Chapter 2

By four in the afternoon, Hermione felt she was finally getting somewhere. What she'd been informed was the story of an obscure saint turned out to be the tale of a powerful wizard whose political enemies had cursed his family unto the third generation. The enemies, needless to say, were speakers of Cumbric. They had attached curses to the wizard's name, and Hermione believed she was already in a position to remove half of the curses on the scroll. She was debating whether this was sufficient reason to ask Crundy to fetch Malfoy when the door opened at the far end of the library.

She could hear the brisk tap of boot heels upon the polished wooden floor. Hermione was reaching for the paper containing her conclusions when a man spoke behind her.

She heard a voice out of the past, reaching out through the intervening years and taking her back, effortlessly, to the Potions classroom in the dungeons of Hogwarts. She could almost smell that sharp, herb-and-chemical odour that clung to his robes. Hermione closed her eyes. She had spent eight years reliving the death of the Potions master in her dreams, wishing that she had at least attempted to save him, regretting his death almost more than the others because he had fought so long and so hard; his death had been so unnecessary, and he had never known that Harry had won. She let herself wish, for just a moment, that he had cheated death and was alive, instead of whatever this was: a ghost or a portrait or a Polyjuice potion trick in very bad taste.

"It appears Madam Janvier has accepted my paper on the uses of dragon's saliva at last." The deep, smooth voice was so familiar, yet it bore a slight edge that she did not remember from her youth – as if he had a residual sore throat. She turned around, slowly, her hand automatically going to the wand on the desk at her side, and peered around the high ornate back of her chair.

He stood in the middle of the library, his black robes sweeping down to pool around his feet, black hair glossy in the lamplight. His black eyes were fixed upon her face, startled for so brief a moment that she wondered if she had seen the expression at all.

"Mrs Weasley," he said, and then his lips pulled into their habitual smirk.

For a wild instant, she thought that this couldn't be Severus Snape because he didn't know her married name; he had died before Ron had proposed.

They stared at one another, and Hermione just knew he was waiting for her to make a fool of herself. She got to her feet, wand in hand, and when she faced him, she bowed her head.

"Professor Snape." She raised her head again and stared into his impassive eyes. "I am so very, very glad to see you again." She heard his breath emerge in a short huff, perhaps of amusement.

"Hedging our bets, are we?"

"Either it really is you, in which case I can say how glad I am, and how sorry for all the things that went wrong in the past, or else someone's playing a very mean trick on me and I'm probably going to lose my dignity."

"Or your life," he whispered. Hermione's wand twitched in her hand and his lip lifted in a sneer. "Do you really think you could best me in a duel, girl?"

Hermione's heart soared in unexpected joy.

"If you're Snape, no, I couldn't, but then I wouldn't need to. If you were anyone else, yes, I probably could."

He gave his head a little backwards flick, which tossed an errant strand of hair away from his face. The movement was entirely and utterly him, subconscious perhaps, and a grudging acknowledgement that she was correct.

Hermione quashed a sudden and unexpected need to cry and settled instead for a bubble of laughter.

"Oh, god, it really is you, isn't it? The real Snape, alive and kicking." She sobered abruptly. "Damn. Does this mean you're going to have to Obliviate me?"

"Do you believe that I should?" He took a slow step towards her, and she recognised how dangerous he had always been, how that gliding walk signified control and a deep, hard-won self-awareness.

"I don't know. You must have a reason for letting everyone think you're dead – everyone except the Malfoys, that is."

"I am hidden under a modified Fidelius charm," he said, "which I have broken by inadvertently speaking to you."

"Then I won't be able to speak to anyone else about you anyway."

"Only to Lucius, Draco and the elves, because they already know about me."

"But why?"

The word 'sardonic' had been invented for the tilt of his black eyebrow.

"Do I need to answer that question, Mrs Weasley?"

"You must know that Harry obtained a posthumous pardon and an Order of Merlin First Class for you."

"And that convinces the remaining Death Eaters that I was not a traitor to their cause, does it?"

"Mulciber! Was it you who dumped Mulciber in the atrium of the Ministry with a label round his neck, addressed to Kingsley?"

"Very good, take a house point."

The Hermione who had been a schoolgirl when she last met him would have protested that he shouldn't try to act as a vigilante and take the law into his own hands, but this was a rather older and wiser Hermione.

"Is that what you're doing, chasing down the remaining ... Hang on, were you behind the new Wolfsbane variant? Of course you were; it was published under Daphne Greengrass's name and she never excelled at Potions. She's Draco's sister-in-law so there's the Malfoy connection. I hope you got well paid for it!"

He merely smirked at her. He must have mellowed in the eight years since the war.

"How did you survive, sir?"

"You are the one who has always known everything; how do you think I survived, Miss Know-It-All?"

His voice reawakened in her an old mix of trepidation and grudging respect. Hermione remembered how he had always walked so close to the edge, all the years she had known him. He had goaded Harry, snapped and snarled at Dumbledore, alienated the rest of the Hogwarts staff and the Order and braved Voldemort's lair, wielding his precise and lethal wit as if he really did not care about anyone, least of all himself.

"Your body had gone when we went back the next day, and there was a message scrawled in blood, 'May the half-blood traitor rot in hell!' so we assumed the Death Eaters had taken it. That was just to stop anyone looking for you, of course. Was it a Portkey or a Stasis Charm? Or both? A Portkey to Malfoy Manor and Healers who were either Obliviated afterwards or else you were taken abroad."

"Close enough," an urbane voice remarked from beside her. Lucius Malfoy gave his heavy-lidded half-smile. "Narcissa arranged everything, in repayment for the way Severus protected Draco. Severus, you are getting careless, my friend."

"As are you. You might have warned me you had a guest."

"Ah," said Malfoy, stroking his chin and giving his complacent smile, "had you informed me that you would return a day early, I would have done so."

"A minor problem with the international Portkey booking. It is of little relevance, since I am sure Mrs Weasley is far too much a Gryffindor to attempt to break a Fidelius charm."

"Your assumption isn't entirely correct," Hermione said, for no real reason that she could discern. Looking from one Slytherin to the other, the almost identical pitch of one blond and one black eyebrow, she wondered if Snape realised that he had modelled his expression of supercilious amusement upon that of his older friend. "I'm no longer a Weasley; Ron and I have separated, and we're in the process of getting divorced."

"Why is this of any interest to me?" Snape enquired with delicate contempt. Hermione shrugged.

"I recall your passion for accuracy, Professor."

"Severus does display such passion, doesn't he?" Malfoy's grey eyes glinted in the lamplight as Snape glowered at him. "It was your passion for life that enabled you to survive, so don't knock it, Severus. And yes, Mrs – I'm sorry, Miss Granger – accuracy is an oft-unappreciated virtue which, as an Unspeakable and a curse breaker, you no doubt have in abundance. Speaking of which, how are you getting on with your project?"

"Brilliantly! I was going to ask Crundy to tell you. I've written out the roots of the curses that are attached to the sorcerer's name."

"Splendid! May I...?"

Hermione thrust a roll of parchment at him, and he spread it out on the desk, one manicured finger following the rows of runes and Arithmancy calculations and his lips moving soundlessly as he read through them. Snape cleared his throat.

"Fascinating though this might be, Lucius, I have just arrived back from Canberra where it is past three in the morning."

"Of course, my dear fellow." He clapped his hands together sharply and an elf, clad in a Malfoy pillowcase, popped into being before him. "Prossy, set out a light repast in the small dining room immediately. Have Severus' luggage taken to his rooms and ensure that the bed is aired. Miss Granger, will you join us? I really would like to know how you disentangled the Cumbric from the Anglo-Saxon aspects of the curses. Was the Malthus-Gainey treatise of use after all?"

"Lucius..." Snape breathed, and when Hermione and Malfoy turned to him, he shook his head. "Really, Lucius, are you working for the Ministry now?"

"The puzzle is intriguing and right in the period that Carstairs so eloquently describes in his new book – you won't have read it, Severus: Charms and Curses of the Early Middle Ages, Volume Two."

"You would no more expect me to read that than I would expect you to peruse a copy of Esoteric Herbal Potions of the Mesopotamians."

"I might," Malfoy said with a shrug, "if I was really jaded; however, I have a very gratifying notion that with you and Miss Granger at the dinner table, I shall be far from bored."

"Has Carstairs actually published the second volume?" Hermione asked. "It would be a great help if he has."

"Not exactly, I have a pre-publication copy to review for The Journal of Applied Charms. It is beside my bed; a little late-night reading. I shall ensure it is in the library ready for you tomorrow. Now do come along; the elves get agitated if their cooking is allowed to spoil."

He made a graceful chivvying gesture, and Hermione found herself accompanying the two men into a small dining room where a table was set for three. The walls were decorated with a delicate duck-egg green and the paintwork in white, picked out with deep green highlights that were echoed in the velvet curtains and the seats of the chairs. Malfoy didn't appear to be observing her perusal, but he remarked, "I considered that Narcissa excelled herself when she remodelled this room," as he pulled out Hermione's chair.

"It is beautiful, Mr Malfoy." Hermione gently stroked the petals of one of the white roses in the vase in the centre of the table. It purred at her.

"My dear, do please call me Lucius. We are, after all, provisionally comrades in arms against the might of the wily Futharc runes."

He met her incredulous look with a smirk and a click of his fingers. An elf appeared and placed dishes of soup before them. Malfoy flicked out his napkin and placed it across his lap, taking in a breath of the fragrant steam rising from his soup. "Ah, brown Windsor soup, excellent; sustaining but not too heavy."

The elf offered a basket of bread rolls fresh from the oven, crisp on the outside and still hot and fluffy inside, accompanied by a dish of yellow butter. Hermione had long ago decided that Wizards seemed to neither know nor care about dental cavities, hardening of the arteries or cholesterol levels.

"Was the conference as motivating as you had hoped?" Malfoy – no, Lucius enquired, spreading butter on his bread.

"Parts of it were acceptable; two lectures and a demonstration were of interest. Fanthorpe's presentation on the properties of the blood of magical creatures lived up to expectations."

Snape glanced at Hermione, and she sensed that he was poised, awaiting her response. She had no reason not to oblige him.

"Fanthorpe seems to be verging on the Dark."

"Fanthorpe is looking at the inherent magical properties of blood versus other more easily collected products such as tears, saliva, hair and sweat, in the hope of substituting blood with ingredients that can be collected less invasively," Snape said. "Which you would know if you had followed the debate in New Sorcerer over the last ten months."

"I side with Ptarmigan. I believe that the structure and properties of the blood itself are too important to allow substitution."

"That may be so in some cases; however, using easily obtained blood of non-magical animals combined with the magically-enhancing saliva or hair of rare magical species not only allows one to collect samples without harm to the creature itself but also brings certain potions out from under the umbrella of those we dismiss as 'Dark' and allows their properties to be legally investigated."

"Naturally Severus wouldn't dream of handling any potion that could be construed as Dark," Lucius murmured.

"I hardly want my potions business investigated by the heavy-footed blunderers of the MLE," Snape said with a sniff. "As soon as they discovered that the brewer was protected by a Fidelius, they wouldn't stop until they'd dragged me into the light."

"Which would be devilishly inconvenient for a man whose life revolves between minimal sleep, writing and brewing in a dungeon," Lucius drawled. He met Snape's scowl with an insouciant shrug. "You need to come back into Wizarding society, Severus. Surely you want to be able to walk down Diagon Alley without using Polyjuice or a Glamour?"

"Not particularly, no. I do not desire to be scorned and spat at."

"But you wouldn't be," Hermione said eagerly. "Your name was completely cleared. You're a hero."

"Dead heroes have always been the most popular sort, Miss Granger, as they are much less inconvenient than living double agents."

"There are plenty of people who would be delighted to welcome you back."

"I doubt it." Snape gave her a completely insincere little smile. "I would be an embarrassment to them all."

"Harry would be overjoyed."

"And this matters to me why?"

"You said that you don't want to be scorned and spat at; well, I can assure you that if you were seen in the company of the Minister for Magic, Harry and Ginny Potter and the Headmistress of Hogwarts, there isn't a wizard or witch who would dare scorn you."

"She has you there, Severus, admit it."

"I will do no such thing." Snape tore his bread roll into little pieces with his fingertips and dropped the pieces into his soup. "I have escaped the entire Potter family and have no desire ever to come into contact with any of them ever again."

"Not even for Lily's sake?"

"No."

"If Harry knew that you were alive," Hermione said thoughtfully, "if you asked him, he'd go down on his knees in front of you to apologise to you for the way we misjudged you, and for the way that the Marauders treated you. Ron and I'd be there with him." Hermione crossed her fingers under the table; she suspected that Ron's mistrust of Slytherins extended to even Snape. "James Potter senior would spin in his grave."

She had him there, but he merely sniffed and did not reply. About to press her point, she caught a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye. Lucius gave an infinitesimal shake of his head. When he saw she was watching, his eyelids lowered and he glanced at Snape, then back to her.

Hermione reached for another bread roll and said brightly, "Since I must assume that you're not really Euphonia Bigwife, you must write as Marius Lacoste. I admired the review you wrote about 'Twentieth Century Charms'. I don't think I've ever read anything quite so damning without actually approaching libel."

"One of my better efforts," Lucius agreed in a self-satisfied purr. "Have you finished your soup?" He clapped his hands and Prossy appeared with a pop to Banish the dishes and replace them with soufflés and salad. "Yes, that book should be ritually burned along with its pompous windbag of an author."

"Not one of your admirers, then," Snape said dryly.

"Even Flitwick wrote to agree with my review, although had he known who Marius Lacoste really was, he'd probably have put the book onto the recommended reading list at Hogwarts just to spite me."

"Filius doesn't hold grudges," Snape murmured. He broke into his soufflé with his fork and then scooped up what looked like wild mushrooms in cream sauce. Hermione discovered her own soufflé contained a delicious concoction of seafood and Lucius' dish appeared to hold cheese.

"I hadn't realised how much I miss elvish cooking since leaving Hogwarts. This is delicious."

"I was under the impression that the Ministry canteen employed elves," Lucius remarked.

Hermione felt her face heating in a blush. "Yes, but they don't like me much. I made the mistake of trying to negotiate payment for them when I first joined the Ministry, and they've never forgiven me. I know better now," she added quickly in case Prossy was nearby. "The only thing they don't either undercook or burn is beans on toast. I usually get someone else to fetch me a sandwich and mug of tea, but I think they've cottoned that they're for me, because the order has been wrong for the last few weeks."

Lucius made a 'tsk tsk' sound and shook his head.

"Take away the service they render to wizards and you take away their reason for living."

"Witches," Hermione muttered, and when Lucius directed his expressive eyebrow at her, elaborated, "Whenever the cooking and cleaning gets done in a household without elves, it seems to get done by witches, not wizards."

"Ah, a feminist witch," Lucius sighed, "of course."

"Yes, sadly for you, we got the vote years ago, Mr Malfoy."

"And have been bothering your pretty little heads with politics ever since."

His expression was just too arrogant. Hermione narrowed her eyes.

"Bastard."

"No, I assure you that my parents had been married for years before my birth; a marriage that had been planned for decades, as was my own. It was Narcissa's fond hope that Draco would be allowed to marry for love, and my pleasure to see it come to pass. My father and I were just as much victims of an archaic tradition as any witch."

Snape gave an irritated snort. "Archaic but comfortable enough, Lucius. You never showed any inclination to run away from your Manor and your money." There was a sharp bite to Snape's words, which Malfoy acknowledged with an inclination of his head that appeared, to Hermione, almost apologetic.

"Had I been free to choose, I would have chosen differently, it's true."

Snape slapped his knife down on the table with some force.

"Easy to say that now, isn't it?" He stood up, drawing his robes around him like a prince's train. "If you will excuse me? Goodnight, Miss Granger, Lucius." He gave a short bow, turned and strode out of the room.

Lucius patted his lips with his napkin.

"Dear Severus, such an intriguingly prickly character, even now. Do take my word for it, Miss Granger, if you push him, he'll push back far harder. You've planted the seeds of the idea – I commend your excellent use of the name of Potter's father, by the way – and we shall winkle him out from his lair in the end. We must make him our next project, once we have mastered the Futharc runes." He sighed. "He'll calm down eventually; he always does. Now, speaking of runes – Accio Carstairs volume two." He held up his hand and smiled as a large book sailed in through the door that Snape had left open. "There you are, Miss Granger, you'll find chapters seven through to ten merit close perusal."

"Thank you!" Hermione took the heavy tome and opened it eagerly. "Oh, call me Hermione, for Merlin's sake. Does he continue his argument about the relative strengths of Brythonic and Goidelic charms?"

"Chapter twenty, I believe. You may borrow the book upon one condition." His voice was so serious that Hermione forced herself to look up from the index. Something in his cool, grey gaze made her insides twitch. "You promise me that you'll go home and sleep first, and not spend the entire night reading."

Smiling, Hermione stood up and held out her hand.

"If I must. Thank you very much, Lucius; this'll be a huge help."

To her surprise, rather than shake her hand, he took it in his, raised it to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. She wished she hadn't chewed her thumbnail quite so obviously.

"My pleasure, Hermione. We shall meet again in the library. Tomorrow, I trust?"

"Of course. Goodnight."

True to her word, she didn't spend the night reading the book; she spent rather a lot of it wondering about the relationship between Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape, and then dreaming that she was watched over by a pair of sharp black eyes and a pair of cold grey ones.

oooOOOooo

By teatime the next day, they had worked out a feasible plan for Hermione's first attempt at de-cursing the manuscript.

"It won't clear the lot," Lucius warned her, "but at the very least, you'll strip the first layer and be able to use the Spencer illumination procedure on the root complex."

"I was thinking of asking someone to help me with the Braintree detangling charm."

"My dear witch!" Lucius stared at her. "If the charm slips, the whole thing could explode! No, you would need at least two, preferably four, very well matched and very powerful witches and wizards, who all knew what they were doing."

"One of the other Unspeakables has done it before," she protested.

"Surely not on something as complex and virulent as this? I thought not. Raise your wand." When she hesitated, he made a sharp, impatient gesture at her wand hand. Hermione allowed her wand to slip down her sleeve into her fingers and brought it up to eye level. Lucius brought the tip of his own wand to within an inch of hers and murmured a melodic charm. Her hand tingled, not unpleasantly, and the wand tip glowed faintly yellow. "You won't be able to perform the Braintree charm safely unless your fellow Unspeakable is at least a twelve on the AIM scale."

He smirked and lowered his hand. Hermione reached out and swiftly cast the same charm on Lucius' wand. He began to frown, then realised he could hardly object so put on a show of waiting patiently as Hermione interpreted the subtle magical signals pulsing through her wand hand.

"Your Absolute Intrinsic Magical level is even higher than mine, you're a fourteen."

"It tends to increase by a quarter of a point per decade, up until the age of eighty or a hundred, so I would expect it to be so," Lucius remarked, sheathing his wand. "I would very strongly advise you to avoid depending upon only one other person if you use the Braintree charm. That knot of curses is too unstable for two people to control if it goes awry."

"Will you come with me and help?"

"Only if we have two other people at level twelve or more."

"Harry's something like a sixteen."

"I might have known. What level is your fellow Unspeakable?"

"Twelve, I think, possibly thirteen."

He shook his head.

"Your friend Potter is powerful but inexperienced. I would balance him with you, as you have far more experience with curses and you know each other well, and I prefer not to place my life in the hands of a less powerful wizard or witch who may well bear a grudge."

Hermione felt her lips curve into a smile.

"Severus Snape it is, then."

oooOOOooo

"Absolutely not," Snape snapped. "If you think you can blackmail me into going into the bowels of the Ministry of Magic by taking foolish risks with your own lives, you can think again!"

Lucius placed his fingertips together before his face and fixed his cool grey gaze upon his perfectly manicured nails.

"Who mentioned the Ministry, Severus? Hermione can bring the monstrous thing here."

Snape folded his arms.

"That means bringing Potter with it. I knew this would happen."

"Potter can be accommodated within the Fidelius."

"You can trust Harry as much as you can trust me," Hermione pointed out, "and you haven't felt the need to Obliviate me yet."

"Oh, give it up, Severus!" Lucius exclaimed, "It's been eight years! Either make up your mind to emigrate or come out of hiding! Stop living this half-life! Live the life you deserve."

"No," said Snape. "You can bugger off, the pair of you!" He strode out of the room with his robes almost crackling in anger.

"How about Kingsley Shacklebolt?" Hermione asked, after a long and rather uncomfortable silence. "He's a level fourteen, I believe, and he isn't the sort to bear a grudge."

After another silence, Lucius nodded.

oooOOOooo

"That was fun," Harry remarked, sitting up and wiping the ash from his glasses with his sleeve. "Was it supposed to do that?"

"Probably not," Shacklebolt rumbled, getting to his feet and offering Hermione a hand up. "Are you all right, Malfoy?"

Lucius frowned and waved a puff of white smoke away from his face.

"Did anyone note whether the voice was yelling in a Brythonic or West Germanic language?" He stood up and used a charm to vanish the dust, ash and splatters of black goo that had exploded from the vat of dry ice in the centre of the room.

"The accent was too thick," Hermione told him. "Damn. I knew we should have persuaded..."

Hermione's throat suddenly closed up as if she were having the most acute attack of laryngitis of her life; she spluttered and choked. Harry rushed to her side and Shacklebolt raised his wand, but Lucius said quickly, "Stop trying to talk."

She nodded, realising that the modified Fidelius charm had prevented her from speaking Snape's name in front of the others. The spasm in her larynx immediately eased, and she coughed.

"Sorry, ash in my throat. If you'd all just wait a moment, I'll see if we got anywhere."

She directed a non-invasive spell at the scroll and stared at the numbers that appeared over it.

"Well?" Lucius enquired.

"It worked. Look, the curses are lying in parallel."

"The explosion must have been a type of ward, designed to prevent tampering." Lucius approached the simmering strongbox. "Your Protego is impressive, Mr Potter. Thank you for your timely intervention. Now you can begin to work on the curses one at a time, Hermione. My word, there are some beauties here! See, that's an early variant of the Eyeball Exploding Curse, and a range of very nasty and insidious little blood and bone hexes..."

"Thank you all for your help," Hermione said before Lucius got too carried away in his admiration for the creators of the curses.

"I've got a copy of Cobbold's 'Curious Curses and their Origins', which might help you to identify them," Shacklebolt remarked, "but I suspect Malfoy's library will be of more use. Harry, have you completed your report on the funfair murder yet?"

"Still waiting for Magical Forensics to come up with the magical residue analysis. I can give you a draft copy, though."

"Yes, please. The Wizengamot needs a précis before Vaughan's trial. Tell me, did Tony get anything on the wand fragments you found..."

Hermione watched them leave, Kingsley's dark head inclined towards the smaller man as they spoke. Lucius flicked an invisible speck of ash from his robe.

"Go on, say it," Hermione said, and he raised his eyebrow at her, exaggerating his expression of polite enquiry. "I could never have contained that explosion with just one other person to help; you were right."

"Of course," he said equably. "And now I expect to claim my just reward."

"Which is?"

"Your company at seven-thirty at the Manor for dinner, and a glass or two of fine wine to celebrate our first victory over the Futharc runes."

"I've still got all those curses to unravel yet."

"And when you finally hold the manuscript in your hand, disarmed and innocuous, we shall have a proper celebration, with champagne, but for now, do join me for a meal en famille."

"Oh, if you insist," Hermione said, and he bowed and smirked before Flooing away from the Ministry.

oooOOOooo

Hermione placed a dish of Hercules Horrocks' Gourmet Kneazle Nosh on the kitchen floor and stuck her head out of the back door.

"Crookshanks, your supper's ready! I'm going out tonight so you're getting fed early."

Crookshanks turned his head to blink at her, raised a front paw and licked it delicately. Having made it perfectly clear that half-Kneazles never obeyed orders, he jumped down from the garden wall and sauntered inside, whiskers twitching. He mewed politely and settled over the dish. The house seemed too quiet, and Hermione realised she missed the high-pitched twittering of Ron's owl, who by now would have been circling Crookshanks' head in the hope of snatching a scrap of Kneazle food. She never thought she would pine for Pigwidgeon.

"Should I buy myself an owl?" she asked the cat. "What do you think: a nice big impressive tawny owl?"

Crookshanks ignored her, intent upon clearing his plate. The Floo behind her flared into life and Hermione turned around.

"Hi," said Ron's head, "can I come through?" Seeing that Hermione was wearing a set of smart robes and high heels, he added, "I won't stay long."

"Okay," Hermione said dubiously, and his head withdrew; then the fire roared high and her ex-husband stepped into the kitchen. Crookshanks ignored him, too. Like Hermione, Ron was dressed in his best robes.

"Just wanted to tell you something," he said. He appeared embarrassed, looking around the untidy kitchen rather than at her face. "Thought it was better than sending an owl, or letting you read about it in the gossip column of the Prophet."

"Go on, then," Hermione said, already suspecting what he was about to say.

"I'm seeing someone." He glanced at her to gauge her reaction and was obviously reassured by the lack of anger in her expression. "I only met her last week," he added hastily, as if about to be accused of carrying on behind Hermione's back during their marriage.

"That's great," Hermione said, "and thanks for telling me yourself. I appreciate it."

"Yeah, thought you might." Ron grinned suddenly, and Hermione was reminded of the schoolboy he had been. "Bet you thought Ginny put me up to this, didn't you?"

Hermione grinned back.

"It did cross my mind for an instant, but we all had to grow up at some time. Have a good evening."

"You, too." He reached up, without looking, for the pot of Floo powder on the mantelpiece and as he threw a large pinch into the fireplace, he added, "It was Harry who said I should tell you, actually. The Leaky Cauldron!"

Crookshanks looked up at her and asked, "Mmmrrupp?" and she sighed.

"I'm fine, Crooks." Yet there was a curious little empty ache in the region of her diaphragm, as if something had been gently extracted without her realising it.