bends down to pick up what Hermione guesses is a bag full of nappies and bottles, and slings it over his shoulder with the practiced ease of someone who’s done this before. “We’ve cleaned the first-floor drawing room. I’m going to start on the floors tomorrow, but they are clean for the first time since I set foot in this place.”

“Master is speaking out of turn, much to do in a house like this,” Kreacher grumbles, before vanishing with a crack.

“Hermione are you staying?” Harry asks. There’s a fond smile on his face as he shakes his head. Kreacher has gotten better , but he is far from perfect still.

“No, I have some things to do before Fleur gets home at half seven.”

“Can’t believe they’re still making her work so late,” Harry comments. “Aren’t bankers supposed to have good hours? That’s what my uncle always told my aunt about the neighbors – he worked for Santander I think. Maybe HSBC…” He trails off as Teddy makes a grab for his glasses, hissing as the baby manages to grab a fistful of hair as well. “These are not for you, Teddy. Uncle Harry needs them to see. Otherwise there are two of you.”

Still talking to the baby, he disappears up the hallway, his voice dropping in volume as he walks past the stairs, but the curtains on Mrs. Black’s painting at the top of the stairs stay blissfully still. Hermione sighs. “I don’t know how he does it,” she confesses. “He – he doesn’t constantly relive it.”

“Do you?” Andromeda asks quietly. “I don’t know all the details and I don’t want to pry, but Harry’s mentioned you had a rough go of it back in March.”

There’s something sharp that creeps into Hermione’s voice. A want to lash out at anyone who’d think to speak of what happened to her to anyone else. “Did he say why?”

“No.” Andromeda looks up toward the landing, eyeing the curtains over Mrs. Black’s portrait nervously. Hermione wonders if it’s always been there, or if she came here as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, or if Tonks told her. “Like I said, it isn’t my business and I don’t want to pry.”

Sucking in a deep breath of air, Hermione begins to roll up the sleeve of her left arm. It’s not bandaged, and most of the wounds have reached the point of scabbing over where the skin draws tight and it’s all she can do to not pick them back open when they itch.

She looks down at the marks for a moment, hating them, before turning her arm so Andromeda can see. She watches the older watch closely, watches as her lips draw into a thin line and how she looks, but does not touch. “The wound is cursed.”

“Yes.”

“And you – and I assume Miss Delacour – have not been able to remove it.” There is something so kind about the way Andromeda is speaking to her that reminds Hermione of the doctors she had when she was a child. They’d always had that same, gentle tone that carefully probed for answers without pushing . When Hermione indicates the negative with a jerk of her chin Andromeda sighs deeply. “My sister did this. It’s the only reason why you would be so frightened every time you see me. The only reason you’d lose control of your magic like that.” She shakes her head. “I always did hate the family resemblance, they used to joke that we were twins as girls.”

Hermione stares at her. “Mrs. Tonks…” She begins. She can’t really spit out that she doesn’t want to hear about Bellatrix, even in passing. She swallows, opens her mouth to try again, only to have Andromeda cut her off.

“Call me Andy, everyone does. But if you must, it would be Healer, not Missus.” Andromeda gives a little shrug, as though she’s used to correcting this.

“Andy, then.” Hermione says quietly. “You’re a healer?”

“Yes, I work on the accidental magical catastrophes ward at Saint Mungo’s, but I have admitting privileges at the Queen Vic and Bartholomew-Kern in Reading. Travel around a bit when needed. Most of my patients are children who are just coming into their magical abilities, but we handle the occasional incident of wild magic in adults. Tricky stuff undoing that. But… I would imagine you don’t really want to hear about that right now. You were saying something?”

Andromeda says it gently, but Hermione knows it’s a gesture meant to put her at ease. Hermione swallows down the worry that comes from speaking about this and asserting her needs in a situation that doesn’t feel quite right to assert them. She doesn’t know this woman, but she knows of her. Knows where she came from and the choices and sacrifices she’s made in her life – knows her child, so lost without Professor Lupin and the complicated relationship they’d formed. “I don’t like hearing about her – your whole family really. I know that it may be – well, cathartic for you, but for me it just sends me right back there.”

There’s a moment then, where Teddy’s distant laughter fills the hallway. A fond smile creeps over Andromeda’s face and her eyes flick toward the drawing room. Light is streaming out of the open doorway into the dimly lit hallway, and the place looks somehow brighter for it. Her attention flicks back to Hermione, and, though she’s dressed like she shops at a charity shop, she looks like she could be the mistress of this household. Hermione swallows down the fear that comes with the shift, for it is when she most closely resembles Bellatrix. “I will keep that in mind, Hermione. I can’t make up for what she did, I can’t even apologize. But as she was my blood it is my duty to try and make amends.”

~

Later, Hermione is lazing on the hammock swing on the balcony, nose buried in Modern Maladies: an exploration into asklebian practice in a modern magical world. She’s read the book three times now, and has written Fleur’s mum as soon as it was safe to do so to thank her for sending it along. If asked, Hermione is sure she wouldn’t be able to articulate it, but there’s something soothing about the healing craft the book describes, even if it is just the more theoretical and esoteric aspects of the practice. She pushes her toe against the balcony railing, pushing so the hammock will rock slightly, and turns a page.

The clock on the top of the tower that plays home to a few business offices just up the road from the row of  converted Victorian townhouses Hermione and Fleur call home, tolls six. She needs to start dinner soon. She’d taken the Tube home after leaving Grimmauld Place and the awkward conversation she’d had with Andromeda Tonks to a lighter one about her grandson and her daughter’s recovery in the weeks since the war. It seemed that Dora, as her mother called Tonks, was on the mend and was seeing what Andy had referred to as a ‘mind healer.’ When Hermione had questioned what that meant, as wizardkind so often, in her experience, called things shared across both cultures wildly different things, Andy had explained that mind healers were a combination of a psychiatrist and a counsellor. “They specialize in trauma,” Andy had explained, “most train in muggle techniques as well as magical ones. Sometimes treatment requires both. Most good healers tend to be muggleborn or halfblood for this reason. Easier for them to swallow the fact that muggles tend to have a better knowledge of science than wizardkind do at any rate, don’t object to the training being so… muggle at times.”

Hermione hadn’t asked her if she’d felt that way during her training, and when the conversation slid into a more comfortable silence and Hermione felt calm once more, she’d taken her leave. The walk to the Caledonian Road station to catch the tube left her feeling slightly calmer, and by the time she’d changed trains at Holburn and headed west toward White City Hermione was back to ruminating on Harry’s comment prior to Andromeda’s arrival about post-NEWT plans. She still doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life, even now in this moment of relative peace. The lack of knowing leaves her, as it so often did, chewing the inside of her cheek in frustration, for nothing has really caught Hermione’s attention as a viable career after what she’s seen. The scars of the war are still too fresh.

Catterlily Place is nestled in the heart of White City, a side street tucked in between two other residential streets that look, to the outside eye, like a gated garden off Uxbridge Road. Hermione had taken the long way back, nipping into the grocers for a few things for dinner, before meandering home. She’s been back for two hours now, and finally feels relaxed enough to contemplate cooking. The bag is still on the counter by the sink.

Sighing, Hermione hooks her toe around the balcony railing again, stilling the chair, and leaves Modern Maladies in the hammock as she makes her way back inside. Crookshanks trots past her as she opens the door, hopping into the seat in her wake and nudging the book to the balcony floor.

By half six she’s got one of Fleur’s muggle cookbooks out and is working her way through the complicated prep work of preparing to make what the cookbook assures her will be a “bright and zesty” stir fry. Hermione has never zested an orange in her life, and is extremely dubious of the whole arrangement, but one of the things that she and Fleur have both agreed upon is that they cannot keep surviving on the few things they both know how to cook and take-away. Hermione’s spent a year surviving on tinned food, she never thought she’d crave vegetables as much as she does these days. She chalks it up to another strange after-effect of the war.

The door opens and Fleur appears beyond the half-wall that divides the kitchen from the rest of the living space. She leans against the wall, watching as Hermione scrapes the orange across the smallest grate of the cheese grater she’s transfigured from a spoon. “I thought the point of an orange was to not eat the peel.”

“It is meant to be zesty and bright ,” Hermione answers. She has orange juice all over her fingers. “Whatever that means.”

Fleur sweeps into the kitchen, setting her bag on the kitchen table and wrapping her arms around Hermione from behind. She presses a kiss to the back of Hermione’s neck, as it’s warm in the kitchen and Hermione’s put her hair up, and hums contentedly. “The citrus brightens the flavor.”

Hermione chuckles. “I see you’ve been reading this one too.” She tilts her head toward the cookbook that she’s charmed to float at eye level and Fleur presses another kiss to her neck. Hermione leans against her, despite the warmth. Fleur smells like the office today, she’s dressed for it, a blazer slung over a soft blue blouse that Hermione has always loved Fleur in. She’s wearing slacks, and Hermione, when she sets the orange down and turns in Fleur’s arms, sees that she’s got her work boots in a canvas bag that’s now on the table beside her leather workbag.

Hermione knows she smells like sweat and this orange and regrets not showering when she came home after spending most of the day cleaning with Harry. She doesn’t care, kissing Fleur gently, her arms wrapped around Fleur’s shoulders. In the time apart, she’d grown an inch, and the only reason Fleur’s taller than her these days is her penchant for wearing heels to the office when she doesn’t have to go down to the vaults. “How was work?” She bumps their foreheads together. “Are the goblins still incredibly cross?”

“They have long memories, Hermione. It will be some time before they’ll allow any of you three back onto the premises,” Fleur’s smile is small, but there’s a wicked twinkle in her eye. “But it was uneventful, paperwork mostly. My hand aches from writing.” She kisses Hermione once more, a brief peck on the cheek, before extracting herself from Hermione’s arms and shrugging off her blazer. She drapes it over the back of a chair and hums, looking through post Hermione’s left there.

Hermione goes back to her zesting, glowering at the cookbook as it bobs cheekily before her. There’s something about its bounce that seems defiant, as though reminding her that dinner is meant to be zesty and bright and if she doesn’t get this right it will just be bland and boring.

“Hermione?” Fleur calls.

“Mn?”

“Why’s Draco Malfoy written you?”

“Oh!” Hermione sets down the fully zested orange and moves to rinse her hands before coming to join Fleur at the table. “I think it was an attempt to open a dialogue. Give me back the necklace.”

Fleur’s eyes flick to Hermione’s bare neck. “It would be…good to see it back where it belongs.” She says it delicately, but there’s a note of hurt that creeps into her voice that makes Hermione’s heart ache.

She reaches forward, takes Fleur’s hands and holds them gently between her own. “I know you don’t like seeing me without it. I’ll get it back from him.”

“Is he still staying at his ancestral home?”

Hermione frowns, she reaches for the envelope that came with the letter and flips it over. “Think so. The return address is Wiltshire.”

Fleur’s hand twists to grip the hand Hermione’s still holding tightly. “I don’t think you should go back there.” Hermione meet’s Fleur’s eyes and there’s something in their depths that implores Hermione to listen. “Ask him to meet you elsewhere.”

“Fleur…”

“Please, Hermione, you still have nightmares most nights. Going back there…I worry what it will do to you.”

Swallowing, Hermione looks away from Fleur, down to their joined hands. She’s fascinated by how their hands look together, how Fleur’s fingertips are stained with ink, how her nail beds are stained a little orange from the zesting she’d done. She forces herself to meet Fleur’s eyes when she speaks next, because Fleur has to know that she’s being honest. “I’ll be okay.”

Fleur sighs. “You can say that, but do you know it?”

“No more than you do.” When Fleur frowns, Hermione snaps, “Don’t look at me that way, I’m my own person, Fleur. I know myself.”

Placing a gentle hand on Hermione’s cheek, Fleur brushes her thumb against the soft skin there. “I just worry that your bravery and bravado may catch you by surprise, Hermione.”

“You think that’s what this is? Me putting on a brave face to prove to the world that I’m okay?” She looks away. “I know I’m not okay, Fleur. I…” she hangs her head in shame, stepping back from Fleur’s touch. “I met Andromeda Tonks today. Fleur, she looks so much like her. I froze, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. My wand…I had an accidental magic incident. I haven’t had once since before I went to Hogwarts.”

“Oh Hermione,” Fleur says. She pulls Hermione into a tight hug. Hermione grips the back of Fleur’s blouse, enjoying the feel of the fabric beneath her fingertips. This is what she wanted after that horribly awkward conversation with Andromeda. What she’s wanted since Draco Malfoy’s letter arrived this morning. The safety and comfort of Fleur’s arms, holding her close, cooing gently at the back of her throat.

Hermione pulls back and presses her lips to Fleur’s. The kiss is gentle, but soon Fleur’s tongue slips into her mouth and Fleur’s hands drop to Hermione’s hips, fingers biting into Hermione’s skin with just enough force to pull a low moan from Hermione. She likes how grounding it feels as Fleur pulls her so close their hips bump together. There’s no space between them and Hermione still doesn’t feel close enough. She wraps an arm around the back of Fleur’s neck, threading her hand into Fleur’s hair.

As their lips part, Fleur breathlessly whispers. “Not if you are upset.”

Fingers twitching, Hermione pulls Fleur into another kiss, her nails scratching at Fleur’s scalp. “I’m not,” she promises. She kisses Fleur’s jaw, grazes the sensitive skin at its underside with her teeth and delights as Fleur shivers against her. “I know you’re worried. I’m worried too. But right now, I just want you.”

Fleur’s fingers drop from her hips to her arse. Hermione flings a hand to keep her balance. There’s a crash as the post, Fleur’s work bag, and the canvas bag with her work boots, all are swept from the kitchen table. Fleur half lifts, half backs Hermione up onto the table’s edge, her hands pulling at Hermione’s shorts. She kisses Hermione again, tugging at her t-shirt and only pulling away long enough to get it over Hermione’s head before crashing their lips together once more.

Hermione’s whole body is aflame. Fleur’s hands fall to her breasts, her kiss drifting to the soft skin of Hermione’s neck and biting. Hermione gasps, the bite combined with the press of Fleur’s hands against her breasts, squeezing gently through her bra makes her ache. She clutches at the back of Fleur’s head. Her other arm flung out to steady herself. “Fleur,” she gasps as Fleur bites down harder still, before soothing the pain away gently with the soft fluttering of her tongue. “Are we doing this here?”

Fleur pulls away, lips swollen and hair mussed. “Why would we not?”

“Well, we bought this table at a boot sale and I’ve long been concerned over its structural integrity.”

As if on cue, the kitchen table creaks ominously under their combined weight.

Fleur throws her head back with laughter and takes Hermione’s hand, pulling her from the table and across the flat to their bedroom. Fleur gets Hermione’s bra undone somewhere in the living room, and Hermione has Fleur’s blouse off and slacks undone before they reach the bedroom door. By the time they fall into bed, they’ve divested themselves of the rest of their clothing.

“That’s better,” Fleur whispers. She shifts to rest on one elbow, fingers of her free hand trailing a gentle circle around Hermione’s nipple. Hermione finds herself making a small noise, wanting more as the skin grows tight. Fleur pinches gently, before bending to draw her nipple between her lips. Her fingers drift to Hermione’s other breast and Hermione throbs. She wants more, wants to feel Fleur. Her hips buck as Fleur’s teeth rake against the sensitive skin of her nipple, before Fleur lets it drop with a gentle pop. A smile drifts across her lips, and Fleur’s hand stills.

The loss of sensation has Hermione groaning in frustration.

Fleur watches her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, before bending to kiss her shoulder. “Tell me what you want, Hermione.”

A million things run through Hermione’s mind. She wants Fleur’s mouth; she wants to feel her fingers inside of her; she wants Fleur to find the toy she bought at Christmas two years ago and take her with that while she’s on her hands and knees because it feels so, so good that way; she wants, she wants.

Hermione swallows down these wants, instead reaching for Fleur and pulling her down into a fierce kiss. When she pulls away, she cups Fleur’s breast in one hand, biting at her lip as she stares into Fleur’s eyes. She watches they flutter shut as she moves her thumb against Fleur’s nipple. Watches how Fleur’s lips part as she increases the pressure. She slips her hand lower, to brush against Fleur’s clit. She watches how Fleur’s eyes squeeze shut and her hips jerk into Hermione’s touch. She moves her hand, matching the roll of Fleur’s hips. “Look at me,” she says. Fleur’s eyes snap open.

They find a rhythm. Hermione keeps her hand steady, fingers slipping into Fleur as Fleur grinds against her. Fleur never looks away from her until she jerks, pupils blown and lips parted as she lets out a breathy groan, thighs twitching as she comes. She slumps against Hermione, half on top of her, breathing heavily. Hermione trails her fingers gently along the small of Fleur’s back, at the dip of her spine, to the curve of her arse. She wonders if she can ask Fleur for what she wants, even though she knows that Fleur will give it to her without question. It’s the asking Hermione finds challenging.

When Fleur’s breathing steadies, Fleur’s hand slips between her legs, and she drags her body down to follow it.  She presses her lips to Hermione’s inner thigh, wrapping her arms around  Hermione’s legs to draw her close. “You like doing that,” she whispers, “watching me come undone.”

“I do.” Hermione agrees. She rests her hand on Fleur’s head, staring down at her, this wonderous woman that she’s so, so in love with.

“The feeling, chérie, is entirely mutual.” Fleur says. She dips her head and presses her lips to Hermione’s clit, making Hermione cry out and her hips jerk under Fleur’s firm grip. Fleur keeps up the pace, her tongue never tiring, until Hermione has come twice.

When they finally eat, much, much later that evening, the stir fry carries a brightness that warms Hermione’s belly as the gentle press of Fleur’s hand on her thigh and the look of complete adoration on Fleur’s face warms her heart.

~

“He says he can’t leave the house.”

From where she’s standing at the sink filling the kettle for water, Fleur frowns, looking over her shoulder at Hermione, who’s curled onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table with Crookshanks on her lap. Hermione flips the letter over to see if there’s more on the back and sighs. She’s absently patting Crookshanks as she reads. “ Were I able to leave my home, Granger, trust that I would do so and return your property to you at your earliest convenience, however the Ministry for Magic and the DMLE have seen fit to lock me and my mother into the Manor until our trials are completed in early July . Then he goes on a bit about how the DMLE has already made assurances that they’re both going to get off with reparations work and his father can rot in Azkaban for all he cares.” She sets the letter down. “Guess I’ll have to go to him then.”

Crookshanks jumps from her lap and pads away to the high shelf he likes to laze on by the window that catches the morning sunlight.

Fleur jabs her wand into the burner well and clicks on the gas, waiting for it to ignite before setting the kettle on the burner and lowering the heat slightly. Catterlily Place is on the muggle electric grid, but Fleur refuses to use an electric kettle no matter how much Hermione extols their virtues to her. (“It is not right for water to boil so quickly when even magic struggles to transfigure it so quickly…”) She takes down the bag of coffee Hermione’d bought from the café up the road a few days ago and sets it on the stovetop before turning to look at Hermione. There’s something guarded about how she asks the question, her shoulders back and eyes narrowed. “Veux-tu aller?”

“I want it back, the sooner the better.” She sighs, rubbing at the fading black mark on her hand. “So I guess I must.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Hermione thinks about this for a moment and then shakes her head. “I think I need to do this alone…to help me move on.” She looks at the calendar they’ve pinned to the wall and then frowns. There’s a small notation indicating a two o’clock appointment at St. Mungo’s. “Not today though.”

Fleur wrinkles her nose. “Ah, oui, the other cursebreaker.”

Hermione rolls her eyes. “You and Bill both encouraged me to talk to her.”

The her in question is a professional, and, more importantly, medically trained, curse breaker working out of St. Mungo’s named Harriet Walinowski that both Fleur and Bill knew professionally. Ancient curses and modern ones were two very different subjects and as much as Fleur was frustrated that she and Bill had been unable to lift Bellatrix LeStrange’s curse from her arm, they both knew it was the right course of action to see if such a curse could be removed.

“Yes, but it does not help my ego that I could not break a curse placed on my…”

This is the third time in as many days that Fleur has trailed off when defining their relationship. Hermione wonders if it’s because they’re bonded and technically ‘girlfriend’ doesn’t seem like it’s enough anymore. If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t think the term is adequate either. “Fleur,” she asks quietly. “Do you want to er… talk about us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just… we’re bonded, aren’t we? We’ve been seeing each other for three years now – we promised . You keep faltering when you try and define our relationship. Is there another word than girlfriend? Partner?”

“We are not bonded,” Fleur answers. “Not exactly. We have never formalized it when we were with my parents last year, you know? I thought it may have happened inadvertently knowing what happened with both our magic, but that turned out to be the lingering effects of that blade.” Her eyes flick to Hermione’s neck and the thin white scar there. “We walked right up to the line but never…” She laughs, taking the kettle off the stove just before it shrieks. Turning off the gas she dumps a spoonful of coffee into the press and adds another for good measure. Pouring the water into the press, she hums. “Sometimes I feel like we’ve done this all backward. I would have loved a formal courtship with you.”

“You mean having sex the first time—”

“ Second time ,” Fleur corrects with a wry grin.

“The first time hardly counted!” Hermione puffs out her cheeks. “But fine, the second time we kissed isn’t proper courtship? Why Mademoiselle Delacour, I am appalled.” She thinks of Pansy and her insistence that their relationship be discussed in society the way someone of Fleur’s family’s standing should be, and adds: “The papers would thrive on such a scandal. I can imagine Page Four of the Prophet already: Delacour Heiress Forgoes Romance to Seduce Harry Potter’s Best Friend. Rita would love it.”

“Well,” Fleur says, and her tone is deathly serious in a way that belies the humor in her response. “One would hope there’s still time to woo you in the proper way.”

Hermione sticks her tongue out at Fleur.

With that, she brings the coffee over to the kitchen table and sets it down before Hermione, whisking off to collect mugs and milk. She slips into the chair beside Hermione’s and takes her hand. “For veela, you are promised, and then you are bonded, and then you are mate . The words that people say here like girlfriend, or partner, or even wife, do not accurately translate into what is involved—what it means to me, to the parts of my nature that aren’t fully human.”

“Merlin, I’ve been telling people we’ve been bonded for over a year and a half now.” Hermione shakes her head.

Fleur chuckles. “We should go see my parents, grandmere, actually do it.” She inclines her head toward the calendar. “Maybe around your birthday? Give things time to settle first?”

Hermione nods. “I’d like that,” she says. And she would. More than most things. There’s an inevitability to her relationship with Fleur. “I do think we should wait a while to do anything more than that, though, if that’s alright with you.” Fleur’s fingers twitch in Hermione’s hand and Hermione presses on. “We’ve never had a chance to just be together for an extended period of time, Fleur. This is the longest we’ve been in the same place since the year we met and then it was all so new . I’d like to enjoy this part too.”

“What part would that be?” Fleur asks.

Closing the space between them, her free hand coming to rest on Fleur’s cheek, Hermione smiles at her. “Loving you,” she answers. “Without interruption, without war. Just you, me, and an endless future.”

~

The crowds getting off the Tube at Oxford Circus have always set Hermione on edge, even as a child when she and her mum would come into central London for shopping and to admire the department store windows at Christmas. Now, though, she purposefully walks to the end of the platform to get into the last car of the underground, ignoring the TFL worker who looks at her oddly as she stands with her back pressed against the very end of the train, her fingers gripped on her wand for the eight stops it takes to get from White City to Oxford Circus. When the train arrives, she waits as long as she possibly can before disembarking, and makes her way quickly up the steps and out into the street. It takes Hermione a moment to get her bearings, turning around twice in the large crowd of tourists gathering at the station entrance, blinking up at the bright lights of one of London’s busiest shopping districts.

The crowd thins a little as she gets away from the station. Hermione finds herself relaxing, walking almost leisurely toward the red brick building just off the main street. By the time she turned down the side street, almost no one was around, and Hermione let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, grateful to be away from the Oxford Street crowds. She realizes, belatedly, that she hasn’t been to St. Mungo’s since Ron’s dad was in hospital back in fifth year after getting attacked by what she can only assume now was Nagini. A shiver runs up her spine, and she glances around nervously.

Purge and Dowse Ltd. looks as run down and depressing as ever. The dummies in the windows are wearing lime-green pleather jackets with shoulder pads that make them look boxy and menacing. Hermione approaches the dummy in the most ridiculous-looking jacket and says, “I’ve a two o’clock appointment with Healer Harriet Walinowski.”

The dummy nods, and it"s crooked finger indicates for Hermione to come forward. She swallows, and takes a step forward through the glass, shivering at the coolness of the glass as she passes through it. Inside, the waiting room is fairly empty, and Hermione supposes that there are still a great many people who are nervous about coming out in public after the war was publicly declared over. The paper just this morning had reports of aurors finding a small rogue cell of Death Eaters who had somehow escaped the Hogwarts grounds back in May. Closing her eyes, Hermione counts to five, and exhales. She can do this.

Even though the waiting room is largely empty, Hermione can feel the eyes of the few witches and wizards in the room on her. She shifts, uncomfortably, and moves to speak to the receptionist, who’s half-hidden behind a copy of Witch Weekly . “Er…” She realizes she isn’t sure if this is the same as a muggle A&E. Does she need to check in? Will they just come collect her like at a muggle hospital? “Hello? I’ve got an appointment with—"

The receptionist folds down the corner of the magazine and looks Hermione over. “Name?” she demands. Her expression, not to mention the article on the war effort splashed across the pages of Witch Weekly tells Hermione that this woman knows exactly who she is.

“Hermione Granger. I’m to see Harriet Walinowksi at two.”

“You’re early. Have a seat.”

“Do I need to give you my…” her hand is already in her pocket, pulling out her muggle identification.

“Goodness no, we aren’t muggles .” She gives a small wink, taking in Hermione’s, well, Ron’s oversized flannel shirt, vest, and jeans. “Or the NHS.” The witch gestures to a low stone trough at the side of her desk next to a small container of what, and Hermione’s barely able to keep her laugh contained when she realizes, is a small container of muggle hand sanitizer stamped with the Boots logo. “Drop your wand in there and wait a mo’. Once it’s ascertained your identity, check it over, and if anything’s incorrect let me know. Then you can go sit and wait. I’ll get Hattie to come collect you.”

“Alright. Thank you.” Hermione sets her wand gingerly in the trough and watches curiously as a quill and parchment appear beside it, scribbling out her basic information. “How does it…”

“A bit like a penseive, but specifically for medically pertinent information. Helpful with patients who are unable to speak.”

“Get those a lot?”

“You’d be surprised, Miss Granger.”

Hermione nods, waiting until the quill drops lifelessly back into a jar with several others before taking the parchment form. She reads it over, and, finding nothing incorrect and flushing brightly at the indication that she’s sexually active being checked neatly on the form with a note (“female, non-human partner”), she takes her wand and goes to sit in the corner of the room where she can see both the entrance to the wards beyond the waiting room and the doors that lead back to the street.

A woman hiccups a few seats in front of her and Hermione watches as a large, hot-pink bubble emerges from her lips and floats away to join several others that have collected themselves on the ceiling above her. It looks like some sort of misapplied bubblehead charm. Hermione tugs her notebook from her pocket and thinks for a moment, before writing out the formula for the bubblehead charm. The bubble is meant to be clear, almost invisible, and that’s written directly into the spell with arithmancy. For it to be pink… Distractedly, Hermione rewrites the formula to change the color of the bubble to pink, wondering if it was just a misapplication to the stomach or esophagus, rather than nose and mouth.

Across the room, a now familiar voice calls, “Rose Martin?” There’s something about the inflection, the way the tone rises up on the last sound of the woman’s name that has Hermione’s hand frozen halfway through writing a lambda, heart again hammering in her chest.

She’s dead . She tells herself, her fingers so tight around the pen in her hand that they’re stark white. She forces herself to breathe slowly, as she did on the train, and at the station. She forces herself to look, forces herself to see the truth. If she looks she’ll know it isn’t real.

Sucking in a deep breath, Hermione looks up to see Andromeda Tonks in lime-green healer’s robes and carrying a clipboard appear from the double doors that divide the waiting area from the room beyond. Her hair is up in the same messy bun as before, yet seeing her in wizarding clothing has Hermione pushing her feet as firmly as she can into the ground. Her trainers squeak on the polished linoleum and both the woman with the bubbles and Andromeda look toward her.

“Ah, Mrs. Martin,” Andromeda says, turning down the line of chairs against the wall and sweeping past Hermione with a brief, “Hello, Hermione” as she makes her way toward the woman with the bubbles.

“Hi Andy,” she says to the woman’s back. Somehow, her voice comes out steady.

Andromeda collects the woman, helping her to her feet and flicking her wand so that the pink bubbles follow them as they move to the door. When she passes Hermione again, she hesitates for a moment before saying, “Go ahead Mrs. Martin, you know where my office is, second door on the left.”

Mrs. Martin hiccups once more, and another bubble joins the rest. She vanishes between the double doors and the bubbles bounce against it for a brief instant before Mrs. Martin pushes the door open and the bob after her and out of sight.

“Are you in to visit someone?”

“No,” Hermione shakes her head. “I’m here to see—”

“Hermione Granger?” A woman emerges from the double doors. She’s tall and has close cropped black hair that flakes away on one side to reveal a blast scar that skates across her cheek and runs down her neck. Hermione thinks she looks ruggedly handsome, if a little awkward in lime green healer’s robes.

“Ah, Hattie, of course.” Andromeda smiles. She politely waits for Hermione to collect herself and then leads her over to the woman that Hermione can only assume is Healer Walinowski. “Good luck,” she says. “Hattie,” a coldness creeps into her voice as she says the woman’s name that sends a shiver up Hermione’s spine.

“Andromeda,” the woman says in the same sort of drawl that always sent Hermione into a mood when Pansy used it around her. “Miss Granger?”

“Yes,” Hermione nods. “It was good to see you, Healer Tonks.”

“Likewise.”

Andromeda disappears behind the double doors and Hermione is left regarding Healer Walinowski with something akin to trepidation. She pushes the door and inclines her head, “Shall we, Miss Granger?” Hermione nods and she lets Walinowski lead her deeper into the hospital. Once they’re in the lift at the end of the hall, and Walinowski’s selected the 4th floor, she speaks again: “Bad for business, that Andromeda Tonks.”

“How do you mean?”

“Trying to put me out of a job,” Walinowski laughs. “Fancies herself a better cursebreaker than me.”

“Is she?”

Walinowski flashes her a toothy grin. “Well, Fleur sent you to me, didn’t she?”

Hermione decides that she likes this woman. She follows Walinowski down a long corridor past the few permanent spell damage wards before they turn into a small corner office. Inside the walls are crammed with books, and Hermione recognizes both wizarding and muggle texts alike.

“It isn’t exactly charitable though; Andromeda is very good at understanding the magic that goes into the sorts of curses that children accidentally cast on themselves or others. Sometimes, though, all it takes is the right push, not inventing entirely new magic.” Walinowski gestures for Hermione to sit in a chair that’s been pulled into the middle of the office floor. “So, let’s see what we’re working with.”

Hermione shrugs off her – well Ron’s – shirt and drapes it over the back of the chair before sitting down and twisting her arm so Walinowski can see the marks Bellatrix left on her. It’s cold in the office with just a vest on. Walinowski hooks her ankle around a stool on wheels and pulls her wand from her pocket. “May I touch it?” she asks, plopping herself down on the stool and scooting forward until their knees are almost touching.

“Yes,” Hermione says. “It’s triggered by what it says.”

Walinwoski’s fingers are gentle, She touches the black mark on Hermione’s palm. “And this?”

“Er… blood ward.”

“High price for safety,” Walinowski comments with a raised eyebrow. The scar on the side of her face pulls slightly. It goes clean through her ear. “Fleur mentioned something about a ward bound up in the curse?”

“Bill saw it too,” Hermione confirms. It had looked wicked, like something oozing within the diagnostic spell that he’d cast. When he’d prodded it with his wand, she passed out from the pain and came to with her head cradled in Fleur’s lap and her arm already bleeding through its bandages. “Took three days for it to stop bleeding that time.”

“How many times has it been set off?”

Hermione thinks back. “Maybe five? Three were intentional though to get a good look at the curse. The other two were… not. ”

“And you’ve lost consciousness?”

“Twice – each time was when Fleur or Bill tried to dig into it to figure out what was making it so it couldn’t be removed.” Hearing Fleur say the word mudblood had made Hermione’s blood run cold. Hermione tenses her hand into a fist and looks away from Walinowski to the mess of books and parchment that litter the healer’s desk.

“Never when it was just accidentally activated?”

“No.”

“Interesting.” Walinowski twists her wand in a figure eight over Hermione’s forearm, and squints before flicking her wand at the window shades on the large windows behind her desk. They lower slowly, and the glowing red and black of the spell diagnostic brightens as their eyes adjust to the dimmer life. She purses her lips, fingers gentle on Hermione as she twists the scar marks. Her thumbs circle the letters, rough fingers catching on the scabbed skin. It’s grounding, even if the diagnostic itself doesn’t hurt, necessarily.

Hermione sucks in a breath of air. “What do the er…the circles do?”

“I don’t want you to lose consciousness now, Miss Granger.” Walinowski winks at her. “Fleur would never forgive me, and I doubt she or Bill would think to do this. See, a curse like this is buried deep. Think of a wart, if you want to think about it in terms of a muggle ailment. They’re parasites, rooting down deep in the skin, and cannot be fully removed unless you kill the roots. Massage brings those roots into view in the diagnostic. Most people don’t like touching their cursed wounds, it’s a handy defense.”

“And an ancient curse on an object…”

“Wouldn’t need the same care.” Walinowski confirms. She leans away and pulls muggle pen from her desk and sets a notepad on her knee, scribbling notes.

It makes so much sense. She’s seen the brutality that Fleur uses to break curses. It’s all brute force behind her magic, with Fleur’s finesse it looks effortless, but Hermione’s seen enough of her background translations and spell diagrams to know how much power has to be put behind spellwork that Fleur makes look effortless. She’d looked so helpless, staring at the expanding spell diagram of the curse on Hermione’s arm – hadn’t dared touch anything until Bill was there and even then the pair of them were baffled as to what had happened.

Now, as the spell diagram hangs in the air above her forearm, Hermione’s lips part in shock. It is far, far more complex than the diagrams that Fleur, even in her combined efforts with Bill, were able to pull up.

Walinowski seems satisfied with her notes and turns her attention to the diagnostic. “Alright, let’s see…If there’s a ward of some sort within the curse…Let me just…” She presses her wand to a floating chi variable and tugs it down across the diagnostic to the deepest line of runes and numbers. A blossom of sweat erupts at Walinowski’s brow. “ Merlin.”

“What is it?” The words are barely out of Hermione’s mouth when she sees it: the black, twisting mass at the base of the root structure of the curse. It looks like nothing she’s ever seen before in a spell equation, numbers and variables switching so quickly that she can scarce keep track. There are a lot of runes associated with purity and family.

Sucking her teeth, Walinowski moves her wand in a circle, casting the rest of the curse upward to the ceiling and focusing on the writhing mess of symbols. “Not usually this chaotic.” She pinches her fingers and then spreads her hands out wide. Her brow furrows as she contemplates a series of swirling runes at the very base of the root structure. Walinowski’s breath is coming in short, small breaths as she focuses on the runes, flicking her wand in quick bursts of magical energy that have pain radiating in a dull vibration along Hermione’s forearm bones. “It’s switching ,” she says after a moment, breathless. “Goodness, it’d be brilliant if it weren’t so fucked.”

Hermione closes her hand into a fist, trying to keep it from trembling as she stares at the swirling mess of runes. It hurts, oh Merlin , it hurts. It’s all she can do to maintain steady breathing. “It’s a blood ward isn’t it?”

“It’s two .” Walinowski answers, sounding a bit dazed. “There’s no discernable pattern that I can see, but there’s definitely two of them that I can see. One seems to be the same ward that caused the mark on your hand, nihil reflectitur, right?” Hermione nods. “There is a potion that can help with that by the way, I’ll write you a prescription. But this other one…I’ve never seen anything like it.” She makes a note and then claps her hands around Hermione’s hand once more. “With your permission, I’d like to activate it to see more of its nature.”

“I—” Hermione starts. She closes her mouth, and looks at how exhaustion seems to be seeping out of every pore of Walinowski’s body. Her arm aches and she wants this to stop, but if it could stop for good she’s willing to endure a little more pain. “If it’s a blood ward would you be able to remove it?”

“It would depend,” Walinowski says. “On if it were tied to the caster’s blood.”

Hermione’s eyes flutter closed. She knows, even without Walinowski saying that this is exactly what Bellatrix LeStrange tied the ward to. She was mad enough to have done it without considering the fact that she still had two living siblings at the time, not to mention a niece and nephew, who could have undone it. Or maybe she did consider it – and think they’d all be dead by the end of things and Hermione would be stuck carrying around a curse that required Bellatrix LeStrange’s blood to lift. She doesn’t think Bellatrix thought the war would end the way it did – or that it wouldn’t matter in the end because Hermione would be dead.

Gently, she pulls her hand away from Walinowski and cancels the diagnostic spell with a flick of her wand. “There’s no point,” she says quietly. Her bones ache and she’s so, so tired. She just wants to go home and curl up in bed with Crookshanks and wait for Fleur to come home. “You can’t remove it.”

“Miss Granger, I—”

“Hermione,” Hermione says. She gets to her feet and pulls her overshirt back on. “It isn’t that I’m ungrateful, Healer Walinowski. I just know the magic involved. It cannot be removed. Not without her .”

“I think that decision’s a bit hasty, Hermione,” Walinowski answers. She gets to her feet and moves behind her desk, rooting around under a pile of papers. “All I can offer you is this, he’s a mind healer, he may be able to help you process the trauma of dealing with what you’ve experienced.” She holds out a business card with a name and address printed neatly on it in embossed lettering. “Works out of the Queen Vic.”

Hermione takes it and nods. “Thank you,” she says. “For your help.”

“I didn’t show you anything you didn’t already know, did I?”

With a slight shrug, Hermione moves to the open office door. “You…confirmed something for me that I needed to know.”

“Well, then I am glad to have been of service.” Walinowski gives a slight bow. “Can you find your way out?”

“I can.”

Walinowski gives a small wave and Hermione takes her leave, heading to the lift and back to the ground floor. There, waiting as the lift doors open is Andromeda. She’s leaning against the wall sipping a mug of steaming tea, casually affecting nonchalance, but in that very Slytherin way that Hermione’s seen Pansy do when she doesn’t wait to appear to be lying in wait. “Any luck?” Andromeda asks.

“No.” Hermione says. “She just confirmed what I already knew.”

“I could take a look, strictly as a private citizen though. I don’t want to step on any administrative toes .” Andromeda tilts her head toward the door of her office.

Hermione pauses, but shakes her head. She doesn’t think she can do this now. Maybe someday, when she’s not still reeling from the news that this may not be able to be removed. Remembering what Walinowski said, she adds. “She said you’re after her job.”

“Not exactly, Hermione. I just disapprove of her methods sometimes. She’s too by the book. And in this case…” Andromeda’s expression darkens. “And in this case I think there may be something uniquely Black about the curse. Before all of this, my sister was the best of the three of us at both creative curses and warding. Best in the family really—always irritated Sirius, he wanted to be the best—though I would suspect Narcissa’s surpassed any of our skill at warding by now.” She gives a little shrug.

“She was there when it happened,” Hermione says coldly. “She watched .”

“I told you Hermione that I cannot apologize for their actions. I can only attempt to make amends.” She smooths her healer’s robes and hums. “Now, I’ve a three fifteen, but I wanted to ask, were you deconstructing the botched bubblehead charm Mrs. Martin was experiencing earlier in the waiting room?”

Hermione flushes. “I, well, I’m familiar with the bubblehead charm. Learned it in fourth year to teach it to Harry, but he was – is really – horrible at charms, so we decided to go with something else. I knew the spell’s arithmancy formula, so I was curious…”

“Because the spell so explicitly indicates that the bubbles be clear?” Andromeda asks quietly. When Hermione nods, Andromeda puts up a finger and ducks into her office. She emerges a moment later with a stack of leaflets held together with a rubber band. “Here,” she says, peeling one off the top. “I don’t know what you’re doing after your NEWTs, but I think you may find this interesting. Now, I’m late. It was nice to see you, Hermione.”

Folding up the leaflet, Hermione tucks it into her pocket. “Likewise.”

She walks down Oxford Street and into Covent Garden to avoid the crowds at the Oxford Circus station. She’ll have to change trains three times to get back home, but she doesn’t care. She can’t be around that many people, and at this hour, very few people will be going up or down the steps at that station. Once she’s finally on the tube, Hermione risks pulling the leaflet from her pocket. Printed at the top of the leaflet above a pair of smiling wizards in lime green robes is something that makes Hermione pause, remember all the times she’s had to do just this over the past few years, remembers how much she likes it, and how good it makes her feel. She folds the leaflet back up, and tucks it into her pocket.

“The Queen Vic Teaching Hospital and Healer Training Programme – est. 1872.”

~

Hermione wakes up to find the sheets drenched with sweat. Her breath comes in short pants and she’s clutching her fist to her chest. She wishes she could pull her heart from her chest, soothe it to calm, and then put it carefully back. It aches, a tingling feeling that drifts across her chest and down her arms and up into her throat. She couldn’t speak now if she tried.

Pain radiates down her arm. Hermione looks down at her hand, barely able to make out anything in the dim light of the streetlamps below. The windows are flung open to catch the summer breeze, and below, Catterlily Place is silent.

There is blood under her nails, splattered across the sheets. Wincing, Hermione twists her arm to see deep scratches across the marred skin. The little burble of sound escaping her lips as she brushes her fingers over the wound sounds somewhere between a gasp and a moan. She hates this, hates this so much. There’s blood all over the bed, and she’s sweat through her clothes. Hermione sighs, and uses her good arm to pull her shirt over her head. It’s ruined anyway. She uses it to dab at the still weeping wounds on her arm and winces as it stings upon contact.

Sleepily, Fleur shifts beside her. “Un cauchemar?”

A shakily laugh escapes Hermione’s lips. “J"ai aucune idée. Cette fois. ”

It is nice to not remember the dream for a change.

Fleur leans over and clicks on the bedside lamp, collecting her wand and the roll of bandages they’ve had to keep there for the nights that Hermione wakes up having hurt herself in her sleep. “Tu ne te souviens pas si c"était un cauchemar?”

“Non, Fleur.” She couldn’t remember if it was a nightmare.

Saying nothing, Fleur casts a cleaning charm on the sheets, banishing the blood. She takes Hermione’s good hand and squeezes it gently before passing Hermione her wand and letting her carefully start to knit the skin of her arm back together.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Hermione says. She clenches her fists, she’s so, so tired. A breeze drifts in from the window and Hermione shivers as sweat cools on her naked skin. Fleur takes her wand back from Hermione and starts to wrap the bandage around her arm. It isn’t to stop the bleeding, though it does help with that, but rather it allows Hermione a moment to swallow down the tears that erupt when she feels Fleur’s fingers brush against her marred skin. It is a reminder that Fleur still loves her despite these sleepless nights and constant injury. Fleur is still there despite the fact that this curse may never be removed.

When the bandage is secure around her wrist, Fleur sits back. Hermione raises her uninjured hand to touch Fleur’s cheek. Fleur’s touch over Hermione’s hand is gentle. In the low lamplight, the ring on her finger is a dull silver. Fleur turns, presses a kiss to Hermione’s palm. “You can ,” she says fiercely in English. “You are surviving , Hermione. Recovery takes time.” She pulls Hermione into her arms, drawing the covers over both of them. “And I don’t love you any less because you are recovering.”

They leave the lamp on for the rest of the night.

~

“I cannot believe of all the places to live in London, Pansy selected the Barbican .” Fleur says, wrinkling her nose as she reads over the note Pansy sent over with a particularly surly owl not twenty minutes ago. “It is so…j’sais pas … dated? Is that the word?” She casts her eyes around their shared prewar flat, converted from a London townhome and built nearly two centuries ago. The fact that the building was old was what had charmed Fleur about it when she’d first decided to let the place. “But not in the charming way. Not to mention it is a muggle estate.”

“Quite,” Hermione agrees. “I’m going to ask about that.” She finishes scribbling out a response to Pansy that yes, she was available to help her move this afternoon and passes the note over to the owl, who hops expectantly over to the other letter on the table that Hermione’s yet to post. “Oh alright. It’s going a long way though, are you sure?” The bird stuck out it’s leg and Hermione shrugged and carefully tied her response to Professor McGonagall onto the owl’s leg. With a nip at her finger just hard enough to make Hermione jump, the bird hopped off the kitchen table and swooped out of the open balcony door into the late June air, coming dangerously close to Crookshanks in the process.

Setting Pansy’s note aside, Fleur picks up her coffee mug and unfolds the morning’s issue of the French wizarding newspaper. “I think it will be good for you to have more friends in the city.” She gives a little shrug, folding the paper to the stock trading numbers, “And also a place to go that is not that awful old house.”

“I’ve actually been meaning to try and go to the WLL to research how to remove a permanent sticking charm so we can get Sirius’ awful mother off the wall, though I’m starting to think Harry likes having her there while he redoes the floors. Something about spite.” Hermione fishes the teabag from her tea. Going to the Wizarding Library London had been her project for the day before Pansy’s note had arrived. For the past few days since her visit with Healer Walinowski, Hermione’s been steadfastly avoiding the constant itching in her arms and the worried glances Fleur casts towards it when they go about their mornings. The confirmation of the curse’s true nature was enough for Hermione. She didn’t want to press it anymore until she feels mentally strong enough to work through what it means.

Her tea is still too hot to drink, so Hermione sets it back down and looks at Fleur, who’s watching her from behind the wizarding stock report’s ever-changing numbers. Silently, Hermione reaches across the table and gently pushes the paper aside so she can see Fleur’s eyes. “Do you think I should take Andromeda Tonks up on her offer to look at the curse? If what Healer Walinowski says is true, she would be able to start to remove the ward.”

“Madam Tonks was disowned, Hermione. As much as she is of the Black family, families like that…well, there are ways of ensuring that those who have been stripped of their status within a family are also stripped of their blood connections. I do not know if this was the case with Madam Tonks, but as you said she’d set off the wards at Grimmauld Place, I would assume it is.” Fleur sighs. She takes Hermione’s hand and intertwines their fingers. “You are going to see the Malfoys tomorrow, perhaps ask the mistress of the house if she has any experience doing such a thing.” Her expression turns dark, and her grip on Hermione’s hand grows tighter. “It would garner a great deal of public goodwill going into her trial if she were able to remove her sister’s curse from your arm. Especially since she did nothing to prevent it from happening in the first place.”

Hermione ruminates on the conversation all morning, flipping through Fleur’s old cursebreaking Mastery books to try and find a way to remove Mrs. Black’s permanent sticking charm. At noon she collects her things and takes the Tube to East London. The train is relatively empty despite the lunchtime hour and Hermione’s able to sit and has almost forced herself to stop scanning the faces of everyone else on the train by the time she’s arrived. She’s on her way up from the Barbican station when she catches sight of a flash of bright red hair. Smiling, Hermione swings her bag onto her other shoulder and goes to help Ginny, who’s gotten stuck in the exit turnstile. “Can’t believe she asked you to help her too,” Hermione says in lieu of a proper greeting, pushing on Ginny’s shoulder so she steps back and Hermione is free to untangle the strap of her bag from the gate.

“Well, she thinks I owe her for all the times she saved my arse last year at school,” Ginny explains, as they climb the steps up from the central line, she tilts her head and asks, “How’d she get you?”

“We’re friends,” Hermione answers. She’s not about to admit to Ginny that she feels as though she owes Pansy for so, so much beyond what their friendship is as it stands now. Plus, for Pansy to move into a muggle estate largely implies, at least to Hermione, that there may be more to the story than her short note and rather comical explanation of all of the flat-pack muggle furniture that she’s apparently acquired with Hannah’s help. She doesn’t know how much Ginny knows and, honestly, they aren’t her secrets to tell.

“Obviously Hermione. But no one offers to help someone move the muggle way unless there’s blackmail involved. Much less assemble flat-pack furniture.” Ginny frowns. “What’s she got on you?”

“Same thing I have on her,” Hermione shrugs. It wasn’t as though Pansy was exactly hiding her relationship with Hannah.

Ginny raises an eyebrow. “That you’re both lezzers?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it so crassly, but yes. We came to an understanding about it two years ago when I think it all got to be too much for her.” It takes Hermione a moment to realize that Ginny has no idea where they’re going. She leads the way toward the address that Pansy’d sent along.

“Bloody weird, socializing with Slytherin like this,” Ginny comments, looking around curiously at the hulking brutalist form of the Barbican center. “What’s Pansy see in this place? Bit grim, don’t you think?”

“I’d imagine its proximity to the banking district,” Hermione answers. Pansy’s interest in Arithmancy is enough to keep her close to a financial center unless she takes it in the direction of a more theoretical direction. “Plus, it"s close enough to Spitalfields and the wizarding neighborhood there that she won’t be lacking for things to do.” Hermione and Fleur had gone out a few times two summers ago in that neighborhood with Bill and Marietta. It was nice, with far more to do than Catterlily Place for young people at night. 

“Keep forgetting that you’re from here,” Ginny shakes her head. “I still get turned around on the muggle trains.”

“Why take them?”

“Well, it isn’t that far from Grimmauld Place and I want to get better at navigating muggle London,” Ginny answers. “Given that Harry’s going to be working for the Ministry, I’d imagine that we’ll be spending a lot of time out away from the wizarding areas. Useful to know your way around muggle transport for when you’re too pissed to apparate. Mum would have a fit, though. She already doesn’t like it that Ron’s spending more time than not staying with Harry because that training program they’re in is wearing them both out. Think she wants to keep us close.”

Hermione smiles. She doesn’t blame Mrs. Weasley, who’d offered, several times over, to let Hermione and Fleur stay at the Burrow when they’d come to collect Crookshanks not long after the battle at Hogwarts. She’d lost a son, two, if you counted Harry’s brush with death during the battle. She wanted her babies close. 

Pansy is waiting for them at the door with a harassed look on her face. She’s directing a man carrying a large, flat box with a picture of a bed frame printed on it. “Thank Merlin,” she says, seeing them both walk up. She drops her voice slightly as the man with his flat-pack box moves past her and up a set of stairs. “I am in desperate need of someone who speaks muggle. ”

“There are wizarding moving companies,” Ginny points out in an equally low tone.

“Not that will respond to someone with the last name Parkinson,” Pansy shoots back. She folds her arms over her chest and scowls at them both. “Do you want to come up?”

Hermione glances around the door. She doesn’t see the vehicle they’ve come in, and wonders if Pansy’s had them walking all the way around this block-long estate from the carpark. “Are there any more movers?”

“No, he’s the last of them.” Pansy pulls the door closed and leads them toward a lift. When they get in, Pansy punches a button and turns to the pair of them. Her face is pinched with worry, and there are dark circles barely covered with makeup under her eyes. As the lift lumbers to life, Pansy wraps her arms around herself. She looks smaller than Hermione’s ever seen her out of robes and in a simple shirt and jeans. “The flat is on the top floor. This has been a nightmare.”

Hermione glances at Ginny, whose lips purse into a thin line, but she doesn’t say anything. Keeping silent is not in Ginny’s strong suit, and Hermione swallows down the urge to ask. She knows Pansy by now, knows that if Pansy wants to talk about it, she will. “Hannah’s coming?”

“Eventually, she’s taking the train because she has luggage. ” Pansy’s lip curls with some derision. Her defensive posture, with her arms folded and sneer curling at her lip, piques Hermione’s curiosity, but she bites back the question. Pansy will tell her in time. That is, if she wants to.

“Where are Daph and Tori?” Ginny asks.

“Fucked off in Greece and ignoring my owls asking for moving help.”

“Wow,” Ginny says. “Just wow.”

“You’d think that they’d at least come up with a reasonable excuse beyond ‘oh we’re out of the country on holiday.’” Pansy shakes her head.

Hermione swallows down a smile.

The lift rattles to a halt and Pansy leads them down a nondescript and lowly-lit hallway to a door that’s half-ajar. In her pocket, Hermione’s hand tightens around her wand. Ginny’s eyes narrow as Pansy sweeps into the room to speak to the three men who are setting down the final box (the stack comes nearly to Hermione’s shoulder) on top of the others. There’s a tatty-looking sofa against a wall, along with a mattress and a squishy looking armchair without any legs on it. Scattered around them are bags and boxes of everything Hermione can possibly imagine needed, but strangely, very few personal effects.

Pansy thanks the delivery men and sends them on their way before locking the door behind them and warding it with a far, far more aggressive spell than Hermione would have expected from her. At Hermione’s raised eyebrow, Pansy marches across the room and tugs the first flatpack box off of the pile – it’s a bookshelf. “I don’t want to be found right now, Granger.”

It’s Ginny who asks the question that’s been on Hermione’s mind. “Where’s all your stuff?”

Ripping the box open with a severing charm from her wand, Pansy tilts her head toward the spiral staircase that leads to the second floor – there’s a bathroom and a bedroom up there. This is one of the nicer flats in the building, as far as Hermione can surmise. “Couldn’t very well let them see all the books on magic and my broomstick, could I?”

“You’ve got a broom ? What model?” Ginny’s already drifting toward the spiral staircase. Hermione’s surprised that Pansy says nothing as she levitates pieces of dark-colored wood from the box. When Ginny reaches the top of the stairs she lets out a low whistle that they can hear plain as day. “Didn’t take you for a Nimbus fan, Parkinson.”

“It was a gift,” Pansy calls back testily. She reaches into the box and pulls out the instruction booklet, thrusting it at Hermione. “Now, Granger. Translate.”

Hermione opens the Ikea instructions and frowns. “Do you have a screwdriver? And an Allen Key? Because we’re going to need them.”

~

Later, when Ginny’s gone home and the empty furniture boxes have been taken down to the rubbish bin, Hermione collects two bottles of Peroni from the refrigerator and ventures out to join Pansy on the balcony. There are two lush shrubs growing on either side of the neighbors for privacy, and Pansy’s slowly erecting a permanent privacy ward around the entire space, marking the boundaries of the spell with small, carved, runestones. The heat of the day is such that Hermione’s sweating in her vest, and Pansy’s wrapped a handkerchief around her forehead to get her hair off her neck.

Hermione flicks her wand to remove the bottle cap and leans against the balcony wall, staring out at the London Skyline. Pansy draws a lazy circle at the end of the spell with her wand, adding in specific anti-apparation wards and a notice-me-not charm to the privacy wards as though it’s just an afterthought. She’s seen Pansy do this sort of magic before, mostly in classes, but there’s something that feels rawer and wilder than usual in her magic as she casts. Emotional, even. Hermione sips her beer and debates asking if Pansy’s alright, if her family has pushed her away, if she’s been disowned or something similar. She doesn’t know how old British pureblood families handle such things. Her only frame of reference is what Fleur’s told her and her experiences with the Weasleys and she’s certain that both families are the exception, rather than the norm in such conversations.

Pansy finishes casting, and Hermione holds out a bottle to her. Hermione decides on a sideways tack. “Were your parents okay with your decisions during the battle at Hogwarts?”

“Well, I’m here aren’t I?” Huffing, Pansy takes the bottle. “I’m not stupid enough to do anything before my trust is permanently signed over to my name, Granger.”

“Can’t you call me Hermione? We’re not in school anymore.” She’s not one for beer usually, but after spending an entire afternoon constructing Ikea furniture the muggle way with Pansy and Ginny supervising because neither of them apparently had any sense or could follow directions, the alcohol tastes good. Hermione takes another pull and then turns to look at Pansy. “And what do you mean?”

Pansy says nothing for a long moment, leaning against the railing next to Hermione, facing back toward the open door to the flat while Hermione looks out beyond them. “I mean, Hermione , that there are certain rules that must be followed, if one is to inherit.” She closes her eyes. “There was talk of a betrothal. To Draco.”

“That’s…” Hermione starts.

“Revolting, I know. He’s a decent enough bloke, I suppose, but I’m as queer as they come. Think his mother saw that at the first meeting. Called the whole thing off right after that. My mother was incensed , going on and on about how if the Blacks could slum it with a continental family surely I was good enough for her son.” She takes a long swig of her beer. “It was exhausting.”

“Thank goodness for Narcissa Malfoy.” Bitterness creeps into Hermione’s voice despite her best efforts to hide it. She raises her beer in a mock toast. “Savior of the wizarding world and lesbians from compulsory heterosexuality everywhere.”

Pansy frowns, clearly confused.

“She lied. To him . About Harry being dead.” Hermione sighs. She sets the bottle down and presses her palms together. She wishes that she’d been able to tell Pansy about this when it’d just happened. Talking about it now just makes her throat feel like it’s made of sandpaper, the words a struggle to force out. “She won’t get reparations for it. Probably an Order of Merlin instead.”

“That’s…well…better than the family situation some of us are dealing with.” Something dark creeps into Pansy’s tone, bitterness, perhaps. She’s picking at the label on her beer bottle. Hermione wants to reach out and touch her, but she doesn’t think Pansy wants that. “Mine wanted me to stay at home until I’d done my NEWTs, as that’s what is done. ”

“But you’re not.”

“Obviously,” Pansy snorts derisively. “My father’s going to get convicted in his trial, my mother isn’t speaking to me. The terms of my inheritance are clear: either betrothal to an acceptable suitor selected by my parents or gainful employment and proof of self-sufficiency.”

Hermione frowns. “What about your arithmancy mastery?”

“One thing at a time, Granger,” Pansy says. She takes another pull on her beer and turns to look at Hermione. There’s a beat of silence, as though Pansy wants to ask something, but thinks better of it. She looks away. “Told my parents about Hannah.”

“How’d they take that?”

“Better than what happened during the battle.” Pansy lets out a short, frustrated bark of laughter. “Her mum was murdered by Death Eaters. She was muggleborn.” Pansy tips the rest of the bottle back and downs it. Hermione reads between the lines and realizes that what Pansy isn’t saying is that her father was probably there when it happened, and that’s why he’s on trial. Merlin … “Guess I’m their bloody reparations now.”

“They’re not going to hold your inheritance over you to force you to end things with her are they?” Hermione’s heard of such things happening, especially to muggles. She’s, for once, grateful that the wizarding community on a whole doesn’t seem to mind what sort of love exists between people. She wonders, though, if that acceptance and support extends to those with names that must be maintained, carried on.

“No. I rather suspect that I’ll be pressured to have…” Pansy wrinkles her nose, “… relations with a man at some point to produce an heir to carry on this line of the family – but there’s potions for that sort of thing and new advances in spellwork each and every day. This isn’t my parents’ generation, where they did…do things like that.” She tilts her head back and stares at the sky. “Makes you wonder about some people.”

Hermione snorts into her beer. “If this is your implying that Malfoy’s mum is somehow bent, you’ve gone bloody mad.”

“Takes one to know one, Granger,” Pansy says with a wink.

Hermione looks down at her wand and contemplates casting a memory charm on them both just to ensure that they never think about that ever again. “I hate you,” she says instead. She stares out over the water gardens below the penthouses and out over the collection of shops and restaurants that dot the estate’s lower levels. Her wand hangs loosely in her fingers. “Have you ever been to a mind healer?”

Pansy makes a sound in the negative, but she’s watching Hermione closely now.

“Professor McGonagall,” she lets out a rueful laugh, “among others, suggested strongly that I see one. Mentioned it when she wrote to me about NEWT prep sessions – in Surrey. Are you going?”

“Obviously.” Pansy says. “If I’m to have a job that shows I’m self-sufficient I need my NEWTs.” She drums her fingers against her empty bottle. “Want another?”

“Sure.” Hermione passes her empty to Pansy and watches as Pansy disappears into the flat. Something pulls slightly at her attention, a flicker of magic as she watches a stately-looking owl sweep down from the sky to drop a note into her hands before swooping off. Hermione unfolds it, reading quickly as Pansy comes back outside. Fleur’s sent a note, asking if she’d like to meet at Diagon Alley so they can go home together. Hermione reads the final sentence out loud for Pansy’s benefit, “Knowing Mlle. Parkinson as we both do, you have undoubtedly spent the entire afternoon assembling her furniture with little assistance as we pureblood witches are horrible at following muggle directions. We can pick up take away on the way home. Indian?”

“Well, if they were printed in bloody English…” Pansy mutters into her beer bottle.

Hermione flicks her wrist, thinking fondly of Fleur that morning, soft and sleepy, her fingers tangled in Hermione’s hair as she woke. The messenger patronus appears and circles her wand playfully before hovering, expectantly, at eye level. Hermione stares hard at its little otter face, thinking of Fleur. “Tell Fleur that she can come pick me up anytime. And Indian sounds lovely.” The otter playfully bumps her fingers before vanishing off in a flash of silver mist. Turning to Pansy, Hermione says. “She’ll be here in about half an hour.”

Pansy nods. “Is Potter coming back for his NEWTs? Figured Weasley wouldn’t – never was much for school anyway – but I could see Potter, especially for Defense.”

“No, I think I’m the only one from Gryffindor, unless Neville decides to come back. I know he’s gotten several offers for Mastery work.”

“Daph’s going – her parents are making her. And Draco wants to go, but…” Pansy scowls. “He didn’t take that mark willingly. They won’t send him to Azkaban for that, will they?”

“I’d hope not.” Hermione doesn’t mention the summons sitting on the kitchen table to present evidence at Draco’s trial before the Wizengamont on Monday. His is the first. Harry’s made it clear that it’s because Draco was an unwilling participant in the war. They’re saving the main trials for the surviving death eaters until later in the summer, starting with the smaller trials that have to be done for appearances’ sake. Hermione wonders if that’s why Narcissa Malfoy’s is scheduled for the second of July, easily a month before the trial of her husband and not three days after her son’s. They’re expected to be found innocent – or mostly innocent. “I’m going to see him tomorrow.”

Pansy’s gaze slides to Hermione’s bare neck. She looks at the cuts on Hermione’s arm. “Will you… er…”

“I’ll be fine , Pansy.”

She has to be.

~

They don’t actually end up getting food on the way home. Hermione’s hand slips into Fleur’s as they clamber onto the Hammersmith and City line to go back to Wood Lane and the quick ten-minute walk to Catterlily Place. There are no seats, so they stand at the door on the very last car and Hermione forces herself to focus on Fleur, in her Gringotts jacket and dusty work trousers and boots. Her hair’s up in a messy bun that’s half falling out at the back. An older woman with her shopping stares at them with a dark look in her eye. They must look a fright, Fleur covered in the dust of Gringotts vaults and Hermione sweaty from constructing all of Pansy’s flat-pack furniture and then helping her set up her flat.

“Cette femme,” Fleur mutters in her ear, “nous regarde depuis que nous sommes montés à bord le train.” She tilts her head toward the woman in question.

Hermione doesn’t let go of Fleur’s hand, but glances down at their intertwined fingers. The woman has been watching them for a while. “We’re both girls,” she answers in an undertone. “Muggles… are not as open. Don’t like it.”

Fleur watches the woman until she gets off two stops before their own, scowling the whole while. She leads Hermione off the train and together they walk back to Catterlily Place in relative silence. When they pass through the gate and into the wizarding area, Fleur sighs. “I didn’t realize it was quite so…uncomfortable. Your parents weren’t like that at all. Neither was Mr. Tonks, before he…”

“With a child like his, do you really think he could have been?” Hermione asks quietly. Tonks the younger had always struck Hermione as some sort of colorful character that could have been anyone or anything and yet chose to love Remus Lupin, and now had lost him too. “Muggles… are not as accepting as wizards are about love. I was talking to Pansy about this actually, when we were talking about her inheritance and how she was going to ensure that she could keep it.”

“Is there a marriage clause?” Fleur asks. “Or just the standard self-sufficiency through any means?”

“The way she described it, sounded like it was the self-sufficiency model,” Hermione says. “Not that it much matters. By the end of this summer she’ll be the head of her branch of the family – father in Azkaban and her mother in disgrace.” She rubs her cheek, thinking about what Pansy had said about Draco Malfoy. “Fleur, do you think these trials are all for show?”

Fleur pulls her keys from her jacket pocket and unlocks the outside door to their flat and gathers the muggle post that’s been shoved into their postbox by their mail carrier. He’s a squib, and given that Catterlily Place is on the muggle electric grid, there are still some bills that have to be handled through the muggle post. “Sometimes I feel that way,” she confesses. “The evils on trial here are fear and power, same as after any war.” When they reach the third-floor landing, Fleur turns to Hermione. “Are you going to testify on Monday?”

“Do I have any choice? I don’t want to see Malfoy thrown into Azkaban.”

Wand in hand, Fleur lowers the wards on the door one by one, leading Hermione back into the flat – home. Once they’re inside and the door is locked, Fleur catches Hermione’s chin and presses her lips to Hermione’s gently. When she pulls away, Her fingers trial gently down Hermione’s cheeks. “You are the bravest woman I know, Hermione Granger.”

Hermione leans forward and kisses her back.

~

Draco Malfoy offers Hermione the opportunity to floo directly into the manor. Hermione doesn’t like the idea of flooing, it makes her feel exposed at the best of times and this is not the sort of occasion where Hermione wants to feel any sort of vulnerability at all. As it is, she’s not sure she’ll be able to walk through the door. She turns him down politely and says she’ll apparate to Wiltshire, thank you. If he is bothered by this, his letter confirming their meeting in fifteen minutes time says nothing to betray his thoughts. Hermione reads it three times over before she sets the letter down on the table and looks to Fleur. “I know you want to go with me.”

Fleur’s standing by the balcony window, staring out at their hammock chair and the steady patter of rain outside. There’s a line of tension across her shoulders, like she’s holding something in that threatens to burst forth at any moment. It’s Sunday. Fleur could have gone with her. Finally, after what seems like too long of a moment to be anything other than resignation from Fleur, she sighs. When she turns, features are darker, narrower. “It is my duty to go with you, as you are the one I promised.”

“Fleur…”

“But I understand why you need to do this alone. Just as I understood why you needed to go to St. Mungo’s alone.” Fleur tilts her head, and her features soften. “This is a part of healing, too, isn’t it?”

Hermione crosses the room and places her hand on Fleur’s upper arm. She pulls Fleur into a one-armed hug, burying her face in Fleur’s neck. “You are more than I could ever ask for, you know that, right?”

Humming slightly as Fleur runs her fingers down Hermione’s back. Hermione’s wearing one of Fleur’s formal work shirts as she doesn’t want to give either Malfoy she’s sure to encounter later grounds to insult her for dressing too much like a muggle. Her lightweight summer traveling robe is flung over the arm of the sofa. She feels overly starched and put together against Fleur’s soft t-shirt and jeans. It’s armor, she tells herself. Proving a point to herself, to Malfoy. She can go back there and reclaim what is hers.

Fleur’s fingers are gentle on her chin, coaxing Hermione to look at her. Her lips are gentle, pressing sweet kisses Hermione’s cheeks, to her forehead, her lips. “Je t’adore. I will see you when you get back.” Fleur hesitates for a moment, sucking in a breath that seems almost deliberate. “Don’t put it on, when he gives it back to you.”

“But I would – Why ?”

The kiss Fleur presses to her lips is searing heat, her teeth pulling at Hermione’s lower lip as she pulls away. Hermione’s breath catches and she wants , but there’s no time before she has to leave and Fleur knows that. Fleur’s smile is impish as Hermione tries to lean in and kiss her back. She presses a finger to Hermione’s lips, stopping her. Hermione’s hands tighten in the soft fabric of Fleur’s t-shirt. “It is my promise to you, Hermione. There are parts of my nature that have been screaming to see it returned to your neck since March. It was all I could do to stop myself from going to retrieve it myself. I—I, Hermione you must understand.”

She dips her head. “I do.” She presses a gentle kiss to Fleur’s fingertips and steps away. She collects her robe from the sofa and pulls it on. She smooths her shirt and tucks it into her trousers. Satisfied, Hermione flashes a grin at Fleur, as she bends to pick up Crookshanks. “I’ll see you later.”

Fleur nods, the cat in her arms purring so loudly Hermione can hear him clear across the room. Hermione focuses on the ostentatious gates that are burned into her memory and vanishes in a crack of displaced air.

~

It is cooler in Wiltshire. Hermione’s grateful for the robe, as she wraps her arms around herself. She’s standing in the middle of a country lane lined with a mess of brambles and old growth trees. Hermione looks around for a moment, almost missing the particular oak with four prominent knots in its trunk that Draco described in his letters. She steps up to it and presses her wand into the leftmost knot and steps back. The ground shifts, and the brambles part to reveal a carefully landscaped white gravel drive.  Hermione doesn’t put her wand way and steps forward tentatively. She was able to pass through the wards easily enough last time she was brought here, but she wouldn’t put past any of the Malfoys to have re-erected anti-muggle wards. Something itches across the bridge of her nose as she steps onto the gravel, but other than that, there is nothing. Hermione walks briskly up the gravel drive to the large, wrought-iron gates that she’s only ever seen once before. .

A tall, thin figure with a shock of white-blonde hair stands just inside them, wand in hand. Hermione grips her wand tightly, but feels herself relaxing as she realizes it’s only Draco. He’s lowering wards carefully, one by one, small flashes of runes appearing as he rewrites them. He looks up as she approaches. “Granger.”

“Malfoy,” Hermione answers. Her tone is tight.

He turns his attention back to the wards. Hermione watches him as he twists his wand and nods, as though satisfied. He tucks his wand away in his shirtsleeve and places a hand on the gate, tugging with what seems like his full weight. It swings open silently and he steps beyond the barrier. From his pocket, he produces a small pen knife and flashes a smile that is neither friendly nor happy. “We need to create a temporary amendment to the wards to allow you entry.”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Hermione says. She sticks out her hand, scowling at Draco, and lets him make a small cut in her finger, which he mirrors on his own hand. He presses them together without a word and says something under his breath that Hermione assumes is the ward key because the itching sensation across her nose intensifies. She sneezes.

Draco holds out a handkerchief between two long fingers. There’s already a spot of blood on it from where he’s wiped his finger. “Should be alright now.”

Hermione takes the handkerchief. “I cannot believe you put anti-muggle wards up.”

“They’re not anti-muggle, Granger,” Draco snaps. He glances up at the wrought gate. “There’ve never been anti-muggle wards on this place – it would impede the help . These are just familial wards that my mother put back into place as soon as possible after…” his lip curls, “everything. Didn’t want any more unwelcome guests.” He steps back through the gate and looks expectantly over his shoulder. There’s something drawn and anxious about the way he looks at her, like he’s expecting her to start to shout at him at any possible moment. “We should get back up to the house.”

Biting her tongue, Hermione shoves Draco’s handkerchief into her robe pocket and tentatively steps forward, over the clear demarcation in the white gravel where the gate lay. The wrought iron twists as she walks by, as though it’s curious who she is, but Hermione feels nothing at all as she passes over what she imagines is the property line. The gates creek shut of their own accord as they start to walk up the drive.

Something starts to twist in Hermione’s stomach as the house comes into view as they round a bend and the hedges fall away to open onto a wide courtyard. She swallows it down, and sucks in deep breaths to keep herself steady. She glances down to see the hand on her wand is shaking.

Draco pauses, watching her closely. He waits for a moment, and then another, giving Hermione the chance to compose herself without a word, before continuing up toward the house.

Finally trusting herself to speak, though dread grows in her stomach with each step closer to the house, Hermione ventures: “So… why peacocks?”

He scowls, lips pitching downward. “My father’s vanity project, I think he liked how they scream in the middle of the night. Mother loathes them.” He glances around and lowers his voice. “I think she’s had them all killed, but I can’t be certain, she won’t say a word about where they’ve all gone.”

“That’s…” Hermione starts – stops herself. She supposes that if she were the wife of a man who’d invited one of the most monstrous creatures of the century into her home, there’d be some anger there. Murdering innocent animals, however, seems a step too far.

“Quite.” Draco agrees.

Together they climb up the steps to the front door and Hermione’s fingers tighten on her wand as Draco pushes open the door and allows her inside. The last time Hermione was in this place it was all long shadows and darkness. Now, as the clouds part overhead and sunlight streams through the wide bank of windows on either side of the front door, it feels almost homey – if incredibly ostentatious. Hermione points her wand at her dusty shoes, spelling the gravel dust from the walk up to the house. Draco, she’s noticed, hasn’t done the same, instead choosing to remove his shoes entirely, carrying them neatly between two fingers. There are small dancing snitches and broomsticks on his sky blue socks.

The front door opens onto an ornate staircase with rooms off to each side. Draco crosses to the stairs and leaves his shoes neatly a few steps up, before leading Hermione with silent feet to the left and into the sunny sitting room. Hermione ventures a glance over her shoulder, to the room where everything happened to her. The door stands closed now, a key sticking out of the lock. She shakes herself, forcing her attention back on what is sure to be a strained conversation. If she can get through this she can go home, back to Fleur, back to a time when she’s never set foot in this godawful place.

The room’s cream-colored walls are noticeably bare save for a large painting of a ship sailing on stormy seas above an ornate fireplace. It bobs slightly as Hermione watches it, the brushwork of the oils shifting in the late afternoon sun. There are a few comfortable looking armchairs and a sofa, a low table sits on a square rug between them that’s covered in books and the newspaper. And there, standing with her back to them and staring out the wide bay window, is Narcissa Malfoy.

Hermione’s heart is in her throat and it’s all she can do to swallow down the panic. She knew she’d have to see her, but it’s when those cold eyes turn to face her that Hermione realizes that she wasn’t ready, that she cannot do this. She forces herself to breathe, to concentrate on the counting of seconds through the process, and tries to ignore the acid feeling of her stomach that makes her feel like vacating its contents, one way or another.

 Draco doesn’t seem to notice, calling out to his mother: “Granger’s here.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” Narcissa Malfoy says. Her voice is warmer than it’d been that night. She turns from the window and approaches the two of them, her expression carefully neutral. “Miss Granger,” she begins, and it’s far, far more than Hermione ever thought she’d get. “Our solicitor sent word that you had agreed to speak on my son’s behalf tomorrow.”

Hermione nods. “I did.”

Narcissa scrutinizes her for a long moment, staring at her with those eyes that haunt Hermione’s dreams almost as often as Bellatrix’s laughter and the press of her knife. “Thank you,” Narcissa says. Hermione doesn’t know what to say, but already Narcissa is turning to Draco, she glances down at his socks and something that could be a smile, but could also be a scowl, twitches at her lips. “If you’re not going to wear shoes, take them upstairs and bring me down the Calais chalk from the study.”

A smile pulls at Hermione’s lips almost before she can stop herself. She looks down at her hands and slowly, slowly, tucks her wand into its holster at her wrist. There’s a fondness in this interaction, a long-suffering feeling that does not quite fit with anything she knows about this family. It isn’t that it puts her at ease, but rather it doesn’t set her automatically to the defensive. She doesn’t think of Bellatrix or of the knife. She doesn"t think of anything at all as Draco says something that is almost good-natured to his mother that Hermione completely misses and disappears out of the room once more.

Narcissa turns her attention back to the window, arms wrapped around herself. “You want to ask why I didn"t interfere,” she says after a silence held just long enough to grow uncomfortable.

“I want to ask a lot of things,” Hermione answers. “But I think I already know the answer to that question.”

“Then you are wiser than I"d thought—”

Which is not to say that Hermione does not have questions, because she does. She shoves her hands into her robe pockets and stares at the back of Narcissa’s head, almost willing her to turn back around.

“Harry told me what you did for him.”

“There is nothing more important to me than my son. We—” Narcissa tenses visibly, before she lets the words fall to the window, her cold eyes trained on Hermione’s reflection in the window, “We Blacks – do what we must to ensure that those who are ours survive.” She glances over her shoulder and Hermione sees her sister. She takes half a step back, legs bumping against the sofa. “Mr. Potter surviving that moment was a means to an end, Miss Granger. Nothing more.”

It"s as transparent a lie as Hermione’s ever heard. Swallowing, Hermione meets Narcissa’s gaze evenly. “Is that what you’ll say come Thursday when you’re up before the Wizengamont pleading your case?”

“Of course not, girl. That would require them asking the right questions.” She exhales, turns to face Hermione, and her expression is unreadable. Her gaze drifts down, looking at Hermione’s arm, at the curse scar she so clearly knows is there. “You have been given something beautiful, Miss Granger. For my sister to see something like that on your person...” Narcissa shakes her head and looks away.  “It would not have ended well for yourself or for Miss Delacour.”

Her throat is as dry as the desert as she answers. “It still did not end well.” When Narcissa says nothing, she continues: “I barely sleep, I reopen the wounds she left on me – wounds you watched her place there while doing nothing – more nights than I do not.”

“You are both alive, Miss Granger. Neither of you are in prison. Neither of you are on trial.” Shaking her head, Narcissa’s gaze lingers on where Hermione’s fiddling with the buttons on her robe sleeve. “The wound is cursed then.”

Hermione tilts her head, indicating the point as well taken. It is warm, in this room that seems so different in the bright light of the morning. She moves to roll her sleeves up and pauses, fingers brushing the bandage. She bites her lip, shifting under the intense scrutiny of Narcissa Malfoy’s perfectly blank stare. “Do you know anything about curse breaking?”

“No more than any other witch who sat the ancient runes NEWT.” Narcissa sweeps toward the fireplace, her wand appearing in her hand. The squishy armchair hovers into the air and floats into the corner of the room. She pauses for a moment, looking pointedly at the carpet that Hermione is standing on. Hermione scoots off it and it, too, rolls itself up and joins the rest of the room’s furniture in the corner. The polished wooden floors of the room shine brightly in the late-afternoon sunshine. Narcissa steps back, tucking her wand away, evidently satisfied. She places a hand on the mantle of the fireplace and stares at Hermione for a long moment before speaking once more. “It is an odd question, Ms. Granger, for one so intimately involved with a member of Gringotts’ elite team of curse breakers to ask.”

“I—”

“One might wonder,” Narcissa continues, eyes narrowing so slightly that Hermione’s not sure she missed it, “if you’ve run into a snag in your efforts to remove whatever unpleasant gift my sister gave you that night.”

Hermione wonders if she can say anything. If she should say anything. She remembers what Fleur suggested but the words die in her throat as Draco reappears in the doorway, a small wooden box in one hand. “Why the Calais?”

“It’s the most agreeable for masking.” Narcissa takes the box from Draco and opens it, selecting a large chunk of white stone. She sets the box, still open, on the mantle.

“Because of the flint compounds?” Hermione asks. She can’t help herself. Chalk from Dover is similar, and useful for similar purposes. “I mean, they’re transformative right? Flint becomes fire when met with steel.”

“Among other things, Miss Granger.” Narcissa bends, drawing a sweeping circle in the middle of the room. She pauses, staring down at the shape she’s created, before she starts to move more quickly, drawing more circles, triangles, the whole proof on the very floorboards. It’s some of the most advanced warding work that Hermione’s ever seen. She’s never so much as seen half of the equations that Narcissa is writing into the spell, some of the variables she’s never encountered beyond seeing them briefly mentioned in the post-mastery level arithmancy texts that she’s flipped through at bookshops. Narcissa writes the omega at the center of the circle and contemplates her work for a moment. “Calais is a place that is important to this family. It is best to draw from native land when you are in a familial home.”

She draws her wand once more, and twists her wrist, setting the spell she’s written out in motion. The room fills with a low light that grows more and more intense as Narcissa’s wand moves through what Hermione suspects is anything but a standard warding sequence. The light finally dims and Narcissa crouches down, pressing her hand into a particular knot in the floorboard. She hooks her finger around it and tugs – pulling up a small panel of wood. “Had Draco merely kept this, they would have known. It may seem like a small thing, but a promise is a promise and the ancient magic imbued within this necklace could have been easily detected without warding.”

“Mrs. Malfoy, you – this is too much. I know what sort of magical effort it takes to create wards like that. You didn’t—you had no reason—” she swallows, her cheeks are burning. “Not for me.” Not for a mudblood. “I — Thank you.”

Narcissa collects a crumpled handkerchief from the floorboard and sets it back where it was. She holds it out to Hermione once she gets back to her feet. Her expression is unreadable. When Hermione does not take it from her fast enough, she presses the handkerchief into Hermione’s hands and sweeps from the room without another word.

Hermione looks to Draco, who shrugs. “She’s been in an odd mood since well, everything. Think she blames herself for this mess.” He looks toward the handkerchief in Hermione’s hand and Hermione slowly unfolds it to find the necklace with its small blue stone and silver chain resting against Draco’s monogrammed initials. Something akin to relief fills Hermione as her finger brushes the stone. Hermione starts to pull the necklace away from the handkerchief, so as to give it back to Draco, but he shakes his head when she glances up to see his face. “Keep it.”

“I—alright.” Hermione swallows hotly. “Does your mum often… just casually do post-mastery level warding on her sitting room floor?”

There’s a bit of a smile on Draco’s lips as he tugs out his wand and starts to spell the furniture back into place. “Everyone’s got to have a hobby, Granger.” He kicks the rug to unroll it once he moves it back to where it was before. “Are you going to go back for the NEWT sessions?”

“I think so.”

“Professor McGonagall said all were welcome but…” He frowns. Hermione thinks of his trial in the morning, and wonders if it truly will go the way everyone seems to think it will.

“They know what you did. And they know that you did not take that mark willingly. Everyone will know that tomorrow.”

~

The flat is quiet when she gets home. Hermione pushes the door closed and bends to untie her shoes. She sets them on the mat by the door before pulling her wand from her sleeve and warding the door. The clouds and cool of Wiltshire have not reached London, and warm late afternoon sunshine fills the flat. Crookshanks lounges on his tower by the window, tail flicking as a breeze blows in from the balcony. Hermione sheds her robe, draping it over the back of Fleur’s desk chair, and sticks her head outside.

Fleur is leaning against the balcony railing, her hair blowing behind her. She’s nestled between the two flower boxes they have that are brimming with potions ingredients, cooking herbs, and a few flowering plants that Hermione’s already forgotten the name of. Turning, she smiles at Hermione.

Hermione’s breath catches in her throat. Fleur in this light, face open and relaxed, her fingers knitted together as leans on the railing. She’s beautiful.

“Hey,” Hermione says. She moves to Fleur, sliding under her arm, situating herself between Fleur and the railing. She smiles back at Fleur, fingers playing at Fleur’s shoulders.

Fleur kisses her. “How was it?” Her forehead rests against Hermione’s, one hand trailing down to brush against the thin white scar at her neck. Her fingers are warm, like little bursts of sunshine on Hermione’s skin.

For a moment Hermione isn’t quite sure what to say. It was many things – terrifying, traumatic, fascinating, exhilarating – and yet it was none of those things at all. “Educational,” Hermione finally settles on.

Fleur bends to kiss her neck, hand dropping to Hermione’s hip. Her thumb traces gentle circles through the fabric of Hermione’s smart trousers. “Oh?”

Her head drops back, staring up at the sky, and clouds shift overhead. “Narcissa Malfoy hid it – under the floorboards in her sitting room. She buried it under wards so complex I didn’t even recognize half the formulae used to write them.” Fleur’s hand stills and she steps back, brow furrowed in confusion as Hermione continues, “She wrote them out on her sitting room floor with chalk from Calais.”

“The Malfoy family has ties there.” Fleur rubs at her cheek, thoughtful. “I had no idea she was so talented.”

“I think that may be the point. Malfoy – Draco – said it was a hobby.” Hermione wrinkles her nose. “As though creating and casting post mastery level complexity wards was something that people just do at the weekend between society parties and high tea.”

A short guffaw escapes Fleur. Her smile falters, eyes flicking down to Hermione’s bare neck, and she draws her lower lip into her mouth. Her fingers rest at the center of Hermione’s clavicle, right where the stone in the necklace would sit if Hermione was wearing it. Fleur sucks in a slow breath. “May I?”

Wordlessly, Hermione reaches into her trouser pocket and pulls the bundle wrapped in Draco Malfoy’s monogrammed handkerchief. She presses it into Fleur’s hands, closing her fingers around Fleur’s hand and the handkerchief. Something feels like it’s breaking, thawing, rattling loose in Hermione’s heart as Fleur presses a kiss to her forehead. She tugs her hand away and Hermione lets them fall loosely to her sides. Fleur’s looking at her as though she hung the moon and painted the stars into the sky. The necklace falls into her palm, the silver chain glinting in the late afternoon sunlight. Its blue stone is dark against Fleur’s pale skin.

There’s a question in the weight of the stone as it sits in Fleur’s palm. A single word escapes Hermione’s lips. “Yes.”

The breeze picks up and a shiver runs through Hermione. Fleur’s eyes are dark with something Hermione’s never been able to put into words. She unclasps the necklace and Hermione lifts her hair off her neck so Fleur can see what she’s doing. The stone is warm as it rests where Fleur’s fingers had been only moments before. Fleur does up the clasp and Hermione lets her hair drop. Fingers cup her face gently as Fleur takes the sight of her promise back where it belongs.

Later, Hermione cannot be sure who moves first. If it was Fleur’s fingers pulling her chin in for a kiss or if it was Hermione’s hands wrapping around Fleur’s back. This kiss feels different, an inevitable collision that they’ve been moving toward for some time. Hermione slips her tongue into Fleur’s mouth, hands fisting in the back of Fleur’s t-shirt as Fleur’s fingers move from her chin to tangle in her hair. She wants and she wants.

Pulling apart, their foreheads bump and Fleur’s grinning so bright and wide and perfect. “Peut-être nous devrions aller à l"intérieur?”

Hermione laughs. “You don’t want to give the neighborhood a show, Fleur?”

“ Non! ”

Fleur sounds so scandalized that Hermione shakes her head. She takes Fleur’s hand, pulling her back inside and out of the sight of the neighbors. Fleur’s got her shirt half-way to unbuttoned by the time they’re into the bedroom. Fleur’s t-shirt is somewhere on the living room floor. Hermione tugs off her trousers and pops the button on Fleur’s jeans, her lips on Fleur’s throat. She scrapes her teeth there, sinking into the soft flesh and marveling at the sound and feel of the breathy noises Fleur makes as her hands slip into Fleur’s jeans and push them down.

Falling back onto the bed, Fleur kicks off her jeans. She rests on her elbows, hair mussed and lips swollen. “This feels very backwards,” she says as Hermione sheds her knickers and socks.

“How so?” Hermione asks, clambering into Fleur’s lap and rolling her hips against Fleur. She skates her fingertips along the line of Fleur’s jaw before kissing her gently, dragging her teeth over Fleur’s bottom lip as she pulls away.

“It is my promise to you, Hermione,” Fleur says.

Hermione kisses her again. “No Fleur,” she says. “It is our promise to each other. Fleur’s fingers close on Hermione’s hip, their grip tight as Hermione rocks into her. “I love you.” Her voice is breathless.

“And I you,” Fleur answers. She shifts one of her hands and slips two fingers into Hermione.

And, for the first time since March, Hermione feels whole.

It"s the way you love me
It"s a feeling like this
It"s centrifugal motion
It"s perpetual bliss

- This Kiss