Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

It is in the Underground on the way to Dean's mother's that Hermione realizes that Luna doesn't look out of place in Muggle London at all.

She is sitting across from Dean and Luna, who are swaying gently as the train shoots forward from the station into the darkness (what she still doesn't like to think about), and Luna's eyes drop half-shut in the beatific trance of the long-distance rail traveler. Even in her blue and purple robes, with her silver-buckled shoes poking out and a glimpse of her ankles in violet stockings, she looks as if she quite belonged. No one else is taking particular notice of her, for certain; they all have newspapers or magazines. Dean is looking at his sketchbook, reviewing and marking something on the corner of each page.

The impression persists all the way to the flat. It is a tiny cramped place in an unprosperous corner of London; as soon as she walks in the front door, there is no doubt about who lives there. The walls are covered in pictures. She recognized Dean's work, and Luna's. She can tell them apart, even when they're working in the same media. Luna is experimenting with Muggle drawing technique. Her drawings are razor-sharp naturalist's field notes or impressionistic shimmers of color and light, very like Turner, who is her idol among Muggle artists. Dean specializes in scenes of sport—football and Quidditch—and portraits.

As well, there are photographs of the family: Dean's mother, his stepfather, his two little sisters—skinny little brown girls in pigtails and brightly colored shirts—and the two brothers who are next up in age. Half-sisters and half-brothers, Hermione reminds herself, although the little girls don't seem to be aware of the distinction, as they pile into the front room to greet Dean; their faces brighten when they see Luna, and they run back to their room—to get their drawings, Dean explains.

That explains the pictures that look a bit like Lovegoods but aren't quite. (Hermione is amused to find herself thinking of pictures that are "Lovegoods," but Luna's style is quite distinctive.) If his artistic talent is an inherited gift, it descends by the Muggle side of the family. She remembers his remarks about magic versus imagination, and smiles. Score another point for the Muggles, for the little sisters are quite as talented as their half-brother. The matter of their pictures runs to cats, pop stars, girls in elaborate stage costumes, and (for nature study) the herbs that their mother cultivates in the tiny south-facing window of her kitchen.

The little girls settle onto the couch, one on either side of Luna, to show her their pictures, with only some childish exasperation that she has never heard of the Spice Girls, who are the subject of this week's portfolio. "She has hair a bit like Scary Spice," says one of them, and Hermione laughs to realize it's her they mean.

"This is my friend Hermione," Dean corrects. "And you lot have no manners."

They shush him, because "Luna is looking at pictures."

Luna looks at Hermione, and says, "But they're right. Hermione can be a bit scary, sometimes." She doesn't actually wink, but there's something in her expression that implies it.

The showing of the little girls' pictures provides the cover for Dean's mother to have a word with Hermione in the kitchen. She already knows her by name and reputation, by way of Dean, and she knows something of the late war.

And she knows what Hermione is doing for the War Crimes Commission, and that she insisted that the news about Dean's father be given to the family.

"Thank you. It makes such a difference to know what happened to him, that he didn't leave us willingly."

Eighteen years, most of Hermione's own lifetime, Dean's mother has been haunted by the question. Dean hovers in the doorway, keeping an eye on his mother and, when she's not looking at him, looking at her with an expression of worried solicitude. Hermione realizes in a flash that it's here he's been when he's not working on his portfolio or teaching the Patronus Charm. It's not defiance that's making him put off the NEWTs so much as the sheer impossibility of balancing that against his family responsibilities, of the hours spent talking over with his mother the matters of which she cannot speak to her husband or to her daughters or to Dean's younger brothers, who are with their father this afternoon.

She sent them out of the house so they could have this conversation, Hermione realizes. Dean's mother has had her entire world rearranged; a long-ago story of heartbreak, the husband who inexplicably abandoned his wife and small son, has been replaced by another just as harrowing, the brave man who fled to draw off his enemies from the family he had inadvertently involved in his fate.

***

Dean's mother is a remarkably talented cook, a real kitchen witch, Hermione is tempted to remark, who could give Molly Weasley a run for her money. She sets dish after dish on the table, and Hermione is required to take some of everything, because, as her hostess insists, sounding quite a bit like Neville: "You're too thin, and you need feeding up."

She doesn't want to think about Neville just now, given the stab of feeling: the cherished grudge (how dare he call her a nascent Dark Lord) and the leaden conviction that things are irrevocably wrecked between them.

Dean's little sisters are dutifully forking fried plantains into their mouths; Luna is complimenting Dean's mother on the stew, whose dense rich flavor, impossible to tease apart into its components, tells Hermione that it was lovingly simmered for hours.

Dean's mother passes her the serving bowl with the stew and insists that she take another portion, as if she were a long-lost relative come back from shipwreck. No, she's not that; she's only the bearer of bad tidings, and yet treated as a welcome guest.

Well, someone thinks well of her.

***

It's Friday, and she's been at work for twelve hours: four hours of meetings at the bank, then a brief nap on the bed in her old bedroom, and then six hours at the Ministry, all thanks to the time-turner. A paper-airplane memo, rather jauntier than the others, sails into her work space just before noon. It's from Percy, unsigned of course, saying that they're meeting in one of the upstairs rooms at the Leaky Cauldron on the matter discussed earlier, and can she be there for half past noon.

They've decided, as a committee, to arrest Ginny Weasley's swift descent into serious trouble, if not outright madness.

She meets Harry in the lift on the way to the grand foyer. He greets her absently, and they make what she realizes is small talk. She didn't think that things would have gone that far, but he's keeping aloof in a disquieting way.

When they step out of the Floo at the Leaky, there's Hannah Abbot waving from the bar, her blonde hair caught up in pigtails and her face pink from exertion; she's just run upstairs from the basement storeroom. "Tom says the room's ready, so you can go right up."

There's the briefest of moments when Harry realizes that they're headed to the same destination.

Percy had called it a meeting, but it's really more in the manner of an ambush.

There's Percy and Dean and Luna and herself, of course, and Neville, who looks at her with a sad and stricken expression. She's not going to think about that, because they're about serious business.

Percy calls them to order. What they all have in common here, all but Harry, is that they've tried to talk to Ginny and failed.

Harry frowns. It's none of their affair.

No, Percy says, it's very much their affair. On Harry's birthday—three months ago now—he saw Ginny aim a bludger at a friend, in a supposedly friendly pickup Quidditch game, with what looked to him like deadly intent. And since then, he has heard Ginny talking about torture and murder in the dark watches of the night.

Harry stares at him.

Percy says, "She knows who gave her that book in her first year, and she's claiming first rights."

Harry shakes his head, and makes as if to stand.

Neville puts a hand on Harry's shoulder and indicates that he should sit. For the very first time, Hermione realizes that Neville is very much larger than Harry, taller by six inches at least and far more heavily built. If this were the Muggle world, it would be no contest; here, it's more Neville's determination than his size that makes Harry sit down, albeit unwillingly.

"When we went out to the pub, she had four firewhiskeys," Neville says. "And I understand that's become customary." He pauses to clarify. "I generally stop at three, if all I'm about is getting stinking drunk."

Hermione feels a little shiver of repugnance, remembering what she did on three firewhiskeys: with Ginny, and then alone in her parents' bedroom.

Percy lists the Potions that Ginny has been using, rather more often than indicated, and none of them recommended in combination with firewhiskey. And she's not been receptive to any comments on that matter, heeded the advice of her Healers, or (a nod to Hermione) followed up on referrals to specialist Healers.

Luna remarks that she shares a room with Ginny, and she's been woken up two or three times as Ginny wakes from nightmare, sometimes violently.

Dean clarifies what Luna did not spell out: Ginny has startled awake, screaming, and on at least one occasion reached for her wand to hex Luna before she realized who she was.

Neville adds, in a calm and matter-of-fact way, that Ginny is training to be an Auror, and as such, she will be trusted with means not given to the general population.

And, Hermione adds, she's been talking about people she wants to kick, or hex… which anticipation of personal score-settling doesn't bode well for the post-war situation.

Percy adds that yes, he has heard some of the loose talk in the Auror office, and doesn't like the sounds of it at all. It doesn't do to give the impression that the extrajudicial killings are originating with the Aurors, for reasons he's quite sure he doesn't need to spell out: not least that they don't want the Death Eaters reconstituting themselves as a self-defense society.

Harry blanches at that.

They've finally made an impression.

Neville follows up immediately: Ginny will listen to Harry, however much she might ignore the rest of them, because she loves him passionately. Hermione is a little taken aback to hear that kind of language—or eloquence—from Neville, and even more to hear the next thing: that he knows this because she told him so, the bleak night that they found out that Luna had been taken by the Death Eaters.

She told him that in confidence. To save her life he's willing to break that confidence.

Harry was their talisman, their symbol, the last glimmer of defiance in a darkening world, but to Ginny he was a beacon of another sort as well: the one, the only, from whom she has only distracted herself with others when he seemed out of reach.

There's an odd tremor about Neville's mouth when he says "others," that gives Hermione the absolute conviction that he was at some point one of those others, and knew it, even before Ginny spelled it out for him.

So, Neville goes on, it's for Harry to take courage, the grim everyday kind, and stand up to his adopted family for Ginny's sake. Because they're ignoring what's going on; he saw enough of that on his visit to the Burrow, and it's not fair for Percy to be the one to carry this, when Harry knows perfectly well what Percy's position is in that household.

There's a very long silence after that.

Harry shuffles his feet, and mumbles something indistinct. Then he looks up and says, "All right. You've convinced me."

Hermione asks, "So what specific thing are you going to do?"

"I'll take her to St. Mungo's to see Derwent."

Percy consults his pocket watch, and nods grimly. "Good. Because we weren't going to let you out of here until you resolved to do something. And I have five meetings this afternoon." He nods to Hermione. "And we will be following up." He waves his wand, and for the first time, Hermione sees the shimmer of the elaborate barriers he had thrown up behind them, as layer by layer they disassemble themselves.

Harry is the first to leave, and Hermione is gratified to see that he's looking properly grim. When in doubt, appeal to Harry's penchant for playing the rescuer, but that took rather more than the usual force, likely because the Weasleys are involved.

Dean and Luna nod to Neville in what looks like gratitude, because he took on himself the task of telling what he shouldn't, and spared them. They file out next.

Percy smiles at her, and it's his battered-warrior smile, but with a little more cheer in it: as if the sun had come up on a ravaged battlefield that was the scene of victory for once. He shakes her hand vigorously, and departs.

That leaves Neville, who she realizes has deliberately hung back. He's wanting some sort of conversation, she can tell, but she doesn't have the time.

Really doesn't have the time, not for sir more-Pureblood-than-thou, in spite of his hero status. Yes, she's grateful for what he's just done for Ginny, but she's also remembering all too vividly the Bludger in the face, and how very much his 'Dark Lord' remark had given her the same sort of shock. It's not clear to her whom she can trust in this world, nor that anyone would take the same trouble if it were she who were plainly destroying herself.

That would be nothing more than the regrettable wearing-down of a once useful piece of machinery.

And speaking of useful machinery, she has some demographic estimates to review when she gets back to the Ministry: just how small this world is, from which they might begin to estimate the extent of the devastation wreaked by Tom Riddle's attempt to imitate the Final Solution.

She smiles at Neville, and thanks him for the eloquence which finally convinced Harry, which she can say from experience is no easy feat. Then she walks past him to the hallway and thence down the stairs to the common Floo.

***

From the journal of Hermione Granger

(undated – mid October 1998)

I just increased the encryption on this. I can't believe what I've done. The conflicts of interest. Oh gods, the conflicts of interest alone… but this world is so incredibly tiny that all kinds of relationships are going to overlap. Boudicca Derwent confirmed the demographic estimates I ran and didn't believe. Wizarding Britain is less than 17,000 people. Less than 0.005% of the population of these islands. And that was before the war. The Ministry of Magic employs nearly half the population. It's best thought of as the Ministry of Damage Control: all of those departments for controlling the propagation of magic, getting rid of questionable artifacts, chasing down those who overstep boundaries of acceptable use… not to mention hiding the wizarding world from the muggle majority. And as I've already learned, it's in the nature of magic to run out of control. Like technology, only easier.

They are outnumbered. We are outnumbered. Am I one of them or one of us? No wonder they're in a permanent state of siege. It explains why they're crazy.

For certain I'm crazy…

I never understood the bad boy thing. Or the thrill of interracial romance. Or the whole sleeping-with-the-enemy kink. I explained all that very cogently to Dean a few months ago. I told him about the merchant banker I turned down for a date because he was looking at me as an exotic (the girl who does magic with computers. Little did he suspect I did magic, capital-M.) That, and he looked too much like Draco. Oh yes, I specifically said that: Dangerous. Alien. Not my kind. Never thought about him that way.

Ron and Viktor were boys. I never had them classified in my mind as Pureblood wizards or Quidditch players, however much everyone else teased me about collecting the latter. Draco, on the other hand…

Well, to start with, I think of him as Draco but I call him Malfoy. And he calls me Granger. Even in the throes of passion.

And I am very much aware of our clothes. I am in jeans and hiking boots and sweatshirt, full muggle gear. He is all Pureblood aristocrat with his long hair and high-collared wizard's robes with nothing under them. (How did I make it all the way through school without that thought obsessing me? Must have been the war keeping the hormones in check.)

I play with his fine silky hair, card it through my fingers and then close them into a fist to pull his head back. I trace those fine-cut features, the sharp pointed nose and chin and the planes of his cheekbones. The pale blond hair, lashes, brows. He is not pretty, but he is the limiting case of a certain sort of breeding. I run my hands over his clothes and gloat to myself about the fineness of the skin I can feel underneath, how I can feel everything through his robes.

I suspect him of similar obsessions; he tangles his long fingers in my hair, complains about its kinks and curls—in a word, its bushiness. He's intrigued by the fastenings on my clothes, especially the zippers. Complains that my jeans chafe his skin but doesn't want me to take them off.

We bring each other off while removing as little clothing as possible, and except for the very last, we have our eyes open the whole time. It's very important to see each other in native costume while undone by passion. Half the thrill is whom and what each of us is doing.

He's flushed and damp and hard against my leg and arching up to get more contact and I've got him pinned to the floor with his robes rucked up and his hair spread out around his face. Not just a teenage boy minutes from coming, but Draco Malfoy, scion of umpteen generations of pureblood wizards. Son of Lucius, who would absolutely shit to see how much his heir loves what I'm doing.

We call each other by name. The surname, and then everything--middle name and all.

"Draco. Abraxas. Malfoy." (In each pause, a kiss with lots of teeth, on the pale tender skin of his neck and shoulders. I hope he bruises easily; I want to mark him.)

"Hermione. Jean. Granger." (He follows my lead. I will have the marks for weeks.)

Neither of us knew the other's middle name before this.

Full name, surname, but never the given name alone. Hermione and Draco could be some ordinary couple—girl and boy, or woman and man. Granger and Malfoy, on the other hand, are a collision of worlds: tectonic plates grinding to make earthquakes, the volcanic islands of Iceland, the ring of fire.

Oh and what worlds:

"Bushy-haired Mudblood."

"Inbred Death Eater wannabe."

Then it descends to the playground insults:

"Know-it-all."

"Insufferable prat."

And then there's what we have in common, what we admire in each other, all considerations of morals aside:

He tells me how scary I am, how powerful, how he could feel the crackle of wild magic when I returned his glare in the hospital wing and he knew he was a hair from death.

"Wildness, chaos—very Dark. Very Pureblood," he whispers, his voice husky with lust.

How there's nothing that can be hidden from me, how my ruthlessness fucking turns him on. Cursed contracts. Turning Umbridge over to the centaurs. Memory charming my own parents to keep them from harm.

"Shit, Malfoy, who told you about that?"

"Language, Granger. Potty and the Weasel were talking about it when they came on their visit, you know, to gawk at me. They were talking in the hall and didn't think I heard."

"Those idiots."

"Well, you get no disagreement here."

(That particularly moves him. He wishes he had been able to save his parents.)

I tell him how irrepressible he is, how he bounces back no matter what, how he's willing to take his life in his hands for the sake of getting off a zinger, how he makes no bones about who and what he is, what a fucking brilliant solution that business with the vanishing cabinets was. (Hacked his way straight through the famous perimeter of Hogwarts. That's world-class.)

I had no idea a staring contest with commentary could be so incredibly hot.

Afterward, I sober up, and then I spoil it. As he's shrugging his clothes back into place, I tell him that it made my skin crawl, the insults especially, because of all that's happened. Maybe in a hundred years we could role-play race war in bed for laughs, but right now it was much too close to the bone. In future, he can be my enemy or my lover, but not both.

That should put a stop to it. I still can't believe what I just did, and with whom.

He asks about the flying lessons.

"Well, that has nothing to do with sex," I say. "But no more games." I add, "And that means no more Quidditch drills." Because that's what started all this. My so-called friends knocked me out of the air at Harry's birthday party, but I will not take it from him.

However kinky any of this is, at least it isn't incest. I am not his cousin.

But he is Tonks' cousin. And I realize now that his insouciance reminds me of hers. If I ever have occasion to dress him in muggle clothes, it will be her boys' jeans and her funny T-shirts. Better not to think about that. He doesn't need to know that I had an unrequited crush on his dead and disowned girl cousin.

***

And how did this happen? He insisted on Quidditch drills. We chased the Snitch, and he forgot who I was and where we were, and when I followed him aggressively, bumping in midair, he checked me with the handle of his broom and sent me tumbling twenty feet through the air.

By the time I picked myself up, mostly unharmed but covered in grass stains, the Auror on duty had him flat on his back on the ground with her wand to his throat. Something was not right; I saw the deadly lack of expression on her face, and her lips were moving in a low-toned litany of threat, as his eyes widened in terror. As I approached, I heard her say to him, "And maybe those kids had the right idea. A nice Muggle-style beating might be just the thing for the likes of you."

I had to intervene and assure her that he would never play games like that again.

(Like the games my so-called friends played on me, but that's another story.)

I thanked the Auror for her trouble in breaking my fall. Then I marched him inside and threw him up against the wall and gave him a piece of my mind. How poor impulse control appeared to be the real mark of the Malfoys, and if he ever did anything like that again, not only would I take my toys and go home, but he'd likely end up dead, because I wouldn't get between the Auror and whatever she cared to do. Not above a little emotional blackmail, I finished with a flourish: what would his mother think about that after the trouble she'd been to?

And at last count, he owed me his life twice over. At least.

I've learned from the best—I think that was a combination of Alastor Moody and Molly Weasley. And it would have had the desired effect, if only I'd minded the timing. He looked chastened for all of a split second, and then scared. If I had walked off at that point, it would have been fine.

But I had to add, "Malfoy, you idiot, I am not Harry Potter." And I didn't drop my hands from the front of his robes.

"No, Granger," he said. "You're the one with the bushy hair and the teeth. The girl one." Then the pointy-faced git actually smirked. I would have smacked him one right then if he hadn't suddenly gone very still, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was looking at me intensely with his lips slightly parted. Amazing to think someone with his ice-cold features could look sultry, but he managed it. Very softly he said, "Granger, you're very scary, but you should be careful."

He pronounced "very scary" as if it were another way of saying "dead sexy."

And something shifted. I could feel his body heat and smell the fresh air on him, and a little tang of sweat, and the indefinable other thing that was his own scent. I could feel my knuckles, wrapped in cloth, sliding against his chest. His bare chest. Naked under our clothes, I thought.

"Careful of what?" I said. The air was electric.

"Your reputation," he said. "You already have a name for collecting Quidditch players."

I should have given him a good push toward his rooms and a firm order to shut it. Instead, I lifted my chin and looked him in the eye.

"And Purebloods," I said. Plain provocation. I felt the tension go up a notch. This is reckless, I thought, and continued anyway. "Which would make you the crown jewel of the collection, wouldn't it?"

I was feeling distinctly lightheaded by this point. It must have been the adrenalin. And the awareness of just how irresponsible I was being. And maybe just shock, because suddenly I was curious.

I added, "Or you could think of it as a chance to rectify your reputation for somewhat narrow tastes."

He closed his eyes, and said, "Granger." Turned my surname into a deliciously dirty word.

I moved in and put my lips up to his ear, breathed into it, "So, Malfoy, what do you say?"

"Yes. Gods, yes."

And that's how it happened.

***

Another dream about Tonks, which is probably worth writing down in view of what happened yesterday.

It's the café again, after the war. The same one as before, and in this dream, oddly, I remember the other dream, as if it were something in the real past. The interior: glass and beveled mirrors and little red chairs. Tonks is sitting behind a shiny black table on one of the red chairs and it's real, it's quite real, because her hair is just the shade of pink—wobbling between fuschia and magenta—to clash wildly with the red chairs, which are crimson. It gives me a 1960s pop art migraine.

And she speaks, which she didn't before. "Wotcher, Hermione." And then, "This coffee could raise the dead," and she offers me a little black octagonal demitasse in a shiny black saucer.

I take it, lift it to my lips. Bitter. Needs some sugar.

I spoon in the white sparkles. It isn't sugar but ground glass, and I know that.

And she smiles, and it's razor blades. When I embrace her, she's ice. The table disappears. I feel ribs, a skinny ribcage pressing against me where breasts should be. All the color has drained out of her face, her hair is hoarfrost or platinum, and we're caught in the polar ice with blue auroral light flashing around us like neon. And I still want to hold on, because if I let go she will disappear.

Oh no, I think, this is one of those dreams where I'm going to find a skeleton in my arms, a six-months-dead corpse. No, I didn't ask for this. Please no.

It's rare in a dream that I know that I'm dreaming.

The eyes are North Atlantic hypothermia. "Sorry, Granger, you picked the wrong cousin," and the voice is not Tonks but Draco, and the mouth that descends to mine is the mouth of a vampire or an incubus, something that doesn't breathe air.

My dream-self notices, as my waking self never did, that their speaking voices are actually in the same vocal range, where tenor and contralto overlap.

I wake up before that ice-cold kiss can suck out my soul.

***

My dreams may be confusing the two of them, but Draco is not Tonks. Not remotely. She was an Auror, a member of the Order, and she died fighting. I have his records. I'm reviewing the damned file even as I write this. He was on the wrong side, mostly because of his parents, and he was ineffectual and cowardly. Not that I should complain about that, since it probably saved us. He hemmed and hawed and mumbled and "wasn't sure" we were who we were. I was the one that Lucius and Narcissa identified, not Harry.

And I saw his arm. He has the Mark. I saw it when I held his wrists over his head, and he knows that I saw it, because I felt him flinch. It's fading, but it's still ugly and knotted and even where the darkness is gone you can see it in relief. It goes down to the bone and he'll probably have it for the rest of his life. Did he wake up the morning after the battle and feel that thing on his arm and know he'd have it forever? I flinch when I see it even though I know exactly what he did and didn't do.

Riddle really hated the ones he marked, didn't he? From what I saw in the depositions, he seems to have singled out Draco and his father for individual humiliation. Certainly I saw first-hand what he did to Neville. Set him on fire. The Purebloods in his inner circle, he tortured and humiliated, and a pureblood who wouldn't come over to his side he tried to burn like a witch.

I wonder if Riddle hated the Pureblood aristocrats more than I've ever been able to manage. Maybe even more than he hated the likes of me.

***

Author's note: Hermione's demographic estimates come from JOdell's essay on the subject, which includes numerical estimates provided by a guest commentator with training in demographics. Estimates on the size of the wizarding world vary considerably depending on assumptions about how many other schools of witchcraft and wizardry serve the British Isles, or if Hogwarts is essentially the only one.