Chapter Ten

"There comes a point when we don't want you to act like gentlemen."

"What?"

"You haven't kissed her yet, Neville?"

"Er... well, you see, Hermione..."

"But you and Hannah have been together for over a year now."

"Well..."

"You have been dating for over a year now, haven't you?"

"What exactly do you mean by 'dating'?"

"You go out together, just the two of you, and she knows what your intentions are."

"Intentions?"

"She knows you want to snog her face off," Ron contributed helpfully, "even though you haven't done it yet."

"Ron!" Neville whispered in exclamation. "Keep it down, will you?"

The three friends were splitting a basket of chips around a wobbly corner table in the Leaky Cauldron, waiting for their somethings more substantial to be delivered. The table itself was strategically chosen: close enough for Neville to exchange demure smiles with the rosy-cheeked blonde helping Tom behind the counter, but far enough away so that she couldn't overhear what they were saying about her. This was Hermione's first time back in Diagon Alley since her return four months earlier, and she was delighted to see the place much as she remembered it.

Like much of Diagon Alley, it looked the same today as it ever did. The apothecary had been untouched, as had the cauldron shop and Magical Menagerie and a handful of others. Flourish & Blotts had sustained only minor damage, unlike most of the rest of the buildings along the street. Almost all of the vandalized establishments rebuilt to their old specifications after the war, with a few notable exceptions. Amid the tastefully remade storefronts of Ollivander's shop and Eeylops Owl Emporium, the garishly modernised silver façade of Madam Primpernelle's Beautifying Potions was an quite an eyesore, and Florean Fortescue had branched out into the world of spinning neon signs in the reconstruction of his ice cream parlor. Wizarding taste ran the gamut from tasteful to tasteless, from worn parchment and hand-cut goose quills to an infamous glittery purple suit.

"It's not a matter of my not being interested."

"Listen, Neville, I'm just saying..."

A loud coughing fit interrupted the trio. When they looked around to find its source, they saw an older witch in dark grey robes with two just-shy-of-Hogwarts-aged girls beside her. Hermione quickly scanned her friends for some sign that they knew the people standing in front of her, but it was clear they didn't recognise any of them, either.

"Can we help you?" Hermione asked tentatively.

"Can you help me? Oh, you're too much!" the woman proclaimed effusively. A ball of nervous energy, her excitement was barely contained as she flitted about their table.

Hermione glanced in utter confusion at her friends.

"I know who you three are, of course." She pushed the reluctant children forward. "Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, Nigel Longbottom, please meet my granddaughters, Harriet and Opal. Harriet, Opal, these are the three who helped the Harry Potter defeat You-Know-Who." Neville winced as she rattled off his name.

"Voldemort," Ron supplied.

"Tom Riddle," Hermione amended.

The older woman, completely beside herself, began digging around in her vibrant tangerine handbag.

"Er... Harriet, Opal, it's very nice to meet you." Neville spoke kindly to the girls, who were obviously embarrassed by their grandmother, and offered a hand for each to shake. "My name is Neville."

"I'm Hermione." She waved across the table at the girls.

"Ron." He did likewise.

"Can we get your signatures?" the woman asked, producing a scrap of parchment. "For the girls, of course."

Hermione was rather bewildered. Why would anyone want them? It had been years now since the war, all of them were working in quiet jobs out of the public eye, and none of them were Harry. If what she had read in the Daily Prophet over the years counted for anything, public interest had largely died down after the first few years. Besides, it's not as though their appearances had remained the same. She watched as Ron and Neville took this in stride.

"Hermione, do you have a quill or something?" Ron asked.

"Er..." She rummaged through her handbag and pulled out a biro. "Will this do?"

Neville nodded. "Who do we make it out to?"

The giddy smile instantly fell from the face of the witch in purple. "To Harriet and Opal and me, of course," she said in a huff, staring at Neville as though he had just insulted her prize-winning dahlias.

"Yes," Neville replied patiently, "I now know Opal and Harriet, but you never shared your name with us."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear, faith restored in humanity once more. "Silly me! Victoria." She proudly held a hand to her breast. "I'm Victoria. Vic-to-ri-a," she added, looking over Neville's shoulder at what he was writing. "With a 'c'."

After he finished writing a short note and attaching his signature, he passed it over to Ron and Hermione to do the same. Victoria led the girls back to their table out of hearing range, celebrity signature scrap in tow, and Hermione asked the boys about the encounter.

"Does that happen often?"

"Er... less often these days," Ron said. "It still crops up occasionally."

"I used to tell people that they probably didn't want my name," Neville replied, "but that seemed to offend them more than anything. Now I just do it."

"Besides, Neville, you know something good just came out of that," Ron said with a twinkle in his eye.

"What?"

"Hannah just watched you speak calmly with a crazy woman and shake the hands of two adorable little girls." He smiled as Neville flushed red. Neville was so easy to embarrass, even after everything he had done. Hermione bit her tongue, watching Ron counsel their friend, ready to leap in if he said anything that gave her pause. "She watched the whole time, and her eyes were focussed on you, my friend."

He whipped around in his seat to see where she had wandered off to, but she was bringing something around to another table.

"Give it up, Neville." Ron leaned over and grasped him by the shoulder. "She likes you. You need to go for it."

"She's a very good friend, and I don't want to spoil that."

"You want more than that, don't you?

"I suppose I... er... that is, I think I want..."

Ron began his cross-examination. "You have lunch here five times a week just so you can see her?"

"Yes."

"You think she's the most beautiful girl in the world and you want to know what she'll look like beside you in bed at ninety?"

"Yes!"

"You want her fruitful loins to bear your children?"

"Merlin, YES!" He pounded the heavy wooden table with his fist, and several patrons turned around in their seats to see what had caused the commotion.

"Ronald!" Hermione exclaimed, swatting his arm. "Do you have to put it like that?"

He ignored her, grinning from ear to ear. "Neville! Man up! Ask her out on a proper date! Do it now!"

He nodded firmly, downed his drink in one, and marched off to corner the amiable Miss Abbott.

"I can't believe that worked," Hermione said in surprise. "Well done, Ron."

"A bloke's got to help his friends out, doesn't he?"

"It's about time something like this finally happened. I thought they were already together, from the way everyone talks about it."

"Yep, well..." He sopped up a bit of vinegar with the last of the shared chips, staring resolutely at the short dessert menu on the tabletop. "It's not always that helpful when everyone's talking about, is it? Didn't we learn that one?"

Oh, Ron. They had never really talked through what had happened between them after she had gone. It had all happened so fast. After years of wondering when he would finally appreciate and understand her, he picked the most inopportune time to show that he had finally got it. Showing support of the house-elf liberation movement was unlikely to be considered a big romantic gesture by anyone other than Hermione Granger, but she had lost it. How could she not have? She kissed him in the heat of the moment, and he looked at her differently for the first time.

As much as she thought she had wanted that for all those years, it felt misplaced when it finally happened. Off. In the aftermath of the war, that kiss had been swept under the rug, and whatever feelings they shared had been pushed to the side. During her first Christmas back at the Burrow, she had thought Ron still might have feelings for her and suspected Molly was still trying to direct the pair of them together, but a number of sob sessions at the foot of the Christmas tree had done wonders in deterring him. Deterring them. A few more repetitions of 'I love you like a brother' and 'You and Harry mean the world to me' had solidified things for the pair of them. She wasn't ready for anyone, and they both knew it.

When he and Susan got engaged, she celebrated her friend's happiness freely, ignoring the long glimpses a very concerned Ginny and fatherly Arthur sent her way. She ignored the way Susan tried to avoid her as well, taking her out for drinks in Muggle London to reassure her of her support for the couple and her desire to get to know the newest addition to the Weasleys' extended family. When they finally tied the knot a year later, she toasted their future together and even willingly danced with the overly handsy Ernie MacMillan at Susan's prompting. (Ginny took note early on, mercifully directing Harry to cut in.) Ron and Susan left for their honeymoon, Ginny and Harry left for their home, and Hermione left for her empty house a world away.

"I'm glad that everything has worked out the way it has. You and Susan make sense together. You fit." Hermione paused, silently wondering when the last time was she felt she truly fit in anywhere. Dismissing her own thoughts, she addressed her friend again. "I'd say she worships the ground you walk on, but I've always thought that talk of worship in conjunction with love smacks of a fairly unhealthy codependency, and I think better of both of you than that."

He didn't look up, but took the menu of puddings in hand.

"Let's just say that she adores you. It's rather sweet to watch, Ron, and I'm glad there's someone who loves you like that."

"I adore her." He began tapping the laminated card idly on the table, opening his mouth as if to say something and closing it again as if thinking better of it. Peering at her out of the corner of his eye, he finally asked his question cautiously. "Did you ever wonder what would have happened between us if you wouldn't have left?"

"Sometimes."

His fingers moved over the choices on the list. "Me, too."

"I think we would have figured out eventually, Ron."

"Hmm?" He didn't have a sweet tooth.

"It's better it worked out the way it did. We would've figured out that we were all wrong for each other in time, but not after we had done more damage."

"I know. I do. Sometimes I wish we had had a big explosion and falling out just to make the break a bit cleaner," Ron said, looking up at her as he set the dessert menu back down with a tentative smile on his face.

"Wouldn't that have diminished all the little explosions we had as friends?" she asked, thinking of flurries of angry canaries and Howlers.

"Had?" He repeated her word as a question in disbelief, asking if she honestly thought their tendency to bicker and yell at one another was wholly in the past.

"Have," she agreed, present tense. It wasn't a Weasley family gathering, after all, without an insensitive remark from Ron, an impassioned protest from Hermione, and homemade pie from Molly.

"I can't believe I never noticed Susan when we were still in school," he stated baldly, shaking his head slightly. "I'm sort of glad I didn't, though. I'm glad she first got to know me after the war."

"It's funny, isn't it?" Hermione smiled serenely as she watched Neville chatting up Hannah at the other end of the room. "Times change, and we change, and we can see things now we couldn't before."

"Speaking of," he said warily, "Hermione, isn't it a bit strange to be hanging around Malfoy all the time?"

"No, actually, he's been... helpful." Given the circumstances, 'helpful' seemed like the safest word to use. She didn't think she could tell Ron yet how much she enjoyed chumming around with Draco. It had unnerved Harry at the time, and he still clammed up whenever she related news from her visits to the manor. He was much more understanding than Ron, and if even he was uncomfortable, she highly doubted Ron would deal with it well. "And it's not like I see him every time I go to the Manor."

"Just Astoria, then?"

"Often Astoria. She's fantastic, by the way. I think I would have liked her in school if we hadn't been so busy with everything else." Hannah and Neville were heading back towards them, plates in hand. "Sometimes nobody. He's got it set up so that I can let myself in and work by myself."

"You're kidding."

"Yep, well, believe it or not, but he's a pretty generous fellow. There's a lot about the Malfoys I would never have guessed."

Neville set his own plate down as took his seat, and Hannah passed off dishes to Ron and Hermione. They exchanged the greetings and chatted with Hannah for a few minutes before she walked off to another customer.

"Neville, you dog, you," Ron said with a grin, elbowing his friend in the ribs.

He sighed melodramatically and let his arms fall to his sides and his forehead fall to the table, muffling his voice.

"I couldn't do it."

"What? Why?"

"What if she doesn't want me to think of her like that?" he asked, still planted facedown beside his steaming roast beef. "We could never go back to being friends."

Ron grumbled something likely obscene under his breath in exasperation, then decided to ignore it all and let Neville stew in his own frustration. Then he turned back to Hermione. "Surprising things about the Malfoys, you said." Ron remembered something she had said in a conversation, the surest sign of any she'd seen that he had grown up. "Like what?"

"Muggle artifacts!" Hermione exclaimed in a whisper. She looked around the Leaky Cauldron to make sure no one was listening. "There's a section of the library exclusively dedicated to Squib and Muggle literature. There are even Muggle portaits in the portrait hall."

"Why are you whispering?" Ron asked in a low voice.

"Oh," she responded in a conversational tone. "No reason, I suppose. It just seems so odd, I suppose. In my less than mature moments, I like to think the Muggle portraits are of Muggle Malfoys, secreted away in the annals of history."

"Maybe they are?" he asked. "But why would they have all that Muggle stuff?"

"I don't know. I should ask." Draco would probably tell her these days, something that never would have happened ten years ago. Ron shot her a look of disbelief, only confirming the wisdom in keeping mum about her growing friendship with the Slytherin. "I see Professor Snape a fair bit, as well. Actually, him more than Malfoy."

"I don't know if Snape's a good or a bad trade-off for Malfoy," Ron stated bluntly.

Neville headed that one off, finally peeling himself up off the table. "He's not a bad bloke these day, Ron."

"Snape? Or Malfoy?"

"Both, I think." Neville liberally seasoned his meal, frequent experience assuring him it would need it without tasting a bite. "Listen, Snape's done quite a bit for St. Mungo's, even if he doesn't officially work there. And you forget that I work with Malfoy. We're not the best of mates, but we talk, and it works. And he's rather good at his job."

Neville defended both Snape and Malfoy. To Ron, of all people. Hermione knew how he and Malfoy had been forced to act companionable at St. Mungo's for sheer survival, and she knew firsthand how far Draco had come from their school days, but hearing Neville defend Snape was a bit surprising. Sure, he had mourned the man when they all thought he had died, and sure, he had visited the man in the hospital during his recovery, but those were encounters with a Snape who couldn't talk back. Her heart warmed up with pride at his words of support for the two people who terrified and terrorised him the most during those years. It also shrunk a bit in shame, knowing that she also could have said something on their behalf. All in good time, Hermione.

"Okay, Neville, I tried to ask you this that day at the hospital, and I got the feeling you didn't want to talk about it. If you really don't, tell me to mind my own business and shove off. But... well, I'm asking because Malfoy mentioned something... about your folks. Is there... anything? Happening? With them?"

"Yeah, well... there's another experiment. I'm trying not to have high expectations."

"An experiment? That's wonderful!"

He shook his head. "Hermione, how many experimental trials have you worked on that cure everyone?"

"Virtually none, but you almost always learn something important that leads to better results."

"Right. They usually don't cure people," he said, confirming only the first part of what she had said.

"Experiments at St. Mungo's don't always go so well, do they?" Ron asked. "Wasn't there that trial a few years..."

"I am very careful," Neville interrupted firmly and almost coldly, "very careful – to allow only tests that I believe can't do any harm."

Hermione was at a loss for what she had missed, and made a mental note to ask Ron about it the next time they were together.

Neville let out a quick puff of air and folded his arms across his chest, leaning back in his seat. "Look, I don't want to sound ungrateful or... that I'm losing faith or anything. I just want to be realistic." He waited for some kind of response from Hermione. Not wanting to cut him off or lead him away from what he was trying to say, she merely nodded and narrowed her eyes, wordlessly encouraging him to continue. "This is the sixth trial now to try to help my parents' recovery. All but one has been a complete failure, and the one that produced any results at all only yielded minor ones."

"There's been a change in your parents' status?" she asked hesitantly. "Neville, that's incredible! What was... What is it?" she corrected herself. "When did it happen?"

"My dad can walk," he responded flatly.

"Since when?" she asked tentatively. She thought he would have been ecstatic at this improvement.

"About five years ago."

It truly was amazing. Neville's parents may have been patients for the same reason and in the same ward, but the curse that sent them there had affected them quite differently. When she had first seen them in St. Mungo's, Neville's mother was still physically strong, dancing about the room. The nerve damage experienced by his father had been far greater, affecting his body as well as his mind, and Frank Longbottom was confined to the same bed he'd been in for fourteen years.

"Five years ago!" She leaned across the table in excitement and flung her arms around his shoulders in a quick embrace. All restraint was thrown off. "Your dad can walk! Walk?" She sighed contentedly. "Oh, Neville, that's beyond anything I could ever want for for you." She was unsettled by his uncharacteristic glowering at her enthusiasm, and explained further, grabbing his arm with both hands. "Don't you see? It means that regeneration is possible! After all those years! A sign like that? That means you have reason to hope."

"Sure," he muttered softly. "Hope. I thought that there would have been a bit more progress by now, you know?"

She wrapped her hand around his arm and laid her head against his shoulder, straining to hear his quiet words.

"I've always wanted to hear one of them call me by my name. Just once. 'Neville.' Or look at me and know I'm their son. I thought..." He abruptly stopped speaking, and Hermione could feel him shaking against her side before he adjusted to wipe his eyes.

Neville began the quiet retreat into himself, so Ron took up the task of distracting everyone from more serious topics with a round of increasingly obscene jokes he'd picked up from George. They were ready to leave about the time that Neville's bashfulness began to lose the battle with the blood vessels in his cheeks, so Hermione did them both a favour, shut Ron up, and pulled out her wallet to pay. As she starting counting out her Galleons, Hannah rushed over and told her to put her purse away.

Someone else had already picked up their tab.

Working with Draco in the lab. Likely free at 2:30 or 3:00. My apologies.

– SS

Hermione picked up the scrap of paper from her writing-desk and read it a few times. She had an apology from Snape, and she had it in writing. That might be even more satisfying than hearing the words of apology from Draco weeks earlier. If an apology makes me giddy, she thought, is there anything I do that elicits the same response? She would have to give it some thought.

Deciding that it would be a waste of time to return to Grimmauld Place for a mere half hour or hour, she set her things down and gave herself permission to indulge in her surroundings. The focus she had employed in this room for months had held because she wouldn't allow herself to wander around the room reading shelves. She knew that if she began to browse the collection, she might never stop, so she had relied upon the Slow Summoning Charm for each volume she had piled up on her desk. Well, that or she relied on Snape to procure books for her; she noticed that most of the required readings from the Malfoy restricted section were delivered to her desk with cautionary notes of instruction attached.

Now, knowing that she had a limited amount of time before Snape returned for their meeting, she climbed a spiral staircase to the balcony level to begin her search. Following the perimeter of the room from the central fireplace, she kept an internal tally of how many books she had seen before at Hogwarts and how many were new to her. She was startled to realise that a third category cropped up during her walk – books she was already familiar with that she had not read at Hogwarts. Books she knew from elsewhere, from the Muggle world. Looking around her and seeing those from the third category in abundance, she knew she was in the Muggle and Squib literature section. Chaucer and Donne and Dryden eventually gave way to Shakespeare and Spencer, Muggle names she knew and loved, but there were several she didn't recognise at all. She assumed those must have belonged to Squib authors.

Checking her watch – 2:36 – and realising that she could very well have no time left before Snape would return for their lesson, she walked over to the alchemy section to find an old comfort read she had regularly turned to at Hogwarts. She began tracing the spines alphabetically to get to the author of her book when, unexpectedly, she ran her finger over another third category book. Outside the Muggle section. She pulled out The Sceptical Chymist by Robert Boyle, albeit a much more elaborately illustrated volume than the cheap paperback she knew, and thought back to the first time she read it in university. An important transition from the study of alchemy to modern chemistry, it was featured in a survey course on the history of science required for all those in the medical track she had chosen. And here it was in Malfoy Manor. Odd.

She pulled it out and perused its pages. A first edition, printed in red and black ink, bound in leather. Boyle was a Muggle, wasn't he? Although if the Statute of Secrecy was passed in 1692, this work predated it by a few decades. The wizarding world had only been in hiding for a little over three centuries, a fact that still shocked Hermione. How could Muggles not know? How could she not have known, when she herself was a witch?

For all the trite clichés about forgotten history being doomed to repeat itself, it seemed impossible that the world could have forgotten something as powerful and pervasive as magic, and yet her own experience had taught her how easy it was to bury the truth. The truth, whatever that was. It seemed to divide along several fault lines. There was what had happened and what people thought had happened. Then there was what people wrote about what had happened, and what people told their children about what had happened, and what people ended up remembering about what had happened. Centuries ago, everyone knew about the magic in the world. Try to describe it to a Londoner today, and you'd get thrown in a padded cell for observation.

Once upon a time, she had been a girl. Then one day, she became a witch, her parents became Muggles, and she could make things fly.

3:11. It wasn't like him to be late, and he had told her that he would likely be free by 3:00. She assumed that whatever they were brewing was complicated, and that there was no natural stopping point for them. Thinking she could possibly be of some help, at least with menial tasks, if not anything more intricate, she called for one of the house-elves to deliver her to the lab. A short walk down a hallway and three flights of stairs deposited her in the anteroom, where she washed up in a setup quite similar to the operating rooms she was used to. After getting the house-elf's assurance that the room was not specially sterilized, she quietly slipped inside to offer her assistance.

Tables of different substances filled the room: wood, glass, steel, and stone. Along the far wall, cauldrons were arranged horizontally by material in descending size; a row of gold cauldrons were on the very top, underneath which was a row of silver cauldrons, then copper and brass and elements she couldn't identify by sight. The wall closest to her was an open shelving system for common potions ingredients, and it was as strictly ordered as everything else in the room. The two men she was seeking were at the centre table, a heavy slab of marble, surrounded by a few cauldrons, piles of ingredients, and instruments for stirring, chopping, slicing, and the like.

It was a case study in opposites: Malfoy was light, Snape was dark. Malfoy quite tall, Snape of rather average height. Short blond hair in a Muggle cut, longish black tied back at the nape of his neck. Quite obviously handsome, not... ugly per se, but not particularly attractive. Much about them was identical: their white buttoned shirts rolled up to their sleeves and pale complexions – part and parcel of being British, she supposed – and their arrangement of ingredients on the table they shared, but it highlighted the contrasts between them rather than diminishing them. Draco's brow was furrowed in concentration as he exerted a great deal of energy in his potion making while Severus' calm demeanor exuded confidence, extraordinarily efficient in his movements. Force and finesse. A dramatic show and the subdued display of a very tangible power.

It was quite beautiful, Hermione reflected, to watch them working. She would never tell Harry or Ron, but she finally came to tolerate Quidditch matches sometime in her fourth year after watching professional Quidditch players at the World Cup moving about on the pitch. It was like poetry, really, or at least ballet. There was some tremendous grace in the human body as it worked, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. Watching Draco and Severus side by side as they prepared the same ingredients was as enlightening as it was intriguing, and she briefly wondered if anyone ever observed her like that when she was in surgery or mowing her grass or even preparing a sandwich. Had anyone ever looked at her and enjoyed simply watching her move? Draco finally spoke up after allowing her a few minutes of voyeurism, startling her out of her revery as her eyes followed the almost imperceptible flexing of Severus' index finger guiding his blade through a neatly ordered pile of shrivelfigs.

"Yes, Granger?" Draco had three cauldrons before him, two of which were small glass pots simmering on low flickering flames, untouched. The final cauldron was a large pot into which he was stirring powdered something-or-other and a diced grey gelatinous substance that she couldn't place.

"I'll leave if you'd prefer, but I wonder if I couldn't watch you work?"

Snape remained focussed on the task before him, chopping plant matter into uniform pieces with his right hand while rhythmically stirring a madly boiling purple liquid with his left. It looked vaguely like one of the pain potions she had tested, whose results were laying in the notebooks on Severus' roll-top desk, but whatever he was chopping was new to her. "You didn't come to chastise me for tardiness?" he inquired ambivalently.

"Of course not. I quite enjoyed myself in the library after reading your message, but then I saw the time and thought I might offer my assistance, meager though it is."

"Can you still do anything, Granger?" Draco asked.

"I'll have you know that Muggles pay me big money to slice open their brains with sharp objects, fish around inside, and stitch them back together again."

"Can you still do anything, Granger?" he asked again with a smirk, neatly dismissing her Muggle medical training.

"Smart-arse."

Draco merely laughed, and Severus almost cracked a smile.

"Well, we can't have you ruining things just because your cauldron's tucked away somewhere covered in dust, now can we?"

She glared daggers at him. "I'm still a precision-oriented human being, Malfoy, and I was trained by Severus for five years, so even if I'm a touch rusty, I can perform menial tasks in the lab." Hermione hadn't even realised how much she missed working on something magical with others until she was faced with the chance to dissect flobberworms for whatever this happened to be. It had been a decade of occasional brewing and occasional charms work alone, and now she found she wanted to do something, even though she knew that her skills weren't up to theirs. She smiled beatifically at the pair. "Look at it as an opportunity to rid yourself of the tedious jobs you hate."

Draco glanced at Severus to gauge his reaction – he was obviously directing this session, even if he was less vocal than the younger man beside him.

Frustratingly less vocal. Hermione was finally coming to terms with this aspect of her burgeoning relationship with these Slytherins; Draco was outgoing and overbearing as always, but Severus Snape could still be terribly, terribly reserved with her. He had no choice but to speak with her when they were one on one, but with more than one person around, he vacillated between a stoic restraint and an almost-friendly chattiness, as in her last conversation with him and Astoria. She couldn't blame the man, but she never knew who she was going to get and greatly preferred Option B.

When he was willing to talk to her, he had a sense of humour buried under all that sarcasm, and he challenged her intellectually in a way that she hadn't experienced in the wizarding world before. Primary school had been an exercise in displacement; her parents had prepared her so well that her teachers threatened to place her with students three years older than herself. Oh, she'd found some impressive competition amongst her fellow medical students as they battled it out for placement, but the only real competition she'd had at Hogwarts surfaced in her sixth year in Potions class with Harry. She'd always known Draco was clever, but he was distracted by his own sense of entitlement in the early years and by the pressures his family was facing at the end. And Harry had only given her a run for her Galleons because of the Half-Blood Prince's old textbook, so her only true competition at Hogwarts had actually been Severus himself.

Sometimes it seemed like he was just ignoring her, which was a strong possibility. Other times it seemed like he was holding back around her, preferring to watch and listen and try to figure her out. It was probably just her own curiosity projected onto him, her own wishful thinking that he was attempting to understand her as much as she was him. It was more likely, she thought, that he didn't notice or care about her presence much at all.

She had seen him with all the Malfoys, of course, but she still had no idea who, if anyone, he ever spoke to otherwise. After a childhood of neglect, he had been relegated to two decades of solitude amongst the masses. She imagined that these years since the war had probably provided him with the first real friendships he'd had since Lily and Dumbledore, even if they only extended to this small family. Even they had known him most of his life, but from what Draco had told her earlier, she doubted that he was honest with them about who he was or close to them at all until the rebuilding years.

His gaze shifted from the cauldron at his left to her hands at her waist. "Do you remember how to prepare root of asphodel?"

"Sliced or powdered?"

"Powdered."

She nodded.

He lifted his head towards the far cabinet. "Top shelf. Check the measurements in the notes."

She went to gather the items and set up a work space across from him on the table.

He spoke acerbicly. "Don't overdo it."

The three of them continued working on some aspect or another of this potion (or was it potions? Hermione still wasn't sure) for the better part of the afternoon. When she was finished with the asphodel, the pair conferred for a moment and then directed her to prepare another root for use. Her time with a scalpel had apparently thrown her off her habits from Potions class. Every so often, Severus would instruct her to change her knife hold or cutting technique, repositioning her fingers around her blade or mortar or whatever tool it was she was using at the time. He routinely gave her about thirty seconds to fall into her standard knife hold before he coming over to curl her fingers around a handle in a certain way or demonstrate the cutting strokes he knew were best. Otherwise, they all worked in relative silence. Draco and Severus seemed to be reading one another's minds as they seamlessly passed off cauldrons to one another to stir and flipped pages through their notes for one another to read.

Sometime later, a quiet rapping at the door alerted them all to a visitor. They all looked up to see Astoria and Scorpius in the doorway, keeping clear of all the bubbling substances on the table.

"Ah, there you all are," Astoria said, approaching her husband with her usual grace despite the wiggling toddler on her hip.

"Darling." He leaned down to kiss her cheek.

"They let you brew with them?" Astoria asked Hermione with wide eyes. "I ought to be jealous, you know."

"Nonsense," she responded with a shake of her head. "They only let me prepare ingredients, and it was only after a certain amount of pleading on my behalf." She let out a small laugh as she began to return excess powdered moonstone to its glass storage container. "I don't even know what exactly it is they're brewing, although..." She stole a glimpse of Severus to observe his response. Austere as ever, he remained unmoved. "Although I think that this one," she pointed at the cooled purple liquid before him, "this one may be related to..."

"I was meaning to ask you about that," he interrupted gruffly. "That is what I wanted to speak to you about today in our meeting, but obviously the brewing precluded a further review of your tests. Draco and I have to gather a few more ingredients tonight, which will, I'm afraid, keep us from our original plans. Are you free to return here tomorrow?"

She frowned, mentally going over her work calendar. "Late shift. The earliest I can meet is Wednesday evening."

"That will do."

"Seven o'clock?"

He merely harrumphed out what she assumed was his acceptance.

"Dinnertime already?" Draco asked his wife.

"Probably past. It's seven o'clock, which is late for Scorpius."

"Probably?" Hermione asked. "I thought everyone with children kept regimented schedules. That is, everyone I know with children keeps a pretty regular schedule."

"Only when Mother's visiting," Draco reassured her. "It's not like there's a great variety in mealtimes or bedtimes here otherwise, but she keeps everyone in line. Refusing to keep to a timetable like a Swiss train conductor is my own little rebellion against Mother's expectations. She's quite particular when it comes to performing all the social niceties, no matter how passé."

"It's a pureblood practice," Astoria confirmed.

"Yes, well, it means that I can waltz and polka and mazurka with the best of them. I also know what to do with that pesky fifth spoon when faced with it at a dinner, and I know how low to bow when greeting someone of each station or title. I can even insult a man just by shaking his hand a certain way...a useful skill to possess, Granger, even though it wasn't particularly pleasant when I was forced inside for dancing lessons rather than allowed out with broomstick over the grounds." He put a Stasis Charm on his cauldrons and began cleaning up his corner of the table while Severus did likewise. Then he turned to his wife. "We're at a fairly good stopping point with this potion right now, but I'm afraid we can't join you for dinner, my dear."

"Why not?" Astoria asked sweetly with a slight pout of her lips.

"Time-sensitive materials, I'm afraid. We're off to the New Forest."

"Quite time-sensitive," Snape added with a glance to his pocket-watch. "It's later than I thought. We should have left twenty minutes ago."

Draco pulled his son into his arms and threw him into the air before smothering him in kisses and handing him back to his wife. "I might not be back for story time, Scorp, so please mind your mother and know that I love you." He then went to move the last of his cauldrons to an empty table. He finally headed for the door where the Professor was waiting with arms crossed across his chest and a bemused look upon his face.

"Any other sentimental goodbyes before we can leave?" Snape asked dryly. "The house-elves need tucking in, perhaps, or the peacocks require some warm milk?"

"Drat!" he exclaimed, ignoring Severus' remarks. "Let me just... find..." He hurried back to the storage shelves to look for something, and Snape waited for him to pull whatever it was he was looking for, surveying the scene before him silently.

"I brought Peter Rabbit to read today," Hermione reminded the boy, who beamed in delight. "He's in the library."

"Good!" Astoria exclaimed. "I'm glad you're staying for dinner. It'll be a cosy little party with just the three of us."

"And then Peter Wabbit?" Scorpius asked excitedly. "I can show my pway woom."

Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy froze in place.

Draco finally spoke up. "Scorpius, maybe you can read in your room tonight instead. Is that all right?"

The boy 'mmm-hmmed' his approval, and Astoria said quietly to a confused Hermione, "His play room is...was the drawing room."

"Oh." The drawing room. She had tried to forget about that room's existence, and she had largely succeeded in doing so.

"I'm sorry, Granger," he said quietly.

"No, no," she stated firmly, keeping her composure, "I'll be just fine." She turned to Scorpius and tickled him behind his knees, forcing a bit of a smile onto her face. "Scorpius, can you show me your play room some other time? Not tonight, please."

Draco snatched the silver mesh bag he had been looking for from the shelves, and he traipsed over to kiss Astoria on the cheek one last time. "We're off."