Chapter Text
((Art credit: alixfelicis))
Hermione Granger wrenched her arm away from Ron Weasley as soon as her feet hit the pavement. She opened her brolly in one fluid motion and marched off in the pouring rain. If Ron got soaked by the summer storm, it was less than he deserved.
“Come on, ‘Mione.”
“No, you come on. We’re going to be late.”
Ron sighed and caught up to her, shaking his head like a wet dog as soon as he found sanctuary under the brolly’s canopy. Cold raindrops splattered on Hermione’s face. She clutched the handle with a white fist. This wasn’t how she’d hoped to spend her Saturday.
“Here it is,” Ron said as they approached a row of brass revolving doors. “Serpenti.”
She couldn’t get a proper look at the exterior before Ron put his clammy hand on the small of her back and pushed her ahead of him. His timing was poor, and her wellies squeaked on the wet marble floor as she slid through the revolving door. She landed on her arse, and like Alice through the Looking Glass, Hermione found herself in an entirely different world.
Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the onslaught of light and sound. Blinding, colourful lights flashed from slot machines featuring cartoonish witches in skimpy lingerie or brindled crups playing with brightly hued chew toys. People laughed and clapped around cherry wood tables upholstered with green felt. The air hung heavy with cigar smoke and cheap perfume, and the tiled ceiling rearranged itself to depict a blue sky dotted with gilded clouds. A golden sun drifted through the fluffy nebulae, dipping behind a horizon made of mirrored glass only to return moments later, soft-edged and rosy pink. Dawn shimmered across the ceiling’s mural, casting everything in a warm glow, distorting her sense of time and place.
The cavernous casino, famed for its magical games and substantial jackpots, seemed endless.
A witch in a silver sequined mini dress balancing a tray of recreational potions stepped over Hermione. “Pardon.” She said it like an afterthought, wrinkling her pert nose.
“I’ll have a Pepper-Up,” Ron said, hovering over her. Hermione rolled her eyes and pulled herself up off the slick floor.
“You playin’?” The witch smacked her gum as she gave Ron a once-over.
“Absolutely not. Come on, Ronald.”
Ron shrugged at the witch, as if to say it was Hermione’s fault he was being dragged away. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
They wove between the craps tables, Ron’s shaggy head on a swivel following the sounds of clattering dice, but soon found themselves caught up in a family reunion. Someone handed Ron a neon pink t-shirt that read, “14TH ANNUAL BABBINGTON FAMILY BONANZA!” which he threw over his shoulders like a scarf.
Hermione scanned the room — really, just how big was this place? — for any signs they were close to the casino’s offices. “Are we going the right way?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you not know? You’ve spent every Friday and Saturday night here for the better part of a year.” She took a cleansing breath and blew it out slowly like her therapist instructed. As with every other time she’d attempted this strategy, her frustration only grew.
“I didn’t think I needed to say it, but c’mon, I’m typically blitzed. After what I did last night, well, as a valued customer, I demanded to speak with the owner and the floor manager said to come back today around noon. And here we are.”
A valued customer. She snorted. A gambling addict, more like.
After four months of expensive, time-consuming couples therapy, he still wouldn’t admit he had a problem. Hermione attended their appointments as well as Al-Anon in the evenings, teetering on the brink of calling off their five-year relationship. She kept their issues private — not even Harry and Theo knew the full extent of Ron’s problem, although during their last dinner out she suspected they sensed the tension. They’d excused themselves early and walked back to their flat, Hermione falling into fitful sleep on the pull-out couch in front of the telly. Every little creak of the floorboards or scratch of the tree at the window jolted her awake. But instead of worrying about snatchers, she worried her boyfriend was sneaking out to the casino.
Her mother fussed over her more than usual. “They work you too hard there! You’d think a magical government would run itself.”
Hermione had been pulling more than her weight at the office lately. She went in early, and sometimes, if the flat was empty after her Al-Anon meetings, a half-eaten takeaway shepherd’s pie sitting under a stasis charm on the worktop, she walked right back out the door. It was all too easy to find herself at her desk again, rejecting hunting permits on centaur-inhabited lands and filing paperwork that McLaggen, a walking, talking masterclass in weaponised incompetence, pretended he didn’t notice.
One morning Pansy Parkinson found her asleep at her desk, red ink from an overturned pot dried in her matted hair like blood. The witch, Morgana bless her, transfigured Hermione a hairbrush and a fresh set of robes. When Hermione tried to thank her with some crisps from the vending machine, Pansy acted like she didn’t know what they were for and dismissed Hermione with the wave of a manicured hand.
The overtime came in handy. She’d hoped for years that Ron would ask her to combine their finances, and eventually their names. They shared a flat, but it was more economical than a step towards the altar. When Penelope Clearwater came in with a giant rock on her finger from Dean Thomas, Hermione bent her quill so hard it splintered and she had to run to the supply closet for another.
She’d locked herself in, ignoring her colleagues’ well-meaning knocks. Cleansing breaths. Cleansing breaths.
Her facade cracked a little more every day.
All the while Ron returned again and again to Serpenti, spending money he didn’t have. And now he’d gambled away something that definitely wasn’t his to risk.
“That’s him over there,” Ron raised his voice. “Oi!”
The floor manager, clad in all black and sporting an earpiece, gave them a practised smile.
“Mr. Weasley, welcome back to Serpenti.”
Hermione cut the pleasantries short. “Ron said you could help us. We need to speak with the owner.”
“Of course, let me flag someone down to take you to his office,” he raised an arm and signalled to a nearby employee. “Please escort Mr. Weasley and his guest to the owner’s offices. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”
The employee, a short, balding man in a smart uniform — matching deep green trousers and vest, a white dress shirt, and a silver tie with snakes slithering in a north-south direction — led them to a lift bay. Ron tapped his foot, whistling a Celestina Warbeck tune while they waited for the lift. Hermione bristled at how relaxed he seemed. She bit the inside of her cheek.
The lift arrived empty, and the man pressed the button for the top floor. They ascended quickly, passing floors labelled “SPA” and “DINING” and “GUEST ROOMS.” How many times had Ron spent his portion of the mortgage on a massage, or eschewed her cooking, claiming he wasn’t hungry, only to tuck into a grass-fed steak?
He worked long days, that much was true. After the war, all the Weasley siblings swooped in to help George keep the lights on at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Percy sourced materials, Ginny threw herself into research and development, and Ron stocked shelves and manned the till. Charlie returned from abroad to balance the books. Bill and Fleur stopped in whenever possible, their growing brood bringing a smile to George’s face when nothing else would. Even Arthur came out of retirement to test new products. They turned things around in no time, families flocking to the shop for a laugh after the months of terror. Now, by all accounts, business was booming.
But no one seemed to have the fortitude to move on. If Ginny suggested she might like to pursue an open alchemy apprenticeship she’d been eyeing, one of her brothers talked her out of it. Bill longed for the arid dunes of Egypt, but Percy launched into a diatribe about the unimpeachable comforts of home. And if all else failed, all anyone had to whisper was, “But what if something happens with George?”
George, understandably, wasn’t quite the same, but he was no longer an ashen-faced shadow of himself. He’d been dating Angelina Johnson for six months, and recently announced his intent to expand the shop abroad. Molly shot the idea down over dinner, adjusting her napkin with a force that indicated the matter had been decided. She insisted on family dinner every Sunday, and if you begged off, she’d come over armed to the teeth with medicinal herbs and homemade soup, scared half to death you’d caught some deathly disease.
The Weasleys’ codependency froze them all in time. And no one was more worse for the wear than Ron.
He didn’t mind if Molly dropped by unannounced. If she happened to put on a load of laundry while she was there, that’d be just grand in his view. He never planned a holiday away, just he and Hermione. Week in and week out, they went through the motions. They were happy enough. Their routines provided stability and comfort that Hermione hadn’t had since she arrived at Hogwarts. They weren’t chasing anything, and more importantly, no one was chasing them.
The lift dinged as they arrived at their destination. A long corridor stretched in front of them, a solitary door at its end. Hermione stepped out, and instead of looking for Ron to follow her, she pretended to be engrossed in the velvety carpet as she forged ahead. One foot in front of the other, she reminded herself. You’ll simply explain the circumstances and walk out like none of this ever happened. No one has to know.
But there was something about being on the run, something she missed. The adrenaline, the pump of one’s heart, the widening of eyes as the person alongside you stumbled over a tree root or snapped a twig. Harry believed in flight until you were forced to fight.
Hermione, on the other hand, preferred a good fight over anything else. Backing down, even when it was the most sensible course of action, held no appeal. There was nowhere else she’d rather be than on the front lines, voice hoarse and covered in a fine layer of dust.
And when she’d run out of her own battles, she’d started fighting Ron’s.
At first she thought she fought for them, who they were as a couple. Originally they’d been like the shiny matchbox cars she’d played with as a girl, side by side on a dual track. Starting at the same time, spiralling down to the finish line. All else being equal, it should amount to a photo finish. Hermione rooted for a draw — a life together. A marriage like her parents’, children, trips to the beach and the continent. But halfway through, Ron’s tires blew out while she sped ahead, and it seemed like no matter what she did, she couldn’t slow down.
She reached the door and waited patiently for Ron to join her. When his trainers appeared on the carpet next to her, she looked back. The Serpenti employee had vanished without a word. A pit formed in her stomach.
“It’s going to be fine,” Ron said, puffing his chest out. Hermione wondered if the display of bravery was all for show. “After all, who could say no to the Golden Girl?”
She wasn’t so confident, but then again, what did he have to worry about? She’d gotten him out of worse scrapes. What he’d done was unconscionable in her book, but if Ron thought the consequences of his actions would never come back to bite him, perhaps he eliminated them from his decision-making equation.
Scratch that. He probably didn’t have a decision-making equation.
Hermione rapped her knuckles against the frosted glass of the door. It swung open to reveal another Serpenti employee, this time a woman with limpid blue eyes.
“May I help you?”
Ron gestured to himself, then to her. “We’re here to see the owner.”
“It’s your lucky day,” the woman, presumably some sort of executive assistant, said with an air of superiority. Hermione snorted — as if anything about this day could be filed under “lucky” — and the woman peered at her over thick-rimmed spectacles. “He’s in. Follow me, please.”
Hermione and Ron followed her through a maze of filing cabinets and past a floor-to-ceiling steel vault. She supposed casinos required massive amounts of cash on hand, but this was much larger than any she’d seen at Gringotts. Hermione opened her mouth to ask about the particulars, but this wasn’t a field trip. She would soon need to negotiate with the kind of man who not only had no qualms profiting off people who didn’t know any better, but also facilitated their downfall.
It was all a glamour, really. Everything down to the last chip was a carefully constructed illusion designed to lure unsuspecting guests in and keep them in a constant state of arousal. The metallic tang of new coins falling from machines that magicked the next result before you even pulled the lever. Beautiful people in glitzy outfits offering drinks, drugs, company. Hermione shivered at the thought of hundreds of eyes glazed with the shiny patina of new money, drifting over dice dipped in gold paint. Even the sky, impressive magic though it was, didn’t hold a candle to the real thing.
And yet, it entranced so many.
This man, whoever he was, was no better than a parasite. A bloodsucker. And she had to remove him before he swelled even further. Before he destroyed everything she tried so desperately to save.
The woman came to an abrupt halt, and Hermione stopped just shy of running into her, tipping forward despite the weight of her wellies. Ron’s hands met her waist in an attempt to keep her from falling, but she wriggled them off. She couldn’t see his face, but his sigh spoke volumes.
“Through there.” The woman tilted her head towards a black door carved with snakes. Instead of alerting the owner to their presence, she sped back the way she came, her practical pumps clacking against the tiles, as if something nipped at her heels.
Ron, who finally had the decency to look nervous, didn’t move. Hermione sighed and wiped her palms on her skirt. After shaking them out — she didn’t bother with another cleansing breath — she pushed inside.
Draco Malfoy stood in front of her, one hand in his trouser pocket as he leaned back against a mahogany desk. His trademark smirk played across his face.
“Ah, Granger and her pet Weasel. To what do I owe the pleasure?”