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Daemons so rarely spoke to anyone other than their person for a moment Hermione thought she was hearing things.
“Clytemnestra?” Draco asked, sounding just as uncertain as she felt.
The little white ferret perched up on its hind legs and looked at Hermione very seriously. “You won’t find who obliviated them in the Prophet.”
“It’s illegal for you to go after them,” Draco said. He held a hand down, and his daemon jumped up onto it, then ran up his arm. “Muggle-borns aren’t allowed any contact with their previous families, it’s –“
“Oh, shut up,” Hermione said crossly. She knew the rules. She could recite every line of every law about her status. She’d been looking for loopholes for years but, whatever else he was, Grindelwald was thorough. If she were caught in their presence, they’d be killed, and she’d be obliviated. If she wanted to keep any memory of what she’d had before this, she had to keep her nose clean.
No one had thought to put any laws in place protecting the Aurors, though. She could meet them, enchant them, become their best friends. It wasn’t legal to kill them, of course, but that was just a matter of not getting caught. Some of that must have shown on her face because Draco began to shake his head. “That won’t end the way you want it to,” he said. “The Ministry, Grindelwald… Granger, don’t –“
“Don’t what?” she interrupted him. She’d been planning this for years, and she didn’t appreciate the perfect little pureblood who got to grow up with his own, actual parents coming in now and telling her it was a bad idea. That rankled, and the rankling made her mean. “Don’t become the poster child for Tom Riddle’s return?”
Draco Malfoy blanched. Clytemnestra arched her back and hissed, and Hermione took a sharp step backward. She was already sorry she’d said it, and threw out the first thing she could to try and make it better. “He probably wasn’t that bad.”
Draco’s face became incredulous, and he sank down into one of the hard, wooden chairs. “I mean,” Hermione added, knowing that now she just sounded pathetic and ignorant. “He’s not Grindelwald.”
“God.” Draco went absolutely white and reflexively jerked his head around, looking for someone listening in. “Grindelwald is a great leader,” he added, raising his voice only a little.
“I scanned the place the first day we were here,” Hermione said impatiently.
“The scans they teach us at Hogwarts don’t – “
“Don’t counteract Auror listening devices?” Hermione knew she shouldn’t be smug about this. She didn’t gain anything by besting Draco Malfoy. She still was. “You don’t think all the time I spent in the library was looking up old records, do you?”
Draco waited, and she sighed. He was going to make her spell it out. “I found all the anti-listening charms in the restricted section and learned them all. Anti-sight ones, too. Not that I plan to, but you could have an Order meaning in here, and no one would know.”
“Don’t,” Draco said, his voice shaking. “People who even talk about the Order disappear.”
“It was just an example,” she said, though now she was a bit more uncomfortable. She’d never really tested the spell work against any real threat. She couldn’t be absolutely sure that they were safe. “A bad one,” she said by way of apology.
“A really fucking bad one,” he said, but colour was starting to seep back into his face. “And you don’t know as much as you think. It’s not all in books.”
Before she could find a good retort for that, the door opened, and Theo walked in, Hrima ambling after him. The hare studied Draco, and one ear twitched. “You two talking?” Theo asked, sounding surprised. He shut the door with the quietest click possible and accioed a bottle of Odgen’s Ale from the kitchen, popping the top off halfway across the room. Hermione snatched it before it could fall to the floor and set it on the table with a frown she knew was disapproving. At least Harry’s bachelor pad had an elf in residence. A hostile, possibly mentally unstable elf, but an elf who cleaned things nonetheless. She’d just about had it with living with two boys.
Draco had slouched back in his chair. “Your sister,” he said.
“Foster-sister,” Hermione muttered,
“ – is out here saying Voldemort wasn’t so bad but feeling totally free to criticize Grindelwald.”
Theo took a long drink from his bottle, then wiped his mouth. “Yeah? he asked. “Not smart.”
It was too much. Hermione pushed herself to her feet and began to gather her papers. Even if Clytemnestra was right, it wasn’t as if she had any other choices. She couldn’t exactly go barging into the Ministry and ask to see her file and without this, what was she? Just another bit of magical breeding stock, rescued from Muggles, as far as the current regime was concerned. Just another child whose life was turned upside down and who was supposed to be grateful for the chance to be with new people, better people. She knocked into Theo as she stormed passed him, her arms filled with Prophets and her eyes filled with tears. He set a hand on her arm.
“Hermione,” he said, and the words were very quiet. “Grindelwald gives Dumbledore – and by extension, Hogwarts – a lot of leeway. We won’t get that out here. We have to be careful.”
“We?” The word was bitter on her tongue.
Theo took another long swig from his bottle. “Well,” he said. “I assumed you weren’t a fan of the current government.”
That was a bit of an understatement, but it made her stop and listen.
“It also behooves you to be publicly very grateful to Grindelwald,” he said. “If it weren’t for him –“
“I’d be with my real parents.”
“You’d be dead,” he said. She blanched a bit at that. It was true, but it wasn’t something people usually said quite so baldly. “And if you want a chance to see them again – and not in some kind of stalking them from afar way – you’re going to need a lot more than a pair of dead Aurors.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want them dead,” she said.
Theo shrugged and pulled a small slip of parchment out of his pants. It had two names on it, and Hermione’s hands shook as she took it. “What’s this.”
“I got our father –“
“Your father.”
“ – drunk,” he said as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “And asked him how the hell we’d ended up with a mudblood in residence.”
Hermione flinched at the slur, and even Draco looked uncomfortable. Theo’s mouth twisted with scorn she was sure was directed at himself. “Yeah,” he said. “But if you want to get the bigot to tell you things, you have to make sure he doesn’t suspect you – “
“Hate him,” Draco said softly. “You hate him.”
“Well, he didn’t brand me,” Theo said. “But yeah.”
“How did you get the fair and very annoying Miss Granger in the spare room?” Draco asked.
“Her daemon showed a magical creature, two Aurors were dispatched, obliviation, and appropriate removal of the child to a magical home was accomplished.”
“Appropriate?” Hermione hissed. Agamemnon arched his back and echoed the sound.
“Would you shut up and let him finish?” Draco’s sneer wasn’t exactly an eye roll, but it came close enough Hermione balled her hands into fists to keep from doing something violent she might regret later.
“And,” Theo pressed doggedly on, “because one of the Aurors involved was sympathetic to Voldemort, and because he knew our father was still trying to dig his way out from that, he quietly moved the Nott application for Muggle-born fostering to the top of the pile and brought you to the Manor.”
“Where your father undertook to raise me with loving care,” Hermione said, more than a little emphasis on the your.
“Anyway,” Theo said. “He remembered the names because he’d made sure to pay that goodwill forward once his own stock had risen a bit. And now you have them.”
Hermione’s hand shook. She read the names over, then again, then a third time. She’d say them to herself, so often no obliviation in the world would completely obliterate them, but for now, she carefully folded the paper and put it down into her trouser pocket. “Theo,” she said.
He gave her a lopsided smile and half a shrug of one shoulder, and she flung herself into his arms. “Best brother,” she said. “Best brother.”
“Only brother,” he pointed out, but his grip on her tightened. Hermione let herself stand there, one cheek pressed to his shoulder, her eyes tightly closed. They’d spent a lot of nights like this when she’d first arrived at the Manor. She’d been scared and confused and angry enough to burn the whole place down. He’d stopped her, matches in hand. It won’t work, he’d said. Fire warding charms over the entire place. But he’ll beat you.
Her own parents hadn’t hit her. Not once. At least, she thought they hadn’t. Surely they hadn’t, because she’d said, You can’t beat children, wholly sure of herself. Theo’s despairing laugh was the best argument he could have made. Theo, as he so often was, had been very, very right and at first, she’d gone crying to him when Thoros hit her. Later, when she’d learned how to stay out of reach and keep her mouth shut, she’d just slipped into his room after being told how lucky she was, after being ignored, after being reminded how she was more of a boarder than a family member by one of Thoros’ endless pureblood friends. He’d hold onto her just this way and make promises that no one could keep.
Only he had kept one of them.
“God,” Draco said. “Please tell me you haven’t set her up to go murdering someone.”
Hermione made herself step away from Theo and scooped up Agamemnon instead. She buried her face in the tiny cat’s fur.
“I told her I’d get the names, and I did.”
Draco tapped her on the arm. “Maybe you didn’t pay attention in Defense, Granger, but murder is illegal. Straight to Azkaban kind of – “
“I’m not going to get caught,” she snapped.
“Oh, please,” Draco said. “You don’t even know not to –“ And then he stopped and took a deep breath. “You don’t know there are some things you can’t talk about.”
“Grindelwald is a great leader?” she said sarcastically.
“And he is,” Theo said, giving her a look. “You can hate our father – fine, my father – and still know that the systems Grindelwald put into place are right and just.”
She opened her mouth, ready to argue, but Agamemnon jumped down, Draco’s ferret pounced on her, and the two of them began to roll around on the floor before Agamemnon got free, jumped up onto the table, slid on some of the papers, sent them careening to the floor, then leapt from there to the countertop, ferret in hot pursuit.
“Clytemnestra,” Draco said in exasperation as the ferret knocked a glass to the floor. Neither daemon stopped to look. They just kept racing around the room in apparent giddy delight.
“They have the right idea,” Theo said. “We should celebrate.”
Hermione’s fingers stole to the slip of paper in her pocket. “You’re right,” she said. She began gathering up all the archival papers she needed to return to Harry. She could tell him she’d changed her mind, that all this was lost in the past, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t love magic. He’d be relieved, and then she could work on the next step without him worrying.
“Diagon Alley for dinner and a drink?” Draco asked. Hermione frowned up at him from where she knelt on the floor of their flat. It was just like him to assume he had any reason to be there. This celebration wasn’t for him, it was for her and Theo, but before she could say anything about how he wasn’t wanted, Theo clapped him on the shoulder, and it was settled. “I should get changed,” Draco said.
“Back to stuffy and dull,” Hermione muttered, gathering the last of the papers Agamemnon had scattered everywhere.
“Unlike some people, I have standards about my appearance,” he said and then stomped off – actually stomped – and Hermione muffled a groan.
“You want to stop at the Ministry to return those?” Theo asked, tactfully not commenting on anything else.
“Harry’s,” Hermione said. “If you don’t mind. It’s not like it’s on the way.”
“When you apparate, everything is the same distance,” Theo said.
. . . . . . . . . .
She should have predicted Ron’s scowl when he opened the door and saw Hermione. Or, rather, when he saw Draco and Theo standing behind her. His daemon began to bark, Agamemnon hissed and crawled from Hermione’s arms into her hair, and she really wished Draco and Theo had agreed to wait down on the pavement.
“That didn’t take long,” Ron said.
“It wasn’t that many papers,” Hermione said. “How long did you think it would take me to go through them?”
“No,” he said, jerking his head to indicate the two men standing behind her. “I meant them.”
Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Theo’s been my brother for ages. You knew we were going to share a flat.”
“It’s just – “
“If you and Harry can share a place, so can we.” She wasn’t going to get into an argument about Draco. Among other things, she was probably even less happy than Ron was about the man’s continued existence in her life, and she didn’t feel like getting into it. She pushed past Ron into the dark, grimy entrance foyer and sniffed. Had something died in here? “What the hell is that?”
Harry poked his head around a doorway. “The smell,” he said as if she could be asking about anything else. It was an overwhelming and horrible combination of rotten food and dog shite. “Mrs. Weasley’s been over trying to get the place cleaned up, and she opened a few cupboards that, uh – “
“It was nasty,” Ron said. He shut the door in Draco’s face. “But I think she got it all. We just need to air the place out.
Harry took the papers from her and shoved them into a bag where they’d surely get crumpled. It made Hermione cringe, but she’d returned them in the same condition he’d given them to her. If he returned them all smashed and wrinkled and got asked questions about it, it wasn’t her problem. “Find anything?” he asked.
It felt wrong to lie to him, but Hermione shook her head. “Maybe there’s nothing to find,” she said. She crossed her arms and let her shoulder’s slump. “Maybe I should let it go. I’m out of that Manor, and, what would I do even if I did find them? It’s not like going after a couple of Aurors would get my parents’ memories back. I’d have to overthrow the whole government for that.”
Harry looked relieved. “Exactly,” he said. “You want to stay for dinner?”
Thank God she had plans. “No,” she said. “Theo and I are going out for a little celebration dinner.”
“For what?” Ron asked.
“Isn’t getting away from Thoros Nott reason enough?”
Ron laughed. Hermione laughed, but it sounded false even to her own ears. They had to know something was wrong, but Ron just reached down and scratched his daemon between the ears. Angitia lifted her snaky head from where she was tucked into Harry’s shirt and studied them all before flicking her tongue into the air and burrowing back into hiding.
“Malfoy going with you?” Harry asked a little too casually.
Hermione didn’t have to fake her unhappiness that that was the case. “Stupid prick,” she muttered. “Doesn’t know where he’s not wanted.” And, at that, Harry finally laughed.