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jomiddlemarch · 11 months ago

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to be two chaoses

The nightmares began after Rose was born.

Resumed was the more accurate term, as Hermione had nearly become dependent on Dreamless Sleep within a few weeks of Harry’s victory over Voldemort, when the multiple years’ worth of trauma, especially the torture she’d experienced at Malfoy Manor, had come bearing down on her like the Hogwarts Express on steroids, an expression Harry would pretend not to understand and Justin would shrug at in commiseration. Her parents, sequestered in Mugglish obscurity in Melbourne, would not have been any help if she’d been able to get to them and restore their memories, something she repeated to herself as a mantra, since she couldn’t get to them and it turned out she couldn’t restore their memories, orphaned in a way no one around her grasped. There was a nightmare about that, but it wasn’t in the top tier, such that she almost welcomed its arrival; it was the only way she saw her parents when they knew who she was to any degree. Though it ended in devastation, it always started with her mum smiling at her.

If Ron hadn’t been able to help her, they never would have stayed together. She knew that in some deep, indefinite part of herself, just as she knew not to tell him. There had been lust, initially fierce and apparently unslakable, and the affection of their schoolyears together, the shared jokes, the homely memories of jacket potatoes and Madam Longbottom’s horrific flower-pot hats secured with jeweled pins that were nearly as deadly as a wand, the scent of the first snow, and so many recollections in candlelight, but none of it would have been enough if he hadn’t taken her into his arms and held her the first night she woke breathless from a scream she’d swallowed, the arm Bellatrix had cut burning terribly, the scar from Dolohov as heavy as the weights they’d used to press witches with in Salem. He’d said her name completely, not dropping a syllable, Hermione, and then I’ve got you and nothing else, letting his heartbeat and his breath be the only sounds she could hear. He’d grown into his frame that last year on the run when she’d starved in the woods, losing her period and handfuls of her brittle curls, and he’d somehow known how loosely to hold her so that she was able to nestle against him. The fragrance of the herbs his mother used in her laundry spells was faint but present, familiar. There was nothing sexual about his embrace then, but there was an intimacy greater than any fucking in the way he reacted, the inviolable memory of the agonized way he’d cried out when he’d heard her being brutalized that lived between them, as potent as the delight he took in her ecstasy.

She’d wondered that first night if it was a fluke, his ability to comfort her, and had told herself not to expect anything the next time but she’d been glad to be wrong. She put aside the sedative potions in their battered flasks and let herself fall asleep with a book in her hands, her hair still damp from the bath she’d taken, able to rely on his presence in the dark, the slight gleam of bronze in the moonlight that was his hair, the nearly grey blue of his eyes. They didn’t speak of it during the day, other than the infrequent mornings he greeted her with all right then instead of a nuzzled kiss to her temple or collarbone. The nightmares began as an onslaught and they waned slowly, slow enough Ron didn’t even ask when she might consider having children, though Hermione recognized the Weasley impulse to obscure their losses with babies, Fleur glowingly enceinte within a few weeks of Victoire’s birth, Ginny’s hand lingering over the small matinee sweaters her mother knit by the dozen. Percy’s return to the fold was eased by his hand at the small of his bride Penelope’s back, her radiance reflected in Molly’s face when they announced they expected a set of twins by the solstice. Ron gave Hermione what she needed to sleep and he gave her time to let the past become the past, her bloody, broken youth a shore increasingly distant. He couldn’t give her everything, but what he did was enough she’d been willing to let herself conceive the future he wanted so badly. He’d wept when she told him, burying his face in her shoulder, wrapping his arms around her instead of laying one large hand on her belly. It was his hands on either side of her spine that reassured her she’d been right.

The pregnancy was ordinary enough. Her only real dilemma was how to satisfy her cravings for Branston Pickle and Hobnobs without offending Ron’s mother or drawing too much attention from his father, whose fascination with the miscellany of Muggle life hadn’t declined with the end of the war. Ron, displaying the thoughtful observation she’d first found impossibly attractive while watching him play Wizard chess, maintained a calm affection towards her in company, a quiet tenderness when they were alone that made her worry sometimes he was trying to be someone he wasn’t just to please her. And then there were the times she found him gazing out a rain-streaked window at the Burrow. She knew he was thinking of Fred, of Tonks and Remus, of the scars on Bill’s face, the brother Ron most resembled, and she knew he’d been forged by grief as much as by victory. Hermione ate, she slept, she complained of heartburn and was told she must be carrying a ginger with curls as wild as her own. She read what passed for child-rearing books in the Wizarding world, nearly decapitated Harry chucking the third book across the sitting room in an only-partially hormonally mediated rage and bought every glossy paperback on the display at Foyles, which gave her some idea of what she might expect if she’d been a Muggle and included the concept of a birth-plan. Plans, as ever, held an irresistible appeal and were nearly as tranquilizing as Professor Binns.

When she mentioned that bit about the birth-plan to Ron while they were visiting his parents, George hanging about as usual, Percy working on some document at what passed for a desk over in a corner Hermione couldn’t remember previously existing, her mother-in-law just managed to keep from saying “Nonsense.” Hermione could clearly see that was what Molly had wanted to say and that she decided against it at the last minute after taking in at the book gripped tightly in Hermione’s hand and then Ron’s blue glare. Arthur kept fiddling with an immersion blender the way a Muggle child would handle a Rubik’s cube.

“A birth-plan is a very good idea, dear, but you’ll need to follow a witch’s plan and I do think, with the number of other witches you’ll require, you’ll be more comfortable at home or here at the Burrow,” Molly announced. Hermione glanced around and saw everyone present agreed with her mother-in-law.

“I’ll need to—or else what?” Hermione asked, curiosity outweighing her annoyance at Molly’s declaration.

“It’ll be too dangerous, for you and the baby,” Molly said. “Wild magic’s always an issue during delivery. For a witch as powerful as you and the baby likely to be the same—”

“It might be a boy,” Hermione said.

“Yes, I suppose it might,” Molly replied, her tone now entirely humoring-the-pregnant-daughter-in-law. She was convinced Hermione was carrying a girl, though Hermione and Ron had declined to find out when offered the chance at St. Mungo’s. “I meant the baby is likely to be magically gifted, considering her, that is, their parents. You’ll need at least four witches and seven would be safer. Obviously, Ginny and I will be there but you must decide who else you’d like.”

“I don’t know,” Hermione said. She’d never imagined childbirth to be organized like a tea-party. “I hadn’t thought to have anyone with me except Ron. And a midwife.”

Would she have wanted her mother with her, if she’d had the choice? She didn’t let herself wonder.

“If you don’t mind, dear, I’d suggest Augusta Longbottom,” Molly said briskly, making it clear that the if you don’t mindwas merely pro forma.

“Neville’s gran?” Hermione said.

“She’s a very powerful witch and she’s quite fond of you,” Molly said. “She’s got better control than Minerva, though I’ll never admit that I’ve said that, and she’s no little experience with a laboring mother.”

“I’ll have Luna,” Hermione said. Ron gave her a quizzical look but knew enough not to say anything else, though she could see the effort if took for him to keep from mouthing nargles? at her. “That’s four, that’s enough.”

“Seven would be less dangerous—"

Who else would she ask? Part of her longed to throw up her hands and tell Molly to stuff it, she’d rely on the NHS to see her through, she still had her card, but then the baby kicked, sharpish, as if to scold her for being an absolute ninny, and Ron was still holding his tongue when she knew it cost him to be quiet. He worried about them both, she could tell he’d be a good father, and Molly was only trying to make sure they both came through it, privy to knowledge Hermione couldn’t easily learn from any book.

“I’ll have Luna, but I’ll ask Andomeda, in case Luna isn’t able to come,” Hermione said. “There’s no trouble with five if they both show up, is there?”

“No. There might be a wobble, but nothing Augusta and I couldn’t manage between us and Andromeda’s a light hand,” Molly said.

“A light hand with pastry?” Ron asked.

“That too,” Arthur put in. “I believe your mother meant in channeling a magical surfeit, but she does make a very satisfying treacle tart. Not a patch on your mother’s, but close. Quite close.”

Molly was right.

Seven would have been safer, but Hermione and Rose bloody well squeaked through, as Ginny put it, earning herself a sharp glance and then an approving nod from Augusta Longbottom. The toucan-adorned hat had come off as Hermione entered transition and Madam Longbottom had had to exert herself to contain the burst of near Fiendfyre Hermione had unleashed. Luna had commented, with clear admiration in her usual dreamy tone, that Hermione was very equitable when it came to her elemental wild magic, as they’d had to contend with not only flames but a gale, a wave that overwhelmed Molly’s hastily conjured hip-waders, and a trembling underfoot that had made Arthur pop his head in and ask whether he ought to firecall St. Mungo’s or the Department of Mysteries. The gnomes had all cleared out and there was an ominous odor of brimstone seeping through the latched windows.

It was terrifying. What she was capable of and how proud they all were of her for it. She nearly burnt down the Burrow and Molly was as red-faced as she’d been battling Bellatrix Lestrange at Hogwarts by the time the baby was crowning, but she had a smile Hermione had never seen directed at herself before, a deep satisfaction that only grew more pronounced when Rose was delivered and discovered to be a little ginger witch, complete with a birthmark shaped like a phoenix’s tail-feather at the nape of her neck. Every peach on the trees Neville had painstakingly espaliered on the south wall withered in an instant and Augusta Longbottom only remarked, “Well done, you.” Luna had almost suffocated before she’d thrown up a Protego and her eyes were bright as she patted Hermione on the shoulder and Ginny had let out a long whistle, as if Hermione had captained the Harpies to a world championship when the Burrow had rung with the sound of the good china shattering.

A new marker appeared on Molly’s clock, the hand for Hermione pointing to “A Mortal Danger” instead of “in.”

Ron grasped Hermione’s dismay, but he was more concerned with her health and Rose’s. Once reassured, he kissed her softly and then asked to hold his daughter. Something about seeing his big hands cradling the swaddled baby and the tears in his eyes when he looked back at her made Hermione think everything would be all right.

That was probably the hormones and the residual magic kickback.

She chalked it up to sleep deprivation, since she was nursing and Rose was a little colicky and Molly said, no, believe it or not, dear, there wasn’t a spell that was safe to use to help settle a colicky little witch. Hermione knew this meant there was some Dark magic that would do the trick, but she’d probably be sacrificing her pinky finger or years of her life or Rose’s, so she gritted her teeth and reminded herself she’d get to sleep again. At some point. Likely before Rose went to Hogwarts.

The first dreams to return were from her earliest days of Hogwarts. The troll, the bathroom, the terror of being alone in her curtained bed and hearing Parvati and Lavender chattering away, but now there was an overlay of Rose’s crying to mix with the tears Hermione had swallowed back or sobbed out silently. In the manner of dreams, the smallest details were vivid—the nap of the velvet bed curtains, the shimmer Moaning Myrtle made in the mirror above the sinks—and yet Hermione woke with only a sense of dread, no memory of the lengthy half-imagined conversations she’d had with Harry or Ron.

Those were the easiest dreams to deal with.

Days turned into months. Rose grew, her silky ginger hair showing a decided curl, her eyes the same warm brown as Ginny’s. She babbled and scooted, crawled and stood and ran, and only Hermione hoped it would be a little while longer before her magic manifested. Hermione’s dreams grew darker, more terrifying. There were a thousand Horcruxes. Harry didn’t survive the final battle. Ron turned away and didn’t come back.

Snape bled to death in her hands.

Fenrir Greyback took her in the flight of the Harrys.

Azkaban. Gringotts. The Room of Requirement.

Bellatrix, laughing, singing, coaxing. Cruciatus until Hermione woke with tears in her hair, afraid it was her brain leaking out. Ron calling out for her under the chandelier, Dobby whisking her away, the knife in Harry’s back.

Everything impossible that had never happened.

Everything possible that had.

They became less gruesome, more disturbing. She thought she might be losing her mind. She worried about having another child and leaving Ron with two children to raise alone, being locked up in the Janus Thickey ward. Not knowing she was locked up, trying to play the out-of-tune piano because she had once wanted to play Liszt’s “La Campanella” at Carnegie Hall. She couldn’t decide which would be worse.

She spent as much time doing Arithmancy as she could and walked away when the conversation turning to curse-breaking or the old days. Hugo was conceived, carried, and delivered with far less fanfare and commotion than Rose and he was a solemn-eyed baby who needed a lot of rocking in the night. She dozed but didn’t sleep deeply enough to dream. It was a respite.

She grew used to it. She perfected her glamour for the shadows beneath her eyes. She learned to manage her hair after a jaunt to a Muggle stylist in London who scolded her for using a brush and sent her off with a bag of oils and conditioners and advice on a silk head-wrap for sleeping in. She worked her way up in the Ministry and Rose levitated herself to their roof along with the seemingly immortal Crookshanks. Hugo made the apple trees bloom at Yule. She lived. She dreamed. She considered the alternatives she’d dreamed and tried to be satisfied with silence.

Rose began to resemble Hermione’s mother.

Hugo hummed off-key under his breath like her father.

Rose turned eleven, got her letter, found Hermione’s old copy of Hogwarts: A History and packed it first along with a set of Extendable Ears from her Uncle George.

They went to the station platform.

Hermione saw Draco Malfoy for the first time in over a decade. His wife fussed with their son, the strap of his satchel. Ron reminded Rose that the Hogwarts pumpkin pasties wouldn’t be as good as Nan’s but she wasn’t to let the house-elves know or that would be all she had to eat for a week.

Draco looked back at her.

He knew.

He sent the letter to her office at the Ministry and not their home, the thoughtful tact therein encompassed being the primary reason she responded.

Yes, she would meet him at the coffee-shop he’d specified. The time was agreeable. No, she did not need directions in Muggle London.

She didn’t tell Ron about the letter or her answer. There needn’t be anything to tell. She knew how much omission was required for their marriage. She loved him. There was no betrayal.

She wore Muggle trousers and a cashmere jersey that hadn’t come from Molly’s needles beneath robes she Transfigured into a Burberry knock-off trench. It was a kind of armor, like the wand holster strapped to her forearm, the leather charmed to feel like silk and be stronger than dragonhide. She left early, to get there first. She wouldn’t be taken by surprise again.

Draco was sitting at a table off to the side when she arrived. He’d left her the place backed up to the wall, leaving himself the vulnerable party, the nape of his neck bare, his kidneys neatly framed by the slats of the chair. When she got close enough, she saw his eclipse-bright hair had begun to turn grey. The cufflinks at his wrists were malachite, neatly secured.

There was a tea-service set between them. The steam smelled of bergamot and smoke, an Earl Grey made with lapsang souchong. Her favorite but not a secret, something it would not be difficult or intrusive to discover, something that showed attention, discretion, and care. Slytherin, as always. He rose when she approached, waited to sit until she’d settled herself. His old-fashioned manners were exercised without any awkwardness, the politeness he would have shown to any witch.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet, Madam Granger,” he began, using the title she had decided on after completing her Arithmancy mastery via correspondence under Professor Ergodic. When Bill had pointed out the more traditional address was Domina Nimue Granger, Ron had nodded and stopped making his incipient fuss.

“Do we need to be so formal?” Hermione asked. “We’ve known each other since we were eleven.”

“Whatever you prefer, Hermione,” Draco said, his voice giving a slight upward inflection to her name. She couldn’t recall him ever using it before, only Granger said with a sneer, but the boy who’d smirked seemed long gone from the solemn, careful man sitting before her. “You are the one doing me the favor—”

“Am I? What exactly do you mean?”

“You read my letter. You responded. You showed up,” he said. “You didn’t need to do any of it.”

“I read the letter you sent after the trial,” she replied.

It had been delivered by a splendid eagle owl she did not recognize, the parchment hand-written in a perfect copperplate hand. The opening section had been rendered in ancient Etruscan, indicating the gravity of the statement, a Pureblood ritual she’d had to ask Ron, Molly and finally Neville’s gran to explain to understand the significance thereof: there was no greater level of ceremony invoked, the abasement of the writer compleat. If it had been a final examination paper for a mastery, it could not have been more exquisitely and thoughtfully written. It was a letter than required no reply and sought none, a detailed acknowledgement of Draco’s transgressions against her. Still, it went across her inarguably upper middle-class background to fail to send some kind of response, so she’d managed to find some monogrammed stationery her Aunt Judith had given her for a birthday gift and had penned a quick note in her crabbed hand to say Draco’s apology was duly noted and accepted. She had balked at wishing him well in his future endeavors, but to be fair, she had been eighteen, effectively orphaned, unable to sleep more than three hours in a night, and had been known to hold a grudge.

“Yes, I know. I didn’t mean that letter however,” Draco said. “I meant the one I sent last week. After the train station.”

“You didn’t say what you wanted to talk about,” Hermione replied.

“I thought you would be more likely to show up if I didn’t,” he said. “Your curiosity remains renowned—”

“Are you insulting me?” Hermione asked, without any of the heat of her girlhood.

“Not at all, though I should be able to express myself more skillfully than this, if you’re wondering,” he said. There was a wryness in his tone that was new to her. “I wrote because of the dreams—”

“What dreams?” she interrupted.

“I have them too,” he said gently.

“I don’t know what you mean, why you think we have anything in common, it’s mad—”

“They are a torment,” he said. Like four notes, the Tristan chord creating the opening between them, leaving her struck by the misery in his voice, the utter candor.

“I—they don’t—” She could not finish the sentence, could not think of what to say next. Draco picked up the teapot and poured them each a cup, stirring a lump of sugar into his own, never once hitting the china with the spoon’s lip.

“You’re not going mad,” he said.

“I know that,” she snapped.

“Then you’re ahead of me, as per usual. I’ve wondered, worried, for years. When Scorpius was born, I thought, maybe I’d be locked up in a straitjacket somewhere by the time his magic emerged. If it did, if he wasn’t a Squib,” Draco said.

“You were worried your heir would be a Squib?” Hermione said.

“I was worried the son of two Purebloods with known genetic disorders and curse-damage would be a Squib. I was worried I wouldn’t be there to defend him from the rest of the family,” Draco said. “You wouldn’t have had the same worries. Hybrid vigor, brightest witch, and the Weasley-Prewett line—”

“They thought we might both die in childbirth from my wild magic,” Hermione said. Draco cocked his head to one side and nodded. “We should have had seven witches present.”

“I did hear something about it,” Draco said. “My mother was quite impressed, though she did say they should have let the Burrow and all its tat burn to the ground and start over with the Ministry money.”

“What?”

“There’s money set aside for those situations, a fund. It’s because it only occurs when there is a surfeit of power. It’s in the Ministry’s interests to make sure a family with such a witch remains properly housed,” Draco explained.

“Oh. I thought maybe I’d die when she was born,” Hermione said.

“And then the dreams would be over,” Draco finished.

“Yes,” Hermione said. She took a sip of the tea, the universal panacea, unsurprised when once again it did nothing for her. It was properly steeped, she’d give him that, since he hadn’t been able to use magic in the Muggle café.

“It was Bellatrix,” he said. “You and I, I believe we’re the last sane survivors of her spells. That’s why we have the dreams, why they don’t attenuate.”

“Dark magic then,” Hermione said.

“Not exactly,” Draco said. “There was something wild about her even before she turned to Dark magic and you know the Blacks are given to madness, throw off restraint like a stallion bucking the bridle.”

“Is that all, then? I suppose it’s helpful, to have some idea why, though it’s not much of a relief,” Hermione said. She refrained from pointing out he was also of the Black line.

“Master Mamu at Uagadou has a theory we’ve been corresponding about,” Draco said. “Oneironautika, whether a charmed potion could function as an inducer, what a traveler could reliably affect within the dream structure, it catalysis is the only viable intervention. But Neville—”

“Neville knows? He’s been writing to Mamu?” Hermione exclaimed.

“They prefer to Floo. Such a mess, all that ash, but I suppose it’s nothing to the greenhouses and Bubotuber pus,” Draco said. “Neville’s been quite helpful, even though it’s not his area of interest. But his parents, well. He and his grandmother have years of observation to draw on.”

“Does Neville know about me?”

“Only if you’ve told him. He may have put two and two together, he’s quite brilliant for someone who was such a duffer,” Draco said with such fondness Hermione could not be roused to irritation. “I can’t imagine he’d ever speak of it to anyone, even if he suspects. Though if your glamour starts to fail, exquisite work, that, I shouldn’t be surprised if he sends along his alternative to Dreamless. He uses heather honey in it, it’s a revelation, but it’s not as much dream-lessening as muting.”

“You want my help,” Hermione said, having figured it out. It was what anyone ever wanted from her. “With Master Mamu, Neville, you want me to work the Arithmancy, perhaps to interpolate the runes—”

“No,” Draco said. “Rather, if you wish, you are most welcome, a witch of your caliber could only be a tremendous asset, but that’s not why I wrote you. That’s not what I wanted.”

“What do you want? Pardon me if my directness offends your Slytherin sensibilities,” Hermione said, tired, the tea in her cup cold, the broken night beckoning.

“I want to help you,” Draco said. “To make you feel better.”

“No one can do that,” Hermione said. Ron did what he could, steady now as he hadn’t been in their youth, astute enough not to speak of it.

“I can,” Draco said.

“You can,” Hermione repeated. “You can do something no one else can and beyond being able to, you additionally want to. There’s no life-debt between us, Draco, even if I believed you, there’s no reason for you—”

“I didn’t protect you when I could, Hermione,” he said. Had his eyes been lighter when he was a boy or had they always been this stormy shade, grey clouds over a grey sea?

“She would’ve killed us both,” Hermione said.

For a moment, she was lying on her back looking up at the chandelier, the bare outline of a girl around nothing but pain. She couldn’t not have told anyone her name if she’d been asked. Ron had been screaming but his voice had been distant, as distant as the future and the past, while Draco’s eyes on her had been a tether. They’d been bound in that second, in hopeless, blameless recognition and agony, and there had been some tiny, inviolate spark of herself that loved him then in a way she could never love anyone else. “You do mean when Bellatrix cursed me, don’t you?”

“I didn’t protect you then. Not before. Not after,” Draco said.

“Well, we were enemies,” Hermione said. She waved over a waitress, asked for a fresh pot of tea and a plate of lemon biscuits while Draco stared down at his hands. They were well-made, beautifully shaped, the hands of a sculptor or a pianist. Neither was the career a wizard would undertake, certainly not an aristocrat like the heir to the Houses of Black and Malfoy.

“No, we were schoolmates. Rivals. We were children and then teenagers,” Draco said. He rubbed a hand across his eyes, bowing his head. “I liked you—”

“You liked me?” Hermione snorted. “Is this revisionist history? Are you going to tell me you wanted to take me to the Yule Ball and buy me sweets at Hogsmeade weekends? Were you terribly fond of Harry and did you think Ron was a good chap whose family was just a bit down on their luck?”

“I liked you, Hermione,” Draco repeated, his voice low. “I wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t allowed to, but I did. I do.”

“You’re married. I’m married,” Hermione said. “Handfasted. Your family isn’t the only one to follow the Old Ways.”

(She would have married Ron at the Ministry, but Molly wouldn’t hear of it. Hermione’s own parents wouldn’t hear of it at all, so she’d acquiesced to the whole thing, the ring in the garden, the saffron yellow veil, the woad, the unsalted cakes she and Ron had had to bake in a solar oven without any magic. The only part she’d liked had been laughing together as they looked at the ugly lumps of dough, the gleam in Ron’s eyes as he’d told her they’d only have to choke down one bite each.)

“I know. I’m not trying to interfere. Weasley’s a good man and I would never dishonor Astoria,” Draco said. “But he can’t do this for you. You know that. He’s done what he can and you’re still suffering.”

“You’d be my Healer then? Without any certification, Healing mastery, apprenticeship?”

“Your friend. A fellow-traveler,” Draco said. “Whatever you’d allow.”

“My friend,” Hermione said.

“You are the same person who pledged her friendship for life to Potter and Weasley after being brought together in a bathroom by a troll,” Draco said. “It shouldn’t be that great a stretch for you.”

“Perhaps I’ve changed,” she replied.

“Perhaps,” Draco agreed, then hazarded a very small smile. “I don’t think so though. Not in this regard.”

“Will it help you with your own dreams?” Hermione asked.

“That’s not relevant,” Draco said. “That’s not why—”

“It’s relevant to me,” she said firmly.

“Of course it is,” he said, under his breath, as if he could get away with it sitting across from her, the café much quieter as the late afternoon rush had ended.

“Well?”

“I don’t know. Possibly,” he said. For the first time, he sounded put out, frustrated. It was the throughline to the boy he’d been and she found herself liking him for it. “Before you ask, it’s very unlikely to make anything worse for me. This isn’t some grand Gryffindor gesture of sacrifice on my part.”

“I think we’re beyond House identification, Draco,” she said.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“It’s a tell me more about how you mean to proceed. What this dream-walking entails precisely,” she said.

“Will you let me show you something?” Draco said. Hermione considered. They were in a public place and she had faced greater horrors than a prematurely greying Draco Malfoy in his Savile Row suit. She nodded. Draco pushed the teapot and their cups to one side, reached over and took Hermione’s right hand in his own. His palm was warm against hers, his grasp charged with the familiarity one had with their wand, the tenderness of a long-awaited reunion. Hermione looked at their hands and then up, to find Draco watching her.

When she didn’t pull her hand away, he reached out with his left and took her other hand. Something surged between them, electric and yet sustaining, soothing. Something that was not magic but was of it, an ardent affection that sought only to give, to cherish, some fundamental realignment. Later, she would puzzle over it, scribble equations, then manipulate them with her wand, with an incantation of runes. She would find a way to explain it to Ron so that he’d understand. When he did, she might.

“Yes?” Draco asked. She could tell what he hoped for and that he would wait as long as she wanted. She could tell he would let their hands fall apart if she refused.

“Yes,” she said. He held her more tightly then and the brightness in his eyes was like moonlight, like the first time she had cast Lumos and banished darkness. Between them, it was as if a cup was filled, spilled over. She could not, however, resist poking.

“You must’ve worked some part of it out. I’ll want to review your notes.”

“Certainly,” he said.

Master Mamu authored the definitive text on oneironautika, but Draco wrote the introduction and Hermione the acclaimed chapter on runic expansion.

Draco insisted Hermione be the editor of the journal. He provided the funding for the first five years. After that, as he’d predicted, no financial assistance was required.

Ron wasn’t remotely put out, though he did scold her a bit for worrying he might be. “You the one always telling Rose and Hugo love’s not a pie. Well, that means you can’t get too full or lose your appetite for it.” At the service for Astoria, Ron told her to go over to Draco and played a three-hour game of Wizard chess with Scorpius he worked hard to throw stealthily enough the boy didn’t notice.

They weren’t one big happy family. But they could be happy and they could be a family.

When Kimah was born, there were seven witches present.

Draco collected a handful of knuts warm from Ron’s pocket when Scorpius announced she had red hair, Transfigured them into a bouquet of apricot tea roses, and gave them back to his son for his daughter-in-law.

Hermione, who had been up all night, slept.

And dreamed.

@artielu you are my main Dramione mutual so I hope you enjoy this atypical offering!

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