Chapter Text
April 12th 2006
“Well, Malfoy, I think that’s us finally done,” Hermione Granger said, tapping her voice recorder with her wand and wearing a tired but triumphant smile.
“Not before time.”
Lifting her Quick Quotes Quill from its matching parchment mid-word, Hermione raised her eyebrow at Draco Malfoy who merely smiled thinly in response. He sat across from her at her tiny kitchen table, his back to the rain-spattered window, with a faintly steaming mug of tea clutched in his pale, long-fingered hands. It was the mug he always used during their appointments—the biggest one she owned.
Sometimes it occurred to Hermione how strange it was that Draco Malfoy of all people was a regular visitor in her flat and that he was there often enough to have developed an attachment to one of her mugs. But so much of her life had changed over the past two years and, really, he had become one of the more pleasant additions.
“You’re talking like you haven’t absolutely relished talking to me about yourself for nine straight weeks,” she said, her mouth pursed sceptically.
“ That I enjoyed,” he said, raising a corrective finger, then lowering it to point directly at her. “And I’m certain you did, too. What I did not enjoy was sitting at this increasingly alarming table.”
Hermione flushed and followed Malfoy’s gaze down. The formica surface of her small, rectangular kitchen table had not been visible for a long time. It was littered with books, folders, broken quills and endless piles of parchment scrawled with notes of varying legibility. The sense of disorganisation wasn't helped, she was sure, by the fact that they were crammed into the only corner of her boxy kitchen that wasn't occupied by a counter. There was only room for three chairs around the table and with her and Draco in two of them, the third was occupied by an increasingly precarious pile of books.
“It’s surely a cry for help. Have you ever tidied it?”
Hermione shuffled her Quick Quotes notes from that day into their own pile and marked them with a green sticker. Getting to her feet, she assessed the table with a frown, trying to determine the route through the mess that would cause the least amount of disturbance.
“It’s an organised mess,” she murmured, tutting as she peered around different piles without touching them to find where she’d last placed Malfoy’s folder. “I know where everything is. Eventually.”
“You need an actual work space, Granger. This flat is barely large enough to live in, never mind to live in and to work in.”
“Well, we don’t all have manors to swan around in, Malfoy,” Hermione said scathingly. With a small whoop she found the folder she was looking for and slid his notes into it. Finally looking up, she found him watching her with faint exasperation. “This is all the space I have and I’ve managed for almost two years. It’s fine .”
“Seems it.” His tone was dry as he lifted his mug up for a drink, only to find that a sheet of parchment was stuck to its bottom. “I’d just like to be sure that I’m contributing to an academic work of value rather than an absolute bloody shambles.”
He gingerly peeled the parchment away from his mug with a pointed look and Hermione reached out to snatch it from him. “You are contributing to a work of value. Oral history is a rapidly developing and valuable field of research and documentation.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Malfoy took another sip of his tea. “I also won’t miss that stupid little thing.” He nodded disdainfully at Hermione’s voice recorder and she made an offended noise, snatching it up from the table.
It was a Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes product and Hermione’s favourite invention of George’s by far. Shaped like a tiny gramophone, it was charmed to record sound and spit it back out. It was much like a magical tape recorder, which made sense because George had made it after Hermione had introduced him to the concept of mix tapes. Fascinated, he’d been adamant that Angelina would have to have the magical equivalent for Valentine’s Day even if he had to make it himself. So he had. And Hermione had purchased one for each of her interviewees.
“Excuse me, I think it’s clever and adorable. And extremely useful.”
“Why do I feel like that’s exactly the kind of thing you’d like someone to say about you,” Malfoy said, his lip curled. Hermione flushed and placed the Wheezebox back on the table.
“I suppose now that you’ve got everything you need from me, I’m never going to hear from you again.” He placed a mocking hand over his heart. “You do know how to make a man feel cheap, Granger.”
“Oh, no, I’m afraid you’ve definitely not seen the last of me. I’ll be back in touch as I put your sections together. I might need to clarify some things with you. I imagine you’ll want to cast your eye over some proofs, too. I’m more than happy for you to have an input—a small input—until publication.”
“And do you have a publisher yet?”
“No,” Hermione said, dropping into her seat with a frown at Draco. “But that’s only because I’ve not been shopping a proposal around.”
“Granger, just let me help you. The family name is far from what it was but I might be able to sway a few people. I could mention that you’re working on something and I’m sure they’ll snap it up. War hero bookworm writes war book.” He raised his hands in the air as though imagining the words on a poster. “Guaranteed interest. We’ll leave off the history part. Boring." Ignoring her huff of indignation, he added, "Not decided on the oral aspect. It could be good if we want to reach an audience that reads words but doesn't take in full sentences. Maybe ask Weasley about that."
"Oh, for goodness sake," Hermione muttered. "For your information, I'm not shopping it around yet because I still don’t have access to all of the sources I need.”
“You’ve got to be joking. You must have interviewed every living person that was even tangentially connected to the war.”
“Not everyone ,” Hermione said, turning in her seat to reach up for the mug of tea she’d left on the kitchen counter.
“Who’s left? The trolley lady from the Hogwarts Express?”
“Your father.”
Malfoy opened his mouth and then closed it again with a click of his teeth, shaking his head. “You don’t want to do that, Granger.”
“Of course I do. The whole point of what I’m doing is to gather a variety of perspectives on the war and there are so few people from…”
“My side.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Well, you can say it. You were probably thinking it.”
Hermione sighed, now deeply familiar with the way Malfoy tended to seize on every opportunity to invite people to treat him with disgust or disdain for his actions during the war. She always stepped around it where she could, though there were times when he made that difficult for her. “There are so few people who fought with Voldemort who are in any position to speak to me about their experiences.”
“You have me, is that not enough? I told you everything I went through during the war. You probably have the colour of pants I was wearing each day noted down in that folder somewhere.”
“You have told me everything and it’s been fantastic ,” Hermione said. “But your father was there for two wars and he managed to survive both of them. He’d be an invaluable source.”
Draco drummed his fingers against the edge of his mug, his fingernails making a series of small tings as they bounced off the porcelain. “Look, I won’t stop you from asking him but the answer will be no.”
Shifting in her seat, Hermione looked down into her tea. “I have and it was. Multiple times.”
“ Granger .” Malfoy sounded exasperated and she looked up to see that, indeed, he was. “How have you been asking him? He’s been locked in the manor for eight years .”
“I’ve been sending owls.” Hermione ran a finger around the rim of her cup, her gaze sliding over Draco’s shoulder to look out the window at the wet April weather. “For a few weeks now. He hasn’t answered a single one.”
Draco made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a moan of anguish. “So that’s why he’s been so irritable recently. Stop sending owls, Granger. One day one of them won’t come back and you’ll have that on your conscience.”
“I thought maybe if you asked him—” Hermione began but Draco immediately shook his head and held up a hand.
“He’ll still say no.” At Hermione’s look of scepticism, Draco slid his mug to the side and leaned towards her, his elbow balanced on a book. “Granger, I live in the manor with him and he barely talks to me . I see him maybe once every four or five days and if I’m lucky I’ll get a full conversation out of him. Between the house arrest and the Magic Dampener, he’s not really been the most...agreeable company.”
Crossing her arms, Hermione leaned back in her seat. “Doesn’t he see that he’s pretty lucky to have avoided Azkaban? I mean—”
“Yes,” Draco tilted his head and gave her a penetrating look. “I’m sure marching into his home and taking that approach is guaranteed to break through his barriers and unlock the loquacious man that still lies beneath.”
Hermione flushed and shifted, not entirely sure why she felt a twinge of guilt. “Surely there must be something that would convince him.”
“I can hardly see what you can offer him. He’s short on freedom and magic but he’s still got plenty of money. And, no offence, but while I think company would be good for him I’m not sure he’d relish yours.”
They fell into silence, the only sounds being a steady drip coming from Hermione’s kitchen tap and the gentle patter of the rain against the window. Taking a drink, Hermione assessed Draco over the rim of her mug. He was skim-reading the top sheet of a pile of parchment that sat by his elbow. The red sticker told her it was a section of her interviews with McGonagall. She’d gathered so many perspectives from the war. Harry, Ron and the rest of the surviving Weasleys, of course, as well as many of the surviving members of the Order. Even Aberforth had consented to speak with her.
Draco had been a particularly big win. It had taken weeks of pestering just to get him to agree to meet her. But she was determined that she wouldn’t just record the voices of the Order; she wanted to connect narratives from across the battlefields for a more complete picture. Draco had, after much back and forth, come to appreciate what she was trying to do and believed that she wasn’t trying to trap him into some humiliating exposé.
With so many former Death Eaters dead or locked in the depths of Azkaban, in some senses she needed Lucius Malfoy. He had been in Voldemort’s inner circle; he would surely know things that his son didn’t and have a perspective that no one else she had interviewed could have.
“What if I could get the Magic Dampener removed? Or a reduction in his sentence?”
Draco’s head snapped up, whatever had been occupying his attention on the parchment forgotten. “You think you could do that?”
“Maybe,” Hermione said, her face screwing up as she considered the conversations she would need to have. “I don’t think I could get his house arrest waived entirely but shaving a few years off doesn’t seem impossible.”
“Well, anything less than the twenty years he got would be an improvement,” Draco muttered.
Hermione pressed her lips together, electing not to comment. After the war, Draco and Narcissa had walked free thanks to Narcissa’s actions and Harry’s testimony on their behalf. Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, had fared less well. He had borne the brunt of the public’s anger at the Malfoy family and received a twenty year house arrest. To add insult to injury, he was fitted with a Magic Dampener which rendered him unable to use his magic. Hermione hadn’t been especially sorry and nor had anyone else.
“You’ve already suggested you think my father deserved what he got, so why would you do this?”
Setting her hands flat on the parchment in front of her, Hermione stretched her fingers wide to indicate that she was effectively laying her cards on the table. “Because I’m desperate. And it’s the only thing I think might even slightly persuade him.”
Nodding slowly, Draco leaned back to give her a sweeping look. “I think you’re probably right.” Sighing, Draco shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in a way that told Hermione she had him. “Alright, Granger, you win. I’ll put it to him.”
“Thank you!” Hermione grinned widely and bounced in her seat. “Oh, you won’t regret this, Malfoy. I’ll get in touch with Kingsley to start a conversation.”
Running a hand through his short blonde hair, Draco stopped its progress at the back of his neck and rubbed a spot of tension he found there. “Merlin knows something needs to change. Just the other day Astoria was telling me she doesn’t want our child growing up in a house where they could reasonably mistake their grandfather for a ghost. Is that not the most depressing thing you’ve ever heard?”
“Then tell him what I’m proposing and, if he’s amenable, I’ll see what I can do. How is Astoria, by the way?”
Draco’s face immediately brightened at the prospect of being able to discuss his wife but Hermione didn’t miss the tiredness around his eyes. “She’s doing well. Late pregnancy certainly agrees with her more than the early days, though she still has the odd day where her strength disappears entirely.”
It was hard not to stretch a sympathetic hand out to Draco, so she did. He didn’t take it but he never did; Hermione just liked to let him know that it was there. In the relatively short time they had been developing a friendly relationship, Hermione had noticed that Draco Malfoy didn’t like to touch. He didn’t mind if she reached out and touched him but to meet in the middle, to extend his hand to meet hers, seemed to be too great an act of exposure for him. Learning what she had about his experiences in the war and the long periods of lonely isolation he had gone through, Hermione couldn’t say she was offended. Understandably, he had built walls. As Hermione saw it, she was there to help him communicate through them, maybe remove a brick or two at a time, rather than to knock them down.
Draco had revealed his anxieties to Hermione about Astoria’s delicate constitution and how it might be worsened by pregnancy on their third meeting. In the end, they had spent their allotted time that week not having a recorded interview but simply chatting as friends might. It was then that Hermione had realised how few friends Draco Malfoy actually had and it had tugged at her sympathy in a way she could never have expected. He wasn’t the same boy she had known at Hogwarts and, though she wouldn’t tell him, she had decided she would be there for him as much as he would allow her to. That was her way of rebuilding and moving forward.
“It’s not long until you’ll have a child to occupy your every living moment. In fact,” Hermione raised her eyes to the ceiling as she counted up the months, “yes, Astoria must be due a little bit after Ginny Potter. She and Harry are having their second soon.”
“Of course Potter’s already on number two,” Draco scoffed, shifting his position in his seat to cross his legs. “That’ll be the Weasley urge to propagate converging with his innate need to one-up me.”
Hermione laughed, drawing a narrow-eyed glare from Draco. “Malfoy, do you really think Harry impregnated Ginny just so he could say he has one more child than you?”
“I said it was innate ; he might not even realise he’s doing it. Wouldn’t put it past him, though.”
“Your children will be attending Hogwarts together,” Hermione pointed out. “An olive branch extended now could be a good chance to stop history repeating itself.”
“Thank you for the advice, oh wise woman of history.” Malfoy gave her a mocking deferential wave before tipping his head back to drain the last of his tea. “Anyway, I’d best be off. I promised Astoria I’d bring her some cauldron cakes from Diagon Alley on the way back to the manor and it’s getting close to tea time.”
“Oh!” Hermione slid from her seat, careful not to disturb any of her papers, and hurried to the kitchen, Malfoy watching her warily. Opening a tin on the counter, Hermione bustled around the tiny kitchen with her back to him, eventually returning to the table with a foil-wrapped square which she placed before him.
“What,” Malfoy said, raising the soft package to his eyes and inspecting it with faint disgust, “is this?”
“It’s lemon cake. I made it myself.”
“ You cook? In here ?” He gestured to the table. “Isn’t that some kind of fire hazard?”
“I bake,” Hermione corrected, then hesitated before adding, “I bake this one thing. Ginny’s craved it through both of her pregnancies, so I’ve gotten into the habit of having a few slices ready to go at all times. Astoria might like it.”
Draco looked doubtful and brought the package closer to his face to sniff it delicately. Hermione rolled her eyes and placed her hands on her hips. “Just throw it out if she doesn’t.”
He shook his head but, to Hermione’s satisfaction, he also slipped the foil-wrapped cake into the pocket of his robes that were hanging over the back of his chair.
“Don’t forget to ask your father,” she reminded him as he started moving to get to his feet.
Draco grumbled something that sounded like “I bloody won’t”, his tall frame moving awkwardly in the cramped space to lift his robes. He managed to slide his right arm in successfully before hitting the elbow of his left against the wall beside him with a muttered curse.
“Maybe you could convince your mother next?” Hermione asked hopefully as she lifted their empty mugs from the table and carried them to the sink.
Draco choked out a laugh as he carefully adjusted his robes into a more comfortable position on his shoulders. “Check your ambition, Granger. You’re more likely to get him than you are to get her.”
Placing his hand on the back of his chair to push it under the table, Draco stopped to watch Hermione rinse the mugs. Feeling the weight of his gaze, she turned, shaking droplets of water from her hands. “What?”
“You really want to interview him, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if I didn’t.”
“You know that you’d need to come to the manor.”
Hesitating, her face scrunched at the thought, Hermione shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Like I said: I’m desperate.”
“ And ,” Draco continued, “if he does actually agree to this, he won’t be nice to you, Granger. I love my father a great deal but I don’t think I could tell you in all honesty that the war has made him a better person.”
Crossing her arms, Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m expecting your father to be nice to me? I don’t want to braid his hair, Malfoy, I want to ask him some questions. More importantly, I want him to be honest with me when he answers them. I’m fully aware that asking for honesty from your father is likely to preclude any kind of niceness .”
“Fine, fine,” Draco said, raising his hands in surrender. “It was just a friendly warning. I’ll keep up my end of the bargain and you see what you can do about yours.” Malfoy moved to leave the kitchen, pausing in the doorway with his hand on the frame. “See you next week?” he asked, without turning to look at her.
Officially, their interviews were over; Hermione had learned all she could from Draco for her oral history. Rather than remind him of that, she smiled at his back. “Sounds great.” Draco departed without another word, leaving Hermione with a fond smile on her face.
With Malfoy gone, Hermione let time get away from her. Pulling her mixing bowl and some ingredients from her kitchen cupboard, she began the methodical process of baking a fresh lemon cake; she had given him her last slice. It was her mother’s recipe—one of only two recipes Hermione had learned from her, much to her regret—and it was so familiar that she didn’t need any kind of instructions.
Hermione loved interviewing her sources but the activity required her to be utterly switched on and her sessions could last hours if she and her interviewee struggled to find a natural cut-off point. So, while baking required exactitude, making the lemon cake was a soothing and almost passive activity for her. She found, particularly in the aftermath of her interviews, that it was the perfect way to move her brain down a gear and recharge.
After sliding the cake into her oven, jiggling the damaged door to the left as she closed it, Hermione glanced at the clock and turned her attention to her work station. Malfoy was right, not that she’d ever admit it to him: she did need more space. But it was hard to come by. She had considered asking McGonagall to let her use the Hogwarts library but the idea of being around loud students looking for any excuse to be distracted from their studies didn’t appeal in the least. Being on long-term leave from the Ministry meant that she didn’t have an office there anymore, either. Overall, in her poky one bedroom flat, it was the best she could do.
Opening Malfoy’s folder, she collected a few loose sheets of parchment from around it and read them over before sliding them inside. They were just notes she’d taken on the Malfoy family history in preparation for her interviews with Draco. Unfortunately, it was a mind-numbingly long history—as they would undoubtedly be proud to point out—and the sheer amount of material available meant that Draco’s folder bulged larger than most. That wasn’t to mention the books she’d found in which the Malfoy name was repeatedly mentioned in connection with magical politics, wars and laws. Individual biographical details were harder to come by without properly digging but the family name was weaved through wizarding history.
In the end, she hadn’t really needed any of the information and hadn’t delved much deeper than their family tree. But, if she was going to end up interviewing Lucius, she wanted to keep all of the resources she’d gathered to hand. Hermione had a feeling that being prepared would be key to conversations with that particular Malfoy.
Closing the folder gently, Hermione considered the offer she’d asked Draco to pass onto his father. Her desperation had perhaps made her overly optimistic about what she could reasonably expect to ask of Kingsley. But she had to try.
The sharp beep of the oven extracted Hermione from her reverie and she returned to withdraw the cake so that she could leave it to cool on the counter. Pulling her apron over her head, Hermione threw it over the back of a chair and hurried to her bedroom to change for her weekly dinner at the Potters.
After the birth of James, they’d agreed as a group that a more structured social life was probably necessary if they had any hope of seeing one another with a degree of regularity. Hermione, adoring structure, had probably been the most enthusiastic about the idea. Ron had grumbled about the loss of impromptu trips to the pub with Harry, though a sharp whack from his sister had closed his mouth quickly enough.
Flicking through her wardrobe, Hermione sighed at the abundance of denim and polyester. Her time away from the Ministry on half-pay meant that her journey towards building a more mature wardrobe had slipped back somewhat and she found she was dressing more like her teenage self with every passing day. Settling on her jeans and a worn Breton stripe jumper, she swiftly changed and attempted to make her long, messy curls more presentable.
Another glance at the clock as she ran back into the kitchen told Hermione that she was only twenty minutes late. She grabbed her wand from the counter and pointed it at the cake, which immediately started depositing itself into a tin while she retrieved a cold bottle of white wine from the fridge.
After a final cursory inspection of her kitchen and double checking that the oven was off, Hermione bustled towards her living room fireplace, cake and wine bundled in her arms.