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Chapter 1:

News Item: Docket number 39857, The People v. Draco Malfoy, came to trial this afternoon, May 12, 1998. Mr. Malfoy pled guilty to seventeen counts of criminal behavior under coercion and, under the statutes of the Death Eater Rehabilitation Act, was sentenced to time served plus five years of supervised probation. He was released into the care of his cousin Nymphadora Lupin and her husband, Remus Lupin. The next Death Eater trial, for Pansy Parkinson, began immediately after.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated May 12, 1998

Lupin seems to think that it might help me to have a place where I can “consider my situation privately and evaluate the decisions I’ve made.”

I think he’s utterly off his tree (not that I didn’t already suspect as much; what sane man would have married Nymphadora?) and that the years where he’s turned into a beast every month have addled what small, Gryffindorish brains he possessed in the first place. However, since he and the wife seem inclined to leave me bloody well alone while I sit here writing, I’ll take what little reprieve I can get.

Merlin knows I could use the peace and quiet. I wouldn’t expect decent manners from the werewolf, but Nymphadora should, in theory, be halfway civilized enough to know that it’s not decent to have that much conversation over supper. For heaven’s sake, she and the wolf see each other every day; surely they couldn’t have that much to say to each other. Mother and Father never did. And they certainly never indulged in such crude displays of affection, at the table or anywhere else. I did not need to see my cousin sitting in the wolf’s lap to feed him his dessert. It utterly put me off my pudding, which is a damn shame, considering it was the first decent meal I’ve had in some time.

Thank heavens for small favors—they seem content to spend their after-dinner hours playing with their child and leaving me mostly alone (as alone as one can be when they’re on the other side of the room, making a ridiculous amount of noise) to “examine my thoughts” in this diary. If it keeps me from being required to join them, then let the examination begin!

Thought 1: Those lacking in proper pedigree and upbringing should not be allowed to breed. The spawn that my cousin and her wolf have produced, a five-and-a-half-month-old boy named Teddy, is case in point. All the child does is gurgle, babble, coo, and occasionally change colors. Metamorphagi are becoming so common these days…or at the very least, they are in this house. The multicolored menace hasn’t truly mastered his skills yet—according to Nymphadora, he’s mostly limited to changing the color of his hair to reflect his mood—but the slightest variation in shading brings on rounds of praise from his parents, as if violently orange locks are something to be not only admired but encouraged, and very nearly venerated. He seems, in truth, to be draining the intelligence of his progenitors with every minute they spend with him. I am resolved to avoid him at all costs.

Thought 2: Life outside of Azkaban is…marginally in the vicinity of tolerable. If it were possible to feel anything remotely pleasant towards such annoying people as Nymphadora and her pet husband, I might be just a little bit…grateful to them for taking me in. I had not thought anyone would speak for me. If the situations had been reversed, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have spoken for them. I still don’t understand why they did this for me and am marking it up as another example of how bewilderingly stupid Gryffindors really are.

Thought 3: Shacklebolt must have been a Slytherin in his day for he’s far more insidious than Fudge or Scrimgeour ever came close to being. (Thicknesse doesn’t count; the man barely needed an Imperius curse to become a puppet. He was every bit as thick as his name implied and seemed to spend most of his life simply begging to be manipulated. All the Dark Lord did was oblige him.) The Death Eater Rehabilitation Act was a master stroke. Of course, if the Ministry policymakers felt like being entirely honest—for the shock value if nothing else—they’d call it the Cover Our Miserable Arses So We Don’t Get Charged With War Crimes Act but whatever name it holds, it remains one of the more brilliant face-saving moves of recent years.

Everyone knows that the Aurors were arresting people left, right, and center while Scrimgeour was in office, on the minister’s orders to bloody well make the Ministry look like it was doing something when faced with the Dark Lord’s return. Looking cross-eyed at someone’s dog was practically enough to get you tossed into an indecently overcrowded cell and charged as a Death Eater, a Death Eater sympathizer, a Death Eater Former Classmate Who Had Sod All To Do With Anything Remotely Illegal But Happened To Be In The Wrong Place During The Most Paranoid Of Times…Scrimgeour wanted to look powerful and in control, and if it took locking up every third person in Britain to make that happen, that was something he was perfectly (and demonstrably) willing to do.

Oh, there were trials, and some of the people falsely arrested were released, but even on a good day, a full Wizengamot trial takes quite a bit of time, and Scrimgeour’s tactics ensured that the new prisoners coming in far outnumbered the “cleared of all charges” prisoners on their way out. Bad luck for them that the Death Eaters took over. (Bad luck for Scrimgeour, too, of course, but he did rather have it coming, didn’t he?) The Death Eaters who were placed in charge were quick to empty the jails of anyone who might actually be guilty of Death Eater activity while leaving all the hapless, innocent idiots in there to rot.

And then, after the final battle, all the Death Eaters who had survived were rounded up and thrown in already overpacked cells. The prison system became a living model of chaos theory. With Dementors out of the picture, inadequate guards in their place (Aurors, yes, but not enough Aurors; with the department stretched like taffy to cover rounding up strays, reinstituting order, and handling minor disturbances from opportunistic wizards who assumed the legal department would be too busy to stop them from working their own brand of mischief in all the chaos, they just couldn’t spare as many men as it would truly take to make the prisons secure), and the new influx of truly dangerous wizards, it was only a matter of time before the jail system went off like a bunch of fireworks.

The solution? Put everyone on trial, fast. Declaring a state of emergency, Shacklebolt authorized the temporary abandonment traditional trial procedures for a much faster, abbreviated standard that depended on pensieves, Veritaserum, and Priori dark arts scans on wands. With these procedures in place (and with the quick confessions and plea bargains they were sure to produce from wizards who’d know that they’d have sod all chance of buying their way out of serious charges when the evidence was, for a change, transparent and incontrovertible), the Wizengamot could clear an unprecedented number of cases every day. This way, they could have all the prisoners properly charged, tried, sentenced (when necessary), and above all separated out as soon as possible.

Good plan, right? After all, magical construction can literally take place in the blink of an eye, so building new, maximum security prisons wasn’t really a problem.

The problem was who to put there. Without dementors to serve as a built-in misery inducer, the structure and set up of the prisons themselves had to be enough to both thoroughly cow and control the prisoners inside and scare the living daylights out of any potential prisoners on the outside so that they’d wet themselves at just the thought of getting sent there. That was the reasoning behind Azkaban in the first place. Grim barely began to describe it—that was the whole point.

But again, who should go there? The miserable sods who’d been locked up by Scrimgeour probably weren’t Death Eaters (otherwise they would have been released when the Dark Lord had control of the Ministry) but that didn’t necessarily mean that they were innocent. A Dark Mark wasn’t actually a requirement in order to be a murderer, or a rapist, or a Dark Arts practitioner. And just because someone was a Death Eater, did that mean they were automatically guilty of any crime?

No, actually. Because here’s the funny thing: It’s not illegal to be a Death Eater.

There’s no law against forming clubs of like-minded individuals. There’s no law against marking the members of such a club with tattoos. There’s not even a law against members of that club getting together and talking about how much they dislike anyone with muggle blood. It only becomes illegal if the members of the club get together to threaten or attack someone—and even then, only the ones doing the threatening or attacking are actually guilty of anything. All those fools who joined the Death Eaters out of stupid pride or arrogance and then spent their raids sicking up in an alley at the sight of the torture and blood? No one ever said vomiting was against the law.

Oh, you could argue the conspiracy line, saying that Death Eaters helped arrange raids before the fact, and that they were criminal in keeping quiet about it, if nothing else, but that didn’t really sell, either. The Dark Lord only prepped the leaders of every raid. Whoever was in charge would know the target; everyone else would just know the coordinates, and that once they got there, they were supposed to make as much chaos as possible.

None of us with the Dark Mark on our arms were innocent little lambs, of course, but not all of us really deserved a lifetime in a maximum security jail cell. So, how to separate the wheat from the chaff? How to determine who was truly dangerous and who was just misguided (or falsely arrested—mustn’t forget the falsely arrested)? And (ah, politics!) how to spin it to the media? Even though the false arrests had occurred under a previous administration, there were plenty of career politicians still active in the Wizengamot who had supported Scrimgeour’s misguided militancy. Flat-out declaring that hundreds had been arrested and erroneously accused of dark activity would cause enormous embarrassment for a whole slew of individuals who reacted quite badly to being embarrassed.

Enter the Death Eater Rehabilitation Act. (Model of efficiency, that Shacklebolt: he fought in the final battle on May 1—Mayday; you’ve got to love the irony—was elected new Minster of Magic in a special, Saturday emergency session of the Wizengamot on the very next day, and showed up to the Ministry on Monday morning with the draft of the Act in his hand…and mentioned it in his press conference, giving the Wizengamot little choice but to pass it, immediately.) Running on the assumption that everyone charged with any sort of dark activity had in some way merited the charge (as a sop to the politicians), the Ministry had decided in the interests of blah, blah, blah, and for the good of blah, blah, blah, any Death Eaters or suspected Death Eater sympathizers who blah, blah, blah and had a family member of good standing who blah, blah, blah, could be released on a probationary blah, blah, blah. In short, if they couldn’t prove that you actually personally killed or tortured someone, and you were willing to plead guilty, name names, point fingers, and beat your chest in a big, dramatic show of repentance, then you could be released, if you had a “clean” family member who was willing to take you in.

They’d never have to actually say whether the individual “suspected of dark activity” truly was a Death Eater or not. They’d just run a quick test to see what the person had done; have them sign a slightly-coerced confession to obstruction of justice or some such minor, nonsense infraction; judge them guilty as charged; and have the court act with “leniency” by sentencing them to time already served. Then they could go home with their clean, upstanding family member and get back to ordinary life. Five years probation—the first two of those years with a restricted wand, capable of only the most limited combative charms—and if they made it through without any further charges, their records would be expunged. Case closed.

An additional bonus, of course, was that with all the cases closed so damn soon after the final victory, the whole Death Eater Rehabilitation Act stood to get absolutely minimal press coverage. All the reporters were determinedly following Potter around like ducklings; the papers simply didn’t have anyone to spare to pester Shacklebolt with questions about whether the Death Eaters being rehabilitated had ever done anything requiring rehabilitation in the first place. The innocent would be freed; those culpable in their imprisonment would have their reputations carefully safeguarded; and the public at large would remain blissfully ignorant as they scoured their papers for news on whether Potter preferred sausage with his breakfast or bacon.

It was brilliant. Brilliant PR, brilliant spin-doctoring (following the essential rule of spin: the best way to manipulate an issue is to make sure no one cares about it in the first place), and above all, a brilliant way to separate the guilty from the idiotically innocent. Most of the poor fools who were held on bogus charges would undoubtedly have family members with pristine records eager to step up for them. Those who had truly done nothing wrong would be entirely in the clear and out of the prison system in short order.

Those of us who had, at the very least, been stupid enough to sign our lives over to a megalomaniacal snake man were in a slightly stickier situation. The really violent, sadistic bastards (such as my uncle, my uncle’s brother, and all of my father’s chess club) would be sent to the maximum security prison, and the rest of us (including yours truly) seemed destined to extend our patronage to the medium security prison for a good, long time.

The whole point of Death Eater cant was to build on our beliefs that we were better than the rest of the wizarding world. Most of our family members were right on board with us and were, therefore, either in the next cell over, in the ground six feet under, or in hiding, with nothing short of the freezing over of hell itself as sufficient motivation to make them come before the Ministry.

The few, rare “black sheep” of Death Eater families who actually stood against the Dark Lord were, as a general rule, not on the best of terms with their Death Eater kin. Forget standing before the Wizengamot to vouch for any of us; they wouldn’t stop in the street to spit on us if we were being burned alive.

In short, we were in for it, probably for a good, long time.

Shacklebolt, eager to get Scrimgeour’s mistakes out of the jails as quickly as possible, held the trials in order of date of arrest. Those trials flew by because, honestly, most of those so-called “criminals” had exceptionally little to say. Priori scans on their wands for dark activity took no time at all. Veritaserum was administered only to confirm that they had willingly signed their “confessions,” and that they had no further crimes to confess. Once that was done, it took a bare minute or two at most for the family member to be pronounced suitably “clean,” and then the record was stamped, the case was closed, and the newly released prisoner was given his restricted wand on his way out the door. It all happened so quickly that it was possibly to take a trip to the loo and return to discover that three people had been tried while you were gone.

So needless to say, it didn’t take long for the courts to get to the arrests from the date of the final battle. And once the defendants from those arrests were scheduled, my family was placed at the head of the docket. When my father told me that Malfoys always came in first, I really don’t think that this was what he meant.

Yes, Lucius Malfoy stood for the very first of the Death Eater trials just yesterday, on May 11.

It took the better part of the day. Naturally, my father had quite a lot of information to convey, and with the liberal use of Veritaserum, and a pensieve provided for verification, he conveyed it all before the court. He was found guilty, of course. Guilty of…oh, who knows how many things. Lots, yes? Lots and lots. He’ll be enjoying the accommodations at one of the new, maximum security prisons for the foreseeable future.

Mother was tried this morning. After roughly two hours of evidence and deliberation, she was found guilty as well, though she was, thankfully, only sentenced to fifteen years. Despite her illustrious connections (no doubt the Wizengamot wanted to throw her into jail just for marrying my father and having the mischance to be born as Auntie Bella’s sister), the evidence showed that she truly wasn’t guilty of much except for basically condoning atrocities.

The most active role she’d actually taken in anyone’s death had taken place about two years before, when she’d told Voldemort that Potter could be lured to the Ministry by threats against Sirius Black. The lure had worked, and Black had died. Shacklebolt, for his own reasons, seemed absolutely determined to have Mother’s culpability in that death on the record. I thought it odd at the time. After all, Mother’s uncoerced involvement in her cousin’s death eliminated her from eligibility for the Death Eater Rehabilitation Act, but so bloody what? It’s not as if we had any clean family members who would have been willing to speak for her anyway, right?

But then there was my trial. It didn’t take long. Based on my parents’ evidence, it was pretty obvious that I hadn’t killed anyone, I hadn’t tortured anyone, and my only attempt to kill was done under fairly strong coercion. Still, there was no denying that I was the one who put Madame Rosmerta under the Imperius and tried to kill Dumbledore, or that I stood by and did bloody nothing while a whole slew of people—including a professor from my school, and a few fellow students—were brutally tortured right in front of me.

Personally, I’d already started planning out how I’d spend the rest of my life in the prison system. Once the true sheep were out of the way and the overly psychotic wolves were disposed of, a new order would come into play, and I was determined to place myself at the top of the pack. I’d already begun plotting out how I could engineer my slow but steady ascent through the ranking system with a combination of physical threat represented by my authority over Goyle and other such similar thugs, plus the judicious application of sexual favors when absolutely necessary (no use being squeamish about sex with a face as pretty as mine; it’s too good a bargaining tool to pass up) so that in under a decade, I’d have the cell block under my thumb with everyone scurrying around, seeking to curry favor so as to be my “bitches” as the Americans say…

And then Nymphadora and her wolf stood. The feted and admired Lupins themselves: war heroes, Aurors (well, she is, at any rate), as well as mentors and friends to the Great Git-Who-Lived. Martyrs, practically, since everyone thought they were dead after the final battle. (All a trick dreamed up by the Dark Lord, as it happens. Seems he got his jollies by conjuring up fake corpses of Order of the Phoenix members as another way to discourage and dishearten Potter. The ruse wasn’t discovered until Granger, reportedly, came across her own corpse and recognized it for what it truly was.)

As far as “clean” goes, they practically squeak with their glowing records. And they vouched for me. Me! And so here I am, living in a house so ridiculously “cozy” that every time I sit down, I half-expect the furniture to give me a hug. It’s not the kind of place where I ever expected to be. Truth be told, none of this is what I ever expected to happen. I always believed that once the war ended, either I’d be alive and well and continuing the life of pomp and circumstance to which I had been raised…or I’d be dead. There was never a contingency plan for this to be my life. And speaking of long-term plans for my life…

Thought 4: Pansy’s well buggered. I’ll have to wait until morning to learn about her sentencing, of course—we didn’t stay to see it out, but there will be a small column tallying the results in the morning paper (on p. 5, behind the headliner story of Potter buying new shoes, no doubt). Still, it doesn’t take a psychic to read the tea leaves on this one.

She’s no murderer. (Pansy never was one for getting her hands dirty; she cared too much about her manicure for that.) Still, she always did enjoy her petty tortures, and she definitely lived it up when the Death Eaters were running the school. My best guess is that she’ll spend the next decade in jail. Even if someone in her family wanted to speak for her, I doubt it would do any good.

We were going to be married, Pans and I. Our parents charted the whole thing out when we were about three. I remember me and Pans playing “Poke the Elf” in the garden while our parents signed the paperwork inside. Copies of the contract should still be sitting in our Gringotts vaults, provided the Ministry hasn’t seized the assets. Draco Lucius Malfoy to marry Pansy Gardenia Parkinson upon the occasion of her eighteenth birthday, dowered by her parents with…quite a bit, no doubt, though I don’t remember the exact terms. Her parents would cough up a great big chunk of money, and my parents would hand over some properties to us, and we’d live very properly ever after. I’d run the estate, Pansy would direct our social lives, and we’d have at least one child together to ensure the continuation of the line after which we’d comfortably slip into the routines that would allow us to live separate lives within the same, large house.

I would have liked that life, I suppose. Pans wasn’t all that bad. None too bright, but still imperiously catty in that amusing sort of way Slytherin girls master from their cradle. Pretty enough. Agreeable in bed, and not all that disagreeable out of it, even if she got a bit whiny sometimes. We made an attractive couple and had always gotten along well. Yes, I think that that we’d have had a perfectly satisfactory life together. And now we never will.

The Ministry official who outfitted me with my new, limited wand informed me that once Pansy is convicted (yes, he actually said that; seems that he hadn’t any doubt of the results of the trial, either), I’ll be “free” of the obligations of my engagement contract.

Turns out, I’m free of a lot of things, these days. Free from Azkaban, which is definitely a plus, of course. Free from the Dark Lord, which I’m willing to admit is a good thing. Free from all the funds in my Gringotts accounts until I’ve served out my probation. (Free, my arse. There’s nothing free about my Gringotts vault. The interest on the galleons alone generates as much income as a small country—and don’t think the Ministry isn’t milking that money for all its worth until I’m in a position to claim it again.)

Free from my parents. Free from my home. Free from the responsibilities and obligations and rules and regulations of my name and my class that have been drilled into me for as long as I can remember. Free from magic, in any truly defining way. (The “restricted” wand I’m allowed to use can’t conjure anything stronger than a tickling charm.) Free of everything that has always defined me.

So this is what freedom is like. I haven’t yet decided whether I like it or not.

Chapter 2:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated May 13, 1998

There are only two possible explanations for what has happened today. Either my cousin is truly a creature of pure evil who has somehow succeeded in fooling the wizarding world with the appearance of benevolence, or she has gone quite sadly mad. I always knew she was a bit unbalanced (pink hair is not considered a resounding sign of sanity in any culture that I know of), but I had no idea the dementia had spread this far. The news that she told me during lunch today, calmly (!), smilingly (!!), without showing the least recognition of what a shock it would be to my delicate system (!!!), has me remembering almost nostalgically the old days with Aunt Bella when she used to hex me with Crucio charms on my abdominal muscles whenever she got her monthlies. Her niece has taken sadistic insanity to a whole new level.

Nymphadora has… Merlin, I can barely even bring myself to write the words… I still cannot, absolutely cannot bring myself to believe that they’re true. Please, please, by all the fates above, let this be just a trick! It’s too horrible to be real; she can’t really have decided to force me, by virtue of her position as my guardian for my probation to work as…as…

Her nanny!

If you’ll excuse me, I must go beat my head against the wall until I succeed in knocking myself unconscious. Perhaps if I’m lucky, I’ll fall into a coma and spend the rest of my days drooling into a pillow in the Janus Thickey ward. In comparison, what a happy life that would be!

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated May 13, 1998, afternoon

Banging my head against the wall gave me nothing but a headache, damnit.

At least, I think the headache came from trying to break my head open. It might just be my brain imploding at the idea that I am supposed to care for that godforsaken child of Nymphadora’s for the conceivable future. I am supposed to feed it, dress it, clean it (unsanitary, smelly little brat that it is). I am supposed to be wholly and completely responsible for its health and well-being every day from now until Merlin knows when! I feel queasy just thinking of it. Nymphadora wants to turn me into a nursery elf! I refuse to stand for this!

My one, slim thread of hope is that Lupin will agree with me that the idea is preposterous, and clearly the result of a broken mind. Really, with the combination of post-battle stress, a husband who sheds fur on the sheets and likes to chase his tail when it’s his time of the month, and constant interaction with her smelly spawn who has spent the past five months coating her with (toxic, no doubt) drool, I’m almost surprised it’s taken Nymphadora this long to snap. When Lupin returns home, I will inform him that my cousin requires immediate medical attention, preferably of the type that keeps her comfortably in a well-padded room for the rest of her life.

Until then, I am determined to stay locked in my room, where I can be safe.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated May 13, 1998, evening

Lupin has apparently gone mad as well, and informed me (when I very bravely exited my room to speak with him upon his arrival home from work) that making me their nanny was a decision the two of them reached together. I am alone in a house with two crazy people and their disease-ridden, rainbow-haired child.

Also, I’m hungry. Fearing for my life in the house of a madwoman apparently works up quite an appetite, and I was forced to skip lunch when I made the decision to stay locked in my room.

Despite all the very rational reasons I produced for why it’s safer for everyone involved if I stay in my room, they’ve told me that I can’t have dinner delivered to me here. If I wish to eat, I have to “stop pouting and come to the table.”

I am not pouting. I’m merely attempting to protect my own sanity from the lunacy that apparently runs rampant in this house.

Still, in the interests of showing how open-minded and generous I truly am, I suppose I might be willing to go downstairs for at least part of dinner. But the food had better be good.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated May 13, 1998, later evening

Dinner was most resoundingly not a success.

The food was passable, I suppose, but the conversation began badly and quickly got much worse. Not only are the two Loony Lupins utterly determined that I become nanny to their child, but they seem truly convinced that there is no other option.

All right, so that’s not entirely true. There is another option: I could return to prison. Not only could, actually; it turns out that I will be returned to prison—and quickly, too—if I can’t prove to the Ministry’s satisfaction that I’ve acquired and sustained some type of gainful employment within the first month of my probation. That was written into the law as well, specifically applying to those with the Dark Mark. Shacklebolt is even cleverer than I thought.

Nymphadora and her pet husband might be well and truly mad, but I’m still inclined to think that they have a point when they say that no one in the wizarding world is likely to hire me without the persuasion an Imperius curse. And getting a job in the muggle world isn’t feasible, either. Even if I were willing to try it (which I’m not, since the thought is even more repellant than serving as some sort of nursemaid), I’d never be able to navigate my way around well enough to hold down work there.

Since her maternity leave is coming to a close, Nymphadora and the wolf had planned to start parking the brat in the daycare facility the Ministry provides for its employees. Now that I’m here, though, Nymphadora has decided instead to use these next few weeks to “show me the ropes,” after which giving the nanny job to me will be, in wolf’s words, “the tidiest of all solutions.” I fail to see anything tidy about it.

I fail to see any way around it, either.

Nymphadora will begin training me tomorrow in the proper care and feeding of the little urchin. She suggested that I get plenty of rest, since I’ll apparently need “lots of energy” to get me through the day. I suggested that what I truly needed was a large bottle of Ogden’s. She ignored me (I have the sinking feeling that this will be the fate of most of my suggestions in the future) and reminded me again to get to sleep early. In spite of my attempts to focus on happy thoughts (such as the lovely possibility of having a heart attack and dying peacefully in my sleep during the night), I cannot help but wonder what a five-and-a-half-month-old child might be capable of doing that requires two adults to gird all their strength before attempting to face it.

Merlin help us all.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated May 19, 1998, exceptionally late evening

The (so-called) child (that I am becoming increasingly convinced is actually a demonic changeling) known as Teddy has been in my partial care for nearly a week now, and today is the first day that I’ve had the energy to do anything other than collapse immediately into bed as soon as I came upstairs from dinner. Now I know what a five-and-a-half-month-old child is capable of. Sweet Circe, how I know.

If I were asked to pass along words of wisdom from my new experience to any prospective parents of small children, I would strongly advise them to looking into boarding school programs that start very, very young. Preferably immediately following birth.

By the dark demons, anyone who chooses to breed should have their head examined. I have a whole new sympathy for my parents, and finally understand why, despite my repeated requests, they never gave me a little brother for Christmas. Instead, I find myself stunned and more than a bit grateful that they felt the obligation to the Malfoy name and legacy strongly enough to have me, at all. Little wonder I was raised in large part by the house elves. If there was a house elf here for me to foist Teddy off on, I would do it with all possible speed.

The “baby monitor” that Nymphadora has given me for my room wakes me promptly at dawn with the ear-piercing din of the little monster’s screams. Unfortunately, the baby monitor only provides a one-way connection, or I would respond to the cacophony by teaching the brat some language it would otherwise have to wait to learn from visiting the Hog’s Head after a local Quidditch loss.

Nymphadora, of course, immediately rushes to the nursery to begin the first morning feeding, and she insists that I be there to join them. I can’t see why I have to be present. Any meals I have to feed the little monkey for the rest of the day will be done with a bottle, not a breast, so watching her flap her tits around teaches me nothing other than how supremely unattractive breasts can be in the wrong situation. I’m fairly certain that I’m now scarred for life, and that overexposure to my cousin’s mammary glands has ensured that I will never find breasts attractive or arousing ever again. (Perhaps this was her diabolical plan all along? I’m still torn between the “Nymphadora is crazy” and the “Nymphadora is evil masquerading as insanity to achieve her insidious ends” theories. Only time will tell which one is right.)

After the brat’s hair has changed from “I’m hungry” orange to “change my diaper” puce, I’m required to take over. And the less said of changing the diaper, the better.

Dressing the child fortunately does not take long, but the sickeningly endless stream of baby talk that Nymphadora seems to feel she’s required to babble is enough to make the short task seem endless. Moreover, Nymphadora has gotten into the habit of entertaining the brat by changing the color of her hair, and showering him with praise when he changes his to match. The little hellion spent the first few mornings trying to induce me to “play” as well by grabbing hold of my hair at every opportunity and yanking on it in a display of clearly inhuman strength. Thankfully, time seems to have convinced him that no amount of pulling with turn me into a tint-transforming freak like him and his mother and he now leaves my poor, mistreated locks well enough alone.

After that, it’s downstairs for breakfast with “Daddy,” which Nymphadora and the wolf like to spend cooing over the baby and each other. The only upside is that very little is required of me.

Following breakfast, Lupin leaves for work. I’ve been horrified to actually find myself envying him. A Malfoy envying a werewolf! But the werewolf gets to leave every morning, go out into world of adults, and spend his day working in the newly-expanded and enhanced Werewolf Support Services office at the Ministry—having conversations that do not include even a scrap of baby talk or so much as a single chorus of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Lucky man. Unlucky me.

My day is filled with bottles, diapers, aggravatingly cutesy nursery rhymes and songs (Nymphadora is utterly tone deaf; if it weren’t for the recordings of the songs, I would think they had no tune to them whatsoever), books covered in fuzz where barnyard animals talk their offspring about how much they love them, and an endless array of toys: toys that squeak, toys that rattle, toys that dance about on their own accord, and toys that I am expected to make dance by waving them in the air, with accompanying ridiculous sounds. All toys, by the way, may start the day clean and pristine, but end the day covered with drool as the little demon seems to think that no toy can be adequately appreciated unless it has been chewed—or rather, gummed.

When we put the urchin down for a nap, it becomes my responsibility to clean all the toys before putting them away—which is, by the way, utterly pointless, since the first thing we do when the brat wakes from his nap is start to pull the toys out again. I’d be inclined to just leave them out if I were dealing with anyone other than Nymphadora. Her tendency to trip over thin air makes me disinclined to tempt fate by leaving things out on the floor, especially since there’s an entire fleet of toys with wheels, most of which are charmed to drive forward on their own, perfect for knocking your feet right out from under you if you step on them when they’re on the go. And yes, I discovered that the hard way, as the bruise on my bum the size of a bludger will attest. I got it from stepping on the (thrice bedamned) toy Knight Bus five days ago and the bruise has yet to fade.

The only time we ever set foot outside of the house is when we go for a “nice, brisk walk through the park.” I’ll admit, the first time Nymphadora cast a color-setting charm on the little monster and informed me that we were going out, I was ecstatic. Aside from my desperate need to breathe air that didn’t smell like sour milk, dirty diapers, and baby puke, I was hungry for the chance to catch up on some bird watching, of the non-feathered type. Unsurprisingly, living in Death Eater Central—with the sole estrogen contributions supplied by my mother and my aunt—massively curtailed my sex life; I haven’t been with a woman in what feels like an eternity.

Of course, I knew that I was unlikely to find any woman in the park who’d be willing to nip off behind some bushes with me for a quickie. Even though I didn’t have to worry about my Death Eater history being held against me (the Lupins live in a muggle neighborhood; apparently—war hero or not—wizarding neighborhoods willing to house a werewolf are few and far between), I doubted that even muggle women were dumb enough to risk arrest for public indecency in the middle of the day with a strange (though devastatingly attractive) man.

All the same, I was still looking forward to getting the chance to at least look at a woman other than my cousin. And if, later on, I chose to wank in the privacy of my room over what I would have liked to do to those women if they’d been willing to explore some bushes with me, then what harm would that do to me or to them? They’d be getting something out of it, too, after all. I daresay they rarely had the opportunity to come across as fine a specimen as me in their humdrum, muggle lives.

The park, as I should have expected, was a massive disappointment. Oh, there were women there, plenty of women, but when it came to wankable material, I’d do just as well trying to get it up over memories of the time when Millicent thought she’d gotten me drunk enough to be able to molest me without me protesting. The park is a Mecca for women with babies seeking a place to take a “nice, brisk walk” for some fresh air, and as a result, it seems to be filled at all hours with an unattractive array of either sloppily dressed, sleep-deprived mothers with babies of their own, or nannies clearly chosen by the mothers to give the fathers absolutely no temptation whatsoever. Instead of them giving me something pleasant to dream about, I find them all watching me the way a cat watches a mouse. Is it too much to ask to have only attractive women view me as a sexual object? I feel so violated.

And each time I finally manage to escape the park with my virtue (barely) intact, it’s back home for more nursery rhymes, and diapers, and sticky, drool-covered toys. By the time the wolf comes home and makes dinner (apparently, it’s tantamount to suicide to let Nymphadora into the kitchen), it’s all I can do to avoid falling asleep face down in my soup bowl.

It is with great joy that I leave bath time up to the parents, who have deluded themselves into believing that it’s adorable that the bath never ends without the two of them getting soaked head to toe and the bathroom floor flooding to the point where it drips out into the hallway. It’s charming. Really. And what a shame that the bath and the subsequent bedtime rituals don’t require my assistance, leaving me with the far less invigorating pastime of trying to muster the strength to change out of my clothes before passing out on my bed from sheer exhaustion.

Nymphadora has informed me that she’ll be returning to work next Monday since things are going “so well” with Teddy and me. In other words, I have five more days of comparative freedom, and after that, chasing after the hell-child all day will be solely my responsibility.

Perhaps I was hasty in choosing this life over prison.

Chapter 3:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated May 25, 1998, evening

All right, I’ve made my decision. I want to return to prison. Right now. Spending the foreseeable future trapped in an institution that forces me to wear poorly fitted, unattractively colored clothing on a daily basis would still be preferable to staying here to take care of this little many-hued monster for the next few years. At least prison life leaves you relatively unsullied while it sucks away all the value from your existence. And for it to happen in front of Hermione Granger, of all people… But no, I shouldn’t skip ahead like that. Let me start at the beginning.

Today was Nymphadora’s first day back at work. At first, the morning was only mildly disastrous. Nymphadora was a tad nervous about returning to work, which made her even clumsier than usual. But Lupin, who for all his (many) faults is not lacking in reserves of common sense, has long since made the house as baby-and-Nymphadora-safe as possible, so that nothing of any great importance was on hand to be broken.

Their vile little offspring, using some sort of demonic intuition, seemed to realize that something was wrong and was a bit fussier than usual during breakfast, but it was nothing that his parents couldn’t handle. Of course, he got rather blue (literally) as soon as Nymphadora headed to the door to leave for work, and he began to cry straightaway—but none of us were terribly surprised at that. We had, in fact, expected it, and Nymphadora assured me that it was just a little separation anxiety, and that once she was out the door and Teddy had a chance to settle down, he’d be fine.

She was wrong.

I tried everything I could think of to get him to stop crying. Nothing seemed to work. I held him, I bounced him, I even rocked him. I tried sitting, standing, pacing back and forth. I pulled out all his favorite toys and went so far as to deliberately trip myself over one of them so that he could watch me as I came crashing down to the floor. (The hellion laughed like a damn hyena the first time I slipped on that blasted Knight Bus model.) All I got in return for my pain and suffering this time was a bruised tailbone and more crying.

The blue hair had morphed into red, and even I knew that red meant trouble. I got so desperate that I even pulled out that muggle music playing device that Nymphadora had showed me how to use and stuck in the Sing Along with Barney (whoever in blue blazes Barney might be) discus-thingy that they’d gotten as a gift from Nymphadora’s great aunt (on her father’s side, of course). I was so desperate to stop the ear-splitting crying that I actually sang along with Barney. I, Draco Malfoy, heir of a family line dating back to Merlin and former follower of the deadliest Dark Lord Britain has ever known, sang about hugs and kisses and being a great, big family. (I’m fairly certain that I heard a rumbling noise signifying my ancestors rolling over in their graves.) And what’s worse, it didn’t help.

At this point, I was starting to get concerned (and not just for the delicate state of my eardrums). Surely a child that size couldn’t have enough water in it to cry nonstop for that long without getting dehydrated (unless it truly is a demon; I still haven’t given up on that theory). The last thing I needed was for the brat to get sick on me on the very first day I was in charge of watching him by myself. Those bastards at the Ministry would just love to latch onto any excuse that I wasn’t performing my “probationary occupation” in a satisfactory manner.

Inspired by a misguided concern for the urchin’s health, I dragged him into the kitchen and fetched out one of the bottles of milk Nymphadora had left. I’d gotten fairly good at feeding him over the past few weeks—Nymphadora always insisted that I handle the feedings whenever she didn’t breastfeed so that I could get used to it under her supervision—and I managed to get him to swallow a bit of it down. Teddy couldn’t scream when his mouth was full, and I began feeling rather proud of myself when it looked that he was truly starting to calm down. Fool that I was, I actually thinking that the worst of the crisis had passed. I even believed that the red hair was easing into a sort of auburn—although looking back, that was probably just wishful thinking.

Of course, just when I was starting to relax in the pleasant quiet, Teddy decided that he truly hadn’t made me miserable enough, and all at once, he pushed away the bottle, began screaming again, and threw up—all over me—every drop of the milk he’d swallowed. And because karma just can’t get enough of kicking me around, the doorbell rang at just that moment, and when I yanked it open, relishing the opportunity to vent my frustration at a target better able than a six-month-old child to appreciate the wide and varied vocabulary that I use when I’m truly teed off, I found myself face to face with Hermione Granger.

She looked gorgeous, damn her, in the smartest little set of business robes I’d seen in quite some time. They weren’t revealing—that wasn’t Granger’s style—but they hugged her body in a way that none of the shapeless clothes I’d seen on mothers and nannies in the park had done, and they showcased a figure that those haggard biddies couldn’t achieve in their wildest dreams, before or after pregnancy.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve always had a perfectly natural appreciation for a well-formed rack, nor that I’d noticed as far back as fifth year that Granger’s breasts were perfect. I was glad to see that nothing had changed in that regard, and gladder still to note that Nymphadora’s disgusting flapping around of her breasts while feeding her spawn had not succeeded in killing my appreciation for them altogether. Finally, I had a fresh image that I could happily draw to mind when taking care of a morning stiffy, instead of falling back on the old favorite of Granger from back in sixth year.

It was unfortunate that my body didn’t seem to be content to wait until I was in a more appropriate setting before showing its appreciation for the new fantasy material. Bad enough that I was standing there sweaty and disheveled, with my hair sticking in a dozen different directions, and vomit covering me from the waist up. Adding an erection to the picture was the last thing I needed, especially with Granger standing there looking so sickeningly tidy. There had to be something wrong with the world when Hermione Granger looked spic and span without so much as a hair out of place while Draco Malfoy was flustered, rumpled, covered in baby vomit, weighed down by a relentlessly screaming child, and hard, all at once.

I half-expected her to burst out laughing at the sight of me (after all, if our situations had been reversed, that’s certainly what I would have done), but instead she gave me that trademark You Are Lower Than Scum glare that she used to reserve for me back in school, and reached out to take Teddy…who was reaching for her.

No wonder she was scowling at me as if she’d caught me feasting on the inner organs of muggle children: The sneaky little bastard who’d just covered me with vomit had totally changed his agenda the moment he caught sight of her. Gone was the hellion who’d spent the whole morning running me absolutely ragged while he screamed at the top of his lungs. In his place was a pitiful looking, blue-haired tot (playing the wide-eyed look for all it was worth) who was sobbing quietly as if he’d just witnessed the ritual murder of his pet puppy, and reaching out for Hermione like she was some sort of bloody savior who had come to protect him from the Very Bad Man.

Gathering him into her arms, Granger pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the traces of tears and vomit from his face and then cuddled him in her arms, whispering soft, soothing sounds while rubbing his back as he buried his face in her neck (lucky bastard). He even let his hair relax back to a far more natural looking brown (about the same color as Granger’s actually), and finally, finally, stopped crying.

Thinking back, I suppose it’s possible that I might have looked just a bit silly, standing there with my mouth hanging open as I watched, but really, there was no reason for her to all but growl at me like I was some sort of incompetent half-wit when I merely asked a simple question about what spell she’d cast to finally get him to calm down.

“A spell wasn’t required,” she snapped. “All he needed was a little comfort, which was apparently too much to ask of you.”

I couldn’t help but feel that that was blatantly unfair. It’s not as if I hadn’t tried. But as usual, she didn’t give me a chance to defend myself.

“Are you going to let me in?” she asked, cutting off the words I was about to say in my defense. “Or are you just going to stand there and continue to drip on the doorstep?”

Curses on mother and father for giving me this damnable fair skin. Yes, it may very well be that pale, translucent skin is the sign of a true aristocrat, but it also makes it bloody impossible to hide from anyone when you start blushing. I stepped back into the house as quickly as I could; it was darker in there, and maybe she wouldn’t be able to see the blush. She took that as an invitation to come in and sailed right past me into the parlor.

“Why don’t you go get cleaned up?” she said, without sparing me so much as a glance. “I’ll see to Teddy.”

I wanted to protest…but what would I say? “No, immediately unhand the brat so that he can start screaming again the way he did all morning before you showed up?” That wouldn’t go over well. Besides, the only reason I wanted her to leave was because I couldn’t bear the thought of her, of all people, seeing me brought so low. But she’d already seen me looking about as bad as I could possibly look—as low as I could possibly be. It would be foolish not to take advantage of the opportunity to at least get cleaned up, and Malfoys always grab any chance to take advantage.

The urge to drown myself in the shower was strong, but I managed to overcome it. (I did give in to the urge to…loosen up a bit, but I was very brisk about it.) In less than a quarter of an hour, I was clean and changed (and relaxed, as well), and returned to the parlor to see that Granger had made good use of her time, too. The kitchen and parlor—which had looked like they’d suffered through a hurricane hex when I’d left them—were spotlessly clean and tidy. Even Teddy was clean, quiet, and content, curled up against Granger as she softly sang him a lullaby. (I hadn’t known Granger could sing, but I couldn’t say I was surprised to find out that she has a voice like an angel. Bloody know-it-all just has to be good at everything, doesn’t she?)

I stood back for a minute, just watching her, and it was like being sixteen all over again. I used to hide in corners and watch her then, too. Oh, I told myself that it was so I could eavesdrop—and that part of it did pay off since I got quite a few ideas from listening to her—but that didn’t quite explain away all the hours I spent just watching her when she was alone, her not saying so much as a syllable that might do me any good while I, fool that I was, couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

The first few years, I watched her and hated her. Hated her generally for what she was, hated her associatively for who she’d befriended, and hated her personally for…oh, everything, really. Basically, I clung to every available opportunity to despise her, mainly because I knew that—blind, stupid heroics aside—Potter wouldn’t have been a fraction of the hero that he was without her by his side, spoon-feeding him the answers. Which meant that every triumph of his over me was really all her fault.

Later, I watched her and tried to make sense of her. Never quite succeeded on that one. No matter how closely I looked for any tricks or illusions, as far as I could see, she really was all those things that she wasn’t supposed to be. And that, in turn, made me think all sorts of things I knew I wasn’t supposed to think.

In the last few months of sixth year, knowing that everything would change one way or another by year’s end, I just watched her, (mostly) without an agenda. Watched her and committed every piece of her that I saw to memory, knowing with absolute certainty those would be the last memories of her I’d ever have. With everything I began to doubt and question that year, I never thought that I’d be proven wrong about that.

And I certainly never wanted it to happen the way it did: Granger, Potter, and Weasley captured and brought to us under Death Eater escort, and—the worst part—my own aunt holding Granger under the Cruciatus curse while I stood there and watched, horrified and utterly helpless. I knew Aunt Bella’s skill with that curse. I’d seen her drive grown men mad with it before. I was certain, so very certain, that by the time the curse ended, the Hermione Granger I had almost-sort-of known would be gone, snuffed like a candle. An empty shell with the blinding brilliance of her mind shattered beyond repair.

The aggravatingly unpredictable witch proved me wrong yet again, of course.

After all that, there we were, the two of us, in the most unpredictable scenario of all. Both of us free, for the most part. Both of us survivors, against all odds. The two of us alone together—which had never happened before—and me, back in my old position, watching her again, wondering, as always, if she’d realize.

She didn’t. Nothing unusual about that; she never did. Truly oblivious, that girl—at least when it comes to me. She never noticed me the way I noticed her. Not back then, and not now. If Teddy hadn’t made a sound at the sight of me, she might never have looked up.

The soft look on her face vanished the instant she saw me, and she got immediately to her feet to deposit Teddy back in my arms. He didn’t seem too happy about the change—his hair started hinting at auburn again, and not in a good way—but she kept petting him gently, cooing quiet nonsense at him until he calmed down.

“I assume you can handle it from here?” she said as she stepped away from us, heading for the door.

I couldn’t help but feel a bit stung. Yes, she’d helped; there was no denying that. It was a relief not to have to listen to Teddy’s screams anymore, and I was certainly pleased that I wouldn’t have to clean the parlour and kitchen myself. But still, it’s not as if I’d asked her to come over and stick her bossy little nose into my business.

“We’d have managed just fine, you know,” I retorted. “No one asked you to interfere.”

“Remus asked me,” she replied. “He was concerned that you might be having trouble since this was your first day without Tonks here, and he thought you might be grateful for a helping hand.” She sneered at me, an expression that didn’t remotely suit her normally sweet face. “I should have told him that gratitude was an emotion you’d never be capable of feeling,” she spat out.

It really was a smashing exit line, especially when she followed it up by sweeping out the door and slamming it behind her. Of course, it was just an added bonus when the sound of the slamming door made Teddy start to cry again.

Bugger. I hate my life.

On the plus side, Granger seems to have kept my little mishap to herself instead of running to tattle to Lupin, which is what I would have expected. In fact, when Lupin brought it up over dinner, he said that she had told him that aside from Teddy being a little fussy—which was certainly to be expected on his mother’s first day away from home—I seemed to have things well in hand. Of course, as soon as he said the phrase “in hand,” I immediately started choking, thinking of what, exactly, I had taken in hand while I was in the shower, with Granger sitting in the parlour that was none too far from the bathroom door. Had she heard me when…had she listened while… I asked Lupin if those were her words or his. Damnit, they were his. The bastard had gone and gotten my hopes up.

I should have known better than to think that she would ever notice me that way. I might as well be a eunuch, as far as she’s concerned. I might as well not exist at all, as far as she’s concerned. It’s more than a little disconcerting that even though I do respond, have responded, and (as this afternoon’s evidence made astoundingly clear) will continue to respond to Granger as a woman, just as I bloody well have since fourth year, she still remains totally and completely oblivious to the concept of me as a man. It isn’t fair. It…it simply isn’t fair.

Chapter 4:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated June 3, 1998

It took a week and a half, but it finally seems to have kicked in for the little monster that I’m all the company he’s going to get during the day, and that crying over it (for hours on end) is bloody pointless.

We’d started to make some progress by the end of last week, but then the weekend came around, and having his parents to make a fuss over him for two solid days got the urchin all spoiled and re-accustomed to being continuously admired and adored. He wasn’t too happy when Monday arrived again, leaving him stuck with me, so he made sure that I was none too happy, either, showing me once more (just in case I’d forgotten) just how loudly he could scream. Fortunately, he got over that stage fairly quickly, and this morning (thank Merlin), we seem to have reached the point where he doesn’t bother crying at all over Nymphadora leaving. Yes, he still cries like a bloody banshee when the mood strikes, but at least we no longer start every morning with wails to shake the heavens, so I’m optimistic about our progress.

As a reward, I’m thinking of taking the brat out for a walk in the park. I was afraid that someone would call the authorities on me if I took him out on one of those days when all he could do was cry, but a cheerful child is much less likely to get me hauled up in front of the Wizengamot. Besides, I could do with the fresh air, and I think the pint-sized nuisance could, as well. My wand can’t handle much, but it should be up to a color-setting charm for the hair, and with that taken care of, what could possibly go wrong?

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated June 3, 1998, later that afternoon

All right, I’m man enough to admit it when I’ve made a mistake, so I’ll come out and say it. Going to the park this afternoon was a big mistake. Big. Huge. Colossal mistake.

Of course, I’d noticed (and been more than a bit horrified by) the way that the women in the park used to watch me when I was there with Nymphadora, but I had no idea just how bold they’d be willing to get when there was no woman there, making an overt claim on me, to protect me. I know I’m gorgeous and endlessly desirable, but honestly! Have they no restraint?

A swarm of locusts has nothing on the swarm of muggle women who descended on me as soon as I set foot in the park. It was horrifying! Nightmarish! They surrounded me from all sides, and they just kept cooing at me, and rubbing against me, and a few of them actually grabbed my bum! If they’d had a bit longer—and continued unrestricted access to my poor, defenseless person—I have no doubt they would have clawed me apart, like the half-crazed mob that they were.

Within that morass of horror, though, there was one shining moment of salvation. Teddy (who might, perhaps, turn out to be non-demonic after all) started to scream like a madman when the women began poking at him. The proof that the child was “clearly upset and needed to be taken home to lie down” gave me an excellent reason to make my immediate departure from those hags’ company. (And here I thought I’d never have reason to be grateful for the sheer room-shaking strength of the little monkey’s screams. Just goes to show, I suppose, that everything has its uses, and that a Malfoy can find a way to use anything.)

As soon as I’d safely…(escaped? No, that’s not accurate. It makes it sound like I ran for cover. Which I didn’t. Really. Anyone who says I did is lying). Anyway, as soon as I’d removed the two of us from the situation (which I faced with the strength and fortitude that one might except from the descendant of such a noble line who possesses, in addition to strength and fortitude, the good sense to know when discretion is the better part of valor), Teddy immediately stopped crying. In fact, if it weren’t totally out of character for the brat who’s shown no signs of appreciation for me up to this point, I’d almost say he smiled at me. Odd. Perhaps it was gas.

So that decides it: No more trips to the park unless I have with me either a female who’s intimidating enough to frighten them off, or a wand powerful enough to stun the whole lot of those women in one fell swoop. Any fresh air Teddy and I might need from now on, we’ll get by walking up and down the street. No doubt that will prove to be much healthier for us both.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated June 5, 1998

Lupin and Nymphadora need to work on their air freshening charms; the house still smells like smoke.

I suppose that I should simply be relieved that, thanks to Lupin’s quick response time and surprisingly capable repair spells, the smell of smoke is the biggest problem we have. Had things gone differently, the entire house could have gone up in flames, and while the Lupins do have some exceedingly tacky decorations in various rooms which could only benefit from getting burnt to a crisp, I shudder to think of where we might have had to stay if Nymphadora had succeeded in burning the four of us out of house and home. I’d been informed shortly after my arrival that Nymphadora could be explosively disastrous in the kitchen, but I hadn’t really appreciated just how literally explosive the disaster could be.

This morning, about half an hour before Teddy’s usual wake-up call, I was jolted out of sleep (along with the rest of the house) by a resounding BOOM coming from the kitchen. Since I’d been quite enjoying my dream, I was more than a little tempted to roll over and ignore it, but the blast woke Teddy up as well, and I could hear him crying through the monitor. Knowing that going back to sleep (and returning to the dark-haired witch in my dream) was pretty much out of the question, I stomped out of bed in a fairly dreadful mood, already thoroughly resenting whatever had chosen to explode in the kitchen and ruin my last half hour of sleep.

I could hear Lupin and Nymphadora’s voices down in the kitchen, which meant that they were taking care of whatever was going on there, so I went straight to Teddy’s room. For once, the little brat actually seemed pleased to see me. The boom must have really shaken him up, for his hair was positively neon green. He reached out to me frantically, and as soon as I picked him up, he burrowed right in against me, his cries dying down to whimpers as we headed down to the kitchen together to see what was going on.

I thought we’d find that one of those pranks Lupin was reviewing for the Wretched Weasley Wankers (he sidelined as one of their consultants) had gone off, or that the floo was backfiring, or even that someone had come to attack us in our beds. I didn’t expect to find the kitchen filled with smoke, Nymphadora covered in flour, and the oven—coated with bits of blackened something—scattered in pieces across the floor. I still don’t fully understand what happened, but as far as I could tell, the baking process was taking longer than Nymphadora expected it to, so she tried some spell to accelerate it, and then…well… BOOM.

So yes, now I can honestly say that I fully understand why Nymphadora is not permitted to bake. Ever.

But based on her whole accident-prone nature, I never did have much difficulty imagining why combining my cousin and cooking would be a terrible idea. That part was hardly surprising. No, the surprising part was why she was in the kitchen—attempting to cook, in defiance of all logic—in the first place. She’d gotten up two hours early this morning so she’d have time to sneak unnoticed into the kitchen and surprise us all at breakfast…with a freshly baked cake. A birthday cake. For me.

And while the “freshly baked cake” part of the plan didn’t turn out all that well, I think I can say that she succeeded in surprising us—especially me. Yes, surprise is definitely playing into what I’m feeling even now, hours later. I’m still having trouble believing that Nymphadora actually baked (or at least, tried to bake) a birthday cake for me.

It’s the very first birthday cake I’ve ever had.

I know (of course I know; I haven’t forgotten) that according to Malfoy tradition, birthday celebrations and all similar such nonsense are suitable only for peasants. I also know that as cakes go, this one currently decorating the waste bin is hardly likely to take any prizes. Still, I’ve still found myself wandering into the kitchen at odd intervals all day just to look at it. And for some reason, even though it’s all black, and charred, and ruiny, I can’t help but think that there’s still something about it that’s almost…kind of…beautiful.

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated June 18, 1998

Today is most certainly a day to mark in my diary (which I still can’t believe that I keep; oh how I hate to admit that Lupin might have had a point when he said I needed somewhere to sort through my thoughts! It’s almost worth giving it up just to prove him wrong. Almost). This is truly an event to commemorate. After eight years of trying, I have finally managed to get to Hermione Granger. Something to celebrate, don’t you think?

So…why don’t I feel happy? Why aren’t I writing this in bright red ink to make it easier to find and gloat over later? I wish I knew. Maybe it’s because I still don’t quite understand how I did it. I hurt her, got underneath that tough skin of hers, and said something that really drew blood—but I still don’t know how or why the words that seemed so innocent to me had such an effect on her. And I, strangely enough, don’t quite like the way it feels, knowing that something that I said completely without thinking caused her so much pain.

Not that there’s any reason for me to feel bad…just because things were actually going well before I somehow screwed it up. So what if we were having the first mostly civil conversation we’ve ever had in as long as I’ve known her? It’s not as if I did whatever it is that I did on purpose. And even if I had, so what? She’s Hermione Granger! Do I really care if I hurt her feelings? Of course not! I should be pleased. I am pleased! Of course I am! (Really. I am.)

Besides, Merlin knows, if one of us should feel awkward or uncomfortable after our encounter today, it should be me! The witch must have some sort of sixth sense that magically lets her know exactly when she can pop in on me to catch me at my most ridiculously embarrassing moments. And today was another winner. So she should feel bad about embarrassing me! (Not that I feel bad. I don’t. Really. Not even a little bit bad about the look in her eyes when she left just an hour or two ago. I’m not feeling…off, or unsettled at all. And if I am, it’s just because it’s been that kind of day, because Merlin, has it ever.)

For starters, Teddy had a bad morning. Not that that came as any surprise, mind you. He’d had a bad night as well, and who could blame him? The thunderstorm last night got pretty fierce, and I know that the noise woke him up half a dozen times. Nymphadora and Lupin usually take care of any problems he has in the night, but I could still hear him crying. Anyway, Teddy demonstrably had a rough night of it, which meant that we’d all had a rough night—waking up every time that he did—so none of us were in exactly the best of spirits when we sat down to breakfast in the morning.

Nymphadora and Lupin have learned better than to expect decent conversation from me in the morning before I’ve had my cup of coffee, but there’s usually plenty of conversation between the two of them, and quite a bit from Teddy, as well. He hasn’t said anything recognizable as a word yet, but he babbles almost continuously when he’s in a good mood. Not so this morning. Teddy—with his lime green hair signaling his distress—kept whimpering whenever there was a crash of thunder outside, and other than murmurs to calm him down, his parents stayed rather quiet, as well. They both looked tired and more than a bit distracted, not to mention not at all enthusiastic about having to face such an unpromising new day.

Given how muddled the two of them were when they left, I was hardly surprised to get a floo call from Lupin an hour or so after he’d left for work saying that he’d forgotten some paperwork at home. He didn’t have any opening in his schedule to come home and pick it up—and with the weather still a raging mess, sending an owl would have been tantamount to animal cruelty—but he said he’d have someone from the office pop by. He said he’d give them his key, so that they wouldn’t have to disturb me if Teddy and I were busy, but to keep an ear out for them, all the same. I told him that I would, and then promptly forgot all about it as I tried to get Teddy to calm down.

He wasn’t screaming, (thank Merlin,) but the crying was something of a continuous theme. It would trail off now and then, but whenever there was a particularly loud bang of thunder, the tears would start right back up again. The storm scared him more than a little, but I think a big part of it was also that he was just tired from getting less than a full night’s sleep. Still, he didn’t seem to want to go down for a nap while the storm was still brewing, so I just tried to keep him as calm as I could and hoped to high heaven that the weather would pass soon.

Walking the floor with him seemed to help, so I kept pacing back and forth, watching him—rather than watching where I was going—for any change in hue that would indicate that he was calm enough for me to be able to stop the forced march. Of course, of course, that damned Knight Bus found its way under my feet again. (I swear, someone charmed that thing to be able to drive its way straight up the side of a wall, and, thus, right out of the toy box. I know I put it away, and yet there it was, in all its purple glory, practically smirking at me as I went flying through the air.

I had the presence of mind to toss Teddy to the couch just in the nick of time before I landed with an almighty thud on the thinly carpeted floor. When I looked up, I saw Teddy watching me from the couch, with pink hair broadcasting his enjoyment as he giggled like a loon…and standing behind him, framed by the parlor doorway, was Hermione Granger.

Of course she was there; I should have expected it! Because Merlin forbid I have any excruciatingly embarrassing moment at any point of my life—from age eleven onward—without Hermione bloody Granger there to witness it. I’m half-surprised that Nymphadora didn’t invite her over to see the look on my face when I was informed that I’d spend the next few years employed as Teddy’s nanny. Surely that would have been a perfect moment for her to view.

This afternoon, she (of course) remained absolutely poised and calm (while I remained on the floor sprawled at a ridiculous angle, with all the air knocked out of me), and spared me barely a glance before sailing over to scoop Teddy up in her arms before he managed to fall off the couch. “I’ll just go fetch those papers from the library then, shall I?” she announced before exiting the room without waiting for my response. “Perhaps by the time I’ve gathered them, you’ll have…pulled yourself together again,” I heard her say as her footsteps echoed down the hallway.

It took me a couple of minutes just to muster the energy to get up off the floor. The fall really had knocked the wind out of me, in addition to giving me what felt like a full-body bruise, and it took a bit before I felt steady enough to hobble down the hallway to check on Granger and Teddy. My already-foul mood did not improve when I heard from the doorway that Granger had done something that had Teddy giggling steadily and happily after only a few minutes of effort; a feat that I’d all but had to break my neck to achieve.

“Did you find the papers?” I asked, eager to break up the domestic little interlude the two of them had formed together so that I could move Granger along her way.

She held them up to demonstrate that she had. “They were right where Remus said he’d left them.”

Crossing the room (as gingerly as I could; I was still bloody well sore from where I’d fallen), I couldn’t help but smirk when Teddy reached out for me to take him again. Take that, Miss Pied Piper Granger.

“You two…seem to be getting along better,” she said, her voice strained with obvious effort from her attempt to be cordial. I wasn’t about to demonstrate that I had worse manners than Granger of all people, so I decided that if she could be civil, so could I.

“You’re quite good with him, as well,” I admitted. Decided to take the chance to one-up her a bit, I added, “He seems very fond of you.”

Her eyes shifted to Teddy and she reached out to rub his back, smiling at him a bit. (I’d never seen her smile from so close before. It was prettier than I’d realized—warmer, when seen up close.) “I’m quite fond of him, as well,” she said, “which is fortunate, seeing as I’m his godmother.”

I hadn’t known that, but it did make sense. She was just the kind of person you’d want to have as your child’s godmother: devoted, affectionate, and relentlessly responsible.

“And did you gather all the books at Flourish & Blotts on infant development to read up for your role?” I teased, starting to relax a bit into the conversation, especially when I saw her response. She blushed. I couldn’t believe it. I had made her blush!

“Not just Flourish & Blotts,” she confessed. “I went to a muggle bookstore, too, to compare the wizarding method with the scientific method, just so I’d be prepared.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and she grinned back at me. (At me; not just near me, but at me.) “And were you prepared?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “But I’ll admit, the reading had little to do with it. I started child minding on weekends and during the summer for our neighbors when I was eight years old. I’m used to babies. I suppose I thought that wizarding children would be different, but other than the rainbow hair, Teddy hasn’t thrown too many surprises my way. Although,” she added, “I don’t think the research was entirely wasted. If Teddy comes down with any common childhood disease ranging from asthma to zoriac infection while I’m around, I’ll know exactly what to do.”

“I suppose Lupin and Nymphadora do have rather strange standards for childcare, when you look at it,” I joked. “You’d think that they’d want to pick someone with more of an insider’s knowledge on babies, like your Weasley. He’d certainly know everything there is to know, wouldn’t he?” I grinned at her, inviting her to share the laugh with me.

I swear I didn’t mean anything offensive by it. I truly just thought that out of their little gang, the Weasel would be the one who’d spent the most time around kids. Honestly, the family breeds like rabbits. Even if he was the second youngest, he had to have some baby cousins, or even nieces and nephews squatting down with him in that hovel where his family lives. (All right, so maybe I did mean something just a teensy bit offensive; but I was insulting Weasley, not her, right?)

She drew back like I’d slapped her, and all traces of that grin I’d just been admiring (yes, I’d been admiring it) vanished from her face.

“Indeed,” was all she said, but that one word closed out our conversation completely. Gathering up the papers for Lupin, she headed straight for the library door, while I stood there dumbfounded, wondering what the hell I’d accidentally managed to say.

She turned at the door, and I braced myself for whatever words might come next. I’d clearly hurt her, even if I hadn’t meant to, and I was sure she was about to strike back as hard as she could. (It’s what I would have done.) She raised her wand, and I was absolutely convinced that she was going to literally strike back, as hard as she could…

But the only effect from the charm that she muttered under her breath was to make the bruises from my earlier fall melt away. She healed me, after I’d hurt her. And then, before I had a chance to thank her, she left, without another word. She didn’t even say goodbye.

The storm had finally cleared by then, and Teddy was turning a bit sandy-haired with fatigue, clearly showing the effects of being awake for so long. I got him to lie down for a nap half an hour ago. I’ve been spending the time since then trying to figure out what the hell went so wrong, and why Hermione Granger’s exit, even though she didn’t say the words, felt like an absolutely definitive goodbye. And why the thought of that…hurts.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated June 18, 1998, evening

Buggering, blighting hell. I got the full story out of Nymphadora tonight, and now I can finally appreciate just how utterly and completely I put my foot in it with Granger earlier today.

Turns out, Weasley is about to get bloody married, to a woman he’s already gotten in the family way, and I had no idea.

Apparently, right after the Final Battle, the Weasel and some of those other lightweight Gryffindors went out to celebrate their victory and mourn the brother who died. It seems that the best tribute they could think of—to both the brother and the victory—was getting spectacularly sloshed. Which they did.

There was a girl, blah, blah, heightened emotions, blah, blah, too much booze, blah, blah, and Aberforth apparently had given him a room key earlier in the evening, knowing that sooner or later he’d need to sleep it off. Nature took its course, and that’s all I intend to say about that. (No need to even imagine it in detail; I have a rather delicate stomach.) My guess is that he probably didn’t even remember her in the morning…but clearly, she remembered him. And when she came knocking on his door two and a half weeks later, she had no scruples about reminding him that they’d been intimately—if briefly—acquainted. She didn’t even mind that Granger was standing there while she and the Weasel had it out. Seems the girl thought Granger had the right to know that her boyfriend had knocked someone else up.

Magical pregnancies can be detected by the second week after conception, and paternity tests, when properly administered (as Nymphadora told it, Granger administered the charm herself), are infallible. The girl was telling the truth. Gryffindor git that he is, Weasel decided that he had no choice but to do the honorable thing. The wedding is scheduled for next month and their baby—a daughter—is due just before Valentine’s Day.

Throughout all of this, Granger has apparently supported Weasley to the hilt. Like I said, she’s devoted, affectionate, and relentlessly responsible. She probably encouraged him to do the “proper” thing, even if it meant leaving her own heart in pieces which, according to Nymphadora, is exactly what it did.

And I brought it up. I shot her down with it, right as she was opening up to me in the first real, friendly-ish conversation we’d ever had. She was grinning at me, with no shields up at all, and then I brought Weasley up and watched while her face shut down. I was smiling at her when I made that crack about the idiot; of course she thinks I did it on purpose. No wonder she didn’t say goodbye.

At the end of sixth year, I was so sure that I’d never see Granger again. I knew, just knew that the war wouldn’t end with both of us alive. I was wrong about that, but now I’m certain that I’m right about this: I’ll see Granger again; that’s inevitable. But that last, best memory that I have of her—the memory of her smiling so brightly while she talked with me—will have to last me for a very long time.

Nothing short of Teddy on death’s doorstep would ever get her to speak to me—much less smile at me—again.

Chapter 5:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated July 21, 1998

All right, if there are any higher powers reading over my shoulder, I’d like to make it entirely clear that my completely casual comment in that entry from last month about Teddy being on death’s door as a way to get Granger to talk to me again was not in any way intended as a suggestion.

Because really, I want this down for the record that nothing that happened to Teddy this morning was in any way my fault. I’m not the one who decided last night that we had to have a family dinner out somewhere to celebrate Nymphadora’s big assignment in Finland, which started today. I’m not the one who chose that dodgy seafood place. And I’m definitely not the one who decided that Teddy would enjoy having a small bowl of fish soup instead of the tinned baby food Nymphadora had brought, because it was, after all, a “festive” occasion. None of that was me.

I’m just the one who got to have the heart attack this morning when Teddy couldn’t stop throwing up.

He seemed fine when he woke up, if a little dispirited and lethargic and slightly seaweedy around the hairline, but we all thought it was just because he’d been up later than usual the night before. It wasn’t until Nymphadora took her international portkey to Finland and Lupin left for work that he started showing signs of being truly ill.

The vomiting started about an hour after that and didn’t stop, though it was joined later on by some of the foulest diarrhea I’ve ever encountered in my life. The bile-green hair made it pretty clear just how miserable he felt, and I decided that medical treatment simply couldn’t wait. I took the fastest shower known to mankind just to get myself in the vicinity of decent to be seen (and smelled) in public, and then flooed the two of us immediately to St. Mungo’s.

Let me begin by confessing that it was my very first trip there. For all the money the Malfoy family has donated to the place throughout the years, we never actually went there when we took ill. That was what our family healer was for. Mother always said she was opposed to the idea of having to tolerate the inferiority of others when she was feeling unwell, already.

Now that I’ve been to St. Mungo’s, I know exactly what she meant.

I’m convinced that the witch at the reception desk of the pediatrics ward is not actually capable of conversing in English. It’s my firm belief that the administration plucked the girl out from some backwards tribe living in the middle of a rainforest where they worship baboons and very deliberately taught her one phrase and one phrase only of the English language.

I approached the desk, and as soon as she saw me coming, she began.

“Fill out the forms.” She handed me a sheaf of parchment and a self-inking quill, then pointed me toward the row of broken-down chairs lining the wall.

“Will there be much of a wait?” I tried to ask, attempting to juggle a crying Teddy, a bag full of baby essentials, and the forms and quill.

“Fill out the forms,” she repeated.

“Because I really think the healer should see him right away,” I added.

“Fill out the forms.”

“He’s been throwing up for the past hour!” I said. To emphasize the point, Teddy threw up right then and there, directly on the witch’s desk, with more than a bit of it spattering onto the witch, as well. She looked first at the vomit. Then Teddy. Then me. Then she looked at my hand, still holding the parchment and quill.

“Fill out the forms,” she said, before getting up and walking away, presumably to go and clean herself up.

“I’ll just fill out the forms, then!” I called after her. There was no reply.

Filling out forms while juggling a crying, vomiting baby (and trying desperately to avoid getting too close to the mother with her own crying, vomiting baby who sat herself down right next to me) should, in my opinion, be given serious consideration as an event for the next Wizarding Olympics. Within ten minutes I was sweaty and exhausted, and the forms were nowhere near complete.

Truth be told, they were barely even begun. I kept hitting upon questions for which I had absolutely no answer. Did Teddy have allergies to any medications? Did Teddy have a family history of scrofungulus? Did Teddy have a middle name?

I’d sent an owl to Nymphadora when I’d first realized that Teddy was seriously ill, and I’d tried to floo Lupin half a dozen times, both back at the house and then later from the St. Mungo’s floo, but neither of them appeared to be reachable. There was only one thing left that I could think of: one final fallback that I hadn’t tried.

If Teddy comes down with any common childhood disease ranging from asthma to zoriac infection while I’m around, I’ll knowexactly what to do.

It was worth a shot, at any rate. The worst she could do was say no, she wouldn’t help me—and then I’d be no worse off than I was already. (Okay, so the real worst she could do would be to hex me through the floo, but I doubted she’d bother. It’s notoriously difficult to get off a good hex through the floo. There’s always too much risk of the person ducking, or closing the connection at the last second, leaving you with nothing but damage to your fireplace that can be quite costly to fix.)

Granger didn’t look pleased to see my head floating in her fireplace, but at least she was willing to hear me out. Once I got out the words “Teddy,” “St. Mungo’s,” and “bloody confusing forms,” I barely had a chance to pull my head out of the fire before she apparated in next to me. Her wand flashed over Teddy with incredible speed, her spellwork causing different parts of him to light up in different colors that were, apparently, very informative to her even though they meant bugger all to me.

“I’ll be right back,” she said before disapparating, and she meant it, too, because in less than five minutes, she was back at in the waiting room carrying a bag that I recognized as coming from the nearby apothecary.

“You know what’s wrong with him?” I asked, a little desperately. Sitting around and not being able to do anything while Teddy was so clearly miserable was driving me crazy. He kept whimpering and looking up at me with these big, wounded eyes as if he wanted to know why I was just leaving him to suffer. It made me feel about two inches tall. I tried explaining to him that I was doing everything I could, but the message didn’t seem to sink in.

Besides, he’d thrown up again while she was gone, and while he’d missed hitting me, he’d still made quite a mess that someone else had had to clean up (while giving me dirty looks. It’s not my fault that the piece-of-shite “restricted” wand the Ministry gave me isn’t strong enough for a decent cleaning charm).

She didn’t bother to reply, just pulled out a bottle from the apothecary’s bag and measured out a dose of some purple potion that let off green bubbles. Teddy looked none too pleased about the prospect of taking it, but Hermione Granger is a witch who knows how to get things done. Done the potion went, and the effects were all but instantaneous as Teddy went straight to sleep. Waving her wand at one of the empty chairs, Granger transfigured it into a baby carrier and laid Teddy in it before taking the forms and quill out of my hands and starting to fill in the blank spaces.

I hated to break the almost companionable silence between us, but I did feel the need to ask. “Was he…supposed to fall asleep like that?”

“Yes,” she answered, without looking up from the forms.

“So you know what’s wrong with him, then?”

“Minor case of gastroenteritis.”

“This is a minor case?” Salazar knows, if what I’d just spent the whole of the morning dealing with was a minor case then Teddy getting a major case might prove to be the death of me.

“Minor case in that it won’t last long,” she replied, still not taking her eyes off the forms. “It’s working its way through his system pretty quickly. The potion will let him sleep off the worst of it and will keep him from getting any more dehydrated. I bought another potion to rehydrate him once he wakes up.”

“Good. That’s…that’s good.”

“Hmm,” she agreed.

“So…thank you,” I said, after another moment or two of silence had passed. That got a response. She looked up and made eye contact with me for the first time since June, staring straight into my eyes as if she could find some answer there as to whether I was pulling her leg or not.

“You’re welcome,” she replied belatedly before returning to the forms. But I did notice that she wasn’t focusing on the forms with the icy concentration she’d been using just a minute before. The quill moved much slower, and her eyes drifted over in my direction quite a bit more.

Since one “thank you” had had such a strong effect, I decided I’d try to see what a second one might be able to do.

“And thank you for the other day, too. For the healing charm,” I clarified when she looked up again. “I imagine I’d still be bruised, otherwise. That little Knight Bus toy caught me completely by surprise, and I fell quite hard.”

“When you put it in the toy box, you have to put it in upside down,” she replied, “with the wheels in the air. Otherwise, it’ll start driving again randomly, and it can drive itself right out of the box and back out onto the floor.”

I sat for a minute in silence, marveling at how stupid I was not to have thought to try that solution on my own, before I remembered that it was my turn to speak again.

“I guess I should count myself lucky that you always do your research—in children’s toys and diseases.”

“I can’t claim I did much research on the Knight Bus toy,” she said, eyes once more glued to the registration forms. “Vivian combined her bridal shower with a baby shower for Laurel and someone bought it for her. Ron broke his nose tripping over it.”

“Laurel; that’s the name they’ve picked for their daughter?”

“Yes,” she answered, very abruptly.

“Funny thing,” I replied, choosing my words with extreme care, “last time I talked to you, I didn’t even know he had a daughter on the way.”

She didn’t look up from the forms, but her hand stilled. “You…didn’t?”

“Hadn’t a clue.”

“But you said…”

“I said that I thought Weasley would know more about childcare than either of us. We were both only children, yeah? Same can’t be said of him. And his dad wasn’t the only Weasley who liked having a full house; his uncles had loads of kids, too. They probably had to hang them off the rafters to have enough room in the house to hold them all for a family reunion.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” she answered, still defending that worthless Weasel automatically. Girl’s too loyal for her own good.

“Never much cared about being nice to him.”

I shrugged, choosing to leave it at that. If she wanted to pick up from that that I was a bit more interested in being nice to her, and not hurting her deliberately like she thought I had that afternoon in the library…then she was a bright enough girl to come to that conclusion on her own. I’d already said thank you, twice no less; I wasn’t going to go and apologize as well. I might be sorry I’d hurt her, but I was still Draco Malfoy. Too much humility is bad for my skin, and I make a particular point of never doing anything that could harm my complexion.

She didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, and I didn’t have anything to add, so we just sat there in silence for a while. I didn’t mind. It was a comfortable sort of silence, and I rather liked sharing it with her. Eventually, the forms were filled out, and Granger returned them to the Witch Of Few Words behind the desk before coming back to sit beside me. There was really no reason for her to stay; the forms were done, Teddy was sleeping soundly, and there was nothing for either of us to do but wait until it was our turn to go in to see the healer. Of course, I saw no reason to point this out to her. If she wanted to wile away the hours sitting next to me, then I certainly wouldn’t complain.

And that’s how Lupin found us, half an hour later, when he finally showed up, half-frantic after getting all the messages I’d left for him. He paused for a fraction of a second just to stare at us when he caught sight of me and Granger, sitting there so companionably together, but he didn’t say a word about it, simply asking us what had happened so far and then making pleasant, innocuous conversation with the two of us until we were finally called in to see the healer.

Another reason to agree with my mother’s assessment of St. Mungo’s: Seeing the healer was absolutely pointless. It only took him a five-minute examination of Teddy to determine that Granger’s diagnosis and treatment had been (unsurprisingly) perfectly correct, and that we could go back to the receptionist to make our payment for the nonexistent help they’d given us.

But oddly enough, I wasn’t feeling outraged at the injustice of it all when we finally left St. Mungo’s. Nor was I feeling disgusted by the unsanitary conditions I’d been forced to expose myself to for hours on end (although I will be monitoring myself carefully for the next few days for any symptoms compatible with some unsavory sort of disease. Merlin knows, you could probably contract the plague from St. Mungo’s if you stayed long enough). If anything, I found myself feeling almost…happy and, most peculiarly, that happy feeling comes back whenever I think of the way Granger smiled at me before she left to go home.

As I said, I never intended for my completely casual comment in that entry from last month about Teddy being on death’s door to be taken as a suggestion.

But still, I must confess…I’m hardly upset that it worked like a charm.

Chapter 6:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated July 22, 1998

Granger came by today.

She said it was to check on Teddy, and I’m sure that was true…but when he went down for his nap, she stayed. Not only stayed but sat with me and made awkward-but-astonishingly-polite conversation for nearly half an hour, right up until Nymphadora burst in like a whirlwind. (It appears that while she was on her special assignment, communication was limited, and she only received messages once a day. She’d gotten the message about Teddy that morning and had spent all her time since then running around trying to get an international portkey back to England.)

Unsurprisingly, Nymphadora didn’t spare a second glance for me or Granger when she hurtled through the doorway. She was so frantic to see Teddy that she ran straight to the nursery. It wasn’t until she’d had a chance to verify for herself that he truly was all right that she came back out and joined us in the parlor.

She seemed happy to see Granger and was certainly very grateful to her when I explained what a help she’d been the day before…but oddly enough, Nymphadora didn’t seem terribly interested in talking to Granger for long. She chatted with us for about five minutes, giving us odd looks all the while, and seemed to get some kind of odd twitch in her eye whenever she looked at me. Then she gave a very fake yawn and said that international portkeying always wore her out, so she was going to go have a bit of a lie-down.

Granger left not too long after that, but Nymphadora seemed quite interested in talking about her over dinner and kept mentioning how long Granger had stayed talking to me. And it seemed like every time Nymphadora looked at me, she would get that strange twitch in her eye again.

Odd. Very odd.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated July 28, 1998

She came again today, this time on another errand from Lupin. He’d told her (and confirmed with me, when I flooed him after her arrival) that he absolutely needed Granger to stop by and pick up his copy of Hairy Snout, Human Heart for him to use as a reference for the grant that he’s writing.

But really, does that excuse hold water? The Ministry library is enormous and almost entirely comprehensive. I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t have a copy of the book on hand. And even if he had notes in the margins of his own copy that he thought might be useful, I could always have owled it to him. So what was the real reason for sending her here?

I wanted desperately to ask her for her opinion, to see if she shared my suspicions, but I refrained. I couldn’t think of any polite, tactful way to say “What are you really doing here, anyway?” without it coming across as if I was unhappy that she had stopped by. If she thought I didn’t want her there, then she’d leave, and I…didn’t want that to happen.

For Teddy’s sake, of course. He likes her visits. His hair doesn’t just go brown when she’s nearby; it goes bushy as well. He switches colors all the time, but he only ever changes the texture for her.

So for Teddy’s sake, I held my tongue and practiced what I strongly suspect was tact, for the first time in my life. Father always said that tact was a tool used only by wizards who lacked the money or power to force others to do things his way, but then, Father also said that werewolves spawned cubs who were covered with fur for the first five years of their lives. (Oh, and that Voldemort would triumph. Father was quite certain about that one.) And since he’s been proven wrong on those points, I’ve begun to suspect that he might have been wrong about quite a few other things, as well: things like blood, and honor, and the meaning of family pride…and curly-haired muggleborns with more intelligence (and far more heart) than any witch was supposed to possess, according to my father’s view of things.

There are quite a few things where I’ve come to feel he was mistaken. Quite a few things, indeed.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated August 3, 1998

Lupin sent her today again, this time under the excuse that she’d take us to see the Medieval Festival in Sussex. I had never heard of the festival before, but since Lupin seemed so determined for us to attend, I assumed it was one of the many festivals aimed at the lower classes of the wizarding world that Father had always said were beneath the dignity of a Malfoy. That was reason enough for me to be willing to go. I even got both Teddy and myself dressed, ready, and positioned next to the door in reasonably good time. It was at that point, just on the verge of exiting, that we hit the snag.

Granger pulled out her wand and cast a color setting charm on Teddy’s hair. As quickly as that, I knew: This festival that she was dragging me to wasn’t wizarding at all; it was a muggle festival.

Digging my heels in, I flatly refused. Whenever there was too much cheese in our dinner, I would still have the occasional nightmare about my last excursion into the muggle world when I was waylaid and molested in the Park of Doom (also known as the Park of Drab, Grabby Women, but I prefer the title Park of Doom. It does a much better job of conveying that nice, sinister tone that conveys exactly how that pestilential location makes me feel). In my dreams, I’m trapped there, unable to escape, while countless hag-like muggle women grope me to their hearts’ content, ignoring my protests as I beg them to stop…or to at least find moderately attractive friends of theirs to grope me, instead. So no, I had absolutely no intention of revisiting the muggle world, for the festival or for anything else, for as long as I lived—and I immediately passed that information along to Granger.

The problem arose in telling her exactly why I didn’t want to go back out into the muggle world. A deeply buried instinct that might—in someone else—be called common sense warned me that falling back on my usual line regarding the inferiority of muggles would not go over well. But still, I was reluctant to traumatize her with the true story of my harrowing experience. After all, hasn’t the poor girl gone through enough? Surely, she doesn’t need more fodder for her nightmares.

Alas, she refused to believe any of my very plausible alternative excuses for avoiding the blight-besieged location, not even when I told her that going to the festival (which apparently takes place somewhere in the countryside, on the grounds of a 15th century castle) would imperil the health and perhaps even the life of her godson who had very recently developed a strong and potentially fatal allergy to trees. (I still don’t see why she laughed at that. Yes, I’ll admit, it’s not true, but it still could be, couldn’t it? People are allergic to all sorts of plants, and trees are a type of plant. Very reckless of her to risk endangering Teddy’s safety with strange and suspicious trees.)

In the end, I had no resource but to confess.

“The last time I went out into the muggle world, I was molested by unappealing, sexually-deprived muggle women.”

I was hoping for sympathy, support, and understanding for my shocking ordeal, with perhaps an extra dose of praise for showing the courage to speak up and share the experience so openly. I was even prepared to accept a more physical means of consolation, should she find herself utterly compelled to embrace me to show her empathy and compassion for my hard plight.

Instead, she laughed. Laughed! It was inconceivable! Did the woman have no heart? Did she actually find amusement in the account of my attack? But no, it turned out that the reason for her laughing was even worse than I had suspected.

“Come on, Malfoy,” she replied. “I said no more excuses. What’s the real reason why you don’t want to go?”

She didn’t believe me! I’d actually told her the full and complete truth (something I nearly always avoid, just as a general rule), and she had the audacity to think I was making it up, just like I had made up all the other excuses! (And for that matter, just why would the idea of women finding me irresistible seem so utterly implausible? Certainly, I wish that the women in question had chosen to keep their hands to themselves, but I can hardly blame them for their appreciation. My mirrors and I have always agreed that I’m exceptionally attractive).

“That is the real reason,” I bit out, thoroughly aggravated. “I was emotionally scarred by the experience and am absolutely determined to avoid the muggle world hereafter. Those muggle women are beasts who view every single man as prey. I was lucky to get out of it with my life…not to mention my clothes.”

She rolled her eyes at me with a wide smile on her face, her eyes still dancing from her laughter moments before, and I was extremely vexed to feel my aggravation with her start to melt away. Within a minute or two, it was actually gone. Gone! Malfoys never lose our resentment! We hold grudges for centuries! We’ve been trading barbs with the Weasleys for over three hundred years just because Ferbinar Weasley accidentally threw Maleficent Malfoy’s cat over the wall while degnoming his property (without the aid of his spectacles) in 1647. (The cat survived without injury, but it was the principle of the matter.) The anger of a Malfoy does not melt; it stays hard and cold and unyielding and is passed down from generation to generation.

I glared at Granger even more for (yet again) defying all my rules, and she grinned back unrepentantly in reply. In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but notice that she looked…rather lovely like that—all happy and glowing—and for a moment, I even had the utterly outlandish idea that it might be worth having her laugh at me if it made her smile at me like that.

Nonsense, of course. Utter nonsense. Nothing could be worthwhile that turns a Malfoy into some kind of clown.

“They pounce on any single man, do they?” she asked, her tone clearly implying that she was not viewing this situation with the seriousness it deserved. “Well then, what if I promise to protect you?” she bargained. “They’ll leave you alone if they see a woman with you, won’t they?”

“Only if they actually do see you with me,” I argued, determined not to concede the point (or rather, mostly determined; she couldn’t have convinced me if I’d really made up my mind not to venture out). “You said yourself that it’s likely to be crowded. What if we get separated?”

She laughed again as she tucked her arm through mine. “There now, will that satisfy you?” she asked. “Ron and Harry always tell me that I have a grip like a grindylow; nothing short of gale-force winds will dislodge me now. But we really have to be going now if we want to have time to see everything.”

Pansy used to latch onto my arm like that all the time. She rather enjoyed plastering herself to my side, as if I was a walking, talking engagement ring that she couldn’t wait to show off to all of her friends, over and over again. And while I didn’t precisely mind that she wanted to show me off, the experience still left much to be desired from my end. Pans isn’t as heavy-set as Millicent, but she’s no pixie, either, and she’d always lean way too much weight on my arm. And let’s not forget the noxious cloud of perfume, or that piercingly high-pitched giggle in painfully close proximity, or the moist, clammy feel of her hands…Yeah. “Unpleasant” is the nicest word I can think of to describe all of it.

It should have been unpleasant when Granger did it, as well. After all, the summer had been unusually wet, with plenty of rain making everything damp, sticky, and muggy. The warmth of another body pressed against mine should have been about as appealing as jumping into the lake, fully clothed. It should have been very unpleasant, indeed. And yet, it…wasn’t. Hell, I might as well admit it. After all, no one but me is ever going to see this written here. (Bloody well had better be no one else who sees this. Nymphadora, that means you.)

Having Hermione Granger touch me so freely, so willingly, in such a way that put her so very close to me with the evident intention of staying by my side for some time…it just may be the most pleasant thing I’ve ever felt.

We went to the fair after that, of course. When we returned home, Granger stayed for dinner and waxed rhapsodic about the beautiful walled gardens, spectacular grand parades, and fascinating living history encampments. I nodded in agreement with all her descriptions, but honestly, if there was anything beautiful, spectacular, or fascinating there other than the woman who stayed right at my side all afternoon, I can’t claim I was all that aware of it. Outside of the way it felt to have Hermione Granger on my arm, I can’t say as I remember a thing.

Chapter 7:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated August 11, 1998

She’ll be coming by today; Lupin just owled to let me know. He didn’t bother to mention just why she’d be coming, which I can only assume means that he has not yet formulated an excuse. And it would be an excuse. I’d bet the last galleon in my Gringotts vault (that those greedy bastards at the Ministry still won’t let me touch) that Remus Lupin has something up his sleeve and that it has to do with Granger and me. This many coordinated visits in such a short period of time just can’t be accidental.

On one level, my immediate reaction is to be distressed at being related, even if it is just by marriage, to someone as pathetically transparent in his plotting as Lupin. (A first year Slytherin could teach him a thing or two about subtlety and the delicate art of manipulating people without being so bloody obvious.) On a deeper level, though, I’ve quickly become far more disturbed that, for all the obviousness of his ploy, I can’t figure out just what it is that he’s plotting for. What does he think will happen if he keeps throwing Granger and me into each others’ company? What end result is he hoping to achieve? In short, why is he doing this?

Option 1: He’s not doing it at all. Lupin is secretly under the control of his diabolical wife who is manipulating us all in her sticky web of intrigue because she truly is evil masquerading as good.

Now don’t get me wrong; I like this theory. After all, it proves that I was right from the start about my cousin’s nefarious intentions, and I do love being right. But let’s be perfectly honest. (Sweet Merlin, I’m being perfectly honest; what have these Lupins done to me?) I’ve seen evil in a plethora of forms: greedy evil (Crabbe and Goyle literally walking all over knocked-down first years—first years who they had knocked down—to get at the cakes on the table), petty evil (Pansy spreading yet another rumor that Daphne is a hermaphrodite), sinisterly appealing evil (me, of course), sinisterly unappealing evil (Snape), and many more besides (including that pesky Dark Lord—psychotic with a side of serpentine evil, obviously), but my cousin machinations don’t quite seem to fit the mold. Who ever heard of clumsy evil? Absentminded evil? Evil that achieves its reprehensible ends through generosity, and burned birthday cakes, and smiling entirely too much?

No, that would never do. Nymphadora would disgrace the proud and glorious name of evil that the generations who preceded me have left for me to protect. Thus, alas, loath as I am to admit it, the time has come to let this theory go. On to the next option.

Option 2: Lupin is acting entirely on his own accord, and he’s doing this deliberately to punish me.

I must admit, this option has some fairly strong justifications in its favor. Lupin’s spent some time in werewolf packs—he knows a thing or two about punishment that truly gets under the skin. Not that I suspect Lupin has any idea about how I feel about Granger (since I, unlike him, am well trained in subtlety), but while Lupin may have his faults—he’s far too naïve, ridiculously moral and upright, indecently fond of his wife and child, and possessed of all the subtlety of a sledgehammer—I must admit that he still possesses a modicum of intelligence. And no male with even half a functioning brain could fail to notice that Granger’s just about the most beautiful, desirable woman who ever lived. If Lupin wanted to dangle something unreachable and untouchable in front of my eyes as a way to hurt me, she’d be an obvious choice. Right on par with sticking a kid in front of a candy shop window and telling him that he can look, but can’t have, or taste, or touch. Ever.

And would he have reason to want to hurt me like that? In a word, yes. I’ve done some fairly shitty things in my life—some of which have injured the Lupins directly, and some of which hurt people they cared about. And even though I’m certain that I can clearly and convincingly argue why I shouldn’t be held accountable for any of my somewhat unsavory actions (for heaven’s sake, I was just thirteen when that mess happened at the end of third year! I heard some juicy gossip about what our DADA professor really was, and I spread the story around. That’s what thirteen-year-olds do! And as for sixth year, Voldemort all but had a wand pointed at my mother’s head around the clock, so I don’t really see how I can be blamed for what happened then, either; much less seventh year when the whole world had gone mad), I still know that the consequences of my actions were…pretty damn rotten. The man would have to be a saint not to hold at least a little bit of a grudge against me.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think he does. He’s not a saint; I’m quite sure of that—I don’t think anyone on the Weasley Wheezes payroll for freelance evaluation and occasional creation of truly spectacular pranks could ever qualify for sainthood—but still, he’s… I don’t even know what to call it. “Nice,” I suppose, is one word for it. He’s so nice to everyone—even me—that it’s downright sickening. And “pleasant;” so revoltingly pleasant that I used to fantasize about beating him to death with a book on manners when I first moved in. And he’s also kind, and considerate, and tactful, and understanding, and an all-around model of all those sticky-sweet virtues that Slytherins such as myself are raised to sneer at and ridicule.

The idea of Lupin using me as some sort of experiment to see how much emotional turmoil a person can take before they crack? It just…doesn’t add up. Putting aside the whole child welfare issue (would be a bit barmy to try and force the person watching over your only offspring to have a mental breakdown, yeah?), he’s just not the type of man to kick a wizard when he’s down. He’s more the kind to give him a hand and help to pull him back up. (I’ve tried very hard to think less of him for this but have had frustratingly little success.)

He stood for me in that trial. I’m no blood relation to him; I’m nothing but a long-standing thorn in his side for the past years on end—and still, he stood for me, when no one else could have (no one else would have, even if they could). He and Nymphadora gave me a home, a job, and their absolute trust with everything they have, up to and including their child who they utterly adore and wouldn’t put in harm’s way for anything in the world. As alien as it is to everything I’ve ever known and believed, I really think I can…trust them. Dora is family, but like no family I’ve ever known. (I’m starting to think that this is the way that family is supposed to be.) And as for Remus…

Is that what it means to be a good man? To be the kind of person who can say that everything is forgiven and forgotten, and actually mean it? I’m a connoisseur of evil, but I’ve had far less practice with goodness. All I know is that I’ve been here for months, and not once has he ever so much as raised his voice against me. I’m in a position where it would be extraordinarily easy to kick me while I’m down, and he never does. Despite his furry little problem once a month, I’m coming to the horrifying conclusion that Remus may be the most humane man I’ve ever known.

Weird.

Anyway, on to the next option.

Option 3: Granger’s the one pulling the strings, and she’s doing it to punish me.

Again, as with Remus, I wouldn’t have much trouble thinking up lots and lots of reasons for her to want to punish me. Putting aside the things that I’ve actually done to her (since I’m pretty certain those aren’t what would bother her the most, ridiculously noble little bint that she is), she’s always taken it so terribly to heart whenever anyone hurts or insults her friends. And when it comes to insulting and hurting her friends, I win the grand prize. (Yes, Voldemort made a strong showing in his lifetimes, but he’s quite dead now and I’m alive, so I win.)

But this possibility is even less likely than the others. First, of course, there’s that dreadful, Gryffindordian “decency” snag which would keep her from attacking a man when he’s at his lowest point.

And aside from that, there’s that “Granger” snag, unique entirely to her, that I’ve never seen in any other woman before. Odd and astounding as it may seem, I don’t think Granger has any idea just how irresistible she is. How someone as bright as she is could look into the mirror every day and not have it hit home at some point that she’s incredibly beautiful absolutely escapes me. Yes, I realize that muggle mirrors are mysteriously mute (heh. alliteration.) but the girl has reasonably good eyesight and uncontestable intelligence. One would think that she’d have noticed at some point.

And how can she not realize that the passion she devotes to everything—even little things, even stupid things that no one has bothered to be passionate about in the whole of recorded history—just goes to show how passionate she could be in the right wizard’s arms as she devoted herself to learning everything about him with all her unquenchable, single-minded intensity?

How can it have escaped her notice that she’s absolutely everything an intelligent, passionate, strikingly attractive, rich—though suffering from somewhat reduced circumstances at the moment—dashing, still-mildly-evil-but-in-a-rather-sexy-way wizard could… Oh, sod it. How can she not have noticed that she’s everything I could ever want? Everything I have wanted since bloody fourth year when I finally pulled my head far enough out of my arse to notice—

Fuck it all—the door! She’s here.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated August 11, 1998

Yep, today was unquestionably Remus’s flimsiest excuse of an errand for Granger yet. We were not out of milk, and even if we were, I could have easily ordered more through the floo account we have with the grocer; there was absolutely no good reason for Granger to show up in the middle of the afternoon with a fresh carton in hand.

Of course, just because she had no real reason to be there didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to invite her to come in and sit for a while. Shoddy pretext or not, I still have manners.

But I have to admit, with all my thoughts still unsettled from what I’d been thinking and writing just before she arrived, my head wasn’t in the best place for making small talk. And all right, maybe it was just a teensy bit blunt for a conversation opener, but I think it’s entirely understandable that the first thing I could think of to say to Granger—once we’d both properly taken our seats on the floor with Teddy and gotten him settled with his blocks—was:

“Really, Granger, is Lupin going to be sending you to bring our muggle mail in from the post box next week?”

I was hoping for a laugh or a smile or maybe even a blush, but instead I saw her face freeze up and knew that I had, once again, said the dead-wrong thing.

I saw flashing before my eyes a repeat of the Weasley Incident from back in June. Once again, I had (all unknowingly) said something to hurt her, and once again, she would go cold and walk out, and not come back…and nothing short of Teddy in the hospital again (which I really wanted to avoid if at all possible) would get her close enough for me to make any kind of apology to smooth things over.

No, damn it, I wasn’t going to let that happen again. Sod the explanation I’d been searching for so desperately just this morning; at that moment, I realized I didn’t actually care why she kept coming around. If it really was part of someone’s dark, sinister plot then fine; I’d deal with that later. The pressing issue at the moment was to make sure that she did not walk out that door before I’d made things right between us again—because if she did, she might not come back, and I could no longer bear the thought of even a week going by without seeing her.

Luckily, I’d learned a bit since the last time I was in that situation, two months before. This time, I wasn’t about to stand there in shock and watch her walk away without doing anything to stop her. And if I sounded like an idiot flat-out admitting that I had no idea what I’d said to hurt her, then so be it. She’d seen me covered in vomit, flat on my back after flying through the air, and sweating bullets in yet another set of vomit-tinged clothes in the Emergency Room. “Personal vanity” was quickly becoming a non-issue for me when it came to her.

“Okay, clearly that was the wrong thing to say,” I jumped in as soon as I saw her eyes go cold. “But here’s the thing: I really don’t know why. Truly, I didn’t mean anything by it.” And what the hell; while I was at it, I went ahead and stripped away another almost-nonexistent layer of pride. “And I apologize. I was feeling a little awkward because I never quite know how to start up a conversation with you, so I opened my mouth and the wrong thing came out. As usual. But if you tell me just which line I accidentally crossed this time, I’ll promise not to do it again.”

The icicles disappeared from her eyes, and she smiled, weakly but sincerely. “I’m sorry, too,” she admitted, to my utter shock. “I spend all day at the Werewolf Support Services office preaching that everyone deserves a fair chance, and I hate it when people don’t believe it…but when I’m feeling self-conscious, I fall back on all my old, bad habits, and assuming the worst of you is one of them.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I insisted. “I’ve given you plenty of reasons through the years to think the worst of me. But…” I couldn’t help but ask—and couldn’t stop my heart from jumping into my throat in anticipation of her answer while I asked. “Why were you feeling self-conscious now?”

My hopes started to rise. Was it possible…was it even conceivable that her self-consciousness was in any way related to mine? Could she feel nervous around me just as I felt nervous around her because she was as attracted to me as I was to her?

“Because you’re right,” she answered. “Remus’s excuses to get me out of the office are getting flimsier all the time.”

My heart plummeted to somewhere down in my stomach. This was a possibility that hadn’t even occurred to me. Apparently, Granger’s little errands had nothing whatsoever to do with sending her to me and everything to do with sending her out of the office. I was just…convenient as a destination, most likely because Remus knew I’d be home all day and probably figured I could use the extra hand with Teddy.

“Why is he so keen on getting you out of the way?” I managed to choke out, not wanting her to see my disappointment.

“Because my job is a joke,” she answered promptly, catching all of my attention again. “Yesterday, I spent an entire hour sharpening quills just because there was nothing else for me to do.”

My first thought was that she couldn’t possibly be telling the truth…but then, the girl is an absolutely rotten liar. Granger’s got her strong points and plenty of them (for specifics, refer to the whole of the Hogwarts curriculum, excepting only Divination and flying) but lying just isn’t one of them. Too much time around books, perhaps, because she reads just as clearly as the printed page. In big letters. With illustrations.

“But…” I sputtered, completely bewildered by this new revelation, “I thought you had some big, important job.”

“No,” she replied, with remarkably little bitterness in her voice. “I have a big, silly, window dressing sort of job, for which they pay me entirely too much.” She sighed and leaned back against the couch, making herself comfortable while she explained.

“When the final battle was over, I wasn’t planning on finding a job at all,” she began. “Honestly, I wanted to go back to school. Does that sound crazy?”

“Actually, no,” I replied, once I’d taken a minute to think about it. “I’d suppose that after the year you’d had, you’d be more than ready to go back to a familiar routine again, this time without the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

“Exactly!” Her eyes lit up and she smiled at me. (All right, so maybe it was more of a nostalgic lost-in-her-thoughts smile and wasn’t exactly directed at me, but still, she smiled in my general direction. That’s something, right?) “I was really looking forward to picking back up with my classes, studying for my N.E.W.T.s—just being a student again.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Kingsley,” she sighed. “He approached me—not long after your trial, actually—to ask me what job I’d like. He just sort of assumed that I’d want to go to work straightaway, and he wanted to let me know that several departments had shown interest in hiring me.” She grimaced. “Frankly, I was none too keen on any of them. I know that Ministry employees had little choice about how things were done when the building was under Voldemort’s control, but from what I heard, there were plenty who seemed a little too pleased with the Muggle-born Registration Act.”

She had a point. She had a good point. Nobody was going to verbally support the Dark Lord anymore, but that didn’t mean that there was no one left who agreed with him—especially in the Ministry. Old, outdated practices made it practically impossible to fire a pureblooded wizard from a Ministry job or force him to retire, and with the average wizard lifespan clocking in around a hundred and thirty years, that meant that a disproportionate share of positions were filled by old, outdated wizards.

Practically to a man, they were all hidebound, old-fashioned, and as prejudiced as the day was long, constantly waxing nostalgic about how wonderful everything had been in the “good old days” (that never actually existed outside of their imaginations) when muggleborns knew their place and all pureblooded wizards were granted the proper deference and respect. They probably threw a party when the Muggle-born Registration Act was passed.

“I told Kingsley that I was planning on going back to school…and he asked me to reconsider. He gave me a whole lecture about how nothing will get better if no one steps up to change things, but the bottom line was that this was the moment to act. The Ministry needed the heroes of the hour—Harry, Ron, and me—to sign on with them and make them legitimate again. As long as we agreed, we could pretty much write our own ticket. Any job we wanted would be ours, and we could do anything we liked with it. But it had to be right away; it had to happen while we were still such big heroes that we could do whatever we liked and no one would be able to argue with us without public embarrassment.”

“And you picked Werewolf Support Services,” I continued, knowing her well enough to see where this was going, “because you knew you could make a difference there—knock out some of the old prejudices and build a department that focused more on helping werewolves than finding newer and better ways to lock them up and stigmatize them.”

She blushed. “They created the role of Chief Overseer just for me. How could I say no? I could finally see that the Ministry did something about the abominable way that werewolves were treated in Britain…and I could toss out that bigoted, narrow-minded cretin they had as office head and replace him with Remus.”

“And it worked, right?” I asked. “Remus is office head now, and the WSS Office is getting loads more funding and support than it used to, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she agreed, grimacing. “And that’s the problem. The office is doing splendidly—but my job is utter bollocks. Remus is the one who runs everything; there’s nothing for me to do but show up, be the poster child, and collect a paycheck that I haven’t really earned. I’m miserable, but I don’t dare quit, because if I walked out, they might cut the funding again.”

“So Remus has you running errands so you won’t have to sit around all day, bored out of your mind, dejectedly sharpening quills?”

“Yes, exactly,” she confessed with a wry grin.

“So what would you like to do?”

“Pardon?”

“If you could walk away from the Ministry without getting the funding cut for the werewolves—if you could go out and get any job you wanted—what would you like to do for a living?”

She chewed on her lip—a nervous habit of hers that never failed to distract me—and I barely managed to concentrate enough to hear her reply. “You won’t laugh?”

I shrugged, wanting to be honest. “I might. But it won’t be malicious. I’m not asking to make fun of you; I’m asking because I really want to know.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded. “All right, then. I miss research.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. She laughed along with me.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it? I think Harry and Ron would be happy never to research anything ever again in their lives, but while there are certain subjects I’m heartily sick of, I do miss digging into things, figuring them out, putting the pieces together to find a solution. I always liked Charms research; looking into what made the charms work and how the different bits of previous spells came together to create new ones.”

“A Spellmaker?” I asked. “That’s what you want to be?”

“Yes.” She smiled shyly. “I’ve always liked the thought of it. Do you think it’s silly?”

“Not at all,” I answered, utterly truthfully. “Personally, I think it’s an excellent fit.”

She positively beamed at me; so brightly that I couldn’t help but blush. I fussed over Teddy a bit to hide it, nudging some more blocks in his direction to play with.

“So why don’t you do it?” I asked. “Merlin knows, if you’ve got as much time on your hands as all that, you could easily fit some research into your day. The Ministry probably doesn’t care what you do with your time as long as you show up every morning and are there for the photo ops.”

She shook her head sadly. “I don’t have the credentials. I never even attended my seventh year, much less sat my N.E.W.T. exams with the rest of you. The good programs require an O on the Charms N.E.W.T. and an O on at least one other practical subject as well as a theoretical subject. Even if I thought I could handle the tests without going through the coursework—which I don’t—N.E.W.T. tests are only held once a year, in the spring. I’d have to wait until next May to even have a chance to see if I’ve managed to remember everything I learned two years ago, and to figure out if I managed to successfully ‘pick up’ the rest on my own. What are the odds that I’d be able to perform well enough to meet the required standards? It all seems unlikely, at best.”

She gave a vague imitation of a smile. “Maybe in five years or so, things will be stable enough at the office for me to be able to take a leave of absence and go back to school. It might be a bit…awkward…to be so many years older than my peers, but it would all be worth it in the end. Worth the wait, even.”

If the Honorable Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt had walked in the door at that moment, I’d have hurled one of Teddy’s blocks at him. All the better if he was followed by Hare-Brained Pothead and the Ribald Weasel, who both richly deserved to be pelted with blocks covered in child-generated goo. What was the matter with these men? Why had they appointed it as their mutual mission to prevent Hermione Granger from ever having anything that might actually make her happy? (Why she allowed them walk over her when she was clearly worlds above them and their petty tyrannies was another valid question—but naturally, I preferred to blame it all on the others.)

“In the meantime,” I replied, faking a smile (far more successfully than she had managed, of course), “what have you managed to ‘pick up’ on your own?”

“Well…” Her eyes lit up as she leaned forward toward me. “It’s all purely theoretical at this point because I don’t really have any facilities to test it, but I have had some ideas about ways to adapt Gunning’s Continuum to allow for…”

And as easily as that, she was off to the races, sharing all of her recent research and theories with contagious enthusiasm. She looked utterly charming with her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling, talking energetically with her hands as she laid out her conclusions—so charming, indeed, that I was momentarily concerned that I’d be too distracted to really listen to what she was saying. I needn’t have worried. Her theories were as engaging as she was, and we were soon engrossed in a full-on debate as we talked through her ideas.

I made some astonishingly good point about Klasky’s Theorem and how it played into her ideas, and she beamed at me so brightly that I had to look away to catch my breath. As it happened, I found myself looking in the direction of the perch used by the Lupins’ owl.

And as quickly as that, I got an Idea.

“You know,” I said, with as much deliberate casualness as I could muster, “should you ever find yourself supremely bored with quill sharpening at the office, you could always jot some of your ideas down and owl them to me. It might not always be a good time for Teddy for us to hash them out in person—” (in point of fact, Teddy was being almost disturbingly low-maintenance at that precise moment. He continued quietly and happily chewing and arranging his blocks throughout my entire conversation with Hermione, with his hair a sunny, contented blond and nary a peep or shift in hue to indicate that he was hungry, or wet, or bored. I knew better than to expect this unaccountable behavior to continue and rather expected it to disappear at any moment like the calm before a terrifically disastrous storm,) “—but we could work them out by owl.”

She agreed happily, clearly well pleased by my idea. (The plan to work through her thoughts via owl was a sound idea, but it was not, of course, the Idea. She wasn’t ready to know my Idea yet, but I was confident that I could orchestrate matters so that she would benefit from it, all the same. That was the whole point.)

Basking in her smile and in my own unrivaled cunning, I was startled when I found myself knocked out of my thoughts by the feeling of a small, warm, sticky hand grabbing hold of mine. I looked up to see that Teddy had apparently decided to cease stacking blocks and had decided instead to pursue the compilation of something else, instead. Tugging on my hand, he pulled it over…to stack on top of Granger’s.

Looking ridiculously pleased with his accomplishment, he sat back on his butt and giggled with glee, clapping his hands in approval of the pile of Granger’s hand covered with mine.

Dora, of course, chose exactly that moment to walk in. She started to call out a greeting when she saw us all gathered together, but she stopped when she saw just what was going on. At the sound of the apparition pop, I had instinctively pulled my hand away from Granger’s, but Teddy immediately grabbed hold of it again, placing it firmly and decisively back in place.

Teddy turned then at the sound of his mother’s voice, and I think…I could almost swear I saw Dora wink at him.

With that, all the various pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. Suddenly, I had an explanation for all of it that made perfect sense. I had been right: It really wasn’t an accident that Granger kept coming to call, and no matter what she thought herself, she wasn’t being sent over just to keep her busy. The Lupins had a plan in mind, just as I had suspected. But I had been so fixated on the idea that it might be a plan to punish me that it had never occurred to me that this might be what they had in mind.

I must have made some kind of noise, because Teddy and Dora turned to look back at me. Discounting the difference from absence of teeth in Teddy’s case, they gave me absolutely identical grins. That confirmed it.

The plan that they had in mind…it was matchmaking, and the whole family was in on it!

Chapter 8:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated August 11, 1998 continued

Matchmaking. Making a match. Taking a pair of people and making them…match. Matching me and Hermione Granger. The mind boggles at the very concept.

Yes, so what if it is a pleasant sort of boggling? My whole world has been turned upside down! Again! And all these revolutions are making me pretty damn dizzy. Merlin, when the Lupins stood for me at my trial, they never bloody well mentioned that life with them would be such a roller coaster. (Or did they? They did mention something to the judge about reformation…but I always got the impression from Daddy Dearest that “reformation” had something to do with endowments to charitable institutions, not any actual change to myself, my life, or my way of thinking.)

Everything I’ve ever known or believed or understood about The Way The World Works has been thrown out on its ear in the past few months, but I never thought…that is to say, is it possible, is it even conceivable that after taking away everything I’ve always valued and forcing on me everything I never thought I could actually like that the next surprise Fate has up her sleeve for me would be to give me what I could barely even dare to admit that I wanted?

A match. With me. And Hermione Granger. Not to be alone. Not to be lonely ever again. To be happy and contented and to love and to be loved, and to have all of that with Hermione Granger. Is that even possible? Without causing hell to freeze over and the sky to fall?

I told myself I could never have her. Hell, for the first few years at Hogwarts, I’d closed my mind off to the possibility so completely that I couldn’t even let myself believe that I wanted her. It took me until the Yule Ball for it to really hit home. Before that, she was almost an abstract concept. Belonged to Potty and his Weasel, didn’t she? Couldn’t get much more untouchable than that. Taking the kid-at-the-candy-store-window idea a step further, the candy store’s door wasn’t just closed, it was locked—and those two were the only ones allowed in. And that was how it was and always would be.

But then she showed up to the ball with Viktor Krum. She was his date. It was phenomenal and catastrophic all at once. It meant that someone other than Potter or Weasley might actually stand a chance with her…and for that first, special someone, she’d wound up with that beetle-browed, duck-footed foreign git who couldn’t even say her name properly and whose only saving grace was his incredible skill at a game she didn’t give two knuts for, anyway.

All right, fine, I’ll admit—I was just a teensy bit of a Krum fan before then. And yeah, when he came to Hogwarts, I might have possibly been glad to meet him. Come on, I’m a wizard. The only wizards who don’t like Quidditch are either poofs or muggle-raised, and even some of them have the good sense to give the only true sport its proper due. So sure, I admired Krum. I admired his skill, that is. His talent. Not his non-existent charm or wit. The boy had no grace, no manners, and absolutely no conversation, other than a few garbled phrases that he only bothered using when speech was absolutely necessary. If he wasn’t the greatest Seeker Europe had seen in roughly a century, no one would have given him the time of day.

And yet, he walked into the ball (looking almost unrecognizable without his usual ever-present scowl) with Hermione Granger on his arm. And she had a smile on her face that I’d never seen before, no matter how many times I’d looked. I knew she didn’t care that he was famous. She wasn’t impressed with his Quidditch skill or his position as a Tri-Wizard champion. And apparently, it didn’t bother her that he had all the charisma of a dirty sock, added to bad hair and eyebrows that looked ready to crawl off his face at a moment’s notice. So since he clearly hadn’t dazzled her with the celebrity status, or the charm he didn’t have, it would seem that all he’d done to get Hermione Granger on his arm was have the balls to ask.

And that meant that if things had been different, then maybe I could’ve…

Bloody useless to think like that, of course. A whole hell of a lot of things would have had to be different, and most of them (her parentage, my parentage, our houses, friends, back history, etc.) couldn’t be changed. But useless or not, I spent the next two years after that torturing myself with those thoughts whenever I saw that she’d caught someone else’s eye. Those wizards (and believe me, there were more than a few; the bastards) could—if they were willing to fight their way past Potter and Weasley—court her, romance her; hell, even win her (if they were supremely lucky) but I could not.

It was a relief when I fled Hogwarts with Snape at the end of sixth year. That damned school had done nothing but bring me unhappiness, humiliation, and confusion while it sliced away at everything I wanted to believe in. It was a comfort to know that once I joined up with the Dark Lord, I’d never have to deal with that ambiguity again. My side would be chosen, the lines would be clearly drawn, and for either death or glory, my fate would be secured.

Clearly, it didn’t work out quite as I had planned. And now there’s Hermione, again; Hermione, as always, prancing about in my life completely oblivious to what a mess she leaves behind as I try to figure out what the hell she’s done to me.

So what am I supposed to do now? Fall in with the Lupin family’s scheme? Give over control and blindly let them plan my life to their satisfaction? Am I even capable of letting go that completely? How can I know it will be worth it in the end? I’m the one with the scheming experience in this family, and I never dreamed… I never even let myself hope that I might… And if even I couldn’t see any way to make it possible, then how can they? What do they truly have planned for me? Should I be pleased? Should I be angry? Should I be both at once? (Is it possible to be both at once? Maybe that’s what I’m feeling: this odd sort of mix-up of confusion and aggravation and annoyance and hope and—)

Speak of the devil…there’s my cousin knocking on the door. Fortuitous, really. Now’s as good a time as any to have it all out before these questions start driving me mad. I need some answers and if it takes me being ridiculously confrontational and Gryffindorish to get them, then so be it. I’ll turn up the intimidation and will no doubt have her confessing all within a matter of moments.

And to save me the time of writing it all down later, Record.

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Draco? It’s time for dinner. Didn’t you hear me calling?”

My Splendiferous Self: “What are you trying to do?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Um…eat? Isn’t that usually what we do at this time of day?”

My Splendiferous Self: “You winked at Teddy. Earlier. I saw you.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “And if you’d been watching a minute ago, you would have seen me make funny faces at him and turn my nose green to make him laugh.”

My Splendiferous Self: “You’re planning something; don’t try to hide it from me.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Turning my nose green means I’m planning something?”

My Splendiferous Self: “The winking! Explain the winking.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Winking means I’m planning something?”

My Splendiferous Self: “Yes! Don’t try to deny it.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Deny winking?”

My Splendiferous Self: “Deny planning!”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “I was planning to wink?”

My Splendiferous Self: loud, inarticulate sound—possibly indicative of dismay “Stop talking in circles! Damn it, you’re supposed to be bad at this!”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “What exactly is this?”

My Splendiferous Self: “This is me cross-examining you to find out what’s going on!”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “And how’s that working for you?”

My Splendiferous Self: “Terribly! And it’s entirely your fault.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Right. And what exactly is it that’s entirely my fault?”

My Splendiferous Self: “Your planning! Your winking!”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Draco, calm down. You’re getting hysterical.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I am not getting hysterical!”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Wanna see me turn my nose into an elephant trunk?”

a long moment of silence

My Splendiferous Self: “What?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “I asked if you wanted me to—”

My Splendiferous Self: “Why the hell would I want to see you turn your nose into an elephant trunk?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Watch the language; what if Teddy can hear you?”

My Splendiferous Self: “Right, I need to work on expanding his vocabulary. Why the bloody, buggering, fucking, wanking hell would I want to see you turn your nose into an elephant trunk?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Well, there’s no need to be vulgar.”

My Splendiferous Self: a quieter inarticulate sound—possibly indicative of exasperation that cannot express itself in words “Are you ever planning on answering my question?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “I thought you might think it was funny to see me turn my nose into an elephant trunk. It always makes Remus laugh. It’s a good tension breaker. You look tense.”

My Splendiferous Self: “Not that question!”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Then what question?”

My Splendiferous Self: “The winking, damn it all to hell. Explain the winking!”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Draco, listen to me. I. Have. No. Idea. What. You’re. Talking. About. Truly, I don’t. What winking?”

My Splendiferous Self: “But I thought… I was so sure that…”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: Merlin, you’re really upset, aren’t you? What is it, Draco? What did you think?”

My Splendiferous Self: “I thought… I thought you and Teddy—and Remus, too, for that matter—were planning to match up me and He—Granger.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Oh. That.”

My Splendiferous Self: “No, don’t touch that you’ll probably—” crashing sound “—break it.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Oh, it’s fine. I didn’t break the clock part; it’s still ticking. It’s just the frame that got a little—and that’s easy enough to Reparo. There, see? All fixed. But Remus is probably wondering where we are, so I’ll just go ahead down, and you can join us when—”

My Splendiferous Self: “Stop, Dora.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “S-stop what?”

My Splendiferous Self: “Stop with the escape tactics. Five minutes ago, you were sitting right next to me, wanting to know what was bothering me—but the second I actually told you, you were halfway across the room, avoiding eye contact, and breaking my things.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “I didn’t break it on purp—”

My Splendiferous Self: “I know you didn’t. But you walked away from me on purpose…because you didn’t want me to be able to see your face. That means I’m right, doesn’t it? The three of you—you are trying to set me up with Herm—Granger.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Well, I wouldn’t really say that Teddy’s part of any master plan…”

My Splendiferous Self: “Don’t do that; don’t dodge the issue. You have to tell me. Please, I need to know. Are you trying to matchmake with me and Hermione?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “I…we…” exhales noisily “Yes.”

My Splendiferous Self: “Oh.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Draco? Um…you’re looking a bit pale. Are you…are you hyperventilating? Draco? Draco! Slow, deep breaths. Come on, Draco, match my breathing. In…and out. In…and out.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I…I’m fine.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Sure you are. Your face always looks like week-old cheese.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I happen to have a flawless complexion.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Usually? Yes. Just now? You’re looking a bit green, cuz. And just for the record, it’s a little weird that you can manage phrases like ‘flawless complexion’ when you could barely breathe a minute ago.”

My Splendiferous Self: “There’s no such thing as a Malfoy too weak to defend himself against slander.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “So you’d consider it…slander to say that you and Hermione might be happy together?”

My Splendiferous Self: “No, I consider it slander to compare my face to week-old cheese. Saying that Hermione and I might be happy together… That’s not derogatory; it’s just not true.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “You don’t think she could make you happy?”

My Splendiferous Self: “I didn’t say that.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “And now who’s avoiding eye contact? Draco, you don’t have to inspect the clock; you should know by now that my repair charms are nothing to sneeze at. If you keep checking it over like that, you’ll probably dr—” crashing sound “—drop it. Hah! See? I’m not the only one. Reparo.”

My Splendiferous Self: “Thanks.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Not a problem. Really. I can cast Reparo in my sleep. Have done; just ask Remus.”

My Splendiferous Self: “Remus, who’s probably wondering what’s taking us so long. We should go down and join him.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Nope; if I’m not allowed to use my own husband as an excuse to get out of conversations then you’re certainly not. What is it, Draco? Why would you say something like that?”

My Splendiferous Self: “Something like what?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “No point dodging the question; we both know that you know exactly what I mean.”

My Splendiferous Self: “And the answer should be bloody well obvious, shouldn’t it? Think about it, Dora. My whole life, when have I ever made anyone happy?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Oh Draco, is that really what you think?”

My Splendiferous Self: “It’s what I know.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “It’s not true; really it isn’t—”

My Splendiferous Self: “Isn’t it? Take a good, long look at my life. I was born—that didn’t go well at all. My mother wanted a girl. And who could blame her? The Dark Lord was at his height; any child of a Death Eater would be expected to honor him, but any son would be expected to serve him.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Your father—”

My Splendiferous Self: “My dear father considered me a failure from the beginning. I scryed those memories once, and do you know what I found? My father’s first words, when he saw me: ‘Rather a scrawny little brat, isn’t he? What a disappointment.’ That was the theme of my childhood. He was never angry with me, he was always disappointed. Disappointed that I didn’t display any signs of magic until I was five. Disappointed that I was weak enough to cry when I fell down the stairs and broke my leg. Disappointed that Potter outflew me, and Hermione outscored me, and Moody—pseudo-Moody—outmaneuvered me and turned me into a ferret in front of half the school. ‘Such a disappointment, Draco, that you would allow anyone to disgrace the Malfoy name in such a manner. Such a disappointment—that you would be such a disgrace.’”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Draco, no—”

My Splendiferous Self: “And mother… Oh, she never said it—would never say anything to hurt me—but I know that I disappointed her, too. Every time I tried to be hard, and cold, and strong; every time I tried to make Father proud of me—she’d always pull away from me just a little bit more. I disappointed my father, but I probably broke my mother’s heart. Broke Pansy’s heart, too, if you believe that nonsense she blathered on about to the papers.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Which I don’t. Like you said, it’s pure nonsense. Pansy’s pining away over her lost chance to be lady of the manor. It’s her pride that’s been hurt, not her heart, and her vanity is hardly your fault.”

My Splendiferous Self: “Sure of that, are you? I’m not. Oh, you’re not wrong that it’s all about pride for her, but who can blame her? I’m the one who told her that that was what I had to give. The day I turned of age, I slid that betrothal ring on her finger, and I didn’t tell her that I’d love her forever. I didn’t tell her that I’d make her happy. I just told her that I’d make her…what was it you said? Lady of the manor, yes? Yes. That’s what she accepted, because that’s all I had to offer. That’s all I’ve ever had to offer, and I don’t even have that anymore.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “You have yourself to offer; that’ll be more than enough for anyone who lo—”

My Splendiferous Self: “Who loves me? Who would love me? Who could love me? Every friend I had—they’re dead now, or in jail, and I was the one who led the way, wasn’t I? Always so determined to be a leader; I led my friends right over the edge into disaster. Hurting people is my greatest skill, didn’t you know? Family, friends, enemies; it’s all the same to me. The things I did to the oh-so-sacred Golden Trio first year, second year…every year, really, since I was eleven years old—I’m eighteen, now, that means that I’ve had a good seven years of making them unhappy. Making Hermione unhappy. Making every single person who has ever met me unhappy.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “You make Teddy happy. You make him happy every single morning just by walking into his room.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I feed him, change him, give him blocks to chew on and arrange, and permit him to listen to songs badly sung by a purple dinosaur. That’s all I need to do to make him happy. He’s eight-and-a-half months old. It doesn’t take much.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “You hate Barney.”

My Splendiferous Self: “Yes, because he’s imbecilic and annoying. But I’ll teach Teddy about good taste later.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “No, Draco, you’re missing the point. You hate Barney, but you listen to him every day because it makes Teddy happy. That’s what you have to offer.”

My Splendiferous Self: “What, my misery? Hermione Granger, brightest witch of our age, one of the saviors of the wizarding world, the Golden Girl of our whole society, and the most beautiful, bewitching… Anyway, Hermione Granger, who could point a finger and have any wizard in London at her feet in a heartbeat, will, instead, want me because of my misery?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “She’ll want you because for you, love means that you’re willing to do absolutely anything to make your loved one happy. Even if it makes you miserable. She’ll want you because you have more to offer than you did a year ago—not less—because a year ago, you didn’t know how to love like this, and now you do. And all those other blokes who want to be with her because she’s famous, or because she could make them famous, or because she’s a ‘challenge’ to be won—they can’t hold a candle to you, because you don’t want to be with her at all unless you can make her happy.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I…I…”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “You’ve finally grown up, Draco, and I can’t tell you how proud I am of you. Truly. This is why Remus and I took you in—because this is the person we thought you had the potential to be. Congratulations, cousin. Today you are a fountain pen.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I’m a what?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Sorry. Muggle joke. Jewish muggle joke, at that. Not quite sure where I picked that one up, actually. Might have been from Goldberg; that transfer from the New York division. Huh. Anyway, it means that you’re an adult now.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I am? Are you sure? I haven’t felt this confused since I was a child. A very small child.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Pretty sure that means you’re an adult who’s in love. But that’s okay; Remus and I will take care of that.”

My Splendiferous Self: “So the two of you are matchmaking.”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Oh hells, yes. And it’ll be full speed ahead once I relay this conversation to Remus. Quite the romantic, he is. He’ll be coming up with twice as many silly excuses to get Hermione over here in no time.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Not in the least. Relax and enjoy it. We’ll have you and Hermione happy before you know it.”

My Splendiferous Self: “I still don’t think that she’ll—”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “She will. Trust me. She’ll see what you have to offer. The force is strong in you, my son.”

My Splendiferous Self: “Muggle joke?”

My Endlessly Annoying Cousin: “Muggle joke.”

Chapter 9:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated September 1, 1998

I visited Mother today for her birthday. Birthdays (just her birthdays; I wasn’t allowed to visit on mine) and Christmases—those are the only days I’m allowed to see her. Two visits a year and an owl every month—that’s the only contact we’re allowed until she’s finished serving her time. The courts informed me that I should be grateful that they allowed even that much. (I’m only allowed three owls a year from Father and no visits at all until I’ve finished serving my term. Apparently, the courts believe that simply spending time in my father’s presence would be enough to interfere with my rehabilitation. To my chagrin, I must admit that they probably have a point.)

The last time I’d seen her was in the courtroom where she was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. They didn’t allow her to stay for my trial or sentencing—which was a shame, really; I’d have loved to have seen her reaction when Dora and Remus stood for me. My mother is almost professionally unflappable, and I learned early on in life that nothing short of absolute disaster was enough to shatter her unbreakable calm. One of my favorite games as a child was to try to startle her into an uncensored reaction. I succeeded a grand total of once—when I came home from my first meeting with the Dark Lord and informed her that I’d been ordered to kill Dumbledore. In that one, unguarded moment, I was able to finally see clear as day that my mother loved me—and that she was terrified, because she was absolutely certain that I’d fail.

At that time, I was going through a particularly cocky and brainless stage, coasting high on the “honor” of an audience with the Dark Lord and the automatic importance that came with being the lord of the manor of the Malfoy Estate while Father was in prison. Given my state of mind, it’s hardly surprising that I wasn’t too pleased with my mother’s response. I barely even noticed the love; all I saw was the doubt, the disbelief that I was capable of doing what had to be done. After waiting sixteen years to get a full, genuine reaction out of her, I was horribly disappointed that the one that I finally saw was her belief that I was too incompetent to pull off the task allotted to me. Anger piled onto arrogance, and by the time I left for school, I was utter confident that I would prove her wrong. I believed that by the time the year came to a close, she’d learn that there would never, ever be reason to fear that I wasn’t capable of being every inch as brutal, fierce, and uncompromising a man as my father.

It didn’t occur to me until much later that that might have been what scared her, too.

The memory of her love came back to me later when I was, of all things, pouring out my heart and my fears to Moaning Myrtle. The cocky stage had long since passed, and I was rapidly moving into complete desperation. I was no longer angry that Mother hadn’t believed I was capable of completing my task; I was just sadly and hopelessly certain that she had been right. I was going to fail, and all the consequences of failure that I hadn’t even considered before seemed to be closing in on me from all sides. That was when I finally remembered the love in my mother’s eyes on that day—and recognized the truth of what it meant: Mother didn’t want me to be the kind of man who could kill someone else for no other reason than someone else’s whim. She didn’t want me to be my father. She wanted me to be the boy she loved: the boy who wasn’t capable of something like that and never would be.

When I stood facing Dumbledore on the top of that tower, I could see my future stretching in front of me along two separate paths, making it abundantly clear that the time had come to make a choice. And as I made it, I thought of my mother, looking at me with utterly unguarded love.

I really wanted to talk to her about it afterwards, but I didn’t get any opportunity. By the time I got home, Voldemort had truly taken his position as master of us all, and he had us dancing to his tune like puppets on a string. There was no such thing as a conversation that didn’t have half a dozen eager eavesdroppers, leading my mother to dazzling new heights of circumspection. And anyway, we weren’t allowed much “family time.” The Dark Lord blatantly ignored the idea that we might want to spend time together—that we had any loyalties to our kin that went beyond our allegiance to him. Bit him right in the bum, that one did; it never even occurred to him that Mother would lie to him about Potter’s state just to have a chance to safeguard me.

Of course, I didn’t find out about that until her trial. We were arrested on the site of the Final Battle and shipped off to entirely separate prison wings, so I only heard about what she had done when Potter himself took the stand at her trial. I didn’t have much time to process it; I was still turning it over in my head when the trial ended and Mother was sentenced to fifteen years. Aurors were waiting to take her away and the court was waiting to convene my trial, so we had only a minute or two for a semi-private goodbye.

I knew better than to expect an emotional farewell. There was no telling what sentence I’d get or how long it would be until we’d see each other again…but for all that, Mother was not about to have some sort of tearful scene when people were watching. Thus, I was hardly surprised when Mother calmly bussed my cheek and told me to take care of myself and stay out of trouble, for all the world as if she was seeing me off on the Hogwarts Express. But when she stood—with her back to the Aurors, facing only me—I saw that look in her eyes again. There wasn’t any fear that time; just love.

And that was the last I saw of her, until today.

I’d heard from her since then, of course. The owl from her arrived very promptly on the fifteenth of every month, giving me what little bits of news she had and responding to whatever I’d said in the letter I’d sent in reply to hers the previous month. Again, it all bore a remarkable similarity to our correspondence when I was at school. If anything, the most striking difference was just how contented Mother sounded with prison life. To tell you the truth, after being raised as a Black, being married as a Malfoy, and being miserable as a servant of the Dark Lord, I think she found jail rather restful. Prison life, except for the questionable quality of the food and her dismay over the sartorial arrangements, seems to suit her quite well.

Naturally, I couldn’t help but wonder if the apparent tranquility was merely symptomatic of a larger problem. I half expected, when I finally did visit her, to find her talking to her imaginary friend, or wearing her shoes as a hat. (Sanity always was in rather short supply for the Black clan.) I was pleased—but still wary—to find her, to all appearances, calm and coherent when I arrived this morning.

“Draco, dear,” she greeted me without standing, tilting her cheek up to be kissed when I entered the visiting room, “how lovely to see you. You look very well.”

My eyes watered unexpectedly at the sight of her (no doubt due to some random particles of dust in the air). Hearing her voice, I could almost believe that we were back in the afternoon parlor at the manor, taking tea together. Then I blinked, and once more we were in a prison visiting room (painted a depressing gray) while my mother sat in a straight-back metal chair, wearing ill fitted prison robes…but wearing them with all the grace of a queen, and sitting with perfect posture upon her rickety throne. She always did have class.

“Hello, Mother,” I replied, dutifully kissing her cheek. “Happy birthday. I brought you your favorites.” I laid the box of chocolates out on the table, from the chocolaterie in Paris she’d always loved. (Remus had bought them for me.) I wanted to give her something she could enjoy right away; I didn’t know if she’d be allowed to take any gift back with her to her cell.

“How thoughtful; thank you, dear,” she replied calmly, slowly and deliberately opening the box and selecting a chocolate with great care. “Won’t you have one, as well?”

Never one to turn down good chocolate, I immediately reached for the box. Selecting one at random, I couldn’t help but smile when I realized I’d ended up with a caramel: my favorite. Pure sweetness, but with more than a bit of stubbornness to it, forcing you to take your time with it to truly enjoy it to the fullest. And that reminded me…

“Mother, what was the name of that wizard Father used to know—” I couldn’t help but make a bit of a face as I said it. It was one of Father’s favorite euphemisms. He would refer to “the wizard I know” on this board, or “the witch I know” in that government office. I suppose he considered it outré to refer to “the wizard I bought and paid for who now toadies up to me on any terms I care to set,” even if that was absolutely what he meant. “—who works at the Einsohn Institute? You know the one I mean—the bloke with the scraggly beard and an endless array of yellow ties?”

“Geoffrey Corrigan?”

“Ah! That’s right. I kept thinking ‘corduroy, but not.’ I knew I was close.”

She frowned a bit. “Are you having some kind of…problem, Draco?”

I knew, of course, exactly what she meant. Einsohn Institute existed for one reason only: to solve problems. It was the top wizarding think-tank in Britain and one of the best in the world. It accepted “problems” from individuals and institutions, working to find, adapt, or invent a solution. Of course, given their reputation, they were rather inundated with problems of all sorts, which meant that it was best to have an “in” if you wanted your particular problem to be solved at some point on this side of ever. Father always found that vast sums of money had rather remarkable success in pushing his problems to the front of the line.

“No, Mother; not a problem. Rather, I have a solution I believe I can offer to everyone’s advantage. But all things considered,” my eyes skimmed over the prison waiting room, “I thought that someone Father knew might be more inclined than the others to give me a fair hearing.” Yes, I was still a convicted felon, and the Malfoy name was more than a bit tarnished, but anyone who’d been bought by Father before was practically guaranteed to have a pragmatic streak. If nothing else, he would be likely to at least hear me out. The Malfoy money was still around, after all, and in just a few years, I’d be able to access the vaults and buy my own toadies.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be glad to help, dear. And certainly, if your solution is to everyone’s advantage, then it would be to his benefit to hear it.”

“I believe so,” I answered, as vaguely as possible.

“And the solution is…to a problem he’s currently facing, no doubt.”

“Hmm,” was my only response. It was always entertaining to see Mother try to compel me to spill my secrets without ever actually being so gauche as to ask.

“Of course, with the current political and social situation, I daresay the Institute is facing a good many problems in need of solutions.”

“Naturally.”

“And they must undoubtedly find themselves in need of capable assistance.”

“Undoubtedly,” I agreed.

“Well, in that case I’m quite sure that Mr. Corrigan will be most pleased to acquire Miss Granger’s services.”

I scowled and studiously avoided eye contact, knowing that if I looked Mother in the eye, I’d be able to see the amusement I could already hear in her voice. If she was anyone else, she’d probably have laughed out loud at this point. (She wasn’t anyone else, of course. Mother always felt it was vulgar to display emotions in public. Or in private. Or ever, really. That hint of a laugh in her voice, and a corresponding half smile, were about as far as she would go.)

Nonchalantly, she picked out another chocolate, chewed it slowly, and swallowed, waiting politely for my response. Finally, I simply couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“How did you know?”

“Andromeda is quite perceptive, in addition to being a very diligent correspondent.”

I was uncomfortably aware that my jaw had dropped, and despite the commands from the still-functioning part of my brain reminding me that I most likely resembled a fish, (though, undoubtedly, a very attractive fish,) it took me some moments before I regained enough control to close it. Honestly, you’d think my mother would have more concern for my health than she was showing. It couldn’t possibly be good for me to have so many shocks in one day. (To console myself, I had another chocolate. And then another one after that.)

After another moment or two, I felt I had collected myself well enough to speak. “How long have you and Andromeda corresponded?”

“A few months now,” she answered calmly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be pen pals with the sister whose existence she’d ignored for the past two and a half decades.

When I was growing up, Mother never talked about either of her sisters. For the first dozen years of my life, I was convinced that she was an only child. I only found out about Aunt Bella when she escaped from Azkaban and landed on our doorstep. I didn’t find out about Andromeda until we were arrested. Dora—resplendent with pink hair—walked up and introduced herself to me as my cousin. I took several steps back to avoid any contamination and recommended that she begin immediate treatment to overcome her delusions of grandeur since she was clearly no relation of mine. It wasn’t until Mother stepped in and confirmed that she did, in fact, have a sister named Andromeda that I realized the truth.

“And how did that happen?” I asked in spite of myself.

“Andromeda petitioned for owl rights shortly after I began my stay here.” I couldn’t help but smile at Mother’s phrasing. Her “stay here,” indeed. Trust her to speak of her incarceration in the same words she’d use to describe a visit to a holiday resort. “Her paperwork was processed quite quickly, and I had my first letter from her not more than a week after my arrival.”

That I could easily believe. Having met Andromeda, I was quite certain that she’d have no problem getting owl privileges at all. (Indeed, I can’t imagine much of anyone ever tells Andromeda “no.” She had that no-nonsense schoolmarm way to her that seemed to make even the most distinguished of wizards start shuffling their feet and saying “yes, ma’am,” and “no, ma’am,” and “I’ll take care of that right away, ma’am.”) She’d have no problem getting nearly anything that she set her mind to.

“And what did she have to say?” What was there to say in Andromeda’s situation after twenty-five years of silence on my mother’s part?

When I first moved in with the Lupins, I (slyly and subtly, of course) brought up Andromeda’s name a few times, just to figure out what I should prepare myself to expect. I was living in a house with her only daughter and her grandchild, after all. I knew it was inevitable that I’d meet her sooner or later, and I wanted to know precisely how frightened I should be. And naturally, I should be frightened. There were lists of reasons why she’d be disinclined to like me, chief among them that I was a Death Eater; Lucius Malfoy was my father; and, perhaps most damagingly of all, Narcissa Black Malfoy was my mother.

She had to hate my parents; how could she not? Not only had they served the Dark Lord who had, indirectly, led to her husband’s death, but they’d also publicly and permanently renounced her from the time of her marriage, striking her off the family record so utterly and completely that I hadn’t even been aware of her existence. I knew she’d have more than her share of pride—there was no such thing as a humble Black—and I couldn’t imagine she’d respond well to having that pride mortified by her family for a quarter of a century.

I was stunned by her downright warm and affectionate greeting when we finally met. She embraced me like I was some long-lost family member (which I was, of course, but it still wasn’t what I had been expecting) and told me that my hair was exactly like my mother’s, and that she’d always envied it. She ran her fingers through it gently with a small smile on her face, and in that moment, it occurred to me for the first time that my mother wasn’t just the cold-hearted relative who had fallen in lock-step with the decision to disown Andromeda; she was also the woman’s sister—apparently a much loved sister—who Andromeda quite simply missed after not having the opportunity to stay in touch for years.

As children, Narcissa and Andromeda had, apparently, been quite close. (Once I grew comfortable around her, which took about twenty seconds, I immediately began pestering Andromeda—in the most charming way, of course—for childhood stories. She was more than willing to share.) Her stories painted a picture of my mother unlike anything I’d ever seen. I could see Andromeda in the stories that she told. I could, without any difficulty, picture her treating my mother with the same fond, patient exasperation and endless love that she frequently shows her daughter. I just couldn’t ever quite manage to picture my mother in her role as the precocious, slightly-spoiled-but-dearly-loved child who followed her big sister around like a puppy. I’d never seen my mother love anyone as freely as openly as my aunt described—not even me.

It was an oddly shocking thing, discovering evidence that my mother had a life and emotions and attachments that predated me. As a child, I always assumed that her existence in the years preceding my birth was mostly spent waiting for the glorious moment when I would arrive. Alas, Andromeda’s stories showed the lie in that theory.

So how was it possible for my mother to go from an adoring, affectionate younger sister who threw a tantrum at the very thought of Andromeda leaving home to start at Hogwarts, to a silent, composed statue who refused to even mention her sister’s name for so very many years? And after all those years of silence and separation, how was it possible for them to go back to being sisters again?

“And…what did she have to say?” I asked Mother next, biting back the urge to demand to see the letter myself. (Mother probably didn’t have it with her, anyway. No doubt it was back in her cell.) How do you start a letter to someone who has spent the majority of her life not speaking to you? (Mother was only eighteen when Andromeda married. Did twenty-five years of silence outweigh any residual connection from a mere eighteen years of sisterhood?)

“She said she forgave me,” Mother answered calmly.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“And what did you say in response?”

“That I didn’t deserve it,” she replied, shocking me yet again. (Honestly, it’s a good thing I was sitting down. Perhaps, looking at it in retrospect, I should have simply laid down on the floor. That way, when all the shocks led to their inevitable conclusion, the Aurors who were required to come in an enervate me would find me already properly positioned for treatment.)

“Didn’t deserve it?” I repeated in a somewhat muted voice, still struggling to overcome my disbelief at my mother, openly and without coercion, showing such an unprecedented degree of humility.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I didn’t deserve it. For twenty-five years, I reined in my emotions so completely that I didn’t even allow myself to care about her anymore. And then, the moment she could approach me again, she forgave me, instantly, without me even having to ask for forgiveness—simply because she loves me. Loves me enough to forgive me, whether I deserve it or not.”

The revelation overwhelmed me, and we sat in silence for a few minutes as I processed what this meant. This, then, was the missing link between the affectionate, open child my mother had been and the cool, contained woman she had become. In an odd way, it made sense. Andromeda had left their parents’ house, but Narcissa had stayed behind and had only departed it to move into her husband’s home. Neither the Blacks nor the Malfoys would have accepted any residual fondness on her part for a sister who had, supposedly, “disgraced the family name.” And so she’d stopped allowing herself to display emotion—she had become cold and controlled so that she wouldn’t betray her family by feeling anything she wasn’t supposed to feel.

Mother hadn’t stopped caring, she’d just stopped allowing herself to care. And after twenty-five years, it had become such an ingrained habit that she honestly hadn’t known how to break it anymore. But Andromeda had known, and she had acted accordingly. It almost seemed like a fairy tale, where the ice queen or the sleeping princess is reawakened to warmth and life by a simple act of love.

I never would have thought that a Malfoy could have a fairy-tale ending.

“Andromeda thinks quite highly of your Miss Granger,” Mother announced a minute later.

“She’s not my Miss Granger,” I protested weakly.

“Perhaps not yet, but she will be, dear. Don’t fret about that. Andromeda is quite determined to play a role in the matchmaking, and as I’m sure you’ve learned, Andromeda always gets her way.”

I groaned, in spite of myself. When I had reached the conclusion that the matchmaking was a family effort, I had had no idea it extended so far.

“She’s wasting her time. All of you are. Hermione will never see me like that.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too certain of that. Haven’t you been listening to me today? If Andromeda and I can patch up our differences after twenty-five years, then I can’t imagine you’ll have all that much trouble setting things right with Hermione, given the way your friendship has blossomed as of late. Especially given your plans for Geoffrey Corrigan. Do tell him I said hello.”

“Mother!” I gasped, truly and utterly overwhelmed. “You mean that you’re part of this matchmaking team as well?”

“Of course I am, dear. I’m quite eager to be a grandmother, myself. Andromeda writes of Teddy constantly.”

Her timing was, as always, absolutely flawless. A bare moment later, the bell went off, and the Auror guarding us stepped forward to escort Mother back to her cell. She rose with perfect aplomb, gathering up her box of chocolates to take with her.

“Goodbye, Draco, dear, and thank you again for the chocolates.” I stumbled to my feet to give her a kiss on the cheek before she left and was startled (yet again!) when she leaned up close enough to whisper in my ear.

“I love you, Draco. And I’m so very proud of you.”

She reached a hand out to pat my cheek while she gave me a look overflowing with acceptance, love, and (yes, there it was) pride in me and the man I’d become such as I’d never seen from her before.

It hit me like a bludger to the gut, and all I could do was stand there, basking in the warmth of it, as the Auror led Mother away.

Chapter 10:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated September 19, 1998

It should happen today. Hermione should get her letter from Corrigan today, offering her the job of her dreams.

I’ve been in contact with him ever since returning from the visit to Mother, and last week, I sent him the pile of scrolls Hermione had sent to me detailing her research. (That is to say, I sent him copies of the scrolls she’d sent me. Why should he get the originals? They’re mine, sent to me because she wanted my opinion. Copies would do well enough for Corrigan.) He was enchanted with them, of course, and wanted to owl her immediately, offering her a position on any terms she’d like.

I insisted that he wait until today. Oh, I claimed it was to avoid rumors. (No matter who leads it, the Ministry is, was, and always shall be the largest nest of gossiping hens in the wizarding world. An owl from the Einsohn Institute winging its way toward Hermione Granger would have the whole building convinced in upwards of an hour that she’d taken a position with them and was leaving WSS. I knew that that was the last thing Hermione would want people to think.) It’s a good, solid, viable justification, detailing legitimate concerns…but I will admit, it wasn’t my real reason. I wanted her to get the news today because Dora told me today is her birthday, and this is the present I wanted to give her.

Not that she’ll know it’s from me, of course. I was very clear on that in my correspondence with Corrigan. At no point is my name to be mentioned in any connection with the position or with his knowledge of her research. My Hermione is just the sort to turn down the job of her dreams if she thought she got it due to favoritism or any sort of undue influence.

She’d be wrong if she thought that, of course. My influence as a Malfoy didn’t do anything more than get Corrigan to read the letter. As soon as he grasped the possibilities Hermione’s research had uncovered—which I had detailed accurately but deliberately vaguely and without mentioning who was responsible—he was on the floo within a matter of moments, demanding the name of the researcher so that he could hire him or her without delay. If Hermione wasn’t so damn modest and had taken the initiative to promote herself and her research a bit more instead of simply assuming that she wasn’t qualified for the position, she’d have gotten the job ages ago. She wouldn’t have needed me at all. Of course, I prefer it this way. I like the thought that my contribution isn’t to bribe or blackmail anyone into giving her unmerited attention but simply to bring her own brilliance to the attention it deserves.

So no, she’ll never know I did this for her. She’ll never know that I gave her a chance at the job she always wanted. But I’ll know. (And Mother will know, and Corrigan as well, I suppose, but I can’t imagine that either of them will ever say anything about it. I didn’t even tell Remus and Dora, so they won’t be able to let it slip.) I’ll know that I made her happy, and that—shockingly enough—is all I need. I haven’t the faintest idea when I became so selfless, but I’m somehow quite certain that, for better or for worse, it’s something that she gave to me.

Of course, selflessly motivated or not, I still wish I could see her reaction to the news. Alas, I’ll have to wait and get it second hand from Remus on Monday. Dora, indefatigable matchmaker that she is, invited Hermione over for a birthday dinner, but she declined, saying she’d already made plans with her parents. Oh, well. No doubt, Remus will describe her reaction in great detail. He might even insist that she come home and join us for dinner that night to cele—

Who on earth could that be at the door?

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated September 19, 1998

All right, so all of that from earlier, about how Hermione would never know that her new job was brought about by me? It appears I was mistaken. Very, very mistaken.

She was the one at the door, and she burst through it with all the force of a tornado. Literally incandescent with fury, her hair was actually standing on end Medusa-like with little sparks flying from the tips. She was clearly—dangerously—furious with at least one of us. Precedent seemed to indicate that she was most likely to be furious with me, so I immediately took protective measures. Good thing, too. By the time she spotted me and turned to me with her wand in her hand and thunder in her eyes, I’d already erected a powerful shield.

“Blrngdss!” Teddy squealed in delight from his position—securely in my arms—clapping his hands and instantly turning his hair into bushy brown curls that stood on end, wrinkling his forehead in concentration as he worked industriously to make sparks fly from his hair, too.

“Hiding behind a child?” Hermione sneered.

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “We Blacks are a pragmatic lot. Any port in a storm.”

“You think that hiding behind my godson means that I won’t hex you?”

“For as long as I keep holding on to Teddy—yes, that’s exactly what I think.”

She scowled at me darkly but didn’t deign to argue the point as she lowered her wand. (Heh. I knew the Teddy trick would get her. That’s my Hermione; always a victim of her own soft heart.)

“So,” she growled, “if we’re going to discuss this without wands, then let’s talk. You can start. What the hell were you thinking buying me a job?”

So she knew—or at least, thought she knew—that I was behind her job offer. While I was pleased to have an explanation for what I’d done to make her so angry, I couldn’t help but be a little bewildered. How had she known I was involved in the first place? Playing innocent seemed to be my best bet.

“Job? What job?”

“Be very, very careful just how far you push me, Draco Malfoy. You can’t hide behind Teddy forever.”

Dora, bless her tension-relieving heart, stepped in to draw off some of the fire. “What job, Hermione? What’s happened?”

“Are you going to be leaving WSS?” Remus piped in, stepping up with his wife. (While Dora had the peacekeeping instincts of a Hufflepuff, Remus was a true Gryffindor, always willing to step up in the face of danger. Not me; I remained contentedly ensconced behind Teddy—who had given up on making his hair spark and had instead grown it long enough for him to chew.)

“No,” Hermione spat out, still glaring at me. “I won’t need to leave WSS. Draco has arranged everything so that I can work for the Einsohn Institute from my WSS office without any training or orientation; without even sitting my N.E.W.T.s. I’m to start right away, choosing my own field, working off-site on whatever schedule I choose, and drawing a fantastic salary.”

“But that’s wonderful!” Remus exclaimed. Hermione turned her scowl on to him. “Isn’t it?” he added, more hesitantly.

“Yes,” she sneered. “Wonderful. As long as I’m willing to give up my integrity and every particle of self-respect I’ve got to take a job that was bought and paid for.” The glare turned back, naturally, to me.

“I can’t even buy cigarettes,” I protested. “How could I buy you a job?”

This, by the way, was nothing more than the truth. According to the Rehabilitation Act, the family member who took responsibility for me was supposed to be in charge of my finances for the probationary period. Since Dora was also my employer, that meant that things like paychecks took on a rather loose definition.

She wasn’t stingy, by any means. She was just…particular. She’d buy me anything she thought I needed—she’d even buy me a whole host of random things that she thought I’d like—but she never actually got around to giving me spending money to buy whatever I chose. And since she didn’t like cigarettes, and I didn’t have any money to buy them myself, this meant that I did without.

“Don’t play innocent with me; I’ll bet you postdate your bribes. We both know that you’ll have access to your vaults again before long, and I’m sure you make no secret of that to anyone you want to buy. That way you can have people in your pockets now on the layaway plan instead of having to wait until you actually have money again.”

Okay, so maybe she had a point. I’m fairly certain that it was the thought of the Malfoy family’s continued “generous donations” in years to come that got Corrigan to open my owl post so quickly, but it’s not as if that was the whole story. Once he read my letter, he’d been interested in her research on its own merits—not because of who I was, or even who she was. She’d gotten the position entirely on her own. All I’d done was get the owl post through the door.

“How could you?” she continued. “How dare you put me in this position?”

“And what position might that be?” I replied, a little annoyed with her attitude. Did all people react this badly to getting the job of their dreams? “The position of having work you actually enjoy that you can do without endangering the status of WSS? The position you’ll get with a strong company behind you, supporting your research and giving you access to the materials you need to see it through?”

“The position of getting something I haven’t earned,” she hissed, bubbling over with righteous indignation. “Do you have any idea what the Ministry gossips said when I took the position at WSS? ‘No N.E.W.T.s, so she must have been aces at C.O.C.K. to get the Minister to create that job for her.’ When I got the Order of Merlin for helping Harry? Everyone knows I was alone in a tent with two teenage boys for months on end. ‘She must have given the Savior of the Wizarding World plenty of help and support…on her knees.’ The new anti-discrimination law I pushed through back in July? ‘Quite the silver tongue that one’s got; all the wizards on the Wizengamot probably made good use of it before they signed the bill into law.’ I may have dropped Divination in third year, but I don’t need a crystal ball to know what everyone is going to say once news of this job gets out. ‘Who’d she shag to get this one?’”

I put Teddy down. He made an admirable human shield, but with Hermione’s latest diatribe, I was less worried about getting injured myself and more concerned about accidentally injuring Teddy. With the way my hands were aching to clench into fists (and pound the living daylights out of a whole slew of Ministry employees), it probably wasn’t very safe for me to hold on to him any longer.

“My only defense—the only reason I can hold my head up when I walk down the hall, knowing that everyone is whispering about me—is my certainty that they’re one hundred percent wrong. I earned my Order of Merlin, and Harry owes me his life at least as many times over as I owe him mine. I may not have sat my N.E.W.T.s before taking my job at WSS, but my prestige offered something to that department that no one else could supply. And that law may be the only bit of true, concentrated work I’ve done in my position, but I gave it my all and I’m proud of the work that I did. But this?”

Some of the fury had faded, and it was replaced by a desperate sort of sadness that was much harder for me to take than the anger.

“This is what I wanted more than anything…and I can’t take it. I have to write Mr. Corrigan and turn down the job of my dreams because I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror if I accepted it, knowing I hadn’t earned it. How could you, Draco? How could you ruin my dream like this?”

Remus and Dora were glaring at me now, but Hermione wasn’t anymore. Instead, she looked close to tears, which rendered all of the Lupins’ glares superfluous. Surely they both knew that nothing could hurt me worse than knowing I’d upset Hermione so deeply. If I’d had access to a decent wand, I’d have hexed myself to get that look off her face.

Teddy, sterling little soul that he is, stepped in to take care of matters himself. While my attention had been otherwise occupied, he had laboriously crawled over to Hermione—a skill he had only recently mastered—and seized this moment to tug on the ends of her trousers until she looked down at him, then lifted his arms to be held. As soon as she picked him up, he latched both arms around her neck and snuggled right into her, his bushy hair brightening to the neon pink shade that signaled his perfect contentment.

She smiled, and Dora, Remus, and I all exhaled in unison.

“Love you, Teddy,” she whispered, planting a soft kiss on top of his head. He burbled something unintelligible in reply. (Talkative as always, he has yet to say anything that resembles an actual word. We’re working on that together. I’d love to see Remus’s face if I actually succeed in getting Teddy to take on “Slytherin” as his first word.)

“Tea!” Dora blurted out a moment later, in much the same tone she might have used to say “Eureka!”

We all turned to look at her.

“Well, we need it, don’t we?” she asked, a little defensively. Silly question, of course. We’re British. We’d just had a strongly emotional experience. Of course we needed tea. Lots of tea.

“Right, I’ll just go put on the kettle then,” she continued, turning toward the kitchen.

“I’ll put on the kettle,” Remus—wisely—interceded, stopping his wife before she could enter the kitchen. “And maybe dig out some chocolate biscuits, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Hermione?”

“Yes, Remus,” she answered, smiling bravely. “Chocolate biscuits would be lovely.”

“Coming right up,” he promised, detouring in her direction on his way to the kitchen to drop a kiss on her forehead and then on Teddy’s before disappearing down the hall.

“Let’s sit,” Dora suggested, “and see if we can’t get to the bottom of this. Draco, do you have any…explanation you’d like to make?”

Sitting down heavily, I took a moment to get my thoughts in order. I hadn’t planned to tell Hermione anything about this, so I’d never really worked out how I’d phrase it. It was now very, very important that I say exactly the right thing.

“You’re your own worst enemy, you know,” I began.

“I’m what?”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best way to start.

“Well, not you, exactly, but your modesty. You seem to think that the same rules that apply to everyone else also apply to you, but they don’t.”

“Because I’ve got connections?” she gritted out through clenched teeth, glaring at me with renewed vigor.

“No, because you’re brilliant.” Pulling out my wand, I summoned the letters she’d sent me; the ones I’d copied and forwarded along to Corrigan. “Do you even realize how amazing these are—how amazing you are for having come up with them?” I asked as I waved them in her face. “You’ve got an utterly, astonishingly beautiful mind, and I don’t think you grasp how much of a rarity that is.”

She had taken some of the parchments away from me, (barely aware of Dora swooping in and taking charge of Teddy so that Hermione could give the parchments her complete attention,) and was looking over them with a frown on her face. “But I thought you’d sent these to Corrigan,” she said, sounding confused. “He told me in his letter that—”

“I sent him copies,” I interjected. “I wanted to keep the originals.” Because they’re mineminemine and I’d never give them up to anyone, I thought, but did not say. “What is it you think I did? Sent him a letter and told him he had to hire you simply because I said so? Or maybe something subtler; telling him that one of the Golden Trio wanted a job with him, and that it would be good PR if he offered it?”

She didn’t reply aloud, but her expression said it for her. That was exactly what she thought.

“Look,” I said, pulling a single sheet of parchment out of the pile still remaining in my hand. “I kept a copy of the letter that I sent to him, too.” I didn’t place the same value on my correspondence that I placed on hers, but all the same, I had worked very hard on that letter and hadn’t been able to resist keeping a copy of it for myself.

“But…” She frowned as she read the letter. “This doesn’t mention me by name at all.”

“Of course it doesn’t. Because you’re right: if I had told him that Hermione Granger wanted a job with him, he’d have made you an offer straightaway, on no greater recommendation than your notoriety. But I didn’t want that to happen, either. I wanted him to understand and appreciate what you truly had to offer to the Institute, and only then would I tell him your name.”

“What exactly is it that you did, Draco?”

I nearly jumped at the sound of Dora’s voice. I’d been concentrating so intently on Hermione that I had, frankly, forgotten anyone else was there.

“I got in touch with Geoffrey Corrigan, one of my father’s associates at the Einsohn Institute,” I answered. Dora and Hermione snorted in unison at the word “associate.” (Teddy seemed to think that snorting was a fun sound and imitated it repeatedly in the minutes that followed.)

“Okay, fine,” I admitted, “he’s someone my father used to pay off at the Einsohn Institute. But it’s not as if he was bribed to falsify records or make unorthodox hires. Father just paid him to make Malfoy problems a priority. Corrigan gets upwards of a hundred ‘problem requests’ a day. If paying him some slight sum meant that letters with the Malfoy seal actually got read before they got hidden under a pile of dust, then it was worth it to my father, and worth cashing in on for me. I sent the letter to him because I knew he’d have incentive to read it and act on it in a timely fashion. That’s the only reason why I sent it to him and not to any other Einsohn employee.”

I paused, waiting to see if she wanted to question that point any further. She didn’t, so I continued. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t use Malfoy influence to get him to hire someone unqualified. The Institute’s entire reputation rests on the quality of their researchers, so all new hires have to be authorized by the company’s board. Once they saw your research, every last member of the board signed off on the proposal to offer you the job on any terms you’d take. I should know; I spent the whole meeting with my head stuck in a fireplace to I could see what happened.”

“But they saw my name on the papers,” Hermione protested. “They knew who I was, and that could have—”

“They didn’t know who you were, because I wouldn’t tell them. When I copied your letters, I took your signature off the end. They asked for your name, of course, but I refused to give it until they’d gone over all your letters and discussed your research on nothing but its own merits. They had theories as to your identity, but none of them came anywhere close. I’m fairly certain that having me come forward as your representative threw them quite far off the scent. Frankly, I think they believed you had chosen me to represent you because you were a Death Eater associate, blacklisted from work anywhere else. And even thinking that, they still agreed to offer you the job.”

“So you…all of that, just for…Why? Why go to all that trouble?” It was the least coherent I’d ever heard her, which was oddly satisfying in and of itself. I’d never have thought that I could do anything to make Hermione Granger incoherent.

“It was supposed to be your birthday present. I’d no more give you an unearned position you than I’d give you a glass diamond. Even if you didn’t realize it was fake, as long as I knew, I’d know that it was less than you deserved.”

Dora made a noise that sounded like a muffled cheer, but Hermione and I both ignored it.

“No, I meant contacting Mr. Corrigan in the first place; making all of this happen. Why did you do it?”

“Because I could. Because you deserved it. Because I thought it would make you happy. But most of all, because I knew you could have what you wanted—what you deserved—just by asking for it, but that you never would. Your own modesty would have kept you from contacting the Institute until you’d jumped through all the hoops that were never really required for you in the first place. But I know what you’re entitled to, even if you don’t, and I wanted to make sure this time that you got it.”

I heard the sound of a soft sniffle and looked over, expecting to see that something had happened to Teddy to make him cry. But no, it was his mother who was blubbering as she looked at me, a couple of tears spilling over her cheeks in spite of the watery smile on her face. Remus stood right beside her with his own goofy grin likewise directed at me, holding the tea tray up with a levitating charm with his wand hand and handing his wife a handkerchief with the other.

I wasn’t quite certain what I’d done, but it was clear that they both approved.

“Tea?” Remus offered, coming forward to set the tray down. Without waiting for an answer, he immediately set to work, pouring out a cup for everyone and passing around the chocolate biscuits.

Hermione accepted both cup and biscuit with a sweet smile and quickly engaged both Remus and Dora in conversation. She didn’t say much directly to me, but every now and then she’d look up and happen to catch my eye…and then she’d blush. I liked that even more than her earlier incoherence.

I didn’t speak to her again until she was ready to leave. Remus had gone to see to the tea dishes while Dora put Teddy down for his nap. Both had insisted that I see Hermione to the door.

“I…I do want to say thank you,” she murmured, avoiding eye contact. “For all you did. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted, feeling massively uncomfortable. “Please don’t. I didn’t do anything, really. I hadn’t even wanted you to know that I was involved. I specifically told Corrigan not to mention it.”

“Oh, he didn’t.”

“He…didn’t? But then how did you know?”

“He mentioned my Continuum research. It was a dead giveaway.”

“But surely there are other people you’ve discussed your research with.”

She blushed again. “No. Only you.”

I had absolutely no response to that, but it’s undoubtedly just as well. If I’d spoken, I might have broken the moment, and then I never would have gotten to experience what happened next.

Standing up on tiptoe, Hermione Granger rested a hand on my shoulder and tilted her head up to give me—me—a kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you, Draco,” she whispered, her breath tickling against my ear. “Thank you for giving me such a happy birthday.”

She pulled away then, and I had just enough time to see her grin widely before she stepped past me, out the door and on her way.

Chapter 11:

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated October 4, 1998

Today, Dora came to the realization that October 31 lands on a Saturday this year. She has taken this as an indication of divine providence that she should host a Halloween party. I told her she was barmy, but she seemed vastly uninterested in my opinion.

She’d already full of plans for decorations she would like and delicacies we can prepare. For the sake of all of us, I hope she’s using “we” to refer to Remus preparing the delicacies. Otherwise, I feel certain they’ll be far less delicate and far more scorched.

Either way, I fear she’s fairly serious when she talks about hiding a boggart with a Confundus charm on him in the coat closet and getting Remus and the rest of the WWW staff to come up with some surprises to stash throughout the house.

Merlin help us all.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated October 4, 1998

Merlin help me—just me, since I am clearly in the greatest need of help. I’ve just seen Dora’s invitation list, and I’m going to spend the party surrounded by Gryffindors. Big Gryffindors, small Gryffindors, a great heaving mass of ginger-haired Gryffindors (damn those Weasleys), and of course, a certain scar-headed Gryffindor I’d just as soon avoid for…well…ever. (Although it is worth mentioning that up to this point, the fates had been mostly in my favor in keeping Potter and me as far from each other as possible. Hurrah for the punishing training hours for Auror recruits. Godfather or no, Potter simply doesn’t have the time to pay many visits.) Unfortunately, my luck has fallen through with this party. I’ve overheard him on the floo with Remus, promising to attend, and I can’t hide in my room to avoid him the way I usually do when he comes around.

Not even the sight of Hermione’s name on the list, with a check by it to indicate that she had already accepted the invitation (probably owled back the R.S.V.P card as soon as she received it, knowing her), is enough to lift my spirits. After all, with all those Gryffindors around, what’s the likelihood that she’ll bother to spare even a smile for me?

I’d appeal to the Minister for reprieve on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment to a poor soul just trying to peaceably work through his probation…but somehow, I fear my pleas would fall on deaf ears.

After all, the Minister is on the invitation list, too.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated October 17, 1998

Dora and I just spent upwards of an hour discussing costume choices. Choices for my Halloween costume, to be exact—although the term “choices” is singularly inapt. If I had any choices, I’d choose not to wear a costume at all. Sadly, it appears that that’s not an option. Plus, Dora seems to have gotten a bee in her bonnet (more on bees momentarily) about putting me and Teddy in coordinating costumes.

Her first suggestion? Teddy as a bumblebee and me as a beekeeper. Once I had been provided with adequate photographic proof that such a profession actually does exist in the Muggle world and was not just a figment of Dora’s deranged imagination, I flatly refused. Aside from the generally tacky, unflattering, and bulky nature of the costume overall, no self-respecting Malfoy male would ever publicly wear an outfit that included gloves and a veil. (Well, except for Uncle Ethelfride, but we try not to talk about him.)

Next suggestion: me as a fireman and Teddy as a Dalmatian puppy. Again, photos were required to understand what she was talking about. Muggles are an odd breed, indeed. Who ever heard of requiring teams of men to put out fires? And what good a dog could possibly do them, other than perhaps peeing on the flames, I can’t imagine. Needless to say, I turned that one down as well.

I did understand her next Mugglized suggestion—understood it well enough to know that I wanted to avoid it at all costs. I would not dress up as the man in the yellow hat to Teddy’s Curious George no matter what she said. Yellow is far from my best color, and besides, I despise Curious George. What sort of message do those books send to impressionable children, anyway? All the perfidious primate does is screw up again and again and again, and because he somehow always manages to save the day, it’s okay that he explicitly ignores rules and instructions. The mangy beast reminds me of Potter, damn it.

In my shock and horror over that appalling suggestions, Dora was able to coerce me into agreeing with her next proposal. Teddy and I will attend the party costumed as a pirate…and his parrot. I have been instructed to spend my days going forward showing pictures of parrots to Teddy to encourage him to make his hair multi-colored and feathery.

Frankly, I think I should be encouraging him to run away, instead. His mother seems to have an unhealthy fixation on the idea of transforming him into some sort of animal for the holidays.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated October 27, 1998

Remus brought Hermione home with him for dinner today. They happened to walk in on Dora and me (and Teddy as well, of course) while Dora had me up on an improvised platform to tailor my pirate breeches.

Dora is, surprisingly enough, a very competent tailor. I suppose I shouldn’t be so shocked—as a metamorphagus, her Auror work is almost entirely undercover, and she has to come up with clothes to match whatever disguise she takes on. Her trademark clumsiness was still in effect—I think she pricked herself with the needle at least a dozen times an hour—but she still did a more than credible job with the trousers.

But of course, once Hermione walked through the door, I was less interested in admiring the line of the trousers and more interested in interpreting the look on Hermione’s face when she caught sight of me in nothing more than an undershirt and the tight fitting breeches.

She broke off in the middle of a sentence and didn’t speak again for upwards of thirty seconds. A good sign—a very good sign, indeed. Maybe it won’t be so difficult to capture her attention away from the Gryffindors, after all.

~*~*~*~

Entry from the Diary of Draco Malfoy, dated October 31, 1998

My hands are shaking. I can barely write, but I have to get this down on paper so that when I wake up in the morning, I’ll have proof that it wasn’t just a dream.

I kissed her. I kissed Hermione Jean Granger—not on the cheek—and she kissed me back.

I can hardly believe it’s true. It truly felt like something out of a dream—like a moment from any one of the dreams I’ve had for the past few months (all right, for the past few years—but most especially in the past few months). In fact, the only thing convincing me that I’m not dreaming right now is that my dream-Hermione wouldn’t have made me wait so long for a kiss.

And she certainly wouldn’t have put me through that utterly miserable party, first.

Yes, the party truly was every bit as bad as I had feared it would be, if not actually worse. I love Hermione, and I have gradually (and reluctantly) grown to accept my cousin’s spouse, but as far as I’m concerned, if the rest of the members of that poor excuse for a Hogwarts house took the path of the lemmings and formed rank and file to jump off a cliff, then the world could only be the better for it. Now that would be an occasion for a party. A proper party—as unlike tonight’s exercise in loutish mannerlessness as possible.

Sweet Circe, the noise! My ears are still ringing. Part of the problem was the music that Dora had blaring, but at least I understood the sense in that—clearly, she intended to block out all the noise of the Gryffinboorish voices. Alas, her noble effort failed, and they only spoke louder to be heard over the din. It would appear that a clause in the Gryffindor charter forbids anyone from speaking at a volume below a dull roar after his second drink.

A second clause appears to ban chewing with the mouth closed. They all showed a decidedly vulgar inclination to talk, laugh, and frequently sing along with the already ear-piercing music while their mouths were entirely full of food. I’ve seen livestock with better table manners.

But I will admit, while annoyances such as the noise and the utterly unappreciated view of my fellow guests’ half-chewed food were definitely factors in my aggravation, it was their more…interpersonal manners that truly got under my skin.

The witches swarmed me, with downright predatory looks in their eyes. I felt like a wounded gazelle being set upon by vultures…and I have no doubt they would have devoured me alive if they could.

I was already well aware of the almost pheromonal effect that a devastatingly attractive man with a baby in his arms could have on muggle women (thanks to my experiences at the disaster-stricken Park of Doom) but I had hoped that witches would have a little more class. Is a hint of subtlety too much to ask? Or do they believe that wizards genuinely enjoy being eyed—and handled!—like a (sinfully delicious) piece of meat?

Within five minutes of my entrance to the party (fashionably late, of course. Just because I lived at the party’s location was no excuse to do anything so uncouth as arrive on time), the witches were three-deep around me. Oh, they claimed it was so they could coo over Teddy (who had, indeed, managed to make his hair go multicolored and feathery to everyone’s oft-stated delight) but I knew what they were really after. They’d talk about Teddy, but their eyes—and, on more than one occasion, their hands—would be glued to my tight-fitting pirate costume. Damn them! Hermione was the only one I wanted admiring the view (or exploring the assets) and thanks to the mob of women, I could barely even catch sight of her across the room. And what I could see, I didn’t like.

She looked beautiful.

Okay, that’s a lie; she didn’t look beautiful at all. In truth, she looked more than a little ridiculous, dressed up as Bridget Wenlock, the follically-challenged witch who was the first to establish the magical properties of the number seven. The costume was very…accurate, both to the woman in question and the period in which she lived, but it was hardly an ensemble to inspire sonnets, or odes, or even dirty limericks.

Honestly, though, we’re wizards; and Hermione, in particular, is one of the most magically competent human beings I’ve ever met. If she had chosen to, she could have waved her wand and easily achieved the blandly uninteresting perfection the other witches sported. But instead, Hermione’s display showed that she’s more than merely beautiful—she’s fascinating and compelling, and brilliantly, utterly unique. She was the only witch in the room worth a second glance, and no amount of bad hair or hideous glasses could change that.

I didn’t stop at two glances, of course. I kept as close an eye on her as I could as she stood entirely too far away from me and entirely too close to a steady stream of Gryffindor wizards.

While the Gryffindor witches couldn’t seem to get close enough to me, the Gryffindor wizards seemed to have decided to give me a wide berth. Normally, I’d be entirely in favor of that decision, but for some reason, they seemed to conclude that the best way to avoid me would be to stay as close to Hermione as possible. While their dates descended on me like a man-hungry mob (and honestly, what’s the good of Gryffindors being so foolishly brave if they’re not willing to step up and shield their dates from my sinister attraction?), they all lined up to pay court to the only woman whose undivided attention I wanted—and didn’t have.

To look at her, one would think that it had just been discovered that every man in the room was actually her long-lost brother. (Because she sees them all as brothers and nothing more. Brothers. Really. Her affection for them all is purely sisterly.) She positively beamed smiles at each man as he approached her, and then she’d hug him, and sometimes even peck him on the cheek. And after that, she’d spend upwards of an eternity or so (or perhaps five minutes—same difference) talking to him, and laughing with him, and continually smiling at him, before hugging him again and turning to the next man in line.

She looked in my direction a few times and smiled whenever I caught her eye…but the smile seemed a little bit forced, and she made no move to come any closer to me. Teddy was getting squirmy, I was feeling hot and claustrophobic from all the women pressed in around me when the front door opened again, and Ronald Weasley walked in with what I can only assume is his wife. One look at her was enough to tell me that Weasley must have been very drunk indeed when he ended up in bed with that one. Horses have sexier features.

For a moment, I felt a glimmer of satisfaction. After all, if the Weasel was stupid enough to let Hermione out of his grasp then he utterly and completely deserved to wake up to a face like that every morning. But my momentary happiness fled when I looked over at Hermione and saw the expression on her face.

She flinched, ever so slightly, at the sight of him with his wife hanging on his arm. She didn’t look heartbroken—I’m not sure if he ever truly had her heart, and even if he did, I’m fairly certain she’s put that behind her now—but she still looked hurt and a little sad. The Weasel’s witch is nearly into her third trimester, and her pregnant belly was very visible. (Without a doubt, she’d chosen a costume that highlighted it, the bitch. Clearly, she wanted to emphasize her admission card—she wasn’t a Gryffindor or a hero, but a Gryffindor hero had knocked her up, and that earned her party privileges.) I could only imagine how Hermione must have felt, having her proof of her former boyfriend’s infidelity waved so smugly in her face.

I wanted to get to her so badly that I might have resorted to knocking witches’ heads together in another moment…but then the expression on Hermione’s face changed again, freezing me in place. The forced, faked smile she’d directed at the Weasleys was replaced by a grinning beam of pure delight as she squealed “Harry!” and threw herself into the arms of Potter the Prattastic who had entered directly behind the Weasleys.

A new and utterly unwelcome realization came to me, and for the first time, I truly considered the possibility of a pairing between Hermione and Potter.

I know it sounds daft to say that I had never thought of it before, but truly, there had been no reason to ever consider it. Rita Skeeter and the Hogwarts gossips had always speculated about a Potter/Granger matchup, but that was just because they loved juicy news, and the Boil Who Lived was always a subject of interest. It would be far less exciting to guess and gossip about Potter’s two best friends falling in love with each other instead of either one of them forming a tendre for him.

For all that, though, I could see the truth clear as day. I always had an eye on Hermione, nearly for as long as I’ve known her, and it hardly took a seer to pick up on what so few could be bothered to realize—practically from first year Halloween on, Hermione only had eyes for Weasley. It never even occurred to her to fall in love with Potter because Weasley was all that she could see.

But Weasley was firmly and decidedly out of the picture now. If Potter had had any scruples about paying attention to Hermione for fear of stepping on his best friend’s toes, he’d have no reason for any such fears anymore. She was utterly unattached—and better than beautiful—and he was also unattached, and too damn lucky for anyone else’s good. He swept her up in his arms and spun her in a circle while she laughed and clung to him tightly, and I felt my stomach twist into knots.

I decided I’d been a fool to think that she could want me; to believe that our letters and conversations and shared smiles had meant anything to her other than friendship. She could have Potter by snapping her finger—probably could have had him all along if she’d bothered to notice him instead of the Weasel—and what girl in her right mind would chose me over him? Aside from the money and fame that I knew she didn’t care about, Potter had been unswervingly and devotedly her friend for years while I’d been busy trying to get her attention by making her cry.

Hermione’s sadness over the Weasel bride had made me ache to get closer to her and comfort her…but her happiness in Potter’s arms just made me want to get as far away as possible. Fortunately, Teddy seemed to pick up on the shift in my mood, and he started whimpering. That gave me an excuse to get away from the grabby women, and I started to elbow my way through the crowd, aiming for the last known location of Dora. If I dropped Teddy off with her, maybe I could head up to my room for a bit and get my head together before I did something utterly foolish and humiliating…like cry in public.

I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I certainly wasn’t paying attention to much of anything in path, the folly of which struck me mere moments later—too late to stop my momentum—as I stepped on what my foot recognized as the shape of that bloody Knight Bus toy. Within moments, I was flying through the air, colliding with a body in my path, and driving the pair of us—along with Teddy—into the water-filled bin that Dora had set up for bobbing for apples.

I closed my eyes for a moment and waited for my body to have the good grace to expire from excess humiliation…but despite my best efforts, I remained firmly in the land of the living. Humiliation utterly failed to kill me, even when I opened my eyes and realized that the body I’d dragged into the tub with me was no other than Hermione Granger.

She looked at me. I looked at her. We looked at each other. And then, all of the sudden, the utter ridiculousness of the situation seemed to strike both of us at once, and we burst into laughter. The crowd directly around us had fallen into a hush when we’d made impact with the water (not that they were capable of hushing much; the music was still loud, as were the voices from the part of the tightly-packed crowd that wasn’t close enough to see—or even be aware of—what had happened), but at our laughter, they all seemed to conclude that no real damage had been done and quickly returned to their conversations.

“What a mess,” Hermione giggled a few moments later, when she calmed down enough to speak. “Poor Teddy’s costume is utterly ruined.”

It was indeed, although Teddy himself hardly seemed to mind. He had grabbed hold of the rim of the tub when we had fallen in and was bobbing himself up and down in imitation of the apples, while giggling delightedly in imitation of Hermione and me.

“Yours isn’t much better, I’m afraid,” I replied, trying not to swallow my tongue as I finally took in just how her water-logged costume clung to her body.

“Nor yours,” she replied, her voice sounding a little breathy as her eyes seemed to focus on my chest, clearly finding something fascinating in the soaked through material of my thin white pirate’s shirt. She shivered a bit, and I suddenly realized how cold and wet and uncomfortable she must be—as cold and wet and uncomfortable as I certainly was, once I bothered to notice anything other than the water-slicked Hermione Granger sitting next to me.

“Here, let me help you,” I offered, standing up and offering her a hand. “Although,” I added, smiling through clenched teeth, “I’m surprised Potter isn’t on hand to play the hero and sweep you out of disaster.”

“True,” she laughed, taking my hand and letting me pull her up. “I’ll have to scold him later for choosing to go flirt with other girls instead of rescuing his best friend from dastardly water bins.”

“Flirt with…” I gasped, spinning around to try and catch sight of Potter through the crowd. He was at a bit of a distance from us—which explained why he hadn’t come over to help Hermione—but I was still able to see him clearly, blushing while he smiled at some blonde I didn’t recognize. But who cared who she was? She wasn’t Hermione, and that was all that mattered.

A clear, shining epiphany came to me like a clarion call, and I basked in its radiance as I acknowledged its truth.

Potter’s an idiot.

It was a simple fact I had known for years but had before never fully appreciated. Yes, with Hermione hurting after Weasley’s desertion, Potter could have won her heart if he’d bothered to try…but he hadn’t bothered, because he simply wasn’t bright enough to realize that he should. Maybe someday, ten or twenty years down the road, he’d wake up at three in the morning with the sudden, heartbreaking realization that he’d settled for so much less than the perfection that he could have had, but if he chose—in the here and now—to be too slow to realize what he was missing, then that was all the better for me.

Hope sprung through me, almost painful in its intensity, and I staggered at its impact, literally wavering on my feet. Hermione grabbed hold of me to steady me, and I wrapped my arms around her, unable to resist the temptation to anchor myself to her.

Teddy, who I’d almost forgotten, chose that moment to make his voice heard, in his very first, all-important word.

“Kiss!” he yelled out, as loudly as he could (and the little urchin’s voice always did carry). “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

Hermione and I had both turned in unison to stare at Teddy when the word first came out, but as its meaning sunk in, we slowly faced one another again.

She met my eyes for only a moment before dropping her gaze. “Wh-what a silly thing for him to say,” she stammered (though I noted that she made no move to extricate herself from my arms). “As if we would…would…”

I didn’t let her finish. In the next moment, my lips were on hers, and the only sound she made after that was a soft moan as she positively melted into my kiss.

(Oh yeah, she definitely melted. I’ve still got it. Heh.)

It wasn’t until we came up for air that I noticed the crowd observing us, with Dora and Remus (and a sopping-wet Teddy in his father’s arms) front and center, cheering loudly.

There is a vague, slight possibility that even I might have blushed (and Dora claims she has photographic proof that I grinned like an idiot, but that can’t possibly be true).

Hermione, bless her, took charge, latching on to my hand and announcing that the two of us had to go and clean ourselves up. There were plenty of hoots and whistles as she dragged me behind her into the loo and closed the door behind us, but they didn’t seem to bother her, so I wasn’t about to let them bother me. If she didn’t have any problem with all the Gyffindolts seeing us joined at the hand (shortly after being joined at the lip) then it was certainly more than all right with me. (Hopefully once all those grabby women saw that I was well and properly claimed, they’d leave me bloody well alone and let Hermione take over all groping duties where my all-too-molestable body is concerned.)

As soon as the door was closed, I had her in my arms again. “Merlin, I’ve wanted to do that for ages,” I gasped when I remembered how to speak again.

“I’ve wanted you to do that for ages,” she retorted, snuggling into me.

“You have?”

“Mmm,” she replied, stepping up on tiptoe to capture my mouth again.

Right she was; words weren’t really needed anymore at that point. After that, it wasn’t until repeated knocks on the door reminded us that we were hogging the only downstairs loo that we reluctantly separated and began to clean ourselves up. Hermione had us dry and reasonably tidy with just a few waves of her wand, but I was pleased to note that she made no move to fix her kiss-swollen lips that made it all too obvious what we’d been up to. (Not that there could be any doubt, of course. Still, I enjoyed leaving my mark on her—and not just on her lips. She made no move to heal those, either.)

She seemed a little shy now that she was no longer trying to crawl into my skin, but she smiled brightly and instantly nodded her agreement when I asked if I could take her to dinner tomorrow night. (Still not sure what I’m going to do for money, but I daresay Dora will be willing to contribute to the cause.)

Nothing could kill my euphoria—not even the sight of Weasley and Potter stationed outside the bathroom door, awaiting us with grim expressions on their faces. They whisked Hermione off straightaway for what was, no doubt, a stern lecture on the folly of giving in to my irresistible wiles. She let them drag her off, but not before she rolled her eyes at me and squeezed my hand.

I was surprised to find myself feeling spectacularly unworried. I know my girl; they won’t be able to talk her out of having me if I’m what she wants, and from the way that she kissed me, I was finally sure and certain that I am.

Dora and Remus came round to congratulate me, and that started the rush. I spent most of the rest of the party fielding off a whole slew of people offering congratulations (for the most part half-hearted, especially when compared to Dora’s unfettered exuberance), mingled with barely veiled warnings of what they’d do to me if I ended up breaking Hermione’s heart. Perhaps all those Gryffindor wizards do see her as a little sister after all, because they were certainly very brotherly in handing out the warnings and threats.

No matter. I have no intention of hurting her—my plan is more along the lines of making her the happiest witch in the world. And she certainly seemed happy when the party finally ended, and she got near me again to kiss me goodbye. She had stars in her eyes and a wide smile on her face by the time she pulled away, telling me that she’d come by at seven tomorrow so we could head out to dinner.

I believe there were others who said goodnight to me as they headed out, but I can’t really remember. Everything else seemed to blur together as I said my goodnights and goodbyes and headed up here to record it all on paper.

So this is how the story ends—or, if you prefer, begins—with the Draco Malfoy-who-was all but obliterated, and my life as far from what I expected as is humanly possible. For so many years, I thought my destiny was carved in stone, unchangeable and unerasable. But then I lost my fortune, found my cousin, lost my dignity in a job fit only for a House Elf, discovered a way to make my mother proud, lost my heart, and gained Hermione Granger’s love in return.

So this is what freedom is like.

I think I like it after all.

THE END