Chapter Five

"Mummy? Mummy? Who's that wady?"

"An old friend of Daddy's, Little One, just here to talk to Uncle Severus. She's not feeling very well right now and she was..."

Voices were hazily swirling around Hermione as she began to recover consciousness, still aware of a gentle throbbing in her head and a dull ache in her limbs. The streaming light in the sunny room weighed on her eyelids, and the voices in the room were becoming clearer as she tried to piece together where she was and who was watching over her. Unwilling to open her eyes just yet, she struggled through her confusion as she began to understand the conversation in the room. Two voices, both seated before her: a toddler's breathy speech, endearingly marred by one of those speech impediments of childhood, and the reassuring words of his mother. Astoria and Scorpius, she reflected. I'm in Malfoy's house. That is... I'm still in Malfoy's house.

She instantly realised that her experience wasn't merely a dream, that she really had returned to this place she had blocked out for so long. And she was still there. And she shouted and – what was probably worse – sobbed at the man whose help she came to England to seek, inadvertently and handily insulting him in the process. The bulk of their exchange was a blur to her, a flurry of sardonic quips from him and defensive posturing from her. But what exactly had she said to him?

She ran through the conversation they had to ensure she wouldn't forget it, recalling his thinly veiled anger when she mentioned Lily Potter. No, that might have been the proverbial straw for this Slytherin camel's back, but he was already irritated before a single word on Harry's mum slipped out. Whatever she had said to upset him must have occurred early on. She had mentioned Dumbledore. Well, not just mentioned him but actually shouted accusations of killing him between wails and tears. What an utterly senseless lapse in judgment, to draw his attention to the congenial old wizard... yet... No, there was more there on the subject of her former headmaster, but that wasn't it either. Oh. It was her, wasn't it? It was simply having to speak with her that put him in a bad mood. Had she really told him that she should have been the one to believe in him during the war? Repeatedly? Ah, what self-righteous nonsense...

That was unfortunate. If not the whole reason, he was at least a large part of the reason she came back. She needed a place where she could learn and practice Mental Magic, but it would have been infinitely easier had her former professor agreed to share a smidgeon of his brilliance with her. It had been a long shot anyway, she knew that, and it hurt to know just how close she had come to getting what she needed before blowing it completely. Now she had to determine the next step as she moved forward alone. Her one consolation was knowing she could try to learn Legilimency on her own here in England without the looming threat of being hauled off to prison.

The resonant clomping of men's dress shoes signaled another person briskly entering the room. They stopped in front of where she was lying, and he spoke from standing height beside his wife and child. "Astoria?"

Hermione listened for a response, but none ever came. Some sounds of shifting bodies and a quiet feminine sigh indicated that the couple did not require words for basic communication, but she couldn't determine what they were saying to one another with her eyes closed.

"Our collection is empty," he stated flatly. "He's going for his supply."

"At least someone checks their cabinets." She lowered her voice, sounding worried. "She's still out cold, though. It's been nearly ten minutes."

"At least she isn't badly hurt. If she doesn't come around on her own soon, a simple Enervate will suffice."

Astoria's voice dropped to a whisper as she stood up to speak to her husband, clearly shielding their son from what she was saying. "I feel terrible. Is it because she was here? Wasn't it the drawing room where... where..." she began to ask, but her voice trailed off.

A heavy sigh from Draco, and his hushed response finally came moments later. "Yes." He spoke more gently to his wife than Hermione had ever heard him before. "Yes, it was."

"Wasn't there any other place for their lessons?"

Lessons? Hermione was startled by her use of the word. There were no lessons planned for the day. Astoria must have confused it with something else.

As she listened to the Malfoys sharing their concern over her situation, she began to feel increasingly guilty about eavesdropping. She decided to wait for them to change to a harmless topic of conversation to stage her awakening in an attempt to minimize the inevitable awkwardness that would follow. He had been doing her a favour, and her own weakness was now putting him an extremely uncomfortable position. If only she could have held herself together and made it out of the manor, she could have explained away her blowup with Snape and everything would have been just fine, thank you very much. Their newly formed acquaintance was a fragile thing, something they both tacitly acknowledged through the use of excessively polite language and the avoidance of any mention of their previous animosity or their encounters during the war. Nevertheless, it was something she fully intended to hold onto and something she wished to see develop. Once you stripped away the Malfoy pretension and the influence of his horrid father, Draco was a decent bloke. He was still a pompous arse at times, but also shockingly intuitive when reading people and an inventive verbal sparring partner, something she thoroughly enjoyed and didn't get to experience often enough.

"I should have insisted on some other place," Astoria continued, still whispering. "I should never have let you invite her here for this. Of course it would bring back bad memories."

"Her last letter came by Potter's owl, darling. Potter's. She just moved back, she must be staying with them, and I wasn't about to ask him to go to the Black residence. That would be completely unfair to him."

"Could you have perhaps..."

Another set of footsteps outside in the hallway cut off Astoria mid-sentence, steps much quieter and much faster than Draco's. "Here you go," said a rich baritone voice. She heard an odd tinkling of glass as whatever he had brought along him was set on the table off to the side.

Professor Snape.

Hermione silently gave thanks to whatever sense she had that had told her to continue playing dead. After the words they had exchanged, she was not ready to face the man.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever, but certainly not now.

"This is my last vial as well, so I'll brew up a double batch and bring you the excess for your own stock. Give this to her when she wakes up. She'll recover quickly and there will be no side effects. I've got to go." He sounded tired, clipping his words and rushing through his sentences. She surmised that he was probably just as exhausted as she was after what had happened between them.

"What in Merlin's name happened?" Draco asked, raising his voice.

"I'll explain later."

"But..."

"Draco, I really must go."

"But, if..."

"Draco, please." He spoke sharply, emphatic in his plea, exasperated by his godson's insistence and desperate to leave them all. She could almost hear him rolling his eyes. "I believe there may be a limited number of hours any one person can tolerate in that girl's presence in their lifetime. If I failed to reach my quota in her third year, I've quite certainly met it now." He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, quietly closing the doors behind him on the way out.

Hermione silently berated herself for being such a fool during her encounter with the man. An insufferable know-it-all, she reminded herself.

"Daddy," the littlest voice piped up. "Daddy, I'm hungwy."

"Just a minute, Scorpius, and we'll get something for you to munch on." She stole a glimpse through her eyelashes, watching Draco pick up his son and swing him up around his shoulders. His words were apologetic, laced with frustration and something she couldn't quite put her finger on as he turned to his wife. "Darling, I tried to completely avoid any place she'd seen here... before, and I never intended for her to ever go near the drawing room. Never. I don't know what else to say. She could have asked for another location if she thought this was going to happen."

"She must have been so frightened."

"Could you stay here, and I'll see to Scorpius? I'm not sure I'm the person she'll want to see when she finally wakes up. She doesn't know you, but at least your history together is clear."

"Of course, love."

"Please get me if anything's wrong." She heard him kiss his wife before carrying his son out of the room, and the door latched once more behind him.

"Hermione? Hermione?" Astoria called her quietly after a brief pause, and Hermione heard her mumble a faint "Enervate" just as she was beginning to stir. A rush of energy flashed through Hermione's body as she jolted upright. She had never been the recipient of that particular spell while alert, and it now unnervingly sharpened all five senses in a flash before relaxing enough to allow her heartbeat to return to normal.

"Astoria?"

"Oh, thank goodness! I'm so glad to see that you're all right, Hermione. How do you feel?"

"I feel... fine, I think. My head... what happened?"

"You fainted in the foyer... at the entrance to the drawing room. I think you may have hit your head when you fell." She gingerly brought one hand up to Hermione's temple, not quite touching her skin. "You had a bit of a bruise starting to form, but I applied a salve when I saw it and it looks like it has calmed down quite a bit already."

"Where are we?"

"The library. Draco thought it might be more soothing for you to wake up here than in any other room in the house, so he had Severus carry you here." Astoria was trying to keep the mood light, alternately smiling at Hermione and staring down at her hands in her lap. "He also mentioned that I should find our copy of Hogwarts: A History and give it to you as a pillow. I'm afraid that he often attempts humour when he's nervous. 'Attempts' being the operative word."

"Professor Snape carried me?" This was startling news. She wasn't sure the man had ever touched her in all the years she had known him.

"Yes. He found you collapsed in the foyer in the entrance to the drawing room and brought you to us." A few moments of silence passed as Astoria gathered her thoughts. "Hermione, I am so very, very sorry about all of this."

"Astoria..."

"When Draco said that you would be coming here," the woman continued, "I wondered if something would happen. He truly didn't mean for this to happen, Hermione, you must believe me."

"Oh, Astoria, I know that." Hermione reassured her in a low voice. "He's been quite generous with all of his time on this project of mine. I honestly didn't expect to get on with him at all, but you've both been very kind to me. This was my fault, not his and certainly not yours. I'm the one who should be sorry; I never meant to inconvenience you like this." She closed her eyes and tilted her head towards the floor, speaking quietly. "I should have known better. I shouldn't have let myself get so worked up. I should have controlled myself in my meeting with Professor Snape." She smiled up weakly at the blonde woman. "It was awful, but it was entirely my fault."

"I remember what a terror he could be in class if someone stepped out of line. He was always incredibly exacting and cautious. Did your first lesson really go that badly today?"

"My first... lesson?" She furrowed her brow and frowned. "This wasn't a lesson."

"Really? I'm sorry, I must have been mistaken." She looked around the library, eyes scanning the shelves for nothing in particular. And then glanced back at Hermione, shaking her head. "No, I'm certain that Draco told me you were having a lesson today. Why, he was so excited the night he convinced Severus to take you on as his pupil."

"Professor Snape agreed to teach me?"

Astoria mutely nodded.

"Really?"

"Yes?"

A quiet rumble morphed into subdued snarl as Hermione dropped her head to her hands and admonished herself in disbelief. "Oh, no, no, no! What have I done?" She had it all wrong.

She wasn't there to convince him to do anything. He had already agreed. He was beginning a Legilimency lesson with her. He was trying to teach her and she cried all over him and called him a killer.

Observing Astoria frozen to the spot, Hermione shook away her shock and reached out for a change of topic. "Astoria, I swear I heard a cry and then a bang... or... maybe a crash and then someone screaming. Is everything all right here? Is everyone all right?"

"About that, Hermione... I think you may have heard Scorpius playing. He's darling, but a bit energetic and unbelievably clumsy. I can repair anything. I mean, anything. If Lucius Malfoy knew how many priceless antiques in this house have been in thousands of pieces on these floors, he'd roll over in his grave. We were in the next room when a Ming vase took a tumble."

"Oh... I'm sorry, I didn't know Lucius had... well..." Hermione's strained attempt to piece together words of consolation didn't make it far; she hadn't known that Lucius Malfoy had died, but she also remained unconvinced that he had ever felt the same remorse his wife and son had. He remained the man who had jeopardized her life and the lives of her friends for as long as she had known him.

She was also oddly proud that she managed not to flinch at the mention of a Ming vase in this house, let alone its apparent destruction less than a quarter hour earlier.

"You really have missed out on a lot since you left, haven't you? It was about one and a half years after the war, before Draco and I got reacquainted. We met up again at a New Year's Eve party in 2000 and were married exactly four years later."

Determined to return to a cheerier mood, Hermione began asking questions on a subject she knew would make the other woman smile. "How old is Scorpius?"

It worked. "Two and a half. He's a wonderful, wonderful little boy. A little imp, really, he's got such a wild sense of humour. He's been good for Draco."

"I can tell. He broke out the photograph collection within ten minutes of our lunch last month."

The pair of women chattered on in the Malfoy library while Hermione recovered her wits, continuing as a house-elf appeared with a pop! to set all the necessities of cream tea before them. She tried to concentrate on the matter at hand, but niggling thoughts of remorse tugged at the back of her brain. No amount of clotted cream or strawberry jam could sooth away her regrets, and she tried not to dwell on what she had lost.

That evening Hermione was back at her temporary home of Grimmauld Place with the Potters. After dinner she found herself in a rousing session of castle construction with Al, periodically interrupted by a "dragon" that looked remarkably like the architect's older brother. The wooden blocks came tumbling down over and over again amidst a chorus of giggles, and the building process started all over again. Somewhere around castle number five or six, Harry swept up the boys to get them ready for bed, and Ginny went to put Lily down for the night.

"That bad, hmm?"

"We started off somewhere at the level of unbelievably awkward discourse, and it went downhill from there." Hermione summoned a teapot and cup to her side, nursing her wounded pride with her favourite Lady Grey in the kitchen with Harry. "Never attempt small talk with that man, Harry. Never."

"Really? Discussions of the weather won't get you anywhere?"

"Oh, it was worse than that. I told him he was looking well and then asked after his research."

"You told Snape he was looking well," Harry repeated with incredulity.

"Well, he does look much better than I remember him. I imagine a decade free from the tyranny of Voldemort will do that for a person."

Ginny appeared in the doorway. "Maybe he looks better because he doesn't have to teach at Hogwarts anymore. It's us Weasleys, you know. We run people right through. We were talking once a few years ago, and Charlie figured out that Snape was there for the entirety of the Weasley children years. His first year was Bill's first, his last was my last." She tilted her head as she jogged through the events of the past. "Well, no, his last was my sixth." She shrugged ambivalently. "Close enough, anyhow."

Harry laughed. "At least he had Bill and Charlie to break him in as a professor before Fred and George came through. Can you imagine any first year teacher surviving those two?"

"What happened next, Hermione?" Ginny asked.

"I'm fairly convinced he thinks I need psychiatric help. I may have started crying."

"What? Why?" Harry inquired with concern. "What did he say to you?"

"It wasn't him, Harry. It was me. He was actually quite kind until I messed things up."

"Kind?" Harry asked.

"Well, as kind as he ever is." She stared into her now empty teacup. "I wasn't feeling good about things there, but I tried to brush it off. I know nothing can hurt me at Malfoy Manor anymore, and Draco has been wonderful about everything. But then... when I saw him there..." She paused.

"Who?" Ginny asked. "Draco?"

"No, Snape," she corrected. "I'm sorry, I'm explaining this all wrong." She poured herself a second cup and reached for the honey. " When I first saw Professor Snape there, I felt like I was sixteen all over again. Something in me snapped, and these petulant, petty thoughts of retaliation swept through me, as though they were all things I wanted to say to him when I was a fifth year and frustrated in his class. I knew as it was happening that it was irrational. That I was irrational. But I couldn't stop myself."

Her friends stared at her silently, allowing her the space to say what she need to say.

"And there he was, whole and well. And happy, I hope? As much as we've all survived together, I wish I could talk to him just as he is. Bringing in all my insecurities with him when I was his student, reminding myself of how unequivocal the power dynamics are in that relationship... remembering the guilt I felt when I learned the truth..." Hermione rattled off the concerns of her conscience and the burdens of her soul as she blinked back tears, willing herself not to cry. "He had been planning on helping me, did you know that?" She looked at them both, not really expecting an answer. "Of course he had been," she murmured quietly under her breath. "When did he ever choose not to help us, even when we belittled him and ignored him?"

No one answered.

Her voice raised ever so slightly in pitch as she glanced between her friends. "Er... listen, do either of you ever have flashbacks from that last year?"

"Flashbacks?" Harry asked.

"Not exactly flashbacks," Ginny offered, "but certain events or dates are hard." She paused, looking over at Harry. Giving him a firm smile and reaching across the table to grasp his hand, she added, "They get easier. They've all gotten easier with time."

A sudden realisation spread across Harry's face. "Malfoy Manor... Bellatrix...?"

She nodded.

"Oh, Hermione." His eyes grew wide, and he reached forward to take her hand in his. "Are you okay?"

"It happened twice. The first time, Snape said something to me that made me think of that day in the Shrieking Shack. It was like we were back there again just a few metres away from Voldemort. The second time, I thought I heard a scream – well, it was just Scorpius breaking something accidentally, but I didn't know it – and again, it was like I was back in the war. I actually felt the Cruciatus, but I knew no one was there. Is something wrong with me?"

"I think," Ginny began, "it sounds rather like a Dementor, doesn't it?"

"A Dementor?" Hermione frowned.

"Making you relive the worst moments in your life?" the redhead continued.

"I suppose so. I've encountered Dementors before, Ginny, and my reaction was never that strong."

"Yes, but when was the last time?"

"Third year, maybe, on the Hogwarts Express?" Hermione racked her brains. "No... fifth year? I'm not sure exactly."

"Since the war?"

"No." A beat passed. "Oh."

"That time in our train compartment during your third year," Ginny began, "that was horrible for me. I felt indescribably pained and guilty and ashamed. Reliving everything with Riddle and the diary, afraid that I had hurt my friends. It was mostly a kind of mental pain, but it was physical, too."

Harry echoed his wife's sentiments. "It's always been mentally and physically unsettling for me, Hermione. From the very beginning."

She thought over her friends' words, strangely comforted to know they had these kinds of reactions before as well. One glaring difference remained. "That does sound similar, but Dementors are external things, and I seem to have generated this all on my own. It came from my own mind."

"True," Harry began, "but the catalyst was something outside yourself. You wouldn't have gone through any of it if you hadn't heard Scorpius or been in Malfoy Manor."

"I suppose you're right." She looked up at Ginny and let out a hearty sigh. "How did it get easier?"

"For me, it was being able to talk about it with family. Another big part of it was going back to places where things happened. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, as my worst experiences were all at Hogwarts. I was punished by the Carrows there, although I never received the Cruciatus. That was where we lost Fred, of course." Ginny moved over to Harry, slipping an arm around his waist and letting him pull her close to his side. "I had to return for seventh year and see all of those places everyday. I know exactly where he fell and I know every room in the building where I saw his body before he was taken with the others for burial. I cried every time I walked by each of those spots for weeks. Every single time. And then one day... I didn't burst into tears when I walked through there. That doesn't mean it's gone. Sometimes I still cry about it. It's just that the power it had over me is finally broken."

A letter from Draco arrived by eagle owl early the next morning.

Granger, what happened? If today isn't too soon, you know where I take lunch on Mondays.

"You could have told me that he was there to teach me Legilimency."

"Why should I have had to? I didn't think you two could possibly have become that volatile before he'd even crawled around in your brain."

"It would have kept me from saying stupid, stupid things to him!"

It was a cool autumn day in London, and Hermione and Draco were bickering over boiled quail eggs and asparagus spears at his regular café in Covent Garden. She had received his owl less than four hours earlier, but she desperately wanted to hear what he had to say about the unfortunate series of events in his home.

He raised his eyebrows. ''Oh, really?"

"Well... no, probably not." She huffed indignantly. "Thinking through everything he did for the Order, how he went behind the lines with Voldemort to help our cause. Did anyone do more in the war? Besides Harry, that is? It's all tremendous. I wanted to thank him for..."

"You thanked him?" he interrupted.

She looked away sheepishly. "I didn't quite make it to there yet. I stopped somewhere between sanctimonious apologies, bursting into tears, and calling him a killer."

His jaw dropped in shock. "You didn't."

"I did."

"Why?"

"I didn't mean to! It all got out of hand so fast. I was trying to explain that I had gotten everything wrong in the war because of his cover..."

"And you told him he killed Dumbledore."

She dropped her elbows to the table and her forehead to her elbows, letting out an inelegant groan.

"Granger, I'm not sure you actually appreciate the magnitude of what Snape did in the war. You certainly don't know what he's done since."

"I beg to differ," she said defensively. "I don't know everything, but I know a great deal of what he did, Malfoy."

"Then ponder this: our sixth year, after Dumbledore forced Snape to save me and Avada him in the process, I was on the run with him for awhile. He was simultaneously protecting me, deceiving me into thinking he was the Dark Lord's right hand man, and convincing me to switch alliances to save my soul. Who else could pull that off? Then he had to run Hogwarts in such a manner as to both satisfy the Dark Lord and defend the lives of the students. Without drawing attention to himself. Who else could have done that?"

She knew the answer: no one could have done what he had done.

"When I realised where his true allegiances were, I went back over all the things he had done for me... astonishing. I didn't deserve any of it. I was such a prat. I really don't know what would have happened if he hadn't intervened." He placed his flatware aside and took a long drink of water. When he raised his eyes to hers, his voice caught in his throat. "Granger – Hermione, I... I want to apologise to you for everything I've said and done to you over the years. And for what I didn't do, for that matter."

She knew he was thinking of himself, standing in the room while Bellatrix tortured her. When exactly she had forgiven him, she didn't know. She certainly never expected an apology from him, but he was looking at her nervously, and she had never seen a Malfoy that nervous before. "Draco, I forgave you a long time ago."

He let out a sigh of relief, all the while fidgeting with the edges of his linen napkin. "Thank you. I appreciate it more than you know and more than I'll ever say again."

She continued on. "I wasn't particularly kind to you, either. I'm sorry for every horrible remark I ever sent your way and for anything else I unfairly said or thought about you."

"You know, I don't really think they're comparable."

"Can you forgive me?"

"Of course."

She smiled. "Thank you." She thought over what he had said earlier as she cut her asparagus into ever smaller pieces. "What do you mean by 'what he's done since?'"

"When the war was over, we Malfoys had to do a number of things. Paying hundreds of thousands of Galleons to the Ministry was part of it, although not nearly enough of it went directly to the rebuilding of Hogwarts. The Ministry is an enormous leech on society, Granger, a big, juicy bloodsucker. Then there were the public performances of contrition, which for some of us were a bit more authentic than others. The Dark items in the family depository? Decisions had to be made about those. Which of the old acquaintances were to be ushered into the new era of Malfoy society? Decisions needed to be made there as well.

"It was all rather overwhelming. I hated being in the house. Hated it. I loved my mother, but I wanted to have nothing to do with my father." He paused, lowering his eyes to his water glass and avoiding any eye contact with her. "Soon I didn't have to.

"That was about the time Severus was starting to recover in St. Mungo's. I arranged for him to be moved to the manor to finish out his recovery, something that was a bit of a stretch financially when the Ministry froze our assets. The Daily Prophet had a few reporters poking around his room, and when I caught a photographer trying to get shots of him, I snapped and forcibly removed her from the premises. We had an empty wing in the manor at the time, and he deserved a lot more than what he was given. The least I could do was give him a place to heal out of the public eye.

"Mother was having a difficult time with it all, but she's a much stronger woman than she appears. Still, she had never known much of the household affairs before and was trying to figure out the mess of our accounts. Some were in Gringotts, and other assets were held and hidden in other forms all over the house and our other properties. I was helping her manage the estate and trying to prepare for that special N.E.W.T. testing the Ministry had prepared, less than a year after we were cleared, and Father was buried. It took weeks to sort out the will, but we did it the same month I sat my exams." He stopped himself in the middle of his story, evidently distracted by something else.

"Nine N.E.W.T.s, by the way. You?"

He really could flip moods in an instant. "Really, Malfoy? You want to compare size with me now?"

"Size, Granger? Really?"

"Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, Arithmancy, Astronomy, and History of Magic." She hoped he wasn't keeping a tally as she rattled them off, but...

"Ha! Only eight."

"Rub it in, why don't you?"

"I'd be happy to."

"All Outstandings, though. You?"

"Damn you, Granger." He was smirking.

"Oh, you didn't get perfect marks? I hope you've learned to reconcile yourself with your own limitations, Malfoy."

"Seven O's. One shabby Exceeds Expectations in Herbology due to unfair proctoring, and a passing mark that needs not be named in Divination."

"Why even bother with Divination? What utter rubbish."

"It is rubbish, I'll concede that one. I never knew why at the time I suffered through it, but now I know: I kept on with Divination in order that I might gloat over Hermione Granger with my nine N.E.W.T.s."

"Fine, Malfoy, fine."

"Nine." A smug grin was plastered across his face.

"Now, what were you saying about the will and estate?"

"Right. So the house. Mother and I didn't want to live there." His tone grew serious once more as he returned to his story. "Every room was a horrid reminder of the year we were held captive in our own home. I watched a Hogwarts professor killed there, I was forced to... I couldn't figure out how not to... " He tried to keep his face calm as he slowed his speech and his heart rate. "I did a lot of things I never wanted to think of again, Granger. For weeks after we returned to the house, I would be sitting in one room and have this eerie feeling that the Dark Lord would walk in the door. I knew he was dead, but that didn't stop me from seeing him everywhere. I kept seeing his giant snake everywhere, too.

"What were we supposed to do? Sell the place?" He looked to Hermione, pausing in his jeremiad as if waiting for a response. She merely shook her head and shrugged her shoulders questioningly. "Who would buy it? No wizarding family in Britain would ever go near it, and only a few of them would be able to afford it anyway. Some other wizarding family from the continent? What kind of madman would be moving to England so soon after the war ended? As it was, we had to peddle an estate in Normandy and a summer home on the Dalmatian coast just to pay our share of reparations. What we could afford instead was a remodeling of much of the interior. You saw a few of the portrait galleries, which remained largely untouched. Nothing ever happened there and there's quite a bit of magic holding the family portraits to the family estate, of course. The Floo room was always empty and has remained that way. The dining room, redecorated. The dungeons, partially bricked over and partially converted into one of the finest wine cellars in England. All in all, over half of the manor's rooms have been overhauled."

He grinned again with a hint of levity in his voice. "I know what you're thinking here, Granger: 'How, Malfoy, did you ever accomplish all of this in such troubled times? I know you're brilliant, certainly, you did earn nine N.E.W.T.s to my mere eight, but this is a bit much even for a wizard as intelligent, skilled, and devilishly handsome as you.'"

"Wow," she said sarcastically. "You took the words right out of my mouth. With skills like those, you really should have pulled another Outstanding in Divination."

He wasn't about to acknowledge her retort. "The answer? I didn't." He spoke more quietly now, adopting the tone he used with Astoria yesterday at the manor. "He did. He's the best man I know. It took me a long time to see it because Merlin knows he doesn't seem to want anyone to notice, but he helped Mother and me get our lives together. He tutored me for exams while he was still unable to walk, later he guided Mother through all the legal mumbo-jumbo surrounding the estates and the will, six years ago he took me on as an apprentice in Potions work, and eventually he sponsored my application to work at St. Mungo's."

Hermione was stunned.

"When was the last time you talked to Longbottom?"

"Neville?" It felt like Draco was pulling unrelated topics out of the air.

He nodded.

"My birthday party last month. Why?"

"Did he mention his parents at all?"

"No. Should he have done?"

Draco ran one fingertip across the top of his water glass. "You really should ask him, Granger."

She nodded, surprised at the tenor of this conversation. Malfoy had hated Longbottom and tormented him for years when they were younger. Oh, he had hated her as well, but she thought he gave her some measure of respect, however begrudgingly. He shouldn't know something about her friend that she didn't.

"I'm telling you this because I'm inviting you to use the Malfoy library for your work."

"But, why..."

"He uses it, too, Granger. As much as I want to make things right with you and as little as I know of what actually happened between you two yesterday, I will not allow anyone to make Severus Snape feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in my house. Ever. He taught me nearly everything I know – everything worth knowing, anyway, and he's the only other patron of the library."

Something finally dawned on Hermione. She gasped in surprise. "He taught you Legilimency, didn't he?"

"Ten points to Gryffindor." He grabbed the bill again, tossing cash into the slim black folder. "I didn't get too far, though."

"How?"

"How what, Granger?"

"How did he proceed?

They both stood, gathering their things and walking to the door. He picked up his overcoat and umbrella from the coat check. "He started by using Legilimency against me so that I would learn to be aware of another presence in my mind. Then he had me study several antiquarian texts on the subject – most are located in my library, and I've still got the list scribbled out somewhere – and he taught me how to build false memories and block true ones."

"And eye contact is necessary for Legilimency..." she murmured, thinking of Professor Snape's cryptic words to her in the study.

"Yes, of course."

Well, she thought. That explains that.