Chapter Text
Present day
I’m going to help you, she announces that Monday morning. He has just walked through the door. His arms are full, his robes slung over a shoulder and several paper bags of pastries in one hand, his bag and coffees in the other. Hermione stands at her desk. She clasps her hands behind her back, and forces herself to stand still.
He pauses, clearly surprised. He tries not to smile too widely, as though he doesn’t want to spook her.
Really?
Really, she mutters, fighting the urge to look down. He places the pastries and the coffee on the side of her desk, slightly clumsily. She picks them up, and steps out to the side. Lilith comes out behind her, too. Shall we? She asks him, nodding to the desk.
He takes a moment to blink before he gets control over himself, and then quickly nods back.
After you.
She hears him walk behind her and their steps are slightly out of time. And then they both clear space on the table for her, and she summons her weekend research.
He stares at the numerous scrolls that she places down.
This –
Just some brainstorming, she mutters, though it is far beyond that.
Right, he says, because he knows as well as she does how much work she has done.
She takes another breath, and then sips her coffee, and then slowly tears open the pastry bag to reveal another croissant. She fiddles slightly with the end of it. It is still warm.
Perhaps you should bring me up to date on how far you’ve gotten, she finally says, looking up to find him already staring at her, as though she’s not quite real.
Good idea, he replies, and it does nothing to her. She waits for him to start speaking, and he also puts it off a little bit. Shuffles some papers, clears his throat.
So, he says finally, bringing her proposal to the top of the pile. I’ve been looking at your proposal.
Yes.
It’s good.
Hermione nods. She knows it is good. She would never have given it to him if she did not think it was.
I think you’re right about the fact we need to look further afield, he continues. I agree there’s not much in the UK that appears it might have any kind of influence.
There doesn’t seem to have historically been much call for magic separation here, she agrees calmly.
Yes.
So you think the person, or group, who did this to you, might not be from the British Isles?
Yes, I think we can reasonably deduce that.
Hermione stares at him for a moment, before making a note on her page. She has brought a new notebook from home for this, and she blushes a bit at the effort. She waits for him to continue. He clears his throat. It feels strange for him to be the uneasy one.
So, she prods after a while.
So that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
She doesn’t say anything for a bit. She’s confused. He has been working solidly for over two weeks now.
What have you been doing? She asks, and she feels a little like she is telling him off. He grimaces.
I’ve been working through stuff, he mutters. I’ve been going down various avenues, and none of them have been successful.
What avenues, she presses and he sighs.
Well, I was first exploring some druidic things –
That’s western paganism, she interrupts.
It is. He’s starting to get annoyed with her.
I thought we just agreed that it wasn’t useful.
I didn’t know that at the time, though, did I?
Hermione stays silent for a beat. She had told him when she handed over the initial proposal but –
Fine, she finally says. Fine. She unrolls one of the scrolls, and makes a few notes.
What’s that?
Progress report, she mutters to herself almost. He snorts.
Great, he replies drily.
So druids are a no, she continues. Anything else I should know about?
Astronomy is also out, he replies. There doesn’t appear to be any significance to the positions of the stars at the time of the injury.
And the time was?
9:47pm.
She looks at him, frowning slightly.
That’s specific. I thought you couldn’t remember?
My portkey dropped me off at 9:40, he replies coldly. I told you I was grabbed, and then felt searing pain. 9:47 is an estimate based on my memories.
And they’re accurate?
Yes, he says coldly. I believe so. I went back through using a pensieve, and the times seem to align.
But we don’t know for sure.
He rolls his eyes at her.
No, Hermione. We don’t know for sure.
So we can’t totally rule out astronomy.
He sighs.
Fine. Although a minute or two is hardly going to –
What time did you regain consciousness, she interrupts him. He glares at her.
I don’t know.
Roughly?
Roughly… he hesitates, thinks back. Probably about an hour later. Hour and a half, maybe.
Right. So between 9:40pm and midnight, let’s say just to be careful, the injury took place.
Fine. We could say that.
She makes a mark on another scroll, this one a sky chart. He sees it, and doesn’t bother hiding his sigh.
It’s better to have the information now and rule it out later, she mutters.
Can you talk me through what happened again? She says after she’s finished making her notes, and watching the planets move slightly on the parchment. He’s right, probably, there doesn’t appear to be anything significant in the sky that night, but it’s still better to make sure. Especially when dealing with the unknown.
I’ve already told you everything I know.
She glares at him, and even Lilith meows at that.
I thought you wanted my help.
He shuffles a bit in his seat, and she’s unused to seeing this amount of guilt on his face. He’s usually much better at hiding it.
Fine, he sighs again. She wants to poke him. She forces down the urge to giggle, because there is nothing funny about this.
I landed at 9:40pm by Battersea Park, he says, staring off into the stacks slightly behind her. His voice has slipped into a more even rhythm, and Hermione is surprised to note that he has become a good storyteller. It was dark, already. There was no moon, that night.
He pauses, looks at the astronomy chart pointedly. Hermione brings a small morsel of buttery croissant to her lips, and tries not to close her eyes when she eats it.
It was dark, cloudy, already raining. I was excited to get home. I had – I had plans for the week before I could leave and go travelling again. So I was eager to get on with them.
Hermione ignores this suggestion of another life. Perhaps another woman. Perhaps the plans were romantic, perhaps they were familial. She was not going to be Lady Malfoy. She did not care.
I started to walk from the landing point
You weren’t seized immediately?
No. As per my estimates, it was around seven minutes before I lost consciousness.
Where were you then?
I could see the water, he says, as though he does not mind her interruptions. She takes another bite of croissant.
And then?
It was difficult to see, the streetlamps were out. I didn’t remember marking that as suspicious, it was more of an annoyance. The black water of the Thames was visible more because of the lights from the other side of the river, and the surface of it was shimmering, moving with the current and the raindrops.
Hermione resists bringing her legs up underneath her, or propping her head on her hand, or leaning forward. His voice is deeper than she remembers it, more sure of itself.
And then?
Nothing. Blackness. Well, he reconsiders, there was pain.
And can you describe this pain?
He thinks, for a moment. Hermione doesn’t press him, she understands what it’s like, the difficulty of putting hurt into words. When it happens it is always so vivid, feels impossible that you will ever forget. But you do. She has never been able to speak about The Manor.
It felt like – he hesitates, and when he looks at her, he is sorrowful. She is not familiar with the way that emotion contorts his face, and she studies him, for a moment forgetting she is not supposed to be entranced. It was like the crucio, he says, and she blinks, and is reminded all over again of the things she is not supposed to feel.
Exactly like it? Her voice does not wobble.
No, he dips his head slightly to her. The initial pain, the searing, that felt like the curse.
Do you think that was used by your attackers?
Perhaps, though it feels like that would have been a waste of their time, if they were trying to take me somewhere else.
Do you think they were?
His brow raises. Do you not?
I’m not sure. If you were dumped in the river afterwards, it seems silly to try to move a grown man just to move him right back.
I didn’t wake up in Battersea, he reminds her.
The currents are strong. You would have floated downriver anyway.
He pauses again, and stares at the table. She wonders if this is hard for him, to admit the weakness. To admit that he was in trouble at all. If he has spent years working abroad, appearing invincible then –
She stops herself. She is not here to psychoanalyse him. She is going to solve this problem, and then send him on his way, and then go back to her life.
The thought causes her to start aching again, so she pushes it down.
I suppose, he allows, and she has to remember what they were talking about before.
Where did you regain consciousness?
The Tower.
She cannot hide her surprise.
A long way.
Yes.
Hermione reflects again that it is a miracle he is not dead.
I shouldn’t –
No, she agrees. You should not be alive. It seems they tried very hard to make sure you were not.
It does.
She pays no attention whatsoever to the way he looks at her.
Right, she exhales, standing and leaving her croissant unfinished. I suppose we better get to work.
He blinks, because he thought they already were working.
She moves the table to the side, conjures a second one to place next to it, and then changes the shape so they are more rectangular. It would make the space awkward, but Hermione basically built these archives, and certainly did all the enchantments on them herself. The shelves move to make space for them, and she turns them all around, so that the wooden backs of them face inwards, allowing them to use the smooth surface as a kind of blackboard. Her notes are pinned up, leaving space for his (though if he has done nothing except work his way through her pre-existing work she doubts she needs them), and leaving space for their future plans. The books are divided equally across the two tables, and grouped by geographic location. They can reorder them later, perhaps when they have developed enough theories to divide by theme, but for now this will do.
The whole time Hermione is conjuring he is staring at her as though he is starving. Being without magic must be infuriating. Hermione does not think about a muggle life, though she often has in the past. For the first time in a long time, she feels grateful she is a witch.
Well, she says after she is done. This ought to be more practical.
He just stares at her. He still has the ability to make her feel breathless, to make her want to scream, to make her feel as though she is being pulled apart and is grateful for it.
The way you use magic is beautiful.
She doesn’t know what to say. He has paid her compliments before. He always managed to make it seem like he meant them, that he was the only person who thought those things about her.
But he has never complimented her magic, and never looked at her like he is looking at her now, and she has not for a long time believed herself to be beautiful.
I’m going to collect some things from my office, she mutters, and she walks away.
She casts a silencing charm, and a disillusionment too, and then she hides under her desk. Even through the magic she still presses her hand to her mouth and tries to hold it in. She sounds like an injured animal and maybe she is, because he has told her one kind thing in fourteen years of nothing, and it has nearly killed her.
She tells herself she is worth more than this. She tells herself that she is strong. She tells herself all sorts of things she knows are lies, but they are supposed to help, and once she had been instructed that if she says them enough she will eventually believe them.
Hermione wonders if that would have been true. If there was a universe where she had gotten over him, if there was a world where she had looked after herself and made herself strong, and was able to turn him away from her without a care in the world.
She checks her appearance before she returns, and has to brighten her eyes and remove the redness from her nose and cheeks.
Didn’t find it? He asks, and she realises that she was meant to have brought something back with her.
No, she says, after a beat. I must have left it at home.
Will you bring it tomorrow?
She hears the stress behind his words, the tightness there. She wonders if he has ever cried like she does over him.
Yes. I’ll bring them tomorrow.
When tomorrow arrives Hermione brings several of the texts she has on her dining room table, even though she knows they will be useless. She mimes reading through them anyway, and he works carefully on the other table. He does not ask her if she has found anything, and she is relieved when the next day comes and she can discard them again.
They work steadily and in silence. Hermione finds herself looking forward to seeing what pastry he brings every morning, so she stops herself from finishing them. He never says anything, though he does not clear her half-eaten things away until they reach the end of the day, when he finally places them, defeated, in the bin.
When you were attacked, she asks at the end of the week. His head snaps up immediately.
Yes?
You weren’t sure if a person had made the wound.
You mean, was I attacked by an animal?
Yes.
He pauses and he looks frustrated though she isn’t sure why.
I don’t think so, he says after a moment.
Why not?
What kind of animal would knock me out, first?
Well, it could have been working with the people who wanted you dead.
Again, people – are you sure it was more than one? Do you think there are gangs roaming the streets of London, divesting people of their magic with large creatures on leashes?
His voice is snide and she relaxes into it. This is much better than the silence or the compliments.
We can’t rule anything out, she replies coolly.
I think we can rule that out, he snorts, derisive.
Why?
I just don’t think it’s likely.
She wants to hit him.
You not thinking it’s likely doesn’t mean anything, she points out. Unless there is something you’re not telling me, and you have other information.
I’ve told you everything I can remember, he snaps.
Then have you found anything that rules out the idea it was created by an animal?
Not specifically. His jaw is clenched so hard it appears to take some effort to speak. She stares at him dispassionately, trying not to marvel at how easy it is to wind him up.
Well, then. We’ll keep an eye out for any rumours of beasts, mythical or magical, that feed on magic, she replies calmly. I think there are probably creatures from Asia that might fit into that description.
She eyes the stack of books on his desk pointedly. He rolls his eyes at her, and she makes a careful note on the board of ‘ideas’. This is to record any theories that might pop into their heads, no matter how unlikely they are. Hermione’s ideas outnumber his, and she is trying not to get frustrated with how slowly he is going. Perhaps the loss of magic also impacted his brain. She also notes that down, to check his mental facilities. She should have been monitoring him from the beginning, but she doesn’t want to look at the wound again. She doesn’t want to look at his body.
What’s that for?
He has come up behind her and she jumps, dropping the quill. The tip of it breaks as it hits the floor, and ink splatters up her leg.
Bugger. She curses, and they both drop to the floor.
I’m sorry, he is saying as she avoids eye contact, snatching up the broken quill.
It’s fine.
I’ll fix it.
It will take me seconds to get a new one.
But this one is your favourite.
She hates that he has noticed that.
It’s fine, she says again, crouched on the floor. She is starting to feel the ink seep through her tights.
It’s okay if it’s not, he says, gently.
There are lots of things that are not okay, and this quill is the least consequential of all of them. She will not give him the satisfaction of giving in.
It’s fine.
She stands up. They have been close for too long, and her heart is beating fast. Her body remembers things it shouldn’t and forgets the things it should have held onto.
Mental damage? He asks, stepping away from her and nodding to the ideas board.
She nods.
If you suffered a blow to the head, and also lost your magic, it’s entirely possible that your mind was damaged in some way. It might explain why you are having trouble with the research.
He starts laughing then, and even though it’s not directed at her, she feels slightly adrift, as though she’s missing the joke.
He laughs loudly, and for a long time, and afterwards when he walks off to the stacks still chuckling to himself, she realises that she can’t remember the last time she laughed like that, and whether he always sounded so angry when he did.
He comes back with more food. She tries not to sigh when she sees it.
I brought lunch with me, she says instead and he just shrugs and places the noodles in front of her.
I’ve wanted to try this place for ages.
I brought lunch with me, she repeats.
So just eat it tomorrow instead.
She stares at the takeaway box. She doesn’t know how to explain without sounding crazy that she needs to eat it that day, because it’s her Thursday lunch, and it’s what she eats every Thursday. She also doesn’t know how to explain to him that sure, maybe another time she’d be able to eat whatever she wanted and something like this wouldn’t throw her. But he is here and she brought her lunch with her and she doesn’t want his noodles.
She leaves the whole thing, and doesn’t eat her lunch either, and he leaves early, that day. Just gets up and announces that he has an appointment at four and walks out, leaving her staring after him, blinking, slightly.
When he’s gone she tries the noodles. They taste so good they terrify her.
She’s not so far gone yet. She calls the therapist again. Apologises about last time. Makes a new appointment.
She dreams about the noodles. The next day she doesn’t wait to see what he brings. She gets there early, and presents him with a pastry from the place round the corner from her. It’s an apple turnover, she didn’t dare get him a croissant after the butter comment. But he thanks her and she nods and he doesn’t leave early that day, even though it’s Friday and surely he has somewhere better to be. They work all the way through till 8pm, and when Hermione realises the time she’s somewhat startled.
Plans this weekend, he asks mildly, as though they often exchange small talk.
No, she replies before she can think up a lie. You?
No, he tells her, packing up his satchel with the most recent of the diaries. Probably just writing.
Writing?
I’m writing up some of my research notes, for publication, he explains.
Oh.
Hermione hadn’t thought that he would do something like that. That maybe one day she might browse past a book with his name on it. She’s strangely grateful she has heard it from him and didn’t just see the words on the shelf one day.
What kind of notes, she asks and he smiles, hesitatingly.
Well, I’ve travelled a lot.
Yes, she agrees.
The idea came from a friend. The one who lives in Paris, he explains. She nods. She does not have friends who live in Paris, or anywhere else.
They thought I ought to write up some of my travels.
They’re not confidential?
I’d leave bits out, he shrugged, but for the most part no. These would be more academic. Remember Lockhart, he pulls a face, and she is almost tricked into a laugh. He was her first proper crush, and he made her look like a fool too.
I do, she allows, and thinks of him at the end of his life instead, crumpled in the Janus Thickey Ward, on a yellowing bed, talking to the ceiling.
Well, something like that but also actually factually correct, I suppose. A write up of the different cultures I’ve come across, the kinds of magic I’ve seen, that sort of thing.
That sounds interesting, she says quietly and she focuses on packing up her own bag.
If you’d like I can tell you more about it, he suggests, so quietly that she perhaps thinks he’s joking.
If you like, she shrugs, not sure what they’re doing right now if it’s not talking about it.
Over dinner, he then qualifies, and she knows he has tried to trick her.
I have dinner plans, she lies.
You don’t, he says calmly.
How do you know that.
You just told me you have no plans.
Maybe I wanted to hide them from you.
Why?
Maybe they’re with a man.
Why would you lie about that, he asks after a moment. This has gotten out of control, but he has always made her feel like that and she is sick of it.
I like to keep my private life, private.
Lilith mews and he looks down at her and smirks.
Come for dinner with me, Hermione. It’s just a meal. You wanted to know more about my travels. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
She wants to say yes, so she has to say no.
Maybe some other time, he says after she refuses again. His eyes are tight but he still manages to have that air of knowing. The suggestion that he is winning even if all evidence is to the contrary.
She doesn’t bother to refuse again, she just waits for him to walk out first and locks up behind him.
Can I come in on Sunday, he says.
Why?
It’s easier to write here than it is at home.
She frowns as she considers his words.
Is that what you’ve been doing?
Pardon?
All this time? When I’m researching ways to save your magic. Have you just been writing your book?
She is so angry that her voice sounds unfamiliar to even herself.
No, Hermione.
Don’t lie to me.
I’m not.
I don’t believe you.
If you looked at me you might.
She risks it, and he is furious, too. She reminds herself that he doesn’t deserve her trust.
Well?
I’m researching. I swear it.
He does look like he’s telling the truth, and that makes her even angrier.
You can’t come in on Sunday.
Don’t tell me you have plans, he sneers.
So what if I did?
I don’t know when you’re going to get sick of whatever you call this excuse of a life, Hermione, but I’m already bored of the lies.
Each word hurts, and they’re both shocked by it. She wants to defend herself against the accusation, she wants to make him hurt just as much as she does. She knows it’s unfair precisely because it’s so accurate.
I like to do yoga on Sundays and cook for the week, she says quietly instead, because she doesn’t know how to protect herself.
I’m sorry.
Just leave.
Hermione. Let me – let’s go for dinner.
Perhaps this is a better punishment than raging at him. She can hear how sorry he sounds, even though she won’t look at him to see it. Perhaps she can punish him forever. Perhaps she can stop researching for him. Perhaps she can forget him.
I’m not going to dinner with you. Just leave.
Will – Monday?
She glances at him and wishes she hasn’t. She remembers that expression, even though it's slightly different on his adult face. That sick wanting, the knowing that something terrible is happening and it’s too late to stop it.
I’ll be here on Monday.