Chapter Text
The Leaky Cauldron has seen better days, Hannah Longbottom thought as she cleaned the bar for the umpteenth time that day. A habit she had originally picked up because standing there wiping glasses was too much of a stereotype for her. Even with the busy times, too much idle time to sit and think about her grand plans.
Nearly two years ago, when she'd originally taken over from old Tom, she'd been enthusiastic. She was going to reform the place, bring proper cooking back to wizarding London. Real food, made with skill and attention. The kind of meals that reminded people magic wasn't all wands and spells, but in the simple act of feeding someone well.
The wooden tables and benches had been a success, at least. The steins adorning the shelves were a good touch. But the food? The food had been her grand project. She'd tried continental meals, real at-home British fare, even some fusion experiments that had sounded great at two in the morning after a glass of wine.
Mixed reviews was being kind. Wizards, it so turned out, were wary if not all but allergic to even the thought of anything different from what they'd grown up with. Her carefully prepared meals went nearly uneaten. The potato pancakes were met with confusion. Even her pretzels, which she'd thought would be a safe bet, remained untouched.
All that remained of the schnitzel was to be eaten with chips, and even then. A compromise that stung a bit, but at least folk were eating it.
But she was proud of her cooking. She could cook circles around any of the house-elves in London, and proud of it! They had magic, but she had the passion to demonstrate that a witch could create something truly magical in the kitchen, no silly wand waving required, to quote a certain grumpy professor.
"Hannah, sweetie, another bowl of chips!" Lavender called from across the corner table, interrupting her train of thought. "Whatever it is you do to make them so crispy. it's absolute magic."
"No magic," Hannah yelled back, laughing. "Good technique and good oil."
It was Tuesday afternoon, the dead zone in between lunch and dinner, and the pub was nearly empty except for Lavender and her friends sitting at the table in one corner, and a few quieter patrons enjoying a cuppa to fortify themselves against a shopping trip. Hannah grabbed a fresh bowl of perfectly golden new chips and walked over to join them.
"Thanks, love," Lavender answered, the magical eyeshadow shifting from rose gold to coral. Makeup magic that functioned like a mood ring, colours oozing across her eyelids in tandem with her emotions and was all the rage already after the young witches of Hogwarts saw Lavender’s creation in Teen Witch Weekly. The scars of battle on her cheeks and neck remained, but Lavender had never covered them up, except for the most important events. She sported them as war badges of survival.
"Zabini's yacht party? Have you heard about that?" Eleanor asked, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. She was three years younger than most of the group, having been a new addition to their social circle after falling out with long-time best friend Laura. "I hear Daphne Greengrass went, and."
"...Eloped with the Lestrange heir," Millicent Bulstrode finished, her needle never pausing over the embroidery she was working on even during her break. She'd begun dressmaking after the war, her big hands surprisingly delicate with fine stitching. "Can you imagine? After all this."
"Other people get over it," Megan Jones said serenely, holding her tea. The only member of the group with children. All three of them, who were currently out for the day visiting their 'Aunty Gwen' so Megan could have a much-needed grown-up chat.
"I still think it's romantic," Leanne sighed, "New starts and new love and all that."
"Not for everyone," Eleanor stated, a bit starchily. "Other people just pretend the past didn't happen."
There was a thick silence. Eleanor had lost someone during the war, someone she'd been particularly close to. A cousin, Hannah remembered. The younger woman did not talk about it much, but it coloured her views on who should be pardoned and who shouldn't.
The flames in the hearth erupted with green for a moment, and an older woman appeared through, arm slung through a shopping basket. Her face wrinkled into a polite smile as Hannah said, "Good afternoon, Madam McNabb!"
The witch waved, her shopping basket bobbing, and passed on through to the doorway that led into Diagon Alley.
"At least Blaise has good taste in boats," Lavender said tactfully. "That yacht is said to be just stunning. All magic sails and mother-of-pearl inlays."
"You just wish for an invitation," Megan teased.
"Of course, well," Lavender said with no remorse. "The networking possibilities alone, not to mention the Agean is supposed to be beautiful."
“Gossip!” Megan quietly coughed into her hand. “Face it, you just want the juicy bits on who’s dating and who’s starting families!”
"Speaking of boats and babies," Leanne announced happily, perpetually preoccupied with procreating and ignoring the eyeroll from Millicent, "Megan, may I take the children next Tuesday? I promise I'll have them home before nightfall. We could go to the park, feed the ducks."
"Leanne, you babysat them last week," came the groaning reply. "And they came back with ice cream on their faces and in their hair and the absolute belief that 'Aunty Leanne says bedtime is optional.'"
"That was one time!"
"It was three times."
"Do you recall that summer, when we were all going to become completely different people after Hogwarts?" Megan asked, cunningly divesting herself before Leanne could launch into another babysitting crusade. "When we were fixing up the castle?"
"God, that was awful," Lavender said, her eyeshadow shifting to a thoughtful shade of lavender to match her countenance. "Half the school coming back to tidy up the place, not looking at the bloodstains. And us all playing and boasting as if we had an idea what we were doing with our lives."
"I was determined to enter Herbology research," Megan said. "Travel the globe, discover new plants. See me now. knee-deep in nappies and making snacks in the shape of snitches."
"You like it, though," Hannah offered gently.
"I do," Megan acknowledged with a happy smile. "But seventeen year old me would be horrified."
"Seventeen year old me would have been dead," Lavender answered matter-of-factly, and the table went quiet. She absent-mindedly rubbed her neck, fingers following the scarring. "When I woke up at St. Mungo's and they showed me what I looked like. I thought my life was done for... that no one would ever see me the same again."
"Lav." Megan started.
"No, I'm all right. I'm all right now," Lavender replied, "The cosmetics started out as a way to conceal them, make myself presentable again. But then I thought, why conceal? Why pretend? So I started making them showy. If people are going to gawk anyway, might as well provide them with something beautiful to look at. Now it's my signature." She smiled. "I’ve got people sending me owls asking what charm-work I use. I've had three interview requests for my 'beauty philosophy' after my eyeshadow started selling well."
"Turning scars into art," Millicent said admiringly. "That… that takes a lot of guts."
Lavender's eyeshadow lit up with pink. "Thank you. That means an awful lot, coming from you."
Millicent shrugged, resuming her embroidery. "I know a thing or two about making the best of a bad situation. Do you know how hard it is to find employment with the name 'Bulstrode' after the war? Everyone assumes you're a supporter of the Death Eaters. Not that I was even sixteen years old and didn't get a word in edgewise about my family."
"I didn't know," Eleanor whispered.
"Most won't. But go try explaining to potential employers that you had nothing to do with what your uncle did. I had to apply fifty times before I gave up and started my own shop." She displayed her embroidery with a flash of pride. "Best decision I ever made. Now I work for myself, on my own terms, and the clients who are worth keeping don't pay attention to my last name."
"The pub's the only thing that kept me sane," Hannah admitted, shocking herself at the revelation. "After Mum died, after everything. I needed something that was mine. Something I could control and shape and make better. Even if most wizards don't like good cooking when they get to taste it."
"We like your chips," Megan said, smiling.
"Yes, well, small victories." Hannah smiled despite herself. "At least I know I can outcook any house-elf in London. That's something."
The door creaked open onto the street, admitting a roar of October wind and the raucous sounds of Muggle London. Car horns, the growl of a bus, a yelling voice about football scores. The noise abruptly stopped as the door creaked shut behind Hermione Granger, the magical pub's defences muffling the world outside once more.
"Hermione!" Lavender waved frantically. "Come join us!"
Hannah watched Hermione's face run through its familiar sequence. Joy at being noticed, distaste at the social courtesy, then resigned-to-pretend excitement. The introvert's never-ending dilemma.
"I really shouldn't," Hermione said, as her feet carried her toward their table. "I have so much to do."
"You always have things to do," Eleanor said, sitting down. "Sit. Unwind. Hannah, will you get some tea?"
"And something filling, not heavy," Hermione added, sitting down in the chair, placing her bag of books and files on the floor. Her work robes were rumpled, hair tied into a utilitarian bun that was already losing the battle with her curls. "I've got hours of reading to do tonight."
"Early shepherd's pie?" Hannah suggested. "Thin on the potatoes? Lots of vegetables?"
"Perfect, thanks."
Hannah just smiled and flicked her wand a couple of times towards the kitchen.
"You look exhausted," Lavender said with the honesty of old friendship. "What's the Ministry keeping you at now?"
"Not the Ministry itself," Hermione said, accepting the tea Hannah put in front of her with a smile of gratitude. "I'm advocating for magical creature law reform. Fighting to get them to consolidate seventeen disparate laws for house-elf working conditions into one system, but."
"But wizards hate change," Eleanor summarized. "Tell me about it. I suggested updating the Floo Network routing system last month, and you'd have thought I'd suggested banning wands. One of the older coordinators even lectured me on how 'tradition is our strength' as if that was supposed to mean anything."
"'I don't want to learn anything new,' is what it means," said Millicent briskly, her needle resuming its steady rhythm. "My father makes this remark whenever I suggest adding something new to our family's tailoring contracts."
"Nevertheless," said Eleanor, "at least you're accomplishing what you set yourself to do, Hermione. You said to me during the rebuilding that you'd be changing the world for magical creatures. You're doing it, in fact."
"Slowly," said Hermione, forcing a tired smile. "Very, very slowly. I sometimes think McGonnogall was right, to go back and teach. Really making a difference with individual children instead of bashing my head against ministry red tape."
"You'd go mad in a month," said Lavender. "Anyone not going faster than a thestral would drive you batty and you know it. Fighting battles is where you thrive. In hindsight, that’s probably why you weren’t a ‘Claw like most of us thought you should have been."
"Oh, I almost forgot," Megan blurted, focussing on Millicent, "how are the talks going? With that Welsh family?"
Millicent's expression eased slightly. "Fairly well. Father thinks we might have an accord for Yuletide."
Hermione blinked. " Accord for?"
"My betrothal," Millicent stated calmly, not looking up from her needlework. "The Cadwallader family. Their youngest son is an apprentice wand-maker in Cardiff."
There was a brief, awkward silence. Hermione's face ran through a sequence of looks before settling on studiously neutral interest laced with a very visible discomfort.
"That's... well, if you're happy about it," Hermione said cautiously, her tone suggesting that she didn't think anything of the sort.
"I am," Millicent declared. "Takes all the pressure off dating. I can focus on my work, practice on my stitching, and when the time is right, I'll have a husband who's familiar with traditional families and won't expect me to be something I'm not."
"But you've never even met him," Hermione couldn't help pointing out.
Millicent's needle stopped in mid-stitch. She looked up at Hermione with a half-exasperated, half-resigned scowl. "Rude. I've met him at least a dozen times. He’s nice enough, with good strong forearms. He's more interested in wand cores than conversation, but that's fine by me. We'll get along."
She set her embroidery aside and glared hard at Hermione. "You know, Granger, it's just incredible. You're trying to change our entire culture, rewrite our laws, teach us how to live. and you've never made even the slightest effort to understand it. It's as if you've never had a comportment course at all."
Hermione flushed. "I- what has that got to do with it?."
"All of it," said Millicent in short. "Comportment isn't just which fork to use. It's being conscious of the social compacts that keep our world together. The rest of us," she swept her hand around to indicate Hannah, Lavender, Megan, Eleanor, and Leanne, "we all learned those things when we were children. Different versions, perhaps. Different levels. But we understand why some traditions are the way they are, what they mean, what they're for."
"Well… I’m muggleborn, but I'd heard of betrothals before even third year at Hogwarts," Leanne supplied quietly, "My parents did a lot of research while we were in Scotland and explained to me how wizarding families are, even though it most likely wouldn't happen to us. It's something that goes along with being here."
"I do believe in tradition," Hermione stood up. "I just don't think,"
"You know there is tradition," Millicent countered. "You don't know how it works for those of us who live it, and you clearly don't care to learn. Arranged marriages aren't about ownership or control. For families like mine, they're about forming alliances, certainly, but also about locating compatible pairs with the minimum of fuss and muss of muggle dating. I know what I'm getting. He knows what he's getting. No surprises, no broken hearts, no wondering whether he's going to decide to back out."
She took up her embroidery once more, the needle returning to its soothing rhythm. "After all, when I am skilled enough in runic work, I'll want someone familiar with magical craftsmanship. A wand maker would be ideal for that. And he doesn't live too far from Morag, which is helpful. So as an extra bonus, I'll have someone around I am on good terms with. For goodness sake, Granger," she spat her maiden name as if it were a dire insult, "I'm getting a man, not being bonded like a house-elf!"
"But the house elves." Hermione started, her voice increasing in pitch. "The laws that I'm attempting to improve would actually serve them. They should."
"Why do you want to kill them?" Leanne blurted, suddenly, her eyes pricking with tears. The question hung there, harsh and jarring.
"What?" Hermione looked shocked. "I don't. I'm trying to help them!"
"Taking away the one thing that keeps them alive," Leanne said, her voice shaking. "I saw your proposals, Hermione. Freedom for house elves sounds lovely, but they die without bonds. They literally die. And you want to make bonding illegal."
"That's not- I want them to have a choice."
"A choice to die?" Leanne wiped away her tears. "How benevolent is that?"
Hermione's lips opened and closed a couple of times, clearly struggling to get the words right. "I- that is not what I meant. There must be some means of giving them rights without."
"Without knowing how they do it first?" Millicent asked softly. "Without asking them what they need? Without even finding out something about their nature and their needs before determining what's best for them? You're doing it all over again, Granger. Telling other people what they should want without even taking the trouble to get to know them first."
Hermione was white faced. She gazed down at her hands, her cheeks burning with embarrassment and something that could almost have been shame.
"How are the children, Megan?" she said despondently, clearly clutching at straws to shift the conversation to more pleasant grounds.
"Busy wrecking Gwen's flat, I expect," Megan said with a contented sigh, though her eyes betrayed a glimmer of sympathy for Hermione's anguish. "I love them, naturally, but three hours without someone asking 'Mummy, why' is absolute bliss."
"Can I have them next Tuesday, then?" Leanne inquired, springing back to her usual liveliness with the resilience of one who was used to mood swings. "Please? I swear to have proper bedtimes from now on."
"No," Megan said sternly but affectionately. "You can have them in two weeks' time if you're good."
"Gwenog didn't mind taking all three?" Eleanor asked.
"Kidding me? She loves it. Tells me they keep her young. And she's teaching them Quidditch, so they come home so tired you could practically pour them into bed." Megan smiled into tea. "Best auntie ever."
A soft bell chimed from Hannah’s earring, so she stepped away towards the kitchen.
"I haven't spoken to Harry for months," Hermione was saying when Hannah returned, clearly relieved to be on firmer conversational ground. "We always mean to meet up, but everyone's so busy, and we never seem to have the time when we see each other at the Burrow."
"He was at the ministry gala last week," Lavender replied, swiping a chip off the shared plate. "Ginny was very attached, barely let him out of her sight. Although I don't blame her. You know the way the society witches move on him. Circling like kneazles after a very fat garden gnome."
"Did he do something with his hair?" Eleanor asked. "It was different in the Prophet photo."
"It never varies," Lavender answered, "Same messy black hair, same green eyes, same face he had when he was a student at Hogwarts. Honestly, I've snapped photos him at least a dozen times in the past few years, and I swear you could publish a picture of him from straight after the war and nobody would even notice"
Hannah paused after returning some glasses to their place, a thought crossing her mind. She'd had it written off as impossible, but.
"Can I ask a strange question?" she asked, leaning against the bar. "Concerning Harry?"
The girls turned to regard her with interest.
"What does he use for his shaving charm?" Hannah asked. "His face is always so smooth. I mean, I see him at all times of day when he comes in, early morning, late at night, and there's never any stubble. Never even a shadow. Neville has to shave twice a day, especially when he's working with the tressmoss. He says the protective salve irritates his skin something terrible, but otherwise he comes back looking like a puffskein. But Harry's always just. Um. Smooth."
There was a moment of silence.
"That's. actually a really good point," Lavender said slowly, her eyeshadow now amber. "I snapped him at seven in the morning once, then saw him again at the gala later that evening. His face looked just the same. Same smoothness. I thought maybe he'd just shaved in between, but now that you put it to words..."
"Shaving charms aren't that good," Eleanor thought, frowning. "My dad hates them because he overcasts all the time and winds up with an awful rash. You can always know when someone's in need of a shave, even with charms. They don't last long enough."
"My husband's the same," Megan said. "Always grumbling about how he has to recharm all over again. Says it's almost as much trouble just to use a razor."
They all stared at Hermione, who had come to a standstill, tea half-way to her lips.
"I. don't know," said Hermione quietly. Her eyes were that far-away look Hannah recognized. The expression of someone's mind racing into overdrive. "I never thought about it."
She set her teacup down on the table with a considering touch, furrowing her brow in contemplation. "Ron shaves twice a day. I have to nag him all the time, really. If not, he gets this awful scruff that's just awful to." She stopped, colouring slightly. "Well. The thing is, he does have to shave. Harry's never. I've never actually seen him have even the smallest little bit of stubble."
Hannah felt an odd flutter in her chest. Her witch's intuition piqued, even if she didn't know why. Something in Hermione's sudden silence, the rolling of her lightning fast mind clearly working towards some conclusion she hadn't yet reached.
"Perhaps he's just lucky?" Megan ventured. "Some guys don't develop much facial hair."
"At twenty-six?" Lavender questioned. "All the men I've ever met have at least a bit of stubble by then, even the super blonde ones. Even the ones who can't manage a good beard at least have some whiskers."
"Maybe it's something that runs in the Potters," Eleanor suggested. "Some magical inherited characteristic?"
Hermione's fingers drummed on the table. "Potter trait." she murmured, half to herself. "Like his hair? That never stays flat, never changes." Her eyes went distant. "He bleeds slowly too. Remember fourth year? The dragon scratched him and Madam Pomfrey said his blood clotted faster than normal."
The conversation moved on. Lavender began to spin a story about a Quidditch controversy over the Wimbledon Wombles' new Seeker. Hermione was not listening, however. She produced from her bag a strange-looking gadget which was half Remembrall, half orrery. Three small spheres were connected by delicate brass arms, and as she suspended it over her left hand, they began to turn slowly, shining with changing colours. Soft gold, pale blue, a green that looked unhealthy and pulsed like a pulse.
Hannah arrived with the shepherd's pie, setting it down carefully in front of Hermione. "There you are, love. Be careful, plate's still warm."
"Thanks," Hermione muttered, barely glancing at the food. She began to eat on automatic, fork moving from plate to mouth without conscious thought, eyes fixed on the spinning balls. The colours shifted as she concentrated, the blue growing lighter, the gold paling, the green trembling more quickly.
"No hair on the face," she mumbled. "faster healing. Transfiguration-resistant hair." The spheres spun more rapidly. "Not natural aging? But that's." She shook her head. "That doesn't add up. Unless."
The device hovered and spun over her other hand, the colours cycling rapidly now, as if to match the rapidity of her thoughts.
"Cellular regeneration. Some kind of temporal magic? Might be. no, that's impossible. But what if."
Twenty minutes later, she made her excuses and left, the set, problem-solving look on her face. The strange device vanished again into her bag, still emitting a soft light through the fabric. She barely completed payment, her coins clinking together in dismay, before Hannah waved her away with a laugh. The shepherd's pie sat on the table, untouched and forsaken.
Hannah’s eyes trailed behind her, then looked back to find Lavender sitting up straighter, her eyeshadow shifting to electric purple. She swept her gaze across the pub with an air of exhilaration, her head swiveling back and forth as if searching for something.
"Lav?" Megan asked. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter," Lavender said, her tone heightening with excitement. "Something's. happening. Can't you sense it?"
Lavender spun and made great big, grabby hands at Hannah, wiggling her fingers insistently.
Hannah released a nostalgic sigh and stretched out from behind the counter, bringing with her a battered deck of Tarot cards. The edges glowed in the light of the lamp, glistening with the accumulated magic of dozens of witches who had used them over the years. "You realize these aren't the most accurate method of divination, don't you? Tea leaves would say more."
"Don't care. Humour me," Lavender said, her eyeshadow flying back and forth between colours in her excitement.
Lavender shuffled the deck with the accustomed ease, the cards whispering softly against each other as faint sparks of gold trailed along gilded edges. The illumination increased somewhat as she focused, then faded as she cut the deck once, and once more. She dealt two cards, setting them face-up on the bar.
The Fool gazed up at them, stood still halfway across a cliff, his pack of stuff over one shoulder. Next to it, the Six of Cups showed two children in a garden, one holding out flowers to the other.
The photographs weren't static. They never were with magical decks. The Fool leaned forward in his eternal state of decision, his foot over the edge of the precipice. And then, slowly, he stepped forward out of the rim of his card, his painted-on smile turning towards the Six of Cups. He sniffed at the flowers the girl was offering him, his face curious and childlike.
"Oh!" Leanne cried, her hands flying to her mouth. "Someone's having a baby! New beginnings and babies and. oh, who is it? Megan, are you pregnant again?"
"Absolutely not," Megan replied with a stern tone. "Three is quite enough, thank you."
Lavender, Millicent, and Megan burst into laughter at Leanne's interpretation.
"Oh, that's perfect," Lavender breathed, her eyeshadow now shimmering gold. "She's literally longing for the days of childhood. Absolutely perfect."
"New beginnings and childhood innocence," Megan climbed out amidst giggles. "That's either very good or very, very bad."
"My bet is on bad," Millicent snapped, setting down her embroidery. "Nothing good ever results from Hermione Granger having that look on her face."
The Fool stretched back into his own card, to the perpetual near-step, and the glow along the margins faded to a thin glimmer.
Hannah stretched to grab the cards, but as she took the Six of Cups into her fingers, there was one more card that was revealed beneath. The Eight of Cups, a figure leaving eight stacked-up chalices and walking towards a distant mountain range.
The card hummed with magic, pulsing with a faint golden-electric sheen.
Lavender carefully extended her hand and touched it, and the moment her fingers made contact, the hair on her head stood on end. All her curls leaped away from her head, crunching gently with static.
"Bloody hell," she breathed, retracting her hand. Her eyeshadow had locked in shock in its pristine white form. "Hannah, what?"
"They're not supposed to do that," Hannah breathed softly, staring at the card.
"That's. that's nothing to do with a baby at all, is it?" Leanne whined, her initial excitement turned nervous.
The card flashed once more, so white that it left afterimages, then went quiet.
Hannah nervously gathered up all three cards with shaking a shaking wand, not willing to touch them with her hands and put them back under the counter.